by Phil Tucker
“You are not the creature to which I bound myself,” whispered Anscythia. “You are not Acharsis, son of Ekillos. You are an old, withered nobody. You have no power over me, and you never did.”
Acharsis shrank back against the stake. “I am Acharsis, son of Ekillos still - and you must obey—”
Anscythia keened, throwing her head back with abandon, and swirled back up into the night sky, bolts and blasts of green flame exploding soundlessly around her as Irella marshalled her might and threw everything she had against the demon.
To no avail.
Irella was the most powerful person alive, steeped in Nekuul’s power, in the heart of her empire, on the night of her greatest victory, purified so as to channel Nekuul’s might without impediment, standing mere yards from Nekuul’s greatest sanctum and altar - and it wasn’t enough.
The air grew livid with magical blasts. The concussive shockwaves rolled through Acharsis without surcease, causing his heart to stutter and nearly fail as he was pounded by the after-effects of magical attacks.
Yet Anscythia rose ever higher above them, exulting, pointing a finger down at Irella, a claw so sharp it tapered to invisibility.
“Thought you to challenge our might? To halt our endeavor? Thought you to rise above your station and contest my kind for supremacy over the world? Foolish mortal. We are shards of glorious divinity, whereas you are but mud and blood and common filth. The world shall fall. The God’s Mountain shall topple. The land shall be laid waste, and I and my brothers and sisters shall stalk bloody-handed through every town and hamlet and city, bringing despair and desolation to each and every heart. You strove mightily, but to no avail. You die, and with you, any hope of preventing the destruction of this world.”
Irella’s legs were bent as she strained against some invisible force, her face half turned away, her eyes narrowed, jaw gritted, tendons standing out in her neck. “No,” she ground out. “Not tonight. Not here, not now, not—”
Anscythia extended her hand, and her talon grew with shocking rapidity, piercing layer after layer of defensive magic to slide without a sound into Irella’s heart.
“No,” whispered Acharsis.
Irella froze, her gesticulations stopping, the green fire playing about her seeming to freeze alongside her - and then with a groan she slid down and off the slender talon to collapse to the floor.
“Mother!” Sisu raced forth from the shadows to fall by her side.
A flash of fire. A crimson dart, and Cinder swooped about Acharsis’ head, a flurry of fiery motes in his trail.
“Cinder! My bonds! Burn them!”
The bird swooped down behind him and Acharsis felt a terrible, fierce heat on his wrists. A moment later his bonds fell away, and he nearly collapsed to the ground.
A plan. A means to defeat the demon. He had no power. No divine spark. No connection to Ekillos -who was still dead. What authority Acharsis had wielded over Anscythia was long gone, evaporated even before he’d ordered her to switch Irella’s blood with his own. Words were of no use against the demon. He had no weapons, no curses, nothing on which to call, no beings to summon, no favors to cash in.
He was himself alone, Acharsis, mortal man, old in flesh and mundane in spirit.
Anscythia threw back her head and laughed once more. Screams arose to accompany that sound of glee as endless leeches, servants, slaves, Seekers and other living members of Nekuul’s cult fled the ziggurat.
Only the dead remained, unfazed, uncaring of the demon’s power, the death of their mistress.
“Sisu!” Acharsis forced himself to stagger forward once Cinder had burned the leather straps that held his feet to the stake. “The deathless! Order them to attack—”
But even as he shouted, he saw the ranks of the dead begin to wither. Weapons fell from bony hands. Heads began to sag. Like weeds exposed to punishing sunlight, the dead began to wilt and collapse.
Irella. Her death had severed their connection to the netherworld.
“And so begins a new age,” Anscythia cried to the heavens. “An age of darkness and blood, of perversity and despair. With this power I summon my brothers and sisters to me, pull the legions of the damned across this scorched earth to join me in strength, to, suck the very rain from the clouds, dessicate the wheat where it stands, poison the cattle and goats, make barren the womb and sterilize the seed. Come, brothers, come sisters - come!”
