Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

1. RIEKA

1

RIEKA

I hungered for the kill. Every part of me that was predator crooned with the knowledge that my prey was running from me.

Adrenaline pumped in my veins, urging me further as the stag perfumed the forest air with the honeyed scent of fear. My heartbeat pulsed in my ears steadily, a reminder that if I were human the speed at which I ran would have stopped my heart by now.

The stag made a drastic turn up ahead.

Feet pounding hard against the forest floor, I veered in the same direction, the stag’s heartbeat drumming erratically as it desperately tried to outrun me.

It would fail as they all did.

My boots beat down into the landscape as the stag veered again, choosing the thickest part of the forest to escape capture.

I made the hasty decision to cut him off up ahead. The brush snapped underfoot when I slid down an embankment into a clearing.

Instinct made me freeze.

Yellow eyes greeted me over the carcass of a snow hare.

Ears jutting out, his stare fixed on me, the white wolf’s lips curled back, his teeth bared in warning.

I was trespassing.

Tail erected in a display of dominance; he growled at me when it was clear I would not heed his warning.

He moved to attack, his scent indicating his interest in human prey.

A growl ripped up my throat and the white wolf skittered to a halt, his tail tucking between his legs. His entire body cowered under my gaze. The spectral I called forth, the six-foot black wolf strode towards him as he crouched low, ears straight back. It hovered over the submitting wolf as he rolled over in the blanket of snow presenting me with his most vulnerable part. His belly.

Keeping my wolf in a dominant position, I offered the real wolf a choice. I brought forth another spectral, of the white wolf himself and made it run from the clearing with his kill in his mouth. The white wolf accepted my offer. Retrieving the snow hare, ears still back and eyes downcast but fixed on me, he fled the clearing with his life.

I released a quivering breath as I tried to stop my hands shaking.

It was a rare thing for me to show my dominance. Rarer still for me to encounter a wolf who was unfamiliar with my kind. Wolf-Blessed Brutes were not as common in this part of the world as one would think. We were still bound by our humanity and preferred the comfort of a fire over the darkness of a wolf den.

The monolithic ancient trees that encompassed The Hetra were too accustomed to creating the illusion of solitude. It was easy to forget one was not alone in the vast white wasteland, cocooned in the silence that befell the icy landscape during its perpetual winter.

Perhaps that was why I had fled so far from Deos.

The Hetra was the last place the Ecclesiarchy would expect to find a member of their Devout caste. Hiding in the white instead of dressed in it. Surrounded by what the priesthood called delusions of the unenlightened mind.

One such delusion whispered to me on a breeze that had not existed a moment ago. The spirit brushed at a white strand of hair that had escaped my braid as I had run, gently pulling at it like a child did their mother’s skirts.

I swatted at it, urging it away. Twenty-two years alongside visible gods were long enough to forfeit control of my life, I wasn’t looking to hand it over to invisible ones.

A message from my wolf brother Tiny crossed the clearing. A spectral of the stag. He had closed in on the animal’s location and he was steering it towards Taren.

With the trail of its scent still lingering in the air, I followed it, trudging from the clearing. When the ground below my feet thinned, the white disappearing to reveal damp soil, I ran, the icy air burning as it passed through my lungs.

The scent thickened to my right, and I jumped a downed log to pursue the beast. Soft were my footfalls, the silent skill a trait of my breed of Apex Brute. Born with the predatory instinct of a wolf, hunting came as naturally to me as breathing. An instinct gifted to me through my blessing by a god who shall remain nameless. I’d often found it more a curse than a blessing.

My prey emerged from the trees parallel to me and I signalled to Tiny to intercede. The stag suddenly veered off its chosen course, running straight across my path.

I ran faster, my pulse a thundering drumming in my ears. Our paths started to converge; the beast unable to change course on account of the grey wolf pursuing it from the right. Tiny chased after the stag in ravenous delight.

Ten seconds and the stag and I would meet.

Five seconds and I willed my blessing to obey me.

