Part Two
Love was awakened from her wedding bed, her lusty lover already dead, being skinned by War upon his barren bed, the scalp of he who had satisfied her for an instant in her ages of life, being dressed by a wicked little automaton upon War’s tripod where hung his armor, rested his spear, and slung his sword so deadly dear.
An automaton clothed in brilliant light hovered before her, its mouth open in a sensuous shape of a heart, and from its ever expanding brazen lips, issued the thought of Time, her master undying:
‘Child of mine you are not as we play—for you and I are both the issue of Chaos...our Father so faraway. My very heart beat keeps him at bay, even as my every terrible breath curses the flowers wrought after your form to wilt and fade away.’
Love return thought for thought, ‘I miss you like Promising Dawn mourns for Madam Night.’
War grunted upon his bed, scraping still the hide of her nameless lover dead.
‘Love, give of your essence that you might return again to She who fostered our image ordered from Chaos of old.’
She was overcome with the sadness and hope embodied in the Thought of Time, yearned to leap to His Service, and her feminine nature held her back, served her kind’s scheming pact:
‘Only if I may leave this seedy, sterile bed for your embrace above Orion.’
Time paused and Love knew that she had served her needful cause.
She hissed a thought that could have been an eternal kiss, ‘Breathe me to you, My Love—take me from this brute bed attended by the beastly undead. Let me live with you, love of you...then might this tinkering thing flesh my image to free your savage Blue who so long ago spurned you.’
Time sang through the tittering angelic machine, “Come to me, Love, let us together renew.”
The Deathless Ones about her shivered, and shrank, balked haltingly, and of dread drank deeply. The hovering light-expanding automaton disassembled before her perfect form, embracing her in every way—remaking itself into a fleshy maid, an extraordinary specimen of the temporary…
Even Wrath unwrinkled his brow and unclenched his mighty fist.
And so Love’s very bed left the Deathless Plane and towards Orion fled, into accommodating Time himself, as upon himself he did fold, suddenly possessed of an ages spent urge to renew a lovers pledge.
The Well of Eternity above Orion would know a shared Chaos-spawned thread, entangled in bliss as the scorned font of ages cast the image of need towards His bitter, widowed Blue.
…
The spheres of Pleades rang with fresh song as Love departed and Hate reigned from a cruel couch rather than a duplicitous bed.
Three were required to escort Maid Love to Old Blue, to gloriously hunt over-bred game, to purge an ungoverned fold to bring about an age noble as of old.
Wild Blue must be harvested, cleansed and planted.
Toiling Sirius must be restocked.
Deathless Pleades must be fed.
Dreaming Orion must feast.
Hate, attended by her sons and their brooding sire, War, held Deathless Court among the sons and daughters of Baal. She mimicked temporary discourse, an affectation which she judged fit the occasion.
Her maiden-headed automaton snakes bobbed about her as War brushed her night hair, their three hideous spawn idling away the time casting knucklebones before her velvet-dressed ivory couch.
The entirety of the Deathless Race, other than Chaos spawned Love—who she had always hated most deeply—crowded about her couch, a lounging wicked throne that was borne by her terrible automatons upon a thought of will. A mere 300 in number now that Love had been taken into Eternity, the Deathless Host brooded, each more selfish than the other, the least of them the worst, the best of them...far, far worse.
Her sibilant voice lifted, “Beastly brothers, Slutty Sisters, if only the temporaries lacked the grace of death, you might keen a song of relative decency. Our adoptive whore of Chaos has been taken off. Time has sparred a rejuvenant in her image that must be escorted to Blue.”
Thought groaned—the rest mewing in silence, as consigned as blind Fate, who continued weaving upon her lap of a loom.
Hate pressed, “The Sons of Phoebus Khron have one the honor to guide three of you upon the Prime Hunt. The 51 lesser Houses of Sirius shall lead lesser hunts.”
“Blue? We are to cull Blue, again?” objected Thought.
Hate grinned, “Oh, none of we twelve. Our little beastly brothers and savage sisters, shall have the fun. We remain as the oligarchs of our guilty kind, behind.”
War snarled as he combed at her hair with a device made of a man’s ribs.
Hate smiled, “You may all game as you care over the honor of hunting this or that corner of tawdry Blue.”
Near three hundred deathless heads turned and looked and spied friends and foes among their kind.
“Squabble as you may,” decreed the Deathless Queen.
“I have been charged with selecting the hunters for the Prime Hunt, to sanctify the seat of our Descendant Maiden:
“Geryon Baal,” she nodded to the black-eyed, blonde-haired giant with skin the pallor of alabaster, you are Her Spear.
He knelt and bowed his head, gritting his perfect flesh-tearing teeth.
“Circe Baal,” she beckoned with liquid fingers and winking eyes at the lithe golden skinned, and golden-haired beauty who sat among a pack of she wolves, “my heart’s desire...you shall be our foundling maid’s shield.”
Hate then winced, a thing that Thought knew was not calculated, for she was ever pained by the fact that her issue from his seed, was such a brute, she having only lain with Thought in hopes of birthing a thinking child, “Amycus Baal, you shall be her swift sword.”
The three Deathless Chosen, minor types of their kind, with no rank among the Deathless, approached Hate and stood before her lateral throne, silent in respect.
To them, she hissed, “The Prime Hunt will be guided by the Sons of Khron, who shall secure Blue, then guide you, in the sanctifying hunt of the greatest temporary empire, where you three may collect trophies until your cruel hearts are content, so long as you make certain to place Time’s own delicate tart upon her sorry throne.’
“Yes, Madam,” they murmured, and rose, sentiment and reassurances and details to do with orders, not being part of the deathless personality in any configuration. The majority of deathless mind thinks beyond the tortured precincts of introspection that was the mind of Thought, loneliest of his terrible kind.
‘Our worst shall plant their best? What an accursed lot.’
Hate smiled dismissively even as Fate wove, blind upon her lap loom.
