Killing a Godking Chapter 4 (Patreon)

As I gained strength and was able to stay awake for more than an hour or two at a time, mother began to visit every now and then with more than simple chatter in mind. She had me learning to read. Apparently reading hadn’t been included in the language knowledge dump I’d gotten when I jumped into this body.

I began to grasp their writing style fairly quickly, or so I was assured. They wrote left to right, same as the english language, but they had quite a few more letters. Some didn’t even have real sounds associated with them and were used to denote context where a word had gained more than one meaning over time.

I was staring down at one of those books now, puzzling my way through the swirling, flowing script that authors like to use in the current day and age. Stumbling when I came upon a word I didn’t know, I pointed to it and asked, “Mother, what is this word?”

“Magic,” she replied with a certain degree of reverence. “A power that dwells within a lucky few, such as your brother or your father. It allows men to achieve great feats on the battlefield or other such masculine pursuits, and women to work wonders within the household or out in a field, blessing crops with rain. It was created by our god, so that we might flourish as a people.”

I blinked. Why the gender distinction? I didn’t ask out loud, I knew enough at this point that the answer was obvious. Women had a certain place in this world, a role that they were to fulfill and it was very much frowned upon to deviate from that. Men too, for that matter, although their place afforded them considerably more freedom.

“How does it work?” I asked, unable to hold back my curiosity on the subject of magic. It was something everyone dreamed of having back on Earth, even if just in passing.

My eyes must have sparkled or something because mother gave a laugh, although it was tinged with a note of apology. “I am not terribly knowledgeable on the subject, dear one. As I understand it, however, a mage must write down spells in the language of our god using a special medium. That spell is then absorbed by their Anosum.”

She paused to fish a little necklace out of her clothing, showing me a triangular pendant of silver, set with precious gems. “All devout followers of Anos carry one, but only mages can turn them into anything more than mere decoration. They use the spells stored within them to change the world around them in amazing and fantastical ways. It is truly a marvel to witness.”

“That sounds very useful!” I smiled wistfully, my imagination already rushing off into wild and somewhat fanciful places.

“Don’t get too ahead of yourself in there,” she said with motherly exasperation, brushing my wild hair out of my eyes. “I am afraid that you are not one of the lucky. You were tested when you were six years of age, as is every son and daughter of the nobility. Unfortunately there was nothing to be found within that little body of yours.”

“Well, I think they were wrong,” I blurted, my wilful confidence getting the better of me for a moment. I was almost certain that the person who had pushed me into this body had also given me power of some kind.

Mother’s eyebrow raised, her expression amused and indulgent. “Oh? Is that so?”

Breaking eye contact, I stared pointedly down at my book as red heat coloured my cheeks. Okay, so that had probably sounded really childlike and stupid from her end… and it definitely wasn’t a good idea to go further than that. Who knew what she’d do if she found out what I really was.

I really didn’t want to jeopardize what I had with my new mother… because to me it was priceless. I’d never felt what it was like to have a loving parent, to feel the arms of safety close around me. To know that I could sleep and she was doing her best to keep me safe. I still felt the familiar rush of fright and adrenaline when I heard a slammed door, but I was able to calm down from that now. I knew that at least in this room and while I was recovering, I was safe.

It wasn't just me who was invested in this either. I saw the looks she gave me when she thought I wasn't paying attention. They were wonder and fear all mixed together. Wonder that she had her daughter back after having given up hope, and fear that she might lose me again just as suddenly. It was in her words too, like a background track that you only ever noticed if you knew to look for it.

“Not to worry, you can live a good life without magic, Anos willing,” she told me reassuringly.

I didn’t reply to that, because I knew that there was a, “as a man’s wife,” added on silently at the end.

Instead I asked, “You mentioned Anos earlier… who is Anos?”

“He is our emperor, our god,” she said simply. “He guides our people with this wisdom and allows us to wield his magic.”

“Us? Like… the empire?” I asked, confused. This pretending to be a child thing was going to be a hell of a lot easier than I thought, given how little I knew about this world and how it worked.

“Not just the empire. It is all those who follow the Church of Anos. The missionaries of Anos have been working tirelessly to bring his light to the heathens beyond our lands, and where they cannot, imperial legions march,” she said, smiling happily, and in my opinion, more than a little creepily. That sounded disturbingly like what had happened back in the day on Earth.

“Oh…” I said, trailing off almost immediately. That kind of organised religion had always rubbed me the wrong way, regardless of if their gods were real or not. I didn’t really see the point in debating the existence of god when the principles that his followers seemed to push were abhorrent regardless.

Except here I was, witnessing what such an existence might mean. Over the course of that afternoon I learned much about my new grand overlord. Anos was a supposedly kind and gentle god, who would also incite his followers to kill, rape, enslave and abuse any who dared to go against his rule. I kept my mouth firmly shut and just listened, because if this was coming from the mouth of someone I’d thought was good, then who knew what she might think if I asked pointed questions.

I learned that Anos had come to the empire a thousand or so years ago, when it had been much smaller. Legend has it that he appeared out of nowhere one day, and at the time they had thought he was just a young man who wielded a vast amount of power. He went on to lead a rebellion against the god that I’d met, Kelex. He drove him out of his seat at the throne and took it for himself, declaring his godhood in the process. He’d ruled unchallenged by anyone competent ever since.

He valued strength, he valued intelligence and he valued so called “societal progress”. Whatever the hell any of that actually meant around here. I guess that’s where my new father got his crap about being strong for the family. He seemed to be fairly hands-off, letting the massive church organisation do all the policing of rules and whatnot. The church that also happened to be part of the government. The lines were sort of blurry as I understood them.

“How do the nobles fit into this?” I asked, curious as to how the idea of nobility had been integrated into this society.

“We are… Anos’ shepherds. We govern the masses, keeping them in line and making sure they pay their tribute and the like,” she shrugged. “It’s nothing for little girls to worry about just yet.”

“But what about the church?” I frowned, trying to wrap my head around things. “Don’t they do that?”

“The nobility and the church both serve Anos in our own ways,” was all she said, her smile falsely beatific. Alright, clearly there were some holes or something. “Let us get back to topics more suited to a young girl, yes?”

What followed was several weeks of what I knew as physical therapy and lessons with mother. Getting my body moving after its long stint in a brain-dead state was tough enough, but even tougher was keeping mother from figuring me out. By all accounts, the previous Photie hadn’t really been all that intelligent, and the questions I’d been asking were apparently wildly out of character for the girl that this family had known before.

I’d heard as much one time as a maid aided me in taking a quick walk down the hallway. Turns out that I was on the second floor of my family’s country manor house, which was a sprawling thing with three wings as well as the main house. We had everything from a ballroom to about seventeen different parlors and everything else you might expect.

Outside the house I could see a vast estate, gardens that gave way to orchards, fields and woodland. It all looked temperate enough, familiar to the point of being jarring.

I saw my brother too, although he didn’t see me. The maid pointed him out as I watched the training yard from a window above. Shirtless men wailed on each other with wooden practice swords, although in my brother’s case he was being taught sword forms of some sort. He looked to be only a year or so older than me, but already I could tell that he was going to turn out to be the tall and handsome type.

The type that all the girls at school had fawned over, the sport’s superstar type. The type that raped some poor girl behind the bike shed and then got away with it because his parents were wealthy and connected.

I’d asked to go back to my room after that. Something about him scared me.