Way of Gods

by Rhett C. Bruno

  Wvenweigard regarded the weapon, then Rathgorah.

  “Please, my son,” Rathgorah said. “I was there when you indwelled. You drank of my blessed blood as you rose anew, a hand of our Lady.”

  “I am her hand still.” Wvenweigard clutched the blade, and with no hesitation plunged it into Rathgorah’s heart. The Oracle’s eyes rolled back, and his mouth gaped, desperate to cling to life.

  “You became too attached to living,” Nesilia said. “But I no longer need to remember, for I have returned.”

  “Sora, tell them to let us go!” Gold Grin shouted. Nesilia turned and saw him and his pirate crew being held by Haral’s warriors, squirming to break free. The loyalty in the warriors’ expressions was clear. They’d watched Nesilia destroy their mighty leader like she was nothing, and for those who grew up in the tundra, strength was everything.

  “Sora…” Nesilia laughed.

  One of the warriors at the front of the others said, “My Lady, what do we do with these flower pickers? Why have you spared them?”

  Nesilia smiled. “I have something special for them.” She sauntered over to Gold Grin. Freydis moved up beside her.

  “I say we skin them all alive,” Freydis said. “Start a new tradition.”

  “Sora, my beautiful friend,” Gold Grin laughed nervously. “Would ye mind giving me a hint at what’s happenin.”

  “Do you trust me?” Nesilia asked.

  “I… I knew ye were powerful, but I didn’t know ye were capable of all that.”

  “That isn’t what I asked.” She circled him, the tip of her fingernail scratching gently around his neck. “Do you trust me?”

  His gaze momentarily darted toward the horde of warlock bodies scattered around them or skewered in the trees like meat sticks in Winde Port. He swallowed “Aye…I do.”

  “Good,” Nesilia said. “Find Whitney Fierstown for me.”

  “That rapscallion?” Gold Grin said. “What’s he got anything to do with anything anymore?”

  “His time back on this world must come to an end.”

  “What?” Gold Grin asked, incredulous. The pirates argued amongst themselves.

  Sora raged inside. “You monster! I won’t fight you anymore. I won’t resist. Just leave Whitney out of it. I’ll tell him to leave you alone.”

  “If only you could,” Nesilia said. “But that is what love does. It deceives us, tricks us. Whitney won’t stop trying to save you. He’ll go to any length to do it; to any monster. And you won’t be able to resist the pull to him. It weakens you, which weakens us.”

  “I’ll resist it…” Sora cried. “I’ll resist anything.”

  “Don’t worry, my dear. Once he’s gone and the memory of the woman you were is forgotten with him, we will be unstoppable.”

  Gold Grin’s first mate Hestor spat at Sora’s face. “Enough is enough,” he said. “You’re a damned fool Gale. She’s playin’ you! We ain’t killin Fierstown. He did wrong, but he was one of us for a time. And we especially ain’t killin him for free. We ain’t the ones gettin laid!”

  Freydis didn’t hesitate. She sliced her own hand, and vines grew up from the dirt, overwhelming Hestor in an instant. The warriors holding him backed away, startled. Hestor’s muffled screams sounded as he was slowly carried underground.

  “Ye’d let her do that?” another of the crew asked.

  “Cap’n, stop her!”

  Gold Grin watched his first mate vanish under the dirt, then looked at Nesilia, straight in the eye. Sora could only watch, but she could see the glint of lust. He was mesmerized by her, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do. Under Nesilia’s spell, or Sora’s or both…

  Nesilia extended her hand toward the fissure Haral had fallen into. The earth shook, and then the broken glass crown hovered out and into Nesilia’s hand. She gently placed it atop Gold Grin’s messy hair, then leaned in and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “Find Whitney, kill him, and when Fierstown’s lifeblood soaks my earth, I will make you a king worthy of this crown.” She straightened the crown on his head, then took a step back to behold him.

  “The boy sank my first ship,” Gold Grin said. “Consider him dead.”

