Dark waves, whipped by the biting wind, trembled in terror at the vibrating, guttural, but somehow songlike growl that rolled over the ocean surface. It was late evening and the twilight sun was more than halfway drowned in the churning horizon beyond which only deathly ice and fathomless depths existed. The Sea of Curses was a place few ships sailed; its waters and winds were too bitter, too laden with frost from the lifeless north, and no healthy lands shared a coast with those profaned waters. Every port was like a tumor upon the lands from which they sprung, a pestilent boil that gathered all the pus and the filth from far and wide, concentrating it in one vile bubble of violence, greed and madness. Although this sea was contained in the north, certain passages and openings existed, linking it to other oceans in the world, letting the accursed northern waters spill southwards, infecting cleaner seas like a plague. Woe unto ships that stray off course and find themselves in these haunted currents. Woe unto them when they hear the feasting chime.
The Regal Flotilla cut a path through the ice floes like daggers would carve a path through naked flesh. Trails of broken and wounded crystal marked their passing while virgin ice, not yet violated by steel-plated bows, quivered ahead. The fleet was an irregular collection of great ships and smaller escorts, varying wildly in their appearance. Some vessels appeared imperial in origin; massive and tall ships of the line, bristling with cannons and decked in powerful masts but recently retrofitted with dark iron plating along the outer hull. The great sails were often colorful and emblazoned with the proud crests of decadent noblehouses that have long since sworn fealty to the Pureblood Empress. Then there were ships of a clearly more primitive make, driven by oars and sails, their flanks lined with round shields, their holds brimming with loot. The open deck revealed a complement of grim seamen, skins rough and hard from a life of exposure to the salt-filled northern winds. Their ships too showed a recent infestation of iron growing out of the hull like patches of diseased skin. Rarer in the mix but conspicuous by their mere existence were singular, elegant vessels of elongated, rounded shapes and beautiful, cruel figureheads displayed at the front. No sails marred these southern vessels; instead, rows upon rows of oars, each shackled to three or four beaten and bloodied slaves drove these ships mercilessly through the snow-covered ice shelf while dark-skinned task masters whipped the horde into a frenzy as they spewed blasphemies in a tongue no civilized man knows to speak. Yet even these brutally elegant ships could not inoculate themselves against the iron pandemic. Every major vessel was a feudal realm in itself, each ruled by a despot of noble blood, each bound by oath to the great empress aboard her impregnable, iron monstrosity. A nomadic empire adrift at sea, bound to no terrestrial borders. The isolation gave safety, forbade escape, and bred stagnation.
“My seventh son died this morning,” a raspy voice lamented in the dark. Unsteady light flickered sometimes bright, sometimes dimly from the swinging candelabra above, while grasping shadows seemed to just barely stop short of devouring the little flames dancing atop wax candles impaled on metal spikes jutting out of the round table’s center.
“We cannot unmake his demise.” An androgynous voice from underneath a black hood. Dark robes swaddled six figures of indeterminable shape, age, color and sex.
“I have been a loyal vassal. You know of my victories. You know of my tributes. I have fed this…
machine more than most.” He leaned forward, into the uncertain light. Haggard features, a dark gray beard. Regal, military clothing befitting of an admiral.
“T’is never enough,” mused a different speaker, running a brittle, pale finger over a scarlet line of the great, occult pattern spanning the entire table cloth. The admiral eyed each of the robed figures in turn, uncertain whom to plead to and who would answer.
“Then my service is never complete!” His fist slammed onto the table; flesh battered impotently against iron. “I only ask that my legacy endures. Look at my flesh, I could fall apart any day now. Can’t even shit without help.”
Silence. The dark council eyed one another, then hushed whispers filled the air. Exhausted by his outburst, the admiral slumped back on his seat. He waited and waited and impatience began to well up in his chest, a bubble waiting to burst. Just when he was about to blurt out once more, one of the figures – he could not tell which – spoke with a clear, neutered voice.
“King Edmund Aran the Fourth, sovereign of the
Stormbringer and liege lord of
Victorious, the
Wailer, the
Virtuous, the
Honorbound and the
Insidious. Son of king Albert Aran the Eight, who famously earned the empress’s attention by singlehandedly overwhelming the
Iaera and its escort, and thus delivering a sum of four hundred and thirty eight slaves to the flotilla. Notable among the captives: the Hadeshian envoys, as well as a well bred princess.”
