CW: Gore out the wazoo

Chapter Three

“But you, you old cad, boldly approached me with a stern letter. Truly terrifying.”

 

Leshin wandered the long, thin halls of God’s palace, desperate to find anything resembling a kitchen—or the servant’s quarters, for that matter. The five other priests shambled behind her, apparently bowing instinctively to her leadership; that bothered her. What had she said or done that implied she wanted to take charge, here? It wasn’t fair. The title of “High Sister” was entirely meaningless. God had no true religion, no dogma or clergy beyond the six sacrifices it demanded from time to time. So, following her lead made no difference.

“Fuck,” she muttered as the hall split into a three-way junction of identical stone halls. Why did God demand this whole place looked cold and drab at all times? Surely, it could make the place look however it liked. “This whole place is a maze.”

“What are we gonna do?” the attendant, Ilaki, said, wringing her tailfin. “How long is it gonna sleep? It wants its food warm—do we just keep making stuff until it wakes up?”

“That’s insane,” another of the women said. She had high cheekbones, dark, curly hair, and even darker skin. “Surely, it can’t expect us to have something waiting for it.”

“Pshh,” Leshin said. “It knows it’s unreasonable. That’s the point.”

“Leshin, was it?” the woman said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any experience in a kitchen?”

Shaking her head, Leshin grimaced. “I was a thatcher by trade. Senior apprentice to the guild head. I’ve no experience in domestic work.”

“Really? Why did they choose you for this role?”

Leshin scowled, looking off. “Old grudge, mainly. Long story. I—uh, I learned your names, but I actually don’t know whose name goes to who.”

“Ah. Yes,” the woman said. “I’m Kilini. Sister of Joys.”

“What guild were you from?” Leshin asked. “You are Higher Sort, right?”

“Of course, I’m Higher Sort,” Kilini said, an offended sneer on her face. “Do I look like an attendant.”

“Ah,” Leshin said.

“I’m a full member of the Fisher’s Guild,” Kilini finally said. “But I perform the food preparations for the Guildmaster and his consorts. I assume I’ll have to teach the rest of you?”

Ilaki cleared her throat. “I-I also worked in a kitchen. Just a sub-Guild, of course, so I’m not as—well, it’s… you know…”

“Then I shall claim you,” Kilini said. “Congratulations, Ilaki of the sub-Guilds, you are the Attendant of Joys, now.”

“T-thank you, my lady.”

Leshin snorted.

“Excuse me? Is there something you’d like to say?” Kilini said.

“We’re fucked, that’s what. Acting all formal like that—it’s such a farce. ‘Higher Sort,’ ‘Lower Sort’—we’re condemned. Don’t bother with titles, Ilaki, oh Attendant of Joys. We’re all doomed. Don’t spend the rest of your sad, little life sucking up to your ‘betters’ when they’re no better off than you.”

“I’m sorry?” another one of the women said. She had bright green eyes and thin lips, with a jaw sharp enough to cut glass. By her reaction, Leshin assumed she’d be the third Higher Sort priestess, Mikele. “We are not going to throw away the ancient traditions just because we’re in a bad place. The Sorting is final, and it applies to prisoners and freemen alike. We may be ‘condemned,’ but ours is a position of honor. Our suffering shall preserve the Kinfolk for generations to come. The people of The City shall mourn us, yes, but we will be celebrated as martyrs. We still have our dignity.”

Smirking, Leshin leaned against the corner leading to the middle hallway. “Ah, yes, the dignity to praise an angry child for a thousand years, or however long it keeps us alive for. And we’ll express that dignity by demanding our ‘attendants’ worship us in the same way they worship God, is that it? Steal a little bit of flattery for yourself? Anything to make yourself feel better about what they did to us, yeah?”

“Shut up,” Mikele said, “Do you get off on making people miserable? I know who you are—we may have been chosen at random, but you deserved this.”