Two seconds and I leapt for it, my arms outstretched in anticipation of the kill.

Bare fingers passed over fur where claws should have met flesh, tearing into it.

The stag passed me, and I rolled into a crouch. An angry rumble escaped my throat at the realisation that my blessing had once again failed me. That I was indeed as defective as I had always been.

An Apex incapable of manifesting her blessing at will.

I bolted after my prey, my muscles wailing at the sheer force of use, the distance between us decreasing by the second.

The air whistled softly to my left. The sound of an arrow striking flesh rung like a wet drum in the silence of the forest.

The stag fell.

I came to an abrupt stop where the stag lay as Tiny emerged from the trees to my right. The grey wolf approached the downed beast with his nose low to the ground, his hunger palpable through our connection. He looked up at me, eyes focused as he spoke. A spectral of himself appeared between us, eating the animal as another one of myself crouched beside him, my teeth ripping at a raw piece of flesh in my hands, gorging ourselves on the kill. Tiny knew I didn’t enjoy food in the same manner he did, but he always offered.

I shared with him the memory of our companion butchering another deer and throwing him chunks of meat. As always Tiny understood my meaning and proceeded to back away from the carcass, to await his reward.

The trees rustled overhead, and Taren emerged from the canopy, his large, feathered wings, brown and regal spread wide to allow for his flighted descent.

As Kanahari, a native of The Hetra, he knew these lands better than anyone. How The White could threaten to swallow you whole if you didn’t respect her. How it was suicide to travel across her without a Kanahari guide. And how if you took one of the lives that resided within her, respect must be shown if one did not wish to incur the wrath of the Eldertides, the invisible spirits the Kanahari tribesman claimed resided in The Hetra. Beings they believed were older than even the Gods of Idica.

The delusions of an unenlightened mind.

My bitterness at my failure to control my blessing must have been particularly pungent because Taren thought it prudent to commend my efforts. A gesture unlike him.

“Your speed has improved. I was barely keeping pace above,” the voice in his head said, addressing me in that dulcet gravelly tone of his.

“Did Taren Tenamai just compliment me?” my inner voice replied as the winged Brute side-eyed me and responded. “I said barely.”

The first and last time I received a compliment from the stoic Kanahari was when he revealed he knew of my ability to hear people’s thoughts and noted how much more useful it would be in my endeavour to leave The Hetra than my consistently failing attempts to use my Blessing while hunting. If I offered my services to the seasons’ hunting parties, I would make enough coin for my passage to Prea within two months. But as I preferred to keep my species status private, and my tongue attached to my body—Kanahari were much more accustomed and accommodating to my kind than the rest of the continent—I insisted on keeping it between us. Hence why our current conversation was silent to the world.

The moment his boots touched down on the white forest floor, his demeanour shifted. The sharpness of his expression softened, his gaze and scent turned to melancholy as he looked upon the dying stag and knelt before it. Speaking in his native tongue, words it had taken me three months to learn, Taren gave thanks to the animal for its sacrifice.

“For joining the Eldertides so I may live another day in your stead.”

When the final word had left his lips, Taren swiftly sliced his blade across the creature’s jugular, the hot liquid spilling onto the white snow, the air above filling with steam.

I rushed to place the canister used to collect the animal’s blood beneath the clean cut and instinctively breathed in the scent.

The part of me that was like Tiny, predatory, instinctual, Wolf-Blessed craved it. I longed to have the animal’s blood running down my throat, desperate to satiate an unnameable need inside of me. The other side of me, the girl who grew up blinded by her love for her Celestial Gods, desired nothing more than to crawl into the deepest darkest hole in the earth and never come out. That need had sent me running to the farthest north, as far from my god’s eyes as possible.

I inhaled again and let the memories surface.

Glistening crimson pooled around my bare feet. Warmth caressed the length of my fingers like silk ribbons. The taste of melted butter on my tongue.

“Exposure to the thing that frightens you will help you overcome it,” my father’s voice echoed in my mind.

