by Terah Edun
Fortunately for her, the goddess herself was obliging and spoke, snapping the Companion out of her reverie.
“To answer your question,” Amani said slowly, “I haven’t left because I haven’t chosen to.”
“What about your rules?” Ciardis hissed in a tone barely above a whisper. It was filled with anger and hate. But she had let her desperation and her hope go. She needed the red-hot burn, like heat from a lance pressed to a boil, to keep her going.
Ciardis didn’t have anything else left. She couldn’t call up a thimble of lightning anymore, let alone an entire mage-forged blade. She was just too spent. Everyone was.
“My rules?” the goddess asked in a mocking voice.
“Yes, your rules,” Ciardis replied. “The ones you say you follow. The ones you insist you are bound by. Come to think of it…didn’t someone mention rules when your minions first appeared in the skies above our armies in the North?”
The goddess made an ugly face as she said, “Careful, Companion, you know so very little about what you are talking about.”
Laughing darkly, Ciardis said, “But I’m right, aren’t I? Those rules, those covenants, you live by them. I know that now.”
The goddess stilled like a statue. Then she spoke. “Being aware of something and cognizant of what it means are two very different things.”
Ciardis shook her head sadly. “That’s the thing, I don’t have to understand them to know they’re enforced. So whatever agreement you had in place with Thanar stands.”
“And wouldn’t you like to know what that was?” the goddess said sweetly.
Ciardis narrowed her eyes after a delicate pause. “So you can trick me into something? I think not. Not this time. Honor your commitment. Leave.”
The goddess crossed her arms impatiently. “You’re guessing, aren’t you? You don’t have any true knowledge of what is in the concords.”
“I recognize stalling when I see it,” Ciardis said flatly. “Even if your posture didn’t indicate it, let alone your sudden willingness to not slaughter us, I know Thanar. He wouldn’t have sacrificed his freedom for just anything. His promise was to keep me safe, to give us more time. So honor your commitment—leave.”
“What makes you so sure you will see your beloved again if I do? Imagine an eternity without him. Alone,” the goddess called out mockingly as she spread her arms in a wide shrug.
“I’m never alone,” Ciardis said through a smile that covered the heartbreak racing through her chest.
Bravado had gotten her here, but the goddess was right; she was only guessing. But it was a gamble worth making. Anything to get rid of a deity they couldn’t kill, at least not without more sacrifice and blood spilled, if at all.
The goddess watched her like a predator making a decision. “Ciardis Weathervane. If you could be given whatever you wanted, what would it be?”
Ciardis didn’t hesitate before answering, “Peace.”
It was what she wanted most in the world. Peace for her people. Peace for herself.
The goddess shrugged nonchalantly. “Peace is boring.”
“You asked,” Ciardis spit out.
“So I did,” the goddess said thoughtfully as she paced forward and then around the room. She paused before each of the fallen individuals as if they were supplicants and stopped to talk to the individuals still alive, always asking the same question—what did they want?
The answers varied. Ciardis didn’t bother keeping track of them. She was too tired.
Besides, she was desperately searching for Thanar’s lifeforce. She could still feel Sebastian’s, but nothing from Thanar. No tug on her heart. No tug on her soul. Just emptiness, like the daemoni prince was no longer there.
It was a funny feeling. Because if the goddess had asked Ciardis what she would have wanted just a short year before, she would have said freedom. Freedom from Thanar’s manipulations. Freedom from an imposed soulbond that caused her more heartache than anything else. But now she couldn’t imagine life without him. Without them.
It was a hard thing to fathom. Even harder to acknowledge and accept.
So as the goddess made her way slowly around the room, approaching individuals quivering in fear, Ciardis’s mouth dried and she wondered if this was it. If this was how the empire as they knew it would end. Not with a roar but with a whimper.
Alone. Isolated.
“Your people are certainly interesting,” Amani said in a contemplative voice as she finally circled back around.
Ciardis noticed and didn’t comment on the fact the goddess’s armor and even the sword that wanted to eat mages alive was gone.
Instead she stood naked in the center of the room, her brown skin glistening with some kind of dew, and with a few light streaks of blood on her wrist.
“Leave,” Ciardis sputtered in a tired voice. She was just done with being polite. Thanar wasn’t coming back. They were practically all dead. They would either live or die in the next few moments, but she was done being toyed with.
The contemplative look on the goddess’s face disappeared as she said, “Show me some respect.”
A single sentence, loaded with an avalanche of threats.
Ciardis straightened her tired shoulders and looked the goddess dead in the eye as she said, “Respect is earned.”
Amani shook her head and let out a peal of genuine laughter. “You know, Companion Weathervane, when I return, I will very much enjoy ripping you limb from limb.”
Hate spewed from Ciardis Weathervane’s lips as she said, “For what you did in these chambers today, I look forward to doing the same to you.”
“Amusing that you think you have the ability to do so,” the goddess said in a mocking tone.
“No one ever accused me of backing down from overwhelming odds,” Ciardis said in a tight voice.
