The Song #2
King Omniel wrote his Asterui Bukkai as a history and prophecy and guidebook all in one.
In chapter one, twin gods Valos and Virya had graphic, incestuous sex and created both the world and the flaming abomination Muhnir.
Their son despised his parents, so they peeled open the ground with their bare hands and threw him into its depths.
For eons, Muhnir attempted to escape, punching giant holes in the earth to allow his evil to seep into the world.
Those leaks created the Wraiths—first Urias, from a flock of vultures getting caught in a whirlwind and thrashed together until they formed a single being, then Mak’kon, who was born of a dead, maggot-infested horse.
Esme was the result of an orgy of a hundred snakes, thrown up by ginormous viper choking to death.
Tagas was washed onto shore swathed in blood after being birthed from the combined agony of a ship full of men swallowed by a storm.
Samander happened when a woman sewed a man, a goat, and a lion together and brought the thing to life, whereupon he ate his maker and spat out her bones from all three of his mouths.
Padrian was the son of a bull and a devious maid, who killed his mother for birthing him.
Daphna was born to a mother who forsook Virya during her pregnancy and refused to wear her colors, so her child was polluted by Muhnir.
They cried so loud and for so long that it plunged their parents into madness.
The last and most vile mark of terror on this world, though, had been the Nuk.
Dark and deformed and dreadful, they rode bears and were double the size of a normal man.
Their giants would descend upon human villages and kidnap the women, forcing them to give birth to terrible half-breed creatures.
Seeing this, Valos and Virya anointed Ramniel Asterou with the ability to father a perfect child that would protect the world from Muhnir and his horribleness.
Ramniel took a wife and willed Omniel to come to life within her.
Little baby Omniel was born with a golden crown sewn into his red hair, so bright and holy that he burned his mother to death.
According to the Asterui Bukkai, not even Omniel could bring out goodness in the Nuk, though he “tried.” They were so formidable as Muhnir’s chosen people that Omniel had to use the Wraiths to fight them.
He leashed the seven of them with the help of Valos himself, and for as long as they were under Micrean control, they could do good.
But if ever they were to escape the country’s palm, it would spell the end not just of Micrea but of the entire world as their dark influence was allowed to spread.
With the Wraiths tamed, Omniel finally had enough power to kill the Nuk.
He threw Brawna and her legion into the burning God Jaw, one of the holes Muhnir himself had clawed into the world, and let the flames seal off the spring of evil.
The end.
Sort of.
The very last chapter of the crock of shit was a forever-looming prophecy.
If ever Micrea grew dark and evil again, just when all was lost and broken, Omniel Asterou would rise from his grave and save his people, as long as they upheld his dominion after his death.
And so Micreans wielded Omniel’s lies like a blade against the horrors he’d invented for them.
They even cut down those who offered a way of living better than what the Asterou built.
All because they believed a bony corpse would claw its way up from the ocean one day and save them from the brown children playing in the street.
That was the truth of the Asterou empire of Micrea. It was not the truth of Esme, who was the fifth child of her empress mother, who was not a snake, nor of the Nuk, who were an empire of warriors who’d lived on this land far longer than the conquerors who had wiped them off of it.
But if truth had no witnesses, no guards to protect it, no teachers to spread it, and no survivors to defy its horrors, did it even exist?
Which was why it was especially strange to see a little boy waving at Esme now.
Was he not taught that she was a viper-born plague?
Then again, as Esme swept into the town, she didn’t see any schools.
Where were the children educated? And by whom?
There were plenty of shops and artisans.
It was possible that children were simply educated by their families and brought up to work in their businesses.
Education was for those needing to escape where they were.
Prelyn was a place Esme imagined someone would want to stay.
The houses were larger than modest, far from the cramped shacks people considered themselves Valos-blessed to rot inside of in the Foot.
Hair came in every color here. People wore simple clothes, but there was still enough dye for the blue dress of the rosy-cheeked pregnant woman who stopped to smile at them.
Blue was Virya’s color, and pregnant mothers made sure to wear their blue gowns every day to gain her luck in birthing.
Lots of times, when mothers died in childbirth, or babies did not make it through the harrowing event of being born, people would whisper that it was because the mother did not wear her blues.
No one mentioned that blue was an expensive dye or wondered, perhaps, if not being able to afford it and deadly birthing were tied for other reasons.
Reasons Omniel wrote off.
But here was this round-bellied woman in her blues, waving with her free hand while holding another small child’s. In the Foot, one of them would not have survived.
Esme wanted to vacation in this bizarrely perfect little city for a few days, but they came upon the soldiers’ camp faster than she’d hoped.
The soldiers guarding the camp were smiling at each other (Song’s breath, was everyone happy?) and eating little meat pies.
When they saw the two Wraiths, their smiles wavered but they pushed the tall wooden gates open without a word.
Esme didn’t remember giving anyone permission to send a pigeon ahead of them.
But apparently they were expected.
The camp was slightly less permanent than the city, the men still living in tents, but they were arranged like a neighborhood, with clear roads through camp.
The tents themselves were well-made and sizable.
Freshly constructed, it seemed. Urias sized up every man he saw, but they didn’t shrink away from him. They were all covertly armed.
A smell snagged Esme’s attention, lingering thick in the air. She squinted into shrouded tent openings and eventually found the source.
“You smell that?” she asked Urias.
Urias used that delicate nose. His eyebrows popped up. “That’s a lot of children,” he said.