Goddess

by Liv Savell

  Only there was Maoz again, dashing in with that damned spear aimed at Mascen’s chest. The Lava God only just managed to avoid it, stumbling back over the uneven cobblestones in his rush. He did not fall, but already Maoz was turning, charging again.

  Well, let him come. Mascen was ready.

  This time when he stepped aside, Mascen took hold of one of Maoz’s curving horns, using the Beast God’s own momentum to fling him away. Mascen kept his hand clenched tight around the horn, and with the sickening crack of breaking bone, he tore it free, spraying the courtyard with blood.

  Maoz’s scream of pain shook the very foundations of the city.

  ❂

  Enyo rounded the corner in time to see Maoz go flying, his skull a wreck and one horn still held in her son’s clutches. Flower petals drifted behind Mascen, strangely delicate against the violence of the scene before her: blood splattered stone and Esha’s limp body. Mascen hadn’t seen them yet, so Enyo shouted to distract him, calling out childhood pet-names like insults. As he turned to look her way, Aryus appeared, as they tended to do, dropping down on a phantom breeze to bash Mascen upside the head with their own artifact.

  “A horn for a horn!” they giggled, wings pumping to regain the height necessary to escape Mascen’s furious blow. Her son’s swing was wide and poorly aimed, and Aryus was already too far out of reach. The God of Disaster staggered, shaking his skull. He was hurt but still standing. Some part of Enyo hesitated. He was her child, her firstborn. And here he was, fending off five Gods on his own. Any mother would be proud.

  Aryus lifted their hand up to their lips and blew across their palm. Where the breath landed, more petals bloomed in great, billowing gusts like fistfuls of birthing-day wildflowers. There was no wind, but neither did the petals fall. They wound themselves into long lines, solidifying into a living, snaking rope that coiled around Mascen’s legs, his torso. He growled but was unable to keep himself from kneeling. Shadows sprung up from the cracks of the cobblestones to pin down Mascen’s legs, and as he bellowed, Enyo’s stone leaped up to claim his wrists, hauling him down prostrate on the ground.

  Va'al winked into existence next to her, watching with unblinking eyes as their son struggled despite the bindings they had put him under. Always a fighter.

  Maoz was first to stagger over, disoriented but grimly smiling as he dipped his fingers in his own blood and clawed them across Mascen’s belly. Symbolically disemboweling him as a bear might. Or a wolf.

  Enyo looked away. Tears of rainwater pricked at her eyes.

  “No! You dancing lunatic, I’ll rip your throat out if you come near me!” Mascen hollered, but Enyo still couldn’t make herself turn to him. Couldn’t bear to watch. Aryus would have marked him by now; she was the only one left.

  Mascen howled, and Enyo gritted her teeth. It had to be done. He was mad. He had no respect for the lands. He wanted her weak and subservient, and she would never be that. Enyo turned back to see Mascen bucking and thrashing. White froth bubbled at his lips, flying onto the stone with his screams. She could see Va'al’s shadows starting to flicker. The earth was keening as it tried to hold him back, and even Aryus’s vague grey eyes were widening with something like concern.

  She had to strike now.

  Enyo leaped, a second too late realizing that Mascen was by far stronger than she had ever known. Rocks, shadow strands, and flower petals exploded outward, a blooming cloud of debris. With all her strength and speed, Enyo had no time to move, no time to protect herself. The concussive force of Mascen breaking free was upon her in the space of a hummingbird’s wingbeat, and then she was flying, the world a blur around her. The wooden posts of a merchant’s stall broke against her spine, adding their splinters to the storm of rubble, and then her body was forced to a halt by rough stone. A week ago, it would have killed her. Now she only gasped for breath and dragged herself around to face her son.

  He rose out of the crater he had created, magma dripping from every crevice in his skin, eyes pupilless onyx. The earth quivered in fear.

  What had she created?

  “You!” Mascen screamed at Enyo, lava and blood flying from his lips in long ropes. He looked like a creature maddened by sickness, wholly unhinged and capable of anything. “You should have stayed dead!!”

