Book 1: Gospel : False Prophets

Book 1: Gospel : Falsw Prophets

Dark Hollow, Steelwilds, Fourth Age

Chapter 10: False Prophets

“Beware the tongue that prays in public but lies in bed. For the Gospel is not in the vow but in the wound it leaves behind. Trust not the clean hands, but the calloused ones—For only those who’ve carried betrayal know how heavy mercy is.”

— Book of Roots, Leaf 14:22

“We have to…”

“ Aggie, I don’t care….”

“ Do you realize what the Church will do?”

“ I don’t care. I know what the Church will try to make them, and this child!”

“Yes! Exactly, Tenshi! This is what the Church what the Flame-Tails have been neeee——“

“ You mind your damn mouth, woman! How can you say you know what the Flame-Tails need when you only recently took my last name. I met you in a frontier mission town on the border of Yogunomori. You know only what the Church has told you to believe, and honestly it has nothing, no ring of truth at all to the words my father penned all those years ago.”

“ How dare you, Tenshi! I love your family and all that they have given us! Your brothers and sisters do so much for the Gospel…”

“ What we have done for the Gospel? There was no Gospel until his teachings unfortunately spread outside of the Grovelands. It turned into some twisted mockery of it once you Haints got a hold of it. Fernweh never took a title upon himself unless the situation direly called for it. You people call him a saint and plaster his likeness all over the walls next to pictures of half naked women and men. He would have never stood for this.”

“ The Saints are those who follow his teachings of the Creator and honor his work through the beads! You KNOW this!”

“ Fernweh HATED the beads. He did all he could to repress them because of what they could take! They took a child from him. And now this Church honors those very marbles that clink out of abused and enalaved women and young girls who end up dried up and shattered before they can even enjoy life. Then those beads are used to buy more girls and continue the process. All in the name of bringing people into the light of your Creator.”

”Tenshi, stop, this is hurting me! It’s all I’ve ever known. You sit in the pews beside me, how can you say you hate it and then pray with me every evening? You are a liar! And a heretic and I hate you!”

Aggie stormed out and slammed the door behind her. She stormed outside to the stables behind Granny’s Inn. Past the rows of mirestags and tuskbeasts was a row of Gloamling automotons. She slipped a bead from her chaplet into the socket in the center of one’s head. It came alive what whirs and clicks as its eyes lit up. The mechanical lynx shook itself and stretched before snapping to attention.

Aggie looked into its eyes, “ Record and deliver the following message. To the Rosary Matron and the High Stringer of Thornmarch. I send this message by my own personal Gloamling. My name is Agatha Cerula Whitethrone Flame-Tail, wife of Tenshi Flame-Tail. Tenshi Flame-Tail has been discovered to be guilty of heresy in the form of hiding a divine artifact, the fourth Godspark bead that has been created by Itza Flame-Tail. Please send someone to bring the renegades to justice and deliver the Godsparked child to the Cathedral of the Known Creator in Thornmarch. Expect resistance. End message.”

With a whir of acknowledgement it sped off northward. Aggie stood up, dusted the straw from her dress and walked out of the stables back to the inn. Two figures watched her from the roof tops. One black and silver furred, the other blonde furred with the piercing blue eyes of his father.

“ You were right, Yoru,” said Tenshi as he wiped angry tears from his eyes, “ She has chosen her church over us.”

Yoru sniffed as he watched her slip back inside, “ Of all the females in the world, that’s the one you chose to breed with? Are you sure what our nephew and his wife made was a Godspark?”

Tenshj nodded, “ Yes, without a doubt, it changed for me too. That makes the fourth person to shift it.”

He looked the way the Gloamling had gone, “ Do we chase it?”

The older fox, the second oldest brother of the children of Fernweh, shook his head, “No, she will have undoubtedly sent other messages.”

He placed a clawed hand on the youngest brother’s shoulder, “ Stay here guard them. I will go to Hollow Port and retrieve Parla and Hayelle. They will not be safe there. I will try to meet you back here in a week’s time with them. If I’m not back by then, get Ezekiel and Itza to the southern boarder. Make to the Sand Seas and find Kiyoko, she can keep them safe.”

“ Yoru, what of our other siblings?”

”We will worry about that later. Now do as I say.”, Yoru eased off the roof, “ Do your duty. Don’t let the church have them.”

The Inn was quiet. A few missionaries muttered in the dining room by the bar. The Haints had stopped frequenting this place. They tended to stay more around the Black Tusker Bar closer to the eastern gate.

I sat at the table with Aggie and Itza. Itza had finally felt like getting out of her room. She slurped down some dusk mushroom soup and crunched on brown bread.

“Mmmph this is so good! I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks!” she said as she picked up a glass of Brasswool milk.

I laughed and glanced at the glowing green and blue bead on her rosary, “ You were out for nearly a week. It took Aggie forever to get the trauma sickness off of you.”

Aggie smiled and placed her hand on Itza’s lap, “Aye, it sure did, but this lassie is on th’mend. She’ll be righter’n’rain fore to long.”

Aggie then turned and smiled at me, “We have to do what is best for the baby that is coming! Especially one as special as this one. A Godspark bead and child. We may be seeing the coming of a new age. Aren’t you excited?”

Itza smiled and placed her hand on her stomach, “ Indeed I am! Can you imagine a little boy or girl! Or what if it’s twins? How special and they’ll get to grow up back in the Grovelands! We can officially settle down, Ezekiel.”

I caught a slight wrinkle of Aggie’s nose out of the corner of my eye when my wife mentioned a son. I pretended like I don’t notice, “ Yes indeed! Maybe we can even move back to Flame-Tail Grove. Maybe mother has come back from her sabbatical.”

Another ghost of a grimace from Aggie, as she smiled and spoke a little more clipped than normal, “Aye, well, mayhaps we don move to far away from Glimmerbrook and the Cathedral.”

”Aye,” I echoed but something in the back of my mind started to itch, “ Always beneath the eyes of the Church.”

“A man is sanctified by loyalty to his Order, And a woman by obedience to her station. A child born of fire is the Church’s to claim, For the Lord’s eyes shine brightest upon the obedient hearth.”

— Book of Saint Fernweh, Gloam 6:3