God Conqueror 2

by Logan Jacobs

  For the first few miles on the other side of Mount Ugga, there were more grassy hills and more trees. We could also spot a few villages nestled along the flanks of the range, and along the largest river that ran from the range until it culminated in a lake. But beyond that, the grass turned sparse and brown, and then faded away altogether and gave way to a vast desert. The desert stretched out past the horizon, a pale golden expanse for as far as the eye could see.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Ilandere breathed. “It looks magical. I’ve never seen a landscape like that before.”

  “It looks hot and dusty,” Lizzy replied. “Not like a place where much could survive, or where there would be much to eat or steal. If I came on a place like that on my own, or with one of my old crews, I’d turn right back around and head the other way. But I got a feeling we’re striking out for that bare patch now, huh Vander?”

  “That’s right,” I answered. “Based on our calculations from looking at that map in the baron’s study, and the reports we’ve heard so far of the sequence and locations of Thorvinius’ attacks, his order headed that way. So if we ever want to close with them, we’re going to have to do the same thing.”

  “You’ve shown us so many wonderful new places that we never would have explored on our own, Vander,” Ilandere said as she looked at me adoringly.

  I coughed with embarrassment. “Well, I also, er, have almost gotten you all killed in various situations that you never would have ended up in on your own,” I pointed out.

  “You sure have, Master,” Willobee agreed. “But you’ve saved us every time, so no harm done.”

  “Better to risk death than to live a life without meaning or passion,” Florenia opined. Her hazel eyes burned as she stared off into the distance. The wind ruffled through her glossy chestnut curls. She was physically the stuff of most men’s dreams at all times, but standing there on the mountaintop in that moment, she was a different kind of magnificent. Like some kind of queen or ancient goddess surveying the earth and the miniscule creatures that inhabited it.

  “Can’t say I disagree with you there,” I said. I had died countless times physically, of course, so many times that it was practically like a hobby of mine. But true death, the death of one’s consciousness and being overtaken by oblivion… or passing into the Fairlands or the Abyss, depending on whom you asked and what you believed in, that was something else altogether. The only way it could really happen to me was if all of my selves were killed at once, and I had none left to regenerate from, and today in the avalanche, or have-a-lunch as Lizzy preferred to term it, I had had a close brush with that possibility. I couldn’t say that the prospect of death held no terror for me, especially when my life right now surrounded by all my friends was so wonderful and held new excitement and discoveries at every turn. But if I had to die in order to destroy Thorvinius once and for all, or in order to save one of my friends, my quest would still be well worth it. Setting out from my temple as the last surviving novice in order to become the man, or maybe even god, that I was now, would still be the best move I had ever made.

  “Well,” Lizzy said after a while, “this Thorvinius guy is waitin’ for us on the other side of that bald patch, yeah? So shouldn’t we get going?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I hope he is.”

  So we set off down the other side of Mount Ugga.

  Chapter Eight

  The descent was much less of a physical struggle than the ascent had been, of course, and we were able to move a lot faster. I worried that it was hard on the horses’ and the centaurs’ knees, so I dismounted from the destriers and walked beside them. None of the equines complained, I think partly because everyone was just so eager to get down to stable ground again.

  It wasn’t possible to avoid rock fields altogether, but I was definitely a lot more cautious about the routes I chose after the incident in which we had almost lost the gnome and I had almost died fully.

  Even so, we made it down right before dark.

  As soon as we were on flat ground again and had taken a few liberating steps without worrying about starting a rockslide or falling off a cliff, Lizzy turned around and shouted at the mountain, “Fuck you, Mount Ugga! Fuck you, mountain spirit! Can’t catch us now! Suck on that!”

  “Lizzy,” I said through gritted teeth as I glanced over at Willobee, with the thought that the gnome may have been a little traumatized by getting buried under an avalanche and then dangled from a treetop.