Meat for a bargain that was never made. These genderless councilors bored him; he knew his legacy already, no need in retelling it. What he needed was a cure to its extinction which he felt welling up in his stomach. Death grew inside his bowels like moss in a dank cave.
“The line is worth saving,” he stated grimly, eying the faceless ones fiercely.
“You decide nothing, king.”
“There will be a mutiny should my line go extinct.”
“Then they would feed the machine… but fear not, good king. Although you have ruled in peaceful times, the empress believes your line worth blessing with child. She sees potential in your blood, in spite of its impurity. Or maybe because of it.”
“Its what?” Anger contorted his face.
“Impurity, king. Traces of Hadesh. Surely you knew.”
Inaudible mutterings beneath his beard. He hated these all-knowing eunuchs more than his impotence and blossoming demise.
“So she will see me?”
“And you, her.”
***
The enigmatic council led him through the depths of the
Tiamath, descending narrow staircases and passing through low corridors of metal that no human hands have forged. They looked too organic, like tunnels naturally forming through molten iron. The deeper they went, the more twisted and alien the environment became. Curved spines, twisted around their own axis, grew from the walls. Here and there, a subtle orange glow emanated from smoking exhaust slits in the metalwork. Pipes crisscrossed above and below like the veins of a great behemoth. Rising heat challenged the admiral to hold fast onto his consciousness. It was like descending into the bowels of hell.
At the end of their harrowing journey, the group of seven emerged into a massive hall inside the ship’s underbelly: the machine room. Rising towards the opposite end of the great hollow, a colossal construct of furnaces, pipes and chimneys. The very ground shook perpetually from the rumbling inferno contained within occult steel. The rhythmic thumping of pistons, the hissing of steam, the creaking of metal plating. And the accursed heat; worse than the Hadeshian dry season. Here the machinists toiled, more wizards than engineers. As oft as they might manipulate a valve or reinforce a leaky pipe, they might be seen scrawling forbidden runes onto unspeakable machinery. Blood and oil dripped from their hands in equal measure. They bowed in reverence as the hooded council and their honorary guest passed by, ascending the hot staircase towards the throne.
Few ever lay eyes upon the empress, and none that do ever speak of their encounter. The admiral now understood why as he stood there, frozen and almost manic with disbelief at the marvels and horrors he has beheld, and is beholding. The council withdrew, closing the searing hot doors to the narrow, vibrating chamber. He knows not what to say; he’s never been known to be coy or poor of speech. But what does one
say unto a sight like this?
“Death eats at your insides like a clot of maggots. Your time is running out, Edmund. Why waste it?” Her voice contrasted her appearance as sharply like a broken piece of glass; it was heavenly.
“I- forgive me, your highness. I was not prepared,” he manages to stammer.
“None of them ever are.” Crimson eyes avert their gaze, stare into the darkness beyond her consort. “Go on. Unclothe.”
Shaky, age-withered hands fumbled to free the admiral’s ravaged body from its stifling uniform. The fabric stuck to his sweat-soaked skin, as if unwilling to let their wearer commit this ultimate sin. Maybe it was a mistake. All of it. He began regretting every decision he’d ever made in his life.
His naked feet, touching the hot floor, shrieked in pain as they approached the empress in uncertain strides. Only, the closer he went, the less pain he felt. The less profusely he began to sweat. The sounds of pistons and hellfire and steam all became distant and muffled. Her very presence promised salvation and spurred him onwards to her seat and prison. Now next to her, he put a gnarly old hand on the elevated leg to his right, pristine and soft and wrapped in constricting, thorned vines of iron. The scent of morning dew, spring leaves and female pheromones filled his nostrils. Birds twittered in the green boughs above, wet grass comforted his weary feet. He could feel his control over his body slipping. Control over the mind too.
***
Judgmental, scarlet eyes gazed dispassionately at the slavering husk of a man that was violating her, every thrust causing a thousand different thorns to pierce her cosmic flesh and provoked almost inhuman screams of pain. There was no resistance against his abuse – not on account of its futility, but on account of its necessity. This was her destiny. This was her gift. This was the will of the strange stars above that she was born under and whose terrible stare could see her even here in the dark depths of the
Tiamath. Her womb received the seed of man, but it would birth end of a great age.
