Chapter 54
Winds thrashed against us, violent and strong.
Beyond the war cries and steel, branches cracked in the grove, tapestries lashing each house sigil, and the stones groaned around us. These winds were not calls of the seas or beckons to the mountains. Not the winds that children chased through tall fields, and these winds did not come with frost.
Warmth bled through the air, weeping, and settled sorrow over me.
I nearly fell to my knees.
I had not withstood such a violent gale since the Goddess of Light had died. I remembered a brilliant star chase across the sky, fade, and disappear. The winds followed that night, threatening the stones and mortar of the castle.
We now stood—gods, man, and Shadow—on a memorial. Tomes would be written of this day. Statues would be carved, women would kneel upon these stones in remembrance, and songs would be sung either to the king or the gods, I had yet to know.
This was mourning. This was requiem.
This was the Goddess of Wind, and Andrael was never to be the same.
As the air beat against me, my eyes drifted from the starless night to the guillotine where Gwendolyne once knelt. In a kick of air, her ivory gown caught the breeze and drifted away. All that remained upon the stage were the men and women who had perished before my father’s tyranny, sentenced to the afterlife.
Have we lost, Deceit? My chest bowed with the weight of my heart. Is this the end?
I twisted around to behold the battle around me.
Air tasted like iron, cries sounded like a final chorus, and the magic of this place was suffocated beneath the crown. Warping at the edges, my sight drew out each of those chosen by the gods. They all struggled for life.
We no longer fought to save the prisoners. We fought to merely live.
What will you do, child? A joint cracked beneath my skull, and Deceit stalked behind my eyes. What will you do to save our people?
A Volant chased the air, using the goddess’s wind, but gilded arms reached above the turmoil and threw her back down. A blade followed. Taison grabbed a soldier’s face and plunged it against the fountain’s rim, concaving the skull.
Fire burned in the hands of a Feytra, but his hands were cut off at the wrist.
You know the castle, Rhoswen. You know each bone and vein, revealed and hidden. His voice held certainty I wish it did not—I was no leader, no warrior in crested armor. You must take them from this place. If you do nothing, they will meet the same fate as those who are now greeted by the Divine.
Gold reflected the bloodmoon, soldiers bathing in the slaughter. Men, wrapped in black veins, moved with animalistic manners. Dark magic was heavy in the air.
We were losing. We needed to escape.
In the distance, there stood the impassable gate dividing us from the city. I scavenged for a memory, digging into the depths of myself, hoping Davina might hold the key—anything of significance that might deliver the Chosen from the crown.
My thoughts were snapped in half.
A body flung into me. I yelped, wondering if I’d ever rise again. Knees and elbows scraping stones, I struggled on the ground, trying to scramble to my feet, but a man spun me over. He took my wrists and manically threw my body up and down.
“Help me,” he cried.
“Gods, save me!” A bloodied tear fell down his face.
He convulsed above me with green skin. Boils festered like sweltering water, and his hair began to dissolve. Bones cracked in his hands, joints distending, and he held onto me until he could not. Cheeks sunken and eyes rolled back, the man delivered a final blow, released me, and fell over. Dead. His face decomposed outside the laws of time.
A final thread of air glided over my face, odorous and rotten.
The god spoke as the man’s eyes shriveled, Long it has been since his touch has haunted these lands. Times of the old churches, where holy waters failed to rinse disease from man. The god of such came to reign, sickness over health. He put an end to suffering, with suffering itself.
The God of Plague.
“Rhoswen!” My name swelled in the bloody babel.
“You need to leave. Get out of here!”
A strong hand reached for me, and Jarl Thranen of Shalimier peeled me from the ground. His bronze circlet was adorned with sapphire gems and splashes of red that saturated his yellow braids.
End him, the god licked.
I held my sword, standing beside one I was sworn to kill, but my arm could not lunge. I knew this man. I had met his family. He welcomed me to his table, and I had thrown bread with his children. I couldn’t do it.
Deceit’s slow breath was a waft of displeasure beneath my skin.
The jarl’s glare was fierce, his eyes watching for an enemy at every turn.
“You need to get out of here, now.”
“But, they have closed the gates,” I yelled.
Thranen clasped my shoulder.
“Rhoswen, get into the castle. There are soldiers protecting the entrance, and the crown will see you safe into the morrow. Not one of these damned god servers will make it past the king’s men.” He shoved me towards the castle.
“Go now, down the aisle of pillars.”
With a longsword in hand, Thranen threw himself back into the butchery.
Here, I knew, my last hope was perhaps the mask of my own face.
I tucked low, running towards the courtyard’s passageway, down the row of columns and beneath the stone awnings. A dying man fell before my feet, gasping his final breaths. I leaped over him and scraped around the corner, nearing the castle’s entrance.
