Free The God Engines by John Scalzi Page B

Tschanu’s eyes. They were terribly aware.
    The air was a storm of screams and howls, Tephe’s own slipping into the gyre. No one moved. What power was folding the boy into himself pinned every soul into immobility. No one could run or turn away.
    Red lines bisected every limb of Tschanu’s body; Tephe realized the boy’s skin was flaying itself. Beneath the skin red muscles uncoiled like fraying cable and then stayed themselves into the ground, pulling off impossibly stiff bone. In seconds, the arch of the headman’s son’s body was an x-shaped spine over a space tented by skin and sinew. With the small strength left to him, Tschanu forced breath past his ruined jaw, offering up a final scream.
    A hand surfaced from the rope of Tschanu’s intestines, spilling them to the ground. It held for a moment, as if scenting the air around it and then grasped for body’s edge, where the tented skin met the abdominal wall. A second hand rose and made for the other side.
    A creature in the shape of man pulled itself up and out of the ruined youth, its shape stained by the youth’s blood, lymph and bile. Tephe stared at the beautiful, streaked form, delicately setting its feet to avoid the visceral coils trailing on the ground.
    My god,
thought Tephe.
    Tschanu’s body, released from its gateway spell, collapsed softly. The eyes that had been so aware stared, mercifully blank. Tephe’s god seemed not to notice the pile through which He had traveled, choosing instead to gaze with dispassion at the now silent assembly. Tephe watched His Lord grow and brighten. The stink of the boy’s body steamed off Him, until He was clean and fine and twice the height of a man.
    The god blinked and looked around Him at the mute and immobile mass of people, those who would be His worshippers, head angling down as He was then three and now four times their height and size.
    Tephe saw His Lord reach down, take a woman from crowd, and draw her to His chest. He crushed her into Him.
    Her body dissolved into His like a spun sugar poppet dropped into water.

    Without looking He reached down and picked another of His newly-faithful, and consumed him as he consumed the woman before.
    Consuming their souls,
Tephe thought, and despaired. His Lord never intended these souls for worship. He needed their allegiance to feed from them, and from the purity and power of their brief new faith.
    His Lord reached down and picked up Tscha, headman of Cthicx.
    I am a reflection of My Lord. That which he is perfectly, I am imperfectly so.
    Tephe saw the headman staring at him as His Lord consumed his soul. A cry slipped from the captain.
    His Lord turned, His beautiful, perfect face staring directly into Tephe, then slowly moving to the priest, the Gavril, and the head of the Bishop’s Men, each in turn struck by the terrible countenance of Their Lord.
    LEAVE—said Tephe’s Lord, and splayed a hand toward Tephe as the other pressed another woman into Himself.
    Tephe was on the
Righteous
, with ringing in his ears that was not ringing, but priest Andso screaming, high and aspirated and mad.

Chapter Nine
    It took Captain Tephe a moment to realize that someone was speaking to him. He looked up from his walk. Neal Forn was pacing him, waiting for acknowledgment.
    “My apologies, Neal,” Tephe said, and kept walking. He had been walking the length and breadth of the
Righteous
since he and the landing party had been returned from Cthicx. “I did not hear what you said.”
    “I said I spoke to the healer Garder and he tells me there is nothing he can do for the priest Andso,” Forn said. “He says there is no physical damage to heal. What has happened to him is in his mind, which is beyond the healer’s Talent.”
    “Yes,” Tephe said. He ducked under a low portal.
    “The priest is no longer in the healer’s care,” Forn said, ducking as well. “He has returned to his quarters and will not leave them. His acolytes say he is poring through books and speaking