“What God did he pray to?”
“Urlial.”
“...the Sedentary God?”
“That’s the one.”
I let out a laugh before Cecelia looked at me with annoyance and I shut my mouth almost instantaneously.
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s- You’re fine. It makes sense that you would laugh. Urlial isn’t known for having a good reputation.”
She was right. Urlial, The Sedentary God, was by far one of the most obscure and least discussed Gods. You had your standard affair of ‘top bracket’ Gods. Inthenia, Ynnthylul, Ffargen. The Privileged God, the Hedonistic God, and the Agrarian God respectively. Each of those Gods were well known enough to have wide devoted swaths of people. As the Gods became less known, you started to see a significant decrease in the amount of people who would worship them. I had never in my entire life heard of someone pledge themselves and pray to Urlial. He was almost a joke of a God, at least in the books I read in Varenthell.
“Why would he pray to Urlial?”
“Urlial is… unique. As you can probably tell from his title as the Sedentary God, he doesn’t really do anything himself. What people don’t know is why he doesn’t have to do things himself.”
Cecelia paused, a long consideration painting itself across her face.
“...y’know it might be better if I explain the whole story.”
“Oh. There’s a whole story?”
Cecelia laughed, and looked at me like I was supposed to know better than to ask that. “Yes, bandit. There’s a whole story.”
“Ow! That’s no fair!” With speed so overwhelming I didn’t have a chance to react, my legs had been swept out from under me, the soreness of my ankles combining with the pain of hitting the dojo floor.
“You cannot expect your enemies to fight in a manner that is fair.” Ffenton spoke calmly, as he always did, while holding out a hand towards me to raise me back off of the ground.
“You’re not my enemy! You don’t have to fight like that!” I whined.
“In this dojo during your training, you should treat me as any other enemy.”
“My only enemies are Deathless” I hissed out the name of the monsters that had taken everything from me.
“Then treat me as one, if that is what it takes. You need to be ready if you are to survive an encounter with one.”
Treat Ffenton as a Deathless? The thought made my stomach squirm. I had only been training under Ffenton for 2 years, but already he had become like a father to me.
“I won’t think of you as one of them. I’ll just think of you as some other enemy.” My words seemed to give Ffenton pause. I always had a hard time understanding what emotions were present on his face. Everything he had taught me so far was about controlling one's emotions. He spoke endlessly about how emotions breed intent, and how if your enemy knows your intent, you will fail before you could even begin. It sort of made sense to me. What didn’t make sense was the way that he attempted to hide his emotions even outside of a fight. I could've sworn that in the entire 2 years I knew him, I only saw his face shift from cold composure a handful of times.
“You’re picturing me as an enemy?” Ffenton spoke softly, moving towards me with the same serious expression that always made my joints want to lock in place.
“Y-yes.”
With another swift sweep to my feet, I was back on the floor once more with my head spinning and throbbing from hitting the hard floor.
“Clearly not. You would never let an enemy that close to you.”
I could feel a rage building in my stomach. My nails dug into the smooth wooden floor of the dojo. Ffenton looked to my hands, and then up to me. With a sigh, he turned from me and began to walk towards the sliding doors into the courtyard.
“If you cannot control your emotions, we are done for the day. Do not be late tomorrow.”
Once he had left, the rage had boiled up inside of me enough to cause me to slam a fist into the ground. A resonating pain shot through my hand, but the pain only made me more angry. Once I had hit my fist into the ground enough times for the pain to outweigh the anger, I stopped. Ffenton had a rule. If I ever lost control of my emotions during our training, he would end the training on the spot, even if we had just begun.
His reasoning, as he explained to me, was that he would not train someone fueled only by rage. That was stupid. He was stupid. I was only nine years old, but I could fight better than anyone else at my age. That still didn't make him treat me any more like an adult. It made me furious.
“Gods you were an angry kid. Some things never change huh?” I let out a giggle, leaning my body into Cecelia in a playful manner as my laughter ran its course.
When I turned to look at Cecelia, I was met with a cold and calculated anger. It sucked all of the mirth from me in an instant, causing me to freeze in her gaze.