Pillars traded for soldiers.
A hallway of gold overwhelmed me, the king’s men lining the perimeter. I threaded through until a gauntlet held me back at the collar. A blade was set at my neck.
The gatekeeper began.
“To what right—?”
“I am an advisor for Lord Alistair Raven. Let me through at once.”
This soldier stood one of many—beyond twenty, untroubled by the war raging.
We were vastly outnumbered.
Through the window, many others held each other in comfort and safety—men, women, children—as my brothers and sisters were dying. Nearly vanquished.
“Let me through!” I shouted as loudly as I could.
“Or should you like to have my blood on your hands? Lord Alistair is not one known for his forgiveness.”
My threat broke past the soldier’s visor and left him in a quiver—tales of Alistair’s mercilessness persevered.
The blade drew from me, and the guard set himself at the side.
“Get inside. Hurry.”
I tore from my place, throwing myself into the castle.
Leaping over children, weaving past the lords and ladies, I charged from one passageway to another. Never breaking my speed, never granting anyone a second look, I stormed through the castle and neared the postern chamber where the lever to the courtyard’s gate was housed.
“Rhoswen,” my name was sung at my back. I glanced behind. A child walked towards me with eyes drenched in black.
“Where do you run to, child?”
The tune was haunting. Torchlight flickered disturbing silhouettes.
My feet gained, leaving the torment of Shadows at my back.
Deceit crouched in my mind, anchoring himself in me.
A cold touch grazed my shoulder. I shot my glare to my side like I could see the unseeable.
“Do not touch me,” I uttered to the air.
“I am sworn to the gods this night.”
I cannot say the cold hand left me, but there was no room in my mind to focus on the sensation. At the end of an old passageway, I heaved a breath of stale air, yanked an iron knob, and opened the door to the chamber.
“Oi! What are you doing here?” A guard asked. There were five of them—three sat upon barrels with backs against the wall, and two played a game of knives at an old, wooden table.
“You aren’t supposed to be in this part of the castle.” The guard pried a knife from the table and began to flick old food from his teeth.
In the corner, there was a spiral staircase that led to the courtyard’s battlement. Outside the iron-barred window, the battle raged. Below the window was the lever. This device of timber and iron—my people’s final attempt at escape.
“Oh, come now, George,” another said as he lifted from the barrel.
“It ain’t often we get such a pretty little thing over here.”
I flexed my hand around the hilt of my blade.
“You would be wise to leave,” I spoke calmly, my voice slick.
All the men laughed, gargles rebounded in the gate room.
“Feisty, ain’t she?” Another rose and licked his lips.
“Tell yee what, you leave now, and we’ll let you walk unharmed. But, if you stay…” His words trailed off as his eyes roved over me, blood-stained and all.
Ready for a fight? I asked the god, hatred narrowing my eyes.
Deceit’s cackle echoed as I thought of another.
A guard stood to his feet with a scrunching face, something of uncertainty playing with his brow. The others continued to prowl towards me, and my skin began to burn, muscles fortifying.
But then… Something happened.
The man behind the others—he fell to the ground like an anchor to the sands. His face pelted the floorboards.
“Gods, Pete,” one gnashed to his back and laughed.
“Too much mead, eh?”
Pete writhed on the ground, his limbs squirming and neck cracking.
Laughter died.
“What in the—”
Pete flipped onto his back—spine arched, fingers splayed, yells breaking in his throat. His voice altered, turning into a vehement screech. It did not sound of man. I knew that screech, but only within the laurel wood.
“Sands,” one hushed as we all watched.
I did nothing. The men did nothing. We all merely stood.
Like a tremor, Pete’s skin burned black, beginning at his eyes and rippling outward with twisting limbs. His eyes were lost to the sinking paleness, his pupils turned white. Bones cracked, and acid spewed from his mouth.
Everything fell silent. Everything fell still.
Suddenly, slowly, he began to rise.
Thin, lanky, and near decay, his neck twisted. Long nails grew from his nailbeds.
“Pete, what are—” The guard was silenced by the unseen.
Each man fell, and they all underwent a violent contortion.
“Where do you run, child?” The haunting tune surrounded me from five mouths, each guard crooning in unison. The men stood to their feet, their spines lopsided and limbs gangly. All milky eyes were on me.
Shadows had come. Shadows had taken these men’s lives.
Shadows had resurrected corpses of the night.
Deceit tensed within me, and his magic melted into my mind.
There was a thought I had, feeble and uncertain, but Deceit grabbed it and demanded, Do it, child.
But, Deceit, last time—
I will not let you fall. Do it, the god commanded. Become the beast.
I did not think of many. I only thought of one other. The god in my head.
