Chapter 27 #2
On and on the gods went. Twenty of them in total, a family who stretched their powers wide.
And him. Elric. Standing there staring down the long lines at the very last man who was at the head of all thrones.
“Who is that?” Jessamine asked, her voice breaking through the nerves that churned in his belly.
“The Warrior King himself,” Elric muttered.
The fatherly figure to all of them sat on a throne made entirely of skulls.
Each one of them were kings who had denied him fealty, warriors who had not bested him in battle.
Snakes slithered through the eye holes of the skulls, twisted through the labyrinth that contained them.
And the Warrior King himself was fully in armor, even the helm, which had protected him for ages.
He clutched a spear in one hand and a sword in the other. Always ready for a battle.
The door behind them opened, and Elric felt the first blast of pain. Because now she was going to see his greatest failure.
They both turned to see him walk through the front door.
Elric when he was young and brash and thought too highly of himself.
He had longer hair and a nose that was far more hawkish, and he’d chosen a visage that made him taller.
More muscular. But it was still him. Still all dark magic and shadows and madness through and through.
“Is that you?” Jessamine asked as she watched this younger version of himself strut through the hall to a throne made of shadows.
“It is,” Elric said.
The memory burst into movement once more. The Crone leaned forward, her fingers toying through the hair of one of her priestesses. “There must be a prophecy announced. There are too many humans deciding not to worship.”
“We will send a plague,” came a voice from far down the hall. Elric didn’t need to look to know it was the Blighted One. He was always covered in boils and oozing sickness.
“Who would worship that?” Jessamine hissed.
“He takes illness away and onto himself,” Elric replied. “Or at least, that is what people believed. He did not. But the gods’ powers are all a lie in some sense.”
His siblings continued to argue while the younger version of him merely lounged on his throne until finally, he heard himself make the stupidest declaration that he could have.
“Why don’t we decide not to punish the humans for not worshipping us, and instead, give them a reason to actually worship? ”
Sudden silence.
Everyone stared at him, and even he cringed to watch his younger self. How could he have been so foolish? To think that he could convince them to actually be gods? They didn’t want that.
“Why are they all staring at you?” Jessamine asked. She walked down the memory without fear to stand beside who he had once been. He admired that. Because even now, trailing after her, he was terrified of their eyes on him.
Clearing his throat, he paused the memory. “Because they did not want to be gods. They wanted blind loyalty and the barest of effort to give any of these people just a hint of magic. Humans were beneath them, even though we were all… once human.”
“I thought you were something else?”
“In a sense. Not all humans could survive what we did to become what we were.” He flicked his hand in the air, allowing the memory to continue. “Power-hungry gods and goddesses are unlikely to share that power.”
The Warrior King rose from his throne, his gauntleted hands curling around the staff. “Deathless One,” his eldest brother murmured. “Stand before me.”
Even now, he remembered feeling so confident. He watched himself saunter up to stand before the Warrior King, before all the other gods, to give the most powerful of them all a mocking bow.
“You wish us to be gods?” the Warrior King said.
“The humans have not seen true godly power in a long time,” Elric murmured in unison with himself. “All we do is punish them. Perhaps we should gift them all with something to remind them why they worship us in the first place.”
Jessamine looked back at him. “It’s not a bad suggestion.”
“It was not,” Elric agreed. “But they did not care to rule like that. The gods here, the ones you see surrounding you? All of them wanted to hoard their power, and they certainly didn’t want their worshippers to have it.
They would give people only an ounce of attention and expect them to fall onto their knees and thank them for it. ”
And here it was. The worst part of the memory.
The Warrior King himself strode down the hall to stand in front of Elric.
Then he reached out his hand, placed it on the side of Elric’s neck like he was going to be kind and thank him for his thoughts.
Instead, that hand then grabbed on to his throat with a pressure that immediately made Elric’s face red.
Jessamine hissed out a breath as the Warrior King spoke.
“You stupid boy. They are beneath us. You want to give them more? Like your little witches who run around and cause problems for the rest of us? Is that what you want? You spoil the gifts that you were given, handing them over to unworthy creatures who should be groveling at your feet. We are too powerful to ever give them what they want. Do you hear me?”
And still, Elric argued for them. “They deserve more than to grovel.”
“They deserve to tremble at my feet and thank me when I spit on them,” the Warrior King snarled.
His eyes glowed red beneath that helmet.
“We fought for this power. We earned it. They never would have survived the spell that gave us this. Never forget, Deathless One, that you were created by desperate women while the rest of us were worshipped from the beginning. We were born from the desires and dreams of thousands.”
With the barest of movements, the Warrior King snapped Elric’s neck.
Jessamine cried out. She even lunged forward, the brave and stupid woman that she was.
She tried to grab for him, but the memory fell through her hands as he lay there on the floor, his neck at an odd angle while he gasped for breath.
He watched himself claw at his throat, his hands turning into darkened claws that rent tears through his flesh as he tried and failed to stop himself from dying.
The Warrior King tilted his head back and breathed in the scent of fear that permeated the room. “Ah.” The old god drew out the sound of pleasure. “I do so love killing him.”
He strode back to his throne as Elric’s younger self stopped moving entirely. He just… died. Right there on the floor in front of them. Without even a whisper of a fight.
Jessamine fell onto her hands and knees beside the memory of him, shock stilling her tongue until she finally stammered. “Why? Why would you let them do this to you?”
He knelt on the other side of his body, tilting his head as he looked down at himself. “Because that was who I was. The Deathless One. They killed me hundreds of times, Jessamine. But I always came back.”
She seemed to struggle with something, some inner argument, until she finally blurted out, “Why would you show me any of this? What is this secret of the gods that you want me to know?”
“That we did not care for humans,” he replied, staring down at his own body. “And that I fear my destiny is to become them.”