Book 1: Gospel: Till Death Do You Part

Book 1: Gospel

Dark Hollow, Steelwilds, Fourth Age

Book of Roots 8:13

“Grief is the last wild thing we cradle. Let it howl. Let it wound. Do not silence it—for in its teeth, the soul remembers what it once protected.”

Chapter 8: Till Death Do You Part

I staggered upright, coughing dirt and blood from my mouth. The grave’s edge had collapsed beneath the shockwave sending me tumbling into a tangle of bone and loose soil.

Across the yard, Itza was already standing feral, breathing heavy, eyes locked.

Granny stood in moonlight, a monster bathed in something far too old to be called holy. Her hair, a matted bramble. Her shoulders, rising and falling like a forge bellow. Her breasts, massive, swaying with each heave like maces of flesh.

In one hand, she held a shovel as long as a spear, resting across her shoulders like a child’s toy, and strapped across her belly, that leather pouch—still writhing in rhythm with her wheezing breath and trembling thighs.

Then, in what could only be an act of dominance, madness, or sacred defilement ,Granny squatted, locked eyes with us, and emptied her bladder onto the chapel stones.

The hiss of urine on sacred ground sounded like blasphemy incarnate.

Itza spat,“What in the fuck is she, Adam?”

I kept my eyes on the beast, pulled my pistol from its holster, and checked the chamber loading a Spark,“I haven’t heard of anything like this since Fern’s age.”

Itza chambered hers beside me. Her aim steady. Her jaw set.

Granny scratched her massive, hoof like, feet across the dirt like a bull before the goring.

And then I said it aloud, voice flat and grim. “Wildborn.”

She charged.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Granny rushed at us like an avalanche in heat and fury. We dove sideways, Itza to the left, me to the right, just as she barreled into an old yew tree and shattered it into kindling.

Itza rolled to her feet and fired twice into Granny’s back. The bullets sank deep into that massive, gnarled flesh, drawing screams that sounded more animal than woman.

Granny whirled.

Her spine cracked and arched, and then she snapped forward with a noise like bones tearing open.

Blue fire erupted from her mouth in a gout of sacred bile, searing the grass and slicing the air like a sermon turned sin.

Itza dove into an open grave. I sprinted ahead of the flame and fired back.

My aim was true, her face the target, but in a move straight from a nightmare bestiary, Granny flipped one massive breast up, catching the bullet with flesh like sacrilegious armor.

“Are you serious?!” I shouted, but I would not let the humor escape, “Itza! Can you do that?”

Behind the grave marker, Itza popped up and took her own shots, two Spark rounds aimed at the knees,“Does my equipment look like it can do that?”

Her first Spark hit true, detonating against Granny’s leg. Muscle and gore sprayed, and the monster bellowed in rage.

The second round struck the leather pouch. Something inside it screamed.

A shriek—not Granny’s— and a red bloom spread across the surface, seeping between the straps.

Granny froze,looked down, touched the pouch with a slow, shaking hand.

“N—no…” she whispered,“N——no… not my mate…”

Granny’s eyes widened. The rage in her face collapsed into fear. With a pained howl, she turned tail and sprinted for the church doors. Her ruined leg dragging, muscle hanging in tatters, but her speed and stride were unbroken.

“No—no, no—not again!” She crashed through the double doors,and in that instant, I grabbed a Cycle bead from my battle chaplet, bright red, hot to the touch, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Creator guide my aim,” I whispered.

I hurled it at her just as she passed through the threshold. It burst midair with a wet, slapping sizzle showering her in flaming gel, the air filling with the sharp scent of copper ,fire and blood.

Granny screamed—a sound somewhere between a banshee and a burning sow and vanished inside, flailing and on fire.

I reloaded my pistol, grimacing,“Damn it. We’ve got to go in after her now.”

Itza nodded, handing me her pistol, “Give me a breath. Hold this.”

She stepped back, closing her eyes, and then she grew. Her spine stretched, limbs lengthening with a series of tight cracks. Fur erupted along her skin—silver-grey, kissed with shadowlight. Her jaw elongated, muzzle forming. Three luminous tails unfurled from her lower back like silk banners whipping in the wind.

