Goddess

by Liv Savell

  Goddess

  Call of Calamity Book Two

  Liv Savell

  Sterling D'Este

  Copyright © 2021 L&S Fables

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  To request permissions, contact the publisher at lsfables.com.

  Paperback ISBN: 9798706735722

  Hardback ISBN: 9798723160446

  Cover design by: Sara Oliver Designs

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021904209

  Printed in the United States of America

  L&S Fables

  Austin, Texas

  lsfables.com

  Books By These Authors

  Call of Calamity Series:

  Vassal

  Goddess

  For our beta readers.

  Thank you!

  Dear Reader,

  Within this book, the use of they or them with a singular subject is used for characters that prefer gender-neutral pronouns or when a character's gender is not immediately apparent.

  Liv and Sterling

  Map of Rhosan and Ingola

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XVII

  Epilogue

  A Note to the Reader

  Sisters Dawn & Dusk

  Silvie, Margot, Ines, Lilou, and Bram

  Pronounciation Guide

  Acknowledgement

  Priestess

  Follow L&S Fables

  Prologue

  Eighth Moon, First Quarter: Western Isle

  The second shock wave was impossible to ignore. Not like the last one. He had known when his father came back, but it hadn’t bothered him much. His father was a trickster, The Trickster, and unlikely to interfere with the way of things. He’d not step out of bounds, amass glory, or corrupt the humans. He’d not sniff out this domain and mettle with things long set into place.

  But that second ripple in the ethos. That second whiff of the divine and the old. The chaotic nature of the howling winds and the thrashing of the seas around his island home was testament enough to who precisely had reawoken. Who had returned to the land of mortal and beast?

  Enyo.

  Mother. The First. Goddess of old and conqueror of man. She had ruled Rhosan alongside the other Old Gods for a time forgotten until finally the mages and human armies of Ingola, petty as they were, found a way to contain the divine rulers. Then, Ingola struck Rhosan at its weakest. With their Gods missing, the people—fierce people—crumbled against the Ingolan boot. They fell to infighting and became nothing more than a collection of pathetic little clans and tribes, scattered and broken. No threat there.

  And he had stayed on his island, his prison intact despite his Godly parents' demise. He had been glad to see precious Rhosan fall, glad to keep his own company on the spit of land they had cast him to—an island with no name, unplottable. A place where they could contain him.

  Three hundred years, he ruled in peace, content to reap and sow, ignoring his half-siblings who had stayed behind in Ingola, little pets to the humans. Not real Gods. Not like him.

  But with that second ripple and the coming of his mother, he knew nothing but hunger and lust. Old insults and vendettas rising anew. If Enyo were back, then she would not be happy until she reclaimed what was hers. Her people. Her land. Her rightful place as worshiped and feared Goddess. She’d go back to precisely the life she had lived before, without a thought for her forgotten, banished child.

  Lava boiled, and the volcanoes peppered across the island smoked with his ire. That she, who had been tossed aside and locked away by no more than mortal trash, should return to glory while he wasted away on this minuscule fleck of dirt—

  That she should have her name whispered ardently, while none but those trapped on the island with him should know his power—

  That she should return with his father and go on pretending as if he did not exist—

  No.

  No.

  NO!

  He would not allow it. He would make them pay. Make them all pay for what they had done to him.

  Mascen, strongest of the Gods, firstborn of the Divine Offspring, and master of disasters would rise, break the chains of enslavement placed upon him and take Rhosan. Perhaps the entire world.

  The island quaked as his fury grew. The volcanoes belched lava, and the sea receded from the beaches in the first signs of a tsunami.

  His parents and the other Old Gods were weak now. Unworshiped. Forgotten as much as he. Now, he could break the wards they had placed around his prison. Now he could be free at last, to claim what was rightfully his.

  Chapter I

  1819, Ninth Moon, Waxing Crescent: Lake Penneidr

  Etienne sat at a small campfire and stared out over the lake ahead, shivering in the cold of a northern autumn. The slow-moving water before them fed into the Neidr River just a few miles south, but for the life of him, Etienne couldn’t remember the lake’s name. It had only been a few moons since he had learned these maps, had studied them in Ingola, but still, the name escaped him, lost in whatever recess forgotten things fell into.

  So much was lost these days.

  Across from him, Delyth stared toward the mountains, the bruises around her neck like writhing fingers in the flickering light. Enyo had left those marks with Alphonse’s hands— hands that would never choose to cause pain, especially not for the people she loved. The bruises were beginning to fade, but still, Delyth’s voice was a faint, broken reminder of what it had been. He wondered if it would ever completely heal, or if it wasn’t her voice that Enyo injured but something deeper.

  For a long time, neither spoke. Etienne liked it better that way. Their words always seemed to come out too sharp— accidental knives.

