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The first time that Phillip makes a grimwalker of his brother, it dies before it ever takes a breath- screaming itself to death in the darkness.
The second time, it fully forms and does, actually, take a breath. And then it dies.
The third time, Phillip makes the man the same age as Caleb was when he died. It fully forms, takes a breath, and then smiles at him.
“It’s good to see you, Phillip,” it- no, he says. Phillip gives him all his brother’s memories until their first major fight, and he assures himself that he can just guide his brother away from sympathizing with these witches this time. He thinks of him as simply an extension of Caleb- the life that his brother should have had, if he weren’t seduced by the awful nature of this place.
It doesn’t work.
The next time, he makes Caleb his younger brother, tweaks his memories just a touch, and hopes that a level of admiration will keep the young man on the right path. This is the Caleb that he should have had- the Caleb who follows his lead and hunts witches instead of wedding them .
It doesn’t work.
Phillip doesn’t try again for months. It’s too painful to think about his brother betraying him yet again. But what if it isn’t Caleb. What if it's Caleb... perfected? Phillip has created his persona as Belos, now. He’s started proselytizing (with little success), but… if this isn’t Caleb, but a replacement- a better version, tailored to share his views. Well. What’s the harm in that?
Caleb was corrupted. Maybe he was predestined that way- but if Phillip goes in and makes more changes, maybe he can set him on the path of the righteous instead of the path of the damned. He can figure out what improves the model and what doesn’t… Surely Phillip can find the perfect version eventually. A Golden Guard, appointed by “the titan” to help Emperor Belos cleanse The Boiling Isles.
This Golden Guard will be Caleb made in Phillip's image. A Caleb who follows his lead, who will help him cure the Boiling Isles of the pox of magic, and then return triumphant to the human realm as the witchfinder general and his right hand. Surely that would be better?
Phillip makes his next attempt as a witch to better blend in with the populace. He gives the man memories of “wild magic” destroying everything, and pledging himself to Belos and his mission to ensure that the Boiling Isles are kept safe and prosperous. Phillip names him Assurance, and feels better than he ever did with a grimwalker named Caleb .
It doesn’t work, but it works for longer than the others did.
Phillips goes through Aid-on-High, Approved, Be-Faithful, Be-Thankful, Dependence, Discipline, and Do-Right in much the same manner, figuring out a slightly better way to tweak the manipulation each time. He becomes a beloved mentor, a hero, the founder of a great institution meant to purge their world of evil.
Phillip realizes that the mid thirties that he’s been crafting his grimwalkers in is too old. They’re no longer as impressionable as they could be, and even if he gets one who is truly loyal, they won’t have a long enough lifespan to return to the human realm with him.
He creates Faithful, Give-Thanks, Heavenly-Mind, and Humiliation in their late twenties. Then he moves the copies down to their mid twenties as he creates his next batch with Jenning, Jobe, Kill-sin, Lamentation, and Loyalty. He gets a few extra years out of them, but he decides to move it down yet again.
By the time that Phillip is truly establishing his imperial dynasty, he’s moved onto creating grimwalkers in their early twenties. A twenty year old named Meek lasts the longest of any grimwalker, from the beginning of his conquest of the Knee to him perfecting his draining spell.
Even Meek (who mostly lived up to his name) has too much of Caleb in him to watch “innocent” witches die, and he rebels just as easily as the rest. Phillip decides to move the next batch down to nineteen and keep them away from anything that actually kills witches until he’s sure that these grimwalkers are loyal enough to withstand it.
Mindwell, Mordecai, Nazareth, Obedience and Patient all last for even shorter periods of time than their predecessors. He’d had high hopes for Obedience, but that boy ended up more willful than most..
Phillip decreases the age to nineteen this time, and Pilgrim makes it all the way through his conquest of the west side of the isles. Redeemed makes it through his conquest of parts of the east before rebelling, and Reliance makes it long enough for Philip to unite the Isles under a single throne.