Pulled together by fate, the god and I were intermingled in ways I could never explain to another. Deceit had seen life through my eyes and strung through my thoughts and beliefs for over a decade. I had lived my life listening to the deity gripe in his disdain for mankind, all while his gifts made me unlike any other in this realm.
We, together, were the woman I was.
Rhoswen Fallen did not exist without her savior and curse, the God of Deception.
This would be the manifestation of our lives. The convergence of body and mind.
It all happened in an instant.
My skin began to boil, though, not as it often had. This was not a maiming of skin from crown to feet, but a disfigurement of what already was. My legs burned, and my kneecaps cracked, hinging backwards. At my feet, ten nails thicken and curl like talons. My sword fell as Deceit’s fingers lengthened and hooked with sharp nails. Temples throbbing, two horns split from my skull. Deceit’s tail scraped down my spine, pierced through my gown, and twisted in the air.
I was Rhoswen. I was Deception.
The men, the corpses, stepped back like felines and hissed at the creation I was.
“This night will not sew triumph for the gods, Davina,” a corpse uttered—Deceit’s tail flicked at my back.
“You will—”
Deceit’s impatience rippled through me, and I lashed my tail before me. The sharp point carved past the distance and stabbed through the corpse’s mouth. A grin found me as I took my place beside the gods. The corpse gargled on its own blood, and, like a blade, Deceit’s tail cut the corpse at the neck, and it fell over motionless.
“No!” All shrieked.
“You have no stake in her fate, you damn creatures!” My tongue grazed over sharp teeth as Deceit spoke through my lips. Our voices interlocked as the god declared.
“You will fall from mankind, just as your creator had all those years ago.”
Creator? I asked, unsure.
An anger burned in the corpses, leaving no time for questions. Feet slamming the ground, the corpses hurled to the god and me with arms outstretched and curled fingers snatching the distance between.
With warped knees, I folded over myself and leaped upon the table. The corpses changed trajectory. I dove into the horde of obscene, led by the talons at my feet, and let Deceit’s whetted nails carve through their rotten flesh.
I left one blind. I left another with a cut down their face. Eight hands reached towards me, a mass of fingers tangling together. Taking my ankles, bony and leathery, the corpses threw me to the floorboards.
But my instincts—they were godly.
Palms-first, I struck the ground, but my fingers bent as my limbs coiled and spine screwed. Moving before I could think, the Beast of Deception was twisting through the air, and I was on my feet before impact settled.
His smile, that god’s lipless grin, struck my face.
My teeth showed, nostrils aflare, and eyes tight at the corners.
Puddles were slick on the floor, blood like ink beneath my curling toes.
A hiss was coarse against the stones, projected four times over as the children of Shadows stood before a god.
“Davina—”
I stomped forward.
“Do not speak to me!” It was odd how this long tongue filled my mouth.
“You do not speak to me. Not of my fate, not of my stake, not of the crown I will not take.” I reached out my arms, letting the chalky eyes see me as I was. “I am devoted to the gods.”
One corpse stood from the rest, breaking the pack and staring me down with eyes void of anything.
“You saw the vision, Davina.” The cut on its face bled black, and loose skin dangled from his cheek. The corpse’s voice burbled in the blood.
“You know what is to come.”
Deceit and I stepped nearer, ink covering our soles. Bodies and souls intertwined, we reached out to the corpse.
“I only saw what I was shown,” I said in my own voice.
“But, just as the God of Sight sees abundant paths, I believe the darkness does as well. And I believe, in a thousand different ends, you see the demise of your work. You see man rising up with the gods, the hallowed Divine at our backs.” I looked at the other lifeless creatures. “And I can foresee all of you wallowing in the sands of Oldurem for eternity.”
“And you will walk with us, lest you forget. You are chosen by gods, but marked by Shadow.” Blood flicked from its lips.
“You are tainted.”
My lungs breathed in, and Deceit’s scoff escaped.
“Lest you forget—” My chin tucked with vicious eyes as I hushed.
“I was cursed upon my birth. But I am your curse, for the gods took me as I was.”
“Until they learn you have been marked, Davina. Then what will become of you?”
The anger far surpassed a seedling. It was an ancient oak, roots twisting from the depths of my childhood and cracking through my bones.
I flicked Deceit’s tail, and the corpse grinned at my unease.
“They do not know, do they?” It asked, nodding towards the god that I was.
“He protects you, doesn’t he?” A disturbing grin seized its lips. It looked at the horns on my head.
“You do not know much of your god, do you?”
My sharp teeth gnashed apart from my say—Deceit gnashed.
“You do not know his place in their damned haven. Your god—”
My arms, my body, lunged forward beyond my control, and Deceit latched his talons around the corpse’s neck. A river of veins flexed upon Deceit’s hand and over the bulging knuckles.
