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Chapter One
Beryl
I was already smiling as I tugged up the blinds over my window, revealing cerulean skies and the orange-and-brown foliage of the sprawling park far below.
Another beautiful autumn day in The Order of the Greater Beings.
I had already dressed in my favourite flowy trousers and shirt—pale pink and white respectively today—but now that daylight streamed into the room, I sat down at my dressing table to do my hair and skincare.
After smoothing moisturiser over my face, I leaned in for a closer inspection in the mirror. The expensive face cream my aunt got for both of us mostly fended off the signs of ageing, but time stopped for no one. Now, as I smiled at myself in the mirror, laugh lines fanned out from the corners of my eyes.
I sighed, leaning back and reaching for my sunscreen. I was happy here—happier than I would be anywhere else. Probably. Maybe. So it was silly to look at my face, now twenty-five years older than it had been when I arrived, and feel like I was possibly… wasting my life.
I wasn’t wasting it, I thought stubbornly. I was ensuring I had the best life possible. My methods may have been a touch unconventional, but they’d worked for this long and they weren’t going to fail me now. Why would they? I’d worked the system—well, my aunt and I had—to ensure I lived in conditions that would otherwise be well beyond my means.
If it meant I had to live with a bunch of people who had willingly dedicated their lives to worshipping the demiurgus, the monstrous beings who lived among humans? Sure, I didn’t mind that. They could do what they wanted. Did I find it a little weird that they all stayed here desperately hoping to one day become a demiurgus’s mate? That they spent all their time reading about the species’ mysterious history, learning their ways and pampering themselves to look beautiful in the hopes of getting dicked down by one of them?
I mean, yeah, I found it a little strange.
The demiurgus weren’t human, but they were just… people. A different kind of people, but people. They weren’t gods. They’d emerged from wherever they’d lived, deep underground, centuries ago to start co-existing with humans on the surface. They’d brought with them medicine, interesting food, beautiful artwork and a new culture, which was how, I guessed, cults like this had sprung up.
Yeah, I was in a cult. But I wasn’t really in it. I just lived in The Order of the Greater Beings’ compound because… well. Because it was great. The building was huge and sprawling, on the top of a big hill that overlooked the city and surrounding countryside. It was clean and luxurious, and I had a huge room to myself. The food was good. The healthcare was top-notch. And my aunt was here.
My mother hadn’t been around when I was little, and my dad was… not great. Just a total dick who’d clearly never wanted a kid. After a decade of neglect, he’d finally foisted me off on his sister, my aunt, who worked at the compound as the general manager for its winemaking business.
She wasn’t a true follower of the cult either. She’d come here years earlier when she’d had no other options after a short stint in prison for theft. During that time, her boyfriend had shacked up with someone new and changed the locks, so when she got out, she’d been homeless—my dickhead dad hadn’t been willing to take her in—and hadn’t been able to get a job. She’d come to the cult one night, desperate, hoping for a bed and a hot meal. And then she’d stayed, because she got both of those things. She played the game just like I did, pretending to worship the demiurgus, and eventually she’d become general manager here, overseeing the day-to-day running of the cult’s winemaking business.
It wasn’t that humans who lived outside of the compound were destitute. Most of them weren’t at all. Many of them had completely normal jobs, normal lives, and treated the demiurgus as what they were—just other folk.
But by the time I turned eighteen and could legitimately go out into the world and make my own way, I’d gotten scared. I may not have been a true member of the cult, my aunt had made sure when I was a kid that I didn’t get sucked into their fervent worship of the demiurgus, but it was basically all I’d known. And I hadn’t gotten a proper education here. I knew I’d struggle to find a job, especially one that paid well enough for me to get my own place.
So I’d stayed. I liked living with my only family—I had no idea where my dad was now—and I liked my simple way of life. I wasn’t lazy. I worked just as hard as all the others on the vineyards we ran. We had two of them here—a standard one for human wine, and a subterranean one within the hill to grow the nightberries that the demiurgus made their own wine from. It was a pretty lucrative business. The demiurgus loved having easy access to their favourite wine without having to make the long journey back underground to the mysterious place they came from, to procure the nightberries. At some point in the cult’s past, a demiurgus had gifted the members with some of the berries, and from there the subterranean vineyard had grown.
Most of the other members suspected I wasn’t as gung-ho about becoming a demiurgus’s fucktoy as they were, but I displayed just enough deference when the “Greater Beings” were brought up, and I made sure to keep my mouth mostly shut when the high priest was around. If he realised I wasn’t all in, that I wasn’t here in the hopes of one day becoming a demiurgus’s mate, I’d be out the door in an instant.
Besides, it wasn’t like there was any danger of that actually happening. In the entire time I’d lived here, not a single demiurgus had stepped through those doors declaring that they were here to choose a human mate. And even if that did happen… well, I would not be their first choice. Or even their last. We had regular health check-ups here, and our medical backgrounds were recorded in painstaking detail so that if a demiurgus did ever come here, they’d be able to make sure they were choosing a healthy mate who suited their needs.
And I would not suit their needs. I made very fucking sure I didn’t.
I still had a somewhat active sex life. Despite all the cult members here pining for demiurgus lovers, they were still human, and lots of humans liked sex. Sure, some of them were “saving themselves”—have fun with that—but others enjoyed sex with one another as they waited to be swept off their feet by a big, looming demiurgus.
I was pretty sure they’d all be waiting a long, long time. As far as I knew, demiurgus very, very rarely took humans as partners. Maybe not ever. But that hadn’t stopped legends being spawned about their sexual prowess, their virility, their unquenchable lust. About how having sex with one of them was akin to lying with a god.
When I heard the others talking about it in hushed, breathy voices, I always wanted to snort. I was pretty sure the demiurgus had started those rumours themselves. Why not make the gullible humans believe you were dynamite in bed? Why not feed your ego by allowing them to form cults and build statues and dedicate their lives to worshipping you? It wasn’t like some humans in history hadn’t done the same thing.
At least, with the demiurgus, it appeared to be all for show. They weren’t showing up here to peruse us like cattle and take one of us home as their new living sex toy. They didn’t seem to be taking advantage of this weird little subsect of humanity by demanding anything from us or overpowering us for their own gain. We were just the strange bunch living up the hill in a big compound built in their name. They probably thought we were freaks.
But seeing as my aunt and I had worked the system flawlessly, I had no motivation to leave.
Sure, sometimes I got lonely and thought it might be nice to get an interesting job and be around other regular people. To find someone, to settle down and live in a proper house and have a normal, quiet existence in the real world. But it wasn’t the driving force in my life.
So yeah, maybe by staying here I was coasting, playing it safe by remaining in my weird little bubble. At least I was doing it in style.
Chapter Two
Greid
What the fuck are you doing, dude?
