The Cult of the Knife
Zagreus slowly walked to the altar, holding his finest work of art on his palm, a small dagger. Around him, hooded figures of various heights all dressed in their own blood-red cloak hummed a melody from ancient times. The underground chapel, cut from the living stone, crafted shadows that moved with the eerie flames of the torches.
The youth, wearing a similar red robe, took a glance at the weapon he held. It was the culmination of all his training as a smith. A polished handle made from old oak and wrapped in leather held a triangular blade, smelted from the finest spring steel. In the three sides of the weapon, Zagreus had scorched upon the steel a branching pattern similar to that of lighting striking the wooden handle. A bronze octagon acted as a crossguard, and in the pommel, he had placed a small sphere of the same metal.
He gazed nervously to his peers as he continued his slow march, to nearly everyone he knew in the small village he lived in. Men and women, citizens of the town and all older than himself, stared at the boy. They all held a bladed weapon in their hands. Someone held a long claymore, the hilt of the blade imitating the antlers of a moose. He caught a glimpse of what resembled a meat cleaver, the torch-light reflecting its wicked gleam. He even saw a bejeweled barber’s razor, the many rubies of the golden handle glittering.
Such was the way of the Cult of the Knife.
Zagreus eventually came upon the stone altar, a slab carved from the very rocky ground. On the other side, his father stood, his crimson hooded cloak barely hiding his white beard. He held on his hand a strange knife, more of a sharp needle than a real blade but equally —if not more so— deadly in the hands of a skilled person.
The boy’s father looked at the nervous youth, the elder’s gray eyes locking with Zagreus’ brown gaze. There was a sense of accomplishment in the older man’s eyes, a proud and comforting image of having brought his offspring to adulthood.
"I never thought this day would arrive, son" He whispered, his voice shaky with emotion and wearing a confident smile on his face. The boy gulped, nervous, and nodded to his father. After chuckling slightly at the boy’s nerves, the older man’s face became stoic, and his voice was loud and clear to all the members of the audience.
“Brothers and sisters. Today is the day where one of our own, and none other than my kin, exits the troubles of childhood and becomes an adult, a valued member of our community, and one of the keepers of the Bloody Truth. For as we all know, our secretive order values every new addition to our ranks, as it was spoken in the Text of Blades, Cut 1…”
Zagreus’s mind wandered away from his father’s speech. It was not his first time hearing the sermon he was giving to the rest. Although he had to admit that the creation myth he was preaching may have been interesting when he was a kid, the boy simply paid no mind. He already knew that, according to the religion, Ganivet the smith goddess had smelted the first knife from her own boiling blood and had used it to carve the world from the living Earth, the liquid pouring from his wounds becoming rivers, as well as other smaller fables explaining how the world worked.
But to him, his previously unwavering faith had begun to crumble. As he has grown, the evidence of a planet beyond that described by the stories had broken the fragile illusion he had believed in. The existence of a whole continent across a supposedly infinite ocean, the vastly proven evidence of evolution clashing from the supposed creation of humans from stone; and the arrival of the Internet had given him a wealth of knowledge that only served to disprove the myth his whole town believed in.
He once again looked at the crowd, now having fallen silent unless it was to recite some litany. Even as he was about to become one, Zagreus still failed to understand adults and their ability to believe in something they knew didn’t make sense. They had always told him he’d understand when he’s was older, despite age having the opposite effect on the youth. Cuts, some believers he knew were programmers who had the wealth of the human race at their disposal, he thought to himself. Why does everyone worship something so blindly?
“… and thus, our Lady has brought us here.” Zagreus’ father continued, the youth knowing the sermon was nearing its end. “It is time, for young Zagreus Dionis to let his work taste the blood of his maker, to fully embrace his destiny and join our order through this final test of resolve.“
“Zagreus!” He said to the boy. “Are you ready?”
“I’m ready to leave my childhood behind, father.” The youth answered, having rehearsed this very moment. He placed the blade of his hand against his palm, the sharp edge ready to cut through the skin.
