by Liv Savell
That drew a snort of laughter out of Va'al. “True! Though, to be fair, you did think I was a female at the time.” It had been a great trick, getting Maoz to lie with him, and they’d both gotten a son out of it. Eifion. The shape-changer. He was wild and tricky in a way that still made Va'al proud. “After we get our bodies back, we’ll have to check on Eifion. And the others, for that matter.”
Enyo spun on her heel, rounding on Va'al. “So you wish to fuck the beast now?” The way her face was tightening and her eyes glinting, it was clear Enyo was in one of her moods. She wasn’t often jealous, except when it gave her an opportunity to be nasty or contrary.
Maoz made the coughing sound that they both knew was his form of laughing.
She launched herself at Maoz, and while he was fast enough to bring up his spear to block her, she still was able to wrap her hands about the shaft and swing herself powerfully into his side. They both fell back with Enyo atop Maoz. She spat as she yanked his artifact away, tossing it to the side. She hauled her hand back with the ferocity of a bear and sank it into the other God’s throat.
He choked, sputtering, and his hands came up, much larger and stronger than Enyo’s mortal form, to wrap about her neck. She scrabbled for his eyes, hair flying back as she wrestled for the upper hand, and her face darkened from lack of air.
Va'al looked up at the sky and sighed.
Did this mean he was supposed to play nurse-maid? To step in and break up this little squabble before they tore their Vassals to pieces?
Really, it wasn’t his style.
Va'al dropped onto the ground and made himself comfortable, stretching out his aching, mortal feet. “You know, it would be much more fun to tear each other apart in your actual bodies. Which you need each other to get if you want them sometime, I dunno, this century.”
They rolled in the earth, Enyo whipping her head to the side to bite the inside of Maoz’s wrist. He roared with pain as blood dribbled down his arm and released her throat. The Goddess delivered one final blow, giving Maoz a good gut punch before she crawled away, panting.
She spat blood and probed a gash on the inside of her cheek with her tongue. Enyo growled in displeasure and rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth, smearing her and Maoz’s blood there. Maoz looked stunned as he clutched his bleeding arm, and Enyo was still red-faced, but they both at least had stopped squabbling.
Enyo, the fickle creature, made it over to Va'al, who she slapped on the shoulder and climbed into his lap. Licking her lips to get the last drops of Maoz’s blood, she rubbed her throat. In their old bodies, that would not have made her lose her breath.
Maoz was clearly dumbfounded by the sensation of pain from Enyo’s vicious bite, her teeth sharper than theirs. It had been three hundred years since he had felt anything at all.
Va'al just cocked an eyebrow at Enyo. “Was that really necessary? You went and made Maoz bleed all because I fucked him hundreds of years ago. After you fucked him, I might add.”
Really, the misfit God was amused. It had been entertaining to watch, for all that it slowed them down. He supposed it was easy for Enyo and Maoz to forget their mission from time to time. They were still new to these bodies. He had been craving real power for eighty years now.
The Goddess didn’t dignify that with an answer and instead gave Va'al a bloody, savage kiss. She was clearly planning to do more when Maoz’s voice pierced through the field.
“When will the bleeding stop?”
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
* * *
“Realms, Aryus was such an anchorite,” Enyo complained as they neared the base of the tower. It was a solitary building, alone in the open field. Lacking decoration or adornment. A dirt path led up to it, circled around the trunk of the tower, and then meandered off in the direction of Esha’s people and Va'al’s little lake.
As they wandered about the tower base, Enyo noticed the complete lack of a door. After a full lap and no apparent means to gain entry to Aryus’s temple, she bared her teeth. What was the catch? The joke? She couldn’t remember. She hadn’t cared when Aryus had told them about it, and now that it mattered, she was only frustrated. Tipping her chin back to peer up the length of the building, Enyo could see balconies on the uppermost level. Of course, it would be impossible to climb in these mortal bodies, what with the stone being too smooth to produce footholds. If one of them had a bow and arrow and a pile of rope, then they might have been able to thread it through one of the windows and scale the side of the building, but as it was…
Growling, she prowled around the tower again, this time closely inspecting each inch. Was it a puzzle or ruse? A hidden door, cleverly placed? How would they get in? How did people get in?!
