Finally, she found what she was looking for. Near the edge of one of the man-made tree groves, Merigold could see the telltale signs of a greenie. Three trees had already succumbed, and the ashes were sweeping across the battlefield, making things even more disordered. A half dozen bored-looking soldiers stood around leaning on those strange spears of theirs and watching the battle. Two more Menogans pressed their hands on separate trees, both of them looking upward toward the sky. The trees were slowly being drained of their lifeforce. Leaves curled and blackened, bark peeled back, and branches cracked here and there. These were the metsikas maintaining at least a portion of the barrier.
If they were to fall, the barrier would fall. Merigold hoped.
She quested, feeling the vibrant maenen within the rabbit. Though the animal was much smaller than a horse, its ephemeral reservoir of maenen was still fairly significant. She continued to absentmindedly pet the small, fearful creature as she plotted out her next steps.
There were a hundred yards of open ground between her and the metsikas. She needed to get closer, but the risk was great. Any one of the soldiers turning around could see her, and then she would be stabbed, pierced, or incinerated. But, she also couldn’t risk missing. She had one shot at this, so she simply strolled out of the tall grass and began to confidently walk toward them. If anyone turned and saw her, they would at least see someone who appeared to belong. With her silvery blonde hair, they might even mistake her for one of their own.
It was strange, Merigold thought, that she felt so little fear as she strode purposefully toward this battle. Her legs bore her weight without quivering, and her stomach lacked that hollow feeling that she would have expected. She was potentially—likely, even—marching toward her death. And yet, for some reason, she felt at peace with herself.
No one saw her until she was within ten yards of them. A guard dropped his spear, twisting backwards to pick it up. He saw the small, slender girl approaching and just stared rather than calling out. Merigold smiled at him and waved before drawing from the rabbit.
She felt frantic and hungry as she crafted her nails. She launched just a single one, which caught the guard between the eyes. The two dozen more that she launched forward killed or crippled the other guards. The first metsika was just becoming aware of Merigold now, glancing away from his barrier. The burning plate that she summoned cut through his midsection, leaving his guts to spill out into the snowy grass.
The second metsika, though overweight, was faster. He diverted his attention from the great barrier to create a smaller shield. He deflected her burning plate, sending it dozens of feet away, into the legs of the rear ranks of the soldiers. Men went down and confusion continued to rein as Menogans turned to determine the source of the magical attack.
The metsika retaliated, sending a spinning scythe toward her. By instinct alone, Merigold threw up her own barrier, remembering to create more of a cone to deflect the attack rather than absorb it. The scythe ricocheted off and flew off somewhere behind her. Three more followed in quick succession. Two more were blocked, but this metsika knew his work. The spinning motion of the blade somehow propelled the scythe around her barrier, and the blade cut deeply into her upper arm.
With a cry, Merigold fell to her knees and the rabbit tumbled from her hands. It didn’t go far, but she lacked the maenen to create another barrier. And, the pain from the burning wound on her arm was so intense that her body shook and her mind splintered. Across her wavering vision, she could see the metsika slowly approaching another tree, his first having been completely drained of life. He moved like a man in his dotage; it must have been exhausting work to contribute to such a barrier. But Meri couldn’t focus. She couldn’t find her rabbit, her only source of protection. She couldn’t think of anything except for the agonizing pain.
The metsika reached the tree and placed his hands on the bark. Soldiers were detaching themselves from the last ranks and approaching the magical conflict warily. Either by spear or magic, Merigold was going to die.
But by fucking Yetra, she would not die on her knees. She would not.
As she pushed herself to her feet, gripping her wounded arm with her opposite hand, a great flash of light and a booming report sent her reeling backwards. Blinking wildly against the stars in her vision, she could just make out a smoking crater where the pasnes alna had been standing. The barrier had broken and the pasnes alna of Agricorinor had pierced the veil.
Above her, she could see that the protectors of Agricorinor were finding gaps all throughout the shield, launching beams of power and creating devastating explosions all throughout the Menogan army. The Menogans fought back, the metsikas continuing to maintain the barrier where they could or sending their own shining powers to deflect and disrupt.
But they could not reestablish the same level of control.
Any joy that an ailing Merigold could have derived from this was lost as she realized that the soldiers still approached her cautiously, and she was going to be in the direct path of the just-retreating army. She stumbled over to the group of guards she had incapacitated with her nails. Two still lived. Two could be fuel for her protection.
Two could be fuel for the destruction of any who approached her.
Ragen had once told her that, if she was ever in a fight, she should hold nothing back. She had seen her father follow his own advice on a day when some travelers had treated her roughly. He’d fought two men, both much larger than him, without any hesitation or consideration for his own well-being. And, he’d prevailed. Merigold would do the same. If she cut a bloody swath through these soldiers, who would dare approach her? She needed to leave an impression before her strength gave out or she became overwhelmed by pain.
She gripped the first Menogan, a young man. Vivid pictures from his life—the memories of leaving his mother and sister behind; of killing his first man, a slave, in a hazing ritual; of boarding a ship and taking a last look at his homeland—became Merigold’s. She shoved them to the back of her consciousness and rained death upon the soldiers approaching her.