And then Reliance betrays him.
Repentance helps him develop the coven system, and only rebels after Philip starts snatching away the palismans of his “true believers” in the Emperor’s coven.
Phillip moves the next batch down to seventeen, and tries to install a view of palismen as vermin to be destroyed. Sometimes it works better than others, and when they do treat the palismen the way they ought to be treated… it almost heals the shock of Caleb choosing a cardinal carved out of wood over him.
Seraphim choses a young recruit to the emperor’s coven to fall in love with, and tries to run away with them into the countryside. It’s not the most painful of betrayals, but it’s betrayal enough for Phillip to dispose of him and try again.
Phillip encourages Silence not to fraternize with underlings. Silence, instead, fraternizes with coven heads , who convince him there’s something wrong with the system altogether. Silence and the coven heads are dealt with, and Phillip starts vetting his underlings far more carefully.
Submit does nothing of the sort, and Swift runs swiftly in the other direction. Each of their skulls lie scattered in his pile of failures within months of their creation.
Tenacious comes across The Collector and figures out Phillip’s plans, so he has to go.
Timothye befriends a wild witch.
Tribulation learns the truth and is left so heartbroken that he throws himself into the skull pit. Phillip has to make sure to emphasize the damning nature of suicide after that. He’s not going to lose another grimwalker to something as cowardly and avoidable as that. They must all have some standards.
Phillips weeps when he has to put Weep-not out of his misery, because he has finally discovered proof of a portal. He’s finally close enough that he may, one day soon, get home. But Weep-Not will not be the grimwalker that he takes with him back to the promised land.
Phillip decides to push his age back another year this time, and tries to isolate this one socially until his values are fully formed.
Zelotes becomes his sixteen year old devotee, and Phillip inducts him into the Emperor’s Coven in the minutes after he’s created. Zelotes is given a head full of manipulation and a strict set of rules, and he shines brighter than all the rest combined.
Zelotes succeeds, recruiting more students and wild witches to covens than any of the grimwalkers before. He brands the woman that punched Phillip in the face all those years ago with the Emperor's seal, and turns Lilith Clawthorne into a simpering sycophant instead of the sort of woman who could see through his facade and leave him scarred.
Zelotes befriends and trains a talented young man who ends up head of the abominations coven, spreads The Emperor’s gospel of the titan, and swells the reputation of the Emperor’s Coven.
But even Zelotes can be corrupted, it seems. He explores too much, goes too far beyond the boundaries that Phillip sets for him. He wants to help, wants to make the Empire a better place, but with Caleb’s sense of right and wrong… knowing things is seldom good for any version of Caleb.
Zelotes finds the room full of skulls and confronts Phillip about it, and then Phillip has to add him to the ever-growing pile.
Phillip is left with a conundrum and a room full of failures. How can he finally fix this? What can he do to make Caleb easier to control? He’s already made him younger, tailored his memories, education, and socialization. Phillip has already made himself the main figure in the boy’s life, and still, every time that a copy finds out the truth, he watches his brother betray him all over again.
Most of the recent models have used magic to fight against him. Some of them knew that they could run away and find a different place in the world- because for all intents and purposes, his grimwalkers are witches .
But what if… Phillip made it so that this version would never be accepted? Phillip switched from making his grimwalkers appear human to building them to look like witches. The first kept the idea that the copies were separate from the witches, but the second helped with Phillip's cover story. Why can't he find a perfect blend of both?
A powerless Caleb with nowhere to go, who is rejected at every turn except by his side.
With a powerless witch, bullied and ostracized, made a leader but never given the footing and training to make it work… that might build a true resentment in the grimwalker towards the entire population of the Boiling Isles. If Phillip could reveal that actually, they’re both human, and they’re going to the human realm where this one will be accepted despite his lack of magic- where he will be hailed for taking revenge on those who cast him out?