The goddess nodded, a measure of admiration growing in her eyes. “Your defense against even my lightest touch was nonexistent and your weapons were puny. You won’t survive the first few seconds of our next encounter…”
All Ciardis could think upon hearing those words was, At least there will be one.
The goddess continued in a decidedly playful manner. “…however I do like to keep things interesting, and as pitiful as you all are, I still prefer my entertainment with some fight in it, so before I go, I leave you all with a boon.”
Ciardis had to wonder if Amani had asked them all their heart’s desires because she intended to grant their wishes. But that didn’t track with what Ciardis knew of the deity’s background and history—what little there was to know, anyway. The scholar who would be most versed in such knowledge unfortunately lay dead on the floor with a chair leg to the heart…part of one of the first waves of casualties.
The goddess turned to look around the room, and as her gaze passed over fallen foes, their flesh knitted and their bones mended. Though the blood pools remained, formerly massacred bodies were now whole.
“As it was, so it will be,” the goddess said with growing satisfaction.
Ciardis was in a daze as she looked around in growing comprehension, which became elation when Sebastian rose from his collapsed position on the floor. His pale flesh bloomed with flowing blood, and his eyes opened while turning toward Ciardis in confusion.
Ciardis’s mouth opened and closed in astonishment as his actions were mirrored around the room, and soon groans sounded from every corner as individuals who had died fighting, suddenly arose with new purpose.
One woman, whom Ciardis hadn’t seen die, pulled a quiver’s worth of arrows out of her shoulder while she patted her front down with alarming alacrity, as if she had to feel for herself and make sure she was truly arrow-free.
When she was done with the pat down, the stranger looked up and said to the room in general in a highly confused voice, “Didn’t I just die?”
Several voices broke out in a chorus of confusion, echoing the same sentiment.
Ciardis, clutching Sebastian’s waist tightly
, didn’t know what to say or what to believe.
She just looked over to the goddess who stood in the midst of the room, grinning like a pleased cat who had been fed cream.
Finally the resurrected members of the conclave and their colleagues who were very glad to see them return to the living, noticed the person in their midst who was no person at all. Ciardis could see it in everyone’s eyes now. No one had any doubts the deity was who she claimed to be.
So when the goddess spoke up this time, everyone fell so silent you could have heard a pin drop on the floor. Then a sense of fear and trepidation swept across the room with Amani’s voice on its heels.
“This is my boon to all of you,” Amani said, pleased as pie.
Sebastian stepped forward a bit, just out of Ciardis’s grip and said in a voice that was both hesitant and hopeful, “A truce?”
The goddess laughed. “Call it a cessation to conflict, for what it’s worth, seeing as your forces were a paltry offensive line against me.”
Ciardis’s mouth tightened in anger, but she didn’t have to tell Sebastian Athanos Algardis to keep his cool in the face of derogation. He had just risen from the almost-dead, after all, and was grateful for his new hale body. No one in the room wanted to jeopardize the unstable peace that had bloomed, least of all the most vulnerable.
In a dry voice the prince heir asked, “How long will the cessation last?”
“For five days and five nights past the return of your beloved daemoni prince,” the goddess said with an eager gleam in her eyes. “Then I will kill you all again, and this time, no one will be spared.”
Sebastian spoke in a measured tone. “We’ll be waiting, then.”
If his voice sounded a little out of sorts, Ciardis could understand that. To be fair, they were all a bit out of sorts. Now that they knew the goddess had no intentions of killing them all—again—people stumbled around checking on others. They were checking on others. Allies, acquaintances, even enemies who had become so much more in the few minutes where they all had had a single choice—stand together or die alone.
In the end that choice hadn’t really mattered, which was why they struggled to believe they were alive—along with all the people who had stood side by side with them.
Ciardis looked on in disbelief and growing horror. They had been given a gift, a boon, they had never asked for. At least one she had never asked for. But the one person missing from these festivities was the same person the goddess wouldn’t bring back until she deemed it appropriate. If at all.
After a minute Ciardis finally collected her thoughts and spoke, albeit nervously. “What do you want from us now?”
Amani smiled and shrugged. “Nothing more and nothing less than what I desired when I first came upon you little Companion. A challenge. A true one. So shape up. I’ll be back for you.”
Then Amani leaned over and whispered in Ciardis’s ear, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for such a very long time. So long it’s felt like eons, when in truth it’s only been centuries. To walk again on the soil I once called home, to be worshipped by my servants calling for blood in my name, to share their pains and their deaths as if they were my own.”
Ciardis’s skin crawled with each whispered word, but she didn’t back down as she said, “So if that has been what you’ve been waiting so long for…why spare us?”
She knew what the goddess had told them before. About Thanar’s negotiations and her promises. But that wasn’t enough, not for Amani, and not for Ciardis Weathervane.
She wanted the truth.
“Because I want a challenge. A slaughter in a small room is not a challenge,” the goddess said mischievously.
As if that explained everything. But to a point, it did.
Sebastian stepped forward. “A challenge according to the rituals?”
Amani turned her face to him and smiled. Given that she was covered in blood and standing so still, the effect was creepy.
“Exactly such,” the goddess said calmly.