Nails flew forward, piercing armor, skin, and flesh. Burning plates severed legs and opened bellies. Scythes decapitated and incapacitated. Occasional barriers blocked thrown spears. There was a circle of death around her and none could approach.
She moved to the next guard upon draining the first, collapsing his nerring into nothing. In the brief time between drawing from one and then the next, Meri was nearly crippled with exhaustion, but the maenen from the second guard filled her with exhilaration. Ecstasy, even. She was a goddess among these weak-bodied Menogan warriors.
The sound of hooves behind her spun the would-be goddess around. The Sun Guard had finally organized themselves and gained the courage to approach her, despite being surrounded by enemies. Or, maybe they rode to the aid of Agricorinor. She would never know, as she cut them down like she was a lumberjack and they were simply saplings. Horses fell and bodies were cut, cleaved, and crushed. Blood splattered on every inch of her body, and she found herself laughing in the face of it. As the dead and dying built up around her, she continued to move from one dying person to the next, giving their final moments meaning as their maenen fueled the deaths of others.
The Sun Guard had fallen or fled. The Menogans ran in the same direction, flowing around her as if she were a great, bloody island amidst a river of panic. Another Menogan metsika tried to stop her and she eviscerated the women with no conscious effort. Any who approached her died, further staining her hands, hair, and face with crimson. The goddess—the girl—did not know how long she fought and killed; time had no meaning. Her nerring was distended, stretched, and sickened. Her body was beyond exhaustion, quivering as if she had not eaten in months. And yet, the only thing that mattered was the maenen. The control. The power.
Eventually, with the setting of the sun, perhaps, there were no more enemies. There were no more injured or dying to sap, to fuel her magic. There were only the dead in their multitudes.
She fell, the girl did, into the muck. Laying on her side, she emptied her stomach through gagging and gasping breaths. She prayed and begged that it would stop, her body bucking and shaking with the effort. Her wounded arm swung uselessly at her side, tearing more deeply with every retching and sobbing heave.
The girl heard the crunching sound of footsteps, and she looked up. A man, flanked by a dozen bronze-armored guards, approached. He was older, and balding, but he held an aura of power. His blue robes, rimmed in gold, were fine and untouched by the filth that caked everyone else.
“Who are you?” A deep, booming voice—one that was used to being obeyed. It held a note of disdain, one that would have made the girl bristle, had she been able to answer his question.
The girl thought for a moment. “I am… I don’t really…” A thousand memories fluttered through her mind. She was the offspring of a whorish mother. She was a killer of children. She was a scared and gentle person, forced into war. Faces flashed through her mind—a thousand faces from a thousand memories, all of which felt real, though incompatible. Tears ran divots down her blood-caked face.
“Maenen poisoning,” the man muttered. “Dumb, foolish woman. So, you don’t have any inkling of who you are?”
The girl, with impossible effort, pulled herself to her feet while gripping her wounded arm. She glanced around at the dirty, hard-faced soldiers and the man in the blue robes. She noticed the way that they gripped their spears more tightly when she shifted her weight on wobbly legs. She considered the bodies scattered around her, and the general destruction nearby. Finally, she met the gaze of the insulting man.
“I’m your fucking savior,” the girl spat, venom lacing her voice.
The man smirked, though not kindly. “That, indeed, you are.” He spread his arms wide to encompass the devastation around them. Ash blew into the girl’s face, trying to tickle a sneeze out of her.
“Welcome to Agricorinor, savior.”
Interlogue: Ascension
“This will be our last visit, sweetling.
“I know not what else to say. You barely understand a word I speak now. You fear me. You hate me. You would never seek to harm me.
“I might as well finish telling you my story. You have listened, this entire time. And, though you are now beyond comprehension, you deserve to hear the end. And it is good for me to reflect and remember, though it is painful. It may prevent me from making the same mistakes.
“Oh, sweetling. Recalling my past has ripped forth so many emotions, few of them pleasant.
“After Amorum died, I shook off my stupor. I re-immersed myself into my role as leader of those people. I placed the mask of the Blood Maiden back upon my face. I realized that it was a mask, after all those years. That was not who I was. What I actually was was complicated. What was I? In my thirties? And yet, knowing that Amorum had died, I felt like a scared girl again. The same girl who had lost so much in the past, and now had no one to trust.
“But, that girl wanted vengeance. This time, it was a cold, calculating wrath. Not driven by the hot rage of youth, nor the belief that I was invincible.
“How had I truly been so unaware of the state of the world? Ultner’s rise had taken place across years. Certainly, I had been fed misinformation by followers too frightened to tell me the truth, but I should have known things were worse. The majority of my domain had been taken, destroyed. Ultner did not seek to control the people, as I did. He sought to free them. And, with that freedom, ever more havoc was wrought on the land.
“With such freedom, the people were filled with lust, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony, and pride. They wanted sex. They wanted wealth. They wanted revenge. They wanted all of that which belonged to their neighbors. They wanted more and more, and they expected to receive it.
