'Aesma and the Red Eyed King' Series - All Liturgies

“I can’t stand it!” howled Aesma, “Your elegies are dull! Your saints are all liars. Your youth are pallid and weak, and your wine tastes like piss. One cannot as much fart in here without being preached at.”

“Out, demon!” said the Hierophant, and brandished his stave of authority. A score of priests stood beside him, robed in their aprons and strewn about with their golden chains. The light of good and righteousness sharpened their noble features and rugged eyes.

“Were violence not forbidden in this most holy temple, we would have thee out by the stave,” boomed the head priest. “I pity thee, crawling thing, for thy black heart is all shriveled and malnourished without the guidance of moral authority!”

“At least I’m not being sucked on by old men!” spat Aesma at the holy congregation. She then pulled down her loincloth and mooned them, to great dismay. Then the staves came out after all, and she was thrown out of the temple in a short order.

“Get thee a husband,” said the exasperated priest, and slammed the door shut.

Aesma thought this was not a bad idea at all. Husbands were rumored to be better than dogs. She set off.

-Excerpt from ‘Aesma and the Red Eyed King’

Aesma and the Red Eyed King

Part 1

Once, and always, there was Aesma Ten Yondam, who was a very powerful goddess. She had anywhere from two to forty five arms, she was exceptionally strong, and had an insatiable red hunger for dominion. She knew five ways of smiling, ten of the forty five forms, and all the syllables of Royalty, though she understood none of them. In her blackened heart she let many wicked schemes and plans ripen and kindled an endless rage against the inadequacy of the universe, which made her one of YISUN’s favored companions. She was poor at Patkun, could not tolerate pedantry, and her ribald jokes and raucous behavior frequently got her thrown out of YISUN’s speaking house.
On one such occasion, Aesma was thrown out long before she could get at the wine. Her wailing and pounding at the doors of the speaking house drew nearly two score of pilgrim-saints, who were passing on the King’s road. When they approached to inquire about her distress, she engaged them in a ferocious battle that lasted the better part of five hours, as was her custom. The battle was so fierce that it cracked two roaming moons and threw part of one into a primal sea, which boiled away to steam.

“That’s better,” sighed Aesma, when the dust had settled and the sea had finished boiling. “Hey,” said Aesma to the battered and bloodied pilgrims as an idea struck her, “Where can I get some wine about here?”
“Foul creature! If it’s nourishment thou seeks, get thee the great and holy Temple of the Disc of the Sun,” croaked a furious pilgrim. “Drink thee of the consecrated wine there, not thy common lecher’s milk, and purify thy fetid soul!” Aesma was grateful, and turned the man into an exceptionally large golden fish as way of saying thank you, for she was fond of well-colored fish. She grabbed a strand of frozen light and broke it into the shape of a door. This was an old and popular trick which the god Un-Kaon had taught her in return for Aesma stealing sweets, for Kaon had a terrible sweet tooth. It was called Division, for it was a cutting art, of which there are thirty and one.
Aesma leapt out of her skin and through the door, and then back into her skin, which was waiting on the other side, through a tangle of twisted planes of space. As she emerged, the temple of which the man spoke lay directly ahead of her. It was a grand and stately building, with sandy white columns, and the Holy Sun Disc enshrined there was visible for fifty or sixty leagues about, so bright it was.
The priests offered libations and chants to the great altar of the Sun there, and payed homage to the stars, and studied in minute detail the nature of a man’s soul. Each was a scientist and philosopher of clean and manly visage, who wore a neatly pressed apron. He discarded ostentation and valued virtue above all else. Members of the temple spent many hours contemplating the proper roles for women and men, the just ways of proper rulership, and the ways in which a man’s perfect qualities could be compounded in his body as in his mind. They had there a great golden scale, with which the head priest measured the weight of a man’s vice against his virtue. It was a place of great influence on the enlightened thinking of the time, a temple of grand seriousness and moral import.
For this reason, of course, Aesma immediately hated it. She lasted about thirty minutes in the public service. “I can’t stand it!” howled Aesma, “Your elegies are dull! Your saints are all liars. Your youth are pallid and weak, and your wine tastes like piss. One cannot as much fart in here without being preached at.”
“Out, demon!” said the Hierophant, and brandished his stave of authority. A score of priests stood beside him, robed in their aprons and strewn about with their golden chains. The light of good and righteousness sharpened their noble features and rugged eyes.
“Were violence not forbidden in this most holy temple, we would have thee out by the stave,” boomed the head priest. “I pity thee, crawling thing, for thy black heart is all shriveled and malnourished without the guidance of moral authority!”
“At least I’m not being sucked on by old men!” spat Aesma at the holy congregation. She then pulled down her loincloth and mooned them, to great dismay. Then the staves came out after all, and she was thrown out of the temple in a short order.
“Get thee a husband!” said the exasperated priest, and slammed the door shut. Aesma thought this was not a bad idea at all. Husbands were rumored to be better than dogs. She set off, her quest for wine quite forgotten.
Aesma looked far and wide for a husband. She broke a sunbeam fifty times by Division and split her mind into fifty shards and hurled those shards, molten, through the gaps therein. This was a trick she stole from Ovis by watching her bathe. Each shard grew into a splinter-clone of Aesma’s evil body, and did great mischief as it ravaged the earth, befouled the land, frightened the populace, and scoured the nations of the universe for husbands. But after five hours had passed this way, Aesma grew frustrated and annihilated all her extraneous selfs in godsfire. It took some effort, for their accomplishments in such a short time had been exceedingly high, and one had even installed herself as queen.

