by Liv Savell
Etienne didn’t hesitate. “Yours, of course.”
“Oh?” Meirin looked down at herself, her thick fur-lined cloak and leather breeches, fingers stained yellow beneath the nails from applying her warpaint that morning. She knew her black hair was wild even though it was tied back in its horsetail. She had hoped the question would make Etienne squirm and flush and stutter as he once did, but his surety in the answer was a welcome surprise. “And what, precisely, do you find admirable?”
Etienne did blush then, a sunrise of pinks spreading across his pale neck and cheeks. His answer came out fumbling, but he gained confidence as he spoke. “You’re— you’re strong and, um, quick-witted. I like the warm color of your skin under firelight and the way you smile when you find something new.”
She was smiling now. “Have you been studying me, mage?”
A snort sounded from behind them, and Meirin glanced over her shoulder to see the source. Enyo and Va’al had been trailing behind them, and apparently eavesdropping. “He’s been studying your ass. All males just want a good set of hindquarters.” Enyo patted Va’al’s in example, but he just rolled his eyes.
Meirin found this funny rather than insulting or embarrassing. She laughed, a strange sound no one had heard in days. Shaking her head, the warrior looked to Etienne. “Is that true? Do you only want a set of good hindquarters?” The term was hilarious, like she was some horse or cow, being assessed for quality cuts of meat or breeding.
Etienne looked mildly mortified. “No.”
“Too bad. I wouldn’t have minded.”
Etienne just sputtered, unable to look at her.
As they rounded the bend in the road, the caravan Delyth had mentioned came into sight. Intact, with carts loaded with supplies and people. Barely visible in the distance, but they were there. Finally, a piece of luck. “Should we pick up a run? To close the distance?” Meirin felt eager to end this, once and for all.
Maoz perked up at this suggestion, looking towards Meirin with approval. “Yes. It is time to hunt.”
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
* * *
There was no breath for speaking as they jogged down the path, but it felt incredible to be moving towards the end of their journey with purpose and drive. To run, to be of action rather than petty arguments. To have the end in sight. The relief was like rain, cold and sweet, after a drought. Meirin kept her eyes fixed on the caravan ahead, as if by focusing on them hard enough, she could shorten the distance between them all. With all the walking they had been doing, Meirin found it easy to run for an hour. Two.
Finally, the travelers were within hailing distance, and she set her fingers to her lips, letting out a shrill whistle. A signal, at least around Mynydd Gwyllt, that friends, not foes, were approaching. She could see the travelers stir and look around, but a moment later, the two-note whistle sounded in response—a greeting and a welcome. Another laugh escaped Meirin. A friendly group of travelers who happen to know the whistles from her clan’s valley? Surely one would be willing to aid them, to take on Aryus and end the madness of Mascen? Their fortunes had turned indeed!
Meirin grinned and turned to look over her shoulder at Etienne, smirking and opening her mouth to say something.
The world exploded instead.
A blast like a boulder falling from a mountain knocked Meirin and the others off their feet. Meirin threw out her hands to catch herself; the rocks of the path bit into her palms, slicing her open and bruising her flesh. A high pitch ringing filled her ears, and as Meirin struggled to sit up, to think at all, she could see the caravan turn. They were rushing toward her. Coming to aid against the invisible attack.
“No, run,” her voice croaked, useless and impossible to hear from that distance.
The earth shuddered again, gasses rising from a crevice like some pus-filled wound in the world’s crust. They cloaked Mascen in toxic fumes as he stepped from the seam, magma pouring off his shoulders in sheets. Somehow he seemed larger, sharper, his details eating up all of her attention. Everything else seemed blurry compared to the God as if he were the only thing in focus in a world filled with ill-formed things. Black eyes drifted over their scattered group and landed on Enyo in the very back.
Meirin couldn’t hear what he said, but she felt the air around them boil. She braced herself for the attack, closing her eyes. She didn’t want to watch the end of her life.
One second passed. Another. A third.
Nothing happened.