“I-I uh… I mean… like- it was a j-joke! I don’t- you’re not- I don’t think of you like- you’re just-”
“Stop talking, bandit.”
“Yes. Absolutely. Will do. I’m on it.” I quickly returned to the sitting position that I had taken to listen to her story in full. Guilt wracked my mind, but I refused to move from my spot, performing my best impression of a statue that had just made an inappropriate joke that I could manage.
My tension was slightly eased when I saw the slightest of smirks form at the end of her mouth before she resumed her story.
In order for my plan to work, I needed to remain quiet and still. Was I confident in this plan? Not especially. But as Ffenton had always taught me, a foe who sees the glint of confidence in your eyes has no way of knowing if the confidence is hollow or not. A lot of his lessons were hard for me to wrap my head around, admittedly, but I thought I was getting better at understanding his flowery language in the 4 years that I had trained under him.
I had begun to learn from him that there was a very thin line between acting confident and being confident. That lesson had begun to give me a kind of ‘style’ to my fighting that, while different from Ffenton, he seemed to think was viable. I was not the best at being stone faced at all times like the big oaf that he was. Instead of keeping a perpetual poker face, I learned that feigning utmost confidence gave the impression that I always knew what I was doing. Which for Ffenton, worked in a close enough way to his own style to be ‘acceptable’.
Acceptable. That was the way that he gave compliments. I had asked him about it once when I was younger. He told me that praise engenders passivity and implies mastery. If he only ever told me that things were ‘acceptable’, then I would still feel the need to practice and refine the skills. That was obviously less effective once I knew the trick, but he never stopped. Perhaps out of habit?
My idle considerations came to a close when I finally heard the lumbering man with a thick white mane of hair slide the door to the temple closed. Hiding behind one of the statues within the main temple was a miserable experience, but it was necessary to ensure I could get the audience I needed. Ffenton would lock the main temple at night after he finished his prayers. Not a problem if I was inside when he locked the doors.
I quickly prowled up to the altar of the temple, ready to enact my plan. I knew Ffenton would be furious if he found out about what I was doing. Too bad. It was the only way to get what I needed.
I had watched Ffenton gain an audience with Ulrial a scant few times through the years, but the audience he had gained a week ago gave me the last bit of missing information I needed. I’d seen him perform the ceremony enough times to have the motions rehearsed in my bones. This was most likely the only chance I could perform this, and I wasn’t going to mess it up.
Silken robe, Rose stem, and a molar.
The first two were easy. I had waited until Ffenton left to hunt in order to sneak into his room. A drawer of silken robes sat neatly arranged, already sliced into the pattern required for the ceremony. The rose stems were also a breeze. The garden in the courtyard had patches of roses planted for this express purpose. Performing somewhat regular ceremonies to appease Ulrial meant it only made sense to have the first two ingredients readily available.
The final component was a molar. I was unsure of how Ffenton went about this part of the ceremony. In the few times I had watched him gain an audience with Urlial I could have sworn I saw him yank his own molar from his mouth. Surely I must have mistook what he did. With how many times he had performed this ceremony, he would have been fresh out of molars at this point. Not to mention I never noticed missing teeth inside his mouth, not that I got a chance to see that much.
I figured that he must have found a work around for that part. Perhaps he used an animal molar as a replacement? It was possible that after your first audience with Urlial, your own molar was no longer necessary. Regardless, I was not willing to make that mistake. I was only doing this once to get what I wanted, I could make a sacrifice.
When the rose stems and silken robes had been arranged underneath the altar, I took a deep breath to prepare myself for the next step. Gods this was going to hurt. I slipped the tonfa out of the bag that I had brought with me. It was the easiest to hide inside of the bag, and would do exactly what I needed it to do. I moved one of the blunt ends towards the side of my mouth pushing it uncomfortably into the right side of my mouth.
You can do it, Cecelia. It’s for your parents. I moved my right hand to the end of the tonfa and readied my palm to strike the end and ideally dislodge my molar.
For your parents, for your parents, for your parents-
I slammed my palm into the tonfa and heard a visceral squish from the inside of my mouth. The weapon fell to the ground, as did I, as I bit down on my arms to stifle the scream that desperately wanted to crawl out of my lips. I cried on the floor of the temple for a few minutes, calming myself from the intense throbbing that pulsed from the inside of my mouth into every tip of my fingers and toes.
