The House Temporal of The House Khron rang with the sounds of slaughter:
First there were the intelligent responses of the temporaries, the men and women crying, “No,” in the very language taught to them by their Titanic masters. Thus, in the language that Titans had employed to instruct man in their due service, the inferior and short-lived beings made after their own image, cried, not in anger, not in surprise, not in the form after a question—but in disbelief.
“No! No!! No!!!”
“No!” they cried, certain that this was a mistake. How could those who had fed, and nurtured and taught and protected them for all of these years, be stalking among them now, sword in hand?
“It makes no sense!” exclaimed Temporary Bill, as his master, Pan Khron suddenly stood over him, sword in hand and cut his life short, a life that had done nothing but serve, obey and make way for his master, now his killer come.
The titans did speak to their temporals, but thought to one another upon that deeper plane.
‘This is the sadness of it,’ consoled his brother Atlas, ‘That the image of us taken into Eternity by those temporary is that of betrayal. We are cursed in this and other ways,” he continued, as he loped the heads off of Temporary Bill’s three wide-eyed sons, all having stood obediently with their account books open concerning the sheep fold, beef pasture and pig farm, not even having time to appreciate the irony of their terminal plight.
‘Thank you so for helping, Brother,’ thought Pan, they are good slaves. If they were pests or disloyal…’
‘Hold them up by their ankles,. these two beauties here’ said, the eldest of the three brothers, Phoenix Khron.
“I’m sorry girls,” Pan said, into the small round faces of his one time lovers, for a Titan took a woman first, before she was wed to her brood mate.
His heart sank into his stomach as he lifted them by their pretty, soft ankles, both having birthed numerous field stock, and yet attractive, in their fading temporal way to his ageless eyes…
Then came the other sound, the second wave of sorrow welling up from the petite throats of these nearly played out mothers, who would be slaughtered soon in any case, as their ovum were nearly depleted:
“Aaaaaah!” they screamed, their musical voices having been cultivated under the instruction of the foremost automaton conductors, so that even the instinctive death cries cut short by Phoenix bashing both of their heads flat with the pummel of his sword, remained forever in his mind’s ear as something fleeting and beautiful.
The smell of death returned to his nose, having been experienced ages ago when Father had first taught him this hardest of lessons, that Temporals lived primarily to die, and only secondarily to serve.
‘I am sick inside.’
‘I know brother, said Atlas—Phoenix does not mind, but I am with you in kind...it is a betrayal, sacral though the cull is. It will soon be over. Sirius will set on a quiet House Temporal. The least we can do is think and not speak, and elevate their torment. Nothing is more painful to the soul of innocence than damning judgment cast down from on high.’
The third chorus of the sorrowful song now rose, the wailing loss of hope, the lament of the doomed, a mournful dirge with no harsh grunts, high pitches, pines of disbelief, but merely the extended sorrow of those who die at their well-served master’s hand.
The automatons of Pliadean Voice, The Watchers they called them, the machines by which The Deathless relayed their commands to the merely Ageless—those toiling souls who died of age old sorrow while their forms were yet youthful, these herders and hunters of Sirius—in the name of The Eternal, decreed:
“Sons of Sirius, only your avatars shall be spared. Extinguish the brooders, for The Deathless must dine.”
‘And that had to be spoken rather than thought!’ raged Pan.
“Hate, demands Her pain-basted repast, Masters of Sirius, servants of The Deathless.”
“Shit,” muttered Atlas, “Pan, the automatons shall gather the fetuses and ovum—so sorry we left you over the herd.”
Deep tones tolled across The House Temporal, warbling cries and unconsolable moans wafting up from the brood beds, where mother temporals had been pampered, coddled, nourished, nurtured and even massaged by their attendant automatons and their caring and introspective owners: all now turning against them in the vulnerable pens: the humming wheels that comforted them, suddenly squealing shrill; the lights that bathed softly blue, now glaringly blinding red; the music of birds and of spring turning to howls of winter wind and rain; the padded digits of their automaton caregivers shedding their velvet and gleaming forth as the talons of life takers…
Almost all of temporary humanity upon Sirius Three, also called Gray, distant Blue’s closest analogue, was extinguished largely by automatonous means among the temporal houses of fifty-two Ageless houses—foremost among them, the House of Khron, whose patriarch, now a thousand Gray years of age and loosing the will to live, having long ago lost the will to kill, sat weeping at the edge of his couch, not having the heart to watch his human lover, Temporary Betsy, strangled before his eyes as she looked to her Lord and Master in hopes of salvation—automaton hands squeezing her soft coppery throat, her Savior covering his eyes in shame.
Most of Sirius, conducted its cull according to automatonous means. Only the House of Khron and the House of Dan, bloodied their own hands, last of their rare breed, believing in the need to share in the sorrow of their loyal food. Raised to perfection, temporal kind provided the ideal companions, nourishment, blood and organ farms necessary for the ageless to continue their thousand or more years of service, a term which seemed so brief to The Deathless, so long to the temporal, and so sad for those who could tell the difference. The scent of severance, the stench of loyal death by eternal decree, took purchase in his mind’s nose and would haunt Pan Khron until he too surrendered to Eternity.
Titans have an instinct of empathy, of time-honored guilt, that moves them—all but the most debased—to speak to one another after the commission of crimes upon the Temporary Race, their thought to thought communication no longer necessary to protect their stock, pets, companions
and avatars from the torment of soul. In such times, the very human speech developed by titans to communicate with their slaves, served as something of an eulogy.
Phoenix, not a titan of wan heart, but one of expanded soul, spoke to his brothers, in the name of their Father, who they all knew without thinking it would not survive this lonely year, “The House Avatar, must conduct judgment. Our Temporals must contest with those of the House of Dan for the prime hunting ground...the lessers squabbling over the rest.”
Atlas asked, “I do not know the law—even Father’s father’s father, was not alive for the last decreed cull.”
Pan snarled, knowing in his bones the law, “Our best against there’s.”
Phoenix, always critical of Pan for treating his pets like titans and his avatars like pets, his stock like souls rather than meat, snorted, “Little Brother, say goodbye to your temporary pet. The House Dan breeds for the Contest, not the hunt. We are about to be outdone by those damned stock breeders and get second rung on the hunt.”
Atlas patted him on the back as Aegina and Athena, their wives, stood at the portal of The House Temporal, faces streaked with tears, and Pan, pride in the temporal quarter of his soul sparking a defiant chord, “A bet, Big Brother?”
Silence reigned for one and three beats of the heart in the gory halls of The House Temporal.
“Yes, Aegina or my Sword?”
Aegina’s eyes asked him to deny his brother’s cruel jest, her outer tears turning to inner fears as she read the resignation in his face, “Done, Brother, done.”
Aegina and Athena hugged mournfully in the blood-dripping archway and the three brothers Khron put their hands together in pact, their elder intoning in ageless gravity above the mortal travesty they had so quickly committed, “My sword has lost its luster, may my good brother win her for Father’s honor.”
They all three chanted, “House Khron,” and with that, the automatons that had been waiting politely in their various stations came alive and buzzed to work, singing the songs of cleansing and renewal, drowning out the heavy footsteps of the departing titans as well as the weeping of their brides, one abandoned the other wagered.
…
Titanic Notes
Titans may not, according to their Law, have more than three sons. The eldest son may not wed and sire a child until his father has passed. Likewise, his male siblings may not sire children until he does, though they may marry at will.