Meirin opened her eyes again, confusion sweeping over her as Mascen strolled away from them. Casual, jaunty. “What…” Realization made the words die in her throat. He was heading towards the caravan, which seemed to have enough sense to turn tail and flee. Not that it would help.
“Mascen!”
“Stop it now!”
Bits and pieces of her hearing were returning, and Meirin staggered to her feet, reaching for a weapon long gone. What would she do? What could she do?
A few paces away, Delyth was pulling Etienne to his feet, her eyes wide with concern and… fear. She turned around, half poised to fight or take flight, and Meirin let her gaze follow the warrior’s.
Each step Mascen took splintered the earth, cracks following in his wake. A walking earthquake. Twenty yards from the fleeing caravan, he stopped and strolled to the side of the road, offering Meirin, Etienne, Delyth, and the Gods a full view of what she had thought would be their salvation. A stage for his cruelty. Brushing a hand through his molten red hair, Mascen looked once over his shoulder, eyes landing on his parents. Absurdly, it reminded Meirin of a child looking to his family for approval. But his smile was not one of a tentative child but a vindictive teenager.
“No!” She didn’t know who shouted it, but it didn’t matter.
Mascen held out his hands, reaching towards the people scurrying around their wagons. He scooped his palms together, as if holding the group, then gripped the invisible currents of magic he was manipulating. The earth around them groaned, a sound Meirin found more terrifying than screams of pain or the clash of battle. Horses whinnied and bolted, yanking free from their riders, one wagon careening behind the frightened beasts. People jumped out to avoid being dashed to pieces as the animals charged recklessly off. As Mascen pulled his hands apart, the road shook and heaved like a bucking bull. Meirin could see the travelers fall. She thought some might be praying or begging for their lives. Whatever God they worshiped couldn’t help, not against Mascen.
With a flourish, he yanked his hands apart, and a seam appeared down the center of the road. He pulled wider, and the crack in the earth grew into a depthless maw. People scrambled away from the fissure, but the sides of the road were tilting, down towards the break. A funnel to drop innocent travelers into his pit. Horror kept Meirin frozen, unable to think. How could she stop that? How could she save the people from him?
In clumps the people, clinging to the sides of the earth, fell into the fissure, supplies from their wagons and livestock following suit. The last human screamed as she tumbled down into the pit, and the spell on Meirin broke. She stumbled forward, snatching up a rock. “Stop! Stop!” Desperation yanked the words from Meirin’s throat, but Mascen didn’t react. He pushed his hands back towards each other, and the earth complied. The fissure was closing.
The screams, frightened and painful before, grew frantic. The people would be buried alive beneath tons of rock and earth, suffocating in a lightless pit. All because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because Mascen didn’t want Enyo and the others to get their bodies back.
Maoz crashed past Meirin, but he only made it a few steps before Va’al tackled him to the earth. “You fool!” She heard the trickster God say, “There is nothing we can do now.”
Delyth’s hand struck Meirin’s shoulder, like a hammer striking an anvil, and she jerked to a stop. She turned, but instead of seeing the warrior, her eyes landed first on Esha. The old priest’s face was dust-marked and streaked with tears, but there was a steel to the God
dess’s spine that Meirin hadn’t noticed before. She was yelling at Delyth, but it took Meirin long seconds to put the words together. “Take the humans, and go!”
Delyth dropped her pack and turned to Meirin, shaking her. The warrior’s eyes were almost all white, the sclera eating up the blue. “Leave your things. I can’t lift that much weight.” Despite her confusion, Meirin complied. Were they going to simply flee?
What else could they do?
Already Etienne had dropped his pack, Esha shoving Aryus’s horn into his hands. For protection.
“But— Those people!” Meirin wanted to help. Maybe if they dug up the area, some would still be alive?
“Meirin, those people are dead.” Delyth’s voice was heavier than a rain-pregnant cloud and just as dark.