The sky was a world wound, a great cyclone of black clouds whose downspout wended its way like a questing serpent to where Anscythia floated, and in that tornado Acharsis saw a hundred hundred faces, each twisted and demonic in its own way, mouths leering, eyes burning, to come screeching down and sink into Anscythia’s ever larger force.
Terrible winds blasted out in all directions, and those who yet stood were driven to their knees with moans and cries of terror. The heavens continued to swirl and flicker with purple lightning, and Anscythia grew in size, swelling with ever more power as she absorbed the demons that flowed down into her.
“Where man seeks shelter I shall stave in their homes,” she crowed, voice booming across the city like thunder. “Where, they show kindness I shall repay with lacerations, where they seek hope I shall mock and destroy. A new age dawns upon the world, and none shall stand against us.”
Acharsis sank to his knees. There was nothing he could do. Anscythia had defeated Irella with ease, Irella who had in turn defeated the civilized world without effort. And now? With the might of a legion of demons inflaming her further, driving her to greater heights?
Anscythia was well on her way to become the most cruel and evil goddess ever.
Cinder flew about him once, twice, then landed on his upraised palm.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the glowing bird. “For bringing you into this world just as everything turned to shit. I’m sorry.”
Cinder quirked his head to one side, then the other, then adjusted his grip on the slender slice of fruit which he held in his claw.
Which he held still.
Acharsis stared, uncomprehending, then surged to his feet. Cupped Cinder in his hand, and to his joy, to his relief, the bird didn’t struggle, didn’t frantically beat its wings or seek to escape.
It understood. Had, perhaps, understood all along.
“Anscythia! A moment, if you will! I hate to interrupt your monologue, and believe me it’s a good one, though a little trite, but first I have to tell you something of the utmost importance!”
Anscythia had grown to thirty or forty yards in height, a towering figure wreathed in black flame and dust. Clouds of smoke were spreading out to choke the stars, and everywhere around them was bedlam, the gathered host of Uros scrambling and tearing at itself in its attempts to get away.
“Anscythia! In all seriousness, if you are to ‘begin a new age’ or whatever, you should at least strive to do it right. I’m good with words, and listen, you don’t want to start things off in such a hackneyed manner. Attend! I’ll give you some pointers.”
The demon slowly turned, seeming to do so reluctantly, bending down as if drawn against its will by Acharsis’ words.
“First, don’t keep repeating yourself.” Acharsis’ voice was growing hoarse. He could barely hear himself over the chaos. “You clearly have some favorite words, but don’t belabor them. Fresh, new imagery! It’s essential if you’re not to bore your audience. I mean, you do want to be taken seriously, right? Not sniggered at behind your back? Don’t harp on and on about despair and blood and so on - it’s good the first time, but quickly bores your listeners!”
Anscythia poured herself down from out of the sky, boneless and fluid, her body not obeying a single dictum of basic human biology, and appeared once more before Acharsis, her face as great as a dream rhino, a vast and alien visage in whose eyes Acharsis could see the promise of everything she had spoken of, and worse.
“Acharsis,” she whispered, the sounds barely holding together as recognizable speech. “You shall be the first I devo
ur. Yet you shall not die and pass on to the realm of Nekuul; I shall keep you alive within my belly, slowly and eternally being digested by pure darkness till your mind breaks, then breaks again, down to the tiniest fragments, till you are no different in essence from mold, unthinking, unfeeling, simply an inchoate mass of terror—”
“Good! But you’re going on too long. You made your point. Cut it off, let the effect sink in!” Acharsis forced himself to not take a step back. To not wail out in fear of what was being promised - and which he knew she could make good on. “You go on too much, you overburden your images and metaphors with—”
“Enough!” Her roar blasted the hair back from his face, and this time he did step back, nearly overbalancing.
Faster than a striking snake she surged forward, mouth widening into a vast maw, fangs as long as Acharsis’ arm glistening with black drool, but before she could engulf him Acharsis hurled his arm forward, like a child skipping a stone across a pool, and Cinder flew from his palm in a burst of sparks to fly straight into Anscythia’s gullet.
