Bliss

by Daniel Lawley

  “Today Captain, we are visited truly by the shadow of death” it was the boson. Smith. His large gut covered by an overcoat that flapped in the wind. A chill crept across the atmosphere.

  “It would seem so” he answered dryly.

  “Abandon ship?” He asked gingerly “A few targets over one. A few of us may stand a chance” he reasoned.

  “No, we are well in range of their guns, they would sink us in an instant if they wished!” The captain responded. “Let's keep the distance as it is and assume we know what comes next.”

  “Which would be?”

  “It is likely,” he answered, “that they have engines of their own and will launch an infantry assault upon us.”

  “So ready the engines” the Boson hazarded.

  “Yes, ready the engines, but do not launch yet, we are completely out-classed in every respect, I do not wish to provoke any unnecessary action on their end!”

  “Understood captain.”

  “Thank you.” He wished he was wrong. Simply by virtue of luck, he wished it more than anything. For the kite to be allowed on her way through the skies, a lesson learned after mercy. Yet he knew they had attacked relentlessly, there would be no mercy not for him, not for his crew. Between them the dreadnoughts toyed with his hopes. A triviality to them, for what did the lives of sky-pirates matter against the will of a principality?

  He heard the buzz before he saw the machines. Great elongated steeds of destruction. Iron plated they were, he noted, of a greater quality than his own. “Launch engines” he ordered loudly. While the balloon remained exposed he noted it would be difficult to splinter and fray the cables tethering it together. In one simple re-design the weaknesses of the vehicle had been eliminated. He wondered what other secrets the naval vessels held. Upon their fronts were mounted great lances of iron. It would be no contest. They were simply outmatched. Yet they had to try. If they delayed inevitability, even by a mere second, one second of hope could be all they needed.

  “Aye captain!” Assent resounded loudly across the deck. The noise of the launch almost deafened him. His heart sank, he'd seen many men die, in many decades of pirating. He'd sent many to their grave himself or ordered them to do so in the name of profiteering. There had always been a chance, even when the odds had been rough there had been something. He'd never sent them so readily defeated. Inside he knew there was nothing to cling to. No glory, no chance, only fear and oblivion awaited.

  Brave men on both sides of the skirmish braced for calamity, fighting and dying in the name of living. Senseless, yet when violence was all men knew, he wondered what would become of them without it. He swallowed as he watched with horror, his crew mown down to the depths of the sky. Those left clashed in epic proportions, the velocity of the skirmish made it difficult to follow completely, yet one truth was clear. He was losing. He'd known they would die. Some took down the naval officers in their fancy vessels. Others went to the grave unfulfilled. Sniped before they had realised what was happening. He hoped they perished before they reached the bottom.

  One brave soul accelerated directly toward an approaching engine. His pistol aim clear. Rather than aim for the balloon he aimed for the rider. Orochi witnessed his lead ball strike true. Exploding his heart and finishing him. He slumped forward in the saddle. His engine accelerated toward the man who had dispatched him. Hitting with full force. They exploded in a display of mechanical parts and burning flesh across the sky. Another had taken down three before succumbing to the same fate. He'd known it would be a slaughter. It still hurt to watch. Knowing he'd sent men to die at his behest for the glory of nothing. Their blood would stain his conscience always. For every man they ended there seemed three more. Thrice as many ready to tear and pull them apart. The kite churned on, full speed ahead. Her own engines screamed out in protest as they were oiled and fuelled. Steam billowed as hot air was pumped into her balloon, as it was expelled from behind, propelling her forwards. The naval vessels had barely worked themselves to strain. He wondered if they had even reached a top rate of knots or if, as he suspected, they were being tormented.

  The boson had been correct in his earlier assessment he realised with a paling of his skin and palpitating heart. Rising inside him, fear became terror. This beautiful ship to which he'd pledged a life of servitude as captain would fall today. There remained only one option. To give the one order he'd regret until the moment of his perishing. He inhaled deeply, his heartbeat a symphony inside his chest. The weight of each breath crushed his chest like the weight of a cannon fallen upon him. Surveying the scene he took one moment longer, stroking the bannister of the navigation deck with forlorn affection.

  “Abandon ship!” He shouted. Bile rose inside him at the events now unfolding before his eyes. A sudden crash broke him from the chains of all emotion. The vessels had opened fire, guns trained upon the kite. She would be lost this day. There was no way to avoid it.

  Around him men blustered to the launch deck. A panicked, stampeding herd of too many running toward not enough engines. Soon they would know, soon they would turn the sharp edge of their cutlass upon one another. Fighting for the chance for a chance to survive. Living had swiftly become a tenuous concept for all aboard.

  Making his way toward the deck he knew Smith would save a space for him. He'd hurry. They would descend to the clouds. Lost to the skies the kite would fall. He wondered, with the sickest of anticipations what the world below looked like. He remembered nightmarish stories from the religious sects. He'd heard them as a boy. Would he experience them now? Turning his back on the approaching behemoths, he ran.

