Liooni's Curse

Ugaz's POV She caught me with her hair. I had the feet of the wind. I had Liooni in my fist and Shuri still warm in my hand. I had every advantage a fallen god could carry. Yet she caught me with her hair. That is the part I never tell. Her long dark hair. The same hair that had floated around her in the deep like a living thing. The same hair her people had sung about for a thousand years… Shot out and wrapped around my wrists before I had taken three steps. It drew me back to her. Not violently. Gently. The way you draw back something you are not ready to release. She was dying. Shuri was still in her body. That is the nature of the sword. It does not simply wound, it clings. It drains, it takes everything it touches until there is nothing left to take. She had given it to me herself. A gift. A sword so powerful that gods fear it. A sword that even Satan, in all his ancient arrogance, has never allowed to touch his skin. She had placed it in my hands and said: I trust you with the thing I trust no one with. I had used it on her back. She held me in her arms as Shuri drained her. The great Mother Qi. Goddess of the sea. The most powerful being that had ever fallen from the heavenlies into the deep. The one whose people had warned her a thousand times: The vampires cannot be trusted. The vampires are not to be loved. The vampires take and leave and call it destiny. She had not listened. She held me, and she looked at me, and she spoke. "You stabbed me in the back," she said. Her voice was still strong. That was the thing about Mother Qi. She did not diminish at the edges the way lesser beings do. She was whole until she wasn't. "With my gift to you. The sword of Shuri. You took my life." I said nothing. What was there to say? "For this," she continued and I felt it. The ancient power gathering in her chest. The power of the sea and everything the sea had ever swallowed. The power of a goddess who had ruled the deep for longer than most worlds had existed. "You shall dwell amongst humans." I almost smiled. That was what I had wanted. That was the entire purpose. "Something you have always craved," she said. She saw my expression, and her eyes told me she had always known. "Yet you would lose something dear. Your immortality." The smile died. "For just a hundred years you shall live amongst them. And the day you give birth to a child, you shall die. When your child gives birth, they too shall die. There shall be only one of your descendants at a time. None would see their offspring. And if you ever let go of Liooni"... Her grip on my wrists tightened. Briefly. With the last real force she had. "You shall die." The words fell like stones into deep water. "No one would break this curse," she said. "Not even the Lord of Hosts." Then Shuri finished its work. She went still. Her hair released me. I stood on the shore of the human world with Liooni in my fist… And the curse settled into my bones like cold water, and I looked at what I had done. Then I ran. Let me tell you what I am. I am Ugaz. From the tribe of vampires. One of the gods of the heavenlies… Created before time, learned to count itself. Present when the Most High spoke the first word that made light. We were all gods. Every one of us. We had our domains, our powers, our people. And when we made man collectively, all of us… Each contributing something, we had assumed… As any creator assumes, what we made would belong to all of us. The Most High had other intentions. He wanted men for himself. Their worship. Their devotion. Their prayers rose like smoke to him and him alone. Not shared. Not distributed. Not offered to us as the smaller gods while he received the greater portion. All of it. Only him. We pleaded first. That is the part the stories always omit, we pleaded. Why can they not serve us as lesser gods while worshipping you as the Most High? It is a reasonable arrangement. It preserves the hierarchy. It acknowledges your supremacy while honouring what we contributed. He refused. So we waged a war. My closest companion was the one you now call Satan. Formerly Lucifer, the most beautiful of all heavenly beings. The one whose light had been second only to the Most High himself… Before pride made him into something else. He led us. He was magnificent in battle. He was absolutely certain we would win. We did not win. The archangels fought on the Most High's side. With the fury of beings who have never questioned their allegiance. They defeated us. Thoroughly. Permanently. And then came the punishments. Some of us… He threw into the underworld, the pure evils. The ones whose hearts had blackened beyond any use. They walk in the permanent dark now, hunting lesser gods who also disobeyed… Slashing heads in a world with no light. Some he threw into the sea. They became creatures of the deep. Mermaids. Sea gods. The things that live beneath the surface where men cannot follow. Mother Qi was among them. She was powerful even then, more powerful than any of the others. In the sea she grew into something extraordinary. Some fell on land and became werewolves, afraid of the full moon. Hunted by the humans they were cursed to live among. My tribe he cursed to become blood-suckers. Flesh-eaters. Vampires. Every time one of us takes human form and tries to live among men… The hunger eventually takes over. We become beasts. We cannot help it. The curse goes that deep. Lucifer — Satan — he cursed to be alone. Roaming. Seeking. Never belonging to anything or anyone. I had called him my companion, my closest friend from time before time. He could not save me from the fall. He could not save himself. That was the day I understood that power without loyalty is just another kind of hunger. I watched the humans from the very beginning. From the heavenlies, before the fall. I had looked down at these small, warm… But complicated creatures we had made and felt something the others did not talk about. Not hunger. Something else. Envy of a specific kind. They had each other. They had families. Children playing in the dirt. Couples growing old together. Laughter around fires. The particular warmth of belonging to something small and permanent. We gods had power. We had domains, worshippers… Eternities stretching in every direction. And none of it produced what a man had when he came home to a house where someone was waiting. I wanted that. From the first moment I watched a human