Deicide the God Eater
The Eleventh Chapter

Once it is known what is not Truth, only Truth will remain,shining brightly amongst the skins its enemies have dressed it in. – Ichor.

As Deicide made his way toward the greattree where the Machine Mother abided, he watched this pleasant ecology formback into the twisted architecture of the Machine. Growths that appeared to be great roots wereactually thousands of cables packed tightly together, running into and out ofthe broken and warped metal decks. Thesoft blue grass gave way to the fields of shallow graves marked by rifles,rivers of shell casings and shattered swords ran between them. He felt as though he had stepped throughanother Gate, the artificial sun overhead was now a crimson glow that bled ontothe landscape beneath it. Deicidecrawled over the cables that had warped this land with their unchecked growth,climbing higher and higher until he began to see evidence of there being lifebeneath his feet.

The beautiful village he had left behindwas no more. Mountains of corpses burstfrom the blood soaked soil surrounding him, all groaning and scratching, cursinghis name as he passed, crushing their bones underfoot, mostly by accident. They wailed and screeched as Deicide pulledhis heels away from their filthy claws; cloudy sunken eyes squirmed inside ofpartially collapsed skulls. He stoppedas he came to a patch of familiar faces, blotched and tallow skin pulled tightacross bony heads. Deicide crouched downto meet the animated corpses of people he once knew. As they attempted to speak, they vomitedblack vestige material as they gurgled through the mess. It spewed from their eye sockets and oozedfrom their nasal cavities; one dug a gnarled claw into its mouth and slapped itagainst Deicide’s face, leaving a black oily smudge.

His enemies and friends were stacked on topof one another without care for allegiance or rank, though not his doingDeicide was embarrassed by the ridiculous shrine. The trembling skulls parted as another roseto the surface, it was the disfigured face of Rodela, and the top quarter ofher skull was missing, replaced by quivering vestige. One of her dead brown eyes had been replacedby a yellow one that was too large to match the other; it rolled around in hergrimy socket until it found Deicide. Boney claws emerged from beside her head, latching onto Deicide’sface. He lacked the strength to breakher grip and he was pulled close until their foreheads were touching, a commongesture amongst eaters who were close. She caressed his head, brushing back his antennas now flashing rapidlywith panic.

“This is all that God sees,” Rodela said. “This is all that God eats. Do not completethe circuit, father.” Then she openedher jaws wide, allowing her stomach and intestines to rise through her throatand bulge from her mouth, spewing their contents on his face as the entrails burstopen. Deicide had finally wrenchedhimself free and scrambled over the field of immobile, screaming zombies,sprinting as he never had before. In hisears were the drums of battle, the smoke from burning corpses found his nose,as a war child he was well acquainted with the smell, he himself had turnedlegions of men into a living funeral pyre for the emperor at their center. He was left wondering exactly what all thecarnage and terror had been for; no one who mattered seemed impressed by any ofhis victories. He recalled thinking tohimself that if enough people were killed surely a true God would intervene,but no one came. As he ran he almostthought he could outrun his sins; that if he could escape this ship, that hewould somehow be absolved of the slaughter which he had enacted upon countlessworlds.

With his sharp fingers he dug into thecables at the base of the tree and thrust himself skyward, taking hold of thenooks provided. Quickly reaching the top,he found two pairs of large feet. Hegazed up to replace two giants staring down at him. Their hair was greasy and stringy, theirbodies were pink abominations; each looked as though they were each other’saborted conjoined twin. They ducked andmet his eyes on an even plane; and though their eyes were shuttered with thickcataracts they could still recognize their Captain. Long pink limbs reached out to grasp Deicide,their grip mighty, but loving, leaving Deicide squirming between their wrinkly,saggy bosoms trying to figure out who they were. They set him down and ushered him to the daiswhich held the Machine Mother. He wadedthrough oceans of cable and wire, dim and cracked displays hung on bentmounting brackets. He pushed aside a weblike curtain to behold the Machine Mother, lounging in her throne, from theback of her head and spine ran millions of tiny wires and umbilicals.

She raised her hand slightly, motioning forDeicide to approach. He was lost in hereyes, so much like the glow of the morning sun. He kissed her soft gray hand and knelt beside her, then ran his fingersthrough the tiny black umbilicals that many would mistake for hair. She tilted her head and examined the fresh scarson his body. With his hands on her faceDeicide moved forward to kiss her, and then noticed the hulking monstrositieswere watching them both. He noticed thatone never moved without the other, as if they were bound together by someinvisible chain.

