Fractured Gods

Chapter 1, Six: The sun would rise soon, and with it, the creatures would retreat. The tower carved out of the pinnacle of black sandstone offered outstanding protection from the outside world. The windows were little more than arrow slits. Six hadn’t learned how old the structure was or who had constructed it. Though she had a guess it once served as a refuge for worshipers of Anshika, the goddess of magic. Throughout the structure, she found the goddess’s iconology: engravings of the twin moons, mystical symbols of protection painted on every surface. At the very top level stood the strangest room. The door was locked with a strange warning sign posted on the outside. Once the sun rose, Six pledged to break into that room this very day, her leg healed enough to make the steps bearable to climb. This tower provided for the small group what they needed: safety. Something kept the creatures of the night at a distance. They never attempted to cross the narrow section of water that separated the tower from the main part of the shard. If it hadn’t been for the scent of a cooking fire, Six never would have found this place. Despite the safety of the tower, the cries of the beasts woke her long ago. Nestled around her lay the children of this tower. Thirteen boys and girls, all under the age of twelve. They called themselves the lost ones. After the first day, Six recognized what she needed to do. This was her place; this was where she was needed. The sea provided food and protection for the inhabitants, the tower shelter. Six would give love to the children as she could. Her heart was never the most giving, but this place provided shelter for her heart as well as her soul. She struggled to navigate the steps of the tower, but the children were always there to help. Each level became increasingly harder to climb as the treads of the steps grew steeper. What Six thought was the last flight of steps, she needed to crawl up. Today she planned to tackle the last room. The room protected by a lock and a strange warning sign. Talia whispered in the dark, “Mother, why do the monsters cry out so loudly?” She was the oldest at twelve. “I don’t know, dear, maybe they miss their family, and they are searching for them every night.” They had taken to calling her Mother. She didn’t mind, preferred it to the other names she’d been called over the years. Six’s answer satisfied the young girl’s curiosity. That was all that was needed for the moment. Later she could tell them the truth, that the monsters in the night would rip their flesh from their bones if they reached inside the tower. Better to shun the outside world and survive than venture forth and be torn asunder. There was no indication of where the monsters came from or when they would leave the shard. Zar had fallen on hard times: the revolt, the sickness, the murders, and now the creatures that haunted the night. It was as if the very gods ganged up on the free city of Zar, unleashing all the evil the hells contained. From the tales the children told, they all understood the world would chew them up and spit out their bones. They were here alone because their families had died, for one reason or another. Even the youngest knew to leave the tower was to risk death. The upper rooms of the enclosure looked out over the crack. In the distance, ships sailed past. The city of Zar was not far off, no more than three days by ship. Her old life there was dead. Now she had children to protect. This place would be her home. There was no other choice with the beasts hunting each night. Once the sun came up, there would be plenty of work to keep the mind from thinking of the death that haunted the shard. Fourteen mouths to feed, and her barely able to walk. She rested her hand on the tightly wrapped knee. It hadn’t fully healed yet. She found it hard to bend. The fear was real… it might never heal, she would work her way into old age a cripple. At least she had a chance here to grow old. The cry of the creatures heralded the sunrise. Now that the sun was up, the residents of the tower were safer, but all wasn’t perfect. Uninvited guests could stumble upon them at any time. If caught outside the safety of the tower, there would be nothing the children and Six could do to protect themselves. The thick walls not only kept the evil out but needed to keep the children inside and out of sight as much as possible. Six helped the children move the drying rack for the fish caught inside the tower. For the moment, this was their only source of food, but the waters of the crack provided plenty of fish. Dried fish, fish stew, fish cooked over an open fire. They had plenty of fish to eat. Six never liked fish… but she hated starvation more. She choked down the dried fish leather, washing it down with the only drink they had, water. “You know what to do. See to your chores. I will be at the last door,” Six said before struggling to her feet. Talia replied, “We could help you.” Six answered, “You know what needs to be done.” Talia searched the floor. “Then I could help you.” Six shook her head. “You know the others will need supervision… I’m trusting you to keep them at their work and safe.” Six didn’t know why there was only one locked door in the tower. The structure was dead. The chances of something bad being locked behind the final door was infinitesimal, but she could not see risking