Meanwhile, the wheels were turning in Ciardis’s head. She knew from talking to Sebastian that the knowledge has been passed down through their families. The old gods believe in ritual. So to beat them at their own game, one needed to follow their rituals.
Sebastian stepped forward and licked dry lips. “We followed your rituals once before.”
The goddess spread her hands in a shrug. “And here I am.”
“But the rituals were never completed,” stammered someone behind Ciardis.
The goddess gave them all an enigmatic look as she turned and walked away. “And so you beg me with pleas and deals. Your ancestors would never have stood for such impurity.”
“But why? Why spare us?” cried out one noble.
The goddess looked at Ciardis Weathervane. “Because my sword might be hungry, but I am its bearer, not the other way around.”
Ciardis said in a hoarse voice, “You read my thoughts.”
Amani smiled. “I didn’t have to. But I’ll only keep my desires leashed for so long, Ciardis. Give me a challenge, put up resistance. Then we’ll see where you fall.”
Ciardis took Sebastian’s hand. The room stilled as the goddess seemed to have reached a decision. She had already killed and revived the broad majority of them. What would the goddess of death and destruction reveal next—do next?
Sebastian waved a placating hand. “Why do all this? Why tell us?”
Amani clucked her tongue and looked over her shoulder at Ciardis Weathervane. “Like you said, we gods believe in ritual. More than that, we believe in tradition. After all, what fun would it be to wipe you from existence so easily without a least a little ‘fair play,’ as you call it?”
Ciardis could feel her chance slipping away, so she spoke. She couldn’t do any less for the other part of her soul. “Thanar, what about Thanar?”
The goddess was silent.
“We need him! You want a fair playing field? You want a true challenge? Give him back to us!” Ciardis screamed.
The goddess spoke with amusement. “Very well, Companion. But I expect a battle the likes of which I have never seen in return. Do your ancestors proud…or meet them in the other realm after I kill you all…again.”
Amani walked into the fiery blue portal the daemoni prince had disappeared through just minutes before. And just like that, the goddess who had killed them all…and spared them all…once more left the room, this time for good.
13
Surrounded by individuals the goddess had brought back to life, Ciardis waited a heartbeat, wondering if Amani would keep her word and not being able to do a damned thing about it if she didn’t. She felt helpless and powerless at her inaction. This only cause her anger to grow with each passing second.
Then the gate flared, like a beacon in the darkness that was their lives, and Thanar stepped through. His eyes were closed and he stood still. Was he alive and well? Was he dead and ready to fall? What had happened to him?
They all waited a breath, paused in the moment for him to say or do anything to break the spell.
Then Thanar’s eyes fluttered open, and his dark gaze was the most beautiful thing Ciardis had seen in days. In that moment she didn’t know if she was supposed to run to him and hug him or crouch down and thank the goddess who had just left them for her mercifulness.
She settled for rocking back on her heels while silent tears streamed down her face. Tears of relief. Tears of exhaustion. Tears of fury. Tears of gratitude.
It was amazing how many emotions one could signal by weeping. To Ciardis Weathervane, it wasn’t a sign of weakness, but a release. A way to channel her emotions when she felt like she couldn’t hold back a highly irrational emotional response. It was a compromise.
As she stood staring at the daemoni prince whom she had given up to another realm to save herself and to save others, she could see from the compassion in his eyes that he understood.
As Thanar walked away from the gate and it collapsed with a final p
ulse behind him, Ciardis catalogued the wounds on his body, the tears on his flesh. They were all new. The goddess, after all, had healed him before anyone else. Now he stood bleeding and torn as if he had just come home from a battle of days instead of mere minutes.
Curiously his wings remained pristine and whole.
Ciardis opened her mouth to ask what had happened, but Thanar put a finger to her tearstained lips and simply said, “Shh, I’m back. That’s what matters.”
And he was right. As if his words had given her the permission she needed to relax, Ciardis’s entire body unclenched and a sense of relief washed over her so forcefully that for a moment she just swayed in the ebb and flow of the wonderful feeling of happiness flowing through her veins..
When she regained her composure and looked around the silent room, Ciardis could breathe again. She felt whole when before she was fractured, and at the moment that was all she cared about—feeling whole.
However, she still needed answers.
So Ciardis took a careful step back from his embrace and with a squeeze of his shoulders she somberly asked, “Do you remember what happened?”
A scowl enveloped Thanar’s face and the spell was broken.
“I was a prisoner,” Thanar said as he folded his arms smoothly—almost defensive.
“A prisoner for all of two minutes,” said a human man as he nonetheless reached over to Thanar with a firm hand.
Ciardis expected Thanar to ignore him, but he didn’t.
Thanar continued, “That’s something I hope you never have to learn. Time passes very differently in the gods’ realm. Two minutes here is a lifetime there.”
With his hand still extended, the human merchant replied, “I would expect no less. The wounds across your body tell a tale, one that would take far longer than just a few minutes to complete.”
His voice held respect, even admiration. Surprise filtered from Thanar’s mind to Ciardis’s own, but he didn’t reply. Instead, Thanar accepted the man’s grasp and allowed the human to shake his hand as the merchant said, “You did more than any of us did, daemoni.”