The Last Goddess

by C.E. Stalbaum

  ***

   

  Tryss had barely made it a hundred yards before it became obvious Van had been right: she had no chance of reaching the plaza. The screaming hordes of Haven citizens were quickly barreling down upon her, and anyone who tried to push against them would almost assuredly be crushed. Behind them and off to the left, a battle continued to rage at the steps of the Assembly. It looked like the various guardsmen from all of the foreign embassies had gathered together in a vain attempt to hold off against the Faceless hordes crashing down upon them.

  She only had one possible way to go: up. Taking a deep breath, she called to the Fane and shifted the gravity at her feet. She launched upwards above the fray then hurled herself forward towards the center of the plaza.

  Few magi ever risked catapulting themselves like this, and Tryss wasn’t particularly thrilled about it, either. But she forced herself to ignore the ground screaming past a hundred feet below her and focus instead on her destination. Once she drew closer she aimed for a scaffold on the eastern side of the plaza and did her best to drop down softly enough not to break anything.

  She was mostly successful. Her landing was smooth enough, but the Flensing took another bite just as her feet touched the ground. Tryss clutched onto the wood railing and waited for the worst of the pain to pass, but her arms and legs continued to throb as if they had been clubbed by a mallet.

  She grimaced and glanced out to the center of the plaza. The entire area around the stage had been cleared, and it was immediately obvious why—the stage itself was littered with corpses. Most were draped in the armor of royal guardsmen, but plenty of others wore the regal sashes and finery of nobles and politicians. And there at the center, lying slumped in a shriveled husk, was her mother.

  Dead.

  Tryss wasn’t prepared for the onrush of emotion. Fear, pain, rage—it all washed over her in one indiscernible wave. Perhaps she shouldn’t have felt anything for a woman who had been heartless so often, but she did anyway. The sight of the corpse itself would have given Tryss pause, but even worse was the man standing over her, dark purple energy swirling around him like some sort of evil god. It wasn’t Senator Veltar like she had expected. It was much worse. 

  “Kastrius!”

  He turned against the din as his army of Faceless continued to carve a path through the plaza. The afternoon sun sparkled off his resplendent white armor and golden epaulets. He shielded his eyes just enough to catch her standing there atop the scaffolding.

  For a moment, she thought he might simply unleash a spell at her, but then his entire body froze in place.

  “Tryss?”

  She couldn’t hear him over all the screaming, but she could see his lips form her name. She leapt down from the scaffold and strode briskly towards him.

  “Impossible…” he breathed as she drew closer. “How could you—?” His mouth fell open and then twisted as if he had suddenly noticed a bad taste in his mouth. “Veltar.”

  “He never told you about me, did he?” she asked, stopping at the bottom of the stage. “You never knew who it was you were really chasing.”

  Her brother shook his head. “No, but it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? He told me years ago that you would inevitably get in the way of our plans, but I insisted you never cared about the throne—all you ever wanted were your books and your tower.”

  “And you were never curious when I disappeared? You never wondered if he might be involved?”

  “It crossed my mind,” he admitted, “but no one had any proof. No one had much of anything—you were just…gone. I figured you’d had enough of mother’s insipid scheming and fled the country. Abalor knows I couldn’t blame you for that.”

  “He knew you wanted the Kirshal,” she told him, “and he needed to quench his thirst for vengeance against the Kirshane. That’s all this was ever about.”

  Kastrius nodded, his eyes flicking back and forth as he put it all together. “But he insisted your memories were destroyed—why would he take the chance that you might come back here to find him?”

  “They were destroyed. He left me with nothing; I had no idea who I was or where I had come from.”

  “But then how—ah,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “It was the Kirshal, wasn’t it? Rook’s power restored your memories, didn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Just after your men butchered everyone in Jehalai.”

  “Not everyone, apparently.” His smile widened, and for a moment he was a twelve-year old boy again, plotting some impish way to torment one of the palace servants and trying to convince her to join him. “This is so…perfect. Mother is dead, and we’re both finally free. Why not join us? If you want revenge on Veltar you’re more than welcome to have it. I’m through with him anyway.”

  “He’s an evil man—you know that. I can’t believe you ever decided to work with him.”

  Kastrius shrugged. “Mother took almost everything else away from me. I needed help, and he was willing to offer it. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll give you the academy tower—by the void, I’ll give you every tower in the city if you want. Veltar already taught you the secrets of Consecration; you could instruct others, train the next generation of Darenthi magi. Imagine what we could accomplish together!”

  Tryss’s mouth went dry as she looked past him to the Empress’s shriveled corpse. “You just murdered our mother in cold blood! And you’ve sent your Faceless to butcher hundreds more!”

  “Only foreigners,” he said matter-of-factly. “They don’t belong here, anyway. This is not a safe-haven for those who seek to conspire against us. I will call the city by its rightful name, Arteris, and it will once again become a military outpost. From here we can launch invasions into Ebara, Sylethi, and even Vakar.”