I opened my eyes, and Taren handed me the blade, and just as I’d seen him do a hundred times before, just as he had taught me, I began to dress the animal. Cold and precisely, I cut through the flesh, the knife doing what my own claws had failed to do. And I rid the creature of the very thing I believed had stayed behind in Deos when I had fled the Ecclesiarchy.

The deer’s heart sunk deep into the snow, vanishing from the world. Until Tiny retrieved the organ, leaving a scarlet trail across the white as he partook in his reward.

After letting the carcass drain from a nearby tree, Taren and I dragged it over to the sled at the bottom of the snow drift where he watched me intensely tie it, securing it to the timber frame. Teaching me how to not be a burden to his sister had been his mission these last four months. He’d blamed my coming from a big city in Deos, the westernmost nation in Idica for my inability to build a snare. My innate tracking skills, my perfect sense of direction, and the fact my senses were on par with his own, if not better, were the only reason he hadn’t given up on teaching me to hunt like a human. Ensuring that his sister Krisenya was not left to do all the heavy lifting when she and I left tomorrow was all he could do to help me compensate for an inability to control my blessing. His words.

We dragged the sled to the snowmobile and reached the edge of town just as the sun crested the mountain behind Keltjar. The vehicle’s motor grunted to a sputtering stop when we pulled up. Taren had purchased it from a pair of hunters from the Prean Union five seasons ago and even then, it had been an antique.

“You did well today, arashon,” Taren spoke in that quiet tone of his, all calm and centred as he untied the rope fastening the deer to the sled. I’d known him five months and he still called me an arashon, a southerner.

“Good enough to not be left behind by your sister?”

“It is good you are paying her in advance.” There was no use in finding offence in his words. Honest sincerity was a trait I had quickly learned was common amongst the Kanahari. His sister when we had first met six months ago had insulted and complimented me all in the same breath.

“I’ve never seen an arashon with white hair before.” Having just spent a month escorting ill-equipped hunters on a guided hunt through the White, Kris had entered the inn in all manner of discomfort, mumbling what I now knew to be Kanahari profanities, throwing off layer after layer of clothing, dispersing them to the floor on her path for a prime position by the fire, where she paused upon seeing me in the opposite armchair. It would be less than a week before I realised bluntness was a Kanahari quirk. The same amount of time it had taken my roots to change from black to white against my will.

“A darker shade would blanch your face. Grey eyes with black hair. Don’t ever dye it,” she had added, leaning back into the armchair and pulling out a smoking pipe from her vest pocket. A stark contrast to the fuzzy white curls that framed her doll-like features.

A Terrestrial Brute, Fox-Blessed at that, casually sitting opposite a Wolf-Blessed Apex, and without any hint of aggression or fear. I knew right then that she was the woman who I wanted to guide my passage across The Hetra to Prea where I would be free of all gods.

“Admit it, Taren, you will miss my company,” I teased lightly. Taren unlike his sister had the patience to teach someone defective like myself to hunt as humans did. A task for which I could never truly repay him. The smallest rise of the corner of his mouth was the only indication of his amusement.

I attempted to lift the duffle from the sled only for it to refuse to budge. Shame once again fell over me. An Apex who could not control her strength at will was not much of an Apex. Taren had no such issues. His blessing allowed him to easily lift our prize from the sled, weightlessly throwing it over his shoulder.

A thick fog lay heavy on the town this side of the dawn. An eerie silence fit for haunted tales of headless knights and ghostly apparitions often dissuaded visitors from venturing the road in the morning. Lest they walk into a stone wall or another hunter’s sword. Not that swords were required in this part of the world, but it did happen on occasion. Bright-lights were always recommended, the luminos contained within the small canisters burned brighter than any fire. My own—the size of a child’s fist— hung around my neck illuminating our path through the fog to the inn.