  ༄

  Delyth did not realize what Etienne had done until she heard Maoz’s feral scream.

  Battle was joined, the Gods already fighting to banish Mascen while still she wound through the maze of streets, kept safely away by Etienne’s guidance. She growled, so red with anger that it blinded her, filled her nose with its mephitic stench. “Etienne…” His name was a curse, low and wild, and in its wake, she scrubbed his mark from her skin, cutting off their connection.

  He would not keep her from this battle. From her freedom.

  With a savage leap, Delyth was in the air, her wingtips scraping stone. She ignored the pain. Reveled in it. Then she was free of the maze and winging towards the center of the city with desperate speed, wind whipping moisture from her eyes as she went. Calamity was already in her hands, as if answering some unspoken command, subdued at last by rage.

  She came over the courtyard just as Mascen stepped towards Enyo, and eagerly she flung herself into his path.

  Dripping with magma, Mascen threw up one whip-like hand and batted Delyth out of the air like a toy, sending her spinning into the cobblestones. There was a crunch, a barrage of pops that might have been sound or feeling. Her ribs, she thought, in a distant, distracted way. What did it matter? She had not lost Calamity, and after a few quick breaths, she pushed herself up in time to watch the red ooze drip down his wrist into a long rope, gaining structure as it solidified. First blade, then crossguard, then pommel until Mascen was holding a glowing sword made of his own volcanic flesh.

  Delyth growled, too eaten up by battle fever to notice pain, and thundered forward again, pulling Calamity upwards in a strike across Mascen’s belly only for the black-pommeled blade to be stopped by his sword of rock and lava.

  Calamity jumped free, and in the winged warrior’s hands, it struck again and again, snake-like in speed, leaving oozing slices in Mascen’s chest and arm that sent real blood sizzling amongst the magma. It was with a wild, angry sort of joy that she realized, for all his strength, the God did not have her art with the sword.

  And all she had to do was hold him here to be marked, to be banished.

  He got through her guard then, left a searing line of pain across one bicep, hot and blistering. Delyth only laughed in his face, urging him to greater fury. She threw herself at him again, her strikes growing wild, desperate. “Aren’t you supposed to be stronger than this?” she demanded. “Stop me!”

  Make it stop.

  Mascen snarled, and Delyth threw Calamity at him, opening a horrible, gushing slice in his side. And she didn’t stop, coming on after him, barehanded and crying from the sting of smoke in her eyes. He was screaming, or she was, but despite the injury, Mascen reached out and hauled Delyth up by her throat. She was smiling.

  Mascen roared and flung her body, incongruously small in comparison, back into the streets beyond.

  ✶

  With a cry, Etienne pulled his knife from his belt and cut a jagged line into the flesh of his palm. Mascen had Delyth by the throat, their figures so small in the distant courtyard, and he had but seconds to save her. Alphonse would never forgive him, not even in the peace of death, should he let the warrior fall.

  With clumsy, hurried strokes, he drew out the first rune he could think of and grasped at the magic, flinging it artlessly at Delyth’s flying form with no direction other than to catch her, to see her safely to the ground.

  The very air answered his call as though he were not some simple mage but one of the Gods himself, cradling her form with invisible hands. He guided her down with deliberate slowness, squinting against the distance until he could be certain she was settled, sprawled out on the cobblestones well away from the fray.

&n
bsp; And then he sighed. He had done it, had stopped the fall from killing his best friend’s lover—his friend, after all they had been through.

  Only, the magic still surged through him, writhing, angry ropes of the stuff, restless in so poor a container. They would not lie docile within the body of a mere mortal. Etienne struggled to give them direction, to think of some spell, but that moment of indecision was all it took. The magic tore out of him and into the world like a hurricane, scraping his throat raw as it went.

  And then Etienne was falling, head cracking against the stone as he sank into quiet darkness.

  ❂

  It was enough. Mascen had broken free, poisoned her. He had ripped Maoz’s horn from his very skull and dashed Esha against the cobblestones. He had burned and torn his way through Rhosan and harmed her peoples and her plains. He destroyed everything he touched. Like the Overseers. Like the Cursed Realms.

