The Fleshmancer's Triumph [Dark/Bio-fantasy 1700 words]
Long time reader, trying my hand at writing, this is only the second piece of writing. This has gone through a number of edits, but there's only so many times you can edit your own work because you can't see your own mistakes clearly.
I could probably cut/trim several portions that go on slightly too long. There's editing/punctuation that could be done as well but I'm less concerned with those.
Two main things:
- Do you understand enough from the story to guess at what a Second Marriage might be?
- Are there any glaring issues with the narrative that stand out to you?
Thanks for reading! Any feedback is appreciated.
It was a good day for Godman Bezarr.
No, the best day! Until tomorrow that was. He would change the world.
But today, he would relax. The preparations were all in hand and he would prove that he was the greatest of the fleshmancers in the history of his race.
Godman languidly paced the cavernous corridor of the Eternal Palace’s north-eastern wing, the soft padding of his sandaled footsteps on smooth stone lightly echoing in the vast space.
He had worked for - wait, no. He was “contracted” by the madman Rex Hokkor and his equally mad Queen.
Godman considered that “working” for someone was undignified for a person of his magnificence. He simply loaned his services, and in return produced works of art unrivalled.
Of the many war beasts he had created, his crowning achievement had been a pseudo-dragon.
The first of its kind!
It couldn’t breathe fire quite as hot as a “real” dragon, but real dragons cheated. They used magic. Dirty… lizard-y…cheaters. And, annoyingly, Godman couldn’t create beings with innate magic.
Yet.
But he had discovered many little secrets during the hundreds of years he had been alive. He could cheat too.
Godman continued the long walk of the north-eastern wing. The entire complex was built in such a way that it illuminated sections of the Eternal Palace at different times of the day and he had two places he wanted to see before the day was over.
But where was he? Oh yes. His pseudo-dragon. What a beauteous creature it was.
Sinuous, shining emerald scales, murderously red eyes. Ah! And a gaping maw that could put the darkest pits of the seven hells to shame.
But Rex had given it a stupid name.
Gox.
Gox the “Devourer”.
How did he even know what it would be like? He’d presented young Gox to Rex as an egg.
On one knee!
Two would have been humiliating.
None would have been a very costly error.
It wasn’t just the 20 years that it had taken to create, during which Rex had been on the verge of killing him numerous times.
The pseudo-dragon was the work of a lifetime of painstaking study and exacting experimentation. Thousands of dissections on beasts of every kind and even members of his own race all to become a master fleshmancer. He wasn’t a savage though – he’d drugged the live ones.
Rex and his Queen Flava Hokorra might appear to be a ‘Brawn and Brains’ couple on the outside, but Godman characterised them more as an ‘Impulsive and Patient’ couple.
Flava reminded him of a snake that had wrapped itself in humanoid skin. Physically anyway. She seemed to put an effort into being kind and understanding which made Godman all the more suspicious of her.
Why anyone, even a ruler, would need to spend so much time in the Palace dungeon’s torture chambers was one mystery Godman was determined not to unravel.
But she had saved him many times. Thirteen to be exact.
Godman thought back to one of those times - Rex had been told by the senior fleshmancer he couldn’t have wings because they’d have to be unusually enormous to support his 12 foot frame of dense bone, thick rope-like musculature and incredibly tough scutes that covered his chest, legs, and back.
That got the senior fleshmancer’s head and spine ripped out.
Godman had inherited the position shortly after, his predecessor’s hot blood still spattered over his face. Seconds after.
If Godman promised to give Rex functional wings and then failed he would regrettably uncover the mystery of why Flava spent so much time in the Palace dungeon’s torture chambers.
He had opted for the lesser of two evils.
So with different words and vastly more sycophantic pandering he had explained the impracticality of wings on Rex’s ‘gloriously refined and superior frame’.
He had still expected his head to kiss the floor but at least that would be quick.
But all it took was a sweet smile, a delicate hand on his arm and Flava had persuaded Rex that Godman was much more useful alive…which, incidentally, was the exact thought going through Godman’s mind at the time.
Though he had struggled to enunciate those thoughts with Rex’s vice-like grip around his throat.
As with all things, and especially with Flava, no good deed was performed by accident.
Once she had seen he was capable, she had asked for the almost impossible.
She had come to him one evening, puffing up his proverbial feathers, telling him he was the “greatest fleshmancer alive”, though he already knew he was.
However, whilst inflating his already considerable ego she had interwoven reminders of the thirteen times she’d saved him from becoming the royal carpet’s newest blood stain.
A “Second Marriage” between her and Rex. That’s what she had requested. He was so stunned that he had risked asking Flava to repeat herself.