  “Cap’n—” one of his men shouted, but he swiftly quieted him.

  “Ye’ll help me, or it’s mutiny! All of ye. Sora here’s gonna make us the richest pirates in history.”

  Nesilia regarded Freydis, who sneered. Then she looked to Wvenweigard, who bowed his head in reverence.

  “Your time is coming,” Sora said.

  “Who can stop us now? Iam?” Nesilia’s laugh filled Nowhere, and Sora felt her essence fading back into the nothingness. The blackness was returning, as it had before she became cognizant in the Buried Hollow.

  “The Ancient One, the Arch Warlock… they are mine,” Nesilia said. “And so are you.”

  Sora fought it, but with so much faith in her renewed and Freydis returned, Nesilia’s will was too much for Sora to bear. All she could think about was Whitney’s face, staring at her, promising to save her. She wished he wouldn’t try, but she knew he would, and it broke her heart. And then, Nowhere enveloped her, and she thought nothing…

  EPILOGUE

  Kazimir leaned against a column from the old Breklian Empire, older even than the Culling itself—the magical plague which reduced his ancestors to a tiny kingdom in the Far North. Older even than the Sanguine Lords—or at least the first memories of them. It stood, ancient, erected before the Lords offered Kazimir a chance at redemption, at reclaiming the blood lost in that horrible era before words were committed to parchment in an attempt to maintain history.

  Snow beat against his cheeks, sticking there, piling up against his frigid flesh like a second layer of skin. He couldn’t even recall what it was like to feel the cold. For that matter, Kazimir couldn’t remember what it was like to feel much of anything except hunger… insatiable hunger.

  It was dark, but his vision pierced through the veil and allowed him to see the cohort of Glass soldiers and Panpingese mercenaries marching through the mountain pass, foolishly thinking their weak, mortal eyes could spot the entry of the Dom Nohzi citadel even if they knew where it was.

  “Damn you, Codar,” he whispered. “Damn you, grandson.”

  Kazimir had tried, to horrific results, to create a family. After so long, his loneliness had gotten the best of him, and vacuous mistakes were made—mistakes Kazimir would never make again. Creating a mortal family, for an upyr, meant damning one or all. It meant deception, lies.

  This was Kazimir’s punishment, to watch as his grandson’s blood dried within his heart, to feel the pangs of betrayal, and to know it could have been avoided.

  Kazimir thought Codar a weak man who refused eternity, just as his father had—but it wasn’t true. Codar might have been the smartest of them all.

  Kazimir was the weak one. It was he who had tried claiming a powerful mystic so he might never again feel the harsh sting of the sun’s light. He’d abandoned the Dom Nohzi code, not Codar. He'd spilled unjust blood. It was Kazimir who’d wound up alongside that ingrate, Whitney Fierstown, stuck in Elsewhere for six years. Even now, Kazimir couldn’t escape the haunting of the man. For generations, sleep on Pantego meant waking up in various realms of Elsewhere, but now, Kazimir only found himself in that same worthless village. Sometimes Whitney was there, other times it was just him. And the worst part was he didn’t completely hate it.

  It was there in Whitney’s Elsewhere that Kazimir was safe.

  A sharp inhale pulled Kazimir back to the present, back to his place, seated high above the Vidkaru, Brekliodad’s ancient capital. He regarded his young progeny, perched to his right. All the things he’d attempted in the pursuit of power; to make eternity mean something… now he understood. Ever since he found Sigrid clinging to life on the dirty Dockside streets, he vowed that he would do anything for her. But she was impossible to teach. Impossible to reason with. As relentless as eternity and Exile.

  Her
wild hair, now stark white instead of the fiery red it had once been, billowed like shredded threads of a standard in the strong wind. Her dark eyes gleamed like obsidian beneath the twin moons. He could see it there in her soul, just like those moons. Two sides, one beautiful and radiant, the other ugly and consumed by rage. He knew that look, the one that knew the world was going to suffer for her blight.

