61. RHYDIAN
61
RHYDIAN
T housands lined The Great Path that led through the city to the Citadel. A great procession marked the end of the three-day celebrations. Dressed in garments of pearly white, The Chosen made their last walk through the city. Amongst them, her ebony tresses flowing down her back was Rieka.
No. Odelle. Odelle was who she was here. Odelle Nicora.
The procession halted just outside the Citadel doors, the number of Chosen nearer to thirty. One by one the Celestial Servitors called them by name, her anticipation and sheer adulation palpable in my own body.
The scent of sadness tainted the air as her name was finally called. She took one last glance out over the city before passing through the Citadel doors.
Odelle was escorted to a corridor, through one large door, then another until eventually she stood outside the room she knew to be the Chamber of the Gods. She’d rehearsed this very part with Vesia nearly a dozen times in the last few months, but she’d never entered the room, her memories informed me.
It was a vast circular chamber, with Gods’ Tongue on the sloping floor and walls made of shimmering silver so smooth they were practically mirrors.
The Chosen formed a circle around the room, all standing before their guides facing the inside of the circle and when Odelle spotted Vesia, it took all her self-control to not lose her composure and run to the woman who had become her closest friend.
A goblet was held in the Priestesses’ hand. It wasn’t until the last of The Chosen had taken their place, and the doors to the chamber had closed that the Priestess handed it to Odelle.
A prayer was spoken and then she drank. I tasted honey and aniseed on my tongue. More prayers were spoken by the Speaker, phrases returned and repeated by both the Servitors and the Chosen until finally, the Speaker said, “Turn and face your gods.”
Odelle turned to face the wall of the chamber where the outline of a door began to glow in the silver of the wall before her.
The wall vanished within the outline and a figure in a mask appeared. A great golden raven mask.
The Huntsman.
The moment they stepped through, the hairs on my arms raised in conjunction with her own.
The room filled with fear.
I watched in horror, the moment imprinted in her memory in the crispest of details as each Servitor pulled a black-handled blade from a sheath hidden in the robes on their backs.
In unison, the Servitors shouted, “Ascend!”
As one, and with the speed only achieved with practice, each Servitor raised the blade to their Chosen’s neck and sliced through their throats.
I clutched at my own throat as I felt a shadow of that pain.
My instinct to use my taint kicked in, the drive to protect her compelling me, but in here, I was powerless. Nothing but an observer forced to watch as the horrific events unfolded.
Odelle had moved on instinct, the blade only managing to slice through her skin. She collapsed to the floor, her hand to her throat as she tried to stop what bleeding there was from seeping from the wound.
Odelle stared up at the woman who had become her friend, a woman whom she had confided in for months. A woman who stared down at her like they meant nothing to one another, her expression cold and disappointed.
The limp bodies of every Chosen were held in the arms of their Servitor, their white robes darkening as the blood ran from their open throats and the panicked looks in their eyes fell to blank stares.
The room filled with the scent of blood as each Chosen was exsanguinated, the very essence of their beings pouring onto the floor as the carvings beneath their bodies served as a pathway into the centre of the room, the very reason why the floor sloped.
A voice so lovely, so intoxicating filled the room. “Looks like we have a winner.”
The words spoken were harsh, a language a rare few could speak outside of The Gods Hold, and yet as those masked creatures spoke in their own tongue, I understood their words. For she, Odelle could comprehend the gods' words.
Another deeper and equally lovely voice spoke. “Save some for us Lemir, we want a taste later.”
“Perhaps tomorrow. He looks ready to devour her,” a third god said as they knelt and ran their hand down the paling face of the young man dying on the floor before her.
“What do you suppose that one is?” said the fourth masked god.
The Huntsman knelt then before Odelle, the golden mask they wore taking on a horrible shade of red as it reflected the sudden colour change in the chamber.
Raising a pale masculine hand, The Huntsman removed their mask.
Her thoughts in that moment spoke of two things she knew for certain.
The first. Never had a Deogn seen a god’s face, not even depicted in art.
The second. This was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, that had ever existed. Pale blond hair, eyes as gold as the mask he wore, and a face as cold as it was divine.
