The deaths of Brook and Dearborne had not meant the death of the
world, or even that of Pomperaque. Life endured as it was seemingly
meant to, and the evil that lived in their time had carried on, as
well.
There came a frightening peace in Pomperaque, as there was a
frightening quite, since no forms of dissention or negative thought was
permitted under Manguino's own amendments to the Canon's Laws.
Public gatherings of men (as were private meetings), were not wholly
forbidden, but the numbers of men that gathered was limited to no more
than four at a time -- unless there was a city conference called for
meeting, in the town's square, by the ArchBishop's own request.
Even the Phoridene Council was forbidden to convene without the
presence of the ArchBishop Manguino, or a tribunal of Cardinals
representing him.
The brisk activities of livelihood that had once occupied most of the
morning hours began to fade away and break down in pattern and even
the children that once played in the streets around their parents'
stalls and kiosks, no longer did so in their usual fervour.
Very few people carried smiles as they once did, in the days prior to
their best and most beloved sovereign's execution.
The smiles that the people kept from their faces had equalled that hate
and distrust that they carried in their hearts for their great
Almighty, ArchBishop Manguino.
There was a very odd change in the lifestyles and habits of the people,
not only in the city of Pomperaque but throughout the entire great
states of Phoride, as well. The entire population had become somewhat
indolent, apparently not caring for what happened to them from day to
day. The whole city of Pomperaque walked about the streets in a glazed
daze, with blank faces and empty hearts as if they were in a purgatory
of sorts.
Whatever there was to Pomperaque's night life, was now gone and
forgotten and even the rains that were once eagerly awaited throughout
the year, were left to come when they came, and the people kept
themselves from partaking of it when it happened. Even harlots and
satyrs, of which were once many in the city, had let their passions
leave them.
With all those immoralities that had carried on during Brook's rule,
those acts of perversion and indecencies that he tried so hard to curb
his people from delving into, were now halted by themselves as if in
honour for the deaths of their two great and courageous martyrs.
Manguino did not understand what was happening to the people of Phoride.
"They're allowed to do what they please, to whom and with whom they
please, and even how they please, and yet why don't they do anything
but walk around as if they are all without spirit?"
Manguino asked that question of each coenobite at Halls, from the
Cardinals that ranked just
beneath him, to the novices and children training in the monastery. No
answer was given to him and no speculations were entered into.
In the first several years following Brook and Dearborne's execution,
many of the city's Prominants and even some of the peasantry, secretly
sent their female children to some of the larger cities to the north,
away from the watchful, lusty eyes of their god.
As if in desperation to produce his own line of gods, his own
offspring, Manguino had brought to him young girls and women to play
favourites to him, and to bare his holy children.
He had proclaimed though a decree that when upon entering the age of
ten, all virgin girls, to the age of twenty-one, would be brought to
Halls to be trained by his followers in the ways of life.
While as the first years passed, the females between these ages that
were brought to Halls, had been personally attended to by Manguino.
His lust for the flesh of young women soon became weak and his acts
were only made on the women purely to satisfy his desire of producing
from them his offspring. Yet, with the dozens of women that he had
made pregnant not one of the children were free from some kind of
degenerate deformities -- much like that of his first offspring, now in
his twenties.
Through the first days and weeks of birth many of the children died on
their own, and some of the women, seeing the monstrosities that they
bore from the ArchBishop, had been shocked into eerie cataleptic states
of being.
Manguino could not accept the horrible children coming from him and he
cried to his physicians to cure him from what he believed was certainly
a curse put on him by Brook; but when they could find nothing at fault
with either him or the women that he had copulated with, he had the
remainder of his children, with the women that bore them, burned alive
at the city's incinerators.
However, Manguino's mind strained even at this subtle act, for not a
scream nor even a gag was heard to exude from any one of those that
were slaughtered.
Manguino turned to being ill and he spent the major part of the next
several years in a state of listlessness.
He had sent some of his Cardinals to various parts of the continent to
find and bring back for him beautiful and strong females, no matter
from what race they were taken. Manguino had believed that there had
to be at least one female, amongst the human-like species inhabiting
the northern continent, capable of producing normal and strong children.
He had placed in charge of this mission his regular hunter in these
sorts of endeavours; the Nasino, Cardinal Levy. In his silent Nasino
manner he compiled a force of coenobites to do their god's bidding and
they spread over the continent collecting females and teaching
Manguino's ways, as well.
By the end of the following year, hundreds of human-like females and
true human women were herded like cattle to Halls Cathedral, by only
half the force sent out to collect them.