  “The explosion,” Delyth rasped finally, her meal half-finished and forgotten in her lap. “What do you think happened?”

  “She’s not dead. I’d know it if she was.” Somehow, Etienne never doubted that he would see Alphonse’s spirit if she had died. That she’d come to him like Theo had. He had known her for too long, since they had first joined the Moxous School of Magics back in Ingola, but then, he had abandoned her before the end of their journey to the temple, Tholanadras. Would she be too angry to come to him if Enyo’s occupation of her body killed her?

  “Then scry her.” Delyth rounded on him, her usually stoic face tense below wide eyes. “Do something.”

  Etienne blanched. He had not attempted any magic since Enyo had bound him. There was every possibility that her spell had been a temporary one, that time and distance would have freed him, and yet… And yet the
chance that it had not been, that he was permanently crippled in this way terrified him.

  To never cast a spell again… She might as well have taken his hands.

  He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to find out. Not if it meant acknowledging that he would be magicless forever. Did Delyth feel this way without a weapon? Enyo’s sword, Calamity, was still on the mountaintop with the Goddess as far as they knew.

  Slowly, Etienne looked up, meeting Delyth’s gaze. He had thought her wild before but never had she looked so untamed. So haunted.

  The mage swallowed and stood up, carefully laying out the tools he would need: a bowl, clean water, void salts for the unknown, rosemary, and brahmi for clarity. Carefully, he made a paste from river mud, salts, and herbs and used it to trace symbols on the bowl, whispering in a language old before the Gods stepped foot on Illygad.

  And yet, the sigils did not stick. They cracked as he worked, crumbled when he turned the bowl. When he filled it with water, it did not go mirror-pane flat, glowing with the light of elsewhere, the places he sought.

  It was still mud and herbs. Utterly mundane.

  Mundane as Etienne himself was.

  He looked up at Delyth to tell her he could not do it, could not show them Alphonse, but he didn’t have to. She read it in his face, in his failure. She didn’t speak, instead standing sharply and walking out of the light of the fire, down towards the lake.

  Etienne gasped in a ragged breath and then flung the bowl away from him, shattering it into clay shards against an old oak. The pieces lodged themselves into the cold earth. Jagged as a wound.

  It was pointless. He wanted to scream it at Delyth, tear out her accusing gaze. They could not return to the mountaintop. Could not fight Enyo and Tristan.

  Now they could not even find them.

  But neither could he leave. Leave Alphonse again to whatever fate awaited her. It was his fault twice over, for summoning the Goddess that infected her and for abandoning her to that Goddess at Thlonandras. He was bound in chains of guilt thicker than blood.

  ⥣ ⥣ ⥣

  * * *

  Etienne’s anger had burnt itself out by the time Delyth returned. Her face had fallen into more familiar lines. Calm, but for the tension in her jaw.

  “Been thinking,” she hasped in that new, frugal way of hers. As though words had become expensive since their battle on the mountain. “Blood is power, in Rhosan magic.” She tapped her chest. “My magic.”

  The mage watched as she slid out her gilded dagger and pressed the tip to the pad of her forefinger until blood welled beneath it. For a moment, he didn’t think she was going to stop, but she shuddered and set the blade aside.

  “Usually, I would need… Alphonse’s blood. To track her.” Delyth spoke as she worked, tracing a complicated rune into the rough, flat stone of a river rock. “But Enyo drank so much… In a way, her blood is my blood. And the other way ‘round.”

  If Etienne understood correctly, Delyth meant that because Enyo had drunk her blood while they traveled together, Delyth could now track her without using anything but her own blood as a focus. She was using her blood both as the fuel to unlock the Wellspring and the focus of her spell. It didn’t seem logical, but then the magic of Rhosan rarely did.

  For a moment after Delyth finished, nothing seemed to happen. Then, suddenly, she stiffened. Her head shot up, pupils widening, and she turned abruptly to the south. “There,” she whispered, almost too softly for him to hear. “This time, your greed will be your undoing.”

  Chapter II

  Ninth Moon, First Quarter: Brig’ian Mountains

  Despite the return of her glorious powers, Enyo remained dissatisfied. She could run faster, hit harder, climb and punch and slap better than a human, but it was still limiting. This human frame was frail and skinny from fighting her inhabitation. Her wrists were narrow and knobbly, the bones sticking out in unappealing spurs. Her cheeks were hollow, and Enyo knew it wasn’t normal to see so many ribs.

  Va'al was thriving in Tristan’s body, but then his host had been willing. Alphonse, the pitiful little healer, had fought Enyo until her demise. Of course, she had failed. She was human. But her dissent had damaged their body. Now, as Enyo washed her hands in a mountain stream and listened to the jokes murmured by the trees, she couldn’t help but miss her old form.

  Glorious. Perfect. Strong.

  Everything she should be. Not this fragile, pale human.

