Reuniting with her creator on Jex Toth had not gone quite as Y’Homa had anticipated. Instead of taking the numinous essence of the Fallen Mother into her mortal body she found herself dwelling within the eternal flesh of the Allmother, walking the lonely halls of her viscera, praying at the altars of her organs. The Chain Canticles had gotten so, so much wrong, but the one thing they had gotten right was that the Black Pope had indeed sacrificed herself for the good of the world, and in doing so drawn in that breath of the divine that would grant her wisdom above any scholar, power over every mortal creature, and life eternal. Just as she spent her undying days in the living temple of the Fallen Mother, so, too, did the angel who had saved her from the First Dark reside inside her own frame, like a second heart that had grown inside her breast. A second brain inside her heavy skull, burning bright with questions. A second soul trapped in her shivering skin, restlessly pacing through her bones.
It could not be trusted, the old clerics of Jex Toth had told her. She must become its master or be driven mad by its constant scrabbling for the ship’s wheel of her mind, the endless pressure to grant it control of the body they shared.
As if they knew the first thing about it. For all their talk of having broken their angels, each and every one of the Vex Assembly slipped up at times, speaking in tongues not their own, indulging appetites that ran counter to their waking hungers. In point of fact, they were all barking mad with little connection to reality; they claimed their kingdom had been transported to a paradise beyond the First Dark for countless eons, for example, when any uneducated bumpkin in the Star could tell you Jex Toth had vanished a mere five hundred years before.
Bold and brash as these heathens had been when Y’Homa had first arrived, with the audacity to imply she was the one who had misunderstood the gospel, now she knew better. Even after half a millennium of cohabitation the other angeliacs warred against their divine halves, whereas Y’Homa had made peace with her own celestial passenger after only a brief if intense adjustment period. Everything happens. Whatever minor details the Burnished Chain had gotten wrong, that highest scriptural truth had prepared Y’Homa for her own Day of Becoming in ways the Tothans would never understand, had allowed her to accept her transformation absolutely, for indeed, everything happens. The difference between Y’Homa and her saviors was that she sought only to love that piece of the Fallen Mother that had fused with her soul, even if she could never understand it, while the rest of the Vex Assembly sought to exploit and control that which was by its very nature beyond their ken. This was why their minds had been fractured, she surmised, because their souls were unworthy—only the purest vessel could contain such intense power and not crack.
Despite her superiority over the rest of the Vex Assembly she was nevertheless bound to Sherdenn, the high priest who had sacrificed her to the Fallen Mother. By dropping her into the Tothan Gate he had transformed her from a mere window for the eyes of the divine to a living door for a higher power. For this she owed the ancient cleric far more than just her resurrected life—she owed him the very salvation of her soul, and that of the angel who had entered her. Imperfect though he and all the other Tothans were, they had been chosen by the Fallen Mother, the same as she, and together they were remaking the Star as their maker had ordained. Everything happens, and when the time came Y’Homa would supplant Sherdenn and the rest, rising to her rightful station as the Fallen Mother’s sole hierophant.
For now, however, they must all proudly work together to serve the Allmother. They were the key that would turn the lock that would open the door that would—
Come and see.
Y’Homa blinked her eyes, her breath falling out of rhythm with the pulsing walls of her chamber as she rose from her reverie to answer Sherdenn’s summons. The Vex Assembly had little need for the imperfections of the spoken word, casting their very thoughts into each other’s skulls across even vast distances. Each silent communication carried its own complex scent, which their soldiers could interpret more readily than word or even thought, and as her eyes watered from the oily cockroach reek Y’Homa answered her mentor with a simple affirmation. As she did she felt in the back of her mind the stirrings of another presence, one that had become so much a part of her it was increasingly indistinguishable from her own. Soon there would be no she and it, no and at all, just one perfect child of the Fallen Mother. In the meantime she strove to become more divine even as its angelic means of thinking became increasingly mortal … or at least comprehensible.
Dress.
She doubted she would have need of her armor anytime soon but nevertheless indulged her angel’s desire to gird itself, allowing it to summon her swarm with a breath of musk. The spiny insects swept over her raw skin, grey legs slipping into the red indentations and puckered furrows in her creamy flesh as they harmoniously locked into place. Her royal armor was far more ostentatious than that of the legions in her command, and a far cry from the simple scuttling robes they had cloaked her in before she recovered from her resurrection. The queen skittered up the back of her neck, thick legs wrapping around Y’Homa’s face to form her mask. The Black Pope smiled as the comforting warm weight settled atop her skull, a bloom of black quills falling luxuriously backward from her living crown as she strode though the glistening aperture that opened in the wall.
The mucus-slick passageways that had seemed so intimidating when she first arrived on Jex Toth now put her at ease, the floor shifting to help her keep her footing as the walls swayed and lurched from side to side. It felt almost like being back in the First Dark, surrounded by a vast nurturing pressure. Sherdenn was not in his chamber, and she followed the path he had mapped out in her mind, her nostrils flaring from the lingering psychic scent. From the sweet tang that now complemented his sharp fragrance Y’Homa could tell that Lagren was with him, which meant something important must indeed be afoot—the spider-frocked priestess had kept to herself of late.
Deeper and deeper they wormed into their enormous host, and finally a pulsing curtain of tissue spread itself wide for Y’Homa to join her fellows. Sherdenn had dressed for the occasion in layer upon layer of gem-bright vermin, and Lagren’s gown of cobweb lace beaded with egg sacs was even more ornate that ever, but neither Y’Homa nor her angel paid them any notice, staring at what lay beyond the pair. The outer wall of the narrow chamber bulged outward, and through the translucent shell she saw that their leviathan had at long last surfaced, and their target filled the horizon.
The war begins, Sherdenn murmured in her mind as Y’Homa stepped past him, staring out at the blue waters, at the other leviathans rising like sunken kingdoms all around them, and the helpless green shore beyond.
Before she had become host to the heavenly, Y’Homa had been terrified of being sent away from Jex Toth. To be exiled from the corporeal manifestation of the Fallen Mother felt like nothing short of damnation … yet now Y’Homa understood her greater purpose. She had not been drawn to Jex Toth because it was the Garden of the Star—it wasn’t. The Vex Assembly’s attempt to transform their homeland into heaven had been thwarted by their jealous enemies, the ritual interrupted, the miracle compromised, and the faithful banished. Y’Homa had resurrected Jex Toth and sailed to its shores not to merely assume a place of power—she had fulfilled her destiny because the Fallen Mother needed her favorite daughter to retrieve that holiest of seeds that had survived the ages of darkness and bring it back to the world, to plant the true Garden of the Star and see that this time it took root.
The righteous did not hide in heaven. The righteous carried heaven with them, even as they sojourned down into hell. Y’Homa was not leaving the Fallen Mother behind in Jex Toth, she was bringing Her to the Star.
The enthusiasm of her angel was contagious, and when the question of who would lead the assault on the Star came to a vote Y’Homa had joyously volunteered. Now they had arrived, the living holds of their leviathans pregnant with both angelic soldiers and the malformed spawn of the Deceiver they had kept in ravenous captivity, eager to be loosed upon the wicked world, desperate to offer the final sacrifice …
And now the wait was over.