But what I knew when I saw his face was confirmation of a terrible truth I'd kept to myself since Lantern Town. The god who she created as a spectral in the fight pit, and the man who hired me to retrieve her from Keltjar were one in the same. Who told me the lie, him or her?
When the Huntsman spoke, in a voice only Odelle could hear, even my own body trembled.
“I claim you little wolf, from now until your last breath, until the final drop of blood leaves your veins, you are mine Odelle Nicora.”
They held their hand out to Vesia who handed over the blade which he immediately slid over his tongue.
Odelle tried to crawl away. “Be still,” the voice in her head said, and I felt my own body obey his decree. His golden eyes remained locked on hers when he ordered to have her taken to his chambers.
Four men, members of the Citadel Watch, the same contingent her brother had been a part of entered from the doorway behind him and picked up Odelle’s now compliant and limp body. Panic and fear began to overwhelm her as her head lolled back in their arms and she witnessed each god in the chamber remove their own masks before they walked towards the expanding pool of blood in the centre of the room.
A blindfold was placed over her eyes and for a moment, the memory vanished. I felt her being carried. The sound the guards' feet made on the floor changed from metallic to stone. A door was opened and she was placed in an upright position.
I knew she wanted to run, but her body refused to obey her. It felt heavy, like lead. She found herself incapable of moving even the pinkie finger on her blood-covered hand.
The Huntsman’s voice returned. He instructed her to remove her blindfold. She obeyed.
The memory remained fuzzy for a few seconds as her eyes adjusted. We were standing in a bedchamber with a mirror encompassing an entire wall from ceiling to floor. Exquisite luxury claimed every corner of the room, it adorned the body of the god that had claimed her.
Standing behind her in silk robes of black and gold, the god congratulated her on becoming this cycles Treasured One. He then informed her that since it was he who had claimed her all those months ago for Ascension, her initiation fell to him.
Odelle was frozen, unable to move as she watched his reflection approach her from behind. I felt the sensation of his hand against my own skin as he slid the dark hair from her shoulder and caressed her neck, and then held it there. I watched as the wound along her throat healed, but just enough to leave a scar.
“A reminder of our first meeting,” he said in her ear.
Perhaps believing it might aid in her survival, Odelle replied, “Thank you.”
“Be silent,” he said as he ran a finger down the curve of her neck.
A moment later pain ripped through my body as he pierced her throat with his teeth. Two sharp canines impaled into the vein in her neck, the pain so shocking her eyes closed as a reaction causing the memory to vanish.
His voice returned and ordered her to keep them open. So she did. And I am forced to watch as the god she once prayed to drank the blood from her very veins, from a body forced to submit to his touches as it weakened and finally fell into his embrace.
I could feel her heartbeat slowing. Odelle was dying, the edges of the memory darkening as her vision began to turn hazy. I felt his hands as he lifted her and carried her onto the bed at the centre of the chamber.
After placing her down, he ran his hands down the curves of her body like a lover. His admiration turned to her wrist and he took it into his hand, brought it to his lips and then ripped into her flesh and drank.
I had to disassociate, to remind myself this was in the past. I had to remind myself that Odelle was not in that moment suffering this unimaginable torture. I had to cut myself off from her pain or else I would not make it out of the memory alive.
He did this again, tearing into the vein on the inside of her elbow, and after relishing there, he lifted her dress and ran his hands over her thighs. He lowered himself over her, parting her legs with a kiss that made her body involuntarily react in pleasure, and then he drank from there too.
When he was done, her body numb from the pain and exhaustion, her voice no longer silenced, Odelle prayed for death.
“Death,” the god said, “is a far-off thing my little wolf.”
As he cleaned himself off in the basin by the window, Odelle saw her own reflection in another mirror above the bed. She could not move her body, not because she’d been ordered, but because she no longer had the will to. All colour had fled her skin. The pearly white dress garment now bore a scarlet apron that trailed from her neck to her groin.
“I shall return in a few days, I suggest you sleep.” But she did not sleep. She cursed herself for not leaving with her brother and hoped she did not see morning.