Exasperated, she resolved to ask the God Un-Ogam, who she often came to with difficult questions. Ogam was in his White Aspect, and thus a little more contemplative. However, he was a ferocious god of battle, and not a philosopher, and thus rarely gave good answers. Aesma liked visiting him anyway, as he was older than her and loved to spar. So Aesma rode her chariot to the gore-soaked battlefield where Ogam was doing battle with a dozen minor gods of justice, and landed it amidst the melee “Ogam!” shouted Aesma, “Find me a husband! Surely you have a slave that will do?” Ogam couldn’t hear Aesma at first, as he was in a berserk rage, bending the great stave of the bird-headed god of Law UN-Ghum in half. When the stave snapped, Ogam hurled Ghum into the sun and calmed down a little. He and Aesma were very close friends.
“I have many slaves,” said Ogam to Aesma, “but none will do for you, little sister. None are your equal. Come back later, and I will find you a great, roaring god for your spouse, hung like a bull and with muscles like an elephant!”
Aesma was discontent, and smacked Ogam in the forehead. Ogam hardly noticed, as his skull was thicker than a fortress wall. This was one of his excellent qualities, in Aesma’s view. “I’ve waited enough!” fumed Aesma, “Why, just now I was preached at just for wanting a drop of wine! If you can’t find me an equal, tell me, who is my equal?”

Aesma and the Red Eyed King

Part 2

Ogam was perplexed, but he was saved when Boratus of the Silver Scales smashed into him with his six-wheeled chariot and knocked him off his feet, sparing him an answer. The other ten gods of justice leapt upon Ogam at once with their clubs and staves and holy rods, and began to beat him savagely. Aesma found this uproariously funny.
“You, wicked one!” said Ys-Perator the Crown of Truth, “How can you stand there and cackle? Begone. We are punishing the tyrant Ogam for his drunken transgressions with the Mistress of the Petal Tower.”
“You’re doing a terrible job of it,” pointed out Aesma, snorting with laughter. It was true. Ogam had grown ten stories tall, so that the strikes of the gods of justice were like matchsticks upon his mighty hide. The gods scramble to pin him down with shards of moonlight, but before they could impale him he grew a score of arms and plucked them by their cloaks and rained blows upon them that would have pulverized normal men into gruel.
Perator gripped her stave with white knuckles and gave Aesma a scornful look. “Well, go off then. Don’t you have better things to do?” she growled. She was of half a mind to drive Aesma off with the rod, as she had done many times before.
“Not until Ogam tells me who my equal is!” protested Aesma.
“Fool!” said Perator, “Anyone would be hard pressed to find your equal in wickedness. There are none with such a soul stained with evil save the Red Eyed King who is kept in the Crucible of Punishment, and he is singular in his accomplishments!” Perator realized her mistake a moment too late, for Aesma had already leapt into her chariot and taken to the skies.
The Crucible of Punishment was a terrible place. Once, the old god Muam was discontent with the angle of the sun upon his mountain lean-to. To this end, he made an arduous journey to the end of the universe, where he found one of the ancient trees that held up its corners, and stripped one of its branches into a mighty pole two and a half billion leagues long. He trudged all the way from the edge back to the center, where he thrust the pole deep into the earth, and using it as an axle, turned the world by five degrees, and was content.
The world-axle was withdrawn, but the hole it left remained. And halfway down that hole, was the Crucible, which was steeped in perpetual Chthonic gloom. It was a mighty fortress, an iron vessel full to the brim of the worst and most despicable beings to defile the earth, and for this reason it was kept deep and out of sight of the innocent. The Crucible was lashed to the walls of the hole by great chains large enough for a man to walk on, and it had one hundred and five watchers – powerful saints of justice clad in white funeral robes. Each saint had dipped their eyes in quicksilver, rendering them blind to worldly concerns, but able to keenly discern the impurities within the souls of any visitor. It was for this reason that when Aesma arrived, all one hundred and five scrambled with great speed from their watch towers and arranged themselves in battle formation.
At first the saints were aghast, for they perceived very clearly that a being of tremendous evil was upon them, and wondered for a second if one of their prisoners had in fact escaped. But then they recognized Aesma, and a collective groan went up among them.
“I’m here for the Red Eyed King!” proclaimed Aesma.
“The King shall ne’er see the lands above again,” said one of the saints. “He has proclaimed his enmity against the forces of good in clear terms. He is a sun swallower and a world destroyer, a tyrant and a demon of pure malevolence.”
“He sounds dreamy,” said Aesma, “when can I see him?”
The saints narrowed their silver eyes and set their spears as a thicket of blades against Aesma, for they knew her well. “Never!” they said in unison.
“Great saints!” wheedled Aesma, “Please, have pity on a poor and desperate girl! I merely want to lay eyes upon this wicked king. Surely there must be some task I can accomplish to prove my worth to you?”
With great reluctance, the saints raised their spears a fraction of an inch, for there was an air of true desperation in Aesma’s voice. They entered into a hushed and grim discussion, for there was among them a general belief in redemption, no matter how small the chances. It was considered among many of the great gods of justice that Aesma was in fact an idiot, and shouldn’t be blamed for her wide and colorful list of transgressions against the common good.
“Very well,” said one of the saints, “Here are your tasks. First, you will find the names of forty two men who truly have not sinned. For if you do not have the discerning eye to find purity amongst the decay of this world, then you do not have the means to pass through these halls with true intent.”
“Ok,” said Aesma.
“Then you must bring us the heart of a leviathan, which is only given to those righteous of purpose.”
“Ok,” said Aesma.
“You must know,” continued the saint, “You can not cut out the heart, or bring it by violence alone. It must be living, and we must see proof of its offering. Even the greatest of questing knights have been turned aside by one of the mighty beasts, for the smallest of evils.”
“Next, you will travel to the holy mountain of Saboth-Ur, where the monks of the Empty Voice keep the silence. For a year and a day you must dwell on that mountain and utter not a word. You must discard your possessions and go about naked as the day you were born, but rid yourself of all lustful ambitions and aspirations of the flesh. You must cast aside your battle consciousnesses and ancillary violence forms. You must rid yourself of the poetry of destruction, break your weapons, and purge the breath of death from within your lungs. Bring us then a token from the abbot there that proves you have undergone these trials. With the heart and token both, we will let you in to lay eyes upon the wicked King.”
“This sounds too complicated,” protested Aesma, “Let’s fight instead.”
So they did, to their great dismay. The battle lasted a day and a half. So much of Aesma’s molten blood was spattered above that it melted through three of the iron chains that held the Crucible in place and caused it to tilt. Later this would cause the Crucible to swing against the wall of the pit and crack, releasing a hundred and fifty of the world’s most evil beings onto the surface, who caused so much trouble that it took several wars and the participation of no less than twelve supreme gods of battle to recapture them.
The saints were very powerful, and were able to slay at least five of Aesma’s war forms, but by the end of the fight, Aesma had hurled all of them into the pit, where they fell for seven hundred years before hitting the bottom and starting their arduous trek back up. She plucked the spears from her flesh and caved in the iron gate of the crucible and limped into its cramped and labyrinthine interior. There, inside, in the deepest pit, she beheld a tiny prison cage with bars made of red hot iron, so that they constantly burned their inhabitant. And kept inside that cruel cage, with charcoal-like flesh smoking, was the Red Eyed King.
He was truly, as Aesma saw, a being of quite singular evil. Though his skin was black from the fire, and cracked and red-raw from his prison, he did not flinch a bit from his torture. Tendrils of dark and oily vapor rose from his charred body, and he had the cruel face of a tyrant. But by far his most notable feature were his eyes, which burned with an insane and hungry red light. As Aesma saw his eyes, she saw instantly that they were sparks of an awful dark flame that would grow to consume the world if they were given kindling.
They were pinpricks of the light of destruction that would shine at the end of the universe. It was for this reason that Aesma instantly fell in love with him.

