Technomagica 2 : 24 Orphans of the Beast (Patreon)

Technomagica 2 : 24 Orphans of the Beast

[Delta Alana Skyisle]

Being Great-Aunt Delta wasn't exactly a walk in the park, especially when dealing with a horde of brainwashed cultists who just tried to burn down my family's home. Slava had collared them with Vow-disrupting hexagrams and sent me to deal with the aftermath.

As my brother snoozed on the couch with Kliss keeping him extra warm and cosy, the lucky butt, I surveyed the scene in the back garden, feeling a tad overwhelmed. The former cultists were huddled together like a flock of scared sheep, their under-robes looking a tad worse for wear thanks to the ant bites and bee stings.

Magenta, the local ringleader, sat with her head in her hands, looking utterly defeated. She looked like a schoolgirl who had been scalded, thin and frail without her armor and lilac robe. I made sure that the cultists took off their armor and scrubbed their foreheads clean of the golden Eye hexagram that magnified their charisma.

“Alright, listen up, you bunch of misguided ninnies,” I announced, my voice booming from the bee speaker. “Time for some confessions. Ishira and I, obviously already know all of your dire sins, but I want you to speak them from the heart, to confess them to me upon this meadow so that you may begin your path to… potential salvation.”

I paced in front of them, my ant-powered legs moving with ease across the moss and grass beneath. My brother had undoubtedly extracted a lot of information with his Infoscopes, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything, to discover what his all-seeing magic might have missed, to begin unravelling the thousand-year-old cloud looming over Skyisle borne from the insanity of the Tricameron Seditionists.

“You first, barmaid of Skyisle,” I demanded, pointing a finger at Magenta.

“W-what?” The violet-haired girl raised her pink eyes at me.

“Confess your sins!” I barked, slamming Ishira’s blood-iron staff into the ground for emphasis.

“It was Giovashi,” she confessed. “She... she told me in a dream that Skyisle was doomed, that the Alan family was harbouring demons, that their workshop was creating cursed tools that would bring ruin to the village.”

“Demons?” I scoffed. “Cursed tools? How long have you known the Alan family, Magenta?”

“I’ve known them as long as I lived here,” Magenta muttered.

“And are they goodly people or demons?!” I growled, waving the staff around threateningly.

“They are… goodly people,” the barmaid gulped as I hearly smacked her with the staff.

“So, you came to attack their home without a single shred of evidence?” I asked.

Magenta blushed red.

“Archpriestess Giovashi has never deceived us,” she muttered, eyes downcast.

"We were doing Ishira's work!" One of the girls cried out.

"Ishira doesn't need blood sacrifices or soul-draining tools," I said sternly. "She doesn't need renegades like Giovashi twisting her words and manipulating people into setting Alan family’s workshops on fire! I came from the land of Oz, from far beyond the hills and glacier mountains to clean up this village and in the name of our glorious Goddess, I certainly will!”

I made the bees spin a spiral around the back of my head, making myself resemble a portrait of an Orthodox saint. Then I added a crown of fire stingers atop of my head, because I thought that it looked cool.

The insect pyrotechnics worked on most of my audience.

The whimpers and sobs of the former cultists filled the air, punctuated by the occasional sniffle and choked plea for forgiveness. Some of them buried their faces in the grass, while others simply stared at me with wide, tear-filled eyes.

“Silence!” I boomed, my voice amplified by the buzzing swarm of bees within my coat. The younger girls flinched, their faces pale with fear. “I will hear no more of this heretical nonsense. You speak of Giovashi as if she were a saint, yet she is nothing but a charlatan, a pretender who has led you astray from the true path of Ishira.”

My gaze swept over the huddled group, focusing on the older women who still held a defiant glint in their eyes. They were the hardened core of this little cult, the ones who had likely been under Giovashi's influence for decades.

