Airith- the Kentilan War Read online

The Creator squirmed uneasily on tired feet. In his worn arms, he clutched a volume of blueprints to his chest. His mechanical limb moved and gingerly swiped at the anxious brew of sweat covering his forehead. He eyed the room around him idly. He stood over the crystalline depiction of the Emperor himself, directly in the full gaze of the atrium’s sculpted moonlight. The only other living beings in the throne room with him were inanimate and still—Royal Corps that had melded with the dark corners of the room, invisible to the eye. And reacting now only to the sound of the Emperor’s voice.

  The heavy creak of large doors heralded the Emperor’s return. On impulse, the Creator went down on one knee.

  “My Lord!” he announced as he bowed.

  “Argh!” A tearing scream rattled his bones. A woman tore into the room, bloodied from her waist down. She came straight at him, at a speed that caught him unaware. She ploughed into him and they both went down. His mechanical arm took most of the shock as it angled to keep the Creator upright. The moment left him breathless and silent. In his arms, a weeping woman shuddered, eyes dilated, skin clammy and pale, totally oblivious to his presence. Instead of picking herself up, she curled into a ball. All around them, his blueprints lay scattered on the floor.

  “Are you okay?” The Creator coughed; eyes wide.

  She offered no response, but the trembling of her body and the emptiness in her eyes offered a horror that his mind refused to imagine. The Creator got down on one knee as a scanner ray flicked on from his other prosthetic limb, a slender thing that looked like a master ethernet plugin. The laser beam swept once over her body and displayed her vital parameters to a side of his vision. Her blood pressure was threateningly high, and her water and electrolyte levels were low.

  “My!” he gasped. “What is your name?” He reached into his coat and took out a satchel of handy supplies.

  She said nothing but she didn’t stop shuddering. One of the guards stepped forward.

  “Back. You haven’t been given any order by your Emperor!” the Creator barked as he reached under her with his mechanical and one of his organic arms. The other gathered his blueprints from the floor. She was relatively light. He proceeded out of the throne room carrying her, with her head resting against his chest. The whipping or grunting hadn’t subsided; the Emperor was still having a blast. It was almost as if he hadn’t realized one of his whores had gone missing. Or maybe he didn’t care.

  The Creator hurried his feet, rushing down another hallway and a flight of stairs until he came face to face with a dead-end. He pressed against a discolored portion of the wall and it parted to review a dark secret passage. He carried her through until he felt the bite of cold night air. They were somewhere outside palace grounds, on a back road. A warm wetness sullied his hands and even in the moonlight he could see the curdling of her blood on his fingers. He set her down gently, propping her against a wall.

  “What is your name?” he asked again, but her consciousness seemed to have wandered from her. Her eyes stared emptily. He returned to rummaging in his satchel. He found what he needed. An airtight tube of nanosymbiotes, little amoebic organisms he had synthesized in his lab by fusing cultured symbiotic fungi and bacteria together and infusing them with his break-through invention, Cymaga. He had hoped to offer it as a token of goodwill to the Emperor and let the snob-nosed infidel enjoy its wonder. But now here he was, about to offer it to a dying woman in the back alley of the palace.

  “Still, you would make a fine specimen,” he whispered excitedly as he shook the tube and relished the frenzied jubilation of the organisms within. He took out a syringe and drew a pint from the tube. Her hand was limp in his and her veins nearly negligible against her skin. He struggled with finding an insertion point before the needle finally slipped in and he pressed down on the infuser.

  The syringe drained and the Creator squinted closely for any signs of change. Nothing. Nothing until he heard it. The undeniably squishy sounds of moving flesh. On coordinated central reflex, his goggle light switched on, illuminating the wide gash in her abdomen, just over the bulge of her pregnancy. The wound hadn’t gone deep enough to harm her vital organs or the bulging uterus below. The gash was a red smile, a smile that was now moving on its own, as the flesh churned and the seams of the wound slowly drew closer, regenerating and healing itself. But only to an extent; the red flesh around the skin stopped moving and its meaning wasn’t lost on the Creator. She would need more—a large dose of the symbiotes—if she was to recuperate and bear her child. He held the empty tube up to the moonlight. He could only make more back at his lab. He needed to take her with him.

  She moaned and stirred.

  “Can you hear me?” The Creator watched her eyes. Her tender lids twitched but did not open. He took her hand and felt her pulse. It was weak, but much stronger than before. She needed blood. She needed nutrition, and she needed rest.

  Suddenly her eyes shot open. Glazed pupils pierced his soul. He shuddered and relaxed when life returned to those eyes.

  “Can you hear me?” he repeated. Was she dead?

  “My baby!” she gasped as she bolted upright. The pain ran in thin lines from the corner of her eyes and yet she screamed when she saw the wound in her abdomen.

  The Creator clasped a hand over her mouth and forced her back against the wall.

  “Shhh! Shhh! I was only trying to help you! Do you not remember?” He pleaded with frantic eyes and sensed relief when his words stilled her. He let go.