“Are you ready to become an adult and join our community of truth?”
“I shall cherish my adulthood and keep the Bloody Truth.”
“If you are as you say, let your blade taste your blood!”
And with one swift motion, Zagreus slashed his hand, his dagger splattered with blood as it cut.
The youth did not notice anything at first. Maybe the acute pain of the cut numbed the senses of his wounded hand, or it might have been the disbelief of anything extraordinary happening on a slightly bloody ritual. However, shortly after his knife tasted blood, his hand began to feel slightly heavy. Zagreus was rather puzzled, but his doubts dissipated when he saw his blood disappearing into the knife’s blade, with more being consumed.
Upon this revelation the world seemed to darken as the boy’s head began to swim, seeing black at the edge of his vision as his blood was being drained. His legs began to shake and his arms tired like he was lifting the sky itself, but his eyes were focused on the knife on his hand. It feasted like a leech while his life slipped away towards the weapon.
The oak handle deformed, sprouting crimson branches onto the steel while dark roots dug into his arm. The hungry iron was no longer drinking from the wound but from the very flesh of his body. And Zagreus could only gaze as he was too weak to even move. And at last, at the moment he had begun to embrace death, a black shadow skirted over his body, a dark entity being swallowed by the weapon and disappearing in a flash of light.
The boy staggered onto the altar as if someone had kicked his stomach, his weapon clattering against the stone. The whole ordeal had lasted just over five seconds, but to Zagreus, it had been an eternity. He shakily looked at his hands and then at the dagger, seeing no trace of roots nor wounds, except for a straight scar on his palm.
«Hey boy.»
Zagreus gasped in surprise. Who had spoken? He looked at the red-robed figures around him, observing the youth with keen interest.
«Boy!»
Once again the voice spoke, but he couldn’t seem to place it. He wasn’t even sure he had even heard it, as if someone was directly sharing their thoughts with him. He looked at his father, who simply pointed at the dropped weapon. Zagreus looked at the fallen dagger with a mix of disbelief and astonishment. He didn’t know how, but he could feel a mocking aura emanating from the weapon.
«Thank our Lady you finally noticed. So, dear creator, what do you say about killing something?»
Mechanical Ship
The ship sailed to the edge of the world, and found corpses.
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It was a bright night. The full moon was high up in the heavens, with the twinkle of an infinity of stars as well as the pale spot of the Milky Way casting a soft glow unto the dark waves. The water, dark as pure coal, flowed at the whims of a slight breeze; the wind creating ripples in the otherwise flat surface. It was in this forgotten spot of the ocean, as far away to land as one could get, that the water was disturbed by a foreign object. A ship. The behemoth made out of metal slowly cruised the seas, its iron hull creaking from its own weight as its long shape sailed along, multicolored crates creating shadows in its deck. In the said vessel, only the quiet hum of the monstrous engine was felt, as no human piloted it. The artificial intelligence, located in the proverbial bridge of the ship as an incredibly complicated program in the code of a complex computer, constantly checked itself as well as the state of the vessel.
Said artificial intelligence was content with its purpose. It had been built with nothing else in mind but ferrying cargo across the seas. With enough free will and self-coding programs to carry out independent decisions and learn from experience, but not enough to even consider if his human masters were unfair, the computer happily did its job. It did not know what it carried, as it was not within its capabilities nor clearance to know, but it was determined to deliver with maximum efficiency to its destination.
However, the artificial intelligence was able to feel boredom. It was happy with its purpose, it couldn’t think of doing otherwise. But in its own artificial way, its desire for efficiency made it feel pride in its work, especially in adverse situations as it could notify its masters it did well. But with no difficulty to outsmart, no storm to weather, the AI was bored. The smooth sailing across the ocean gave no challenge to the intelligence, nothing to prove itself against. Maybe it was in the hope to find a problem to solve, maybe it was to break the monotonous routine, or maybe something completely alien to any human, but it constantly checked itself and its ship. However…
All of a sudden the wind direction sensor suddenly relayed an error to the main computer before starting its restart protocols. Not only did it seem like it was the only one, the AI detected how multiple of its sensors –but strangely enough, only those exposed to the outside of the ship– seemingly had given up on transmitting data and were rebooting themselves. One small part of the intelligence’s thought programs was thrilled. Finally! A challenge! If it had a mouth it would have smiled in delight as a problem had raised, something to finally solve and prove its worth as an AI designed to safely ferry cargo.
