21. Scorn

As the girl’s shape dissipated, I lingered. I stood there, admiring the vestige of the immaterium that used to be home to us all. 

I chuckled to myself. It was no loss. The collapse of the immaterium was the only true gift the creator ever gave any of us.

I closed my eyes for a moment. When I reopened them, I was back to sitting on the rosewood chair in my office. I took a deep breath and relaxed my body, letting my head slowly tilt back. Baptisms were an exhausting season for us gods, but luckily, few were those who professed to me, the goddess of hate.

I stared at my effigy on the painted ceiling. I thought about how strange it was for them to expect me to enjoy staring at my image all day long, but there was no reason to insult my host by pointing this out.

My thoughts shifted to the young kin, Silika. Her name was now forever etched into my mind like every kin who earned my blessing. Her predicament was perplexing. Of course, her life had been quite the tragic affair so far, I could tell as much from peeking into the rather short memories of her life. But what was it that drove a child who should have lived a life of luxury to become this way?

What was more troubling was the Meiriem’s church involvement in the affair. 

There was a time when we gods had laid the laws for all and administered them through our churches, but those days have long passed for most of the material realm. Only Seeir had still not given up her power… And I guess you could argue Steihnner, the God of War’s church in the Heillhs Empire, still practised and enforced his divine decree to this day… But those were the exception, not the rule. 

The era where the gods ruled the material world was over. Our churches were the only vestige of those bygone days. Now, the only thing our divinity was good for was the blessings we bestowed upon our kins. To the kins, I’m sure blessings appear as a mere tool to be used to their personal accomplishment, but millennia ago, an age that only us gods and select few kindreds remember, they were what brought life to this sterile rock we call the material world… Truly, mann has long forgotten what incredible feats can be achieved through the fate they provide through our gifts, but perhaps that is for the best.

I looked down at the mangled metal appendage I used as a hand, resting on the chair’s armrest. A memory from long ago, when a kin almost killed a god.

Blessings were powerful, but they could just as easily corrupt mann.

They were known as feral, or sometimes heretics or witches, in this era. They were kins who, through breaking covenant with their gods and abusing their blessing, twisted their very form and souls, and brought destruction wherever they appeared.

As to ‘why’ this happened… Well, that’s not something any one of us gods would be willing to share. Let’s just say that the collapse of the immaterium not only affected our kins, but also our divinity. No longer are we omniscient in any other way than what was in the field of our vision and the prayers that reached us….

And so, the church was a necessary evil, as I’d call it. Devotees to the cause of safeguarding the kins' integrity and protecting them from those who strayed. In this era, the presence of ferals had greatly diminished and in no small part thanks to my sister Saria, the goddess of Matrimony, who at the dusk of the Era of Strife some millennia past, cursed the kins with the Purple Veil… In essence, it made the offspring of unholy unions almost impossible and would always result in infertile offspring. A cruel, but necessary precaution. 

Of course, the curse had little effect on those weak in faith, such as were the majority of mann, but it still caused those born outside the bounds of Saria’s unions to carry a certain stigma…

This meant that there was no long-term threat caused by the feral, but kins lived in the present. The threat of marauding feral abominations still persists to this day… But Salland, Silika’s home, was a civilised area far from these issues. The Kinsmanns of the ‘Orthodox Meiriem Church’ had probably never encountered any real heretics, and probably did not know the first thing about dealing with them. 

Excommunication is probably one of the worst possible ways to deal with those falling for the corruption of blessings, as it only pushes them further into deviancy…

No, more than that, one couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to excommunicate their believers. There must be something more to it. Some scheme of manns, no doubt…

Stupid children….

I closed my eyes as I felt my ever-present anger rise in my chest. Aeons of practice, and I could still barely contain the hate that made up the very essence of my being.

I couldn’t believe how the words we wrote in stones with chisels and bones still bore such meaning to this day… Those useless dogmas we forced upon ourselves. Lip service to myself and my brothers and sisters. A charade! Anyone with half a brain would…!

I heard a snapping sound. I opened my eyes, but the fingers making up my metal hand were no more; instead, iron claws replaced them, still grasping the remains of the armrest. 

I threw the wooden remains of the armchair at the wall, turning it into smithereens and let out a howl of unrestrained anger.

At that very moment, I heard a knock at the door.

I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. Controlling the flow of anger emanating from my chest. ‘Keep it for a rainy day’, as Meiriem had put it in the past.