“It’s the Twins,” Nott said. Deicide turned back toward them, peering intothe horrible, twisted faces under the greasy black hair. In disbelief Deicide shook his head, thepretty things he had watched become intelligent women, had been ravaged by someunknown ailment, driven out of proportion, and they each possessed a great armthat looked more like a giant’s club and a withered, feeble one to match it. They no longer possessed mouths, instead Destraand Sinistra communicated to Nott through the umbilicals flowing from theirskulls. They looked as if their bodieshad tried to mimic the towering anatomy of an Abstrusian with horrible results;the genetic adaption to this world had left them sorry, misshapen beasts. Without leaving the pair Deicide called backto Nott.

“What happened to them?” Deicide said,caressing the twisted backs of the twins.

“They couldn’t hold their shapes. The body of an immortal will morph to fit theneed. Remember my lecture on personalevolution?” Nott said. Immediately andselfishly Deicide thought how he might look after trillions of years,embarrassed by the thought he dashed it away, knowing that Nott might haveintercepted it. He returned to wife’sside, smiling, unable to hide his joy.

Nott rubbed his cheek with a tiny grayhand. “I knew you would return,” Nottsaid.

“You have to tell me what happened. This place, this can’t really be theAeolipile,” Deicide said.

“Truly, it is. All dimensions, including the half worlds arebleeding into one another,” Nott said, “and now the Aeolipile spreads acrossmany spans of time as well as space.”

“But how?” Deicide said.

“Your choices have brought this upon us,” Nottsaid. “There will be only one time, flowingtoward a fateful end.” Deicide slouchedagainst her throne, clutching her legs as if they were the key to solving hisproblems.

“Show me how to fix this,” Deicide said,watching the Twins as they sat in front of him. As they and all of his own children had gathered in his office long agoto hear fables of his exploits. Neverwould he have believed he would do something to harm his darlings, but even ifthe open graves surrounding the tree were some sort of delusion, the sufferinghe had witnessed was real.

“Tell me what you saw before you enteredthis place,” Nott said.

“Horror; one massive grave for anyone Iever touched,” Deicide said.

Nott gestured to the surroundinglandscape. “If the world is so, then itis what you desired,” Nott said, pausing to lift his chin with a finger. “But, you are not bound by time,” she said.

“Then what will I do?” Deicide said.

“You will kill the pretender that much iscertain. I can only see that event playout one way,” Nott said. “However, youhave but a single choice before you. Complete the circuit and you and the Aeolipile will sail foreverdevouring everything until there is nowhere, where she is not. Or do not complete the circuit and dissolvethe partitions keeping our dimensions from merging and all vessels fromwarring.”

“Could we not live in peace?” Deicide said.

“What have I told you of the Corridor, oncemerged all would become aware of the Corridor and what is at the end of it,”Nott said.

The only true world lies at the end of theCorridor, and what could be more beautiful than Truth, Deicide’s mentors hadtold him. They imagined that beyond thecorridor was what the ancient people had called Heaven, where the true godsresided, without want, war or destruction they lived out their days advancingthemselves into a higher form of being, much more than a Constant, who reallywas just a half-god, a human that had merely beaten his own biology, even thelobster could live forever, why not a man?

“This mission is more than just revenge,”Nott said. “You slaying the pretender isbut a small part of a much larger focus.”

“Why was I not told of these things,”Deicide said. “Why was I not prepared?”

“You were created to fight my love,” Nottsaid, “And truly, I’m afraid that it would take much too long for me to explaineverything to you, but I believe great thinkers were on the verge ofdiscovering purpose.”

“Of?”

“Life,” Nott said.

“I was always taught that our purpose waswhat we made it to be,” Deicide said. “Even you taught me this.”

“No my love,” Nott said. “Your purpose is to kill the pretender god,and lead the new children through the Corridor. All unnatural creation has purpose, and you are unnatural.”

Deicide tried to replace the meaning in herwords, but she seemed so distant to him now, as if she was on the verge oftossing her body aside and living as omnipotent spirit. TheTwins rose to allow arms of strange machines to move closer to Deicide.

“Can you accept this truth?” Nott said, tearsrolling down her gray cheeks. “Can you accept that you were created to replacethe man who failed?”

Hurt began to squeeze Deicide’s heart, butthis was only from witnessing the pain in Nott’s face. He knew little about the stock he had beentaken from, as a child it was forbidden to read or watch the archived footageof the man’s life, but also the father that had bore him. All that Deicide did know is that both ofthese men were not born with the powers that he possessed. And neither was born with hair-like antennas.

“Your wants and dreams are not your own,”Nott said. “Your goals have been givento you, but what is it you truly desire?”

After taking some time to think Deicidefinally spoke. “I wish to converse withthe God Constant.”

“The God Constant could never be a thinkingcreature, only an occurrence, like the weather of a terrestrial planet,” Nottsaid.

“Then I desire to witness this occurrence,”Deicide said.

“Though we never gave you this body tochase phantoms, it is yours to do with as you wish,” Nott said.

