Games for a Lost Bone Goddess

A BonePunk story by Holly_Gonzalez 

A voice she'd almost forgotten called in her mind, called her by a name no one used anymore.

"Katya, someone's coming."

"I already know," she answered aloud.

It was just a memory, the voice of a friend long gone, made vivid by the entity possessing her consciousness. Empty voices, spirits, mirages of yesterday. Distractions, nothing more. She paid them no heed and focused herself for her impending summit.

Her eyes flicked toward the door, where the visitors would soon arrive. None other than the head of the Pruessian state, Hir Anzelvik Kaezer himself. Would he come to endorse her or assassinate her? Her spies had hinted of the Great Leader's possible distrust, though his correspondence to her had been formal and predictable.

The voices died to whispers and faded like the dreams they were. She never slept, but dreams passed endlessly through her mind. Dreams. Visions. Memories. Pieces of someone she'd once known, once been, a place she'd lived and loved.

Someday, she'd return home. To her own Earth, not the diverging branch of space-time she now occupied.

The others, her former crew mates, had called her mad. She'd called them weak, cowardly. She knew the price and how to pay it. The key to escape dwelled in her body. The key to its secrets could be deciphered in time.

She had more than enough time ahead of her. The Abider was eternal, in this universe as well as her own. As long as it remained fused to her bones, there was a chance to bridge universes again and create a path home.

Reality was a game. Games existed to be won or lost. And she would win, no matter the cost. She'd bend the very fabric of this pathetic new universe to get what she wanted. The consequences didn't matter. Neither did her enemies.

She lifted her hands to her forehead and pressed her fingers against her skull. Against the prison of her mind and its warden, the sentient parasite attached to her skeleton. Into the very cells and atoms and who-could-say-what beyond. The thin layers of flesh between her bones were little more than insulation and substance for this creature, this conscious generator of renewable energy.

If only she could harness its full potential. The technology to do so was far beyond the understanding of this society, but these 'Pruessians' as they called themselves had the right potential. She needed resources, devoted manpower, and at least a decade to build the network.

Fortunately, the resources of an entire nation lay within her grasp. She had but to persuade one man to aid her--a small task. Great leaders always had passions. Weaknesses. She'd find a weak point in this Kaezer fellow. The Abider's awareness opened her to levels and concepts beyond human perception.

She rose from her chair when the expected knock struck her chamber door. Her skin chilled, pulse quickened, a sign the Abider was alert and observant.

"Be patient, friend," she whispered. "We won't fail."

Another chill ran over her, the Abider's response buzzing through her nerves. Their shared power resonated the space around her body. Both ready, now. All the better to sway the course of this timeline's history.

"Enter!" she shouted.

The door opened, and five men strode into her ossuary. At the fore walked her personal raven-guards, Hugir and Munyet, two strapping young men clad in the ceremonial ornaments, furs, and hides of their paleolithic religion. Bone Singers, as the religion's followers called themselves. The perfect cult fanatics for a makeshift goddess. Their priesthood had been easy to infiltrate and corrupt. Now, their country's government would share the same fate.

The raven-guards bowed their heads to her and stepped aside, revealing the Great Leader and his two escorts. Another squadron of guards remained at the door and stood ready along either side of the foyer. The Kaezer certainly kept solid defense.

One of the guards stomped a boot and flung an arm upward in salute. "Victory to Hir Kaezer! Victory to Pruessia!" he shouted.

Everyone in the chamber repeated the hail.

A dictator's fanfare, she mused. Regardless, she followed the fascist game.

Hir Kaezer's gaze lingered on her only a moment. He looked upward, taking in the grandeur of the ossuary dome with widening blue eyes.

"Welcome, Your Excellency. It's my great pleasure to finally meet you," She curtsied low enough for the boned fringe of her seer's mantle to brush the marble floor.

The Kaezer's attention snapped back to her. He bowed with one hand over his heart. "A pleasure it is, Lady of the Sacred Circles," he said. "They tell me you're named for the ancient death goddess, Hella."

She nodded. "This is my name for the world. My spirit name is spoken only within the Circles."

"Naturally. Thus are the mysteries of the Old Ways. I know them well. My mother was descended from a shamanic lineage, and she made sure I learned the traditions." The Kaezer chuckled and admired the ossuary again, studying the thousands of human and animal bones stacked in beautiful patterns along the walls and pinnacle of this once-abandoned cathedral. "Your sanctuary is impressive. True to the monuments of old and arranged with an artistry never before seen. You've far surpassed my expectations."

"I'm honored to receive the Great Leader's praise." Hella smiled and gestured to the empty chair beside her own. "Will you join me?"

They sat beneath the vaulted shrine and stared at each other. Two leaders, the figureheads of political and spiritual power in this fierce and wealthy nation.