father hold his child… I wanted that with a ferocity that no war could satisfy and no power could replace. So when the fall came and I found myself on the earth… Cursed to become a beast if I tried to live among men without control… I did what I have always done. I mapped a plan. Liooni. A stone the mermaids had brought from the heavenlies when they fell. A stone of extraordinary power. It can transform its holder into the womb of a woman. To be born anew with the qualities of man. Born into a human body with no memories erased and immortality preserved. A clean passage into the human world. With Liooni, I could be born a man. Live a full human life. Have the family I had watched from the heavenlies and never stopped wanting. I needed to get it. It was in the possession of Mother Qi. So I went to the sea. I spent a hundred years there. Learning the ways of the mermaids. Their language, their customs, their politics, their songs. Eating Chisz, the creatures Mother Qi made from the dead of man. The only food a vampire can sustain himself on in the deep. Breathing through Kinos, the tube from her breasts that allowed me to take in water like a sea creature. Her people warned her from the beginning. The vampires are not to be trusted. We see what you are doing. We know your kind. She refused to listen. She was in love. Or she believed she was. I gave her everything that love requires on the surface. Attention. Presence. The particular quality of being chosen. I was patient. I was consistent. I was everything she needed me to be. She called the great Shiatz, the supreme deity. The one whose judgement moves the architecture of creation itself… To ask him to alter our biology so we could procreate. She wanted children with me. She wanted the life I had always pretended to want with her. Shiatz refused without hesitation. "Only a beast can come from a vampire," he said. Flat. Final. Without feeling. The waters shook with Mother Qi's fury. The males of the deep begged her to listen. She refused. Then she took my arm. "Let's go to land," she said. "With Liooni we can be born into human bodies and keep our memories. We can find each other in adulthood and marry. We can have everything." She gave up her throne. Her position as Goddess of the sea. She handed her kingdom to Mother Sula… And she walked out of the deep and onto the land for me. I walked behind her. And the moment we were on shore, I struck. I made one error. In my haste to run… In the urgency of a being who has just committed the greatest betrayal in the history of the fallen… And wants to be as far from the evidence as possible. I forgot to wait for Shuri to finish. Shuri clings. That is its nature. Once used, it attaches and drains until there is nothing left. Then it releases. If I had waited, if I had stood over her body for another hour… The sword would have fallen free and I could have taken it with me. Instead I ran. She returned to the sea with Shuri still in her. Still draining. Close to death but not yet dead. Shiatz tried to save her. He could not. When Shuri is used, the outcome is fixed. She died in the deep she had given up her throne to leave. And Shuri… The most dangerous weapon in existence… Fell to the floor of the sea and was absorbed into the kingdom of light. I did not know this for a long time. When I found out, I understood that I had not simply failed to take the sword. I had left it with the people who would one day use it on me. That was fifty years ago. I entered a woman's womb using Liooni and was born into the human world as I had always planned. I grew. I learned. I became of all things… A professor in paranormal activities. Because the irony of studying what I am from the outside has never lost its flavour. I have tried everything to break the curse. I have consulted every witch doctor, every oracle. Every source of knowledge the human world contains. I have read texts that predate human writing and spoken to spirits that predate human memory. Nothing. Mother Qi was precise in her dying. The curse has no seam, no gap, no weakness. Not even the Lord of Hosts… Who I know from personal experience is not without mercy when mercy serves his purposes. So I have accepted it. I am fifty years old. An old man in human terms. A child in the terms I was born into. And I have made a decision. I will father a child. The curse says I will die the moment I do. I accept that. I am tired. Living amongst humans has not been what I watched from the heavenlies. They are more complicated up close. More frightened. More willing to destroy what they cannot understand. I have been alone my entire human life. What I wanted. The family, the warmth, the child playing in the dirt… A couple growing old together… I could not have. The curse saw to that. But I can leave something behind. A piece of me. A descendant who carries my memories, who knows what I was and what I did and what it cost. Who will face the world with the blood of a vampire and the knowledge of a god. When the child cries for the first time, Liooni will leave my pocket and go to its palm. And I will die. That is acceptable to me. What is not acceptable. What I must warn my blood about, in the memories I will leave them… Is what is coming. The mermaids will not rest. Two thousand years from now… I can see it the way the very old can sometimes see the shape of things. The way gods who have been alive since before time have a sense of what is coming. A child will be born in the family of Dipps. A child from the waters. The one Neza the sea witch prophesied long before the fall. In the time when even witches were closer to the truth of things. A child who needs no Liooni to breathe onshore. My descendant. Whoever held Liooni at that time… Will be in danger from the moment that child draws its first breath above the surface. I am leaving my memories in the blood. Every descendant of mine will carry what I know: The history, the curse, the warning. They will be born with it the way they are born with their eyes. Present.. Permanent… And impossible to remove. They will know that somewhere in the water, the kingdom of light is waiting. And one day a door will open. And whoever walks through it will come with a purpose. And they will be beautiful. And they will be dangerous. And they will not stop. Because the sea does not forget. And neither do I. My child is coming. And so is theirs. God help whoever stands between them.