The firelight from the chapel danced across her new form my warrior bride turned lunar beast.

I whistled low,“Creator’s breath… It’s been a minute since I’ve seen you like this.”

She bared gleaming teeth in a smile, “Pistol, please.”

I handed it to her with reverence.

She cocked it with one clawed finger and gestured toward the burning chapel,“After you, husband. Ladies first.”

I crept forward, the ruined chapel doors still smoldering, their hinges warped and smoking. Behind me, Itza’s Kitsune form was bathed in firelight three silver tails flicking, her frame tense and gleaming.

“Purebloods always made it look so easy”, I thought,”Like breathing.”

Though I had to admit, shifting like that was hell on a wardrobe.

I eased into the sanctuary, boots whispering against scorched stone. Pews lay scattered like bones. Ash curled up from broken hymnals. Tiny fires danced in corners, giggling like heretical candles.

And there—at the front—blood, thick and dark, a trail leading past the altar, to a trapdoor that was flung wide.

I stepped up to it, the edge lined in scorch marks and something wet.

From below: no light. No wind.

Just a low sound—like breath caught in a throat too full of teeth.

I turned back toward Itza, her muzzle lowering just enough to catch my gaze.

“Ladies first,” I murmured.

Her tails stilled, and she smiled—sharp, knowing, ready.

We eased down the worn stone steps, shadows clinging like wet cloth to our backs. Itza led the way, ears twitching, muzzle low, her breathing steady and focused. Her preternatural senses stretched out ahead of us, searching for heat, for rot, for sin dressed as flesh.

Then she winced.

“Smell hits hard here. Too hard.”,she reached to her chaplet, fingers deft despite the claws, and crushed a white Milk bead.

A faint shimmer passed over us and the scent of fresh-cut grass, summer rain, warm blankets drying on a line filled our nostrils.

The field from our first vacation. Hayelle’s first toddling steps. Parla’s giggles chasing fireflies.

The illusion slipped into our senses like warm wine, masking the stench of the chamber below.

“Better,” Itza said quietly. “Thirteen beads.”

“Thirteen here too,” I echoed.

And then we heard it.

Sobbing.

Not human—not fully.

Shrieking.

Wounded animal sounds.

Something broken and not healing.

Then—pleading.

Guttural, choking, desperate, “Please… please no more…”

And beneath it all—like a choir dragged from the throat of Hell itself— a chorus of similar voices, layered in pain, filth, and fading memory.

Itza froze at the last step. Her fur bristled. Her tails stilled.

“Zeke” she whispered, “There’s… a lot of them.”

I eased down the last steps, each one heavy with dread,“Stay sharp, Itza. Stay focused, no matter what you see.”

She nodded, her breath low, ears forward.

We rounded the corner, and everything changed.

Cages and pens lined the walls, soaked in low torchlight and rot. The one nearest to us held a disfigured female elf, her body stretched past its limit. She lay strapped to a rolling rack, her belly grotesquely swollen, breasts bruised, nipples raw—forced beyond reason for Milk bead production.

But it was her eyes that shattered me.

They weren’t blank. They were empty.

Hollow.

Gone.

A soul pushed out. A body left on religious autopilot.

Behind me, I heard Itza growl—deep and low, dangerous. I reached back, hand resting on her furred chest, feeling her heart pound.

“I know,” I whispered. “We’re going to make this right.”

I leaned forward, scanning past the cage bars. There at the center of the chamber was Granny. Naked. Kneeling. Shaking on her good knee.

The leather pouch was gone. In her arms, she held another one of those spindly, mutated gnome things, still locked inside her, connected by a grotesque union that was parasitic, not passionate.

This wasn’t love.

This wasn’t bonding.

This was biological possession.

The thing thrashed, shrieked, spasmed ,and Granny rocked, weeping, whispering in that broken voice,“Sssss—save mate… ssssave mate…”

She lifted the creature toward a woman across the chamber.

Famora.

Tall. Cloaked. Watching like a disappointed god.

“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “another one didn’t take?”

She didn’t wait. She reached into her robes and pulled something round and brass, and with one smooth motion.