That… might actually work.
Phillip needs to craft a traumatic backstory, of course, a good reason for this one to care even more deeply for him than if he were just the mentor who took them in.
A nephew, perhaps. That could work. And it's close enough to true.
The only issue is which age to make him. Part of the problem with the previous grimwalkers, is that they thought they had lives before Belos. They emerged more fully formed, with thoughts and opinions on the world that had been shaped by memories outside of him.
But what if Phillip made this one younger? A powerless child that he raises to be the perfect replacement for his brother?
Phillip couldn't make him too young, of course. He can’t imagine taking care of a baby. A toddler would exhaust him, even in the rare moments that the toddler listened to him. A six or seven year old would still have too much energy, too little impulse control, and he'd probably have to teach the child to read on top of it. He might even end up with a brat that acts like The Collector.
But if he made this one a child of ten perhaps? Eleven? They would already be formed enough to follow his orders, and young enough not to question them. Because he will have made himself the boy’s beloved uncle, his savior from the evils of wild magic. The one who took him in when no one wanted a castoff freak who couldn't cast a charm.
Why, the goodness and charity of that action would make Phillip a saint to him. Not an idol, because that would be sinful… but the closest that a human can get to being an object of worship.
This would be a Caleb who is fully dependent on him. He will follow Phillip back to the human realm without question, relieved to finally become normal. Phillip will fix his ears on the way through the portal and then they’ll be free: the beloved heroes who finally rid this wretched world of its witches and demons.
Yes. That is exactly what he'll do. It's something that he's never tried before, and he's willing to have an honest go of it.
Phillip gathers his supplies, and starts throwing ingredients into his caldron. Galdorstone, Palisman wood, Selkidomus Scales, Stonesleeper Lungs, and one of Caleb’s original bones. He stirs the pot as The Collector dances around the wall, singing the crude little song that he sings every time that Phillip tries this process again.
Phillip groans, but does not scold The Collector for his rudeness. It would only make the demon-spawn sing louder.
The Collector sings louder anyway.
Phillip is an adult, so he doesn't snap at the hellspawn. He only peaks into the caldron to check on the grimwalker’s progress. The child's body has already solidified- and within minutes it should wake up with a full consciousness, ready to greet the world and learn how to be Phillip's right hand, his little Hunter, who looks just like Caleb did when Phillip was a wide-eyed child of five, who worshiped no God as readily as his older brother.
Creating a grimwalker of this age required Phillip to delve deeper into his memories than ever before. These childhood memories were buried so deep they hurt to dredge up. But it was worth it. This one looks like most like Caleb of any grimwalker that he's ever made.
“Hehehe,” The Collector giggles, "you're making this one… a kid?”
“Yes,” Phillip says, “I expect a child will have a harder time betraying me .”
The Collector laughs, shaking his head no. "No way, Bellsy! Us kids have an easier time with that, 'cause we don’t have the stupid stuffy morals that grownups have.”
Phillip glares down at the child-demon. “My child will be a proper Calvinist. He will listen to my authority and that of the one true God .”
"God schmod," The Collector cackles.
"You will not mock my creator in my presence," Phillip says, pointing an angry finger at The Collector.
"Mocking a creator?" The Collector asks, "maybe I should teach this one to make fun of you!" The demonic child materializes in front of the caldron, and goes to pull a strand of his newly made nephew's hair.
"Don't touch him," Phillip orders.
“Boring!” he sing-songs, starting to braid the little bit of hair on the new grimwalker's head.
“Can I play with him!” he says, gently pulling at the hair hard enough that it would hurt if he were conscious, “he looks like so much fun !”
“No,” Phillip orders, “I want this one to remain… uncorrupted. Leave him be."
"But Phiiiillll-"
"Now, Collector," Phillip says.
The Collector crosses his arms over his chest, and then pouts out his lip. "No!"
"If he doesn't trust me, then he won't help me make the draining spell. Remember what happened the last time one of them met you?"