  It was all enough.

  Enyo stepped forward to fill the void the priestess had left, and Mascen glared at her, bleeding sluggishly from the many cuts he had sustained. He panted but raised his hands, empty now. His brows were pressed together, the pale skin between them wrinkled just as it had when he was small. He had always been so determined. Her boy. So wild. So strong.

  He lifted his hands to protect his face quickly enough that when she swung, he slapped her first and second blows away. He was fast, but Enyo knew she could be faster. Must be. She pivoted on her heel, whipping her fist around to his skull. All her existence, Enyo had fought larger, stronger opponents, had used speed and cunning to win her battles. Anticipating Mascen’s block, she yanked her knee up to his belly.

  Surprise mingled with fury on his face. It was the tyrant's quandary, their fatal flaw: Mascen had not believed he could lose. He erupted upward and caught her under the chin, but Enyo ignored the clacking of her teeth and instead hooked her fist around to his ear, boxing it as one might a disobedient child. Mascen reacted quickly enough to bring his elbow up to block her, but now he was backing up. She swung again, and he parried, stepping once more out of her range, drawing her away from the others so he could escape and live to fight another day. Enyo kept her focus entirely on raining blows down on Mascen, fast and unrelenting so that he had no more time than to retreat. She wanted him to move back, wanted him to believe he had some means of escape.

  Beneath his blocking fists, Enyo could see a cruel smile stretching over Mascen’s sharp teeth. Good. He thought he was distracting her. He thought he was slipping away, back into the city or the tunnels below. He thought she was too single-minded to wonder why he wasn’t attacking back, only thwarting her time and time again.

  But it was Enyo’s turn to smile as Mascen stumbled to a halt. He glanced behind himself to see his folly—the fountain, filled to the brim with water. Water to banish fire. And it was too late to stop her. “Mother…” There was an edge to Mascen’s voice that had not been there before. Fear.

  Enyo’s hand shot out, gripping his wrist and yanking his arm away to expose his chest. His clothes were in tatters, cloth burned away by heat and battle to leave him vulnerable. He should have shown more foresight. His father would have. But then, Enyo supposed the child did take after her in some ways. She grimaced and placed a red-branding hand against his heart. Mascen screamed and tried to shove her away, but already the wards were working, his power bound up neatly within him. He could do nothing but wobble, Enyo’s grip on his wrist the only thing keeping him upright.

  “Goodbye, Mascen,” the Goddess murmured, and before he could spit or curse or beg, she let go. Mascen dropped back into the fountain with a hissing torrent of steam. There was a moment of struggle, of roiling water and thrashing limbs. And then nothing. Enyo leaned forward to peer within. Empty.

  Mascen had been banished.

  Chapter XXVI

  Eleventh Moon, Waxing Gibbous: Caerthleon

  Delyth woke in fragments, her world a blur of pain.

  But she woke.

  Hot, bitter tears soaked into the thin linen that bound her scorched neck where magma fingers had gripped her as she remembered the events of the battle. She had fought Mascen, finally, despite Etienne’s interference. She had wounded him. Thrown herself at him without a blade.

  By all rights, she should be dead.

  And still, it wasn’t over. She had to go on like this. Broken. Bereft of everything she loved. Enslaved by her own oath.

  It was supposed to be over.

  Delyth’s fists clenched in the fabric of the cot on which she lay, panting for breath past the lump in her throat that would not let her scream. She swallowed against it but gave up, turning her mouth into the pillow and shaking against the force of her cries.

  The world was dark again for sometime after that, and she drifted only distantly at the edges of consciousness. “She’s torn open her wounds,” a voice came, muddled and quiet. “Keep her sedated until they begin to heal.”

  After that, the deep was more complete.

  Delyth came to her senses again in a bare, white room that smelled vaguely herbal and clean. Like the mender’s wing at the temple in Glynfford where she had been raised.