Some of the women were bought by these coenobites but most were
snatched from wherever they could be found. Those not suiting the
ArchBishop's specification were made to indulge those who had found
them, then they were discarded or disposed of, depending on what degree
of pleasure the hunters had experienced with them.
Within the first weeks, nearly seven score females were brought back to
Halls and the ArchbIshop immediately began administering his blessings
to those who were most to his liking. To his amazement, some became
pregnant, came to full term and gave birth within several weeks while
other appeared to have a infinite gestation, until they also gave
birth. Finally, all those that the
ArchBishop bedded had given birth, with the same horrid results -- and
the same end became of them.
When Manguino desired to turn again to young girls from the city, there
were very few to be taken. The choice were married-off by their
kinsmen early in their lives and only the homely and very ugly
remained. Those were the ones that were not wanted by any man; some
not even during the season of the rain.
Manguino, feeling that he knew the nature of the imaginary curse that
he thought was put on him by Brook, took those ugly girls and women and
set himself ready to have them give themselves to him.
One day, there came to the ArchBishop the most unsightly of these
wretched-looking women. She was squat and balding. Her body was
covered with thick black hair, similar to the hair of the Teniqués.
She had yellow irises and a runny pustulated mouth, and thick stringy
mucus constantly flowed from her huge nostrils.
Her laugh ran course through men's ears and the town thought of this
woman as a witch because of her formidable looks.
There wasn't a single piece of skin on her body that was clear from
open sores, and yet she was of the prize of looks from the ugliest of
women in Phoride.
However, this woman (if one chose to call such a hideous rind, by that
word), had one quality that most all of the others that the ArchBishop
bedded had lacked. She was clever. She made herself seem worldly to
Manguino, the man whom she had secretly loved for so many years.
When Eckma was summoned to Manguino he could hardly look at her without
wincing and she didn't hesitate preparing herself to have her hour of
delight with him.
She took off her rags and stood before him squeezing parts of her body
attempting to excite him and growing in excitement herself.
Manguino was surprised that she was so eager and willing to let him in
and he thought, that maybe a woman's willingness was the key to
ensuring him healthy offspring. He readied himself to invade her body,
for the little that he thought it worthy. Then, Eckma refused to let
him come in onto her and he could not understand this.
Now, as it was that Eckma was very clever, she tried not to anger her
beloved Manguino and she sat him down on the bed near her and caressed
some of his parts while she explained why she refused him so suddenly.
"I have been a virgin all my twenty-eight years, my dearest
ArchBishop." she said to Manguino. "I had always wanted children but
what I wanted more was ... you!"
Manguino looked at her and felt a disgust that he could not shrug, but
her gentle caresses, which made him grow with excited impatience
soothed him, as well.
"What do you mean by that?" he demanded and as she smiled a creamy
rheum flowed from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.
"I had loved you since I was a little girl, and I wished and prayed
that some day I would have the pleasure, and the honour, of being
blessed by you. But I believed that was all just a foolish dream."
she said and she smiled again, with a clear tear issuing from her eyes.
"I had also dreamed of being wed to you, my true love." she added.
He grew to completion and she continued to caress him and he felt a
powerful but uncomfortable urge to invade her. He was becoming sure
that the woman's willingness was the key
to his product of normal progeny, but when he pushed her down on the
bed, and was just on the
verge of having her, she pushed him off from herself.
"Steady woman, you can't refuse me!" blurted Manguino as he dripped
onto the covers by her hand.
"I do not refuse you, me hoped-for love, but welcome your all into me
-- with an open heart -- but I would hope to suggest to you one thought
I had dreamed an age ago!" she said.
"What thought, woman?" he demanded of her, becoming frustrated and
quickly becoming limp.
"The dream had shown me that you could not have the offspring of your
heart's desire; and then there was me, with you as the objective of
love, to my own heart's desire, calling me to your bed. But, in my
dream I saw that you had wed me. With the union between us and my own
desires towards you, we produced many children of godly quality!" she
looked up at him as he turned away from her to wipe himself, and she
cried.
"What now, Eckma?" asked Manguino in a voice oddly resembling a distant
compassion, as never before heard coming from his lips.
"I know that a marriage with you could never be. Forgive me for even
thinking such a thing." she said and looked at him, right into his
eyes. "You may do with me to your pleasure."
Manguino stood there for a moment and looked at her lying on the bed,
her eyes closed and her large legs lying slightly apart.
He thought, what an odd feeling it was to have a living human woman
love him so. He imagined what a love from a beauty would be like and
he envied his now dead brother, because of his wife, and he envied all
the wedded couples in the whole world.
