by Eric Vall
“I would hope that you would be serious about this,” I stated plainly as I moved my black power around me in swells and surges.
“Let’s be honest, Nahum, I’ve never been serious about anything. All of my decisions have been flippant and nonchalant without a care in the world but… if anyone were to take my life, then I guess you deserve to be the one,” Euron said as his two different colored energies hardened to points and tips around his back. His power changed color as his monochrome eyes glowed red in their sockets, and I knew that he was ready to face off with me for the last time.
“It may not be the time to ask this, Euron, but I must,” I inquired honestly. “Why blood magic? Why call upon the darkest of all powers? Do you really think yourself that weak?”
The scarlet in his eyes didn’t shift or change for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was deeper than before.
“If I’m unafraid of what’s on the other side, then why not switch over before I descend? The underworld is without a ruler at this time. Why not go and have my fun while I still have the chance?” the deeper and more gravelly voice asked back, and I stared at him, astonished. “The darkness called my name, and I answered back. Why should I be ashamed when I know you’ve done the very same?”
“Euron, there is a difference between being born in that world and being called to it,” I told him as I advanced and condensed all of my dark power into two long spears at my side. “I was destined for the pits, and you were not. You should have stayed in the heavens where you belonged.”
“Where I belonged?” Euron snarled back in that hellish voice. “Being in the god’s realm was a punishment worse than death. Neither of us belonged there, and we both knew it. You just left before I had the chance to follow!”
“I didn’t leave, you ignorant bastard!” I yelled as I lashed out with one of the dark energy spears, but it clashed against his power as he brought it up to block. “I was thrown out! I was practically the prince of the heavens before I was cast out! I could have had it all under my control, and then…”
My words trailed off as he smashed his hands together. His surging power coalesced and rushed towards me, but I brought both hands up to deflect his force and it flew up over my head like a cool breeze. Euron was finally fighting back against me with all of his might though it wouldn’t help in the end. I had collected so much power from other gods and deities that his might paled in comparison to mine. This fight would soon be over with only one of us left standing.
Euron gritted his teeth as he ran forward, and we came together in a clash of powers. Electricity bounced off us in arcs, and as we struggled, I pulled my left hand back over my shoulder and slammed it down directly in the middle of his chest.
The impact blasted Euron away from me with streamers of black magic trailing off his form. My eyes widened as he was about to be thrown out of the summoning circle, and just as he would have flown free, a glimmering wall flared to life, and his back hit it at full force. Euron’s head slammed back against the magical wall created by the summoning circle, and then he lurched forward to lift his head to me. Blood seeped from his hairline and stained his pearlescent white hair. Euron’s scarlet eyes met mine as his chest heaved for breath, and droplets of blood spilled from his thin lips to the dusty stone floor. He hastily wiped it away with his arm, and the red liquid stained his colorful garments.
I hadn’t used even a fraction of my power, and I could see that my old friend was waning quickly. Euron hadn’t fought someone in a very long time, and it showed. I almost felt pity for him at this moment. He hadn’t a chance against me, and yet he had so desperately wanted to fight against me for old times’ sake. Even with the help of his blood magic, he wasn’t a worthy adversary for me, and I wanted to end this fight as quickly as I could without causing too much damage to the one person who had been my friend in the god’s realm.
I pushed my arms out in front of me, tensed the fingers, and summoned up more of my corrosive black smoke up from the cracks in the stones at his feet. Euron didn’t see it, and in a flash, the smoke consumed him, and I could no longer see him fight and his struggling form within. I moved my hands as if I was holding a ball, my fingers tensed in the air as I closed the space between both hands and concentrated my magic. I could feel his life force draining, and as much as I wanted to look away and ignore my godly senses, I couldn’t.
This was something that I had to watch and witness for myself.
I had seen so many other deaths of gods that I would have thought that I was immune to the remorse of separating a soul from its body, but this time was different. This was a god that I knew, a god that had been close to me at all times during my life in the heavens, and I was the one killing him. If I couldn’t give the Tichádáma the death that she had wanted, I could at least give it to Euron in her wake.
The black smoke swirled around him, and the scarlet in his usually colorless eyes dissipated in a flash as I took the blood magic from him and added it to my powers. Euron threw back his head as his pale eyes lifted up to the ceiling above both of us. I knew and felt that he accepted his end as his tensed arms relaxed and dropped down to his sides, and he took a deep breath. The eddying black smoke around him lightened to a steel gray, then to my surprise, pure blindingly white.
I looked down at my hands in surprise, but my concentration never wavered. My hands had only known hate and revenge as they lay waste to everything in their path, and now, for the first time, I was doing something good for another god, and it felt eerily strange.
Euron lifted from the ground peacefully as soft whispers of unseen voices echoed around the room. His bright, clear eyes met mine through the whirling smoke, and his lips pulled up into the cocky smirk that I remembered so fondly in the god’s realm, and now, it tore at me. I pushed my hands together, and each of my fingers knit as the white smoke condensed around Euron for the last time. The whispers around me heightened then came to an ear splitting crescendo, as I felt Euron’s holy soul split from his heavenly body and intermix with the white smoke moving around him. The voices combined into one and warbled as the white mist cleared, and Euron’s empty shell lowered to the floor and lay still. I stared down at it with weary eyes, but something I hadn’t expected happened next.
