Prologue II
“Every god is a cursed being, obédi.
You must never strive to become one.”
Ursla had been warned as a child. Yes, she’d been a child once, born to a people whose magic was boundless if they wanted it to be, but discipline and selflessness had tempered it. They could have become weapons but had simply chosen not to.
To become a god is to be possessed entirely of hunger.
This clever, dangerous girl spent lifetimes in search of a world where the ancient wisdom was a lie.
It took centuries, sure, but the witch, knowing more of what Men were than what they tasted like, was meticulous in her work.
She took the sea as her arena. It was too vast for Merrine to ever fully control—whatever that meant—and experience told her it was the one realm where Men in their natural curiosity would never stumble upon her. Mystique was key to godhood.
For a hundredth time, she had replaced living gods as a being who could not only give men immortal life but also a reason beyond worship to exist. And while her influence grew, the Old Gods of Ixia continued to devour men, not realizing the souls of those they’d killed returned to Ursla, increasing her power.
She had learned some time ago that indeed the living would always die, and if death was her power, it was infinite.
It was not a fight the Old Gods could win.
But there are pitfalls to being a self-made god.
As ever, Ursla’s ambition required sacrifice.
Being not naturally of the sea, the more she acclimated to life in the water, the less time she could spend outside it.
Soon there were no more forest strolls, no meetings in the mountains, no pipe tobacco, no cooked food.
No human joys. And quickly did the men turned Urslings require societies and structures, purpose, of their own.
She’d never been fond of the responsibility of power, and so began to groom her Ursling Peris, a promising young man from a scholarly family who’d been sold into slavery to pay his father’s debt and chosen the deep over whatever that future held.
She surrounded him with drowned nobility, Urslings whose pasts contained some knowledge of governance or bureaucracy.
Peris, she knew, would make a fine leader of the creatures she’d created.
She looked forward to their new art and culture.
For now, though, she’d grown bored. Curious.
She’d discovered that it wasn’t necessary for her to hunt her prey.
The same magic that allowed her to occupy the bodies of her followers, which she mostly used to once again experience the joys of living on land, could also be used to bring prey to her.
Faith in Ursla, the seeking of the favor of the God of Death, meant it was a blessing to have her visit your body.
Peris knew this. He’d seen her most devout walking into the sea at her whim, certain that they were meant for their new life and not merely to sate her craving.
Merrine, the Old God of the Sea, was the pettiest of them all. The Kept chronicled as much. She was the last to flounce off into the ether after her brethren quit their realms.
There was a regality to whatever form she took.
She would have outlasted the others whether or not the witch had interloped.
Perhaps it was this supremacy that had made her Ursla’s target.
The witch had, after all, set up shop in Merrine’s own territory—a direct challenge that required a direct response.
Merrine alone had the keenest understanding of Chaos and had first sought the sea because it was the seat of the world. Where went water went all life. And she would not allow Ursla to have both that and death.
The truth splits here, into the church and the faithful: the Kept and the Obéid.
It is the Kept’s position that Ursla was of the pantheon of Old Gods, not their usurper, and that the divine spats were familial in nature.
The Obéid are Ursla’s devout and maintain that Ursla’s superiority made her a target, that Merrine had gone to Chaos and demanded the Obé’s abominations be adopted into the natural order.
“I will create a kingdom of the sea to relieve you of the burden of ruling them. Only the blood of my blood will sit the throne, and they will be bound to honor you as I do,” she offered.
“You possess no heirs,” Chaos allegedly replied. “Ursla, the last of you remaining gods, in this moment has more claim to a throne than does the fruit you’ve yet to bear.”
Merrine claimed to know the Ursling Peris, who knew the Obé better than anyone and would do anything to protect the world from her hunger.
With him, Merrine would produce an heir, but not without purpose.
The bloodline this sea god and Ursling bastard would produce was Mer beings created of life, not from death.
Not from the witch.
And the Obéid’s truth was the real one. If only they’d been better armed.