Deicide was viscously snatched upward byrobotic arms from the overhead and thrust into an orange gel that hungweightlessly above; it burned his clothes and skin away. He flailed as the intense burning grew to anunbearable sharpness. His wife watchedfrom below as did the Abyss, both seemed unaffected by Deicide’s sufferings,their mustard yellow eyes gazing with indifference. The robotic arms began their grotesque work,quickly pulling the bones away from his tendons and muscles, cutters ranthrough him like sandwich meat. Deicidewondered when this would end, more and more was pulled away from his carcass,the muscle fibers untwined in puffy red strings. A few more moments passed before his worldwent black before him, the membranes which had shielded his eyes had beeneroded away and his eyes had quickly followed. Here in this darkness he felt nothing, yet he was aware of hisbeing. He was an accumulation ofmemories and experiences stored on the gargantuan crystalline disks of hisexternal memory.

Now his body was to be recast withsubstances and technologies only available in a time that had yet to come tohis present. His mind developed andhoned trillions of years in the past was now being merged with a body designedtrillions of years in the future. Hisskeletal frame was a composite of remarkably rare minerals; his bones couldwithstand the pressures at the center of a black hole. Cords of muscle flowed in and began to wraparound his bones, the machines fused tendons to his skeletal frame, while his organicsystems were reengineered, and his physical brain was properly fitted to handlecalls between the Amanuenses. He wasreborn, constructed to have no equal, he looked down at his body, if he were torecognize the design; he would know it was a carving by an Abstrusian artistwho lived thousands of years before the society’s collapse. This sculpture was a symbol of an ancientAbstrusian theology, the Last Child, the Axis; a godlike entity forged by thescientific advances of the entire race. It was believed that when the Axis emerged all of the greatest secretsof the universe would be known to all.

Deicide opened his eyes, replaceing Nottsitting next to him. He was lying on astone slab; alter-like, as if he were being sacrificed to a nameless god,perhaps to himself. He looked on hissurroundings with fresh eyes; he could see all of the dimensions folded intoone, all crowding him. Machine elvesbegan to belch replicas, he was amused by their alien structure, and he pokedat their soft angles with an umbilical. His umbilicals were wrapped in a thick skin like textile, which werecompletely fused with his body, and the mechanisms at their tips connected themthrough time and space to the main engineering plant, always functional, it wasthe single space not affected by this melting of dimensions. He looked to Nott, trying to grasp theconcepts of this higher level of Existence.

“How is it?” Nott said.

“This is the world that God sees,” Deicidesaid, eyes wide, trying to take in as many signals as his mind couldprocess. He drew a slow breath throughhis nose, as the filter membranes had been replaced, he could smell thevegetation and death that surrounded this place, and then he allowed himself tobreathe through his umbilicals, which was more comfortable. He began to receive a flood of voices in hismind that were not his own, they were quick and clear, all thinking withfrightening uniformity like that of a massive computer array. He began to send them a multitude of queriesat once, they broke down the torrent of questions, each for a smaller group,almost instantly he received back answers, hypotheses and theories were arguedand scrutinized back and forth with amazing mental speed. He was notified that the Amanuensis’s werefurther backed by the ship’s array of supercomputers. Immediately he began to draw on the ship’sarchives, he pulled every deck log, astonished at how fast he could process theinformation, all erroneous data was tossed aside and sifted by the AmanuensisArray.

Deicide swung his legs over the side andgrasped his wife’s hands, face beaming, for the first time he could understandhow his wife saw the world. If hefocused and peered mentally through his Amanuensis and over the coldness of thequantum computers, he could see his wife’s signature signal through theIntranet onboard the Aeolipile. Over thepartition that separated Deicide’s mind from all of the rest of the ship’ssystems and archives he could see that Nott was everywhere. Her influence inside the ship’s network wasgodly. He watched as the address markingher signal operated trillions of switches in nanoseconds, routing informationand data with maximum efficiency. On thenetwork existence, all revolved around her, she could simply take a few jumpsof data to make him or a piece of equipment more efficient or route theinformation into an eternity of roads, never to reach its target, or cut theconnection all together, severing life support of any system or individualconnected to the Machine.

Nott caressed his face and brushed herfingers over his rows of edged teeth. Deicide pretended to bite at her and clasped her in his firm grip; henow dwarfed his petite wife, but he still did not equal the height of thetwins. He enjoyed the pure air beingpumped through his umbilicals and into his lungs; the halcyonic cider abated hiscannibalistic hunger and the Abyss began to regain her size as the black oilshe consisted of seeped through the pores of his umbilicals. He wondered now if Nott thought he was worthyof his name just before his view began to blur. The scent of oil and fuel drifted into his nostrils, he could feel greatgears turning over in the distance, millions of cylinders fired in unison allaround him. He wanted to ask Nott somany questions before he drifted away from consciousness, but she shook herhead and laid him back on to the slab, gently closing his eyes and kissed his stillscarred lips.

“Kiss thechildren for me,” Nott said.