  He knew too that some of that was simply coming to terms with what she now was, enduring her endless hunger; but there was more. This was why his masters had scolded him so on the many occasions when he bent the will of the Sanguine Lords, and why they themselves felt need to punish him, as he now punished her.

  It pained him. His heart, if it could bleed, would.

  An enchanted muzzle covered her mouth, damning her to that hunger but not allowing any satiation of it. Only Kazimir could remove it. It was only his voice which the cold metal would heed. It was her punishment for placing herself above the order, for murdering the Queen of Glass even after the accepted Blood Pact was fulfilled by Codar’s death.

  The irony didn’t escape Kazimir. He’d done worse, pushed further. It had taken centuries between Pantego and Elsewhere for him to understand that his enduring fate upon accepting a morsel of the fetid beast, the Wianu—a creature which, too, lived in the realm between lives—was final. And it was all that mattered. His power was the Sanguine Lords’ power, not his own.

  Should I punish her for destroying all trace of my life before? he wondered. For giving me clarity?

  He looked back at the proud columns leading toward the peak of the mountain like a ribcage of stone or grasping for life like great, sculpted tentacles rising to frame the door in the rock face, tall enough for giants. To the mortals below, it would only appear as a ruin. He’d heard it called many things, Forwonay, Gilly Gale, Bist’rofunis—but it was none of those things.

  The men below searched, but they’d never get far. Kazimir’s people would feed first.

  Kazimir turned back to the pass and sighed. It was a human sound, one he had no use for any longer, but the feeling was still comforting, even after all these years. “None leave here alive,” he ordered Sigrid.

  She nodded once, then removed a crossbow from her back. A bolt thrummed, racing it down the snowy mountainside. His eyes followed it with perfect precision, never losing it, knowing Sigrid did the same. He missed that feeling, the thrill, the excitement when his abilities were more than a mere tool used by the Lords for their purposes.

  “Reports say it’s up this way!” The regiment leader’s voice carried over the whipping wind. It didn’t need to. The upyr could hear a fly buzz a kilometer off if they desired to. “Those murderers are finally going to pay.”

  “Was the Queen really worth this?” a soldier replied, shivering.

  “That isn’t up to us, is it?” A short period of silence went by. “Is it?”

  The leader turned and saw the soldier, hand pressed firmly against a bloody hole in his neck where the bolt stuck out.

  His lifeblood painted the snow beneath him, and the smell hit Kazimir’s nose with the force of a thousand zhulong. Sigrid was already halfway down the hill.

  “We’re under atta—” He didn’t finish the word before Sigrid shredded his trachea with her nails, sharp and strong as any fine blade.

  The soldiers scrambled for their own weapons. Kazimir could tell by the way they shone that they were coated in silver—an old wives tale said to help kill the upyr. Effective at harming and destroying their mortal bodies maybe, and though the return path through Elsewhere was insufferable, it was not true death. There was only one way to truly eliminate an upyr, to fully wipe him from existence, and Kazimir preferred never to think of it: Dakel un Ghastrin. Only the wianu that turned him could kill him.

  The Panpingese mercenaries wore strings of garlic around their neck. Another tall tale. The only smell that mattered to an upyr was blood, and veins pulsed all around him.

  Kazimir drew two knives, two of many which adorned his chest. He threw one through the forehead of a soldier who ran at him. Terrified eyes fell headlong into the snow along with the rest of the man. Then Kazimir pulled another blade and wove through their ranks like a master seamster, gutting and rending flesh. Untouchable.

  A muffled howl pierced the night. Kazimir whipped around and saw a steaming wound on Sigrid’s arm courtesy of a silver blade. Kazimir felt something, strange. His heart didn’t beat, but for a second, he felt like it might.