He had never given consideration to such a union, but he thought, maybe
it is time? Maybe
that is what was necessary, for him, to have proper children?
Manguino went over to his chamber doors and pulled a small rod out of
the wall, summoning a servant to attend to him, and then he went over
to Eckma and took her naked cankerous body into his arms and kissed her
mouth, smearing some of her pus onto his own lips.
"You will be my wife, Eckma and I will love you, and make love to you,
with more intense passion than I have ever, with anyone."
Soon, an attendant knocked on the door and Manguino ordered him to
enter. When the servant saw his god lying by that unearthly ugliness
and passionately caressing her, he very nearly fell faint but he looked
to the floor and waited to be ordered.
"Seek Cardinals Levy, Tohm and Jordas and bid them prepare the chapel
for my wedding, and have the Rogjans announce this from the city
spires!"
The servant couldn't say a thing. He just nodded then backed out
through the doors, closing them after him.
Immediately, he ran to the dispensary and vomited violently into a duct
there, and Polis, the physician, gave to him a drink of medicine that
stopped the lad's affliction. He explained to Polis about Manguino's
strange taste, and his even stranger request, then he went off and
rounded up the three Cardinals; conveying the message and telling them
who the bride was to be.
"The Almighty had made his choice. Let us abide with his requests!"
suggested Cardinal Tohm, and they went to prepare for the ceremony.
Throughout the afternoon and evening the Rogjans sang out the news to
Pomperaque, and for the first time in years, since the executions of
Brook and Dearborne, did the people laugh and rejoice for their
Almighty ArchBishop -- and his misfortune.
Manguino was pleased and happy to see his beloved people having a good
time and enjoying themselves, even though he had no idea that the
celebrants were really mocking him.
At the wedding, a few of the Cardinals and others that were there could
look upon the bride as she and Manguino emerged from their wed-eve
initiation chamber.
Cardinal Tohm was the ArchBishop's second during the ceremony, and
Cardinal Jordas had performed the ceremony of unity. The ceremony was
the Bonds, performed to consecrate the union of two in marriage. The
couple was fused together as one entity for all of eternity, by promise
of eternal love and full allowance to life together, regardless of
hardships that may possibly happen between them.
Now Eckma knew she was safe from death, no matter if she had children,
and regardless of their appearance.
The bond between them; the cutting of wrists and the joining of them
through the drinking of each other's blood, assured the cunning female
that her life was her's and that she was Manguino's, forever.
At the completion of the wedding ceremony, this one where the bride and
groom were married in their naked flesh, the men of Halls were to pay
their tribute and honour to the bride by the kissing of her genitalia.
Although Polis gave all those attending a potion of medicine to keep
their stomachs calm, most of the Cardinals still felt gravely ill
whilst in Eckma's presence.
All the novices, vicars and Cardinals that passed by the wedded couple
bowed down, on bent knee, before their new god's consort. All kissed
the sagging brownish flesh that dangled from between Eckma's legs, in
a single and complete sweeping motion. And even in this brevity, a
vast portion of them quickly ran out of the wedding hall to take full
account of their week's food intake. Only Cardinal Tohm summoned
enough nerve and will to take Eckma about her hips in a sustained
embraced. He kissed the lips of her genitalia until a small split
formed in one of her many scabs, letting a thin brownish fluid dampen
his mouth, chin and eventually to soak his beard. Some of the
stinking pus found its way into his mouth and Tohm, obviously and
ceremoniously, swallowed it in full.
"You truly were trained well by Cardinal Allen, my dear Tohm!"
Manguino whispered to him, then kissed him on the mouth.
The wedded couple were carried to their marriage bed, prepared with
sweet smelling linen and the entire room was decorated with many
pleasant flowers.
When they were left alone, Eckma produced a good sized vile from her
vagina and she held it up for Manguino to see.
"What is that, my darling?" asked Manguino.
"It is a small bottle of rain water." she answered. "If captured in
glass, the water of the rain retains its potency."
"Why do we need that? Put it away!" he ordered but she refused.
"Your promise of intense love to me must be aided by this, my love. I
know I am ugly and this will help the both of us, immeasurably." she
said.
Manguino finally nodded, and after entering her body, she opened the
vial and poured the contents over both their genitals.
Very little was seen of the newly wedded couple over the next couple of
weeks. They stayed in their wedding chamber and consummated their
promise.
The people of Pomperaque returned to their blank and lifeless style of
living, knowing well that their ArchBishop Manguino had indeed found
his true love.