"It was funny," The Collector defends.
"Funny enough to give up on the draining spell for another however many years." The Collector glances over at Philip, and then at his baby-faced grimwalker.
“Whatever,” The Collector says, sinking back into the shadows, “let me know when you stop being lame!” Then the Collector fades from this realm entirely, and leaves Phillip at his leisure.
Finally, his ears can start the recovery process. Phillip breathes a sigh of relief as the devil he tied himself to finally lets him breath. Phillip grabs a bucket, and ladles out bits of the potion. It leaves only a naked, soaking little boy shivering at the bottom of the pot.
Phillip averts his eyes, and throws a towel into the pot to wrap the boy up in. Then, he reaches in and pulls him out. The boy starts to stretch out and makes a groaning noise.
"Hunter," Phillip prompts. He sets his hands on the boy’s shoulders and shakes him, trying to jar the boy out of his half-sleep. Phillip's newest grimwalker opens his red eyes.
“What?” Hunter asks, rubbing at them to try to get the sleep out.
“You’re in the palace, Hunter,” Phillip says patiently.
“The palace?” Hunter asks, eyes widening. He breaks out of Phillip’s hold and sends him a confused look. With the memories that Philip gave him, he doesn’t know why he’s in the palace yet. In his memories, he never got to visit before, even though he knew his father was the Emperor’s little brother.
“Yes,” Phillip says, “you’re here in my palace. Safe."
Hunter takes a cautious breath, and then moves his hand softly over the towel.
"Do you remember what happened?" Phillip asks. It takes a moment for the implanted memory to take hold, but Phillip sees the fear light up the grimwalker's eyes.
“There was a fire,” Hunter whispers. His eyes are wide, lit up like a sunrise with fear. Even when Caleb was this young, he never looked as scared as this copy does. Caleb was confident; but Hunter seems frightened. Pliant.
This is a very good sign.
“Yes,” Phillip tells him, “the wild witches burned down your village.”
“Did they get… everyone?” Hunter asks.
“Yes. Even your father and mother."
Hunter flinches.
Phillip digs the knife in a little deeper. "Everyone in the village perished.”
“Oh." Hunter tries to draw the towel up over his bare chest.
"No-" Phillip orders, "keep it down there. You wouldn't want to expose yourself." Hunter looks down at his body, and for the first time during the interaction, he seems to notice that it's the only thing covering him. His face turns red, and he tries to wrap it even tighter around his middle. Phillip nods his approval.
"Uh," Hunter says, "can I ask you a question, Emperor Belos?"
"Yes, Hunter."
“Why am I naked?” he asks softly.
“Your clothes reeked of smoke, Hunter,” Phillip tells him, “we were barely able to get you out.”
“Oh.”
“I had to give you a bath.”
Hunter looks at him awkwardly. “Thank you?”
“It’s not a question, Hunter,” Phillip scolds, “don’t phrase it as such.”
Hunter looks down at the ground. “Thank you.”
“That’s better,” Phillip says. Then, Phillip stands back up and holds out a hand. He helps his new nephew off the ground.
“Come,” Phillip says, gesturing with his head towards the door, “we’ll get you settled in.”
“What?” Hunter asks.
"We'll find you some clothes, get a room together, and make sure you get a good meal."
"But- why?" Hunter asks, looking up at his newfound uncle in confusion.
“You’ll be moving into the palace with me,” Phillip says, as if Hunter is particularly slow.
“But-”
Phillip silences him with a glare. "I am the Emperor, Hunter. You are asking a lot of questions of your titan appointed authority."
Hunter opens his mouth, then closes it again. He blushes brightly as he looks back down at the floor.
Phillip sighs, grabs Hunter's chin, and forces him to meet his eyes.
"What is it?" he demands, "if you're interrupting this much, it must be important." Phillip shouldn't have to soothe whatever this is, but he'd rather figure it out right now. Then he'll have a better idea of what tactics to use going forward.
