Chapter 265 - Blood Gods in Exile part 10

So we made them into blood drinkers.

In Uroboros, the act of making a new blood god is entrenched in ritual. Initiates are given a symbolic last meal, whatever food he or she desires. The men are given to spend one last night with the sexual partner of their choice, so that their mortal seed, if the gods favor them, may be preserved. They are bathed, their hair and nails trimmed and shaped so that they have a comely appearance, as hair and nails do not grow after the transformation. They are encouraged to severe ties with any mortals they might love, and only then, once they have sworn their fealty to the God King, may the initiates be given the living blood.

First they make an offering of blood to the T'sukuru who transforms them. They are given a sacred blade, one made by the hands of the God King Himself, and with that blade they slice into the main artery of their forearm. The blood that gushes forth is collected into a bowl, which is passed to the initiate's maker. After the maker drinks, he or she moves over the prone body of the initiate, and brings forth the living blood, vomiting into the open mouth of the mortal, as a mother bird gives nourishment to her hatchlings.

After that, the fate of the mortal is in the hands of the gods, or perhaps I should say the Strix. No one knows how or why the living blood makes one mortal into a god, while it consumes another, and renders the third into a mindless, ravening ghoul. That, perhaps, was why the children of the living blood had not already consumed the world. It's propensity to kill those who dare grasp for immortality.

The Uroborans have a saying: T'ando ebu ne alba estu? Roughly translated, it means,"Will it be the black stone or the white?" It is based on a game in which one player holds his fists behind his back, switching two differently colored stones from hand to hand. He brings his fists forward when he has decided which stone shall go in which hand, and then the other player must pick a fist. If it is the black stone, the first player wins. If it is a white stone, the second player wins. It is a game, but it is also used to make decisions when two parties are unable to come to a compromise on some matter. Both men have a hand in the game, both have their choice to make, but neither knows what the outcome of their decision may be. It is a rather apt metaphor for the human—and inhuman-- condition, I think. And for the making of blood gods.

Will it be the black stone or the white?

Will it be death or immortality?

Will my fledgling be a good child, or a treacherous one?

We spent that first night getting to know the men who wanted to join our group. They were a brooding, suspicious lot, and who can blame them? Life had given them little reason to be jolly, and all mortals are instinctively fearful in the company of a vampire. We can pass for mortals for a little while, when we choose to move among you, but look too closely, abide in our presence too long, and anxiety will begin to gnaw at your guts. You will become jumpy and paranoid, leaping at every little sound, every flitting shadow. You will start to wonder just what it is about the fellow sitting next to you that makes your heart rattle in your chest, that makes your breath quicken, and your skin crawl. Lay a lamb beside a lion, and watch it tremble.

They perked up a little after they ate the meat of the animals we had preyed upon earlier. Zenzele had taken the flesh as well as the fur that night, knowing that Bhorg was bringing the mortals. She cooked for them, turning the meat slowly on a spit over our hearth until the fat dripped and sizzled and the skin was brown and crisp. The nourishment invigorated them. They'd had little luck hunting in recent months. They ate every scrap of meat we prepared for them. But they were still a solemn lot.

Of the six, I found Hammon and Eris to be the most intriguing.

Hammon was a natural born leader, intelligent, confident, and resourceful. He had managed to keep his small clan alive despite hardship and the caprices of fate. He was the least uncomfortable in our presence, the most talkative, and I found him to be a rather entertaining fellow. He regaled us with hunting stories, tales of their battles with the other nomadic tribes of the Eastern Dominions, and fables based on their mythology.

Eris was an enigmatic creature. He was obviously male, with a thin beard and a lean, muscular body, but there was something feminine in his character. He had finely-boned features, full lips and large eyes with long, curling eyelashes. He also had a female scent, and a quiet, watchful nature.

It was explained to us during the course of the evening that Eris was what the Orda called a "two-natured" being-- what we would call, in modern parlance, a hermaphrodite, a creature born with both male and female genitalia. It is not an unusual thing, though in contemporary western cultures, such people are often surgically altered at birth to conform to some repressive notion of "normality", usually to their detriment, and a lifetime of mental agony if the wrong choice is made for them. But in those ancient times, such births were considered either good luck, and the rare creature was revered, or bad luck, and the child was put to death. We didn't try to sculpt their flesh, make them into something they were not.

Fortunately for Eris, the Orda regarded the birth of two-natured creatures a good omen, and believed the unusual beings were more spiritually enlightened than their single-sexed contemporaries, embodying the sacred natures of both the Mother and the Father. Eris was both shaman and medicine woman, fellow warrior and gentle caregiver. When they fought, he fought at their sides, as ruthless and unyielding as any of his more masculine tribesmen. When the men were in need of sexual release, she submitted to their needs.

That was the theory, anyway.