  He started to move toward her, but then Sigrid grabbed the blade with her bare flesh. Steam rose, but she snapped it in half and drove the sharp end through her attacker’s eye. Then, the rest of the soldiers felt the storm of her ire. A blade wasn’t even necessary. Broken necks, ribs, spines; she worked through them like a battering range.

  In a flash, the nearly fifty soldiers were dead—Glass soldiers, Panpingese mercenaries, and others.

  “Screw the Queen!” a lone straggler shouted. He clambered over a few dead bodies. Kazimir rolled his shoulders, then removed a knife from a holster inside his coat and flung it. Sigrid slapped it down quick as lightning. She turned to him, only her raised eyebrows showing beyond that metal mask as if her face contorted into a wild sneer.

  “Sigrid,” Kazimir scolded.

  She bent and retrieved the knife, waited for the soldier to get a little further, then threw it with all her new-found strength. From so far, all Kazimir could see was a red spray before the soldier vanished beneath the deepening snow.

  The sounds of death quieted beneath the howling wind. Kazimir knew how the Glass Kingdom viewed its queen. After learning of this massacre, they wouldn’t send more. Even if they did, they’d see nothing. Codar would be decided to be a liar, sending Glassmen to their deaths. Kazimir had already been punished long ago for showing his grandson the home he’d wanted for him. Now it belonged to Sigrid, his true daughter.

  “Bring them to the citadel before the sunrise,” Kazimir ordered. “At dawn, we feast. For successful or not, all Pantego shall know the fear of the Dom Nohzi once more.”

  “Yes, master,” Sigrid said, her words nearly indiscernible thanks to the mask. Kazimir watched her eyes, little more than dark holes lusting over the still-flowing arteries of their victims. It’d been weeks since last she’d fed, and in her adolescence, she must have been agonizing.

  “Feed first,” Kazimir said. “Don’t tell a soul.”

  He waved his hand. “Otkryt,” he said, and the muzzle unlocked, falling to her chin. Her gaze darted between him and a body, then, without saying anything, she mounted a corpse and consumed.

  Some punishment, Kazimir cursed himself. All those years in Elsewhere made me soft.

  He turned and took a step. Suddenly, the snow at his feet turned to grass, one blade at a time, blooming all around him. He spun, and there it was behind him as well. A wattle and daub cabin stood alone on a field, smoke puffing up from the chimney.

  “No,” Kazimir said, fists squeezing. “How can I be here? I’m awake.” Another step, and a familiar young boy and a girl with pointed ears rushed by him toward the cabin.

  “No, I can’t be back here,” Kazimir said. He looked up. “I’ve seen your truth. I honored that Pact, it was she who—"

  “Who are you yelling at?” Kazimir spun back around, drew a knife and had it at the speaker’s throat in less than a second. The man didn’t back away or startle. He stood, grinning from ear to ear as only Whitney Fierstown could.”

  “You,” Kazimir snarled.

  “Me,” Whitney replied. “Not very nice getting snuck up on like that, is it?”

  Kazimir lowered the blade. “Well if you’re here, at least it isn’t Elsewhere again.”

  “Or did we never leave?” Whitney taunted.

  Kazimir pursed his lips, then blew out and walked the other way “I don’t have time for this.”

  “No, wait. Please.” Whitney ran and threw himself in front of Kazimir, hands palm out.

  “What do you wan
t, thief?”

  Whitney Fierstown shifted in his stance, then released a nervous chuckle. “Kazzy, old friend. We need to talk.”

  END

  The Buried Goddess Saga will continue in War of Men coming Summer 2019.

  Thank You!

  Thank you for reading Way of Gods, book four in The Buried Goddess Saga.

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  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Thank you so much for reading Way of Gods by Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. We just wanted to take a moment to encourage you to review the book on Amazon and Goodreads. Every review helps further the author’s reach and, ultimately, helps them continue writing fantastic books for us all to enjoy.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Jaime lives in Texas with his wife and two kids. He enjoys anything creative, from graphic arts to painting. His office looks like the Avengers threw up on the walls.