Hunter tries to wrap his towel tighter around him, and tries to break his chin out of Phillip's grasp. The Emperor of the Boiling Isles holds it firmly in place.
"Tell me what's wrong," he orders. Hunter's eyes start to drift down- "and look me in the eyes."
Hunter squirms a little, looking uncomfortable, but he maintains the eye contact. “You don’t have to take me in."
“What should I do then, send you back to the ruins of your house?” Phillip replies. He rolls his eyes for good measure. Then he lets go of Hunter's chin.
The boy backs up and shrinks into himself, trying to make himself as small as possible. “You don’t have to keep me,” he whispers.
Ah. So that's the problem. Hunter doesn't want to be a burden to his blessed uncle the Emperor. What a good reaction to have. Sensible- fearful- obedient. Phillip has finally made a grimwalker who might learn his place.
“Hunter," Phillip tells him, "I promised your father that I would take you in if anything ever happened to him, do you understand?" The boy nods.
"This is a burden that I am willing to bear."
“But- Emperor Belos,” Hunter says, “I don’t-”
“You don’t what, Hunter?” Phillip asks, “want to live in the palace with me?” Hunter frowns and shakes his head.
“That seems a little ungrateful,” he tacks on, just to hammer the lesson in.
“No,” Hunter says, shaking his head even faster, “I just- I don’t have magic.”
Phillip smiles. “Why ever should that matter?”:
“I’m just half a witch,” Hunter says, tears welling up in his eyes, “I can’t join a coven, or go to witch school, or- I don't know!"
"You don't know what?"
"What I can do," Hunter says, "I can't help you."
“Well, let's start with that first bit. Whoever said you couldn’t join a coven?” Phillip prompts. It's a question that he already knows the answer to, of course. He made the memories, after all. He knows the schoolyard bullies who called him half-a-witch. He knows the “mother” that he crafted who told Hunter, with all the sadness and compassion in her heart, that he could never join a coven. That he would never belong.
“Everyone,” Hunter says, wiping a tear as it falls down his face.
“Well who cares what everyone says,” Phillip says, “I am the Emperor and you are my nephew. Someday, you will lead my coven.”
“But-”
“You don’t need magic to be helpful, Hunter,” Phillip says, placing a hand on his shoulder, “you just need to follow orders as best as you can. That’s all I can ever ask of you.”
Hunter smiles. “Really?”
“Yes,” Phillip says, “really.”
“Thank you Emperor Belos!” Hunter squeals. He’s smiling widely, and looking up at Phillip with the type of awe and adoration that he sees from his followers. Phillip never saw look that from Caleb. He does want it, but he wants it to look a little different from this grimwalker than from the witches he's leading to the gallows. He wouldn’t have made Hunter his nephew if he didn’t hope to keep this one forever, after all.
“Hunter,” he says softly, “you are my nephew. You may call me “uncle” when it’s just the two of us.”
Hunter smiles even wider. "Yes uncle!"
“Now come,” Phillip tells him, starting his long trek from the workshop to his quarters, “I have much to show you. You are going to be in charge of much of this castle someday, so you’ll have to learn all of its inner workings.”
“Of course!” he chirps, “I’ll make you proud, I promise .” Hunter has a bounce in his step, eating up every word that Phillip tells him like precious candy. It strikes him, then, how much surer he feels of this one. He looks like Caleb. He's been crafted, perfectly, to ensure his compliance.
This one might really work. Phillip wants him to be the one that sticks: the one he gets to take home, that finally proves that Caleb could have been happy with him, if Caleb had just given his little brother a chance.
Hunter will be the one that finally proves it to Phillip and to whatever remains of Caleb: that he was right and his brother was wrong. The witchfinder general and his loyal little witch hunter will destroy the depravity of the Isles and finally return, triumphant, to the promised land.