Vacant Throne

Alyssa stood over a long wooden table set up in a small cave a half-a-day’s draken ride out from Illuna. Both hands were hovering a foot above the table, making her look like she was about to slam them down on the keys of an organ as she played some creepy music fitting for an old horror movie. Haunted organ music wouldn’t have been out of place for what she was currently doing either. A bit of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken soundtrack would have fit perfectly. She was in the middle of some real mad scientist stuff at the moment.

Or mad arcanist stuff.

A bright glow emanated from her palms. The luminous darkness that was common to all of Tenebrael’s magic flooded the cave. Between the table and her hands, something started to form.

It had two legs, two arms, a single head, and a torso holding it all together. Humanoid, though not perfectly human. The feet were more like bird feet, similar to the talons of a falcon. Three toes faced forward. One backward. All four were tipped with black, razor sharp claws. The hands were more human-like with five fingers including a thumb, though it too had claws rather than proper fingernails. They were shorter, but would probably have to be filed down further. The ears were another big difference. They looked like large fish fins slapped onto the side of the otherwise humanoid head. Mostly humanoid head. The teeth were a bit sharper than normal human teeth, though they couldn’t be that large or they wouldn’t fit into the mouth properly. The eyes were wide open, vacant as they stared up at the cave’s ceiling. There were no whites, just speckled green with vertically slit pupils. Titanium scales covered most of the body, though the face was plain. They gleamed silver underneath the light of the magic.

As soon as the body was complete, Alyssa allowed her hands to drop to her sides.

The body on the table before her, formerly rigid, lost all tension in its muscles. It couldn’t really slump while lying on the table, but it did sag. Its head lolled to one side, blank eyes staring at nothing despite being open.

There was nothing inside it. No software piloting the hardware, to use Tenebrael’s analogy. It was technically alive, though it wouldn’t be for long. So far, no body Alyssa had created had actually tried breathing on its own. They just asphyxiated after a few minutes unless she intervened. The first few, she had kept alive as long as possible through CPR. Not so much the chest pumps. As far as she and Irulon could tell, the heart beating was something that went on without outside stimulus needed. But breathing for the body seemed to be required.

She hadn’t bothered to keep them alive in the last few weeks. It was more effort than they really felt necessary.

The hope, at the moment, was that breathing would be more or less automatic for the body once someone actually got put inside it. Irulon theorized that breathing, since it was possible to control manually, required higher brain functions to work. The heart didn’t. It wasn’t possible to hold a heartbeat like it was possible to hold in a breath. It seemed logical and Tenebrael hadn’t discounted the theory, so that was a minor concern.

The biggest fear at the moment was that long-term bodily functions wouldn’t work. It was hard to test such things given the short lifespan without someone literally breathing for the body. If Alyssa somehow messed up and connected the digestive system backwards, she imagined that the dragon would not be all that happy with her.

Alyssa started out with a few preliminary tests. She wiggled all the joints, making sure they were connected. The fingers flexed properly, as did the toes… she was pretty sure anyway. The toes were a bit more alien to her than the hands. But they were all connected and didn’t feel like they were floating around, only contained by the skin. That had been an issue in some of the earlier iterations of the body.

The spine was another thing she had to pay careful attention to. Especially when she started trying for bigger alterations. Pushing the body over onto its back, she found three large errors. Two wings and a tail. The additions themselves were not errors. She had meant to create them. But it was obvious she had created them incorrectly. The wings were… not at all attached to the body. She could tell that much just by looking. They were small. Vestigial, almost. Even if they were somehow attached to the skeleton, she doubted that there was enough musculature attached to them to get some flight. Not to mention the fact that their size would probably have to be increased to the point where most of the body was wing just to get the lift necessary to get off the ground. Real dragons could apparently fly despite their massive size. Alyssa didn’t know how big their wings actually were, but she suspected they would have to be huge. That or they just used magic to fly.

Probably the latter.

There was a tail. It felt attached to the spine—humans had a vestigial tail in the tailbone, so extending that wasn’t a huge issue. But the way it meshed with the back and butt was completely wrong. She wasn’t sure that a creature with a tail like that would be able to walk, let alone defecate properly. There were monsters with roughly humanoid forms that had tails. Fela, for example. But Fela’s tail didn’t start right where the human tailbone came out. It was just a bit higher up.