Engar’s burly frame passed by the window as we arrived at the back door, his melodious hums a sign of his preoccupation. When he took me on as his kitchen assistant, claiming the job meant living in the isolated mountain town of Keltjar for months at a time, I had assumed he’d done so because he needed the extra help during hunting season, but I soon learned that wasn’t the case. As both owner and cook of The Old Man’s Hearth, Engar could calculate the number of ingredients he required for a single meal off the top of his head without any formal education. He could cook a dinner for forty single-handedly. I’d even seen him throw a six-foot-tall Imperial drunkard across the courtyard without breaking a sweat. Engar didn’t need the help. It was the company he desired. He offered me twice that of other town cooks, and when he discovered I could bake, he offered me a Hunting Season bonus. Five per cent from any order of my baked goods bought during the season. I took the job much to my then companions’ disappointment.

Pausing outside the door as Engar turned his back to it, I immediately removed my snow boots, careful not to let them make a sound as they touched down on the cold stone.

We had this ritual, he and I. A bet really. We’d been having a debate over the advantage Terrestrial blessings had over Apexes. Even with my defective blessing, my instincts seemed to be the only traits that never failed me—Wolf-Blessed like myself had the innate ability to stealthily walk on our toes without making a sound and so I bet him that I could sneak up on every resident Terrestrial in Keltjar. His response was to promise that if I managed that, he would tell me the true story of how he ended up so far from the Imperial City, and not the tale he told everyone else. That he punched a guy for being an asshole.

“You’re always insisting I’m lying. You manage to sneak up on me last, and I’ll tell you the truth.”

At first, I’d been hesitant. Engar was hard of hearing. His right ear had been ripped off by a Brute during a fight at the border, and his left ear drum was destroyed due to a slap sustained in a bar fight five years ago. Someone had suggested that a trip to one of those black markets down south might obtain him the services of an Organic skilled in cellshaping who might repair and regrow what he’d lost, but Engar had rebuffed the idea. He liked the selectiveness his hearing aid provided in his retirement.

I believed I had an unfair advantage over him because of this. But Engar had assured me, I was the one at the disadvantage. He even agreed to have his hearing aids turned off when the time came for me to target him.

Taren, having witnessed our antics before, simply rolled his big brown eyes and waited, the carcass just hanging over his shoulder.

My soft-soled shoes made no sound as I entered through the open kitchen door.

Four steps between us. Three steps.

“Morning Rieka.”

The thrill of the hunt vanished in an instant, the wolf in me utterly deflated.

That’s the fifth time he’s known it was me.

Engar turned around to great me, only for a shrill squeal to escape him, startling him enough that his blessing emerged. His one ear dropped and elongated, tusks grew out from his bottom jaw and his normally large nose squashed into a snout.

“By the God’s Sphere Taren!”

I spun around and found the Kanahari just standing in the doorway, his wings tightly pressed against his back, staring at the startled cook. Taren moved past me to deposit the deer carcass on the benchtop, greeting Engar with a stoic nod of the head as the Swine-Blessed cook switched on his hearing aid.

“How do you always manage to hear me,” I sighed amused, closing the distance and stretching up on my tiptoes to peck him on the cheek. “But Taren scares you without even trying.”

Engar shook off his blessing, returning his appearance to that of the burly and balding retired imperial guard I knew. “I told you, Terrestrial senses trump Apexes.”

Vibrations, he’s going to say.

“Vibrations,” he said, handing me my apron with a smile.

A light dusting of snow drifted to the floor as I untucked my braid from my shawl. “I believe my last day of employment was yesterday.”

“Consider it punishment for losing the bet,” he added when I hung up my coat.

I took the apron from him with a smile and a “Yes Boss,” and proceeded to tie it as I approached the common room doors. My ears caught the raucous morning chorus before I’d even pushed them open.

Usually, this time of morning was quiet, but with hunting season starting tomorrow, and the workers from Farbor Ice Mines returning due to the annual temperature drop further north, Old Man’s was full. A pity really, the coin today would make the little gold gremlin in me salivate. Thirty hunters had registered with just our inn this season, and at least ten of them had sought the employment of a Kanahari guide, like Taren. The rest of the inn’s guests encompassed tired, red-faced, snow-burned miners who were thoroughly enjoying Engar’s full breakfast over the compact freeze-dried meal packs the mining companies provided them.