Her frustration was starting to boil into full fury when a small symbol caught her eye, barely discernible beneath the layers of dirt and mud. Enyo crouched down and smoothed one hand over a stone near the very base of the tower, revealing a crude drawing of a fish. To the right of that stone was another one. A bird. As she kept crawling about the tower, scrubbing each lowermost piece of stone, Enyo uncovered more symbols of animals, plants, and people.
How strange that Aryus would cover the base of their temple with depictions of life when nothing else bedecked their sacred space. What could it mean?
Frowning, Enyo caught Va'al’s eye where he stood near Maoz. “What do you make of this?” she asked, straightening up and dusting her dirty hands off on her sarong. “There is nothing else— just these little pictures. It seems strange unless it is some part of a game Aryus designed. The idiot.”
Va'al examined the drawings, a smile quirking his lips upwards. “Of course it is—a game or puzzle. This is Aryus we’re talking about. They liked little else more than playing.”
Stepping back and trying to see the temple from a more reasonable perspective, Enyo felt something giveaway under her bare foot. Thinking it a trap, she leaped artfully back, hunkering down into a crouch, ready to attack.
But nothing happened. No warriors sprang up from hidden lairs, no blades flew at her heart. Enyo glared down at the patch of ground. There was something there, twinkling in the dull yellow of the grasslands. She pounced on it, hauling plants up by the root and flinging them over her shoulder. It was a bronze disk, the size of both her hands spread apart. “Look!” she called, her voice full of pride. She had found it. Whatever it was. “Bring me water!” Maoz’s hand came into her periphery with a canteen. Yanking it away, she uncorked it and poured the contents onto the disk set into the earth. Washing the rest of the debris away.
There was an inscription there. Of course. In the old tongue.
Alive as you but without breath
As cold alive as in death
Never a thirst, though I always drink
Dressed in mail, but never a clink
A riddle. She hated riddles. “What is the blasted point of this?!” she hollered down at the disk. “Why would Death need their followers to prove they are canny to enter their temple?! Everyone dies!! It’s not as if Aryus was ever discerning in their devotees! This is ridiculous.”
Straightening up, Enyo started to rifle through her pack. She brought out a small bundle of kindling, flint, and a bottle of harsh spirits. Yanking the cork out with her teeth, Enyo strode towards the tower. She’d just burn the thing down, and the artifact, being imbued with God-essence, would stay intact. A simple, eloquent solution, if she did say so herself.
⚀
“Wait!” Va'al said, real irritation seeping into his voice. “It will take days to burn the tower if it’ll even catch. The blasted thing is made of stone!”
Not to mention how much work it would be to sift through the rubble and find the damnable artifact.
The misfit God shared a look with Maoz, rolling his eyes expressively. Fucking women.
Once he was certain that Enyo was not immediately about to start a fire, Va'al bent down to consider the plate she had uncovered, reading the inscription a couple times through. He had always l
iked riddles. Not enough to bear Aryus’s company for any length of time, but he had exchanged puzzles with the Death God.
At first, the answer seemed obvious. It was a dragon, of course. They were lizards, ‘as cold alive as in death,’ and their scales could be a mail of some sort. But then, dragons were not quiet creatures. They rustled and creaked as they moved. They breathed.
He should know. His mortal shell still bore the marks of dragon breath.
Perhaps, then, the ‘mail’ in the riddle referred to the bark of a tree? They certainly didn’t clink, nor he supposed, did they breathe.
But then again, he had never seen a tree drink anything.
Va'al scratched his scruffy chin, drawing his brows together. If not a tree, what then? What lived but did not breathe?