  But he was smiling, and with his rosy cheeks he looked like the picture of health and contentment. He shrugged in response to Lizzy’s taunts. “She’s right about that, Master,” he said. “Qaar’endoth can go to Mount Ugga, but Mount Ugga cannot go to him.”

  “I don’t really like mountain-climbing,” Ilandere remarked, to the surprise of no one, “but, you know, I kind of liked those woolly sheep things with the giant horns. They were kind of cute.”

  “They started the rockslide,” Lizzy reminded her. “Big clumsy oafs.”

  “They didn’t mean to,” the silver-haired princess pointed out.

  “Sheep are nothing but trouble,” Lizzy declared. “The Sanctimians wouldn’t have been so miserable if they hadn’t been depending on something as stupid as sheep to survive.”

  “I don’t think most villagers choose their own livelihoods,” I said. “It seems like they kind of just pick up whatever trade their forebears have been working for the last few centuries and stick with it. So I guess Sanctimia’s always been a sheep village.”

  “People can always adapt if they choose to, smart ones anyway,” Lizzy declared. “I was a bandit and now I don’t do that shit no more, Florenia was a fucking noble and now she’s tramping through the dirt with the rest of us and happy about it too, Ilandere was some kinda horse princess and now she’s not either. Elodette is kinda doing her same thing as always I guess, but that’s just cause she’s stubborn, not dumb, and Willobee changes life stories on us whenever he feels like it. So none of us are stuck doing whatever dumb shit our ancestors used to is what I’m saying.”

  “My family has always been very proud of our ancestors’ illustrious record of service to the kings of Ambria, and the lands that we have gained, and the monuments we have built, and the artists we have patronized,” Florenia remarked. “But I think that now, I’m a part of something even bigger than that. Qaar’endoth’s reign shall transform the world.”

  “What?” I sputtered. “How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not trying to take over the world?”

  “Destiny is what the individual makes of it,” Elodette stated. She didn’t usually get involved in the group’s philosophical discussions and debates. She already had her own opinions that she was very sure of and didn’t usually care what anyone else said about it.

  “You don’t believe in prophecies then?” I asked her. I respected the huntress’ opinion and was genuinely curious what she thought. I had definitely been influenced by what Aurelana had prophesied about the last surviving member of my order assuming the role of Qaar’endoth and creating more selves to usher in a new age, and by what Meline had prophesied about how my quest could only succeed if I saved the village of Ferndale from its horrific plague. Both times, following their prophecies had worked out for the better so far, but I also understood that there wasn’t really much of a logical reason to accept the instructions of random women making predictions about people, places, and events they had no experience with or concrete knowledge of.

  “I believe that prophecies have power,” Elodette answered after a pause. “But, it’s the power that people ascribe to them. Like you. You do things because an oracle told you to, and that gives you enough motivation.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never would’ve even known about Ferndale if Meline hadn’t mentioned it, and Lord Kiernan wouldn’t have rewarded us and offered me a new temple if we hadn’t saved Ferndale. We wouldn’t have Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry here with us now. Seems like there must
be something to it more than some random lady making things up.”

  “Aren’t prophecies based on the will of gods, as interpreted by mortals?” Florenia inquired. “So if you are a god, that’s kind of a shortcut, and you shouldn’t even be dependent on prophecies anymore. That’s like getting your information secondhand.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All I know is, I followed their advice and it worked. So next time an oracle gives me a prophecy, I think it’s at least worth a shot.”

  “Fair enough,” Lizzy said.

  “I trust your judgment, Vander,” Ilandere said. “Whatever you think we should do next, I’ll do my best to help.”

  “What I think we should do next,” I said, “is find a sheltered spot to camp for the night. And, Elodette, now that we’re back down on solid ground, if you wouldn’t mind bringing us a deer or something? All those rockslide games have given me an appetite. Three appetites in fact.”

  “That I can certainly do,” the centaur replied. “And I don’t need any prophecy to tell me that I’m capable of it.”