I sensed some contempt for the hermaphrodite from the others, and a bit of resentment on Eris's part, but it was mild.

The births of two-natured beings were common enough among the peoples of the Eastern Dominions that they had a third pronoun for their kind, the word ers, which was a conjoining of sem and fer for male and female. For simplicity's sake, I shall henceforth refer to Eris by the masculine forms, for he seemed to me to be slightly more masculine than feminine, but he was much more complex a being than that, and I found him to be quite fascinating, even after the novelty of his dual nature wore off.

As for the rest…

Neolas was much like his brother. So much so that his existence seemed almost gratuitous. He was just a slightly smaller, somewhat less confident version of his older sibling. Had they told me they were womb-mates, I would have believed them. Petra was a skinny and anxious young man, quite unattractive, with overlarge features set in a narrow, angular face. Stine was the oldest of their group, a paunchy, gray-bearded, morose fellow. And Morgruss, Stine's cousin, was a hard, suspicious man, with blunt features, a perpetual scowl and rheumy, joyless eyes.

They stayed with us most of the night. Zenzele and Bhorg were easy with them, accustomed to being around mortals. From time to time I would catch one of them staring at Hammon's jugular, or the necks of one of his companions, their eyes sharp with the predatory urge, but they did not move to harm our acolytes, nor did they seem overly distressed by their proximity. I was a little more uneasy. I had lived among my mortal descendants long enough to tame my murderous impulses, but not so long that I could put them out of my thoughts completely. I have never been able to do that. I am still tormented endlessly by my bloodthirst. It rattles at the back of my mind like a drug addiction whenever I am with mortals. It is why I live as a recluse. I can never quite trust myself around the living.

After Hammon had told us his tales, we shared our lives with him.

Zenzele, they had heard of. Who in the Dominions hadn't heard the legends? Zenzele, the dark-skinned goddess of death, as ruthless as she was beautiful. Even a small band of nomadic hunters at the eastern fringe of the God King's territories knew the name Zenzele.

I could tell it pleased her, and it pleased me as well. All men should know her name! They should love her as I loved her. Fear her as I feared her. The Orda were fascinated by her story: how she became a blood drinker, her journey to Uroboros, and how the God King destroyed her maker, the leonine Bujune, freeing her at long last from her maker's possessive love.

Bhorg's story was also an entertainment to them. His was a warrior's tale, the story of a cocky young fighter brought low on the whim of the gods, enslaved, forced to labor in the lowest chambers of their hell, but never submitting, never falling to his knees, only continuing stubbornly on, day after day, until he chanced to win the favor of one of heaven's princesses.

"Made into a god by merit of cock alone?" Hammon laughed. "Let us see this princely cock, giant! Let us see if it is worthy of godhood!"

Grinning, Bhorg leapt to his feet and pulled aside his loincloth, pumping his pelvis so that prick and balls swooped in a broad circle. Zenzele laughed and the Orda roared their approval. It was an impressive cock. I was a little jealous.

My sad story, of course, brought everyone down. I told them of my happy mortal life in the north, in a land far beyond the God King's Dominions. I told them of my two wives and my six beautiful children. I told them of the rogue blood god who preyed upon my first wife's people, and how, in ignorance of its true nature, we went to make war on him. I told them how we were defeated and how I was made a blood god against my will, raped by the cold and callous creature, raped with immortality. I told them how I killed my own maker, how I guarded my mortal descendants, never able to come too near to them because of my appetite for blood, and how, after ages of loneliness, I sought out my death in the maw of a great floe of ice. I told them of my rebirth, how I was reunited with my mortal descendants, and how I met and was defeated by Zenzele.

"Beaten by a woman?" Stine exclaimed, his expression judgmental.

"If I remember correctly," Hammon said, "you did well to handle that woman of yours."

"Rea?" Stine said. "Rea was a big woman, as strong as any man."

"And Gon was defeated by Zenzele."

"I did not defeat my lover," Zenzele said. "He surrendered to me to preserve the life of his blood child. What father would not die in his son's stead?"

She looked at me lovingly, but I was not shamed by her conquering of me. "Zenzele defeats me every time I put my cock inside her," I said, grinning at her mischievously.

Surprised, Stine erupted into laughter. He nodded his head, as did the rest of the men, all but Eris. "Yes! Yes! In like manner are we all defeated! As often as we can be!"

Eris looked to Zenzele, and they shared some secret amusement.

I told them then of our battle with the God King in the bowels of the great mountain, Fen'Dagher. I told them how we Share our memories through the exchange of our living blood, and how I stole a drop of his blood in the midst of that battle, and the terrible visions I saw when his memories came flooding into my mind.

The whole world overrun by our kind, consumed, and mortal man kept as animals for the slaughter.