Aesma and the Red Eyed King

Part 3

This was a massive problem for Aesma, for she had never before felt love of any capacity, so at first she thought she had fallen violently sick.

“Stop that at once!” she gasped, clutching her chest, “You are using some foul art to explode my heart!”

“What misbegotten wretch are you?” said the Red Eyed King. He had a voice like drifting ash and it was said the moment you heard it you would not forget it for the rest of your life. It could reduce a normal man to a babbling, terror stricken mess. Aesma merely fell in love a little more.

“You!” she screamed, panting and sweating, “I demand you become my husband!” There was no response from the Red Eyed King, and Aesma was taken aback. For most of her problems she had solved quite easily by beating them to a pulp, and her usual approach didn’t seem to apply in this case. She was thoroughly stuck.

“I’ll beat you to a pulp!” she said, hesitantly.

“An odd threat to make to a man in a cage,” said the Red Eyed King, “I refuse.”

Aesma’s heart jumped again, and to her immense surprise, her face screwed up in a tight and pained expression of grief, and molten tears began to pour from her eyes in great rivulets, searing the iron floors.

“What are you doing to me?” she wailed in confusion.

“Nothing,” said the Red Eyed King, perplexed.

Aesma did not hear, for she ran, blubbering and wailing from the deepest pit of the Crucible to its exterior, her tears burning holes in the floor the entire way. And once she was outside, through her steaming eyes she groped for and found the tiniest particle of matter she could and smashed that particle into an explosion so violent it sent plumes of white fire shooting up and down the shaft, and hurled her up and out of the pit, where she grabbed a passing shaft of sunlight and broke it into a door she could travel through. When she hurtled through that door, the light in her destination was clear and unwavering, for she had returned to the only place that knew anything about husbands in her esteem, the Temple of the Disc of the Sun.

When Aesma landed, she ran right up the temple steps, leaking molten fire from her eyes, and knocked on the great temple doors so hastily that she bashed them right off their hinges. They flew right through the mid-day congregation, sending worshippers flying and completely demolishing the large and stately Altar of Philosophy. In any other time Aesma would have found this hilarious, but the matter of her leaking face and jumping heart terrified her, so when the hundred manly priests of the temple came to beat her away with their staves, they found her apologizing profusely and were thrown into great confusion.

“What’s wrong with me?” wailed Aesma.

The priests had a hurried and argumentative conference, and then the Hierophant said, “You appear to be suffering from a broken heart.”

