The clay went cold in Saul’s hands. He made some progress over the passing hours, but his weariness grew with the effort.

  He wiped sweat from his brow and his fingers brushed the bandage near his scalp where Mho had cut him. I’m beginning to accumulate scars, he thought.

  Behind him, Olivia was silent, as she had been since Rult had stopped purring and lain down beside her chair.

  He stood on a stepladder and shaped the face of the creature, the mouth, the nose and one large, solitary eye in the center of the forehead. Effort turned into detail, but the face that resulted did not look handsome, just unsettlingly calm. Saul took a step down the ladder. Lifelike features to be sure, and they should reform after punishment from the tiny influence he had left in the taph with threads reaching into the child’s head.

  “Why one eye?” asked Olivia. “What about depth perception?”

  Saul sagged with fatigue as he turned toward Olivia. “I’ll make sure he can sense distance with it.”

  “How?”

  “Tweaks to the eye through the taph.” Saul retrieved an oven rod from his pocket and pressed it’s flat disk to the forehead of the creature. He ignited the rod with his spark. The clay of the new child’s face hardened. “It’s not difficult to manage with a little knowledge of ocular anatomy.”

  She yawned. “How much anatomy have you studied?”

  “As a child, I committed several species-models to memory. Some have done the same with whole bestiaries”

  She put a hand to her mouth to stifle another yawn. It had to be some time past midnight now, but Saul still needed to finish the birth-scripture of the new child before he could awaken him. He descended the ladder.

  “Guess you studied birds, then?” Olivia asked.

  “Among other things, yes.”

  “I figured you must have because of all the pigeons.”

  “An unobtrusive form makes for a useful disguise.”

  “Do you always sound this philosophical when you’re tired?”

  “Not always.” He walked over to her. “You should get some sleep.”

  “So far all I’ve seen you do is sculpt, and as good as you are at that, I don’t think it’s going to make this child able to fight Apahar.”

  “I’ve already done most of the taph.” He offered her his hand. “I can show you.”

  She ignored his hand and got to her feet on her own. They circled to a place behind the sculpture of the cyclops. He pointed at the taph diagram’s circles and lines on the creature’s back.

  “These patterns and symbols are keys to the intrinsic powers of this child’s body, things it will be able to do by instinct.”

  “Like Rult sniffing out the hilt,” Olivia said.

  “Yes. And his taph grew as he matured, so now he can use it as an arm to manipulate objects.”

  “You mean throw an iron rod like a javelin.”

  “Exactly.”

  She frowned at the taph carved into the cyclops’ back. “What will this one be able to do that he can fight Apahar?”

  “Some art-children are designed to combine, bond, with a human or other creature’s taph. Most do this only with a willing subject, but this one will be able to bond with a gern by the taph, against the gern’s will.”

  “Is the bond how the city lord made those bodyguards back in Mortressa?”

  “Yes. Those were physical bonds where the human and the maker become one in body and soul.”

  “Body and soul.” She inhaled sharply. “So, they’ll always be that way?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “The bodyguards looked like they were in pain. Why would they bond at all?”

  “Some makers don’t trust the loyalty of more powerful art-children. That makes them willing to take the risk, and pay the price of the bond for greater control.”

  “Risks?

  “If the subject is not firm and strong in their sense of self, or if the child overpowers their mind, the child becomes the dominant party in the bond. It becomes the ruler of the combined body, and the maker’s personality is buried in the subconscious.” Saul shuddered to think of such a fate.

  He glanced at Olivia.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Nasty.”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Yeah.” He turned his gaze to the cyclops. “This taph will hopefully be strong enough for the child to do that to Apahar.”

  She shot him a frown. “You mean, you want to take over a gern?”

  “Not just any gern,” said Saul. “An aleph-gern.”

  “Apahar is still a gern.”

  “By all accounts, the ancient makers thought Apahar died when he was beaten. Seffuinn left him mortally wounded and imprisoned on Earth. We both know he did not die. Most of his original body is still buried under Gatewood Hall.”

  Olivia nodded, but her frown remained. “But he’s walking around in Luther’s shoes right now.”

  “Part of him is. The power of an aleph, and therefore an aleph-gern is infinite. Each aleph shard is a splinter of infinite power.”

  “That’s why you can make worlds from them.”

  “Yes. Infinite power contained in a limited space. But think about it for a moment. The aleph at the heart of Apahar’s taph makes him indestructible, and incomprehensibly powerful as long as he has access to it.”’

  “How did Seffuinn ever beat him?”

  “I don’t know. Not really.” Saul shook his head. “Judging by the hilt of the sword that contained part of Apahar’s essence—”

  “The one Luther stole,” said Olivia.

  “Yes. Judging by the size of the aleph in that hilt, I think it was used as some means to siphon out part of Apahar’s infinite power, though the amount in the hilt itself was limited, meaning right now so are Apahar’s abilities. If this child can bond with him the child should gain his powers, and destroy the personality fragment living in Luther.”

  “That would but the kibosh on him rejoining his old body.” Olivia raised her eyebrows. “What then?”

  “Lesser gern won’t be able to breach Gatewood Hall, so I suppose things will go back to how they were.”