  ~ Naval Barracks, Qesa~

  ~ Twelth of the Sheath, Song of Sorrow~

  The sweetest mask to cloak,

  The gnashing teeth of terror

  She will build a fleet

  In her own honour

  - Gnashka the street prophet

  Mitrick Tenebris surveyed the young woman’s corpse. Strewn uncaring across the floor of his chambers, she’d not bled, only cried out in a moment of horror and realisation before the darkness had taken her. Her arm, outstretched, led to a singular, accusatory pointing finger. Her lifeless eyes stared at nothing, they had seen their last. She had perished at his hand. He thumbed the pendant at his neck, somehow heavier since she’d passed, he enjoyed the feeling of its smooth pewter surface between his thumb and finger. It hummed. A dull buzz against his breastbone.

  The very essence of peculiarity, he never remembered owning such an artefact in the time before, in his old life, in the time before Beocantes and her mission for him. Second chances came from serving others, which led often, to uncomfortable circumstance and happenings. He only remembered slivers, snippets of jumbled memory somewhere deep inside him. Rabid as a cur, some new part of himself quenched it downwards, plunged uncaring into the miasma of the power within. Despite this he knew he'd never been as handsome in his natural life as in this second, supernatural existence. It was if the goddess had granted him simply more than he'd been allotted before. It was also as if people knew him, people he'd not known in his life before. This allowed him enough trust, enough agency to carry out his task, her will.

  This came with its own set of peculiar complexities. The dark times, the desperate times when the bottle at his neck felt empty. It shook gently against his chest in rhythm with the beat of his heart. When it emptied, his strength left him, he felt himself waning. His existence precariously dependent upon the state at which the bottle was filled. He also found himself filled with emptiness in these times. With the desire for carnal knowledge of the flesh, craving. He'd no trouble, bringing them to his bed, lured as prey, hypnotised toward the dangerous predator that would devour them. It was the same sequence of events in each instance. They would come and he would use his physicality to strip them of inhibition, then upon the final stroke of his victory they would perish. Life ended, the bottle would feel somehow heavier. His physical strength returned. His existence within the realm of the living enti
rely dependent on his new found predatory nature. He enjoyed being able to command this new found power.

  He liked to think he would never have carried out these acts in his previous life. In the time before Beocantes. Yet he knew that part of himself reveled in the power, in the glory of holding life and death in his hands. Deciding who would meet the goddess herself and who would live to perish another day. He was also certain that, besides the one weakness, he was indestructible. He felt no physical pain and when the bottle was filled, woulds healed as fast as they were inflicted. Darkness prevailed over him, a specter over this new life, yet he embraced it for the spoils, he found it to his liking.

  Silently he slunk over to the girl. Slip of a thing, her corpse remained warm upon the wooden floor. She appeared almost at peace, he wondered if she'd felt pain as he'd robbed her mortality for the sake of his own. Part of him hoped it had been blissful, a few moments of joy before an expanse of nothing.

  The bottle vibrated again, more violently this time. He sensed a presence he'd not felt since…

  “Mitrick Tenebris” echoed a voice from nowhere yet everywhere at once.

  He dropped to his knees, pressing his face to the wooden floorboards of his room. The oak felt rough beneath him. Splintering slightly the edges pressed his face, not enough to cut him, simply to be uncomfortable. He mused that perhaps one should always feel uncomfortable in the presence of a deity.

  “Do you yet believe?” The voice asked mockingly. “Do you yet see, young sweet fool, that the wonderments of all nature lie not in the minds of men, but the hands of those such as myself? That all is far from your grasp no matter how you reach, capable of such dizzying heights yet destined to fall forever short?” He knew better than to answer, it was not that Beocantes needed an answer, only that to her, he’d become a simple play thing in the realm of mortals. “You may rise my sweet prince” she cooed seductively. Instinctively he came from the floor to his knees, showing humility yet upward on his haunches before her.

  The corpse sat upright, her naked form causing a stirring to his loins. As he stared she withered before him, decaying with haste at a rate that surprised even he. “See something you like, my cruel lover?” The voice soothed.

  “Ughmh” he mustered toward the skeletal body before him.

  “You find my form unappealing?” She grinned. He'd no way of knowing if the grin was intended or a peculiarity of the form she’d chosen. “Mortals, you only grasp half of what is presented before you” she chided. “I am but a goddess of life and death. Their ways and forms are the playthings before me. There is so much in life that you focus only on one side of the truth, yet existence is a balance Tenebris. Mortals have ignored the realm of the dead for so long, you fear what is natural. Life is but a celebration of coming death. Death itself is but a festival in remembrance of life. Neither is the same as the other yet neither is capable of existence without the other.” She sounded unhappy, desperately sad yet capable of infinite possibility.

  “Your Grace?” he asked gingerly.