Of course, they were dead, but shouldn’t they check? Be certain? The road trembled again, and Meirin glanced back to Mascen, who hadn’t moved from his place beside the path. Watching them. Soaking up every detail. He loved the chaos and fear. Instead of answering, Meirin slung her arm about Delyth’s shoulders. Etienne mirrored the movement and then stretched his long arm across Delyth’s body to grip Meirin’s side, hand fisting in her tunic. She did the same, and Delyth’s strong arms looped around each of their hips.
The warrior half lifted them by the waist as she took several shuddering lunging steps forward to gain speed. She beat her wings downward, lifted off the ground a foot, fell back down. Struggling to keep her balance, she tried again, run-stumbling forward. It felt as if they were falling, like the ground was rushing up to meet them, but instead, it began to fade. Delyth gained height in ungainly hopping thrusts, her neck corded with strain. But they were aloft. They were moving away.
Behind them, Mascen grew smaller and smaller, but Meirin could feel his pleasure for miles.
Chapter XXI
Eleventh Moon, Waxing Crescent: Eastern Branch of the Afonnieder
How many nights had she sat by a fire, just like this one, watching supper cook and listening to Etienne and Delyth practice magic? How many nights had she gathered around any sort of campfire, perhaps with her fellow warriors or clansmen, and shared stories and wine? But never with the company she currently kept. Never with hostile Gods trapped with half their powers locked away. Never with lovers torn apart and the fate of so many hanging precariously in the balance.
Her heart was heavy as a river stone. Those people, those poor people, whose only faults were being friendly and turning to aid them. Crushed to death. Buried and suffocating with the bodies of their friends and family surrounding them.
Meirin shuddered, not cold but chilled all the same. And all they had done was flee. Etienne and Delyth said it was all that could be done, but Meirin knew that wasn’t true. She could have tried.
Instead, she turned tail and fled like a coward.
They had met up with the Gods just before sunset, miles down the road from Mascen’s butchery. Esha and Va’al had thought to grab their packs so at least they had tents to sleep in and food to put in their bellies.
The fire popped, bringing her attention from the past. Maoz laid an additional log atop the blaze and settled back on his haunches, the flames lighting his face from below. “We cannot hunt while we are hunted.” He had said something similar before. When Mascen had known where to wait for them.
Esha found a place to sit beside the God of Beasts, putting the fire between her and Enyo where the other Goddess sat in her usual position of power, ensconced in a throne made of Va'al’s lap. “So we need some other plan,” Esha said, reaching towards the fire with a man’s large hands.
“We have to find a Vassal. Without one, there is no other plan.” Va’al’s hand rested on Enyo’s thigh, where it lay exposed by the fall of her sarong.
“Should we stop fleeing and stay to fight? Or distract him? Just long enough to get someone for Aryus?” Meirin watched Va’al’s hand as his thumb stroked the inside of Enyo’s thigh. Comfortable, tender even.
Enyo scoffed. She lifted her pitiful stone hand in example. “You fight him. I’m certain you’ll be ample distraction.”
Etienne looked up from his journal. He’d been sitting between Meirin and Delyth, scribbling away for the last several minutes, and he still seemed half-absorbed in his work. “Why do you need five Gods anyway? Why aren’t four enough? Even that many seems a prodigious amount. How much difference in power can one God make?”
Esha spoke up, cutting off Enyo. It was likely for the best. Enyo was in the habit of acting as if Etienne was the slowest creature she had ever met and tended towards cruelty when addressing him. “Our old bodies, before the banishment, were comprised entirely of magic. From the original source. To access that source again, we will need a great deal of power.”
Having no idea where “the source” was, Meirin kept her mouth shut.
✶
Etienne did not know precisely how much power it would take to summon enough magic to form the bodies of Gods, but he well understood the principle that the more magic one required for a spell, the more energy it took to pull that magic from its source. The exact nature of that source had puzzled Moxous scholars for years; some postulated that magic laced the very air of Illygad, others that it came from an entirely different plane. It would be interesting to report what the Gods believed if he ever made it back to Moxous.