But she saw the morning arrive and with it two Servitors. Organics who tended to her body, mending the tears in her flesh, the bruises on her skin, forcing her body to produce new blood cells, and rebuild her blood supply until her cheeks turned pink. Together they removed any trace of the god’s impact on her body.
Odelle’s mind suddenly cleared of all pain. Rage took over. I felt her body change, the bones breaking and re-fusing within seconds. I felt her skin as it tore and mended.
A wolf took her place in the chamber, a wolf that lashed out at the two Servitors before they had a chance to react. I could taste their blood on my tongue as she tore through the throat of one with her teeth and ripped through the chest of the other with her claws.
The door to the chamber opened and the wolf snarled as her god entered, amusement lining his beautiful features.
“My my, aren’t you a little monster.” He stepped into the chamber coming face to face with the wolf that Odelle had become. “That is what you are. A monster. You fear it, this side of yourself. You cannot control it.”
Instantly her body changed back to human. Clothes torn, her body covered in blood, she glared angrily into her god’s golden eyes.
“You have strived your entire life to get it under control,” his voice said in her mind. “But you have always failed. It is why your brother left after all.”
Unable to speak aloud once again, she denies him in her mind. “No it isn’t!” she yelled.
“Yes it is,” he replied calmly.
My own stomach twisted at what I was witnessing. The god was warping her memory.
“Your selection as Chosen meant he no longer had to watch over you.”
“No!”
“He had to make sure your parents were safe and your ascension meant he was finally free to live his own life. Without you in it.”
“Lies!” she cried in anguish.
“How else was your mother sundered if not by you?”
“No.” Her voice was barely even a whisper in her mind. I could feel her succumbing to his words as he pressed his body into hers.
He ran a hand down the naked flesh of her arm. “ And your father discouraging you from joining the guard, why else if not because of how dangerous you are.”
“Because I’m a monster,” she said through a devastated expression.
“As am I, but I love you for it.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You are a monster.”
“I am a monster.”
“But who loves you?”
“You do.”
He took her chin in his hand. “And who am I?”
“The Huntsman, the whisperer, death incarnate, ” she replied, her voice cracking.
“Yes, and only a monster can love a monster.”
“Only a monster can love a monster.”
He released his hold on her chin. “Now get dressed, you have a congregation to greet.”
What followed was not a normal procession of memories, rather it seemed her mind was incapable of ascertaining when each one occurred and instead had joined them together in one long string of instances.
Odelle returned to her chambers, unable to speak though she was often spoken to, dressed in a new gown nightly, forced to stand before the mirror and await as a new god entered her chamber and made her body theirs. One night, it was a goddess who drank the blood from her veins, touched her body against her will and made her beg for death, a prayer which they refused. Another night, she had no time to beg for her end for the god who fed from her drained her in one go.
Come morning, her body was once again tended to by new Servitors, these two surviving the morning, both of whom she was ordered to obey by the command of her Huntsman. Forced to wash away the remnants of her assault in a hot bath tainted with sweet limes to hide the scent of the blood that had soaked into her skin.
Each day repeated as the one before. She sat on the glass throne of the Treasured One’s dais, wearing garments that barely covered her body, listening to the prayers and wishes of Deos's most devout, only to return to her chambers at night where once again, her body was trespassed against her will.
Night after night they fed from her, unable to scream, crying tears they cared nothing for, praying for a death that would never come. And when her own mother made the pilgrimage to the Citadel to seek advice from the Treasure One, Odelle was unable to seek the comfort of her embrace, forced to sit in silence and listen to her mother’s proud adoring words. Blessed that her daughter shall become an Astral in the God Sphere during the next Ascension, forbidden to ask for help by the god who had claimed her as his.
Lemir. That’s the name he asked her to call him when he finally visited again. “You may now call me, Lemir.”
And in what seemed like a year that followed the progression of memories, I came to realise that in some twisted way, Odelle had come to believe that this god cared for her, loved her in his own way. He made her feel that love, made love to her until one day he marked her as his with the symbol of his position. Twelve black spots on the inside of her wrist in the pattern of the Raven constellation. His constellation.
