Chapter Twenty-Six #5
‘It is not,’ Ailel assures him. ‘We all assumed they were not much different from any of the other creatures inhabiting the world. How could we have known?’
‘They were always closer to us than anything else,’ Nuada says. ‘We should have known.’
‘None of that matters now,’ Terrin says firmly. ‘We need to warn them what will happen if they continue disregarding the balance of things.’
‘Everything that balances eventually unbalances.’ Kyarin barely raises his voice, but the shock of him speaking forces the group to listen. They stare at him, though he stays pressed close to Vaire with eyes cast down. ‘I witnessed it for millennia before any of you came.’
‘That does not mean we are helpless,’ Sulan butts in. ‘We must try something.’
‘Death and I will go into their lands,’ Vaire says. ‘Disease will kill off many of them. We will show them that they do not own everything, and that they cannot think their damage will have no consequences.’
It is what scares them most. The heat of the sun can be eased with shade, cold can be held back by fire, even famine can be alleviated with preparation and resourcefulness, something humans are adept at. But disease is inescapable and indiscriminate.
It kills a huge portion of the population, from north to south, village to town, young to old. Agony is wailed into the sky, but they should have known the sky did not care.
The human gods care. All except Varuith and Caindel arrive to confront them.
Cadoc storms forward, shoulders bristling and hand on his hilt. ‘How dare you—’
Sulan watches unflinchingly, but Eithne reaches out a hand to stop Cadoc and steps in front of him. ‘We worked hard to give you what you wanted. Why are you breaking our agreement?’
‘You refused to meet with us to let us explain,’ Sulan replies. ‘The world the humans made has no heart. We cannot live there and be disconnected from ourselves.’
‘So you resort to killing them?’
‘They are killing us.’
‘You look perfectly alive to me,’ Cadoc snarls. ‘You refuse to share because you’re selfish. Humans are doing nothing but progressing and you want to continue living in a world of the past.’
‘They are doing harm,’ Sulan tells him. ‘We cannot allow them to hurt us with no repercussions. There would be no end to it.’
‘You are vast and endless,’ Langaire growls, stepping forward from those hanging back. ‘Humans are small and finite. Cadoc is right, you have plenty to share, you just refuse because you cannot fathom a world in which you are not supreme.’
‘We cannot fathom a world in which we are torn apart and abused and do nothing about it,’ Sulan snaps back.
‘The world might be you, but you are not the world.’ Cadoc shoulders past Eithne and marches up to Sulan. She stares him down, unmoving. ‘It is not you providing for us, it is the universe providing for us all, is it not? You have no more claim to it than they do.’
‘Humans do not yet understand how to live in harmony. They are disregarding all life—’
‘You are disregarding human life!’ Cadoc shouts. ‘You pretend to be doing this for all, to be better than them, but you are not! You are doing it for yourselves.’
‘We just want balance and peace,’ Sulan says through tense lips.
‘No! You want war,’ Cadoc spits, eyes fiery. ‘So war you will receive.’ His hand plunges into Sulan’s chest.
She jerks back, wide-eyed, breathless. Her body jerks again as he rips out a pulse of light. Between his fingers, he crushes it.
The pain splits Vaire’s chest in two. He collapses, blind to the others, but hears their screams echo his own.
Sulan’s lifeless body hits the ground.
“Light!” Ailel screeches, fury lifting her ahead of the others and stirring the air into painful whips of current. Langaire lunges forward and drives her own arm into Ailel, wringing her heart inside her chest.
Terrin sends a burst of serrated earth towards them, but it is too late.
Ailel’s body falls just like Sulan’s. Cadoc dashes forward and a spike of crystal pierces his abdomen.
His body morphs around it, collapsing and stretching into the shape of a wolf.
Unfazed, he leaps past the rock and slams into Terrin, jaws of sharp teeth ripping into his chest like fingers through wet clay.
‘Earth!’ Nuada screams. She staggers to her feet, her agony a crushing blow on top of the blinding confusion of pain and chaos.
Geom latches onto her, stopping her from flinging herself towards the massacre.
Vaire grabs Kyarin’s wrist, yanking him away as a wall of roots and vines weaves itself between the civilized gods and the living wild gods.
‘Run!’ Geom yells at them, dragging Nuada, screaming and fighting his resistance, into the forest.
Dihen stands quietly in the midst of it all, eyes lowered.
Kyarin scoops them into one arm and Vaire pulls them both into the forest. They sprint, Vaire’s inscrutable knowledge of the forest turned to panicked disorientation as branches whip his face and he stumbles over roots and bushes.
He blindly follows the sense of Geom and Nuada ahead of them, larger now that they are within an absence of what was once always there.