“What is the source?” he asked, raising his pen to write.
“The Cursed Realms, where we originally came from,” Esha murmured, eyes steady on Etienne’s face. “This world didn’t have magic when we came. The people were struggling, so we brought magic with us.”
“That’s right.” Enyo snarled. “You have us to thank for your precious magic, mage. Aside from taking the chaotic humans and teaching them things like music and dance and warfare, we also brought the one thing you hold dear above all else. You’re welcome.”
“You mean that you weren’t divine beings, but trespassers from another world who decided that you would like to play as Gods,” Delyth said.
Etienne shifted uncomfortably. That sounded like another fight, another barrage of poison-arrow jabs. He cleared his throat, addressing Esha rather than the caustic Enyo. “What were the Cursed Realms like?”
He had labeled the top of his page “Cursed Realms” and was ready to scribble down any more information she might be willing to impart.
Esha actually looked uncomfortable at that. “It was long ago,” she murmured as if saying she couldn’t recall. But Enyo was leaning forward now, hand braced on one of Va'al’s knees as if he were her armchair.
“Imagine a place with howling winds and screaming voices; imagine that you are the most pitiful, weakling creature there. There is no color, no clean air or water. Just ash. Things that shouldn’t exist do, monstrosities that make your Gods seem benign. And the things that should exist don’t. Everyone can do magic ten times more potent than even the most powerful humans, and everyone stronger than you gets what they want when they want it. No matter what. Time has very little meaning, and hope is a novel concept.”
The hair on the back of Etienne’s neck rose at that description, but he wrote it down anyway, as close to word-for-word as he could get it. Moxous would want to know just exactly how she had said it so that they could pick her words apart.
“And that is the place all our magic comes from?” he shuddered, thinking that every time he worked magic, he was opening little portals into that horrifying realm. What if one of those monstrosities that Enyo spoke of decided one day to come through?
“If you are made of magic, then the spell that bound you must have stripped you of that power,” he went on, half to himself. What a tremendous amount of energy that must have taken. It took so much just to strip a mortal of the ability to access magic.
Something old and dark flickered behind Enyo’s eyes, and she looked away. “Va'al… What is the first thing you will do when you regain your original form?”
She snuggled back against Va'al’s lap
, her rump wiggling obviously. Despite the stone curse sapping her strength, she still could muster up the energy to deliberately flaunt her physical relationship with the Trickster God. It seemed Etienne had gotten as much information out of her as possible regarding the Cursed Realms. He knew better than to push the Goddess.
Va'al leaned back, pinching Enyo’s rump appreciatively. “Greet the shadows, I expect,” he said, content for once. “Maybe nip off and cause some trouble before we deal with Mascen. What about you?”
The mage could all-too-easily imagine just what sort of trouble that might be, and he looked away, disgusted. He had never liked Va'al. Not even when he thought the God was a man named Tristan. Delyth was clenching her jaw so hard that he could see the muscles in her cheeks bunch even from this distance. Enyo had not become any more considerate of the body she used since they last traveled together, and her ill-use was preying on Delyth’s already fraying nerves. He wasn’t quite sure how much the warrior could take.
And yet, they all were bearing the strain of traveling with the Gods. They just had to endure until a Vassal could be found.
“Bathe in starlight, maybe,” Enyo was crooning. “Paint the sky with thunderheads… regrow everything Mascen obliterated…”
“If all we need for Alphonse to be free of you is a Vassal, I’ll do it.” Etienne flinched at the darkness in Delyth’s voice, surprising after the Gods’ frivolity. It had the same air of desperation as her old dealings with the Goddess. Don’t misuse Alphonse’s body, and you can drink my blood. Let her free, and I’ll be your Vassal.
He shuddered. To willingly give up your body, even for a short time…
Enyo leaned forward, firelight reflecting in her too-wide eyes. Of late, her face had been hollowing out, skull-like. “Oh, would you, Ba’oto? That’s a deal I would make.”