  Sitting back on her haunches, Enyo looked around in mild curiosity for Va'al. He had wandered off to some nefarious deed, and while they had spent days together, mostly rutting like deer in heat, Enyo still didn’t want him out of her sight for long. Three hundred years was enough.

  “Va'al,” she murmured, knowing even in his human body he would hear her, and waited. When he appeared, through simple stealth rather than his powers of old, she tilted her chin in an invitation to kiss her, nip at her throat, devour her. Anything. Everything.

  “Don’t you grow tired of walking?” she asked idly, ember eyes flickering down to his booted feet. Before all of this—their banishment, their reinstallment in new bodies, the basin— he could appear wherever he pleased, whenever. A thought, and he’d be there. He’d just step through the shadows, cocky and a mischievous glint to his eyes. Before all this, Enyo could sprint faster than the wind, and her form would never tire. She could run for days and get wherever she needed to go without having to stop to drink water or rest.

  Now.

  Her feet ached, and her legs were heavy and weak.

  Va'al snorted, leaning in to nip at Enyo’s neck. “I was tired of walking fifty years ago. I’m tired of aching. I’m tired of shitting.” He turned away and spat in the mud. “That’s what I’ve been working on. Now, aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been?” He leaned back, straightening his vest. Not unlike a peacock, spreading a wide swath of feathers.

  Her eyes squinted with mirth, and Enyo jerked her chin at Va'al in demand. “Well?”

  He sighed and flung his hands up like a stage performer on a carnival night. “Seven years ago, I helped a clan chief with a rebellious daughter play a trick. And you’ll never believe what I found in his eating hall… Maoz’s artifact.”

  “And I care because?”

  “We can bring him back with his artifact and a Vassal. Think about it. So what, you and I can’t restore ourselves alone? We’ll just get some of the others together and with all that extra power we can get our old bodies back.”

  Enyo stared at Va'al for a long moment before she straightened up, hardly taking in his ridiculous little bow. She scoffed. “You think we can get our old forms back? Don’t you remember what the banishment was like?” She and Va'al had been together at the time, ready to fight the humans, only to find out too late they were attacking the wrong group of mages. Their bodies had been frozen in place, then a burning heat hotter than any fire, any volcano had wracked through their bodies, ash and vapors coming off in noxious plumes.

  Slowly, painfully, they had crumbled away into nothing more than piles of dust. And then the darkness. The all-consuming darkness had no end and no beginning, though their consciousness went on. Aware of every empty, silent minute in that void of a place. No light, no sound, no sensation.

  “Our bodies were destroyed beyond repair. How would we get them back?” She was angry and excited all at once, eyes wide and pupils dilating rapidly. What he was suggesting was impossible. It would be foolish to hope for it, and yet her heart fluttered.

  ⚀

  “Do you think I just wasted all that time while you slept nice and cozy in the void? I searched for any possible way out of this fucking confinement, and what I found was simpler than you might think. The mages that banished us bound our magic, our true nature. If we just reverse the spell, if we just get enough power… We could weave new bodies. What better source of power is there but the other artifacts and the souls bound to them?”

  Va’al scowled. He was starting to sound like on
e of the bloody mages himself; still, he had to give it to them. They pulled off an extraordinary trick all because they had understood the Gods better than they understood themselves. Well, no matter. They were all dead, and if both he and Enyo could be freed, then the others could as well.

  “So what do you say? Maoz is closest. Then Tha’et, I suppose, but who wants him around? Always was so full of himself…”

  “Wait. If you knew this before, why didn’t you collect up some of the others years ago?” Enyo’s eyes slitted in suspicion. He could see her mind working, see her put together the lengths he would have had to go through to obtain this information: How he’d first have needed to get to Ingola, find their records, and find the answers to precisely how they had been unmade. It wasn’t as if he could just step through the shadows and appear in those libraries or vaults where such precious information would have been stored. So he would have needed to gain access… Smile and sneak and bribe his way in.

  Did she understand how much time those things took when you were confined to a human body?

  “You think me a fool? As easily tricked as a human?” She stepped closer, snarling, the forest around them growing quiet. “You think I believe it took you eighty years to find this information? You think me simple-minded?!”

  Va’al was stunned. Did she really think he was making this up? After the years of work he’d put into struggling out of this form? “What are you even talking about, you ridiculous creature?” He reached down and gripped her by the chin. “I was looking for you.”

  Of course, out of all the temples erected in her honor, Enyo had chosen the most remote to hide her artifact. He had all but given up, all but decided to go after Maoz’s spear, which he knew the location of, when he felt her stir. Reborn without his aid. There had been plenty of time lost in the interim, in the petty distractions of mortal pleasures, but he’d always returned to his quest. To find Enyo, then some of the others. To free himself of the bonds of flesh.