The Kaezer folded his hands in front of his chest and leaned toward her. "Finally, I have the chance to speak with you. You're a difficult one to contact, though the Circles do keep their secrets.Tell me what you will about yourself. Where in Pruessia were you born, if I may ask?"

Born? Of course this would be his first question. Blood and ancestry are more important to this madman than morality. "I was born from the soil of my homeland," she said flatly. "A distant territory you wouldn't have heard of." In a parallel universe, at a point far ahead of yours in progress and history. Flung here by an accident of multiversal proportions. But is your mind willing to accept the truth?

Lines creased the Kaezer's brow. "Obviously, the newest Lady of the Circles would be a native of her ancestors' blessed Pruessia. Pardon my curiosity, I merely assumed it was so."

She inclined her head to him. "Spirit leads all seekers to their fate and fortune in this journey we call life, no matter where that fortune lies."

"Well said, yet you still elude me." He straightened his posture. Such a big, broad-shouldered man, tall even by Pruessian standards. "The elders of the Circles have spoken to me of your incredible power. They say you can invoke spiritual gifts long considered lost to the Bone Singer clans."

"I found the fortune of which I've just spoken through the guidance of a most powerful spirit," she said. To these more primitive minds, a being like the Abider was best explained in the mythological terms they revered.

She looked away and laid a hand on the small altar table between the chairs. A hollowed human skull brazier rested there, incense smoke wafting from the eye sockets. Alongside the skull lay a long, sheathed sword with a handle of carved bone and a child's mechanical toy made of painted tin. "Allow me to be frank, most Beloved Leader. Taking what I've divined from my Guardians and my fellow seekers, it would seem we have a mutual interest in the future of Pruessia and its role in a better world to come."

"I hoped this would be your aim." His voice was low, his gaze boring into her. "You've been frank, and so shall I. As it stands, I'm not entirely convinced that you are who you claim to be."

Hella's laughter echoed over the stone walls and bone conduits of the ossuary. "You think I'm a fraud? That I've won over the Circles of the ancient Guardians with sheer trickery?"

"Trickery is a shaman's greatest weapon," the Kaezer replied. "I know this, my Lady. But I struggle to understand how a strange upstart with no traceable descent from a shamanic family can perform the miracles of which I've heard tell. Speak true, as a loyal citizen of Pruessia must, and show me the magic you' used to earn your place as the Bone Singers' new queen. A leader must be sure that the greatest folk religion in his domain is in capable and trustworthy hands. Someone as clever and devout as yourself will understand my...concern."

She rose from her chair and stood before him. The Abider's force gathered and intensified within her, breaking a thin sweat over her skin. "You want proof, simple as that? Where I'm from, there's a saying: be careful what you ask for." She paused, lifting an arm over her face for a silly dramatic effect, then added, "You might just get it."

Drawing on the Abider's power, she focused a zero-point in front of herself and moved into it. A humming noise rang throughout the ossuary as she concentrated and willed the forces of dimensional order into a sort of clay she could mold with thought alone. Every bone in this chamber had been infused with small tendrils of the Abider's etheric influence and arranged into circuits to amplify the power.

Swift as a falcon on the dive, she snatched the knife from the altar. Her physical form vanished, faded like a shadow at noon, and she reappeared right where she'd intended--beside Hir Kaezer, her arm around his shoulders and her blade against his neck.

"Hello," she said. "Convinced yet?"

"Damned witch! How dare you?" Hir Kaezer paled and sprang to his feet, drawing his pistol. He pointed it at her head. His guards aimed their rifles at her.

Hella's raven-guards drew their blades and stood beside the Kaezer's defenders, ready to kill for their mistress.

"I knew it," the Kaezer said. "You're not Pruessian. You're an enemy agent. Confess, and I may let you live." His fingers twitched at the trigger.

She grinned. "Good guess. I'm not Pruessian, but I'm not an agent. I'm also not your enemy. The little knife act there was just to prove my point. I could kill you if I wished, but I won't. We could be the most formidable of allies if you'll believe me."

The Kaezer's voice was cold, deceptively calm. "Tell me who you are and where you're from. Now."

"Very well. Since you ask so nicely with your gun in my face." She slowly set her blade down on the altar table and picked up the skull brazier. "I'm a foreigner not only to Pruessia but to this very dimension you inhabit. In my own time and reality, my name--my oldest, truest given name--was Katya Ibragimov. I came from a country called Russia, similar to your Pruessia in many ways."

Hir Kaezer seemed unimpressed, his pistol still brandished. "Go on."