“I think I will die!” said Aesma.

“I assure you, you will not,” said the Hierophant, with very little sympathy. “How did you come by this condition?”

“I found a husband, as you asked,” said Aesma, “but he will not take me!”

A great discordant cry went up then among the priests, and they threw themselves into furious debate. Some of them wanted Aesma out by the stave immediately, no matter the truth of her words. Others could not believe that such a wicked being could find love. But the sentiment that won out in the end was the rather self indulgent and completely wrong notion that if Aesma had indeed found a husband, she would be far better served by having a man to reign in her wanton and vile habits. The priests were very firm in their belief that the moral authority of a good husband could tease out an enlightened womanly virtue from even the most wretched of creatures, and therefore they ceased to see Aesma as a base and vile creature beyond redemption, and began to see her as a great conquest and affirmation of their own righteousness. They began to imagine in their enlightened minds the power and prestige of a tame and demure Aesma, the most infamous and despised of goddesses. This was a fantastic mistake.

“Aesma Ten Yondam,” said the Hierophant, “Do you truly desire a husband? Have you found such a man, with a nature to guard against your womanly vice? The priests of this good and holy temple can hardly believe that you have.”

“I have!” protested Aesma, and wiped her eyes clean of fire, “What should I do?”

“You must promise to submit to his superior will,” said the stern Hierophant. “It is accepted in this society that a woman should do three things for her husband: tend to his meals, darn his clothing, and obey his every command without question. In return he will be your protector, guide, and counselor, and will not lift his hand against you in violence. Go to your prospective husband and promise him these things, and he will surely take you as a wife.”

Aesma was very tempted to beat up the Hierophant, for she hated commandments, and she hated things that came in threes. But for once in her life, her desperate desire for a husband overrode her natural instinct to apply violence directly to her problems. This was very uncomfortable for her, but Aesma’s desire was the strongest among all divinities, for she was the Master of Want. So while the priests saw her twitch at their commandments and readied their staves in fear, Aesma merely knelt and bowed her head quite awkwardly, for she was unused to such things. “I will do as you say,” she said, and in quavering voice recounted the things the Hierophant had said to her.

The priests were ecstatic. “Go and bring your husband here,” they said, “And we will join you in holy matrimony, under the light of the great Sun Disc.” They were very firm in their belief that a great moral victory had been won, and saw Aesma off with great pride and vigor as she grabbed a passing sunbeam and rode it all the way back to the Crucible of Punishment.

Aesma and the Red Eyed King

Part 4

Aesma was in such a great rush when she arrived at the battered iron gates of the Crucible that she made a very ungainly landing and sent the whole fortress swaying side to side. She rushed through its dreary halls, thick with the howling of the evil beings imprisoned within, and arrived with great haste at the tiny red-hot cage of the Red Eyed King.
“I’ve come back!” gasped Aesma, out of breath.

“What are you doing?” said the Red-Eyed King, for indeed he saw Aesma was trying to accomplish something that she seemed to greatly struggle with.

“I’m trying to prostrate myself,” said Aesma. It took her the better part of the morning, and even then she could only manage it for five seconds at a time. But in those five seconds she said this: “I promise you that if I become your wife, I will tend to your meals, and darn your clothing, and obey your every command without question. In return, you must be my protector, guide, and counselor, and you must not lift your hand against me in violence.”

The King mulled this offer over, and saw that there were many fine things for him to exploit, for his wicked mind was as twisted as Aesma’s, and he too could bend the world into shapes to his choosing. This was the source of his power.

“I accept,” he said, and his evil red eyes burned every brighter. Aesma could barely contain herself, and jumped for joy, which only sent the entire fortress swaying and shaking more violently. “What should I do, oh husband of mine?” said Aesma. “Let me out of this cage,” said the Red Eyed King. So Aesma struck the cage with all her might, and bent the bars asunder with a shower of sparks. The bars were very hard and white hot, and Aesma was burned quite badly, but Aesma was so love-struck she hardly noticed.

“Ah, I am so weak,” whispered the Red Eyed King as Aesma carried him out of the cage. And Aesma saw that this was true, for the King’s form was charred and pitifully thin from his confinement, so that he could barely stand. She cradled him and fussed over him. “Oh what I can I do for thee, my husband?” she said, desperate for his affection. “Please make for me my favorite meal,” said the Red Eyed King.

“Your favorite meal?” said Aesma, who hadn’t anticipated ever having to actually cook.

“Yes,” said the Red Eyed King, and his eyes flashed with an evil glare. “It is a plum from YISUN’s private garden. I used to eat them all the time when I was free, and I crave their sweetness now. If it is thy wish to be my wife, then that is the succor I crave.”

“Oh, that’s easy!” said Aesma, who was privately very relieved she wouldn’t have to cook, and didn’t give one thought to what the king had asked for. For the plums of YISUN’s garden could grant eternal life, and their juices nourished the flame of the body to an immense, roaring brightness, so that any who ate one would be almost impermeable to harm. Aesma dropped the Red Eyed King with very little ceremony and leapt to it, and very shortly she had returned with a glistening plum from YISUN’s garden, plump and ripe. Normally the garden was guarded by a red ten-antlered buck, who was resolute in his duty, exceedingly calm, and the most powerful fighter in the universe, for the wide trunks of the plum trees were littered with the bones of his foes. But when Aesma had arrived there and asked for a plum to please her husband, the buck had been so taken aback by the notion of Aesma submitting to marriage that he was completely stunned for a whole three seconds, which was more than enough time for Aesma to snatch a plum and leap out.

