Chapter Forty-Four
How clever of the gods to weave devotion so tightly into the hearts of mortals that they would kneel, bleed, even die for them.
Mortals raise their prayers to the heavens, whispering their hopes to deities they believe care deeply, foolishly, for their joy and well-being. Perhaps, just perhaps, a rare few do.
But one must wonder…
Who first spun the tale that the gods are the virtuous ones?
Tabitha Wysteria
Vera halted, her gaze drifting downward to the tip of her weathered black leather boot. A smile curled at her lips as she beheld the delicate blanket of snow gathered upon it. At last.
She lifted her head, and her smile unfurled further at the sight before her. A forest veiled in white, no longer a domain of the Fae. No, this woodland, cloaked in frost and silence, now belonged to the Kingdom of Ice.
They had arrived.
And soon, so very soon, she would walk the halls of the ice castle with the royal family bowed beneath her will, their pleas for mercy breaking like glass upon her feet.
She took a step forward, only to stagger, brought low by a sudden, vicious pain that clawed through her skull with such force it nearly cast her to the frozen earth.
One of the witches beside her reached out instinctively, but Vera struck the woman aside with a growl, breath hissing through clenched teeth.
She pressed a hand to the side of her head where the agony still pulsed like a living thing. It had been happening more frequently of late. This splitting pain, this echo of resistance. She knew precisely what it was. But she would not yield.
‘The only way you’re escaping this cage,’ she whispered to the true Vera, the one imprisoned deep within the recesses of her own mind, where the goddess now reigned supreme, ‘is through death.’
When a god took possession of a willing vessel, the soul would vanish peacefully, dissolving into nothingness.
But when the body resisted, when the soul fought back, the god would push it aside, force it into the shadows, locking it in a corner of its own mind…
helpless, voiceless, and doomed to watch.
Vera almost relished the thought. Somewhere within her, the real Vera still lingered. Trapped. Screaming. Clawing for freedom.
And she would never be free.
‘There is a village not far,’ one of the witches reported, her voice quiet beneath the hush of falling snow.
Vera gave a single nod and waved her hand, signalling the army forward with a flick of her fingers.
She found her thoughts drifting, if only for a breath, to her brother. It had been far too long since she’d last seen him, and longer still since she’d had the pleasure of breaking him, bit by bit. She almost missed the sound of his suffering.
Long ago, when she had walked the realms as the goddess Eris, she had dwelled in the Underworld alongside Thanatos. Her brother. Her betrayer. And now, oh, now he would pay. They all would. She would bring ruin down upon their heads until the world trembled beneath her wrath.
As they crested the final hill and the village came into view, Vera’s lips curled into a delighted smile at the distant wail of terror.
Wolverian women gathered their young and the elderly, desperate hands clutching at whatever hope remained as they fled, racing through thick drifts of snow, away from the encroaching nightmare.
‘What do we do?’ a witch asked, her voice edged with anticipation.
‘Burn it down,’ Vera replied, her tone silken with cruelty.
And so her army surged forward, magic blazing in their palms. Flames erupted, devouring timber and stone alike. Screams tore through the air like wind through dead leaves as villagers scrambled to escape the inferno that had once been their home.
Vera watched it all in silence, as if observing a masterpiece in motion.
An elderly wolverian was dragged forward, his steps stumbling, though dignity still clung to his frame like frost to stone. He was one of the few who had remained behind, no doubt to shield the women and children in their desperate flight towards freedom.
The warlock who had seized him gave a cruel shove, forcing the old man down onto his knees before Vera. She raised a brow, her interest faint but piqued.
‘I beg of ya,’ the man said, voice roughened by age and despair. ‘Da men left. This land has endured enough. There are only women and children…’
Vera did not reply. Instead, she regarded her nails with idle detachment, as though the plea had come from a gnat rather than a grieving soul.
‘Please…’ he whispered again, tears carving silent paths through the weathered lines of his face.
She looked down at him, eyes gleaming with a quiet, perverse intrigue.
His garments were thick and woven in the pale hues of snow—white, grey, and blue—crafted for survival in the frozen wilds.
Silver hair, carefully braided in the style of his people, hinted at a past lined with honour, perhaps even renown.
He had likely been a formidable warrior once.
A scream tore through the air behind him.
He turned instinctively, and Vera’s gaze followed, amusement blooming in her expression like a bloodstain on silk.
Mothers were being driven back into huts, now collapsing under bursts of warlock magic.
The screams of the trapped grew more desperate, then abruptly fell into silence.
Vera’s eyes narrowed upon one figure. A woman on her knees, cradling a bundle in her arms, weeping with every shred of soul she had left. She begged, brokenly, for her child’s life.
Vera’s lips curled into a delicate smile the moment the woman dropped to the ground. Her sobs, and the infant’s cries, faded into nothing.
Silence reigned. And Vera, goddess cloaked in mortal flesh, savoured it.
‘Da gods will punish ya for this,’ the old man spat, defiance trembling in his voice as it hit the snow at Vera’s feet.
She stared down at him, then gracefully crouched until their eyes met. Her lips curled into a mirthless smile. ‘You really are a fool, old man,’ she said, pressing her fingers lightly to his brow before giving him a cruel shove. He toppled backwards, his pale blue eyes wide with alarm.
‘Pray to your gods all you like,’ she added, rising with effortless elegance. ‘They won’t lift a finger to save you.’ She turned to the witch beside her, her expression already laced with disinterest. ‘Kill him,’ she ordered. ‘And the rest. Wipe out this wretched village.’
The witch hesitated. ‘But…’
Vera paused mid-step, her head tilting slightly as her gaze fixed upon the one who had dared interrupt. ‘Yes?’ she drawled.
‘Do we have to kill them?’ the witch asked, her voice quivering, purple eyes wide with unease. ‘They’re just women and children. It doesn’t feel… right.’
Vera arched a brow. ‘And did Hagan spare the old?’ she asked, her voice now silk over ice. ‘Did he not butcher every soul he crossed?’
‘Well… I suppose, but—’
‘Oh, I grow tired of this.’ Vera's fingers twitched, a subtle gesture that snapped the witch’s neck with an audible crack. The woman collapsed into the snow like a marionette with its strings cut, her body already half-covered in frost.
The old man screamed, stricken by the sight, but remained frozen in place by the warlock gripping his shoulders.
Vera licked her lips slowly and turned to the warlock, not once glancing at the lifeless body by her feet, as though the girl had never existed at all.
‘Be done with it,’ she muttered.
The warlock inclined his head in silent obedience.
A thick plume of green smoke curled from his fingertips, sinister and serpentine, before he pressed them to the old man’s temple.
The wolverian elder struggled, limbs flailing, heels scraping against the snow-packed ground, but the warlock’s grip remained ironclad.
The smoke slithered into the man’s ears and nostrils, winding its way into him like a venomous breath. His coughing turned to choking; his resistance faltered and then ceased altogether. His body fell still.
Lifeless.
‘Ensure no one dares defy me again,’ Vera commanded, her voice cold as the snow beneath her boots.
She stepped over the fallen bodies without sparing them a glance.
‘Hang them from the trees. When the wolverian men return, let the first thing they see be the corpses of their kin. Their parents. Their wives. Their children.’
Her laughter echoed through the forest like a fractured hymn, trailing behind her as she strode forward into the chaos she had so gleefully wrought.