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Fafnir313 — At the end of tethered fate is a new beginning
#android #beast #creature #creepy #cthulhu #cyborg #dark #death #deity #demon #digitalart #effigy #eldritch #fantasy #fantasyhorror #fate #girl #god #horror #horrorstory #lovecraft #macabre #machine #monster #photomanipulation #resurrection #robot #scary #story #philosophersstone
Published: 2021-04-07 22:33:04 +0000 UTC; Views: 16354; Favourites: 42; Downloads: 0
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Previous Chapter (www.deviantart.com/fafnir313/a… )
Beginning Chapter (www.deviantart.com/fafnir313/a… )
It was hard for him to believe that Isabella was a woman grown.
“Come with me, please?” She tugged on his sleeve before the cellar door.
You’re twenty years old and still afraid of the dark?
“May I be excused?” She asked at the dinner table, biting her lip with legs crossed tight.
You’re twenty years old and still asking for permission?
“Good night, dad.” She kissed him on the cheek, folding her arms in front of her, tapping her toes, and waiting for a response that would never come.
You’re twenty years old and can’t sleep without being tucked into bed?
Faulcetti ran his fingers across her cheek, black and blue, a special gift on her twentieth birthday.
Isabella was such a clumsy thing, spilling his coffee and wrecking one of his monitors. Her hands were shaky, her skin clammy and cold. Perhaps, deep down, she knew what was coming.
Deep down, she was afraid to die.
He slapped her all the same. The blow left her dazed on the floor, and he struck her again and again.
Faulcetti thought that this would be the night that she would finally turn on him, wheel around, spit with fire in her eyes, and a right hook that would knock him flat.
It’s what he wanted; for her to stand up for herself, to say what she wanted to say, to push and strike back, to be more like her mother.
Yet, even on their last night together, she would disappoint him.
“I love you, dad.”
Smack
“I… Love you, dad.”
Smack
“I… Lov..e.”
Smack, she was out cold.
Why wouldn’t she run away? Isabella had a gentle heart, but she wasn’t stupid. The cold steel etched into her right palm marked her as property of the immaculate machine.
Faulcetti traded her like cattle without so much as a second thought, but he would accept nobody's judgment, for the prize was a philosopher’s stone.
He held it in his hands, that translucent orb that crackled with a pale blue light. Look closely, and you can see visions of the future, his future.
With the philosopher’s stone, he saw a tower that captured the light and stored it like grain.
So, with a mountain of copper, iron, steel, mercury, and lead, he built the luminaria astradominus, the house of the radiant sun. A tower that captured light as a wave or particle and emitted it as solid matter rays so dense they scraped the land and forced oceans to part.
With the philosopher’s stone, he saw a garden with lush scarlet fruit that never wilted nor exhausted its supply.
So, with mounds of graveyard soil, a ship of whale oil, and yards of a grey silken sheet, he cultivated the opaque garth. The farmland nurtured silver and gold, reversed oxidation, corrosion, and crackled with a pale electrical charge that shot into the clouds.
They called him a madman, a heretic, a lunatic; they called him a genius.
The philosopher’s stone had given him everything; his daughter seemed such a small price to pay.
Besides, it’s not as though her life was forfeit at the conception of the deal.
The immaculate machine gave her till twenty. Isabella’s heart had to mature; before it could take the burden and stress, or so he was told.
She had twelve years, twelve years to enjoy life, twelve years to find love, to live like there was no tomorrow.
Isn’t that what young people are supposed to do? It wasn’t his fault that she never left that she stayed by his side and never tasted the fruits of life; to live as a kitten still scruffed at the neck and braying for milk.
“Bring me a fireside lily.” He told her when she was twelve.
The flower was rare and only grew on the highest cliffs upon jagged, unforgiving stones. Surely the task was too hard for a collard mule; surely she would run away.
“I love you, dad.” Isabella rested the flowers at his feet with bloody knuckles and shaking knees.
“Bring me your friend’s locket.” He told her when she was sixteen.
It was a golden trinket, a keepsake from their mother. Surely she wouldn’t steal from her only friend; surely she was angry, ready to tell him off and spit in his face.
“I love you, dad.” Isabella placed the locket on his desk; tears streaming down her face.
Why don’t you ever say no? Why don’t you grow a spine?
Why do you never do what I want you to do?
“Bring me your heart.” Faulcetti whispered, resting her limp body upon the metal crib.
It was too late for the girl, but not for him.
This would be it, his greatest invention, his ascension into godhood.
“Faulcetti!” He could hear them pounding on the metal doors. “Let her go!” There was clamoring at the gate and the sound of groaning metal and flying shrapnel.