“Ah, excellent,” said the Red Eyed King, “Now feed it to me, wife.” And Aesma did, bit by bit. And bit by bit, the Red Eyed King fleshed out, and the char and scabs fell away from his flesh, and his wounds sealed, and he grew more and more in stature until he stood three times Aesma’s height. And Aesma saw that he was a tyrant king with night-blue skin and a wild mane of hair like a tangle of shadows, and great fangs and tusks jutting from his black lips. His nails were wicked claws, his arms were like corded iron, and his hands were large so as to easily snap men’s necks. For this reason Aesma fell in love just a little bit more.

“Oh but husband,” said Aesma, blushing and giggling, “You are quite naked.” She was thoroughly enjoying being a wife so far.

“Yes,” boomed the King, and gave a mighty evil laugh. “Wife, attend me!”

“Oh what can I do for thee, my husband?” said Aesma. “Mend my clothing!” commanded the Red Eyed King, “I had one time a hauberk made from the scales of the Ur-serpent that coils beneath the ash of the world. The feathers of the screaming Roc I took for my mantle, my shield was of the tail-hide of the Leviathan that haunts the deep, and my sword was carved from the bone that is found in the heart of a World Tree.” This was all a fantastic lie, of course, for the King had never had such fine or rare clothing. And if he had been girded in such armament, so empowered by the plum he had eaten, the Gods of justice would never have had any hope at all of defeating him in battle. He would have laid such waste to the universe had never been seen before, and burnt it to a cinder, so that his red eyes could lay their baleful gaze on only smoldering ashes. This was his one and true desire, for like Aesma, he was an idiot and did not understand the true nature of Royalty.

Aesma, of course, did not detect his hidden intentions, for she was smitten with love. “At once, my husband!” she said, almost tearful in her joy, and strode off to gather what she could. She was so focused in her matrimonial bliss that she scarcely gave any thought to the monumental scale of the tasks she was accomplishing. First she dug until she found and tugged upon the tail of the mighty Ur-Serpent, whose body was thicker around than a city. Yanking it from the earth, she wrestled with it for three days, during which she bashed enough scales from its body for her purpose. Then she dove into the black and limitless ocean, and swam until she found the leathery and ancient Leviathan of the deep. Aesma was very bad at fighting underwater, and couldn’t hold her breath for very long, so the battle went very poorly for her at first. But very shortly, she became so fed up that she summoned a score of transcendental fist arts and rained such horrific blows upon the water around her that she beat it back for a full day, turning the bottom of the ocean into dry land for a short while. The Leviathan was very slow on land, so Aesma bludgeoned it into unconsciousness and stole it’s tail while it slept.

Next Aesma tracked the Roc, and clung to its back for a full week while it pecked her viciously, but she was able to pluck enough feathers to make a fine mantle. Then she rode her chariot to the edge of the universe, and fought through the howling winds, the scouring cold, and the limitless demons that poured in from the edge of existence there. And after a harrowing journey, she was able to hack out a heart-slice of the fourth World Tree that held up creation using a vorpal shard of void-ice. The tree was mighty enough to withstand its mutilation, and it recovered in time. But until that time it was injured enough to bow, just a little, so for a while an entire corner of the universe sagged quite terribly. This caused great consternation in YISUN’s speaking house and among the multitudes of star-gazers, astronomers, sorcerers, and techno-saints that measured such things, but Aesma was scarcely aware of this. In a fervor, she fled to Koss’s workshop and stole his lesser chisel when he wasn’t looking. Then she crouched over a public hearth for a full week and banged her husband’s armaments into shape.

When Aesma returned, she was truly a terrible sight. Her skin was puckered and swollen from the venom of the world serpent, she was frost burned from her trip to the edge of the world, and she was bitten and punctured all over from her great battle. But she was beaming, for she was still terribly lovesick, and in her arms she had a great hauberk of shimmering dark scales, a glorious feather-mantle, a mighty hide shield, and a white and curved sword carved from the iron-hard heartwood of the world tree.

“Here is your armament, O husband,” she said, out of breath and beaming with joy. “This is a sword that will cut thirty six ways at once!”

The king was greatly pleased at the gullibility of this poor fool, and he donned his impermeable garb.

“Oh what else can I do for thee, my husband?” said Aesma, totally consumed with love.

“I am not thy husband yet,” said the satisfied King. “I think it is time for my return to the surface world. Who are the sorry fools that sent thee?”

“Oh yes, I almost forgot!” said Aesma, prancing about in joy, “Will you return to the Temple of the Disc of the Sun with me and join me in marriage? We can have a massive wedding ceremony and I’ll invite everyone in YISUN’s speaking house to attend.  No, everyone in creation! We can have drinking, and dancing, and fighting, and fighting and dancing, and afterwards I can build us a great big house and we can have lots of magnificent and gigantic children!”

“Yes, let us attend this ceremony,” said the King. “Make of thee a beast I can mount and we will be there promptly.” And Aesma did. She turned herself into a massive black beast with wings of the darkling sky and talons the size of a man. And the king sat astride her back and rode her out of the pit, his red eyes flashing the entire way.