Crack!

She crushed it against Granny’s temple.

Bang!

The air filled with smoke and the stench of scorched hair. Granny slumped forward. Her deadweight collapsing on the thrashing gnome-creature, crushing it beneath her. It screamed once and stopped.

Famora dusted off her hands.

“So much promise…” she murmured, turning away,“And still… failure.”

The gnome-creature gave one last twitch, its parasitic connection finally softening and slipping free from Granny’s ruin with a wet, shuddering shluup.

I stared.

Frozen.

Fury building beneath my ribs like a sermon waiting to be screamed.

This.

This was not Wildborn.

This was heresy.

My mind raced back to the stories of my grandfather Fernweh.

The original Wildborn were beautiful, mad, bonded to each other in flame and glory.

The women were towers of living strength, seven to eight feet tall, shoulders like gates, hair braided in ceremony, wild in war.

Their breasts were massive but not vulgar. They were weapons, shields, and wells of nurture, capable of feeding the rare child that survived the divine violence of the womb.

Their bodies were sculpted and scarred and yet always honored. Shaved smooth. Oiled with care. Tattoos etched by the hands of husbands who saw their wives as sacred altars.

Symbols of love, victory, loss, and birth.

Each line a vow. Each mark a testament.

The men were small, fast, and devoted. No taller than five feet, built lean and clever and yes, blessed with the gift to bind so potent it could anchor the soul of a warrior-goddess. They were the eyes in the storm. The blood in the altar. The reason that counteracted the rage. These couples didn’t mate. They merged. If one fell in battle or life, The other followed.

Always.

What I saw in this pit,this laboratory of filth and fraud,was not that. There was no love here. No ceremony. No creation.

Just parody. Just rape wearing a rosary.

“This must die,” I whispered. Then, for the first time in years, my rosary glowed.

The rage that surged in my chest was not a fire, but a commandment. I stepped out into the open, voice steady with holy wrath.

“Chief Bishop Famora,” I called,“you are hereby ordered to cease and desist this heresy and submit to arrest and trial by the High Church of the Tower for resurrecting practices deemed too dangerous for mortal life. Do you come quietly?”

She turned and smiled like a serpent wearing silk,“I figured it would only be a matter of time before the Church’s dogs sniffed me out.”

She sauntered over to one of the cages. Her fingers dancing over the iron latch, “Thank you for bringing me your wife, by the way.”

She gestured lazily at Granny’s twisted corpse. Her bulk still covering the failed gnome.

“As you can see,I’m in need of a new subject.”

The latch snapped open.

“Let’s begin the bonding process, shall we?”

Seven of the not-gnomes burst from the cage, tongues writhing, twisting in the air, sniffing for female pheromones like predators tasting blood. Their mutated phallic limbs scraped the floor behind them, engorged, wrong, and ravenous.

Itza took one step down from the shadows tall, silver, three-tailed, and glowing with divine fury.

“Itza?” I said, hand gripping my pistol, fingers tight on a Flame bead,“Ease back. Watch your flanks.”

Her growl was low. Her eyes locked on the swarm.

“They want to bond?” she hissed. “Let’s show them what real Wildborn blood tastes like.”

They surged forward, and we met them.

I tossed the Echo bead,a crimson-glass bomb forged by Eunice Flamejaw, a hotheaded Dragonborn beadsmith back home.

Creator bless her rage.

The bead flared bright, burning white-hot as it shattered against the floor.

A moment of silence.

Then—

FWOOM.

The second pulse ignited, searing the chamber in a wave of righteous fire. Three of the not-gnomes shrieked. Their bodies writhing as they were devoured by flame, howling in twisted soprano as their flesh cracked and fell apart.

“Twelve!” I shouted.

“Thirteen!” Itza called back—her pistol firing a clean, thunderous shot straight into the chest of another. It staggered, bled sap and sin, and collapsed.

“Bead got three, you got one, that leaves—”

“ITZA, LOOK OUT!”

She turned too late ,and one of the creatures barreled into her, knocking her to the ground in a spray of filth and frenzy. It was on her. It’s tongue writhing, phallus slithering, hips thrusting. It’s gross tasting, measuring, seeking.

