Father of Monstrosity

Jakob woke up, curled within the embrace of Heskel, who had moved them to some alleyway when he had suddenly become too tired to function. Though he had long since learnt the skill of staying awake for days on end, the new environment and excitements had worn him down quicker than anticipated.

He stood up, stretching his spindly limbs, then looked at his Lifeward as he adjusted his flesh robes.

“We need to find a place where I can operate in quiet. The first Wrought Servant clearly did not live up to my expectations, but I take the blame for it, as my workmanship was rather hastily done.”

Heskel arose from the cobbles as well, grunting in agreeance.

“Shelter seek,” he replied.

“Indeed we must.”

Jakob had only been walking down the street for a few moments, when a large woman, with brown hair in a bun and a flour-stained grey apron, called out to him.

“Hey, Boy! Are you an Alchemist?”

He immediately halted and turned towards the woman.

“How did you know?” he asked her incredulously. Alchemy was one of the many vocations Grandfather extolled and it had been required learning since Jakob had been seven.

“So you are an Alchemist then? Follow me, and be quick about it.”

Heskel grunted a warning, but, with a single glance, he was mollified and followed as Jakob accompanied the woman into the bakery from where she had appeared.

Inside, two other women, skeletal when compared to the large apron-wearing lady, were leaned over a man with a face void of colour and a purple swelling all up his right arm and shoulder. From the colour, which was a reddish-purple akin to the Loathsome Leecher toadstools that grew in the middle layers of the sewers, Jakob could tell that some manner of infection or poison was in his system, and had been for a long while.

Without needing to examine him further, Jakob told them, “He will die when it reaches his brain. Perhaps he will live another day, or maybe two.”

One of the women immediately fainted upon hearing this, while the large one pleaded with him.

“You must be able to fix it!”

“I can fix it,” Jakob replied, “but I do not have the facilities to do so, as I am without a laboratorium.”

“The only available space I know of, is our basement. We mostly keep flour and yeast down there.”

“How big is it?”

After having Heskel move around the sacks of flour, as well as the miscellaneous stuff the bakery had stored there, Jakob had a decently-sized workspace. Using some of the discarded planks and broken chairs, Heskel quickly constructed a surface on which to lay the sick man. It was in essence just a low table.

While the Wight continued setting up the various things that were needed, Jakob bent over the man on his worksurface, cutting away his grimy blouse to reveal his torso and arms completely. On his forearm were a few distinct, yet barely perceivable, punctures, like those from a rodent bite.

“When was he bitten?” Jakob asked the large woman, who was the only one that had remained to watch him and Heskel set up the laboratorium.

“Bitten?” she asked, confused. Then recollection seemed to come to her. “Oh! It was four days ago. He came in to work complaining that some kind of cat with barely any hair had nipped him when he tried to pet it.”

“What is a cat?” he asked Heskel.

“Big rat: hunt small rat,” he replied, also in Chthonic.

Jakob nodded thoughtfully. “A bigger rat, but with smaller and shaper teeth. Peculiar. Why would anyone try to pet one?”

The Wight grunted indifferently.

The large lady, whom Jakob had learnt was the owner of the bakery, looked between them. “Are you out-of-towners?”

“I need vessels,” he replied, not deigning her question with an answer. “Big ones, either metal or ceramic. They need to be water-tight. And bring the other two back with you.”

Not questioning this demand, the owner left with waddling steps, going up the stone steps to the ground floor above, yelling at the two other women.

“Should I actually bother to save him?” Jakob asked the Wight as soon as they were alone.

“Keep as cover: fool guards.”

“Do we have enough for four Rituals of Abeyance?”

Heskel grunted in the negative.

“Three?”

The Wight nodded.

“Just barely enough then. We shall have to find more Demon’s Blood in the city. I am loathe to summon a demon like Grandfather is wont when supplies run low.”

Just then the Lady came back down, with her two assistants in tow, all of them carrying bowls of cast-iron and crude ceramic. One balked at the sight of the man lying shirtless on the impromptu table, dropping a small vessel that shattered into many shards.

“Get a hold of yourself, Lisbeth! This young Alchemist has assured us he will cure him.”

The girl, Lisbeth, nodded meekly. This was the same woman who had fainted earlier.

Jakob pointed to Lisbeth with a finger.

“That one we strip for parts, the rest we submit to the ritual.”

Heskel nodded in command, while the three women looked between them in confusion, not recognising the danger they were suddenly in. If Jakob had not been a sheltered boy raised by monsters and a mad Fleshworker, then perhaps he would have blamed them for the situation they now found themselves in: after all, they had let in a masked boy dressed in off-putting clothes and a giant with abnormally large muscles and discoloured-and-scarred skin. As it were, Jakob did not think of much beyond his goal. When Grandfather asked, he obeyed. Everything else was inconsequential.

The trio barely had time to react as Heskel strode across the stone floor of the basement, grabbed Lisbeth’s neck in his enormous fist and snapped her spine. With skill borne of experience, he palmed first the owner in the temple, then the other assistant. Both immediately fell to the ground, unconscious. Heskel was a monster of supernatural strength, but his true talent lay in his ability to utilise everything from a minute fragment of that strength and up to steel-bending power. Thus, he was capable of knocking unconscious a person with the most limited amount of trauma inflicted on their brains and skull structure. Granted, it was never a sure thing, but so far Jakob had not witnessed Heskel accidentally kill someone when he intended to subdue them.

“Before we begin, tie them up and secure the upstairs area so no one will disturb us.”

