I couldn’t tell if this was better or worse than the accursed bar I’d been in back at the docks.
Nobody was leering at me, I was the only person here other than the woman behind the counter.
But Chartered, was it clear I wasn’t supposed to be here.
I’d been thinking a lot about what Sarah had told me last night, about Irons. Now I knew her theory on how the Godbox worked, that was enough for me. I could go test that theory. I could use it to find out where the original went.
I could maybe even make my own.
I had a parts list and an operating principle, and even if I didn’t know how a lot of the rest fit together, I figured I could make a low-quality prototype and if it achieved even a fifth of what Raspe’s version could, it was a sign I was on the right track.
The problem was the parts list in question boiled down to ‘Monster body parts’, and so I was stuck in a damned rendering yard.
The place reeked like a tannery, because it was mostly the same thing. I had a cloth wrapped around my nose and my eyes were watering. It was dark, barely lit by enclosed gas-lamps. I guess they didn’t quite trust electricity not to spark and blow the place up.
I was just in the foyer talking to a gnoll behind the desk. There wouldn’t normally be carcasses in the open here, but a knacker, somebody whose job it was to take animal carcasses out from the road or farms here for rendering so they don’t just rot on the spot and block roads, was off to the side with a wheelbarrow, taking a break and smoking a cigar, head stuck out a window to get away from the fumes. His wheelbarrow had a mixed mess of fur, white bone and gore which I’m fairly sure used to be several rabbits.
I tried to ignore that and kept my eyes on the woman in front of me. A hunched, dark-furred gnoll about a head taller than me. She was wearing goggles and a face-mask of her own, plus an odd looking outfit composed of a strange film all down her fur, making sure not a scrap was exposed. Same as the lights I assumed. Gnoll fur was famous for having odd interactions with static electricity, accumulating and storing it. The sparks were probably a real danger around here.
It made her voice come out muffled. Between that and her accent I could hardly understand a thing.
“Mrhh’ssa bssh dhh nnndh dhhh fhngndhrh…”
I fidgeted with my hands as I tried to listen to her, but in the end I had to give in. “I’m sorry, I uh, I didn’t quite catch that?”
She rolled her eyes and pulled down the face-mask, revealing a row of much too sharp teeth as she smiled, almost sharklike. “It’s a busy day, so unless you’re here to pick up an order for somebody…”
“I’m here to make one!” I told her. “...Is uh, is this the place to make one? Should I have sent a letter instead? My first time, I don’t really know the process.”
“You want to purchase processed animal by-products, or to…” She looked down her goggles at me, and I couldn’t help but feel I was being judged. “...ask for a carcass rendered that you brought in yourself?”
I opened my hands, gesturing around me. “I uh, I kinda clearly don’t have one on me, so…”
“Some people make ones they can’t get in through the door.” She put a heavy emphasis on ‘some’ people.
“Do I look like somebody who’s, ah, making animal corpses on a regular basis?” I had basically no muscle and had never held a weapon in my life. I was almost certain I did not look like a monster hunter, insofar as that was even a thing these days.
The gnoll just grunted. “What parts you want?”
I looked down at the list I’d gotten from Schreck. I’d scribbled the ones he’d mentioned down after I’d talked to him. “Uh- you got any, uh… grootslang tusk…?”
She stared at me blankly. She clearly did not know what that was. I ploughed on ahead. “Lambton Wurmscale? Maybe, ah-”
I jumped as the knacker threw open the doors to go deeper into the tannery. The sudden noise of it startled me when I was already feeling out of place, and the ammoniac stench that came through after was like a physical blow. He dragged his cart full of carcasses down behind him.
And all that still wasn’t more uncomfortable than the way the gnoll was looking at me.
“We process animal parts here. You want glue, bonemeal, soap…” She said very slowly, like she was talking to an idiot. For how big she was, her voice was quite soft. Despite their reputation, I knew full well gnolls were generally, well, surprisingly human. Nothing to be afraid of, really. I just wish I didn’t have to stare right into all those teeth.
“Don’t the sailors ever bring in anything more… exotic? I’m after monster parts. Anything a little, uh, not quite… real?” I felt silly asking for that, but it’s what Schreck had said. And monsters were plenty real, if rare. I’d seen a ghoul once when I was younger. Not a memory I liked to revisit, but very real.
The gnoll furrowed her brow at that. “Occasionally. Lots’ve nasty stuff in the sea. Not equipped to take ‘em, though, have to tell ‘em to go elsewhere.”
That was what I needed. I rummaged in my pockets and took out a handful of crowns, slid them across the desk. “Could that somewhere else be… to me, next time?”