“The population of Saiwen was decimated, reduced to a fraction of what it was. In the wake of the wars, pestilence and disease reached out and gripped the continent firmly. Ultner continued to destroy my forces wherever he could find them. Some surrendered, freely giving up my towns and cities. Often, the people rose up in the aftermath of the surrender and murdered my soldiers nonetheless. Sometimes, my soldiers defected and joined with Ultner.
“Soon, my remaining forces were spread thin and vastly outnumbered, war being fought on a thousand fronts. Many of my pasnes alna were killed, and Intenu was missing.
“My chances at regaining my place as the goddess of these people were negligible. But… I felt an obligation to the people. Maybe it was because my near-death experience had changed me. Maybe it was to honor Amorum. But I felt an obligation to help the people, to force them into a peaceful life once again. They had peace under my rule. Granted, it was peace that had been birthed by fear, but maybe, could I once again unite the people, I could change that.
“My one chance was to collect all that remained of my forces—conventional and magical—and cut straight to Ultner. To defeat him and his Menogan allies, destroy their miernes arma. And then, to start over.
“The thought, sweetling, was exhausting. But I knew not what else to do.
“Battles of great armies rarely occur in a single day. There are ruses and feints, skirmishes and pitched battles. Fights for the high ground, and digging in around defensible terrain. My forces and Ultner’s were joined together for weeks in battle. A thousand tiny battles, really. Though my veteran army did a great deal of damage, Ultner’s army continued to grow. Men joined him on a daily basis, and some deserted me. It seemed as if defeat was inevitable.
“Wantran was again my savior. She rallied my three captains and nine of my most skilled pasnes alna for a covert attack against the miernes arma. Without my knowledge,e she did this, and knowing that I would wish to protect her and my own magic weapons at any cost.
“The twelve, with great skill and daring, made their way past the magical defenses put in place by the miernes arma. And, instead of targeting the weapons, themselves, they attacked the Menogan slavers, the holders of the bonds.
“Nearly all were killed. Having no one to control them, the miernes arma fled. Intenu had taught us that, though the miernes arma were revered and treated with the utmost respect, they were slaves nonetheless, and would always flee if the opportunity arose.
“However, Wantran and the eleven were surrounded by the end. The earth had already crumbled; the green had been exhausted. There were no living beings left to draw from. They were cut to pieces by swords, pierced by spears, transfixed by arrows. Thereafter, they became known as my Martyrs.
“Most of the mythology about me was created after the fact, by the misguided group who wrote The Book of Amorum. But the Martyrs… I named them myself. And I mourned them with all of my heart.
“The warriors on both sides were exhausted from fighting, exhausted from killing. Ultner sent me a message requesting single combat with me. I accepted.
“He was not, as depicted, a boil-faced, horn-headed demon with a silver tongue. No, Ultner was a young man in his twenties, relatively handsome with jet black hair and piercing blue eyes. He was softer-spoken than I had expected, and incontestably less certain.
“He asked questions before our battle began. Whether I truly believed I was a goddess. Whether I believed in peace. If I still felt emotions like I had when I was younger. If I was scared. If I could love. It was a far too… human conversation to be having just before we battled. I hated myself for liking the man. I hated him for being likable.
“He asked whether we could allow the armies to retreat to a safe distance first. I acquiesced.
“I had my one hundred donors nearby, and Ultner had his own menagerie to draw from. Animals—cows, horses, goats—and humans.
“As if there were an unspoken bond controlling us, we began our attacks in unison. Clouds swirled in the sky, drawn by our powers as we strained against one another. I sent fire; he summoned a wall of wind to block it.
He sent blades of power; I deflected them with my own barriers.
“The lands were torn around us. Men and women, who had crept back to witness the battle, were killed by errant powers. Even those who retreated a safe distance were not immune, so powerful were the forces that stretched between us. The impact of this battle was felt hundreds and thousands of miles away. I later heard that a great sphere of power, shaped by me and deflected by Ultner, ended the lives of two hundred thousand souls in what is now Rafón. The balance of the very world was shredded, and nowhere was safe. The world’s population was decimated.
“Ultner and I were utterly, evenly matched. I could gain no advantage, nor could Ultner. Hours passed. Maybe days. I began to tire, and had to use donors to refresh myself. Ultner’s attacks became less concentrated, more diffuse. After a time, we were like two exhausted prize fighters, exchanging periodic, ineffective blows. I’m certain that only sheer will kept me on my feet.
“My donors were nearly gone. My own maen was near expended, my nerring nearly emptied. I felt weak, alone. Scared. I quested beyond myself to find power, to find something to allow me to hang on a little longer, and cling to this world for a few more seconds. I needed just a little more. Something. Anything. Sweetling, I have told you before that I fear death.
“Without any warning, Ultner’s powers flared like a sudden, violent storm. He knocked aside my paltry defenses; left me bloodied and on my knees. It was the end for me, sweetling. So I thought. I am not ashamed to say that I wept.
“I quested one last time, reaching out beyond myself for any power I could use. Anything… the crumbled earth, the blackened flora, the air itself. And, I was rewarded beyond belief.
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