  The warrior made this connection only dully, her mind still fogged by the remnants of whatever herbs the menders had used to keep consciousness at bay. She was queerly empty, either from the medicine or so ravaged by the last few moons that she could no longer feel at all. She sat up slowly, her face towards the door.

  Perhaps summoned by the sounds of Delyth sitting up, a young woman entered. She had dark eyes and hair like Meirin, her skin less copper and more bronze, but that was where the similarities ended. The woman instead had the soft eyes and gentle smile of someone who worked with the sick, and she bowed respectfully when she came to Delyth’s bedside.

  “Do you want something to drink?” the mender asked, voice tempered and kind.

  Delyth looked at the girl a moment, then turned away, unable to meet her gaze. She did not resemble anyone Delyth had known, but there was something familiar in her eyes. Was she thirsty? She didn’t much care, and all she could feel from her neck was a dull pain.

  In the end, she didn’t speak at all, but the mender poured a cup of water anyway. She moved closer to help Delyth hold the glass and take a sip. Her touch was impersonal but not sterile, gentle as she bustled around Delyth’s bed, straightening the blankets and pillows. Coming to Delyth’s other side, the woman took the opportunity to peek under Delyth’s dressing and nodded sagely. Whatever she had seen pleased her.

  “You are a brave warrior, Priestess Delyth. We were honored to heal you after the battle. For a time, speech will be challenging, and you might have dizzy spells.” She smiled warmly. “You might not fly until your ribs are whole again. But happily, I can report you will make a full recovery.”

  Delyth looked down at the cup, her teeth clenched, and found her hands were shaking. “How long?” she rasped. “How long has it been?”

  Had the Gods left? Might she have some respite before Enyo came for her?

  “Three days,” the mender answered, reaching to take the cup. “Are you in much pain?” She must think Delyth’s trembling was from that.

  Delyth ignored the question. “There was a boy, a mage. Where is he? And… and Mascen. Is he gone?” It was a lot to say all at once with her throat raw like this, but she well remembered the feeling. Last time it had been Enyo’s fingers around her throat.

  “Mascen is gone, thanks in part to you. Praise Esha.” The woman’s face lit up, perhaps remembering that Esha was amongst them once more. People all across Thloegr would have that look now.

  “The mage? He was brought in. He hit his head badly; we think he fell off of the temple in Midon square. Really there is no explaining why he is not dead, but…” She lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug as if saying there was no understanding these strange times. “He’s in his own room. When he is stronger, you can see him if you like.”

  “No,” Delyth said and turned her
back on the girl to drift again into the oblivion of sleep. “I don’t want to see him.”

  ⥣ ⥣ ⥣

  * * *

  “Good morning.”

  It was snowing outside Delyth’s window, winter finally breaking over the plains of central Thloegr. She felt as though she had known that for some time, as though she had been awake before the mender spoke, but only just realized it.

  It had probably been snowing in the Brig’ian Mountains for moons. Glynfford would be draped in white.

  But what place did she have there now?

  “How long?” The words came out like a rasp, and Delyth winced. She could feel the pain in her throat, in her chest more acutely now. Had they begun to wean her off the sedative? She wished they wouldn’t. She wanted to sleep forever.

  “Days since we last spoke? Two. The tinctures we’ve been giving you to aid your healing can make you sleepy. You’re well enough now that you don’t need so much of them.” Her hands moved as she spoke, feeling Delyth’s throat, brushing over Delyth’s ribs. Finding her injuries, assessing their progress. If Alphonse had been here, the warrior would have already been healed. In a flash of green light and warm touches, followed with some tea and admonishments that Delyth ought to be more careful.

  Delyth closed her eyes. The thoughts were too painful, the gentle, searching brush of the mender’s fingers too like Alphonse’s healing hands. If she could not sleep, then she could not stay here.

  Still, the motivation to get up escaped her. Where would she even go?

  “First snow,” Delyth croaked. “I think. How will the city fare? After everything?”

  If she could not convince herself to move, she could at least find other distractions—anything but sinking into memory. She hated self-pity. And she hated herself for wallowing here.