Aesma and the Red Eyed King

Final Part

So it was that the Red Eyed King rode Aesma through star-winds and yawning gulfs of space-time to where the Temple of the Disc of the Sun stood glowing in its stately majesty. And when Aesma landed with the King astride her back, the priests from the temple marched out from between its columns in graceful stride. Their aprons were neatly pressed, and their collars were starched and spotless, and their gleaming rods of office rapped out a pleasing synchronous pattern as they came down the temple steps. For indeed, the priests were expecting Aesma. Their hearts were full of the pride of their victory, and anticipation to see what manner of man had conquered Aesma the Wicked so thoroughly. Already they had spread the word of Aesma’s forthcoming wedding widely across the world, and it had become table talk across all creation in short order. The temple at that time was for that very reason bustling with activity. Worshippers, gossips, and philosophers alike had all come to see the triumph of order, reason, and light over womanly discord, darkness, and wantonness.

But as the priests descended into the temple courtyard, they beheld that the throng gathered there around the new arrivals was recoiling in horror. There was no proud and virtuous man standing there, for as the King dismounted, and as he stood to his full monstrous height, the priests beheld that he he had a pure and perfect aspect of a destroyer. And at once, all their notions of victory melted away, for victory itself is of course a ridiculous notion.

“What is the meaning of this?” boomed the Hierophant.

Aesma made of herself a woman-shape again, and dusted herself off. “I have done as you said, oh great teacher!” she said, throwing herself to the dirt in joy. “It is so grand and great to be submissive! I have brought my husband meals, and darned his clothing, and he has even mounted me across the stars.” She blushed and looked demure as well as she could, which was to say quite terribly. “Now I am here to be joined in holy matrimony, and to submit to the will of my husband, as you have asked of me!”

“What has overcome you?” said the Hierophant, aghast.

“It’s love, I think!” said Aesma, “Isn’t it wonderful?”

The priests racked their staves against the King, and charged with a mighty battle cry. But the king swept up his shield, which was a thousand times heavier than stone, and their attack was dashed against it like water breaking on a cliff.

“I must thank you for inspiring this poor fool to free me from my long imprisonment,” said the King, in his voice like drifting ash. Aesma was too dazed to notice being called a fool and merely gazed upon the King through tears of admiration.

“Now that I’m free,” said the King, “These eyes of mine see a world even more putrid and insipid than in ages past. I ache for its destruction, and since I only deal in fire, fire shall by thy reward.” The king pulled his Roc-feather mantle tight about him, and drew into him all the dread powers and venoms of the night. He invoked his war forms of which he had ninety and two, enclothed himself in roiling smoke, and crowned himself with cinders. Planting his feet, he grew to such monstrous size that his flame-circled brow seared the clouds, and the earth shook and shuddered with his mighty inhalations. The crowd at the temple scattered before his majesty, and black clouds obscured the light of the Great Sun Disc as the king reached out with taloned hand and crushed it into a thousand splinters. The light and power of the Disc was exceptionally potent – a great beacon of strength and wisdom that had drawn in pilgrims from distant empires to bathe in its majesty. For this reason it seared the king just a little when he crushed it with his hand, but then its light was snuffed and it fell in shards to the earth. As an oily night fell upon the land about, the virtuous and manly priests of the Temple knew immediately that they had made a terrible mistake.

“Wife,” roared the king, in a voice that seared the mountain tops far away, “Bring my mine sword!”

And Aesma brought the king his massive sword of bone, that could cut thirty six ways at once, and he enwreathed himself in a dread black fire that could burn up the land, and immediately set about his rampage. First, he smashed aside the priests and roaming saints that came up to defend the temple, for their staves and starched aprons could do naught but turn to char beneath his onslaught. He toppled the white and stately columns of the Temple and he burned the altars to cinders with the mere heat from his body. Most of the crowd and congregation was slaughtered and torn to bits from the gale of his passing, and the Temple was consumed by hellish flame.

So satisfied with his work, the King turned his red gaze away from the temple, and found all the land about unspoiled and pure, which offended him greatly. He took five great strides across the land, and each stride burned a forest up and smashed its trees to matchsticks. On his fifth stride, he found the great domain of the king Mavamatri Io, which was a shining white city that had long revered the great Sun Disc, with orderly avenues and leafy boulevards of gilded paving stones. As they saw the King approach, the city guard blew the great horn of defense, and to its clarion call rallied five thousand men at arms in armor made from gleaming fish scales, whose chariots were drawn by horses shod in silver. The warriors of that city could draw a bow heavier than any man in five hundred kingdoms, and they were brave and righteous men, bearded and muscled from toil and training. They loosed upon the King their shafts, but once again he drew up his bulwark and dashed the rain of arrows into a pitiful shower.