The stone floor beneath our feet rumbled and shook, but I kept my footholds as my minions clung onto their Bantams with wide eyes. The red streaks that marked the summoning circle crackled and split open as it sensed the absence of the god it had been created to trap and keep inside. Then I turned my head as a soft shuffle came from behind my women near the door. I watched as the horde of blood-curdlers wavered on their feet, and one by one, fell in a disarrayed heap of legs and arms on the dirty floor.
The pack of creatures couldn’t live without their master, and now that Euron was dead, the hive died along with him.
I wondered for a moment about the coven that Euron spoke of and knew that, one day, all of his women would return to the castle to find their master was dead and gone from this cursed place. How their cries of pain and sorrow would echo and vibrate around this room when they discovered his lifeless corpse. I looked at my minions for a moment, though their eyes were wary and questions bubbled up in their minds, I still felt the overwhelming love they had for me as our eyes connected. No man nor god could take me away from them like I had taken Euron from his coven, and if anyone tried, they’d be struck down viciously and without mercy.
I turned back to Euron’s corpse and walked over to it. His tanned face was serene, and his colorless eyes stared upward into nothing. His arms and legs were splayed out unnaturally around him, and I bent for a moment as I righted them and crossed his arms over his chest. I brushed my hand down his smooth face and closed his eyelids for his eternal sleep. My minions shuffled up behind me then, but I didn’t raise my head to them. I only stared down at the corpse of one of the only true friends I had known in the heavens.
I didn’t feel any remorse or regret for what I had done. I only
wished that he hadn’t followed after me and stayed in the heavens where he would have been safe from death such as this. If he remained in the heavenly realm, we would have never faced off against one another, and he might have lived a happy life. Even as I thought it though, I knew it was a lie. If Euron stayed in the heavens, we would’ve been reunited once I ripped the god’s realm to shreds, and the outcome would have been the same.
I blinked down at his body for a moment, my women completely silent behind me as they huddled together for comfort. I watched as his aura sunk into the stone, and his powers lifted from his body. The orb was smaller than the other gods’, and the swirling colors were the same cerulean and maroon from before.
I held out my hands for it like an old friend instead of waiting for it to come to me as I usually did. When my fingertips brushed against the smooth surface, I was filled with a sudden warmth and happiness as I remembered my boyhood spent alongside Euron. I held the orb of power for a long time and stared down into its depths. For a second, I thought I could see his cheeky laughing face in its surface, but then it was gone. I never let my emotions past the surface of my avatar, and this was the closest that I got in the entire time I had spent with my minions. I pulled the orb closer, and the warmth rose to a fiery heat that licked at the flesh of my face. I pressed it into my chest, and it slowly lowered itself into my being.
With Euron’s power, I would be able to take over the minds and control as many people as I wanted, and I was grateful to him though it meant the end of his life. I stood then and turned to my minions.
Their faces were pale, and they looked up into my face with mixed emotions, but I could tell that none of them feared me. What they wanted most at this moment was to comfort me from the loss of someone I once knew. I held out my arms to them, and they rushed forward to embrace me. I enveloped them in my arms and took comfort in the warmth and love of each of their touches.
Carmedy stood up on her tiptoes to lay a soft kiss to my cheek, and from the wetness of her own, I knew she was crying. I looked down into her emerald eyes, but they were downcast as more tears welled up and threatened to spill down her round cheeks. Still, surprisingly, the feline was the first to speak to me.
“Did you miss him?” the dark-haired cat asked as she lifted her face to mine.
“What do you mean?” I questioned as I reached out and stroked her cheek tenderly.
“He was your friend, right? Did you miss him while you were gone? After you were cast out?” Carmedy asked more fervently.
I lowered my eyes as I thought.
“I don’t remember,” I admitted, and the feline sighed softly as she moved her gaze over Euron’s corpse. “But I think I did. Euron was the best brother and friend that I have ever had.”
“Is that why you gave him a quick and painless death, Master?” Morrigan asked as she nuzzled into my neck, and her sweet breath tickled my flesh for a moment.
“I gave him the death that a true god deserves,” I told them firmly as I averted my gaze away from Euron and to the lifeless blood-curdlers strewn about the floor.
“But what about all those things he said, Master? The stuff about being… the God of the Underworld?” Annalise stuttered out as she avoided my gaze, and Rana was the first to break from my grasp.
The redhead placed her clenched fists on her hips, set her jaw and leveled her sharp blue eyes at my face. I knew this was coming, I had expected it as soon as the words had fallen from Euron’s lips. The fox tilted her head at me then narrowed her eyes as she spoke gravely.
“We need answers, Master. You need to tell us everything.”
Chapter Fourteen
My minions were silent as we exited Euron’s castle. There was no treasure or sacred items here since it wasn’t the god's true dungeon, and I wondered for a moment where Euron had landed in the beginning before the coven summoned him here. I felt a twinge of sadness as we regrouped and gathered our Bantams but quickly brushed it away as I took one backward glance towards the room that the god I once knew was trapped in. His corpse lay still and would remain there until his coven returned.