Acharsis closed his eyes and crossed his arms before his face in a desperate ‘X’. He felt Anscythia pass over him, heard her shriek, not so much as a sound, but more as a vibration in his bones. Felt a chill pass through him as if he stood once more atop the God’s Mountain, and then she was gone, passed through him, leaving him shaking like a newborn lamb to slowly lower his arms and gaze around in stupefied wonder.
“Anscythia? Where…?”
He turned in a slow circle. His only audience were the other godsbloods, still bound to their stakes. Nobody else was atop the ziggurat. Curls of black smoke were rising up and disappearing even as he saw them. The ghosts of demons fading away as if burned into nothingness by Ninsaba’s moon. A great and desolate moan was carried past him on the wind, and then was gone. The guards, Hephesa, the deathless - everyone had either collapsed or fled.
Anscythia was gone.
A small crimson bird lay at his feet, wings half opened, still in death.
A bright light flickered from above Acharsis’ head. Brighter, and then it blazed forth with the majestic intensity of a miniature sun.
Caught up still in wonder, Acharsis looked up and beheld the soulstone that had been affixed to his stake. It blazed now with such brilliance that he couldn’t look directly at it. Blazed and burned like a sliver of divinity cut from the heart of the world itself.
“Anscythia…” he breathed.
“Acharsis!” Jarek’s bellow. “Free us!”
“Right, right,” he said, stepping away. He tapped at his belt, but of course he had no knife. A collapsed deathless provided him with a blade, and he set to work, cutting and hewing at leather straps, freeing those around him, who stepped away to consider him and the gem, rubbing at their wrists and shaking their heads.
“How did you…?”
“What happened? What was that—”
“My soul. My soul is gone—”
Acharsis reached Jarek and slashed at his bonds till they parted. Jarek stepped away from the stake, nearly fell, then caught himself and took Acharsis’ knife. Without hesitation he ran to Kish, whom he summarily freed.
The godsbloods were freeing each other, and several striking individuals stepped forward, each putting questions to Acharsis in raised, shrill tones.
“Enough!” said Acharsis, raising his one good hand. “I don’t know, just wait - wait, Ekillos damn it!”
They didn’t listen, but rather jostled around him, grabbing him by the arm, voices raised in anger, confusion, till a wave of green fire slid between their number to flare up and form twin walls down which a shadowed figure approached.
Irella, thought Acharsis, but no. His moment’s confusion was quickly ended. Sisu walked up to them, wreathed in a new majesty so that Acharsis corrected himself: no longer Sisu, but now Sisuthros, heir to Irella’s power.
“My mother is dead,” said Sisu, voice made hollow by emotion. “Your plan saw her dead.”
“What happened?” asked Kish, holding tight to Jarek. “Your demon… why did she grow so powerful?”
Acharsis reeled where he stood. He wanted nothing more than to fall into a pool of beer and literally drown his woes. Instead, he thrust himself through the crowd, and staggered to where Irella lay, eyelids fluttering as she gazed up at the sky.
“Acharsis.” Her voice was faint, and a slight smile curved the corner of her lips. “How by all the gods do you pull off these… miracles?”
Acharsis dropped to his knees by her side and took up her hand. It was cold. “Irella.”
She gazed at him, expression somber, thoughtful, but he could tell she was near death. Her skin was beyond pale, bone-bleached, and her eyes were sunken in pools of purple. Her breathing was irregular and shallow, but what was more, her power had passed to her son.
“My time is come,” she whispered. “But I die content. The demons are defeated.”
“We could have done this together from the beginning,” said Acharsis, anger rising within him as he squeezed her hand. “Could have -”
“No,” she whispered, and reached up to touch his cheek. “Such is your genius. It is only roused when denied by others. You would have made… would have made a terrible partner. I pity whomever you now love, whomever now loves you. But… well done. The demons.”
“Gone,” he said, fighting back the rising emotions. “I think. Anscythia called them all to her at the end…”
“Greed. She was much like me, then. Wanting… needing… more than was wise. But no matter. My time on this scorched earth has ended. Be a good regent, Acharsis. Nurture this land back to health. Allow the dead to rest. Bring back the gods. Be… be kind to my son. And love. Only now… at the very end, with Nekuul above me, do I realize…”
Her eyes glazed over, her lips stilled.