Cutting off the feet and making them bird talons wasn’t that difficult. Slapping scales onto it had been easy as well. But adding things that just weren’t supposed to be there was nearly impossible.

Alyssa had tried to create a hellhound body with modifications, but that had wound up with far more failures than this one. Just the base skeleton had been completely wrong. Although Fela looked human at a glance, the failure made Alyssa think that something at least slightly strange was going on underneath her skin. Something she didn’t understand.

And, as she had discovered, understanding what she was doing was key to creation.

Leaving the body on the table, Alyssa headed out to a larger side-path in the cave. Irulon’s experimental station. It was similar to Alyssa’s spot except quite a bit larger. Much… fouler smelling as well. The bodies were organic and living. Even if they weren’t actually real people, they still decomposed like one. When they got too rancid, they took them out to a deep grave that would probably confuse future archaeologists for centuries. It was filled with all sorts of failed creations. From humans to humanoids like the one Alyssa had just created to malformed entities that really just didn’t have names but looked like they belonged in some eldritch horror movie.

At the moment, Irulon had her hands deep in the chest cavity of another body. One that Alyssa had created a few hours prior. It was a regular human body. No taloned feet, clawed hands, or scales. Just a practice human. Its ribcage had been split straight down the center and pried open. A stomach, lungs, heart, liver, and several other internal organs were sitting on large plates nearby. Irulon was currently extracting several feet of intestine from its abdomen.

Alyssa tried not to gag. The first few times had been beyond nauseating. She had conflicted feelings about being able to say that she was used to it now. It really looked like a horror movie scene. The place the teenage protagonists would wander into unsuspectingly twenty minutes in. The place that revealed both to them and the audience that they were really in trouble. If this were a movie, Irulon would probably slowly turn around with a maniacal grin as she brandished some common tool as a lethal weapon.

As it was, Irulon merely glanced over her shoulder, acknowledged Alyssa’s presence, and went right back to work.

“This body,” she said, “is consistent with the previous seven. I dare say you’re improving.”

“It looks functional too then?”

“Quite.”

“Good. I’ve got another one for you. One of the… other types—” Alyssa grimaced as Irulon gave a sharp tug on the intestines. The ripping and slop sounds were not pleasant on the ear. “I’m honestly not sure it will work well,” she said, hoping to disguise her discomfort by continuing strong. “The human body just wasn’t meant for wings or even really a tail. And I’m still skeptical about the feet being able to support the rest of the body’s weight. Will the ears be able to actually hear things with them being all fin-like?” Alyssa shook her head, genuinely uncertain. “We should probably just stick with a human body. Sorry, dragon, but maybe if we had a few years to experiment further. Maybe we could modify the body after it is made.”

“You’ve made a great amount of progress in only a few weeks,” Irulon started. Setting the tangled mess of intestines down in a large wooden bucket on the floor, she stopped and turned to fully face Alyssa.

And once again, the horror movie tropes were in full force. She wore a large leather apron completely covered in blood, both fresh and old browned stains. Her arms, completely bare, were dripping from her elbows down to the tips of her fingers. For a moment, she stared, eyes flicking between their black and white form and their usual violet. Conversing with the dragon, likely.

After a long moment, she finally spoke again. “We suppose that there won’t be an issue with a more humanoid form. Scaled skin is not a problem you listed, however. Would that be doable?”

“I mean, possibly? Given how long the bodies last, we don’t know if there are long term problems with it. Will new scales grow in if the old ones fall out? Will the body shed properly? Gangrene? Necrotizing of the skin? Who knows what kind of problems there will be. The amount of research I had to do on the human body to get it working was absurd. Such research doesn’t exist for monsters. Not even poking and prodding Fela and Kasita has helped. I’m basically having to invent everything as I go and I don’t know if it is all working.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Irulon said, splattering a bit of blood around the room as she waved at the corpse. Not that the blood was really noticeable. The entire room was essentially painted in the stuff. Which probably contributed to the smell. The whole place would need a healthy dose of Annihilator when they finished. “I owe a great deal to my companion. It would mean a lot if we could grant at least part of this request.”

“I mean, I’ll try. I’m just worried that something is going to go wrong. It would be best if we only have to do this once.”

“Believe me. None of us want to make this a regular thing. That’s why we’re spending so much extra time on it, making sure that everything is perfect the first time.”

“Do you want to take a look at the one I just made? Or shall I just toss it with the others?”