His eyes drifted upwards to the ring of pictures around the base of the tower. There was a bird, a wolf, a snake, a human…
And a fish.
The God’s eyes lit up in delight. That was it! It had to be! A fish lived but did not breathe, was as cold living as it was in death. Drank but did not thirst. It had scales.
Va'al straightened, dusting off his worn travel clothing as though they were the garments of a king. “Not to worry, Enyo, Maoz,” he said, clearly pleased with himself. “I know the answer.”
With a decided strut, Va'al flounced over to the tower, leaned down, and pushed hard on the stone carved with a crude likeness of a fish.
A blade popped out of the stone and punched into the meat of Va'al’s palm, deep enough to make him bleed but no mortal injury.
❂
With the addition of blood, the tower groaned. The stone blocks that formed the tower walls slid inwards, turning and writhing, setting themselves back together. When the dust cleared, a path lay open before them, twisting upwards into darkness. Enyo plucked up Va'al’s hand and licked the injury as Maoz started up the stairs.
“Let the beast trigger anymore ‘jokes,’ yes?” she murmured, peering into the gloom of the temple stairway. Aryus wasn’t the malicious type, not like her, but they did have a crude and immature sense of humor.
They might think a step that broke beneath the walker’s foot or a trap door might be as amusing as their stupid little riddle and their hidden entrance. “Are we certain we want to bring Aryus back? They seem like more trouble than they are worth.” Of course, she had been arguing to keep Aryus and forgo Esha only days ago, but the Death God had gotten themselves onto her ‘hate’ list with all these ridiculous tasks.
“I don’t see why this should be so challenging. It’s death after all. Everyone dies—humans do it all the time. It’s not like it’s complicated. Anything can kill them. Spear to the belly, head cut off, heart torn out, not enough food, not enough water, fire, water, landslide—” Enyo continued to list the numerous ways humans could be killed as she and Va'al climbed the endless steps up into the tower of Aryus. “Snake bite, suffocation, broken neck. I mean, you can literally scare a human to death.“ She grinned. “Do you remember that man back in— Where was it? You disguised yourself as his dead mother and came in on him with that whore and started shouting, and he jumped off the boy and was flailing around—”
They came to the last step and Maoz glanced over his shoulder at Enyo and Va'al. “We’re here.” Of course, the beast wouldn’t think it was funny. He had a terrible sense of humor.
⚀
Va'al was still chuckling as he stepped around Maoz and into the chamber. It had been an excellent trick, for sure, but shorter-lived than he had hoped. As much fun as it was to say he had scared a human to death, it really just meant that the joke had been cut off—rather abruptly too.
Like the rest of the tower, Aryus’s main chamber was unadorned. Just stone floors in a circular room with evenly spaced pillars disappearing into shadows far above their heads. He supposed it did have a sense of grandeur, in a way. And once, he would have had a fete in such thick dark as cloaked the room’s corners.
Soon he would again.
In the center of the room stood a circular altar carved with the same crude runes as they found on the tower’s wall. Seated atop it, amid a pile of desiccated petals, was a simple, ivory horn.
To call mortals to their deaths, Va'al supposed. Though he had always thought a blade would be more fitting.
“That was easy, eh?” Va'al said, picking the horn up and holding it out to Enyo. “I suppose they thought the puzzle at the door deterrent enough.”
Hefting the horn in her hand, Enyo only shrugged. “Why would they have bothered to hide or protect their artifact? The entire point was for someone to touch it and bring them back, should anything ever happen. Not everyone jealously guarded theirs with dragons, Va'al.”
Maoz snorted. “I forgot you did that. How did someone find it and release you?”
“As if yours was any better, Maoz.” Enyo drawled, tossing the horn up into the air and then catching it over and over again. “Just propped up in the hall of some human warrior, gathering dust.”
“The clan was strong when I left it there. My intuition was right. They kept it safe for three hundred years, did they not?”
Enyo ignored Maoz’s remark. Typical. She couldn’t admit he had proven her wrong.