The King struck out with his sword that cut thirty six ways, and it cut the air with a fierce and awful wind that blew the walls of the city asunder and killed seven hundred men at once. And in very short order, the King’s red gaze beheld only ashes were the great city had stood, and he was pleased. Aesma, for her part, was so lovesick that she could only sit in stunned admiration in the smoking ruins of the temple and watch as her would-be husband lay waste to the land about. But very shortly, it occurred to her that the marriage ceremony would still have to take place, so she staggered to her feet and skipped after the King, following the wake of his destruction.
And indeed, that wake grew very large indeed. On the first day of his rampage, the King razed ten cities to the ground, and slew a score of demigods. On the third, he had razed thirty five cities, and slew a hundred and thirty two demigods, and thrown twenty temples into ruin. And by the seventh day, he had razed ninety five cities, slew five hundred and sixty demigods, boiled seven seas to dust, burned the College of Stars to the ground, set alight the Ulaptis river, and slaughtered the god Un-Utram in single combat. And each day, Aesma would follow along, giddy with love, mend his battle-worn armament, sing his praises. But as the sun grew low and the only light was from the cities burning to the ground around the King, Aesma would tug at his ankle and say, “Oh husband of mine, will you come back to the temple with me? Have you forgotten our ceremony?”

This grew extremely vexing to the King, who truly cared little for Aesma and could harbor nothing so infinitely complex as love in his small and dull heart. And by fits and starts, the King made the exact same mistake as the priests of the Temple. He began to relish in his conquest, and he grew assured in his victory, for the swathe of carnage and devastation that the King had carved was visible even from YISUN’s speaking house, and it’s smoke was so thick that it blotted out the sun for near half of creation. Grand and imperious armies rallied against the King, and were dashed to pieces upon his armor, and everywhere he went he left a sea of dying men and horses. Even the meta-dimensional halls and transcendent planar-estates of the Gods began to pay attention to the King, and rallied their celestial hosts. War gods girded their loins and clad themselves in steaming armor and summoned their sword arts for battle. The Great Gods of Justice summoned the minor Gods of Justice from where they were harassing Ogam, and together they shouldered their spears and clothed themselves in molten law, and marched for the battlefield.

But even the Gods themselves could do little but slow down the King’s ferocious rampage. For battle as they might, they were unable to strike a single wound against the King, who was encased in his invulnerable armament. And the King did not sleep or tire, for his hatred of creation and his burning rage against the insipid beauty of the universe gave him the awful power of Want, which filled his limbs with unstoppable force. He shattered the smoking spears of the Gods of Justice, and threw down the Gods of Law with a strike from his shield, and did battle with Sivran, God of Conquest, for seven and one days before Sivran retired to his palanquin from exhaustion.

So indeed, the King’s victory seemed assured. And it was there at the height of his conquest that he decided to rid himself of Aesma.

“Oh husband of mine, won’t you come back to the temple with me?” said lovestruck Aesma, for the twentieth time. The King looked at her with his terrible red eyes and said, “Get thee gone, gnat! Thou hast served thy purpose, now play in the ashes a while!” And he took his sword that could cut thirty six ways and smote Aesma with a blow so mighty that it sent her hurtling across the world and blew all the love clean out of her. When Aesma landed, she was pouring tears again. She staggered around, sobbing, until she found herself trudging through the ashes of the Temple of the Disc of the Sun. By this point she had been crying for a good day and a half, so her eyes were very sore and blurry with fiery tears. But she could see just well enough that she made out the sorry and filthy figure of the Hierophant of the Temple, who was poking through the smoking mess that had been the mighty congregation hall with what remained of his staff of office.

“Oh teacher!” sobbed Aesma, and shook the poor Hierophant from side to side, “I did what you asked! I followed all the rules of your temple! Is it because I’m too wicked that I must be punished so?”

“You awful, wretched creature!” shrieked the Hierophant in rage, “Look at what your foolishness has wrought! Get up and set this right at once!”

“Oh I was struck by my husband,” said Aesma, “And now my heart is aflame with pain!” And she sobbed and rolled around in self-pity, covering herself in ashes and moaning. The immediately Hierophant saw that he had made a second, and far greater mistake than getting Aesma to marry in the first place. By trying to tame Aesma, he had inadvertently removed one of the only weapons that could be relied on to trounce pompous fools such as the Red Eyed King with any degree of reliability.

“Get up!” sputtered the Hierophant, “You have to fight!”

“Oh but that’s against the rules!” sobbed Aesma.

“You useless moron!” said the Hierophant, “The great Disc of the Sun is shattered! This temple is brought to ruin, and the world will ne’er see its like again, even in the whole history of creation! The stars themselves burn with the evil you have unleashed! Who cares if you were struck?”

It was true that the Temple would never return. But Aesma was not listening, for a sudden thought had hit her like a stone, and she stood up.

“Say!” she said, nurturing a growing anger, “If my husband strikes me, doesn’t that break our marriage vows?”

“You absolute dolt!” said the Hierophant, “You haven’t even been married yet!”

“Oh!” said Aesma, standing up, and becoming herself again. “I’ll beat him to a pulp!” She smacked the Hierophant for good measure, and felt fantastic. Then she set off in a dead sprint through the charred and smoldering landscape to where the Red Eyed King stood, wreathed in ruinous power, and laying waste to the world about him with great bolts of black fire and scorching ash. Five hundred gods were doing furious battle with him, and the light of their burning combat obscured the sky itself. Aesma instantly filled to the brim with an unstoppable berserk rage upon seeing his wicked face, and she began to tantrum, as was her custom.

“You!” she screamed, and laid hand upon the nearest thing to her, which was a large rock. She hurled it with tremendous force, where it struck the King in the thigh and made hardly a dent. Aesma was so angry, she turned to the next largest thing she could find, which was a stray horse. The horse was a well-bred steed that had once pulled the chariot of Mantos Am, God of Tax Law, but Aesma cared very little. She gripped the horse by its mane and flung it bodily at the king. It bounced of his thigh and he barely turned from his heated combat.