  When we had found a good spot and built a fire to keep warm, the tall, dark huntress went off to do exactly that while the rest of us huddled together around the flames.

  “You know, I thought I would feel safe, now that you have three selves,” Florenia remarked. “But then that boulder killed two of you at the same time, and I realized that three is not nearly enough. Especially since you intend to confront the most murderous god known to Ambria and his host beyond number. Perhaps I will not feel safe until you have a dozen selves. Or a hundred.”

  “Don’t worry about me, I’m replaceable,” I replied. “There’s only one of you.”

  “A hundred Vanders would be something else,” Lizzy said. “I can’t wait for that, that’ll be real fun. Won’t be no army could stand in our way then.”

  “And you could breed a whole generation of demi-gods,” Florenia said. “Your children could be a society onto themselves.”

  “That’s, uh, that’s really not part of the plan,” I said quickly. Not only did her vision have some certain incestuous implications, there just wasn’t any practical way for children to fit into my current lifestyle. I already had my hands full protecting the four women, although admittedly Lizzy and Elodette were usually more than capable of taking care of themselves, plus the unpredictable gnome and our five horses or whatever other domesticated animals happened to be under our charge at the time.

  “You could try out new professions,” Ilandere suggested wistfully. “You could be other things than a warrior. You could be a farmer or a lord or a minstrel.”

  “A minstrel?” I had to laugh at that one. “I guess you’ve never heard me sing, Princess, or you wouldn’t say that.”

  “But you’d have time to learn how,” the little centaur persisted. “You’d have a hundred days for everyone else’s one day, if you had that many selves. And you just have one mind, right, so if one of your selves memorized a song or learned a language or anything like that, all of you would have that skill from then on, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” I said.

  The transference from physical sensations was less thorough: each of my selves sort of just felt echoes of all my other bodies’ pain or pleasure, so they weren’t quite full force, although I was aware of them. Also, I had noticed that now that I had three selves instead of two, the vicarious sensations were even more diluted. I guessed that was a practical necessity because it would just be too distracting to feel a hundred bodies’ worth of sensations at once. It wouldn’t work out well if several of my selves were being tortured at once, and my mind snapped from the combined agony. It also wouldn’t work well if one of my selves were trying to fight an enemy and collapsed to the ground orgasming uncontrollably due to the activities of my other selves elsewhere.

  But mentally, my multiple selves remained a cohesive whole. The tiniest detail that any one of my selves processed was automatically added to my collective mind’s knowledge.

  “I could have a hundred husbands,” Florenia mused to herself.

  Lizzy snorted. “I’ll fuck every one of your husbands.”

  “Well, yes, of course, it would require our combined efforts to satisfy that many bodies,” Florenia replied.

  “… husband?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “We’re not married.”

  “But we are in an unbreakable union,” the duke’s daughter replied. “Which is more or less the same thing. I was using the term in a colloquial sense, not a technical one.”

  “Er. Okay,” I said doubtfully.

  “Fifty of him for each of you?” Ilandere questioned. “That seems like a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “It seems like just about the right amount,” Florenia replied.

  Lizzy snickered. “Why are you asking, horse? You want us to cut you in a share?”

  “Hey, hey,” I interrupted to spare Ilandere the embarrassment of struggling to answer that question. “Not much point discussing this right now, since I’m nowhere even close to having a hundred selves. There are only three of me. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? Let’s just take it one step at a time.”

  “Three isn’t very many at all,” Florenia agreed, “but at least you do have an extraordinary level of stamina, so functionally, it counts for more than that.”

  “Yeah,” I said through gritted teeth, “I’ve trained for a long time to become capable of continuing to fight at a high level of intensity, long after a typical opponent has been debilitated by exhaustion. Or running. Or swimming. Or mountain climbing. Or any number of other cool and useful things that I can do.”

  “Well, Qaar’endoth, in this case I was referring to--” Florenia began.