A living rape spell.

“GET OFF ME, YOU BASTARD!” Itza howled—not in fear, but in fury.

Her leg snapped upward in a perfect battle-kick straight into the creature’s pulsing groin.

Squelch.

A wet rupture.

A shriek like something dying twice.

The force launched it skyward. It slammed into the edge of the altar with a crunch as its neck snapping at a jagged angle.

It slid to the floor.

Still.

Itza rolled, snarling, back to her feet. Her three tails swaying like vengeance incarnate.

One of the not-gnomes lunged, faster than expected, and its clawed hand raked across my chest.

Tearing. Burning. Blood.

I grunted, stepped in, and jammed the muzzle of my pistol into its jaw,“Die for what you are.”

BOOM.

Its skull detonated as a shower pulp and bone sprayed across the back wall. A cage of women scream in part horror, part hope.

I looked up to see my wife gripping the last one by the throat. Its grotesque member writhing, trying to coil around her arm like a serpent hungry for sin. She snarled and squeezed.

CRACK.

The neck snapped. The thing dropped, lifeless and spent. We both exhaled.

And then—

“ENOUGH!” Famora’s voice cut the chamber like a lightning bolt.

We turned. She stood atop the altar table. Her robe fell from her shoulders in a single, practiced motion revealing a body cloaked in ritual marks. Not ink. Not paint.

Beads.

Hundreds.

All stitched into her skin like jewelry sewn through muscle and scar.

Gold, crimson, black—whisper beads, cycle beads, unknown beads. Her belly bore a shattered Soulweave cage, half-embedded in her womb. Her thighs marked with Chainbind glyphs. Her breasts heavy with Milk scars. Her neck lined with Prayer runes.

“If the Church won’t build the Wildborn again,” she hissed, “then I will.”

Her hands lifted , and the beads across her body began to glow. The altar trembles beneath her. Cracked, stolen, violated beads pulsed and glowed across her flesh—hundreds, maybe thousands— ripped from the bodies of the dead, the discarded, and the abused.

“A union of new faith and old!” she bellowed. She bent legs spread, mouth open in a moan as one of the last not-gnomes clambered onto her back like a parasite seeking a throne.

Squelch.

The union was established as he locked inside her, and with every thrust her body pulsed with a wave of destructive aura. The air hummed with cursed creation.

Her voice deepened. Her eyes glowed with corruption and clarity, “Now behold the power of creation! Join me, sister. Realize the entirety of your potential, as the cradle of power itself.”

Itza crouched. Her three tails whipping like blades. Her teeth bared. Her heart unshaken.

“You’re gonna die, bitch,” she snarled, “For every one of them.”

I smiled, and let the pistol fall as I pulled a Chainbound bead from my vest. It was orc-forged,and blessed by a Shaman of Fleshlightning, a gift from a battlefield we never spoke of in public.

“Alright, my love,” I said, “Lead the way.”

I threw the bead. It struck the ceiling, and unleashed a lightning storm from the bones of heaven.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Thunder cracked like judgment, and bolts arced into Famora. Ash beads detonated on her skin, blowing gouts of meat from her arms, legs, and chest.

Others exploded into disease. Plague pustules bloomed across her belly. Her milk runnels blackened. Her Prayer runes wept.

She laughed. A shriek of pain made holy.

The not-gnome thrust harder matching her screams with pulse after pulse of violent creation.

“Yessss,” she moaned,“So this is pain! So this is divine!”

She clapped her hands ,and a shockwave ripped the chamber like a demon’s exhale.

Itza and I were thrown back bouncing off cages and altar stones as Famora charged forward a demon of all flesh and fire and faith gone wrong.

I skidded against the wall. My bones rattled, and ears screamed.

“Ffffffucking planes,” I hissed, dragging myself up.

My vision swam. There two Itza’s, two Fameras. All locked in something more brutal than battle.

Hand-to-hand. Flesh-to-flesh. Faith against blasphemy.

Itza struck again and again. Every blow shattered an Ash bead stitched into the bishop’s skin.