“Fuck off,” Leshin said. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

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She randomly chose the path to the left, storming down it for a good, long while. The five women followed her with bitter scowls as she turned left and right down various hallways and rooms. Tables, empty bookshelves, cluttered storerooms went by, before they finally arrived in an odd dining room. There was a simple, stone table in the center, with only one chair but enough spaces for twenty. In several of those strange, empty spaces sat… six empty suits of wooden armor? At least, they looked like armor to Leshin. Much more intricate than God’s puppet-like body, swirling with root and twigs and long-dead leaves, the empty shells stood ominously around the table, staring down at its expanse, their unnaturally organic masks painted with unholy patterns that seemed to twist in on themselves in impossible ways. Before each of them sat a ceramic plate topped with a single steel cube. A sense of utter doom, absolute awe, eternal terror flooded Leshin’s mind whenever she looked at the suits, and she noticed after a while that she’d started crying. When she wiped her tears, she realized they were made of blood.

And when she started to pass by the table, she heard something in her mind.

Whispers.

Breathing shakily, she ignored the incomprehensible mutterings flooding into her head. She just zipped by, ignoring everything she’d seen, and her companions seemed to do the same. The stars had mercy, though, and God had placed the kitchen just adjacent to the dining room.

“Oh, thank God,” Mikele said as the six entered the wide, open kitchen. Large, stone countertops seemed to stretch on for miles, with gaps in between for odd-looking, shiny boxes and flat, steel surfaces. Apart from the giant, ceramic stove and the many pantries, nothing stood out in Leshin’s mind that screamed “kitchen.” Even Kilini, the self-proclaimed chef, seemed clueless as she wandered around the room. Eventually, she came to a heavy, steel door with a round window. When Kilini opened it, she recoiled for a second.

“It’s cold!” Kilini said.

“What?” Leshin asked, butting in from the side. Sure enough, the room behind that door was utterly freezing. Inside, rows of metal shelves and hooks hung various cuts of some kind of… flesh. Meats of a few familiar varieties—fish, monitor, dolphin, seal—sat on these shelves, yes, but those did not make up the bulk of the selection by any means.

No, what hung from the hooks were the arms and legs, heads and torsos of Kinfolk. Bloodless, pale, and desiccated, they dangled there so, so still. Dozens of them, of assorted races, ages, and sexes—but none looked quite right. Behind their ears, there were no gill slits. They had no tails. Their fingers and toes were long and slender, with no webbing or claws. But Kinfolk or no, these beings were so clearly people.

Leshin couldn’t move.

She just stared, broken. Streaks of dried, bloody tears still adorned her cheeks, as well as the cheeks of her companions; the horrors of that day had ripped into her with jagged teeth, and now she had nothing left to say or do.

“We have to cook people,” Leshin muttered. “It’s expecting us to pick fish. But we have to cook people, don’t we?”

Kilini gaped at her. “You cannot be s-serious…”

“And we have to cook it over and over, until it wakes up,” she said, her voice as dead as the bodies hanging from the hooks before her.

“N-no,” Ilaki said, holding her hands over her mouth. “No, I—I can’t!”

Leshin doubled over, dry heaving and choking out gagged laughter at the same time. “W-we’re fucked. Oh, my God, we’re fucked.”

Mikele surveyed the scene, her hands shaking. Then, she clenched her fists. “We take it in shifts,” she said. “Four hours per pair.”

“You’d have us prepare the same meal again and again, for four hours at a time?” Kilini asked. “You lot don’t even know how to cook!”

“Then show us,” Mikele said, her eyes drooping. “We’ll do the first shift together. Then, you and Ilaki can split up. At least two of the teams will have people who… know what they’re doing.”

“Why do we have to keep making it again and again?” one of the attendants asked from outside, having stayed far, far away from the freezing room. “W-why can’t we reheat what we make when it wakes up?”

Leshin grimaced. “What was your name again?” she asked, staggering to her feet in the icy room.

“N-Nikime,” the attendant said.

“Nikime,” Leshin said, taking a sharp step forward, “we aren’t cooking for some High Sort Guildling; that thing is looking for any excuse to hurt us. If it doesn’t like what we make, we’re as good as dead. It wants to eat people, and it wants to enjoy it. Understand?”

“Y-yeah, I guess,” Nikime said, backing up away from the cold room.

“Good.”

With that, Leshin stepped out of the meat locker and into the kitchen, surveying the tools they’d have to use for the… procedure. Knives, pots, pans, herbs, scissors, stakes, hammers, saws… They’d have no choice, but Leshin wasn’t about to give God a reason to have its way with her—or any of the other priestesses, no matter how stuffy and arrogant they could be.

Leshin gritted her teeth and put on her bravest face. “Lead the way, Kilini.”

 

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