Acharsis bowed his head, holding her hand tight, and then placed it over her chest. Looked up to see Sisu, his face stricken. “Here,” he said, rising to his feet and touching the youth’s shoulder. “Take your time.”
With heavy steps, feeling bewildered, lost, alone, he made his way back to where the little bird’s corpse lay, and took it up in his palm. Gone was the last of its magical heat.
“It was Cinder,” he said, voice low with sorrow as he turned to Jarek and Kish and the others. “He saved us. Him and his slice of rotten apple. He held it still. Almost… perhaps he did know. He was divine, after all.”
“But only a slice?” Jarek peered down at the dead bird. “How could but a slice effect such a being as Anscythia had become?”
Acharsis shrugged. “Anscythia was never more than a reflection of Scythia. Perhaps… perhaps that made her uniquely vulnerable to the powers of the apple.”
“But…” Kish pressed her palm to her temple. “What she said at the end there. About her kind?”
“My mother explained much while we waited for the ceremony to begin,” said Sisu, rejoining them, voice still dull. “Explained why she did what she did. Why she betrayed you all twenty years ago. The land, she said. It was failing even then. Drying up. Crop yields were down.”
“What’s that got to do with the demons?” asked Kish irritably.
“Everything,” said Sisu. “Don’t you remember, Acharsis? Jarek?”
Jarek rubbed at the back of his head. “Sure. But we were fighting off the nomad invaders at the time. It’s normal for crop yields to drop during war—”
“No,” said Sisu. “She was vouchsafed a vision from Nekuul. The land was failing. And she knew that you and your brothers and sisters would never unite to deal with it until it was too late. Would bicker and argue until the war was already lost. So she had you removed so she could fight the true enemy: the demons who were escaping the valley and poisoning the Garden atop the God’s Mountain from below, making it so that the apples grew rotten.”
“What?” Acharsis hadn’t thought he could be shocked any more this night. “That’s - she thought—”
“Knew,”
said Sisu. “The demons had found a way to escape the valley. She speculated it was through deals much like the one you made with Anscythia. They had burrowed under the Garden, and were working at poisoning it, and through it, the world. My mother defeated you all so that she could take control of every resource and work toward saving the River Cities. But over the years she saw that the dead were not enough; it was not a question of increased labor. The land itself was failing, and even a thousand extra hands on each field couldn’t compensate. So she decided instead to accrue as much power as she could and then lead an assault on the demons atop the God’s Mountain.”
“Madness,” said Jarek, voice hoarse with shock.
“Perhaps,” said Sisu. “But she truly believed that was the only way. That Magan would never bestir itself. That the shamans of Khartis would not understand the peril. That only she had the wherewithal and authority to mount sufficient resistance. That’s what tonight was about. Opening a portal that would empower her to lead a single great attack upon humanity’s true foe.”
Acharsis’ mind reeled, and he gazed past Sisu to where Irella lay still on the last level above them. “All this… she did all this to save humanity? Not for herself?”
Sisu’s eyes filled with tears and he hugged himself. “Yes.”
“But… she should have told us,” said Jarek. “Could have explained to us all what was going on. We’d have listened, we gathered for that very reason—”
Acharsis heard her voice again: Such is your genius. It is only roused when denied by others. He shook his head. “The Jarek of today might have listened, true. But the youth of twenty years ago? Do you honestly think we would have believed her? Would have united for long without breaking out into our old feuds? By the nine dead gods. All this time. All this time she was… incredible. And I had no idea.”
“And now she’s dead,” said Sisu. “Her life’s goal accomplished by us, her enemies. Though who is to say all the demons perished with Anscythia? That she had time to summon them all?“ I have inherited some modicum of her power, but I am a step removed from Nekuul. I do not enjoy her blessings like my mother did, but I will make it my life’s work to hunt down the last of these creatures and destroy them, wherever they may hide.”