She gave me a flat look. “...You know I’d do it for free, right? No need for a-”
I started to take the money back and she slammed a hand right over mine. Claws dug into the back of my hand, little droplets of blood welling up.
“...I’m keeping it, though.”
The claws pierced those film gloves she was wearing and there was a little flash of light, a static discharge. Both of us jumped at that, and she withdrew the hand. We both ended up looking bashful at the exchange, embarrassed.
I chuckled anxiously as I let go of the coins. She took them happily. “I gotta go get this fixed up before I get in trouble. Tell me your address first, though. Pleasure doing business, lady.”
I gave her what she needed, and got the hell out of there quickly as my feet would carry me.
Maybe two days later, I was sitting in Raspe’s office. I was kinda surprised I could just wander in there, it wasn’t being treated as a crime scene and it hadn’t been reassigned. I was glad, though, since it was time for me to do a little experimentation.
Irons thought that the Godbox was basically a god itself, powered by belief that it works. The massive electricity draw was, presumably, equivalent to a sacrifice. I could probably recreate the effect on a smaller scale if I just made myself an idol to channel it through.
The best part of this theory? One person’s belief alone usually couldn’t create a god, but Irons and half her people probably believed this would work. That would be enough for something small. Just a tiny effect, maybe, but something.
I’d paid three months’ wages for the remains of some kind of turtle. It was missing a head and two out of four flippers, and was white as marble. It was a monster all right, I could feel that little crackle of divine power when I put my hand on the shell.
My house stank of seafood now. I’d spent a day ineptly skinning the thing to get down to just the bone and shell. I’d tossed all the meat out, rotten anyway, it’d been dead for days. And then I’d gotten to work learning scrimshaw by doing.
Three days of work, and my hands were covered in tiny cuts. Sarah had visited for tea and asked if I’d tried hugging a cactus. My first attempt at carving something from the shell had collapsed in two, I’d made it too skinny at the base, couldn’t support its own weight. But the second went better.
A tiny little model of the Godbox, maybe the size of my forearm. Purest white, but it looked like a child’s carving. The curtain hiding the interior looked more like a solid panel, the cogs and plugs in the back were either jagged gouts or shallow notches. But it had the right rough shape. Enough for an experiment, I figured?
Which again, brought me to Raspe’s office. Right next to the little void in space. I placed one hand on my brand new idol and felt the static crackle of divine power. I didn’t feel the same thing from the patch of anti-gravity, just a little lensing in the air. It was like it wasn’t even there otherwise. I could easily lose it out of the corner of my eye, it surprised me when I turned, sometimes, like I’d half forgotten it existed.
It didn’t feel like this was right. Didn’t feel like the energy I could feel from the idol and the energy of the gravity bubble was the same thing. But that was just gut instinct. Wouldn’t know until I tried, right?
I’ll be honest, I just kind of sat there staring at the idol for a couple minutes once I got it on that desk. I didn’t know the full mechanics of how divine power and worship worked. I figured I’d have to make a sacrifice. And then what, pray for more antigravity? Or to undo the antigravity spot? Pray to what, the box?
I didn’t have any notes to work off and Raspe hadn’t told me jack nor shit that was useful. I wracked my brains to see if any of his ramblings or nonsense diagrams made more sense in hindsight, felt more useful, but I couldn’t remember clearly enough to be sure.
I hissed in frustration. Bastard had to go and get himself killed, didn’t he? Sitting on a starvation-ending device and he had to go and die before anybody could make another one.
I’d brought a couple chocolates, half intending to use them as sacrifices, but I took a bite of one instead. It tasted good.
If this worked, maybe I wouldn’t even need to figure out who bloody killed him, maybe I could just make my own box instead. I’d already have a tiny facsimile of one in hand, I’d just need to scale up. Probably. Maybe.
Too many ifs.
I ran my hand through my hair. Okay, time to get to work. I laid out a bowl in front of the idol. Gods all had specific sacred materials specified in their contract that they took as sacrifices. Hylyss took food, Lugann metal, Convox Birds anything shiny…
But blood worked for everything, right?
The knife I’d been using to carve this thing was nicked and blunted from most of a week of ill-use. I hadn’t been kind to it. But it was sharp enough that when I cut my fingertip open, blood still came out. One more tiny scar this thing had given me, I hoped it’d heal up quick.
The blood dripped into the bowl. Just a few droplets, that was enough, I didn’t need to open a vein here, I didn’t want something big, just… anything.
The bowl was made from the same turtleshell as the idol. The red stained the white, and slowly started to seep into the material, drying out quickly. Had it accepted the sacrifice?