The memory snapped violently into another.
Odelle stood motionless, her gaze locked on Lemir where he stood in the centre of her chambers. At his feet, a body lay dead, torn and dismembered, their blood smeared across her face like a mask. The body had belonged to Priestess Vesia.
Beside the body, discarded and unsheathed lay the black-handled dagger once wielded against Odelle.
“I killed her,” Odelle said, her voice trembling.
Her god replied simply with, “Yes . ”
“Why?”
“Because you are with child and they see it as a threat. Vesia was tasked with killing it.”
Odelle’s hand fell to her stomach, and I realised that the weight my body felt within the memory was physical. She was far enough along that her stomach was showing beneath the white dress, the blood on her hand imprinting on the fabric.
Her anger shot to the surface and through gritted teeth she blamed him. “ This is your doing!”
Her god rushed towards her, his hand wrapping around her throat, her tiptoes the only thing touching the ground as he raised her up in anger. “THAT IS MY CHILD YOU CARRY, AND I WILL CLAIM IT!”
The god sucked in a sharp breath. His expression shocked. Blood dripped from his open mouth. He looked down as his grip fell from Odelle’s neck.
I circled the scene and found Rieka had plunged her hand inside of the god’s chest. She then ripped it out, and I tasted the god’s blood on the air. In her grasp was the god’s still beating heart.
The golden-haired immortal fell limp to the floor, the heart in her hand now silent. The beating ceased.
“You did it, Odelle. You have freed yourself.”
Odelle gave no indication she had heard the voice, whilst my own body jumped in shock in the physical world.
The god’s voice had filled her head, his tone not unlike that of her own voice.
From over her shoulder, her dead god appeared, golden-haired and golden-eyed. But Odelle did not seem to see him.
The memory contained two gods, both identical, one living and one dead.
“You must leave. If the Celestials find you, they will bleed you dry and burn your body with the rest of the sacrifices,” the g od over her shoulder said. Odelle turned from the sight on the floor and ran to her bed. As she did, I witnessed the dead god vanish, only to reappear when she looked at the corpse.
Once again, my body in the physical world roiled in anger. Her god was altering her memories, warping her mind again.
“You will flee Aronbok. To protect the child from The Celestials, you will hide in the Green Waste and there you will wait.”
Odelle paused in her packing, the false image of the dead god on her floor flickering in the memory’s periphery.
She was hesitating.
The living god that she could not see drew closer to her until he could whisper in her ear. “You will go to the Green Waste and you will wait. You will not know why. Just that that is where you will be safest. And when I find you there, you will come to me. And you will give me what is mine.”
Odelle blinked and returned to her hasty packing, all whilst the living god watched. When she had finished, she regarded the room, the real and implanted corpses on the floor. Relief flooded her face as she touched her stomach and let out a shuddering breath.
On her way from the room, as the memory began to fade into the next, I saw her pick up and pocket the black-handled dagger.
A single lamp shone overhead illuminating the doorway to the back of the apartments. Many months had passed, and the season had grown wet. Mud clung to her boots.
I could feel the chill of the wind in the memory. I felt her exhaustion. She’d travelled a long way.
Odelle knocked on the door and waited as heavy rain pelted down on her hood. A moment passed and she raised her hand to knock again. The door opened.
Her father stood in the doorway, his eyes narrowed as he looked at his visitor without recognition. Regardless of the rain, she flipped back her hood and greeted him.
“Hello, Papa.” Odelle didn’t give him a chance to respond, despite missing the sound of his voice. The memory told me she’d come for a reason.
She took a step into the house, her mere presence forcing her father to withdraw inside. Her mother appeared a moment later from within the kitchen, alarmed by the silence of her husband and quickly hushed herself when she recognised her daughter.
Shutting the door behind herself and having checked her parents were indeed alone in the apartment, Odelle pulled off her cloak and draped it over the dining room chair.
Her mother’s legs visibly failed her, forcing her to seek out the stability of her husband’s arms as they gazed at their daughter and the very pregnant state of her body.
Clear and direct were the words she used to convince her parents to abandon their obligations to their gods.
“Help me protect him.”