Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 6: Obligatory Bigger--Ahhh! Part 3

Dunno how long I was out, dunno where I was, but I did know one thing; that bucket of water was cold. My eyes immediately opened; my hands gave to tugging at my newly found bindings. I could not pull them apart. I was bound to a chair, sitting in a cold room, wet, surrounding by Typhous and my own turncoat cultists. Goody-goody gumdrops.

I looked down and examined myself, my right eye somewhat puffy and hard to see out of, but I had enough vision to see that I was okay. No missing toes, no blood, had my fingers and my junk. Whew, nice. If I was intact, then what were they planning to do with me?

"Where am I?" I mumbled. My right cheek was swollen like my eye. Ishmael did a little damage it seemed. "Where have you taken me you disgusting, bloated fu—"

"Ah," Typhous tutted at me. "Cursing goes against He's religion, Sanguine. Or should I say Mathias?"

There was some snickering from the cultists; a villain's real name being revealed was an embarrassing affair, taboo in a lot of circles. I wasn't a villain anymore and I knew a whole lot of names to say.

"Funny coming from you, Buckley."

This elicited mixed reactions. The men wanted to laugh, yet they knew better.

"Enough," Typhous said. He wasn't as bothered by his name being called out as much as I'd hoped. "We're at your castle, Mathias—well, my castle now."

"Yippy," I mumbled, looking between the new-tyrant and the five or so men staring back at me. "And what is it you plan to do with me?"

"Well, death would be too good for you, I think," he said in a rather calm manner. "I think, for you, we'll keep you alive until the ritual."

"You don't have the skill in blood and fleshcraft, you aren't going to do jack shit."

"Hmm, you're right," he said. I didn't like how he said that. It was much too calm, as if he had something else up his sleeve. "I have another ritual though"—knew it—"one beyond Gaia and from the stars."

"What are you talking about? Has rot destroyed your brain you corpulent fool?"

"I don't want to use her blood and flesh to make myself a mortal god, as you'd hoped to do. I cannot do the ritual, but I have an alternative. I will, instead, use her as a vessel to reach the Ancients, to ascend and become like them. I will be an avatar of rot; I will not be a god; I will overthrow those two weaklings in their realms. I will devour them, as the Ancients have done and will continue to do. I will become more."

I stared at him for a moment before I finally broke the silence. "Okay, that's nice and all but who are the Ancients? You mean the progenitor people? Our ancestors?"

"They are our ancestors, yet not. They are something more," he explained, his words dripping off his lips like radioactive venom. He enjoyed this a little too much, his fascination seeming more like obsession. "Did you ever question why the progenitor people left blueprints in people like the Seals or all their ancient dig sites? They were always so pristine, perfect, advanced."

"No," I grunted. "I can't particularly be bothered with trying to understand why a bunch of old cultures died out. We are them and they are us."

"Wrong," he shouted at me, his voice booming, loud, obnoxious, "they are separate. The Ancients were one group, originally, but they splintered off, into two groups. We're the descendants of one such group, all of us on Gaia."

"And—what of this second group? God, stop with the ominous villain bullshit and just give it to me straight."

His dark eyes narrowed in on me in annoyance, his fingers digging into my staff all the while. "Well then. If you want it straight, you'll get it. The Ancients still exist, they are just not on this planet."