Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
Gnaeus sank beside him, gentle, unassuming.
“Ethyr,” she said quietly. “Let me.” He moved aside.
She rested her hands over Poyut’s stomach and bowed her head.
For a long minute he watched them, desperately, until Poyut’s eyebrows flinched together and with a pained exhale, she opened her eyes. They found Ethyr first.
“Ethyr,” she breathed with relief. Then she looked down at Gnaeus by her side. “Who are you?”
Gnaeus smiled with sweet benevolence. “Do not worry over it, little mouse.” Poyut’s eyebrows drew together, in confusion rather than pain, a deep comfort to see. Ethyr gripped her hand, drawing her attention back.
“How do you feel?”
Her hand went to her side, followed by her gaze. She stared in new confusion at the mostly-healed laceration, stitched shut with woody tendrils. “What happened? Lyrian hit me and I… I—”
“It’s okay. Everything is okay now.” Ethyr stood and held out his hand. “I’ll explain later.” Poyut let him help her up, dragging her sword with her and leaning on it.
“What is going on here?” Klara pushed through the priests who had gathered at the front of the temple at Lyrian’s screaming. She stopped short at the sight before her, the pool of blood Gnaeus knelt in, the mound of tangled roots in the road, the line of gods standing beyond it.
“Gnaeus?”
Gnaeus stood slowly. “High Priest.”
Klara looked between them all, lost for words.
Ethyr tilted his head back, looking over the temple, its age-worn but clean stone walls, the ivy climbing its sides, stretching up to the carved statues of the eight gods above its entrance.
The realization struck him with brutal force, a connection of knowledge from two lives.
He turned to the gods, striding forward, but stopped himself short. “You…” He choked on the anger and grief that knotted in his throat as a held-back sob.
Varuut stepped forward from the others. “Ethyr…”
“No!” he roared, and the word shook the mountain. “As long as they believe in you, you exist. A king…” He couldn’t breathe. “Their faith… for my family’s lives.”
“Ainder and I had nothing to do with that!” Varuut burst out. “Gallus didn’t even exist!” Gallus watched anxiously from the side, looking uncertainly between them.
“You did nothing to stop it! Nothing to stop this!” Ethyr screamed, gesturing to himself.
“We were going to tell you!”
“When!?”
Her mouth opened. Closed. The sadness twisting her face smoothed to guilt, and the confession of it soured deep in Ethyr’s stomach like curdled milk. He felt violated. He could barely speak the words.
He forced them out, strangled. “When I loved you?”
Varuut didn’t respond. None of them did, though a few at least had the dignity to look guilty. He turned to Kiaro still kneeling on the ground, hands on his knees, eyes down. But he raised them to meet Ethyr’s.
“Is this what you wanted?” he asked, words cutting, as though with them alone he could lacerate Kiaro deep enough to scar his soul.
“No.” Kiaro’s soft gaze on him was agony. “None of this is what I wanted. But it was the only way they agreed to bring you back.”
“Ethyr…?” Poyut hesitantly interjected. She had knelt to one knee, he didn’t know whether from reverence to the gods or weakness from her injury.
She watched him with concern. The priests who had braved stepping out of the temple once Klara was there were also on the ground, prostrating themselves before the gods.
The sight was disgusting. Mortals venerating what they alone allowed to exist. It would be like Ethyr expecting the trees to bend and bow to him. But none of the gods paid them any mind. They watched Ethyr with uncertainty, shame, or steeled resolve.
They were only faces. There was nothing of them that was a part of Ethyr; light’s warmth, air’s grace, earth’s steadiness, sea’s resilience, crystal’s tenacity, death’s calm. Darkness’s sweet severity. Where they once bloomed vivid inside him was only a hollow chasm.
He closed his eyes, turning his head away from the gods’ stares.
He let anger replace sorrow, let it take root and grow.
It thrummed inside him, choking out every emotion but fury.
From within his human body it spread to the chords of life that veined the earth below his feet.
It embedded beneath the foundation of the temple, the foundation of every foolish human’s faith in their worthless gods, and there it sprouted.
His wrath unfolded, bursting forth from itself.
Thick roots cracked the millennia-old stone floor, an expanding trunk crumbled painted walls, stretching branches burst through the ceiling and toppled the austere statues of the gods.
He watched in the sparse light of a crescent moon as the last wall fell, replaced by a trunk nearly as wide as the temple and a canopy as tall as the top of the waterfall.
The few straggler priests still inside scrambled out, panicked, and the drove of them watched in helpless shock as their home, their life, the center of their faith, was demolished to rubble around a tree larger than the temple had ever been.
The gods didn’t move.
Ethyr whipped towards them, their lack of reaction infuriating him more. “You’re not going to stop me?” he snarled. “You’re not going to tear my heart out?! Isn’t that what you want? What your humans want?”
They did not respond. He grit his teeth and strode to Catocus, forcing the god’s hand to his chest. “Cadoc? You won’t do it?”
Catocus watched him with pained resolve.
Ethyr stepped back, eyes stinging. “What did I do to deserve this?” he cried. “This existence? You won’t even free me of this?!”
“Ethyr, what is going on?” Poyut asked, her fearful gaze locked on the enormous tree. The terror in her eyes tempered his anger. The civilized gods were not worth the energy it took to spit, let alone this madness. He returned to Poyut’s side to help her stand.
“Can you walk?” he asked her. She nodded, still watching him in concerned expectation of an answer.
“Come on.” He helped her down the road. The gods split, stepping apart to allow them through.
He did not cast them a single glance. They could continue their repugnant existence if they wanted. He’d have no part in it.
Guards who had rushed to the top of the mountain at the rumbling stood in the road as well, looking at the chaos, looking around for Lyrian.
“Lyrian is dead,” Ethyr told them. “Klara is the new advisor. Speak to her.”
They looked between each other in baffled uncertainty, but did nothing to stop Ethyr and Poyut from walking past.
“The gods did kill him, then?” Poyut asked, arm around his shoulders as she leaned on him to stumble forward. “They protected you?”
“Yes,” was all Ethyr said.