  She didn’t move, but her eyes watched him distrustfully.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “My baby. Save her,” she wheezed. The Creator stared down at her ghastly belly. She was at least five months along. “Save her,” she urged eagerly. “I just want her to live. I want to hold my daughter. That is all.”

  She oozed vulnerability and trust. The Creator could not believe his eyes. Not only did his latest invention work, but he could take her and further study the aftermath of his first human testing.

  “I can save your baby.” He watched hope spark in her eyes. It tingled all over his body. “But, to do that, you have to come with me and let me care for you. I can take you and your child to safety, away from the Emperor’s peril. Would you not like that?”

  Tears welled in her eyes as she nodded.

  “Good. What is your name?”

  “Valdova.”

  “Wonderful name.” He gave her a genuine smile and reached slowly to brush the tips of his fingers over her wound. “And the baby?”

  “Her name…will be Phara.” She smiled weakly.

  “Beautiful choice. I’m sure it will suit her nicely.” The Creator glowed with anticipation. “You will not only be a mother to her, Valdova. I will give you a sacred gift.” His keen eyes watched for a response.

  The girl stared wide-eyed, unable to decipher his meaning.

  “I will make you a mother to an elite race, pure and technologically advanced. A nation that will call only you, Mother!” He shuddered with the excitement, leaning all the way toward her face. “How does that sound?”

  “I don’t understand, sir. But it sounds fulfilling.” She trembled.

  He darkened with a smirk. “Don’t worry. You will understand in time,” he whispered, slipping his hand into his satchel. “For now, you rest.” He retrieved a different syringe. She didn’t see him move, but his hand came over her mouth as the needle pressed into her neck. She jerked and her eyes widened.

  “Don’t worry. I will not hurt you” were the last words he said.

  *

  The Emperor awoke. A humming filled his ears and some invisible force sat heavy over his chest. The walls around him pressed down from all sides and the agony crept over his skin like a being of its own, festering and feeding, peeling at his skin like a molten blade, scraping and exposing live nerves, nerves that screamed, precipitating his short dreams, turning them to nightmares, and keeping him up at night.

  “Argh!” he wailed, his voice rusty and drawn. T
he slam of his chamber doors preceded his guards, strong hands pinned him down and a small man's face floated before him, for just a moment, like he was always doing, every other night. Then the man was gone, and the sharp pang of the needle's entrance ushered the elixir. The Emperor jerked with another scream, but he barely moved, pinned as he was. The maester held up the syringe for him to see. He had injected him with the Elixir. A potion that would put him out of his misery for at least an hour, until its powerful numbing effect gradually wore off and he would wake to his nerves coming alive again.

  It took two days to extract the Elixir from the seeds of an herb that grew singly and in isolation. A secret that was kept from his subjects, to ensure the throne's safety.

  Now, the numbness was all he could feel, and a sweet calmness. He drifted off, just for a bit. Until the pain returned, again, seeping into his temporary bliss. He woke with another scream and the features around him began to press down on him again. It was an experience that heightened his senses, muffling sound and dulling taste, so all he could sense was pure, caustic pain. In the electric haze, the small man’s face floated within reach again. His tired eyes watched him pitifully and he mouthed something. The Emperor could understand only pieces of what he said, but it wasn’t good. “We can’t find more of the Moon's petals, my Lord. We may have to find another means.

  The Emperor shuddered at the pain in the places where the bacteria was festering. He tried to plead but his lips mouthed wordlessly.

  The Creator. Where was he?

  The Maester turned away from him as the chamber doors opened. The Emperor looked. There he was. The Cyborg that had promised him heaven and earth. Even as he was wrapped in this debilitating pain, his rage roiled underneath.

  The Creator bowed once and approached, holding out an airtight tube.

  “My Lord? Can you hear me? I'm sure you can. I’m pleased to tell you that you will no longer have to rule from the confines of your bed. For this.” The Creator held out the tube. “This is your salvation. Fully tested and working. I have synthesized a culture that will repair as much damage as you take. The culture is a symbiosis of the—”

  The Emperor screamed. He could take no more. He jerked and writhed. The guards struggled to keep him down.

  “Administer it,” the maester ordered.

  The Creator’s deviant smile split his face like an upturned boomerang, and then, like a pancake, the guards flipped the Emperor onto his stomach, stuffing him into the pillows and suffocating him.

  “Hold him still!” The Creator urged, and the men tightened their hold.

  The Emperor sucked up feathers. The sharp bite of the needle came from his lower back and hit him straight in the head. The pillows absorbed his scream and the guards held him still. The needle left behind a sensation that radiated from his spine, traveling in the fissured network of his veins like lightening, straight to the recesses of his being. The pain was gone and what replaced it was a dullness, a lull in feeling. A negligible hum. His nerves went silent. A calmness had returned.

  “Let go, so you can witness this wonder.” The Creator chuckled, just as a dappled sensation covered the Emperor’s skin. He could feel it. He could feel tissue moving, squirming. His body had come alive, every atom in him dancing in a frenzy. The hands holding him, immediately let go.

