Chapter Text
You never knew your human mother.
When your homeland was invaded by the Strangers (as to call them by their empiric name is to give more respect than they bastards deserved) your mother had been pregnant. The other parent was a simple fling, for her true partner was the blue blood troll she loved dearly. They had planned to raise you together, but that was not to be. The native people of the land were deemed lower class to the invaders, and the midwives were executed.
Your mother survived long enough to know you, and to name you. She was a strong and nasty bitch, clinging to life as her health declined, never truly recovering from the difficult birth. You were two by the time she finally passed.
Renku, was the name she gave you.
The mother who raised you was named Joromo, a spiny and spiteful woman, yet playful and strangely kind in her own strange way. She was the matriarch of the small farming settlement, keeping everything running and keeping the Strangers who came to harass and underpay from getting too big for their britches. Her horns were as sharp as her fangs and her hair eternally unkempt no matter how much the nannies tried to clean her up.
One day she pushed too far, snapping back at the samurai when she should have retreated, and the snarling bastard grabbed your mother, as you watched, hiding behind the barrels of rice, choking her. He swung her around then threw her to the ground and stomped down on her head.
She lay there, her raspy breath so loud you could hear it from your hiding place. Her fingers twitch like a half-dead spider. The bastard strangers then left her lying there, and no one dared move, dared to run to drag Joromo to safety to heal. The bastards dared to chuckle, and then…
And then he kicked her .
And with that Joromo convulsed, reaching up to grab the samurai’s leg like a striking scorpion and pulling him down to the ground to join her. Your mother screamed in anger and delight as she wrestled the bastard till he was beneath her, and grabbing his helmet she then used it as a crude weapon, like a large rock she slammed it against his head, again and again until his skull cracked open.
The other stranger tried to protect his comrade only to trip over his own feet, slamming to the ground with the sound of his nose crunching audible even over the continued brutality inflicted on the first bastard. The third, a coward, tried to run, tried to hop up onto his horse only to get tangled in his own saddle and fall, dangling upside down from his ankle, head to the ground. The horse, startled, kicked, and neighed and began to gallop and you imagine the gods must have been merciful as you could not see what caused his wretched screaming and the sound of crunching bones.
It was only the nannies who could drag Joromo away from her deserving victim. Blue blood dripped from her nose as she laughed and laughed and cried. She was broken and bleeding but the other guy was worse.
That evening your mother had sat in the sun room, crossed legged and falsely peaceful, her face bruised and bandaged. Her hand was in a splint, folded under the other.
“Renku, come here.” she called for you. “If I sleep tonight I will not wake up. Come and join me in my meditation.”
You grabbed a mat, unrolling it in front of her, joining her in her meditation. Between you was a bowl of rice, mixed with beetle eggs and fried crickets. Most found the mix to be unpleasant, but your mother loved it and you had joined her in the acquired taste. She handed you a pair of chopsticks, then took her own to take a bite of her meal.
“I must not sleep, but if I sit here doing nothing I will quickly find myself in the dream bubbles.”
You asked her what you should do.
“When the stranger knocked me out, I found myself on the edge of death, and it was there I found enlightenment. Tonight I will not sleep, but I will tell you what truth I found in the veil between the dreaming and the dead.”
All that night she spoke to you of arcane secrets that left you wondering if she had gone well and truly mad. She spoke of deep heresy like none other, of gods and their sins. She spoke of their true names, and their secrets.
She told you the most that night, the Light Thief unable to close her eyes for the Light Thief was herself.
She got more daring and bold after that, challenging the strangers and fighting them back, and more and more the farmers fought for their freedom against the invaders.
As you grew, she taught you all she knew on the gods, holy heresies of unspeakable truths. You were diligent in your study of her scripture and sermons, a worthy student of the fallen goddess. A worthy son to a widowed mother.
Joromo cried at night, every now and then, quiet sobs before the small shine of the dead. She never spited you, or blamed you for the curse your birth inflicted, instead she cursed the strangers who denied and continue to deny your people the care they need and deserve. She vowed that one day her people would see peace and good times once more.
When you came of age the samurai threatened to take you, to make you join their armies. Instead your mother hid you in a barrel and rode out in the night, to the boarding mountains with a familiar defiant sneer. She took you as far as she could, meeting an ally at the border between home and beyond.
She kissed your cheek, whispering words of goodbye in your ears.
“Find then, find the gods. They have grown blind to the world, hiding away in their churches, speaking to no one but each other. They do not know what evils have risen to power on this side of the world. Tell them who your mother is, and that she requests their aid.”