the children on her fool’s errand. “Besides, if I need help, you will only be a quick call away.” Talia nodded. Six’s words didn’t convince her. She doubted they did much to settle the fears of the oldest child. She thought of no other reason for the children to not come with her. Truth be told, if she made an unfortunate discovery that harmed her, there wasn’t a thing the children could do to keep from falling to the same fate. Her Y crutch, shaped from a limb, had been replaced with a bar of iron that was used as a brace for one of the doors in the lower rooms. She’d spent the better part of last evening pulling it off the door. The clank of the rod on the stone steps reverberated through the stairwell cut from the black rock. Six found the sound oddly reassuring. The heft of the rod would make an effective weapon in a fight. At the bottom of the final fight of steps, she laughed. The thought of climbing these final steps to bust open this last door worked her mind into such a fit, she couldn’t understand the unnatural fear that filled her heart. There was no need to work herself up, no need to worry the children with her flights of fancy. She was sure there was a perfectly logical reason this last door remained locked. Why no one had ever broken it down, why after so many years the contents remained undisturbed. She doubted the simple warning on the outside was sufficient to keep looters away. Even if they were strange words. On all fours, she climbed the near-vertical metal treads of the ladder to the final door. She read the faded words on the outside aloud. “Authorized Personnel Only.” Such a strange way to say keep out, but it had worked for however long this structure stood empty. She inspected the heavy door. There were no visible hinges nor handle to turn. She spotted no signs of forced entry. There was the possibility this level, the entire tower, had never been searched and looted. With the scavengers that trolled the cracks, that seemed highly unlikely. The landing at the top of the stairs left little room for Six to find a purchase from which to pry the door open. She spotted no indication that the door opened to the left or the right. The only place she could find any sort of seam large enough to force the rod into place was the bottom. Might as well start there and work her way up. Using her full weight, Six was able to lift the door a crack more. Bright light spilled over the landing, bringing light to the dark stairwell. From her angle on the steps, she was able to see under the door and into the room. The space was filled with bright sunlight. From this vantage point, it was easy for her to see there was no monster lurking in the shadows to gobble her up. She still thought it better to leave the children working while she fought with this door. There was still a chance this endeavor could turn out horribly. She learned long ago there were many ways to die that had nothing to do with monsters. The bar was long enough to use as a lever. She slipped it under the door and used the muscles in her good leg to lift with all her might. The door was forced open with a blood curdling screech. The sound hurt Six’s ears, but she wasn’t going to stop now. Another short inspection found there was enough room for one of the small children to slip under the door and into the room. For a moment, she considered calling for one of the little ones to finish the job. That was before she spotted a pant leg and a pair of feet sitting on the floor at what looked like a desk. The chances that someone remained alive in a sealed room for the gods only knew how long were slim, but she decided the children didn’t need to see more death. No, this was something she felt capable of doing. If she could get her head to fit, logic dictated the rest of her body should fit also. Her hand did the most accurate measurements of her head and hips possible. “Screw it.” She spoke to herself again. “If I get stuck, the kids can come to pull me out.” No matter how flawed her logic, she convinced herself she would fit. On her back, she turned her head sideways and nearly lost an ear when she worked her head under the door. She took a quick inventory of the contents. She spotted a table, or perhaps more of a desk, with a body tied to the chair. The body was most certainly dead. It was easy to spot the white skull through the long scraggly thin gray hair. The walls were lined with books, and on the far side of the room stood a long brass tube standing on a tripod. The room was more bizarre than that: the roof was shaped like a hollowed-out sphere. This was an important find, Six just didn’t know why. Now she really needed to force herself the rest of the way inside. Thankfully she had never been a large-chested woman. Time and age had made her breasts rather pliable. The lack of food over the weeks escaping Zar didn’t hurt. She had lost several sizes during her run from the city. Her stomach gurgled when she sucked her gut in to wiggle into the room. When the bones of her hips reached the narrowest part, it took some work rocking back and forth, but she was eventually able to force them through the slit, with bruises on both hip joints. She struggled to pull herself the remainder of the way in. After the exertion, it took a few seconds to find the energy to stand. She’d hoped that once she reached the inside, there would be a way to open