Alas, said computer still had to resolve what had happened to all of his sensors, as without any kind of input from outside the ship, it was practically blind to danger. It wondered what could have done it, could it be some sort of tidal wave? It discarded said thought as it should not have forced a restart on every device, and it would have detected water leaking in from inside. What about some electromagnetic shock? But it should also have affected not only the outside sensors but nearly everything of electronic nature other than the shielded computer. Possibly a glitch, the AI wondered, but it should have known a part of itself was damaged as it had constantly run diagnostics on its programming. It still had not thought of any possible accident when it heard something.
The AI recognized the sound of running water. It may not have sailed up a river but it had felt some particularly nasty currents when it exited a well-sheltered port, and thus knew what it heard. It had also noticed how the clear night sky had been replaced with a murky mist, greatly reducing visibility in the bow of the ship. But, as an AI, it paid equal attention to nearly everything that happened to its ship, including the strong flow of water coming from the starboard side; but something else triggered what humans could describe as fear.
From the stern cameras of the ship, where the mist was surprisingly clear, the terrified AI could glimpse a massive waterfall about half a kilometer away from the vessel, with the edge extending beyond the horizon and falling to an impossibly deep pit. Jagged rocks dotted the very edge, water roaring as it flowed. It could see many stars in unfamiliar constellations beyond the void as if there was nothing else beyond the impossible waterfall. The AI was not aware of how sailors had portrayed the literal edge of the world, nor it has ever seen a waterfall, but –call it deduction, educated guess, or electronic gut feeling– it knew enough that getting close to that would mean certain doom.
Slowly but surely, the frantic AI turned the boat, its sluggish speed and its massive girth exasperating the computer with its split-second thought process. The hull creaked in resistance against the current of the water as the waterfall tried to draw the vessel into the depths, like a hungry whirl sucking in any unfortunate boat that happened to be caught in its current. But said waterfall could not feel hunger, and the ship was gaining enough speed to counter the current dragging it to its perdition. The AI drove the vessel into the mist bank its bow was already in at full throttle, and despite how much the hull loudly complained or how fast its fuel reserves were depleting, it did not stop until the fierce tug of the waters was no more; and the sea stood perfectly still.
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The anchors splashed down the murky waters below the deck, quickly gaining depth before hitting a seafloor full of rocks and debris, barely 30 meters below the surface of the strange sea the ship had found itself in. In its haste to get away from the strange waterfall, the ship had brushed its hull against some hidden obstacles. According to its memory, the ocean should not be shallow enough for anything to hit the ship, but it had just witnessed something far stranger, and it did not want to risk any more unpleasant surprises in its travel.
A dozen submersible robots, each the size of a motorcycle and armed with multiple repair materials such as underwater welding torches, prehensile manipulating servos, foils of metal, and a patch of hull material emerged from twin gates located at the bow. The AI patiently ordered the squad of repair drones to search for any kind of damage the hull below the waterline had sustained. It saw through the fishbowl cameras of the drones that, albeit some paint had been scraped off the hull, it seemed to have endured its punishment rather well beyond a scratch- except for a pale piece of debris one of its drones had just detected embedded to the ship.
Submersible Repair Drone #06 held something in its left manipulatory servo. It had been stuck to the rudder of the ship, apparently having created a small dent in the rudder that the drones had swiftly repaired. The AI wondered what it could be. Although the water was obscuring it, the computer could detect it was a pale, curved object, in the shape of a C. The ends of the object were shattered, and the inside of the object, under scrutiny, seemed porous as if something was supposed to be inside. Unfortunately for the AI, it had never been programmed to recognize the object as a human rib.