  Thankfully, Elodette arrived back at camp just then with a limp stag draped over her shoulders.

  The group commenced our usual dinner routine. I helped Elodette skin and clean the stag, and Florenia took charge of roasting the steaks that we passed off to her. Lizzy, meanwhile, morphed into a giant wolf and eagerly scarfed up all the innards that we discarded. Willobee took charge of eating the steaks as fast as Florenia could cook them and loudly expressing his enjoyment by smacking his lips and humming deep in his throat. It wasn’t until the gnome ate himself to exhaustion, passed out, and started snoring loudly that the rest of us were able to get our hands on our share of the meat.

  Then we adopted our usual sleep routine. The centaurs always slept side by side, since Elodette made sure to stay where she could best guard the princess, whenever she wasn’t off on a hunting or scouting errand. One of my selves stayed awake to keep watch, another curled up with Florenia, and another lay down with Lizzy. Willobee loved using Lizzy in her giant wolf form as his bed and blanket. In my opinion, her human self was a lot more pleasant to hold, but it seemed that Lizzy was used to sleeping as a wolf and was not particularly inclined to change the habit.

  Another nighttime habit of Lizzy’s was that she liked to sneak off and kill some snacks that I only knew about from her bloody muzzle when she returned hours later, so I didn’t think anything of it when she slid out from between me and the gnome and padded off into the woods. I just turned over on my back and fell back asleep.

  Then a little while later, my rest was disturbed by an unearthly howl similar to the one I had heard near the drummer camp the night that Lizzy had entrapped them into one final, fatal wolf hunt.

  Willobee’s snores continued uninterrupted, but Florenia startled awake in my arms, and so did the centaurs. I soothed Florenia back to sleep and my self that was standing watch reassured the centaurs too and instructed them to stay where they were while my self that had originally been sharing Lizzy’s warmth went off to find her and figure out what the hell was going on.

  It wasn’t exactly hard to track Lizzy down even at the worst of times, since she was a highly noticeable creature in either of her forms, and subtlety wasn’t a skill she had ever taken a single lesson in. But this time, she was even easier to
find than usual. She was standing at the top of a hill waiting for me, in a very similar position to the one she had taken in order to taunt the drummers.

  “Lizzy!” I called out, so that she would know it was me and wouldn’t barrel down the hill to tear me to shreds the way she had done to them. Lizzy had only killed me once, and that had been an accident, when we were wrestling for training purposes, and one of her claws had punctured an artery.

  As I climbed up the hill toward her, her enormous, shaggy silhouette against the moon shrank down into that of a human woman. A naked and extremely curvaceous woman, with pointed wolf ears and a tail that lashed mischievously back and forth.

  “Is something… wrong?” I asked as I reached her and took her into my arms for a kiss. “Why did you howl like that?”

  Her impish spring green eyes glittered at me from behind her wild mane of tawny hair. “Oh, I was just howling at the moon,” she replied. Lizzy had mentioned more than once that wolves didn’t howl at the moon or really even pay it much attention except as a source of illumination.

  So I repeated skeptically, “… The moon?”

  Lizzy nodded. “Yup. It’s so big and round and white that it got me thinking… let’s fuck.”

  That wasn’t really a cohesive chain of thought at all, it was a bit of a non sequitur really, and the elegance of the phrasing left something to be desired.

  But I was thoroughly convinced.

  Probably it didn’t hurt Lizzy’s case that by that point, I had both hands full of as much of her big, round, firm ass as I could hold and was pulling her against me while she moaned and grinded herself against my erection.

  I pushed the she-wolf up against the nearest tree trunk and kept her pinned there while I unfastened my pants, and she removed my shirt. Then, once there was no more fabric between us, I hooked one of my arms behind one of her knees to draw her leg up toward her chest in a bent position, which gave me full access to her entrance and boosted her up to a more equal height.

  “Put it in me,” she demanded.