“I suppose we need to find another human, though… One that would be to Aryus’s taste…” Her eyes flickered to Va'al.
Va'al shrugged. “If we can find one.” Besides, that would take more time. Weeks or moons walking in human bodies all to find Aryus a shell they would dispose of anyway.
Gods, he was so tired of masquerading as a mortal.
“Let’s just go grab the first mortal we come across.” As they turned to exit, Va'al clapped a hand on Maoz’s shoulder. “And, on the way, I’ll tell you the story of how this mortal idiot braved the Sky Keepers for my artifact. It's a good one. Even won a competition a few moons ago.”
Maoz only turned to leave the way they had come, but Enyo smirked up at Va'al as she tossed Aryus’s artifact into his hands. She wasn’t the type to haul about supplies after all.
“I wasn’t in that competition. Had I been, your paltry ‘dragons burned me’ story would have lost.”
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
* * *
Tenth Moon, New Moon, Western Isle, Unnamed
It had taken three days and three nights of lashing the barrier around the island with lightning and gales of wind, but it had finally begun to crumble. The Old Gods who had erected the invisible structure to keep him tied to this pitiful hunk of rock hadn’t been around to renew the wards. With that weakening and his unbreakable will, the last embers of power in the cage flickered and died.
Mascen stepped across the beach into warm waters for the first time in a millennium. No longer bound to the land itself. Waves crashed against his shins, and he smiled in exultation.
Now he was free.
Now he could return to Rhosan and his beloved parents and begin to set right all those wrongs from so long ago.
A roar of triumph echoed through the island, sending birds flying into the skies and making the humans shudder in terror.
Chapter IX
Tenth Moon, First Quarter: North of The Tower
“Try it again.”
Etienne nodded, running his hands back through his hair so that it stuck up at odd angles. The rune he was trying to replicate was a simple one—the same one he had seen Delyth use every night on the tent she shared with Alphonse— but still, the magic eluded him.
Carefully, he traced the swirling character in his own blood once more, looking up at Delyth when he was finished so that she might test it. She had explained to him a few nights ago that not only would the caster feel the warding break, but so would the person breaking it if they were trained in the old ways.
She stepped through his tent, shaking her head. He was starting to hate that look. “It didn’t hold.”
Etienne sighed.
“It isn’t the rune that is the problem.” Delyth sat down beside him, pointing t
o the mark in blood. “It is as perfect as any I’ve ever seen. The problem is with your intent. This isn’t a mental exercise, Etienne, but one of feeling. You must believe you are protecting what you ward.”
Etienne nodded miserably. It hadn’t been the first time he’d heard that advice. From the very beginning, this magic had been less about learning rules than using his body, his feelings. In some ways, it was even harder than staff training.
Delyth must have recognized his discouragement because she lifted a hand and placed it on his shoulder. “Don’t lose hope. Only a couple weeks ago, you made your first rune fire, and already we are starting wards. You’ll get it.”
Etienne smiled weakly. This must have been the Delyth Alphonse had seen on the way to Thlonandras. Too often these days, she was distant and angry, but she seemed more herself in these lessons. “I just hope it's in time.”
She nodded, turning away without saying anything to assuage his fears. They both knew there was too much at stake and too little time. “Let’s stop there for tonight. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
And with that, she disappeared into her tent, leaving Etienne to clean up dried blood by the light of the fire.
Meirin was sharpening her dagger on the other side of the fire. Dark eyes flickered in the dim light of the flames, and she tested her work by running a hair across the edge. It split, fragile ends falling away from the blade like feathers or snow. Meirin put her dagger back in its sheath and settled back to gaze up at the stars overhead.
“I can show you a different ward, if you like, Etienne. More immediately effective.” She grinned up at the sky and then looked across the fire, expression hidden in the shadows.
The mage looked at Meirin a little apprehensively, trying to read her face in the dark. “I thought you said that you don’t practice the old ways.”