An Angel Called Eternity

Faetales and Forgotten Stories - Child, God, Dust: The Still

Tjenkha, Central Nekhtou, the Kikhepis.
The Eighteenth Day of the First Moon, 2392 BD.

It was done. Finished. Twenty-two statues now stood sentinel over the Valley of the Gods, nay over the very desert itself, their eyes of that strange stone looking down at all beneath them impassively, almost cruelly. They seemed to mock the men beneath them, taunting them for their mortality, their insignificance, their very humanity. It was a monument that could only have been built by the hands of a god, and indeed, it was. He had built it. Him. The world would look upon the Valley of Gods after a thousand-thousand years, and still his monument would watch over the world with twenty-two stone cold gazes.

He had a new toy, as well. The Fleshsmiths themselves had contacted him directly, rather than through their Slaver's Guild overlords, to thank him for his enduring and, of course, exceedingly generous patronage. They had created something that defied imagination, something that put to shame anything else he had seen them create. They told him it had taken the lives of a great many acolytes from their order, as well as an untold number of slaves and failed prototypes, but the results were more than worth it. A Drake-Ogyr. The torso of an Ogyr-Alpha, engorged on slaughter and made far larger than even the greatest of it's brethren, masterfully joined to the body of a wingless dragon, scaled and clawed and above all deadly. It could gallop across vast distances in mere moments, far faster than a creature it's size should be able to move, so great was it's size that the captain of Amerys' personal guard, possibly the tallest man he had ever seen, barely came up to the creatures knee.

It was... it was beautiful. Perfect. He'd had it barded in bronze sheet-armour, engraved with silver hieroglyphs symbolising protection and destruction, and studded with black-diamonds. A great warhammer was placed in the creatures hands in times of war and battle, it's haft a great northern oak stripped of bark and branches and a head made of the finest bronze his smiths had ever seen.
He would only have the best for such a magnificent pet.
Already he had unleashed his divine pet against Nrtkha, that squalid and pathetic array of nomad tents masquerading as a city in the desert, and the results had been... they'd been beautiful. He had watched from atop his wyvern, circling the city like a vulture, watching to make sure noting bad happened to his newest pet. Entire streets of tents were crushed to kindling and foolscap beneath the monstrous feet of the beast, its tail lashing to and fro like a great crushing flail as the mighty warhammer turned ranks of men and steeds both into little more than a fine red mist and memories.
He shuddered a little in extasy as the memories of that day replayed in his head. To see the people who had once laid low his divine father forced to flee their ancestral home before the very manifestation of his wroth and fury, the manifestation of the new links he had formed between the Nekhtoudum and the Sotenari... oh, it was most pleasing to think about. He was almost disappointed that there had yet to be any further rebellions against his reign. Oh, the thinks he could do with his pets in a true battle...

The thought sent another spike of extasy through him, and he made a mental note to check with his advisors if any of the client-kingdoms between them and the Sotenari could be 'integrated' into the Kingdom of the Kikhepis without alienating their new allies. Perhaps the Sotenari could even be persuaded to split the various petty kingdoms between their two great empires? They had already annihilated Ereverry, after all. Or perhaps cousin Khypra would not be against an offer of expanding his new kingdom; surely he understood that increasing his territories, spreading his influence, was the greatest way to secure a future for his kingdom? There were so many possibilities for conquest, for expansion, for slaughter, he could hardly contain himself.
And yet he would. For he was divine, and divines did not give themselves over to their selfish desires as mortals did. Such behaviour would be beneath him. Beneath his divine blood. And he was divine, of that there could be no doubt. Who else could claim to have accomplished the things he had by the age of fourteen? Even the great heroes of yesteryear who build the very kingdom he now ruled paled in comparison to his genius, his strength, his magnificence. His work was complete, his great monument finished, his name etched into history even as it howled and screeched at him. And now?