"You," I pointed the staff at a woman in her late 20’s with blue-tinted hair and a sharp jawline, "Step forward. Tell me your name and how you came to be entangled in Giovashi's web of lies."

The woman I pointed my staff at didn't flinch. Instead, she straightened her back, a defiant glint in her steely gray eyes. The other cultists rapidly parted like a nervous flock, leaving her standing alone before me.

“I am Ellirra Krizantheum Osk,” she replied. “Priestess of Ishira. I was but a nine year old child when Giovashi found me, lost and alone after dragon Aradria pulverised my parents home with her claws. Lady Giovashi offered me a home, a new family… and true purpose. I cannot go against my master.”

“Aradria is dead,” I revealed. “Unlike Giovashi who encouraged Aradria to roam and burn the countryside…”

I heard muttering of disbelief.

“I killed that annoying dragon,” I said, taking credit for Dante’s work. “It made a mistake coming to Skyisle, just as you have.”

“You ended… Aradria?” Ellirra sputtered. “That… that’s not possible! Aradria is a level two hundred abomination empowered by her hoard far beyond that, a monster that even the Empire of Equality could not bring from the sky. I remember her face when she swiped our house with a massive, orange-red claw. That demon left me alive, let me watch as she devoured my parents!”

“Oh? Perhaps you’d like a walk to the forest to see her corpse if you don’t believe me?” I asked.

“A corpse?” Ellirra blinked, not expecting my words.

“Yes,” I grinned dangerously. “Why don’t we go visit her so you can see for yourself what a true Bishop of Ishira can do and how my power compares to that pathetic faker Giovashi who offered you an empty plate of lies.”

The glint in her eyes flickered with doubt, her previously resolute expression replaced with a flicker of uncertainty. Good. My little revelation about Aradria’s demise was starting to crack her shell.

We set off into the forest, Ellirra and the others trailing behind me like chastised puppies.

I made good use of our hike to learn more of their names and histories. Most of them were orphans that Giovashi plucked from various small villages surrounding Agamenon. Orphans that resulted from Aradria’s attacks that occurred eighteen, fifteen and then thirteen years ago. With the exception of the Skyisle barmaids, the other girls fell into the same pattern - Giovashi warned them of sin and doomsday and then the giant red dragon decimated their villages in some manner and ate their parents.

In about thirty minutes of a brisk walk, we arrived at the blackened section of the valley. The smell of eternally smouldering dragonfire was inescapable, there was no sound here. The radiance of death emanated by the tiny sand particles left by Aradria chased away all animals and made the trees into dead husks.

“Behold, the remnants of the dragon–drained of her magic and life,” I waved Ishira’s staff at the beast.

The girls peered at the massive corpse, eyes wide with shock. It was ossified and gray, but it was still quite imposing and recognizable.

“See?” I grinned. “The vile beast is no more. Unlike Giovashi, I took care of it.”

Ellirra slid to her knees, staring at Aradria’s maw.

“It’s her,” she whispered. “It’s really her… and she’s dead.”

“Giovashi sent Aradria to your homes,” I revealed, turning my face to every orphan present. “She sent this dragon to all of your villages, so that she could make orphans of you. Parentless children are easier to manipulate, easier to bind with Charisma magic, easier to trick into sacrifice of life and blood.”

“N-no,” Ellirra choked. “That… that cannot be the truth.”

“And yet it is,” I tapped the dragon’s corpse with the iron staff, producing a hollow, morbid sound. Ashes and flakes began raining down.

“Ask yourself, did your lives become better when you encountered Giovashi? Did the pretend Archpriestess really help you or did she simply use you as a means to an end? Did you actually improve anyone’s lives in your years of servitude to Giovashi? What good have you brought to this world, Ellirra?” I magnified my voice through the bee speaker so it echoed across the forest like a sombre bell, adding a pitch of infrasound to it, to make it sound more surreal.

“This corpse and the air-cleansing trees around town is a veritable record of my good deeds,” I declared. “Go on - confess! What good have you done for the world, children?”