This so enraged Aesma that she turned to the next largest thing she could find, which was a boat – a mighty war barge a hundred paces long or more that had washed ashore when the river was vaporized by the king’s passing. She flung it at the king with terrifying force, and it glanced off the back of his hauberk and shattered into a thousand splinters of wood. This got the king to turn a little in Aesma’s direction, but at that point he gave her so little regard, so enthralled by victory as he was, that he spared here only the tiniest sliver of a sneer before turning back to his fight and swatting three Gods of war out of the sky with a swing of his hand.

Aesma couldn’t take it at that point. She dug her fingers in the earth, and with a mighty heave, flung part of the entire battlefield at the King. It struck the king square in the shoulder, and knocked him off balance as clods of earth, men, horses, and errant war machines went flying everywhere.

“What are you doing, miserable creature,” said the King. He threw off his combatants and turned to face her, and aligned all his aspects of war and mastery, armor states, and vorpal blade arts in her direction. He was an awe-inspiring sight.

“I think you’re the handsomest man I’ve ever met,” said Aesma, and she was quite sincere, “And you’ve got such a great work ethic! But you struck me with that sword that cuts thirty six ways, and more importantly you let my love for you pour out of me and die cold and withered on the floor. And that I cannot forgive!” She leapt at the king, and summoned up her destroyer form, and rained such ferocious blows upon him that the other five hundred Gods made a circle of their shields and gave her wide berth. But the King was a mighty warrior, and would not yield, so clothed in the invulnerable armor that Aesma had made for him. Any other warrior would have shriveled in dismay at the impossibility of victory in such a situation. It quickly became apparent that Aesma could not beat the Red Eyed King in battle. He was equally as fast as her, better trained, and his war aspects were more deadly. Most of Aesma’s killing blows bounced harmlessly off his shield, while others were rebuffed by the scales of his hauberk.

But Aesma did not cling to victory. Her lack of success merely filled her with a hot and infinite rage.

With a free hand, she groped around until she found the largest object she could find, which happened to a nearby mountain, and with impossible strength she tore it up by the root and dashed it across the Red Eyed King’s shield. The mountain shattered with a colossal rumble and the King was thrown back, but still he would not yield. So Aesma found the next largest object she could find. She raised herself up and reached into the sky and tore a passing moon from it’s orbit. And as the King staggered back from the mountain blow, Aesma ripped the moon molten hot through the atmosphere, and smashed it down into the King’s sword. Moon and sword both were blown into a million pieces, and the battlefield was rent asunder and turned into a maelstrom of screaming men, and gods, and horses, and chunks of stone and clouds of earth. Up and down ceased to have meaning, and the stars were blotted out by the cloud of destruction. But still the King would not yield.

So Aesma reached even further out, and pulled stars, one by one, and hurled them at the King. And the King hunched low and charged at Aesma through their fiery trails as they hurtled to earth in great explosions. He kept coming, even as his shield was blown into pieces, and gripped Aesma by the shoulders, so Aesma grabbed an Eye of Night, which was a star so large it had broken through space-time and collapsed into a hole infinitely more massive. She bashed the king over the head with it, and he was stunned and bloodied, but managed to knock it away from Aesma, where it flew off and devoured a nearby lunar kingdom.

“Yield!” said Aesma. But the King would not yield. He was exceedingly foolish, and still clung to his dreams of conquest. This allowed fear of losing to make its way in his limbs, which poisoned his grip. Instead of snapping Aesma’s neck, as he should have easily done, she instead squirmed out of his hold.

It was exactly then that Aesma did a truly impossible thing, since by then she was thoroughly fed up. She flexed her fingers, and planted her feet, an inhaled a mighty gale of breath, and reached out to grab the fabric of the world itself. And with a deafening roar, she lifted, and the entirety of creation shook.

“What are you doing?” said the King, aghast. And the other Gods who were hurled too and fro through that chaotic battlefield echoed his cry, for all could feel it.

“I’m going to lift the Wheel and beat you over the head with it until you give up!” puffed Aesma.

And the King saw that this was true. Aesma had indeed lifted the Wheel. He knew then that he had lost utterly and completely, and yielded. He lay down his shattered sword, and shuffled off his battered scale hauberk, and dispersed his dread aspect. If there was anything to be said about him further, it was that he was a graceful loser.

Even still, it took some convincing by the five hundred other Gods and the celestial hosts to get Aesma to put down the universe, but eventually she did. She remained upset all the while the King was escorted back to the Crucible of Punishment and locked inside an even tighter cage, and only cheered up once the key was turned in the lock, removed, and melted. Aesma was brought before Payam, who was foremost in YISUN’s Speaking House in those days, and sentenced to a hundred days as a scullery maid as punishment. Strangely, Aesma seemed rather meek about the whole affair and accepted her punishment gracefully as long as she was brought wine once in a while.

“You seem changed, Aesma ten Yondam,” said Payam to Aesma.

“I’m done with husbands,” said Aesma, who was despondent. “I think it’s time to grow up.”

“Oh?” said Payam, with great concern. The other Gods in YISUN’s speaking house also leaned in closely at this, for they were very worried at what could possibly go wrong next.

“Yes,” said Aesma, “I’m getting a dog.”