"That is why we must defeat him," I said. "That is why I must raise an army against him, and why we must find some way to destroy him."

The Orda did not seem much impressed by my vision. I think the fates had treated them so unkindly that they did not care that the world was consumed. Or perhaps the vision was too grand for their minds to encompass. I spoke of a world consumed, yet they had lived their entire lives—their brief hard lives—on but one tiny and barren portion of it. The steppe was the world to them, and desolate as it was, its destruction did not seem to be much of a loss.

What they wanted was immortality, and they were willing to do my bidding for a chance at it.

That was enough for me.

They did not sleep with us in the cave that night, but who could blame them? I would not have tempted fate that way if I had been a mortal man. When they retired, they made camp a little way down the river from us.

We accompanied them to their campsite, helped them to make a fire. They were quite impressed by my fire-making skills, shouting in surprise when I rubbed two sticks together fast enough to combust them. It is an easy trick for an immortal, but I quite like it. I get a child-like thrill from the squeal of the wood, the billowing smoke and great burst of flame.

"Bathe yourselves in the river today," I told them before we departed. "If it is your way to fuck before battle, or to celebrate endings and beginnings, then fuck, for it will be the last time you will couple as mortal men." I told them to trim their hair and nails and explained why, and gave them one last chance to reconsider. "Tomorrow evening we will give you the living blood," I said. "The transformation will be painful, and the outcome is never certain. If the ebu potashu finds you wanting, it will devour you from the inside, as the spider devours its prey. We know not why it does this, or why it finds one man lacking and makes another into a god, but you should know this. If you decide to live out your lives as mortal men, to forsake our offer to you, then leave at first light. We will not pursue you."

They regarded us with wide, somber eyes. Finally, Hammon spoke, "Thank you, Gon. You are an honorable man. We will do these things you say. And we will give your words great thought tonight, though I do not believe any of my men will want to leave when morning comes."

I nodded, and the three of us departed.

Bhorg returned to the cave, tired from his journey. Zenzele and I climbed a nearby promontory and watched the Orda from afar.

They sat around their fire for a little while, discussing the three of us. I was pleased that their impression of us was favorable, though all of them admitted to being uneasy in our presence. They also seemed to have no reservations about taking the living blood. They were excited by the prospect of immortality, of having our strength and strange powers.

"Do you think they will be good warriors?" Zenzele asked.

"I do not know," I replied. "They may fight with us. They may abandon us. I do not think they will betray us. They revere loyalty and honesty. We will just have to wait and see, I suppose."

We watched as the men bedded for the night. Eris went to the river and bathed, and then each member of the group took turns lying upon him before retiring to their furs to sleep. All except Hammon, who sat staring into the fire, lost in thought. When he had performed his duties, Eris went and sat beside the leader of their band for a little while. Their voices were faint, but I could understand them.

Eris urged Hammon to take his pleasure of him. "It will be the last time we have the chance to lie together while we are living men," he said. "I would like to know you before it is too late."

Hammon declined, saying that he had sworn to honor his wife's memory until his dying day, and he meant to keep that vow. He said it gently but firmly.

"You may never die, Hammon," Eris said. "Tomorrow, we become gods, never to know the embrace of death as living men know it. Do you intend to keep your vow through all of eternity?"

"Their living blood may devour us from within," Hammon replied. "You heard what their leader said. The ebu potashu may find us lacking and destroy us."

"And you would prefer that?"

"Of course not."

"Then come, lie with me."

"I told you I will not. How many times must I refuse you, Eris? Go to bed."

The two-natured man rose and walked quietly to his furs. I watched him curl up in them. He gazed at Hammon's back for several minutes before dozing.

"We will have to make many more if we ever hope to defeat Khronos," Zenzele said thoughtfully.

"Yes," I nodded. "But we will raise them up to be good children. To be the guardians of mortal man."

"It will not be easy," Zenzele said. "It will be like training a lioness to nurse a baby impala. It seems unnatural to me, this reverence you have for the very creatures we must feed upon."

"Can the predator not love its prey, Zenzele?" I mused. "Yes, nature is cruel, but even in nature there is room for love. The problem is balance. The lion kills, yes, but only the weak and the sick. It does not strive to devour them all. It takes only what nourishment it needs to survive. It lives in balance with the world, taking from it temporarily, and returning to the earth when its life is finished."

"As I lived once, before I was stolen from my family," Zenzele said softly. "Before I was seduced by Khronos."

I put my arm around her, pulled her close to me. "I was just as tempted when I walked among your people. The ways of the God King are powerfully seductive. But the living blood is not of this world, and we must find a way that is sensible for both our kinds. What will Khronos do when he had devoured all living things?"

Hammon finally rose. He walked a little way from the campsite and pissed, then went to the river and drank before retiring to his bed.

Zenzele and I retired, too.