  “There was a time,” she began, “when all worshipped me, the crown jewel in the set of goddesses known as the Four. In my hands I held life and death and was loved for it. Most holy, most devout. First among the omnipotent” There trailed a vicious sadness from her voice as the fetid corpse spoke. Eternal life flickered in her eyes. “Yet the fickle hearts of fragile mortals forgot, a being thriving on love starved and choked. No vigils held in my honour, only fear and trepidation where love and understanding once bloomed. A sour feast.” She was suddenly silent as he listened.

  “This is different to what the Order teach, hells! Even to what they are taught as truth” he told her.

  “Dare you misbelieve?” She asked angrily.

  “Nay, your Emminence. Simply I exclaim that the Order believe in the Three, to speak of a fourth would be blasphemy, to believe it heresy. Their influence is wide and curses strong” he paused regretfully. “They control the faith…”

  “Exactly,” she began, putting aside her revulsion toward him, “they control the faith, yet the faith they give so freely is false, not as close to the truth as they believe.”

  “What must be done?” He asked with trepidation.

  “Further destabilisation, further secrets, further subterfuge, for are those not the ways of life and death?”

  “Yes mistress” he addressed her formally, bowing again into the floorboards. The bare skin of his shoulders felt warm in the candle light. The pendant hummed gently against the wood. Not hard enough for the sound to be audible, yet enough for him to know of it's happening.

  “I have my goals in this, you are but one of many avenues,” she continued sweetly, “you have done well to cause such chaos, such death in Neta, soon their society will turn on the Prince, revolution. He will protect his birthright, arrogant one. Faith, they suppose, will save them.” She paused momentarily, allowing the repercussions of her words to fully dawn upon him. “Helpless they turn to faith, believing it will hold them. They turn to the Order to save them. The Order of the Pearl must be no more.” Her words rung out, their echoes resounding in his ears.

  “The Order must be destroyed?” He questioned.

  “Yes, foolish one. This will be your test. Are you ready to cast aside the shades of your old life? Are you ready to reshape the fabric of Neta itself? To rebuild reality in the image of the goddess who gave you new life?”

  “Yes dark mistress” he answered. Truthfully it would be no difficulty. He’d cast them aside in the time before. He'd met the fourth deity, how could he now deny her existence when so much of his own rested upon her?

  “Good, in the absence of the Order, there will be chaos. The faithless will thrive and those with faith will panic and I will be ready.” She spoke delightedly as her scheme became laid before him.

  “Yes your worship” he answered her.

  “My servant?” She asked of him.

  “Yes?”

  “There is more that you should know.” she spoke sternly.

  “Yes?”

  “You have taken the power I gave to you so freely, renewed your mortal life, your mortal fate, but your soul is mine.” She shifted. Slinking toward him across the wooden floor boards as they creaked under her weight.

  “Yes my liege.” he answered perplexed, “my soul belongs to you only.”

  “Then rise from your knees.” As she spoke her form shifted, from skeletal to her first, the one he'd met upon the world below the floating isles. The one he'd envisioned her as since. The bottle hummed violently against his chest. He looked at her, desperation set deep within his eyes. Her raw power dominated, he longed to be free of it. Her physical intensity bore upon him. He pushed against it to meet the burning gaze of her eyes. Jet and jade they forced themselves upon him. She reached towards him, her fingers brushing his forearm. Sudden pain spread through the limb as if struck by lightning. He screamed out yet found himself unable to make any sound. Unable to pull himself away her touch lingered, so too did the agony. He fell back against the wooden boards. Twisting, writhing, unable to fight. She bore down further upon him. It occurred to him that he had always been trapped in the slavering mandibles of her predatory jaws. To his horror the limb began to wither, taking the look of decay it shrivelled to useless. The agony streamed through his body as she inflicted herself upon him, a rage of coiling malice. “Do you see?” She asked.

  “Yes” he admitted, succumbing entirely to her power over him.

  “Each action you take is an expensive use of my power, of my agency, of my might above the realm of mortality. Excessive expense that a dying goddess cannot afford, you must see that each action works entirely toward my desire, or you shall find yourself swallowed by the nothing, swallowed by the eternity, the black that you so fear.”

  “Yes” he ceded, exhausted by pain, unable to speak further. Why was she showing him this?

  “It is a mere thirty of your Netan days until the time you know as All song’s Bliss, the cu
lmination of the songs and the signs in the sky. The time a mere breath exists between the realities of the goddesses and that of mortals. A time of renewed faith, a time of quickening in the soul.” She paused, allowing him time to comprehend in his agonised state. “This is the final opportunity, for by the next all will be lost, all will be for naught, do you follow me, fool?”

  “Yes mistress” he squeezed. Nothing beneath her might, powerless. In a flash she disappeared leaving him writhing as the pain dispersed. As it did so he turned his mind to task.

  ~ The Secondary Temple, Once Hallowed Grounds~

  ~ Fifteenth of the Sheath, Song of Sorrow ~