  “I feel…”, the Emperor heard himself speak understandably, for the first time that week. “I feel…” The word did not come. There was none to describe it. Where they listening to him? He willed his limbs to move. They responded. His hand lifted of his own accord. The numbness was gone. He turned over and bolted up in bead. He could feel the gaze of the others and the body heat surrounding him.

  “How do you feel, my Lord?”

  There was no word to describe how everything inside him pulsed. And yet, he could only say, “Awake.” He looked up and found the Creator gloating with wide eyes, unable to contain his excitement, trembling visibly.

  “Can you synthesize this for me? Every day?” The Emperor held out his hand, watching the pale-blue skin change into lifeless scales and peel off, revealing new skin. His heart rejoiced.

  “Of course, my Lord. Bacteria and fungi are never in short supply. However…” There was that glint in his eye. “I would want something in return. And you already know what it is.” He grinned.

  *

  Years passed after that fateful night and the sprawling mass of the Kentilan Empire grew like a swarm across the atlas, spurred by a new technological enlightenment and spear-headed by the Emperor’s close hand, the Creator. The Kentilan race began to flourish again, after years of stagnation and fearful rumors following the Emperor’s illness.

  During this Renaissance, and to the east of the Kentilan Palace, a thin veil of advanced technology slowly took form: an energy field so strong it drew from the Life Pool itself. It slowly grew, first a dome containing nothing more than a few thousand acres and then gradually growing, swallowing hectares of land; a gift and token of the Emperor’s goodwill to his new-found savior. He had given the Creator diplomatic anonymity and jurisdiction over this land, to do with it as he pleased. The Creator wasted no time, and his energy field grew until it blocked out the Emperor’s eastern view from the Kentilan Palace and was the only structure on Kentilan soil to touch the sky.

  “Why is it so big?” the Emperor sniffed with folded arms, standing naked by his massive window. Behind him, a dozen women lay tangled in his bed, draped in fur and snoring softly. “But most importantly, why are their towers so tall and so different?”

  He growled to himself, seeing silhouetted figures of the advanced architecture the Homecity bore; towers built to give their people the most space, to include the hanging gardens that flourished between them. Their transport system was an airborne express that left the grounds for only pedestrian commute.

  “And you know what annoys me most? He will not share his tech with the Empire. He thinks little of me. Can you imagine? Me! His Emperor.” The Emperor was assailed by a sickness but not the disease that constantly ate his flesh. Rather, it was the drug that repaired his skin in the disease's wake, and the sight of the utopia that blocked his view. The sight of the technological advancement that was within his reach, and the half-machine, half-man that always lingered in his thoughts. The one every citizen truly adored.

  “My Lord. You should rest.” The maester touched his hand lightly.

  The Emperor flung his hand off. “I want to be alone, he seethed.

  The maester bowed and backed away, and then a woman’s purr caught the Emperor’s attention. He looked to his bed to see that one of them had roused from sleep, her body, like the rest of them, covered in crimson sores.

  “Did you not hear me?” He hissed. He delighted in the terror the woman registered in her eyes. The others, as if on cue, came to, sensing his dissatisfaction, and cowered. He stalked to the foot of his bed, basking in the terror he saw. “Did you not hear me, you dirty little bitches?”

  He chuckled, reaching for the spiked cane he had discarded by the edge of the bed.

  *

  “Oh, worship at Mother’s feet. Glory be. Glory be. For her warmth birthed us all.” The mantra was voiced by all ages and people of all forms and sizes, all half-human and all half-machine. They bowed in unison, paying tribute and kneeling as they presented gifts in all forms at the feet of a tall glass display. On exhibit was a being of pure ingenuity, or so the Creator thought as he watched multitudes of his creations pay respect to Mother.

  She was laying on her side, shrouded in velvet, with one hand over her glass stomach and the lifeless child within it. She was beautiful. A true being of power, and it was because he willed it. Her mechanical half ran from her waist down, a huge contraption attached to her, as well as a mechanical crane that kept her mobile. There was no need for weak organic limbs. He had made her part of life itself. She had the power to create and give life, just as he had given her life. Along the walls of her glassy display, birth pods were assembled
in clean rows, attached to life cords that ran directly from her.

  He waited till the praise and worship were over and watched her children mill out of her chambers. Then he went down to her. She saw him as he came, and he saw the flesh of her face stiffen.

  “Mother,” he said as the slam of the great hall doors consolidated their privacy.

  “Yes?”

  “Today we are going to transfer Phara into a special creation, unlike any you have made before.” He glided across the room to a semi-tactile neuro-control console. He placed his hand on the virtual board across the interface and, like creeping creatures, fibers of the electronics crawled unto him, inserting into his skin, seeking out nerve endings like tiny live leeches. He felt the zap of energy jolt up his arm and his hand spasmed as the impulse reached and created a neuro link with his brain. This gave him override authority over Mother’s programs.

  “What do you mean?”

  He sensed her impatience and impudence. She dared to doubt his intent.