Elirra's eyes filled with tears as poisoned ashes drifted around her. She looked up at me. I saw that her lips were whispering questions, praying to her Angel, but it didn’t answer her.

“Your Angels turned away from you, because you chose to serve evil, were deceived,” I said, making fiery angel wings shaped behind my back with my bees. “I am your last chance for reaching heaven. If you stick with me, stay in Skyisle, become my… Radian Knights of Ishira, then you might just redeem yourself, after a few decades of proper service. You just might help me undo the great evil that Giovashi spread across Ishikaria! Unlike Giovashi, I do not feed nor encourage monsters such as this dragon–as you can plainly see I put a stop to them, permanently!”

Elirra choked.

“Now, will you help me end monsters like Aradria, darling, or will you continue to be a blind fool led by trickery of the deceiver, become responsible for more children losing their parents?” I asked as I offered Ellirra my hand.

I mentally smirked at how the gesture resembled my big brother’s gesture to Kliss, how he always found a reason to save the girl who I never considered worth much, how he miraculously turned the Overseer from a dangerous enemy to our best friend.

I could never admit it to anyone, I even refused to admit it to myself, but I was inexorably drifting closer and closer to Kliss. The adorkable, shiny-haired dragon girl somehow made me feel less hollow, less cold, less broken, more grounded to the physical.

Just like the trembling cultist in front of me, I was a victim of Giovashi’s machinations and even though I never told it to my brother or my parents - I knew that I was gradually disconnecting from reality, becoming a hollow, ghostly monster myself. I played the role of a cute sister, pretending to be a cute teenager. Often, I pretended to smile, hiding my pain behind a fake, bubbly personality. Only thanks to Kliss, I was once again able to feel like I was alive, conscious, self-aware…

Damn it, I was already missing her warmth and the solace it offered. I sent the cultist in front of me an irate glare as if she was the cause of all of my problems in the universe.

The weight of my words, the truth I laid bare before Ellirra, seemed to be tearing at the foundations of her carefully constructed world. I could see the internal struggle within her, the battle between the lies she had clung to for so long and the dawning realization that her devotion had been misplaced.

The hate-filled glare and the angel wings is what did her in. Elirra’s resolve snapped, broke like an old twig.

"I… I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!" she stammered, between tears. "I just wanted to belong... to have a family… Thank you, thank you for ending the monster that haunted my dreams and every waking moment! Thank you!!!”

She crawled over to me and hugged my boots covered in wooden armor, wailing even louder.

“Please, Bishop Delta, forgive my sins! Forgive me, Ishira! I cannot bear it, the voice of my Angel has forsaken me! I know not what to do! I want to be good and righteous! I do want to help Ishikaria prosper, I swear it on my life!”

I reached out and brushed her hair.

“Will you help me plant trees, instead of burning things?” I asked.

“Y-yes, my Bishop!” the cultist stammered. “I will.”

“What about all of you?” I growled, addressing the gathered girls.

Resounding confessions, pleas and cries of agreement surrounded me. I wanted to hurt them further, to break them, to feast on their souls.

No.

That was the void talking, the icy hollowness within me, the hunger for life. I needed to hug Lizzy, to drown the ever-present, gnawing, maddening chill in her embrace. Yes. YES. I was going to get home, hand these idiots to Georgi so that he could show them how harmless his workshop truly is, leap into my human body and then… then I could hug the warmest thing in the universe, forever and ever, or at the very least, until I felt a pinch more alive once again.

I put a fake smile on my face.

“Good,” I addressed the cultists. “Good. Let the healing begin! This first step you take is a step towards righteousness, a step towards absolute goodness, towards Ishira’s divine, warm embrace! Rejoice! Soon you won’t feel so empty and hollow and cold for you will come into the light! Follow! You shall meet the man and work in his workshop, the very workshop that you so eagerly wanted to burn down in your folly!”