  She leaned closer to him, her shoulder against his arm. “And what will you do?”

  “I go back to Hidria. Find the world I made with Irene. Then take my place on the council.”

  Hopefully things will be that simple.

  “You win.” She smiled slightly and looked up at his face.

  “Yeah.” He sighed as he felt her against his side. “I guess that’s the plan, right?”

  “Sounds like it,” she said.

  He pushed gently against her side. “Right now, there’s a hundred problems between me and those goals. Right now, I need to make sure this child has a strong enough will to defeat Apahar.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you do that?”

  “I give him a history, a drive to succeed.” Saul reached into the pocket of the smock he wore for working with clay. He pulled out a plastic pen and a pad of yellow note paper. “I write the source of his personality and then embed the text on his taph.”

  “Huh. You didn’t do that with Rult.”

  “I was in a hurry at the time.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “That is why he was born like a human, with little more than instinct and biology to govern him initially.” Saul led Olivia back to the card table in front of the cyclops’ frame. “But this child will be more complicated.”

  Rult’s head turned. “Complication is overrated.”

  Olivia giggled and rocked pleasantly against Saul’s side.

  Saul smiled. “There are advantages to both approaches.”

  Rult snorted and lay his head down across his legs. His mane hid his face.

  Saul set the note paper on the table. He sat down in the chair before the paper and removed the cap from the pen.

  “Where do you start with an origin story?” Olivia looked down at the paper from behind Saul.

  “It’s not always easy. But it can be anything. I think this child is a bit like how I used to be, driven by ambition to gain power.”

  “But he can’t be selfish like that, can he? It sounds like his job is dangerous.”

  Saul started writing notes on the pad. “He will brave any danger for his goal. He will fight and suffer through the worst. “Hmm… That’s all outcome. I think he remembers always being strong, a protector.”

  “But he hasn’t always succeeded, has he?” Olivia said. “He feels the need for more power because he lost something important to him.”

  “That is a good idea. Something of great importance lost to him.” Saul jotted down Olivia’s words on the yellow page beside his earlier notes. “He seeks redemption for his failure.”

  “What did he lose, though?”

  Saul’s mind flickered to the things now lost to him. Friends, home, Irene. Love. “That’s it. Thank you, Olivia.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure, don’t tell me your brilliant idea.”

  “Excuse me, but I mean to hurry. This should go quicker now.”

  He chose a new page, separate from the other notes.

  His hands wrote down a story, automatic, unfiltered. He forged the child’s narrative, a sense of lost love that would cause him to pursue closeness, a kind of passion that would make him want to fill the void of his loss with power. And that passion would brook no compassion for his enemies, for Apahar, who was the source of his pain. For this child’s great love came from the unity of all things and Apahar was a symbol of division, destruction, chaos itself. His courage would be unbreakable, his drive for power immense, and his ego would match that drive.

  Saul finished writing the story. He signed the name of his new child at the bottom of the brief story.

  Bantos. Born of unity, torn by trials, and driven to gain as much power as possible.

  He picked up the page with a weary smile. Olivia followed him around to the taph of the cyclops. He took a few drops of wet clay and drew a line down the middle of the largest circle of the cyclops’ taph. He barked a triumphant laugh and stuck the story into the clay. Then, he hardened the clay with a careful touch of a small oven rod.

  Saul turned to Olivia with a grin. “He’s ready.”

  She smiled back at him, but with a hint of reluctance, of which he could not place the origin.

  He pressed his hands to the back of the cyclops, one on either side of the small sheet of paper. He focused his spark, driving its power from the center of his own taph through his hands and into the body of the cyclops.

  There the creature began, under the harsh electric lights in a workshop of failed experiments. But where he was born would not define him. He would succeed where the others remained unworthy of completion.

  Saul sent those thoughts into the child’s frame. Lost love. Ambition. Courage. Greatness. He held his hands to the creature’s back and breathed deep, in and out, in and out. He closed his eyes and focused. This child would press the gern, be their archenemy, the instrument Saul could wield to destroy them and claim his place in Hidria.

  His breath came and went in bursts. His spark flickered. This had become a mighty making, an investment of power beyond that of any child he had made before. Then, in an instant he was not fully aware of, the dull clay where he held his hands became warm flesh.

  Bantos was born.

  Saul staggered backward. Olivia put an arm around his shoulder and helped steady him. He faced the cyclops.

  “What is your name?” he said in a gasp, as the solitary eye turned toward him, now alight with the gold of inner flame. Bare feet shifted, separated from the platform at the awakening of the art-child.

  “I am Bantos,” the creature said in a calm voice.

  “And do you know who I am?”

  “You are my maker, Saul.”

  Saul nodded. “Bantos, keep watch for a few hours. I must rest.”

  Bantos bowed to Saul. “At your will, Saul.”

  Saul turned to Olivia. “Please, help me up the stairs.”

  She kept her arm around his shoulders. “Sure.”

  They left the workshop and climbed the grand staircase. At the top, she parted from him. He dragged himself to the master bedroom and collapsed on top of the covers. Exhaustion carried him into dreams.