The idol just sat there, still. Almost eerily so, given the energy it gave off. The air felt alive, where the antigravity spot wasn’t making it look fluid. It felt like everything was in motion and alive except the idol.
So I put my hands together and prayed.
The Godbox probably wasn’t bound by divine contracts, so formal prayers or rules wouldn’t apply. I was winging it, just doing what… felt right, I guess. Simple words.
“Please work. Please, please, please, you stupid box… you stupid goddamned box. If you’re real-”
No, wrong. I closed my eyes. I knew that was wrong. I corrected myself. “You’re real. So please, listen-” this was about belief. And you couldn’t make yourself believe something you didn’t, it wasn’t a matter of staring and thinking real hard about something and tensing your brain-muscles until you pulled something. Monks spent lifetimes learning to eradicate tiny traces of doubt from their mind and even then didn’t get all of it. But I thought the box was real. At least I thought that I thought it was real. I wanted it to be real bad enough it hurt, bad enough I could feel my nails digging into my palms as I clasped them together to pray.
“Undo the antigravity. Accept my sacrifice of blood and tears and undo the godsdamned antigravity. Please. Please.”
It…
Didn’t.
The little field didn’t even flicker, still a marble of space about the size of a fist that distorted visibly to the naked eye.
“Dammit!”
I slammed a fist into the desk, the idol juddered then toppled to the side. I felt the beginnings of tears sting my eyes, and wiped them with my sleeve.
For just a moment I’d thought it would actually work. That all the time and energy I’d poured into Raspe’s stupid bloody project would pay off and I’d have evidence he wasn’t just bullshitting me.
I’d known I was probably being stupid listening to his theories. Magic box that breaks physics, who would believe that nonsense? Same song every snake oil salesman on the planet sings, figured I was getting scammed. But he seemed sincere, and…
And I knew his history, knew what he was like.
I stared at the wall behind the lensing air and the idol. It was just empty brickwork now, bare wall, but before there’d been a little painting of home. His home, not mine, I was from Ruge, Lysian territory to the east.
But he was from Authas, the island fortress. I knew what happened to them during the war too, during the Coil Crusades. They’d been sieged too, albeit from the sea.
He’d nearly starved to death, once, as a child. We had that in common.
The Authas in that painting was all stone walls and stone cliffs and stone streets, there was greenery but it was decorative, trees about as wild as a potted plant. Nothing worth eating grew there, not in bulk. He wanted to fix that. I’d wanted to fix it too.
And then the fucker up and died on me, and he’d taken his box with him.
I took a deep breath. One more time. Picked the idol up, steadied it on its base. One more time, pray very, very hard.
Hands together. Deep breath. Blink the tears out of your eyes. You can do it, Alex.
“Oh mighty… Godbox.” I felt silly, but half of all prayers started like that, right? “Lend me your aid… turn off- no, not even that. Nevermind the gravity distortion, just do… something. Anything. Glow a little. Gods glow when they’re… present in their idols, right? Put out a little energy, do-”
Was it not enough blood? Did it not take blood? Most gods took blood but maybe the box didn’t. Did I need to figure out how to plug electricity into a bloody turtleshell replica without breaking the current or electrocuting myself?
I took the knife and cut open my hand. A shallow cut, along the lines of my palm, but blood flowed into the bowl. It dried slower than the droplets, but it still dried quickly. I grit my teeth to keep from screaming in pain. It was just a shallow cut, but I wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing, it stung like hell, was probably still the worst I’d been hurt in years.
But I’d bleed for this if I had to. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever been hurt. I stared at the spot on the wall where that painting had once been.
I stared for a long time, then back to the idol.
I didn’t know if I was imagining it. For an idle second I wondered if I was delirious from blood loss before realising I hadn’t lost close to enough for that to be plausible. From the pain? I doubted that, too.
I thought it was glowing. Just a little. A faint red glow, almost invisible against the red brick background, but on white ivory? It stood out.
It vanished almost as soon as I saw it. I rubbed my damp eyes and it was gone.
But it had been there. I was sure about that. I hadn’t had enough power to really get it working, not enough sacrifice, not enough belief. But something.
I struggled to call this a successful experiment. It wasn’t all ontological categories broken down, reality torn asunder.
Wasn’t even a lonely pencil floating aimlessly in the air.
But… It was evidence Bishop Irons was on to something. Evidence that the principle was sound. And it meant that more likely than not the box was functional in its own right, not a god-in-the-box, an actual Godbox. No god inside had gone wild of its own accord, no elaborate suicide through a skylight and trapdoor.
There was an actual Godbox out there, taken away by its own powers, teleported. It was real, ran on principles that could be learned and understood.
And it guzzled one hell of a lot of electricity.
Now all I had to do was find it.