“Come in.” I declared, repressing the anger in my voice.

A trap opened at the top of the door, and a disembodied head encased within a helmet flew in. 

A pureblood Solomonkin. 

Not a very rare specimen on this continent, where their ability to displace their limbs independently from the rest of their body made them prized messengers, scouts… or spies. 

I had to give it to him. Death had an interesting design for his kin. Not only could their limbs act independently, but they also shared a common digestive system, which would redistribute the food equally to the entirety of their kind… An interesting concept for sure, but the implications were too philosophical for my taste. The starving kings of the olden days were the primary culprits for my conservative stand on the matter.

The head hovered smoothly, the air around it standing undisturbed around it.

“Iron Maiden, his majesty would like to know if you will be joining him for dinner?”

I looked out of the window. The sun was setting, but that meant that it was still only early afternoon in Firsland and most of the western continent.

“You will have to convey my most sincere apologies to your master. I cannot accept his invitation until the sun has set on Firsland.”

The head tilted respectfully, catching a glimpse of the broken armrest.

“Shall I have a new chair brought to you, Iron Maiden?”

I nodded. The head acknowledged my response and silently flew away through the same trap door it had arrived.

I waited for a moment before speaking.

“Eyzo, show yourself.”

A swallow which had been sitting perched on a tree just outside my window delicately swooped in. As it reached the front of my desk, it turned into a man. His skin was blueish white, his hair black as midnight, and his eyes golden with crosses going through them. If I had preferred the male form, I would probably have looked similar to this man, but that was not surprising. Not all of us were as ingeniously original as Solomon. Instead, most of us created kins in our image.

Eyzo was but one of a dozen of my original kins from untold millennia ago and had followed me all this time, acting as my most trusted servants.

“At your service, Iron Maiden.”

“Spare me the false reverence, Eyzo. I’m bored with it.”

I said in an irritated tone. A title of war should only ever be used for exactly that, war. Yet the kins took these titles as such a prized possession that they believed we would do the same. 

In other words, I am patient with ignorance, but not with malice.

“As you wish, Lady Scorn. What is it that bothers you?”

I stood up and headed to the large bookshelf on the opposite wall.

“How long has it been since you’ve last  been to Firsland?”

Eyzo scratched his chin.

“Seven decades or so. Maybe eight? Is there something that you would like to know?”

I nodded.

“The Everest family. Of Oblon. What do you know of them?”

“Ah, the marquessial family. The family was quite renowned in the capital for its role in defending the south-western coast of Salland against the Flatfoots. Truly, warriors with few equals and true protectors of Order...”

So the Everest family used to be followers of Seeir? Interesting.

“What about Meiriem?”

“What about them?”

“Did the family worship the gods of love?”

Eyzo seemed to think for a moment before answering.

“Although I have never spoken to a member of the family directly, that would be surprising. Despite their Meiriem heritage, their church’s presence in the region was quite ordinary.” He explained with a shrug.

“Not anymore…” I mumbled to myself.

I recalled the girl’s memory. That day at the Meiriem Cathedral. I threaded through her ingrained memory, going backwards in time. 

Being dragged into the carriage. Thrown on the pavement at the front step. Being hauled through a long corridor. A painful slap from the ringed hand of a kin. An impressive Meiriem statue. A heavy wooden door opens. A screeching sound. A garden…

A screeching sound?

“A crow”

I said out loud.

“Mmhh?”

Eyzo responded half-mindedly.

“Which one of you has the habit of taking the appearance of a crow?”

His face lit up.

“Ah, yes! That would be Orr! Last I heard, she had indeed been drifting about the western region of the continent.” He mused.

Then she is the one who has the answers I need. I sat back at my desk and started writing a letter hastily.

“Deliver this to Orr, have her come and report to me.”

I said as I handed him a summons letter.

“Shall I have her come here?”

I thought for a second. 

“No, you will not. I will depart for the old continent tomorrow. Have her meet me at the Moreti Kingdom capital of Mai’Ville.”

“As you wish, Iron Maiden.”

I grit my teeth at him. Before I could chastise him, he transformed once more and flew away through the window.

Moreti was the midway point between Firsland and the Solom Kingdom, a perfect meeting point, but there was another reason I wanted to go there. For the last two centuries, it has been the primary residence of my counterparts.

The gods of love, Meiriem.