The Mare Gods The Sword of Nubium

by J.M. Thomas

his siblings?"

  "They will follow your decision, Father. Only Nubium would dare oppose."

  "Then Nubium relinquishes his place."

  Another pause.

  Fecunditatus knew it to be his dismissal.

  "Thank you, Father."

  Anguis, while surprised at the decision handed down by her father, knew Fecunditatus to be cunning when necessary, and she knew a resorting of the order of things might work out to her benefit. With the die cast it would be in her best interest to support the decision to remove one of the Five, and as she watched her children, her lovers, prepare to support Fecunditatus in the deed, she felt the time near when she would have the best opportunity to rule she would ever have at hand. Anguis could replace a lover. Anguis could destroy her other siblings without Nubium among the opposition. Her patience might soon be rewarded.

  Coming to in her bedroom, with only marginal memory of what happened prior to her blackout, Audrey's first memory was of having an ovary removed. Partially. On that frigid October day, the temperature a solid month ahead of when it should have registered so low as it did and described by many as freakish, she woke knowing part of her, a part she needed to feel the part of a woman, was gone. How things felt, the look of things, what the doctors said as she counted backwards into nothingness and butchery took days to remember. In the first moment post-surgery, she knew an important piece of her life was gone forever.

  As she woke she remembered the smell of the afternoon, and the sense memory brought the only image of her attacker she could remember, the red neck, the color of fire. There was also a decapitation included in the vision, and the weapon used to deliver the death blow rested in the corner of her bedroom.

  "What did time feel like?"

  Audrey heard the voice but did not turn to its source as she knew not from whence it came. It seemed as though the room itself radiate the sound.

  She closed her eyes since they were not doing anything for her anyway.

  Then she was able to sense the presence next to her on the bed.

  The reflex to open her eyes, to jump up from the bed, to reach for the pepper spray she neglected to retrieve to fight her assailant failed her. Audrey left her eyes closed. She could feel whoever was next to her and not by touch or noticing the bed slanted and it felt as though she might roll into it whomever it was. She could feel him. She could smell him. The men she had been with all had the same scent, not of shampoo or deodorant, but the smell of a man, and it was not a smell she enjoyed as much as she let on with her lovers. Her preference was intimacy following a shower for the sole reason fresh soap might wash away part of the scent. This? This was wonderful, masculine but not in the unpleasant manner of what she knew, a scent she would welcome as part of her life for the rest of it.

  Time. What was time like?

  "I might believe you if you said a century passed," she said.

  Audrey sensed a slight nod of his head.

  "The meaninglessness of time. With no manner to reference its passing it means nothing. I was born shortly after it started, and I have lived for millennia or for seconds. They feel the same."

  Audrey paused. Her mind raced through everything she could access. She felt her faculties numbed, it bothered her to be slowed, but in the stories of her childhood, in those moments with her father on her bed telling the tales designed to breed hope for love in a girl's heart, she found the sword.

  "Nubium."

  A hand, heavier and somehow stronger than she had ever before encountered, was placed on her forehead, and the warmth of time soothed her as no bubble bath ever had or ever would. Three senses into the experience of knowing him, Audrey knew should she see him, should she taste him, loving any mortal man would now be an impossibility.

  "I am Audrey," she whispered.

  She felt something in her hair. It wasn't him, but something sliding among her locks. It caused her to grab at it with her hand, and when she opened her eyes, she found a snake in it. She screamed and threw it across the room.

  Faster than she ever saw anything move, Audrey watched Nubium leap from the bed and retrieve his sword. The two windows, with their view out onto Seminary Avenue and the park where expectant mothers walked with new mothers and did their best to not show the nervousness at the impending birth, imploded. It all happened so fast. A man made entirely of wrinkles glided into the room while Nubium fought against specters hurling serpents of pure energy at him, gashing into his flesh, evading the flaming sword with deft maneuvers. The floating man entered the fray, and with Nubium busy fighting the serpents, the man had little trouble taking the sword.

  It sent Nubium into a rage, and his rage only intensified the fight.

  The impulse to do something triggered Audrey up and off the bed. As she reached for the sword in the final moment, it was in the room, a bellow of rage boomed from Nubium. He and Audrey reached the window at the same time.

  "Fecunditatus!" he bellowed.

  On the street below the man who stole the sword swung it through the neck of a horse made entirely of clouds. The creature whinnied in pain and started to dissolve.

  "Fecunditatus!"

  There was a chariot made of what looked to be stone just past where Fecunditatus slaughtered Nubium's trusted mount. He looked back and held the sword above his head in victory as the chariot sped away and vaporized into the night.

  To Audrey, Nubium did not look like the god she saw in her mind before the raid and before she set eyes on him. He looked then nothing like the hundreds of statues, of the drawings girls in junior high made showing his genitals the way they imagined them to be, of the mental image in her mind as she rested beside him. Nubium looked mortal to her then, there was blood, sweat, passion, and anger. When she imagined seeing an actual god, which wasn't often, she never envisioned a being looking so in need of help. Audrey fell to the floor to hold him as her instincts told her to do.

  Nubium tensed at her touch, the raw emotions transferring from him to her as though there were nothing between them, and then relented. He accepted her embrace. For the time being, Nubium knew the speed of such an attack meant they were prepared, and they would be prepared should he attempt a hasty response.

  Nubium knew the best thing to do was allow a woman to hold him. Those moments he could spare for he would take all time to exact vengeance upon his brother for the treachery.

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