She sighed and stroked the skull with her fingers. Power swirled in unseen currents around the bone, building in potency. "So hard to convince, aren't you? I'll go back to the beginning to help you understand. My colleagues and I were part of a research crew sent to study a strange phenomena at the edge of the solar system. A field of erratic, undefinable energy fluctuating the very structure of matter into wild new forms. We isolated the source and found it was a vessel of unknown origin located on the surface of a remote asteroid. A story from my version of Earth used to tell about a young girl named Pandora and a box that should have never been opened. This is the essence of what happened the day we opened the vessel. Some things are best left undiscovered. Inside the vessel was an entity of pure energy, and when exposed it unleashed a catastrophe we'd never intended. This entity we now call the Abider split itself into five parts and entered my body as well as the bodies of my crew mates. The moment we merged with it, a reaction occurred which even our most brilliant engineer couldn't explain. A rift opened between universes and threw us from our own into this one. Into yours. And here we are, with no hope of ever getting home."

The last statement was a lie. There was a possible way for her to get home, but no one could ever know of it but herself.

"You..." The Kaezer swallowed. He lowered his gun somewhat. "You're a traveler from another world beyond Earth?"

"No, I'm from Earth. Another Earth. One with a few similarities, but vastly different in others. The very geography and society here in your reality are completely alien to those found in mine. One of the most surprising differences is that what both of our universes call 'magic' actually works to some extent here. In my universe, such powers are a complete sham. Here, even without the Abider's influence on my mind and capabilities, what my world called supernatural is a tangible force. When the Abider enters the scene, miracles such as this can happen."

She held the skull aloft and uttered a quiet chant to the spider Guardian of the Bone Singers. The 'spirit' she'd chosen as her connection to the shamanic Old Ways. One thing she'd learned about the Abider since she'd come to live with it so long---its power thrived on the bones of both the living and the dead, and what her old universe had dubbed 'psychic energy' was a very effective and very real means to an end here. The Old Ways practiced by the Bone Singers harbored actual magic through the expression and determination of song. Sound and rhythm, waves, patterns. The very substance of universes themselves.

"Do you see that little toy on the altar, the wind-up plaything I've brought for you?" she asked. "I meant it to be a gift of my good will and a mark of what I have to offer you, if we can agree to trust each other."

She set the toy on the floor and laid the skull beside it.

The Kaezer stepped back. "What does this mean?"

"Call off your guards, and I'll call off mine," she told him. "I'll show you."

He waved his hand, and his guards lowered their rifles. Her raven-guards sheathed their blades and withdrew.

"Watch now. This toy is lacking the main spring to make it function. But the power I bear can drive even inert matter to action."

She channeled the innate 'magic' of the Abider through her bone and marrow, through the sub-quantum threads of this, her adopted universe, and into the crude toy at her feet. It was a small figurine of a dog, meant to delight children. She levitated it into the air and willed the gears and mechanisms inside of it to life. Tiny lights and whirring cogs moved, the innocent barking sound it made like laughter in the face of all doubt.

His jaw dropping, the Kaezer reached a hand toward the floating toy, then turned to Hella. "Intriguing. I've never seen such a feat, even in all my studies of the Old Ways. I understand why the Bone Singers have rallied around you. If all you've said is true, then I owe you an apology, my Lady. You're the link I've waited for to bring the Circles of the Bone Singers into my fold."

And you are the link in my scheme to flee from your cursed universe, she thought. She took the blinking toy into her hands and gave it to him. "This is just a hint of what we might do. Imagine a mechanical assault force powered by my magic. It will take time and much work, but I can teach you things far beyond your current knowledge. And with the might of Pruessia behind us, we can change this world, make it into the perfect society you've talked about for so long."

A grin spread over his face. "A most profitable arrangement for me and mine. But, what of these others you mentioned? What do you want from all of this, and where are your former crew mates now?"

Time for a few more lies. She'd fed his oversized ego enough to pique his interest. He didn't need to know all of the details. "I'll gain my rightful place and purpose in this new universe. The others, my former companions, are lost and worthless. They'll do nothing, can do nothing. We, however, will become unstoppable, Your Excellency. An influential leader from my reality, a man named Hitler, once set out to change my world as you will change yours. I like to think you are a variation of him in some cosmic way beyond our ken. If you join me, we can achieve more than old Hitler ever did. What do you say?"

She extended a hand to him, the simplest gesture of truce. And the lure to my greatest trap, she thought. The moment their hands touched, she sent an invisible spear of power into him. Through his fingers, his palm, seeping into his bones. A link of influence, one of the tricks she'd learned from her Bone Singer friends. If Anzelvik Kaezer really was familiar with shamanic ways, his spiritual defense was surprisingly weak. Yet another advantage she kept silent about.

A pact was forged between them. A plan to steer history in a bold direction, a direction more like the history of the universe she'd come from. The more she could create similar connections here, the closer she might move this universe to her own and, hopefully, secure a solid portal between them. That meant the equivalent of two world wars, mad leaps in the technology and science needed to build an army of robots, and all the while continuing to lead her wayward crew mates in the wrong direction should they try to stop her.

In the meantime, she had a dictator to manipulate and a planet to conquer. Plenty of fun for a goddess and her fragmented, multi-dimensional parasite sidekick to find until their big transcendental reveal at the finale of it all. There were more bones to pick and fools to bait along the way.