  “Listen to yourself,” she pleaded. “Kastrius, we don’t need another war. Thousands will die, and when the secrets of Defilement get out, no one will be safe.”

  He scoffed. “’Defilement?’ You sound like an Edehan lapdog, sister. I know you were never a believer. You never cared about Abalor or Edeh or any of their dogma; you just wanted to understand the Fane. And that’s all this is about—unlocking its true potential for anyone with the strength and courage to wield it.”

  “I don’t care about religion,” she growled. “This is about reason. Without the Flensing, the Fane will be torn apart. You understand that—you have to.”

  Kastrius sighed and shook his head. “Of all people, I never would have expected you to start spouting Edehan propaganda back at me. The Flensing is a curse by a petty goddess afraid of what we might accomplish on our own. What I’m bringing to the people here is freedom—freedom from foolish treaties and spiteful deities.”

  “What you bring is death,” Tryss said flatly. “I know this power, Kastrius, maybe better than anyone else. I know what it can do, and it is terrifying. You have to let it go.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” he replied defiantly, eyeing her up and down. “You always were mother’s pet. She never stopped reminding me that someday you would be the one to rule. Tryss, the great mage who could do no wrong…and now you’re just an apologist for kreel like her. Maybe it would have been better if your memories never returned.”

  Tryss balled her hands into fists. She hadn’t really expected him to listen to reason, of course, but a small part of her had held out hope that everything she’d been hearing about him was wrong. She had wondered if perhaps Veltar had organized everything, and if her brother was little more than a useless pawn…

  But no, as vile and vengeful as the old man was, it was ultimately her own blood that had ordered this massacre. He was the one who would use the Faceless to start another war—he was the one that would cause another Sundering to get what he wanted.

  And he was the one she had to stop.

  “Call back your Faceless,” she ordered, bringing herself up to her full height as she stepped up onto the stage. “Stop this now, before you do any more damage
.”

  “My big sister, always trying to boss me around,” he said, taking a step back and extending his hands. A sinister swirl of purple-black energy gathered at his fingertips. “No one commands me anymore, Tryss. I am the Emperor of the Darenthi Republic, and you…you are nothing!”

  He unleashed the dark magic, and she could feel the Fane shudder as he drew energy from every living thing around him—the grass in the street, the mice in the nearby buildings, even from her. Tryss clapped her hands together in response, weaving the Fane and releasing an invisible surge of power. His spell unraveled just as quickly as it had formed.

  “I’m sorry, brother, but I can’t allow you to do this,” she whispered. She extended her palm forward as she wove another spell, attempting to pin him in a prison of controlled gravity…

  He dispelled her effort with a wave of his hand and let out a derisive laugh. “You’ll have to do better than that, you know. I’m not a first year student.”

  “You’re not a student at all,” she snapped. “You never even went to the academy.”

  “I didn’t need to listen to Edehan propaganda to understand the world, and I still don’t.”

  The air hissed again, and a bolt of lightning darted from his fingertips. Tryss extended her palms and redirected the blinding flash of energy straight into the sky. This time, however, the Flensing struck, and she nearly lost her balance and toppled off the stage.

  Kastrius smiled darkly. “How pathetic. Why do you still draw on yourself when you know you don’t have to? You already said you understand this technique better than anyone. Surely it would make you more than a match for your dim-witted brother.”

  “You take what doesn’t belong to you,” she replied, steadying herself. Her feet were starting to go numb, and her arms throbbed as if she had been hanging from them all day. “The Flensing is the price of power.”

  “Only for kreel who don’t know better—or worse, idealists who delude themselves with convenient morality.”

  Once more his hands flashed with power, and a thundering wave of concussive force surged straight at her. She met the blast with the same spell—and suddenly found herself flying backwards as the two waves collided with a deafening clap. The stage split straight down the middle, and wood and debris showered in all directions.

  Tryss brought herself to a knee and was suddenly glad for the armor she’d donned—her breastplate and leggings were both riddled with splinters. She caught a glimpse of Kastrius pulling himself up not far away. He brushed the wood from his white mantle and actually managed a smile.

  “You really are gifted, just as everyone always liked to remind me,” he told her. “If you didn’t insist on hamstringing yourself, it would be you standing here instead of me.”

  Tryss glanced down to her throbbing arm. Her veins had started to glow faintly, creating a sickening latticework beneath the skin on the back of her hands. Blood trickled from her nose, and it wasn’t from the force of the blast.

  She was running out of time. For all her knowledge, for all her so-called power, Tryss knew the only way she could defeat him was to Defile—and soon it would even be too late for that.

  She had told herself repeatedly she would never draw upon that power again. It was evil. But if she didn’t stop him here, who would? The other nations of Esharia might rally and defeat his army of Faceless, but they would be no match for an army of Defiling magi. Nothing would. They would destroy anything and everything in the name of ambition. The world around them would burn.

  And it all would be her fault. She, the fool who had started it all. She, the weakling who couldn’t stop a madman.

  She, the princess who had failed her people.