Then what would happen? Would his lovers bury him? His body wouldn’t rot or age as mortal corpses do, and for a moment, I hoped they would burn it. Though cremation wasn’t practiced anymore since the ritualistic practices of worshipping gods had gone by the wayside, which was what the priests and priestesses would do for a god when they passed, a rare event to begin with.
I thought back on the city that used to worship me so piously, and a few miles from there, there was another city that worshiped the sun-god Amun. He’d been alive since the beginning of time, if not before the earth came into existence. I don’t remember him or interacting with him much, but when he passed, his body was sent down to the city that worshipped him the most. The town mourned him with lavish festivals and funeral processions, and they took Amun’s body into the largest of the temples, anointed it with oil and sage, then burned it on an altar while the whole city watched with bated breath. I watched them stand around Amun’s body as it smoldered and burned into nothing but gray ash on the altar.
I hoped that Euron’s coven would do the same for him.
My women and I picked our way through the decrepit castle and out into the cold air. We took very little time to set up our tents and built up a fire inside. I could tell from the sour look on Rana’s face that she was disappointed that there was no treasure in Euron’s castle, but she quickly turned her attention back to me over the crackling flames. Her blue eyes were bright and focused on my face, but I wasn’t ready to speak yet. I wanted them to fill their bellies and rest for a few moments before I dove headfirst into the tale of my life and my past. I untied my pack and began pulling out some of the food I had brought with me, and Carmedy followed my intentions eagerly.
“We eat first,” I told them in a firm voice as I looked deep into each set of eyes, and they slowly followed my lead.
Morrigan settled herself in a few feet away from me, searched in her pack for something to eat, and pulled out a small bag full of nuts and berries. Carmedy was busy skewering potatoes on a long stick, and the feline held them over the fire until their brown skins broke and steam burst into the air. Annalise grabbed some dried meat from her bag and ripped into it ferociously. Rana kept her eyes on me but pulled a parchment-wrapped bundle from her pack and unfolded it neatly. Inside the parchment was all sorts of different roots, a few walnuts, and like the High Queen’s rations, two slivers of jerky.
I grabbed my pack and rummaged through it and found that it was nearly empty of supplies and food. My searching hands found only an apple and a small bundle of beans. From our meager meals, I knew that we’d have to buy more supplies in the next town which was near Jemmets Landing. We ate in silence, and my minions kept their eyes low as they ate their small meals. I finished my apple in seconds then the beans, and still, my stomach grumbled for more. Before I knew it, a sizzling potato wrapped in a small swath of parchment was thrust under my nose.
Carmedy offered the potato to me with a broad smile as she bit into her own and I took it but planted a tender kiss to her temple first in gratitude. Morrigan offered me a handful of blueberries, Annalise held out one of her sticks of jerky, and even Rana, who still avoided my eyes, offered up two walnuts. My women still cared for me even in this moment of worry, and it warmed my heart exponentially. I took the food they offered and thanked each of them in turn. As I took the walnuts the redhead offered, our fingers touched and her pretty face flushed red. Even now, she still showed her true feelings to me. I quickly ate the food they offered to me, and they continued with their small meals while they kept their eyes on the fire.
Their faces were troubled, and I wanted nothing more than to comfort them, but I knew I could do that only after I told them the truth. I had protected them this long, and I hoped they would see that I would protect them through everything even if it meant keeping secrets from them. I wouldn’t tell them everything until they were read
y, but now, they needed something to placate them from the constant worry in their heads.
Rana was the first to level her sharp eyes to mine over the fire, and I felt it deep in my belly, it was time to tell them about my life in the god’s realm and what came after.
“I will not tell you my true name,” I stated calmly, and the redhead’s mouth opened to protest, but I lifted a single finger in the air for silence. “My god’s name is something I hold close to myself, and I hope that one day I’ll be able to tell you what it is but today is not that day, I am sorry. Other than that, feel free to ask any question? Where shall I start?”
“Start from the beginning,” Annalise said as she blinked her chocolatey brown eyes. “Start from your birth.”
“Very well,” I began softly. “I was born in the god’s realm thousands of years ago, if not millions. I cannot give you the exact date, but I can tell you, it was before the earth was even born. It was only a frothy celestial soup when I came into the world.”
Carmedy tilted her head at me as one of her black ears twitched softly.
“So, are you older than the Tichádáma?” the feline asked in an interested voice. “Remember what the citizens said? When she was born, all the aquatic animals were born with her.”
“Merely a tale that the people of Kanashimi spread around,” I told her softly. “But the Tichádáma was much older than me. If you remember in her dungeon, she mentioned there was a boy she liked to watch play in the heavenly gardens? That was most likely about me and Euron.”
Carmedy nodded to me once then went back to staring into the fire thoughtfully.
“My parents were, and probably still are, two of the highest-ranking gods in the heavens,” I continued after a moment. “Chirus, the god of victory, is my father, and Qyris, the goddess of the sun, is my mother. I have a long line of brothers that come after me, but the one who matters the most in this story is the second oldest next to me, the sniveling little bastard, Otia.”