I set the molar in the center of the altar and wiped the tears that streamed from my eyes, and the blood that dripped from the corner of my mouth.
The moment that I set the components in their proper place, I sat ready.
10 seconds.
20 seconds.
30 seconds.
Did I fuck it up?! Trepidation set into my heart, the prospect that I had ruined my only chance at an audience with Urlial was almost too much to bear.
An inky purple substance dripping from the altar pulled me from my thoughts. I watched in amazement as a thick smokey purple gas began to coat the altar and fall off of the sides. The smoke seemed heavy enough to fall almost like a liquid, but without the sound or splash of a liquid splattering across the ground. The smoke that originated from my molar grew exponentially greater, filling the recesses of the room with horrifying efficiency and speed. Before I knew it the temple room was covered entirely in the thick gaseous purple smoke.
This was it. An audience.
“You ripped your molar out!”
“Were you listening? No, I pushed it out with a weapon. Can you just listen to the story?”
“I-Yeah, but can I see? Which one was it?” I spoke, moving my head around to attempt to peer into her mouth as she spoke.
“Would you stop?” Cecelia quipped. The woman rolled her eyes and let her jaw drop to allow me to look inside of her mouth, a clear agitation in her eyes as she did so.
“Happy?” I could only barely understand what she had said since she spoke while her mouth was still wide open.
“Woah! That’s hardcore for an eleven year old!”
Cecelia closed her mouth and sighed.
“Anyway…”
A disgusting creature began to take form in front of me, hovering just above the altar. As the God began to take shape I saw a large mass of skin form. There were layers upon layers of a purple, vaguely scaly skin, that rolled over the structure of what looked to be a throne underneath. A grotesque face took shape, with the appearance akin to a melted man’s face with 4 unsettling and lightly shifting eyes. When the being spoke, the voice filled the entire room to its fullest. I could feel the very vibrations of his speech in my own chest like the words were coming out of my throat.
“What have I told you, Ffenton? A week’s rest is nothing. You had better have a good reason to have summoned me.”
Urlial finally took the effort to lower his head towards the floor to see me sitting awkwardly in front of the altar with blood collecting in the corner of my mouth and occasionally overflowing out of the corner of my lips.
“You are not Ffenton. What business does a child have with a God?”
As dirt on earth, I root my heart. As dirt on earth, I root my heart.
I was doing everything in my power to keep from showing fear. Like Ffenton had taught me. Confidence would be my shield.
“I wish for you to lend me your power.”
“HA! An entertaining little girl you are.”
I made no response, keeping my intense gaze locked on his eyes. All four of them.
“You mean not to joke? What reason do I have to lend my power to a kid.”
I had studied everything I could about Urlial from Ffenton’s books. I prayed that it would be enough to get me through this encounter.
“I will offer you anything you desire. In exchange, you give me the power to rid all Deathless from the world.”
Urlial gazed upon my fragile form. His lower left eye began to trade places with his upper right eye, a sludging sound reaching my ears as the facial features moved around like clay.
“I would not be so free with your wording, girl. You know not what you give to me.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will.” Urlial cocked his head and twisted his mouth into an unsettling grin that stretched beyond what was possible for a human’s face to reach.
“What do you know of me, little girl?”
“I know that you do not act yourself. You wish for others to carry the burden of your will. I know that you offer them power to perform your desires.”
The grin grew wider. “Then you are a lucky girl indeed. Your infantilized revenge is vast. Vast enough that I’m almost tempted to set this ball of fury upon the world to watch. I love a good show.”
“Give me your power, and you will have front row seats to every animal I butcher.”
“That is some hate, girl. I can use that.”
“So we have a deal?”
“Not so fast. I might be lazy, but I am not foolish.”
Urlial waved his finger in a lazy motion. Purple smoke coalesced into a physical form before me. When the smoke faded, a small paper was left behind.
“Your name, in blood.”
I stuck a finger into the back of my mouth to coat it with the blood and saliva that was quickly pooling. Once my finger was coated in my blood, I moved it towards the paper.