the door. She was sadly mistaken. She found no way to raise the door higher. She would need to reverse her journey when it came time to leave. Perhaps with rest, she could force the door higher. Before she inspected the room fully, an unsettling fear gripped her. It took so long to enter this room, if the door fell shut, she might not have the energy to escape. She took a few seconds and jammed whatever she could find, and felt heavy enough, into the crack to hold the door open. It was for the best she never thought of the door falling while she was halfway under the opening. Six was certain the fear of being trapped would have become a self-fulfilling prophecy and ended up trapping her if she’d thought about it. While searching the room for items to shore up the door, it was hard not to notice the walls of the strange room. Where not covered in books, plants of many different species stood. Many of them Six recognized. They could be used for medicine or more sinister tonics if mixed in the correct proportions. Before she learned more about the people that once lived in this tower and the body at the desk, she began to feel a kinship with them. She was never properly trained in witchcraft and magic, but over the years, she’d learned more than a few useful things. She turned away from the door and the dark thoughts of being trapped inside the room and shifted her attention to the female body that sat at the desk. The sight was a strange one. The woman would have been much smaller than Six, even smaller than an old woman time had shrunk. On the table was a book the woman looked to have been taking notes in when she died. The sight became stranger. The woman was tied to the desk, and from Six’s more adventurous clients, she learned too much about knots, ropes, and how to tie people up. It looked like the woman had bound herself to the desk and chair. She died working on the book that lay under her head. The book must have some meaning. With gentle hands, Six lifted the woman’s decayed head and discovered the woman had a beard. With no flesh left on the skeleton, there was no way to tell if the body was a small male or a bearded female. In the long run, it didn’t matter. Six pulled the book from under the head and let the skull rest back down on the table. Her imagination ran away with her. She half-expected the damned corpse to grab her wrist or come to life and attack her. Even if the room was bright and sunny, it gave her the creeps being this close to the dead person. Six had seen plenty of death, but it was a sight she would never get used to. Clutching the book to her chest, she moved over to the brass tube. Below one end sat a chair. Six sat in the chair. The setup was too low, but… it looked like someone sat in the chair and looked into the tube. She adjusted the tube, pulling the end up to her eye, and took a peek into the tube. She was shocked to see the water of the crack like she floated in it. This was some magic, indeed. She would need to take longer to inspect this room. With the books that lined the walls, it might take the rest of her life to understand what the room contained and what the metal tube was for. Now she had the book the dead person worked on, that would need to be a sufficient place to start. She would take the book down with her and read it. Tomorrow, she would return and try to open the door wider. She didn’t know what any of this meant, but it seemed important. For the rest of the day, she would read over this book. Someone died to write it down. It seemed the least she could do. After the battle between the son and the sleeping god, all the gods of the lands went into hiding. Six found the book difficult to read. Written in several hands, in a flowing script, the tome might take a team of scholars years to completely decipher. She could make out bits and pieces when they seemed to follow a sort of logic, even if the story varied wildly from the lore she learned as a temple-attending child. Humans were cast asunder. The gods abandoned them. Those not killed outright found themselves struggling to scrape a living out of the remains left behind after the great war. Magic disappeared from the world with the gods. Six recognized this book was important, she felt it in her bones. Problem was, she didn’t know who she could tell. By the decay of the body sitting at the desk, this place had been empty for at last ten years. The last entry told of the demise of the tower. I’m the last one. Everyone has left to follow the ships that pass more frequently. With no goddess to guide the women, I can’t really blame them. The stars tell me something is going to happen. I can see the return of magic, the gods, and finally, the evil that sleeps under the earth. I will force myself to have a clear vision of the future or die at my desk trying. This was more than a journal and more than a textbook. It was the combined research of years, compiled by at least a dozen priestesses of Anshika. Six had learned a few spells, and how to brew a few potions and poisons, but these ladies delved into how the universe worked. If she could understand a small portion of what they knew, she might be able to better protect these children that had come to call her mother. They spoke of a coming darkness. From what Six witnessed in Zar, she couldn’t see a much darker end to the world than what had already befallen the city.