It was absurd!
Greater than absurd.
It was fundamentally unsound.
It was not an original idea, and hadn’t been for some few hundred years and yet no one had ever succeeded.
He had agreed nonetheless though because he wanted to prove he was without doubt the greatest.
…Or had he?
A disconcerting thought gnawed at the edges of his mind that he tried to push back.
Could it be that he accepted not because he was some godlike genius that desired to be immortalised but because he had been guided into a position where refusal was no longer an option?
Godman felt a cage had been built from his own monstrous vanity and desperate need for validation.
Flava hadn’t needed to lock him in, she’d handed him the key and he’d done it himself.
But that was utterly preposterous. No, he wouldn’t accept it, he’d chosen to be here! He -
“Dad? Dad!” a small voice insisted.
Godman was so deep in thought he had barely noticed he had come to the first place he had wanted to see.
He looked down and to his right.
“Yes my sweet?”
His daughter was still at the stage where she was too innocent not to love him.
“You’re late!” she said, hands planted on her hips.
“I was… occupied, little one.”
Though he had come to feel protective of her, Godman had never truly felt like her father. Or even ‘a’ father.
One time she had asked "why is the sky blue?"
He had given an excessively thorough explanation which caused her to scrunch up her face before making an exaggerated groaning sound and he had only been half way through!
She had not asked that question again, though when the next question was "why is the grass green?" Even Godman knew he had to adjust his approach.
“Hmmmm.” She grumbled, an accusatory look on her face.
Oh dear.
“I see you’ve brought an enormous and menacing friend with you?”
Her face lit up. “Oh! That’s Alkie! We came together. Did you know he has lots of brothers and sisters?”
He did.
Godman had to look up, even being 7 feet tall did not allow him the luxury of not having to crane his neck.
“Alkie” towered over him like a brooding stormcloud, four segmented arms crossed over a shiny black carapaced thorax and abdomen. Two horns protruded from his head and middle shoulder plate with the opposing arcs making the horns look like a giant black pincer.
Godman smiled wanly. “How… good to see you, ‘Alkie’.”
“I am Alcides the ‘Spineripper’, Master Rex has named me.”
Of course he did. And to one of my finer creations.
“I rip out the spines of my defeated enemies. Would you like to see my collection, Master Godman?”
Godman swallowed. “Another time, perhaps.”
“I am to follow you and make sure nothing does you harm, or that you go missing. Master Rex is quite concerned with your wellbeing Master Godman.”
Where exactly did Rex think he would go at this point?
“He’s always been a very caring Lord. Very well. Twenty paces?”
“Twenty paces.” Alcides repeated.
He knew that Alcides was faster than a charging bear, he’d never escape by running, but he didn’t intend on escaping.
When he looked down again she was looking at him expectantly, arms outstretched.
Godman lifted his little daughter onto his shoulders to a delighted squeak, and continued on.
He knew this place well.
It began small.
Godman was flanked by thorny bushes as he trod the narrow path that snaked between two towering hornbeam trees - their trunks supported a myriad of branches where broad leaves sprouted.
He brushed his hand down one of the trunks as they passed, with his daughter imitating him, excitedly feeling the thick and uneven ridged texture of the golden-coloured bark.
Branches stretched overhead as they continued, tangled and dense, hemming in the trail as it crested, dipped and wound.
Wherever they went, a looming, horned shadow traced their steps, though Godman pretended not to notice.
Cleverly hidden mirrors meant this place was lit with the rising of the morning sun and light peeked through the vegetation in fractured beams.
When he had first wandered through here Godman had felt unease. Now she felt it too, he could tell by how she clung to him, her small arms squeezed tighter around his neck, her tiny fists balled into the collar of his robe.
“Daddy, they're all staring.”
Hidden in alcoves, behind trees and bushes there were foxes, rabbits, badgers, deer, wolves, boars, and even great bears. They all faced the path, watching silently as the trio passed, transfixed.
Godman had to admit even for him the feeling of being watched was unsettling, which was only partially offset by the forest’s unearthly beauty.
Yet… the birds did not sing, the wolves did not howl, and the waters from the stream that cut the path ahead did not stir.
Because this place was dead – or perhaps it was more accurate to say it had never been alive.
From the smallest branch to the tallest tree, each and every animal, the water and even the dirt. It was all a stone-carved facsimile of ‘Gannium’.
Gannium-of-the-Golden-Trees that reached the heavens.
But Gannium was no more.
Now it was ‘Hellpit Gan’, ‘Gan the Gate of Hell’ from which belched forth legions of demons.
All because of a failed Second Marriage.