“Not so fast, girl. My you are reckless. We have not set our terms yet.”
“Out with it.” I was impatient, sure. But I knew what I wanted, and I had gone into this knowing I would pay any price that I needed in order to get it done. It didn’t matter to me in the slightest what his side of the deal was. As long as it lets me rid the world of Deathless.
“I will lend my power to you, with the goal of exterminating Deathless. In exchange, I will hold onto your soul. Perhaps I could be convinced to return it upon completion of your goal.” He gurgled and spat up a viscous ball of smoke. I think it was supposed to be laughter. “Though, if you die before then, I’m afraid it will remain mine.”
My hand, puppeteered by the hatred that soaked every inch of my soul, had signed my name the moment he finished speaking his terms.
‘Cecelia Ignalia’
“In all my years I have never seen such a reckless human. You will be a spectacle to watch, girl. Be seeing you, killer.”
With the same gruesome sound that I thought was most likely laughter, the smoke in the room swirled fierce enough to make me feel as though a tornado had appeared in the temple. A moment later, I opened my eyes to see the temple. It looked exactly the same as it had before the molar began seeping smoke.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
Before I could react to the booming voice behind me, two meaty hands had gripped my shoulders to turn me around. The face I saw sent shivers down my spine and made every muscle not currently paralyzed in fear pull away.
The face before me was one of unbridled anger. It looked so unlike the Ffenton that I had grown to know in the past four years. There was a fire in his eyes that burned with such intense heat that I feared if it escaped his eyes it would threaten to burn the entire world to ash to sate its hunger. It hurt to even bear witness to such a fury filled expression, every feature of his face twisted into an expression that spurned me. I looked at him as a father. I knew he looked at me as a daughter. At this moment, however, I felt like I was a monster. The hate in his eyes felt like it was kin with the hate that burned like an unbridled disaster within my chest. It was wrong. It was so very wrong.
“DID YOU MAKE A DEAL?”
I was so stunned I felt there was no possible way to express my fear of this man. The overwhelming presence of being within his gaze without the cold calculated mask to hide his anger made me forget how to even speak. After all, what language could convey the feelings that squirmed away from this man.
He seemed to have taken my lack of an answer as an answer in itself. He let go of my shoulders, the pain where he gripped me only hitting my senses after he had stopped holding me. I fell to the ground, looking up my fathe- at Ffenton. Everything about the way he looked at me began to make sense. The hate that he would glimpse inside of me that would cause him to stop our training instantly must have reminded him of the presence of his own wrath. Was that why he was so insistent on making me control my anger?
In but a moment, I could see his anger fall from his face, like the layer of anger had been sliced off of his skin and left to writhe on the floor. What had been a paralyzing anger, quickly shifted to yet another expression I had never seen cross his face before. Sorrow.
He looked down to me, his towering presence above me peeling away as his lips quivered. He moved his hands towards me as I laid on my back. I raised my hands to cover myself, afraid of what such a wrathful man could do.
As I waited for my fate to hit me, I was instead met with a soft splash of something hot on my hand. When I opened my eyes to see what had just hit my hands, I saw an image that hung in my mind for the rest of my life. Ffenton was crying. It was a hot tear that had splashed across my knuckle. I looked up at the man, his hand held out to pick me up from the floor in the same way he did in the dojo multiple times a day.
With a shaking hand, I clasped my palm against his, and with the immense strength I knew the man to be capable of, I was pulled directly against his chest.
He was hugging me. That was new.
For a moment, I felt I was back in my home. I could feel my father hold me tight against his chest, whispering comforts into my ear to dissuade my nightmares from returning to haunt me in my sleep.
Ffenton felt like home as he held me.
“I’m so sorry, Ignalia. I failed you.”
“W-what?”
With a quivering voice that became etched into the back of my mind from that moment onwards, he spoke.
“I could not quell your rage fast enough. You’ve made a choice you will be running away from for the rest of your days.”
I didn’t know what to say to the man. I had done what I needed to. The monster that had taken everything from me needed to die. It was just the price that needed to be paid.
Despite not understanding the man’s sorrows, I wrapped my arms around him in response. I will never forget the way that he cried for hours. It was one of the two times he had ever cried.