Two families had arrived from the Prean Union. One was from one of the hydrotech kingdoms of Torvar. They thought it amazing that the entire northern section of our great continent of Idica was made up entirely of ice and snow and they just needed to tick it off some destination checklist. The other was Setrali, their wide-brimmed hats, and finely embroidered silks made it keenly obvious they were from the southernmost island of the continent. Their attire was entirely unsuitable for the northern climate, and they photographed everything, including their meals. The last of our rooms filled only yesterday. Three guests had to share a room. One was a botanist from the School of Geomechanics in Athus, the other a Kanahari making their annual pilgrimage through the White, and a man who in the three days since his arrival had sat reading a different book each morning with his breakfast. Today’s book, the title written in Old Prean read “Tales of The Nine.” The first time he said a word to me was when I served him his breakfast.

“You don’t happen to serve kharee here?”

The bitter bean beverage was difficult to import this far north of Pazgar, a fact I have had to live with for a year. Three-hundred and sixty days since my lips had touched its delectable goodness. I informed him of the travesty.

“Pity,” he said, his voice heavily accented. Lycoan perhaps. “Someone could really make some coin if they could manage it.” He leaned forward, taking in the smell of the savoury good, his scent a clear indication of his pleasure.

He didn’t look like a typical Lycoan. He was at least three inches too short, and whilst his hair was the right colour, he had all of it. Lycoans regularly shaved the sides of their heads. Both sexes. The only thing he did possess which was indicative of the people of that kingdom was the runic tattoo on his chest.

The blue whorls and lines seemed to dance under the Bright-lights of the dining room.

I’d only ever read about the tattoos. A Lycoan began receiving the runes when they came of age, and their number would only increase throughout their lives, expanding the breadth of the tattoo across their chest. It represented their heritage, their position in society and the expected nature of their life. As foreign as his home was, I could only recall one of the runes from my studies with certainty. Me’lai.

He is unmarried.

“Something else?”

My cheeks flushed. He’d caught me staring.

“Is it any good?” I asked, hoping the change in subject had deterred any suggestion it was his body I was admiring and not the book in his hands.

“It’s interesting. A lot of mighty feats and impossible odds if you like that kind of thing.” He flipped it closed and offered it to me. “I’m done with it if you’d like to read it?”

Flattered but knowing myself, I declined. “I prefer real history.”

A single pale blond eyebrow rose as if he were curious. “You think these tales are false?”

“The word tale implies a narrative that is imaginatively recounted. I’d rather immerse myself in the words of those who have taken the time to record the world’s truths than waste my time on an account of real people that stretch the truth for propaganda’s sake.”

“So that was just a phase?” He indicated to the tattoo of seven black spots on my left wrist, the ones I usually had covered by my gloves but were at that moment packed in my coat hanging back in the kitchen.

“I outgrew them.”

“Careful,” he chuckled, the sound causing a fluttering in my chest. “They might hear you.”

Engar’s baritone voice called my name through the kitchen doors. “RIEKA!”

“Coming!” I returned my attention to the Lycoan to excuse myself from the conversation but found him cutting into his pie greedily.

A few paces from the kitchen, a familiar gait passed through the inn’s entrance. Kris had finally returned. Her family’s Imta, the blessing-crafted home, was built in the Kanahari village just outside of town and since our trip to Prea would mean she’d be gone for months, she’d travelled there today to bid them farewell. The hair on my arms stood on end as the door swung shut behind her. Irritation was not the scent I expected upon her return.

Kris marched towards me, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed as the crowd of miners that we had been expecting to arrive that morning passed through the doors behind her, and with them, a surprising spectral from Tiny.

No sooner had I seen the image of my former lover standing before me, did the actual man pass through it, dispersing the image like smoke.

Standing no taller than five feet and with a scowl that would make a baby cry, Kris came to a stop in front of me. “Tell me again why you slept with that horse penis?”