It would take them a while to cut through those doors. Faulcetti made them thick with bolted steel and curled black iron. He knew they would come, jealous of his vision, the last prophecy of the philosopher’s stone, the metal crib.
It took him four years to build the crib, working with metal as soft as clay and stringing wire into ropes hung from the ceiling. Within the digital hammock, Faulcetti constructed an effigy of the great machine. He shaped gilded chitin and golden digits, fashioned beaded eyes from metal saucers, and stitched magnesium into its throat.
On Isabella’s twentieth nameday, the metal groaned, and the joints swelled with breadth claws clicking and saws spinning.
The effigy of the immaculate machine was coming to life.
“Faulcetti! Open the door!” The gate budged, a blade poking through the corner.
Too late, it came down from the ceiling like a puppet, eyes as big as his head, sparks flashing from its throat, and wires whipping around like tentacles.
Not so fast, Faulcetti held a kitchen knife over Isabella’s breast.
“Make me a god!” He yelled, the beast shuttering as it skittered across the walls bending the metal hooks and the base of its collar.
Faulcetti wasn’t foolish; the philosopher’s stone showed him a vision of a crib that granted godhood, but nothing he made ever came out like the stone’s prophecies.
It was apparent now; the metal crib wasn’t for him.
It was for her.
“Make me immortal, or I will kill her.” He smiled, the tip of the blade touching her chin.
Suddenly, the lights about the room began to flicker, and the computer screens flashed overhead. He saw an image in flame, a picture of twisted metal and cold black eyes. He couldn’t look away as numbers scrolled across the screen, forming words in his head.
“You already share your daughter’s immortality.” Came the buzzing in his ears, blood running down his neck.
“No matter how many times the world is reset, the first, the second, or even the hundredth peninsula. There will always be a Faulcetti; there will always be an Isabella. Because my daughter needs a soft and gentle heart, and only a man like you could give it so freely.”
Faulcetti felt a tugging at his shirt as Isabella reached for his collar, a single tear running down her cheek.
“I love you, dad.”
He screamed, driving the blade straight into her chest.
“I hate you!” He pierced her heart again and again until her hands went limp.
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”
Panting, he dropped the blade, which clang across the floor as he slumped to his knees.
If I can’t have her, nor can you.
The effigy dropped down like a spider, wrapping its arms around Isabella as wires sunk into her chest.
“You’ve but made the first cuts; I will make the last.” Came the buzzing in his ears.
There was an electrical charge, a sudden pulse when Isabella’s knees jerked up, and she drew a sharp breath.
Thump, thump; her heart beating once more.
“No!” He screamed, reaching for the knife but stopped just short as something took hold of his head. It was like he was caught in a vice, a cat scruffed at the neck, his heart skipping a beat.
“Tag, you’re it.” Came the voice of a little girl.
“Let me go!” Faulcetti shouted
“Mmmmm, in a minute.” She giggled, a faint white outline flashing from his left to right.
“No, fair.” Came another girl’s voice. “Why do you get to have all the fun.”
“Shhhh, pay attention; this is the best part.”
The effigy cut Isabella’s garments from neck to waist, exposing a velvet wound clamps poised for careful extraction. With its right hand, it lifted her chin and whispered in her ears.
Come home; your sisters miss you.
Isabella smiled as if it had lifted a weight from her shoulders.
Lights out for a second; you won’t feel a thing.
That’s when the door finally burst open, white clouds of gas flooding the room. Faulcetti felt the clamp around his neck loosen, and he dropped to the floor coughing.
This was his chance, the only way for him to stop the immaculate machine. He grabbed the knife once more.
“Stop him!”
Faulcetti lunged forward as the shots rang out, a dozen bullets piercing his chest. He slumped over one of the consoles, his breathing ragged and knife dropping to the ground.
“I.. am… God.” He shuddered one last time before collapsing, the last of his breath spent.
Men in black gear flooded the room catching a glimpse of the monstrous puppet before it screeched, shattering the monitors and delicate glass casings; the lights winking out, flooding the room in darkness.
Shouting and loose gunfire ricocheted around the metal instruments as the effigy pulled itself free from the walls and flung itself through the open door vanishing down the halls.
“But, father.” They heard a little girl in the distance. “I didn’t think her heart would be this soft.”
Scritch, scritch.
They heard a scratching in the ventilation as lights flickered back on, and men clambered down the halls in pursuit.
One man stayed behind, dropping his gear before the metal crib. A young woman lay with her arms spread wide, a hole where her heart used to be.
“I’m sorry.” He said, closing her eyes with trembling fingers. “We were too late.”
As the man turned to leave, a single monitor flicked back on, a line of code blinking in the distance.
01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101100 00100000 01100100 01100001 01100100 00101110