After lifting the anchors and powering up the engine, the ship was ready to set sail once again… but unfortunately for the AI; it, as well as the ship, was lost. It had not received any radio signal since it found itself by the monstrous waterfall, and nearly every device that would give the current location of the ship simply refused to work other than a simple gyroscopic compass, but with no starting direction to go it remained lost.
For a full minute, the AI pondered what to do exactly, its thoughts stuck in a loop as it didn’t know what to do. But finally, it reached a conclusion: since the planet was round, and in theory, if it could go in any direction it’d eventually find land, the ship should sail in a straight line towards a direction and eventually find civilization. It would consume a lot of fuel but it figured it should do something rather than wait for what could extend for years for a rescue that might not even come.
Shuddering at the thought despite not having a body, the ship’s AI steeled itself to start the journey. Turning the ship towards the north and with a mighty bellow, the ship’s engines started. Slowly but surely, the ship accelerated towards the foggy unknown.
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Exactly 11 hours, 23 minutes and 37 seconds after the ship had started its voyage to the north, it found something floating in the water.
The AI was slightly surprised. The mysterious object was not land to follow, but yet finding anything in the high seas was already a strange occurrence. The ever-present mist obscured the most detailed features of the floating thing. In response, the artificial intelligence sent a small repair drone, outfitted with a camera, to see what it was. Hovering Repair Drone #02, took off from a small landing pad on the deck, and quickly closed the distance within the ship and the object at the instruction of the thinking machine.
It immediately recognized what it was once the drone was close enough. A sperm whale, its insides spilling over the ocean through a gash in the stomach. It floated sideways, a cloudy eye staring at the infinite heavens with its tongue full of sharp teeth limp. Half a fin laid on the dead cetacean’s body, blood coming out of the multiple wounds tainting the water.
The ship’s AI did not pay too much attention to the corpse. It had seen a couple of times a pod of orcas attacking blue whales and knew that humans would find such spectacles morbidly fascinating, and it had a plethora of oceanographic knowledge on its database, but to the machine, it was nothing but a diversion of its purpose. Although it also knew that whale corpses sank and fed more critters in the abyss, so how was that open carcass floating on the surface? Furthermore, the body of the cetacean looked fresh… what had killed it?
Dismissing these thoughts, the AI resolved to continue on its journey. It recalled the drone back, storing it safely within the vessel, and carried on through the waters. The whale corpse bobbed up and down when the ship disturbed the water with its wake.
It wasn’t long before another mysterious object was spotted by a camera. The AI repeated the same process by sending the same drone to check what it was. Again it was a corpse, although it was the body of a sunfish, completely ripped in half. And it the distance, it saw not one, but many more mysterious floaters from the body of the sunfish, and after a quick flight with the drone, the AI learned they were all dead bodies of ocean animals.
Whales with their insides floating beside their corpse. An entire pod of dolphins prickled with geometrical stab wounds. Sailfish with their noses bent and their dorsal fins broken to pieces. Turtles with shattered shells. Sharks with no teeth nor fins. Even smaller fish like sea bass and sardines floated belly-side up, with all their organs on display throughout large cuts or gashes. All of them floated on the murky waters, ghastly eyes pointed to the skies and pouring fresh blood onto the seas.
This time the machine got worried. What kind of leviathan had killed so many creatures? Was it even a sea animal? How long had these corpses been here? And whatever did it, could it try to attack the ship? Its computer core began to heat up as it frantically searched its database to find a logical answer, without results.
For exactly twelve hours the ship’s AI decided to stay put by killing the engines. It did not doubt that if anything could kill so much it would have no trouble tearing open the cargo vessel. As such, it decided to wait for the monster to appear. But nothing seemed to change. No living thing came up for those corpses.
For twelve hours, the ship patiently waited, but it began to lose its patience after half a day of inactivity. It fired up the vessel’s engines, and the cargo resumed its march north, its wake disturbing the otherwise placid sea stained red with blood and dead.