“I’ll trust your judgment that it won’t work. It might still be interesting to look at, however. I’ll come get it in a few minutes if you want to just leave it on the side.”

“Might take a brief breather.”

Irulon sniffed the air for a moment before shrugging like she didn’t smell anything. Or rather, she was probably just used to it. Even Alyssa didn’t find it nearly as offensive as she had a week or two ago. The area she spent most of her time in was, after all, part of the same cave. They didn’t even have doors on the chambers to act as mild barriers. Not that doors would help. The stench of rot and death permeated thoroughly through the entire cave. Even outside it, the smell was present unless the day was particularly windy.

“I would join you, but if I stop, I’m going to want to get cleaned up. No point in getting cleaned up while I’ve still got another body to tear into.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll be back soon to try your new suggestion.”

Nodding her head, Irulon turned back to the open chest cavity of the cadaver on the table. Alyssa left her to the corpse, heading out of the cave. It wasn’t that big of a cave. She wasn’t even sure if it counted as a real cave. It might just be an alcove, carved out by an ancient stream that had long since dried up or maybe pure wind over who knew how many years.

Or maybe Tenebrael had hand crafted it. Alyssa honestly wasn’t sure how the formation of worlds went or who was responsible for it. Creating a world seemed like a significantly larger task than merely managing one, but who could say when angels were concerned.

The cave led upwards until it met the surface, coming out on the side of a small hill. Although the interior looked mostly natural, wooden supports had been put up at various points and the entrance had clearly been crafted by hand. Irulon speculated that it had, at one point in time, been used by criminal elements. Either to hold goods or to act as a hideout from where they would ambush travelers. There wasn’t any evidence that it had been used recently. Just some minor grooves in the land around it that had come from wagons being pulled around. They were so faint that Alyssa didn’t notice them even after having them pointed out to her. Irulon had followed them all the way to the cave’s entrance.

Further evidence of former human habitation came from a well that had been dug down in the valley between two rolling hills. A fairly even path led down to it, which was where Alyssa was headed. Musca and Izsha should be down there if they hadn’t gone off hunting. They usually did leave, though. They weren’t too impressed with the smell around the cave either. Fela hadn’t wanted to come since the first day or two. Kasita didn’t even like it and she didn’t have a real nose.

Alyssa found none of her companions down at the well. But she didn’t find it completely empty. One person stood around like she had been waiting for Alyssa’s arrival.

“Hey,” Alyssa said. “Did you make that cave up there?”

Tenebrael looked over like she hadn’t known Alyssa was on the way. A notion Alyssa found absolutely ridiculous unless Iosefael had fallen down the well or something equally unlikely. She blinked twice before flicking her eyes up the hill. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean this whole world. Did it already exist when you became its Dominion or did you make it yourself?”

“Ah. No. The Throne crafted everything that exists.”

“Are we like… in the universe? The same one as Earth, I mean. Like can I look up at the night’s sky and find Earth if I had a powerful enough telescope?”

“You would be correct in that assumption, though I believe Earth would actually only be visible from the northern hemisphere. Maybe during some parts of the year, but this world doesn’t have as much axial tilt as Earth does, so probably not.”

“I had been wondering about that,” Alyssa mused to herself. “I’ve been here for a few months now and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of seasons. Food is grown year round too.”

“There are seasons, but nothing so drastic as what you are used to.”

“Huh. Well, I think things are progressing well. Haven’t managed to make a monster of my own that doesn’t look like it would die instantly or be in constant excruciating pain. The dragon seems to have given up on that aside from maybe some scales. Don’t know why. It’s lived in a human body for a few years and has expressly stated that it doesn’t care if it gets a human body or not.”

“I look forward to your end result,” Tenebrael said with a smile. She had offered to create the body herself—it was something she thought she could do given her ability to create a duplicate for the Earthlings—but Alyssa had rejected it. If she had been completely unable to craft a body on her own, Alyssa would have agreed. But her skills in manufacturing creations had gotten much better after some tutoring from Irulon and Tenebrael. She even had a brand new pair of sunglasses on at the moment.

The biggest reason that Alyssa wanted to do this was because she had said that she would. The more she learned about how to work Tenebrael’s magic, the better off she figured that she would be. This was a perfect opportunity to get instruction on how to use it during a time when Tenebrael was being helpful. In the future, a situation might arise where Tenebrael was less likely to want to help her out. Especially if her rulebook said she couldn’t.