With each impact, Famora’s body blistered with necrosis and rot. Itza’s hands bled, fur torn, skin peeled from sacred fingers.

A devastating kick to Famora’s groin connected right at the unholy union point where the not-gnome still thrust in sync with madness.

The impact sent Famora flying. Her back arched, her mouth gaped as a grotesque pulse of ecstasy and agony spilled from her.

Essence—tainted, unnatural, spilled across the altar like spilled Eucharist.

I staggered forward—

Itza’s breath ragged, her tears streaking through blood and fur.

“My love…” I wrapped my arm around her waist, steadying her, “Here.”

I reached for my last green dwarvish Genesis beads—three of them—crafted in the birthing caves of Morngard, wrapped in hope and heartbeat.

I crushed them and a burst of new life essence surged into Itza’s limbs knitting torn tissue, soothing ravaged nerves, and quieting trauma.

“Go to the stairs,” I whispered, voice trembling,“I have this now.”

“Nine.”

She turned to me not weak, but weary, and from her rosary, she lifted a single radiant amber bead. I knew it. We both did. Our first union, the moment I’d made her sing in our bed.

“Remember that night?” She smiled, the kind that breaks hearts and mends them, and she crushed it against my forehead.

A wave of flame rushed through me, not fire, not pain.

Joy. Euphoria. Connection.

My knees buckled with the memory of her voice,her body,the moment she gave herself to me completely.

The flame didn’t burn. It lifted. Itza collapsed behind me, spent—her bead offered like a sacred psalm.

A growl ripped from my throat deep, primal, holy.

Blood burned.

Muscles trembled with righteous fury.

I stood tall,shrugging off my vest, my shirt and bare skin kissed by scars and the memory of every bead my body had ever borne.

Famora laughed, drunk on her own rot,“Yes… Come! Join me in communion! Let us usher in this new a—”

“Shut. Up.”

With a snap of my fingers, I spoke the old tongue, “Clamagh Singhar.”

And the chamber answered.

In my palm, Foxfire appeared, a scimitar of radiant memory. Passed from Fernweh, to my mother, Kiyoko, and finally to me. Given on the day of my Tail Rite. A blade forged from the Creator’s own essence. A relic from the first dawn of the Druids.

It hummed in my grip. It sang.

“No more blasphemy. No more pain.” I lunged. A blinding sweep. A horizontal arc of divine judgment.

Famora raised her arms, her beads glowing in defiance, but Foxfire passed through them like smoke. Through beads. Flesh. Bone. Soul.

She screamed as the blade cleaved her and the gnome inside her into two twisted halves.

They fell as shattered offerings on the desecrated altar.

Still alive.

Still twitching.

Still whispering curses between ragged breaths.

I knelt facing her.

Her eyes, fading.

I placed my palm on her rotted cheek in one final benediction and whispered, “Immolate.”

She didn’t scream.

She sizzled.

The flesh evaporated first followed by beads bursting like blistered fruit.

What remained was ash.

What remained was silence.

Itza stirred behind me.

Somewhere above, the candles flickered back to golden calm,and the altar was clean again.

Foxfire flickered, then faded,and with it, the last of the divine strength drained from my limbs.

Pain flooded back my muscles burned, my ribs screamed, and my vision swam, but I moved anyway.

One step.

Then another.

To her.

Itza.

Kitsune no more, Itza Flame-Tail.

Warrior.

Mother.

Wife.

She lay on the cold stone, her form bruised, scratched, bloodied, and perfect.

Arms that had held our daughters.

Fingers that traced love into my soul.

Hips shaped by divinity.

A womb that had carried the future and would, Creator willing, carry again.

Even bloodied, her lips held their sacred curve.

Even unconscious, her face shone with grace.

This is my woman.

The one woman I will serve, love, and protect until my spirit leaves this body.

I knelt.

Lifted her gently into my arms,and limped, step by agonizing step, up the stairs.

Carrying not a burden,but a blessing.

Book of Saint Fernweh 8:13

“Mourn quickly, for the rot of unchecked sorrow invites the Taint. The faithful bury their grief beneath duty, and cleanse the wound with obedience.”