A Pirate for the Dead Goddess (Legends of Rahasia Book 2)

Chapter Forty

The Alchemist kneels in his bloodied, beaten state, bound to a pillar in the chambers beneath the High Lune University. Only the Lune government knows of it, the main council officials.

Of course they would. They orchestrated the whole thing.

The Matriarch sits across from him, sipping some tea and staring in disgust at the shriveled Alchemist before her. "This sun-spotted, bleeding husk holds the brightest mechanical mind on Lune? You'd think that he'd be built, frankly, stronger." She sighs and calls for Cato. "Come along, my son."

Cato strides forwards, gingerly since he's still bleeding from the gouges of his eyes. "Mother, I cannot see. Be patient with me."

The Matriarch grins. Half of her face morphs and bends like clay. Her lips twist into a sneer. Half a head of long silver plaits, the other of shorn black hair and ashen skin. The god of deceit and the goddess of truth.

Sharing one body, bearing two minds and two faces.

"I am mother and father now." A sigh as the two-faced deity brings Cato forwards. "Trapped so long in the Before that we became one being. Truth and lie. Same body, made stronger. A fusion. A monster."

The Alchemist leans his head forwards, a bit of blood and spittle dribbling from his lips. Just as Cato is about to raise his hand to him to get the old man to speak faster, a group of Lune officials stride in.

Clean shaven. Wearing mirrored clothing with electric cattle prods strapped to their backs. Boots strapped to cover their whole leg from filth, the color of sun glinting off ice. From all manner of nations. The best and the brightest. The smartest. The wisest.

The ones who created Soleil.

And who aren't done creating mechanical monsters yet.

"Your eyes, your godliness." The lead Lune, a man with skin tinted to mimic snake scales, holds two glowing orbs on a pillow. Newly removed from the forge. "Exactly as the Alchemist designed."

Cato steps forwards, removed the gold-soaked bandages. He takes the glowing orbs, even set with gold flakes for pupils, and brings them to the tender gouges. The technological eyes set with tiny mechanical gears. A click and a whir. His swollen eyelids close, but when they reopen...

Eyes as bright as the sun stare back at the Lune officials, seeing once more. A miracle.

A female scholar from Okami with short cropped blue hair and a screeching voice. A doctor from Rahasia. A battle tactician from Idriola with a cruel sneer to his lips and spiky yellow hair. A Jiwanese technician. And others besides.

"A technological marvel." Cato smiles.

"And you, a biological one." This time the Idriolan speaks in slow, measured tones. Pink skin ruddy. Cheeks glowing and folds beneath the shrewd eyes. The edge in the voice hiding a cruelty unmatched. "A biological wonder. One, a brutish specimen of war with primal strength. The other a fusion. Two bodies trapped in one. A god. What we'd call an abomination."

"Excuse me?" The deceit-truth creature steps forwards. Silver hair swinging to one side, black hair gleaming to the other. Two voices melded into one disharmony. "You forget yourself mortal."

"No," this time the Okami scholar, the fringes like ocean waves glinting against the tan, ready to take multiple souls under. "We remember everything. It's how we surpassed the other mortals. How we even managed to surpass you."

She holds a lever attached to a removable baton, and when she presses down upon it, Cato's new eyes electrify. His whole body goes rigid, tendons twitching with thunder, lightning, the whole of a storm killing him slowly.

The god opens his mouth in a silent scream, brought to his knees from pain.

"My son!"

"And you." The yellow-haired Idriolan, with yellow teeth to match, barks out at the two-faced creature. "Catch."

A wire net, coursing with that same electricity, coils and melds to the creature's flesh. The fusion of the Matriarch of Truth and the Lord of Deceit, brought down by human creation.

By human nature to betray and become stronger than that which they are threatened by.

"Our council agreed the time of gods is over," says the snake-skinned man. The Idriolan blonde and the Okami with hair like the cerulean ocean waves steps forwards and smile wickedly. "You served your purpose in distracting the Rahasians. Now the time of humanity is coming. The time of reason. Of science."

The Alchemist shudders, watching the creatures once called gods twist and turn in absolute agony. The metal, they had the Alchemist create a metal so strong that only the hottest forges could make it. Infused with electric pulses. Infused with precious minerals they'd mined from the core of the earth, that burned mortal flesh from bone if held too long. Strong enough to withstand an earthquake. To hold a storm in its mighty recesses.

But even that feat would never buy the Alchemist's freedom. Not with what he knows. Far too much. A weapon of knowledge.

"The time for superstition is over." The Lunes intone, eerily, as one. A cult for the cause of a purists' science. "May humanity rise."

***
Hey Pirates,

Who's worse: the Lunes or Cato/the two-faced Truth-Deceit?

-Sophia