Relying on Tenebrael was a secondary concern. Although she had been helpful in showing exactly where Alyssa had been going wrong, she still might up and disappear for days or weeks or even months again. If Alyssa had accepted Tenebrael’s offer, she might still be under the misguided impression that she would have to look up the exact process of how a human formed in the womb, from conception to birth. The whole growing process was another ordeal—the dragon wasn’t interested in being stuck in an infant’s body, especially not a human infant—that Alyssa did not need to fully comprehend in order to craft an adult human body.

That wasn’t to say that the process was simple. For an inanimate object like sunglasses, the process of construction did help some. For a body, she had discovered that knowing the anatomy of a human was far more important. She had taken an entry level anatomy class back in the early days of her college career, but that hadn’t been nearly good enough. Over the past few weeks, she had studied and studied and watched videos and even dove her hands into the bodies she had created alongside Irulon. Even with all that studying, Irulon’s presence was invaluable. The princess had some experience with taking apart human bodies and had been able to point out all sorts of errors that Alyssa had made during construction.

“Irulon hasn’t specified a date yet. She and the dragon want to be absolutely certain that everything is in order before they commit. Despite all the time they’ve been spending taking apart bodies, they’ve still got a few details of the spell to rearrange. A good portion of that is because parts of the ritual will change based on the physical dimensions of the body. Once they finalize how they want the body to be, I have to be able to make consistent bodies over and over again. With them checking it out, I imagine there won’t be any problems. Still… I would appreciate it if you would check my work before they actually start.”

“Of course, Alyssa. I would be happy to.”

“Good. Great. That’s a small weight off my mind. I’m glad you showed up though. I had a few questions about some things I noticed while using your power the other day and was wondering if you might help enlightening me.”

“I’ll answer if I can.”

Alyssa didn’t ask right away. She put her hands behind her back as she walked around the well, considering what to say. Eventually, she decided to simply start at the beginning. “You almost always say something when casting a miracle. Or whatever you call whatever it is you do. Like ‘creating portal to Earth’ or something.”

“It’s usually a bit more involved than that, but continue.”

“Since creating matter doesn’t seem to require me talking to myself, I started trying to do other things without making any requests to you or other verbalizations. Much like how I do regular human-style magic. And I think figuring out how to create a human body has given me a few clues I needed to do other things as well.”

“Such as?”

Alyssa pressed her lips together, wondering if she should actually tell Tenebrael or not. But… she needed more information. Tenebrael was really the only supply of information regarding this particular topic. So, Alyssa held out a hand. A blinding ring of light appeared, hovering above her outstretched fingertips. Almost identical to Tenebrael’s halo. The light wasn’t quite the same. It didn’t produce that warmth that came from true angelic halos.

Even still, Tenebrael stared at it with wide eyes. “How did you do that?”

“I understand a lot more about light than I did a few weeks ago. Even with how shoddy my rushed knowledge is… well…” Alyssa waved her hand forward. The halo followed her movements. “Let there be light.”

“So you’re creating light much like you would create sunglasses? Clever, but—”

“I don’t think so. I think this is more akin to a real spell. Or miracle. Whatever. It is a subtle difference, but…”

Tenebrael hummed. One gloved hand stretched forward to touch it before she paused, drawing back and swapping to her ungloved right hand. “Interesting,” she said, tapping it with a black-painted fingernail. “Interesting,” she repeated.

“Understanding is the key to using your power, isn’t it. I have to know not only what I want to achieve, but at least most of the process to get there. But once I know, I can do it. So, if I wanted to visit Earth…”

Tenebrael glanced up, looking not at all angry or upset that Alyssa had suggested going back there. Being there had been what set off the Astral Authority in the first place. Who knew what going back might do. Instead of upset, Tenebrael smiled. “You recall that mathematics lesson I tried to give you?”

Alyssa grimaced, making Tenebrael chuckle.

“Maybe some day,” she said, reaching out to pat Alyssa on the head.

“I’m not a dog,” Alyssa said, batting the hand away after the third pat. “But… if not teleportation, perhaps you could help me understand some other things.”

“What is it you wish to know?”

Alyssa paused. “Would local portals be too impossible to understand how to create? Something just from here to Illuna. Or Illuna to Lyria,” she asked, deciding to start small. It was related to going to Earth, but different enough that Tenebrael might be willing to offer some insight. And if she did…

Perhaps she could expand on that knowledge later.