The Wight assented, and they set to work.

After finalising the first two rituals, Jakob had Heskel undo the restraints on the owner and the assistant baker.

“What are your names?”

“Ehlo,” said the owner.

“Katja,” followed the assistant.

Jakob noted the lack of vocal interference, like what he’d experienced with Callum upon his recreation.

“Why are their voices normal?” he asked Heskel. It was not that it disappointed him, but being of a curious mind, such abnormalities needed proper examination lest they go unaddressed and lead to future problems.

The Wight shrugged, much to Jakob’s chagrin.

“I will have to conduct more tests then.”

He returned his focus to the two Wrought Servants, ensuring he properly intoned his following command in Novarocian.

“Ehlo, Katja. You will return to your normal functions within this store above, making sure none may learn about my laboratorium down here. If necessary, you will give your lives to allow myself and Heskel to make good our escape, should we be discovered.”

“Yes, my Lord,” both immediately replied.

Jakob smiled humourlessly behind his scent-mask. It was a strange quirk of the Ritual of Abeyance, and any other type of subjugation spells he knew of, that the individuals internalised the subservient bond in terms that they themselves could comprehend. The rats of the sewer viewed him as their Broodlord when he had first tested the ritual on them. The vagrants of the upper sewer saw him more as a Demigod however. It seemed to the working peasants of the residential district that Jakob was some sort of aristocrat or royalty deserving of unquestioning obedience.

If such a thing as a subservient Demon was a possibility, he wondered what form its adulation would take. Even Raleigh, Grandfather’s longest-serving Demonic servant, viewed himself as an equal to his creator, and above the station of Jakob. Demons were not controlled, only bartered and dealt with through thoroughly-written contractual bonds.

“Now for the last one.”

Opting for a different approach to that of Callum, Jakob remade the poisoned man as an unassuming monster. It seemed quite obvious in hindsight that blending in was a prerequisite to going unnoticed within Helmsgarten. Though it minimised the maximum potential strength, he redesigned the man’s new shoulder and right arm with hollow compartments hiding blades that could be released with the use of certain additional muscle groups, such as with his right hand, where flexing the pinkie finger and thumb would release claws from within the back of the hand. Ultimately, these new organic weapons would not stand up to fighting against blades nor armour, but their discreet nature insured that the fight would be over before the opponent had the chance to adequately defend themselves. At least that was thought.

“What do you think?” Jakob asked the Wight.

Heskel nodded thoughtfully.

“Better?”

“Creative,” he replied.

It was a rare compliment of a servant who had served his Grandfather and first-hand seen the brilliant Fleshcrafting Master perform his figurative, and literal, magic.

Jakob was about to begin the Ritual of Abeyance, when the reformed man started suddenly coming out of his induced coma.

“Restrain him,” he ordered, and the giant quickly placed his hands on the thrashing body.

While the subject stirred violently under the grip of Heskel, Jakob did his best to draw out the three necessary signs for the ritual.

Without warning, the air started vibrating, and a sickening purple light grew from Heskel’s fingers where he gripped the man by the forehead.

“Shackle!” he roared in a distorted voice, and the struggling man fell still in an instant, as though the life had been snuffed from him.

The Wight looked up at him, blood leaking from under the timid mask he wore and the tips of his fingers vomiting thick tendrils of smoke from the magical backlash.

“Hurry,” he said.

Jakob immediately wiped out the signs and started redrawing them with the utmost haste, though without compromising the lines nor proportions. As he worked, he could not help but wonder at the Wight’s hitherto-unknown knowledge of incantations. He doubted that even Grandfather was aware of this side of Heskel. The thought of it made his head throb.

After he finished the symbol of the Lord, Jakob triple-checked every line. Heskel still had his hand on the forehead of the subject, and the other on his torso. As Jakob checked the sign of the Lord, he saw that the tips of the Wight’s fingers were quietly smouldering as though touching burning coal. The stench they gave off were like burnt hair and ash.

Jakob stood back, grim determination on his sweaty brow, and prepared for the ritual. Just then, the man started stirring.

Closing his eyes and hoping his lines were true, he began the ritual.

“Watcher, I beseech thee observe this rite. I beseech thee ensure its claim.”

The man started shaking violently.

“With this rite I lay claim to what I am owed as Lord. With this rite I enslave this soul to me.”

Shaking turned to thrashing, and Heskel had to force the subject back down on the makeshift table as he tried to reach for Jakob, the claws in his arm springing forth.

“Drawn in the blood of the Lord, the Watcher, and the Squire, render this my subject absolute.”

As Jakob finished the last syllable and opened his eyes, the man freed himself from under Heskel’s grip and was a hand’s breadth from Jakob’s throat with the claws of his remade arm. Then he simply retracted his weapons and sat back down on the table edge.

“COMMAND ME…” he said, eye-to-eye with the diminutive Jakob even sitting down.

“What is your name?”

“HOLM…”

“This one has the same voice as Callum,” Jakob remarked.

Heskel let out a tired grunt of acknowledgement. It seemed the ordeal had quite spent his reserves.

“Holm. I command you find me a man of lithe build who is past adolescence. Once you find one, report to me. Use only the power I have granted you when deemed absolutely necessary. Ensure that you do not capture the eye of the guards, though if you do, eliminate any that try to follow you. Lastly, stay within this district.”

“YES LORD…” Holm obeyed, then stood up and went upstairs after putting on the discarded tunic they had removed from Lisbeth before dismembering her to rebuild his arm and shoulder.