She holds you tight, and you feel her hesitance to let go. “I am no god, not in this body, I have awoken prematurely, without the guidance of my other half. She's a real bitch, that seer. But I love her. You have to find them, and I need to stay here. Even without all my powers and divinity and what-not my people need me, they need a hero, Rinku”
Her dialect had slipped into the strange manner of speaking, so different yet so true. She kissed you once more, on the other cheek, and sent you on your way.
Eight years, you traveled. to the other side of the world and then some. At times you swore you must have looped the globe itself. It was only on the eighth year, that you stumbled into a church, tied and poor, and kneeled before a shrine of nothing and nobody at all.
Eight years you had been a vagabond on the wind, with rarely more than the clothes on your back and the words in your head. The rain had soaked you through and your wallet had once more found itself empty when you stumbled into the church, lightning all that illuminated the darkness. Weak and hungry you pull yourself up onto the altar, and enclave in the back wall. You curled yourself into the shelf, and wondered if your quest was for none.
You missed your mother.
In the dawn you awoke in a bedroom fit for a princess. You had always found the large wooden beds of the western cultures unnecessarily large and cumbersome, yet now you snuggled beneath the thick quits you understood their worth. The country was cold and snowbound, and a fire crackled in a hearth and it was all that lit the room.
“Something about you, kiddo, caught my attention.” says a woman, dressed in thick robes of midnight blue and the softest pinks. Her hair is bound into white braids, and her eyes shone brighter than roseglass.
“Night’s Rogue.” you whispered.
“Smart one, aren't you.” the Rogue giggled. “Are you a seer, or perhaps a prophet? My daughter’s followers tend to know more than they should.”
You let yourself out of bed, and sit beside the Rogue, hesitant but unwavering. “I've been seeking the gods for some time now,” you told her. “My country has been invaded, and seeks intervention against those who step on our necks and crack our skulls.”
“Oh kid.” she places a hand on your own. “I'm sorry, I really am, but you don't want the gods getting involved in mortal politics. We will only make everything worse.”
“So you will stand by and let my people die.” your voice cracks.
“As long as you stay here you'll have all the comforts anyone could ask for. This castle is a safe haven. Come on, let's get you cleaned up properly now that you're awake enough to not drown in the bath.”
The goddess herself leads you to the bathroom, filling the bath with warm water and handing you fancy soaps to clean with. Such luxuries feel stolen despite how openly they are given, as you scrub the sweet smelling shampoos into your hair. Rogue rinses you down with warm water from an amphora, giggling as you sputter.
“What is your name?” she asked you, as you dried, the thick cotton towels like golden fleece against your skin.
“Renku.”
“That's cute, that's a cute name.”
She dresses you in robes not unlike her own, a true invitation to her castle, her church, her abby. Her hands on your cheeks you feel a comfort that you had long been denied by your travels, the comfort of home. You close your eyes, and let her kiss your forehead.
The abby is a strange place, named for the blasimous tragicomic. You join the nuns and wizards, the routine of the day comes easily and gentle. The cats roam the hallways as they please, eating mice and spiders.
Each turn of the zodiac season you would return to the rogue, and ask her to end the war that plagues your homeland.
“We will just make it worse, stay here and be comfortable.” she tells you each time you stand before her.
You stop asking.
You join the nuns, and take up apprenticeship as a midwife. You tell them the story of your mother’s death, denied the care she needed. You speak rarely of your other mother, for reasons you do not know. You can't bring yourself to think of her.
“You won't find a drop of alcohol in this church.” says the Rogue, pouring you a drink of juice made from peach and mango. The crystal glass glitters in the moonlight. “Getting drunk around here is just asking him to mess around in your head.”
“Who?”
“My step father,” she says like it’s obvious. “He sleeps in the basement. He has no interest in humoring our bullshit up here in the waking so he stays in bed between dreaming and dead. I keep his organs safe in magic jars so that no bubbling fools wake him up before he's good and ready.”
You take a sip, tasting the sweet icor that is almost sour in your throat, but not unpleasantly so.
You find strange peace in your time at the church, a rhythm of comfort among those who serve the flighty goddess of night and void. In the evenings the goddess herself joins you for cheese and fruit punch and you mix rice with fish eggs and fried ants. The resulting meal tastes like home, but not the regret of leaving it. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself.
After three years you had stopped thinking of home, and stopped asking the Rogue for what she would not give.
Your mother tongue feels heavy in your mouth, unspoken and fading in favor of the new. You learn the strange scripts, reading from tomes of poem and scripture.
Perhaps in your absence, the conflict has resolved itself. You are but one man, how vain it would be to believe you alone are some sort of kingpin in the tide of an entire war. So you stay in your new home, and make what you do of your new life.