Chapter 49 #2
“This is the part of the tale that few remember, now,” Acaeja said.
“Nyaxia was merely a minor god before she married Alarus. She ascended to major divinity by consuming the heart he left behind. But this was no easy transition. Nyaxia had been tortured by her cousins while in captivity. Her arrival in the land of mortals was a violent one, and she did not know if she could return to the divine realm without being captured by the White Pantheon. In this weakened state, she was given shelter and protection by what is now the House of Blood. The king, Thastias, was kind to Nyaxia when she needed it most. He ordered a temple to be built for her right alongside his castle, upon which his people would lavish in gifts and prayers. This sanctuary became, for a time, Nyaxia’s home. ”
These images played out across the wings—a great gold building rising beside the Bloodborn palace, then Nyaxia upon a throne within it, surrounded by offerings. I saw the face of a handsome king, fair-haired, with an elegant face that looked so very familiar.
“Nyaxia regained her strength and solidified her power over the infant world she had created. She gave her gifts to the Houses of Shadow and Night, and still, the House of Blood waited for a power that month after month, year after year, did not materialize, despite Nyaxia’s promises.
“King Thastias eventually grew bitter and angry. Nyaxia had now largely fled to the divine realm, confident in her own strength. And the House of Blood’s rivals, arrogant with their own new powers, were making threats to his kingdom.
But while caring for Nyaxia in her weakest state, King Thastias had seen the blood upon her face.
He learned that her power had come from consuming the flesh of her husband.
He became the first mortal to understand a very dangerous secret: the power that lay within the body of a god.
If Nyaxia would not give his people a gift—a gift, he believed, they deserved far more than his vampiric brethren—he knew how he could take it. ”
I saw that handsome king fall back into the shadows, on his knees in a dark temple, speaking to a figure that remained shrouded in fog.
“And so, King Thastias decided he would betray Nyaxia. He would turn her temple into a cage, stocked with mystical shackles that would hold even a goddess at the height of her power. And when Nyaxia was expecting it least, returning to a place she had always considered safe, he would imprison her and use her body as a source of his own divine strength.”
The dreamlike images across Acaeja’s wings grew darker now.
I saw Nyaxia, beaten in the great temple; saw her dragged across the floor and shackled to the wall with cuffs of glowing silver.
An image of her, screaming in rage and pain, as faceless Bloodborn sliced her body, holding cups to catch the blood, flitted through the mists.
The cruel end that Thastias had planned for Nyaxia—to be harvested like a resource, and nothing more.
{An abomination,} Zefiah whispered. And I couldn’t disagree. For all that I hated Nyaxia, it was such a torturous fate. A fate no better than the prisoners I had seen locked up for meat or the people the Shadowborn had imprisoned as weapons.
“But that’s impossible,” I said. “No mortal can do that to a god.”
“It would have been very difficult,” Acaeja said.
“But not impossible. King Thastias had a collaborator in the White Pantheon. A god who was giving their own power to make this a reality. The gods could not directly act against each other, especially not in the immediate aftermath of their betrayal of Alarus. Thus, a smarter path to use her own followers against her.”
“Which god?”
“The traitor kept their secret carefully. Even the White Pantheon never knew.”
“But you do,” I said pointedly.
Her eyes were steady. “I see only what fate does. If you ask me if I have my suspicions, there are many gods who would be interested in killing Nyaxia. Atroxus was enraged by her actions, and he had already attempted to have her killed once. Srana hungered for power and would have been able to create the technology to build the shackles. Shiket saw Nyaxia’s betrayal as a great injustice and the existence of vampires a disgrace.
Any of them could have moved to destroy her.
“King Thastias continued his work in secret. He outfitted the very temple that he had once used to help Nyaxia at her weakest to become her cage. He did it all with great discretion. But he was not secretive enough. In a moment of uncertainty, one of his closest advisors told Nyaxia of these plans.”
Silhouettes danced across Acaeja’s wings. Silver chains in a fiery forge. Workers moving under the quiet light of near dawn. Then, at last, a small figure bowing before Nyaxia, and her rage exploding across the heavens like the collision of stars.
“Nyaxia was furious,” Acaeja said. “Worse, she was hurt. She had genuinely trusted Thastias, and the Bloodborn were her favorite followers. The depths of this betrayal only made her pain sharper.”
In Acaeja’s wings, I saw the Bloodborn king bleeding against the wall, chained there as he had once planned to do to Nyaxia.
“Nyaxia told Thastias that if he was so desperate for a gift, then she would at last give his people one. They would be given the gift of blood that betrayed them over time, leaching away their sanity, offering them power only at the expense of their own lives. A curse that would kill them slowly, and with no dignity, so that they might experience a fraction of what he had planned to do to her. And only then, after inflicting this curse upon the House of Blood, did she kill him.”
Blood bloomed over Acaeja’s wings, blotting out the shadows of the past, as the wings faded to misty darkness.
“Thus, this is how the Bloodborn curse came to be,” she said. “Many gods are proud of their vengeance. But Nyaxia wiped this incident from history and never spoke of it again.”
“She was ashamed,” I murmured. I didn’t quite mean to speak aloud—but I felt it in my own heart. The shame Nyaxia must have felt at allowing herself to be deceived, and worse, for allowing herself to trust at all.
I thought of Septimus, and wondered if he felt this way, too.
Acaeja blinked, bright eyes bearing into my heart.
“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully. “But there is another reason. Nyaxia destroyed what she could of the cage intended for her. But she could not eliminate it completely, and she knew that it would always be a danger. So she killed every soul that ever worked on the project, then thrust the rest of Bloodborn society into a curse so cruel and suffering so great that they could focus on nothing but survival for the next two thousand years.”
“Until now,” I said. “When you finally decide to leverage this information.”
I couldn’t quite keep the accusation from my voice.
Acaeja laughed softly. “You are a distrustful soul. But perhaps that makes you an intelligent one. Even I did not see the full tale of this schism as it was happening two millennia ago. But you are correct. I have waited until the right time to share it. Fate is a web. There are many threads that must line up to bring us to where we stand tonight.”
Septimus had said so, too. But even he hadn’t expected the twists this one would take.
“So you are telling me that if I want to kill Nyaxia, I need to use this . . . cage,” I said.