Faint for a spell, I stumbled. Deceit hardened my muscles to my bones.
Stay vigilant, Rhoswen, he demanded with an edge to his tone.
My vision blurred—the god’s powers drained me. This weariness, the craving to fall over, I had suffered once before. The night the guild fell, Deceit had stolen Skye’s fears through my hands, fleeing the corpses in the laurel wood. I fainted in the god’s possession.
This was the cost of magic—the cost of a god ruling over my body.
The corpse’s neck was in my hand, but I could not make out anything apart from hazy shapes. Deceit tightened my grasp, the bones giving out, and the neck snapping in my hand. The god opened my grip. A distant thud followed.
The last three were odd silhouettes, surrounding the god and me.
You must garner control, Rhoswen, or my possession will strip you of conscience. Take control! End this now! Deceit forsworn the reins, and our hand fell to my side.
The corpses surged forward from all corners.
The chamber fell dark. My eyes closed. As the god slipped back into the void, a swell of life flooded back into my veins. He gnashed his teeth, hissing, rattling me, and I opened my eyes to see decaying limbs hysterical before me. Coming for me.
I grabbed a corpse’s hand and used its nails like a dagger—nails not so different than the gods. Plunging their nails beneath its jaw, I summoned a river of blood down its neck.
Crouching low, knees bent backwards, I twisted and stole another corpse with my tail. Shackling it at the waist, I damned it to the ground. I leaped upon it like a wolf, the nails at my feet slipping past its sternum and into its heart.
Then, there stood the final corpse.
It licked its lips.
“Your god is no stranger to—”
Deceit hurled me forward and possessed my hand to follow the budding vein at the corpse’s neck. Like candlewax to a hot blade, I slipped Deceit’s nail along it’s throat, and black blood spewed from the incision.
The lifeless waste fell to the ground.
It was only the god and I that remained standing—
Monster and maiden, god and man.
Deceit slithered back into the dark of my mind. I leaped over the bodies, and his knees cracked—mine knocked into place. Dagger nails were filed down, and my temples jolted where horns abruptly snapped back into my skull.
Midair, I became Rhoswen Fallen once more. Midair, a wave of dizziness collapsed me to the ground.
Get up, Deceit quaked in my mind. Save our people!
I lay there with the corpses, feeling like a corpse myself. The room darkened, and the chamber twisted in my vision. My muscles sloshed beneath my skin. Stomach churned in circles without relent.
Get up, now! Deceit bit again, his nails imbedding into my mind.
My palms pressed against the stones, slick with blood. I fumbled to my feet and thought of another. I thought of Alistair. It sent a tormented flutter in my heart, but I whisked it away and thought of his muscles. I thought of his arms catching the firelight before the hearth as we stood together. And I considered how his blade flew in his grasp, and how he lifted me with ease.
With fortified arms, I gripped the iron handle of the lever. Straining, I turned it. The portcullis groaned to life. The gate was lifting. Iron teeth began to tear from the ground, and ancient chains growled alongside the gate.
My mask—Alistair—fell from me for an instant in another pelt of dizziness. I delved into my mind, strengthening myself with thoughts of him, and reforged the mask.
“The gate is opening,” someone cried from the battlefield.
“Get to the gate!”
With a final, gut-wrenching heave, I latched the lever into place. And I fell.
I don’t remember the impact. I came to, propped upon my elbows, the realm spinning around me. Words were left muddled, colors extinguished, and sensations dampened. My eyes rolled back, but Deceit chained my gaze open.
The god articulated in godly decree, Get. Up.
I stumbled to my feet, consciousness slipping in and out from beneath me, leaving the ground unsteady and my legs wobbling. Each stair was a battle, each inch gained was a mountain. At the top of the stairs, an unexpected barrier stood before me—a wooden bar fixed over the outlet.
Deceit, I hushed with dizziness screwing the edges of my vision. Stand with me.
The god sprawled out, his nails scraping the veins in my arm. I stand with you, child. Always.
Hands within mine, Deceit possessed my reach to the wooden post. Together, we lifted it. Shoulders straining, the god and I groaned. We managed—a maiden and her savior lifted the wooden post, and it fell to the ground.
Deceit pulled himself back, safe in my mind. Go be with your people.
I leaned against the door for a breath, but my weight summoned the door to life. It opened, and I was thrown into the redlit night. Winds pelted against me, channeling from all directions and warping the battle in dust and torn banners.
Beneath me, the courtyard was of gold and red—soldiers and blood.
Everyone chased the path to the gate. Guildmembers were escaping. Soldiers were chasing. Arrows cut through the air towards the gate. Vera was below. She thrust her blade into a man’s stomach then made for the exit with the others.
Without grace, without ease, I climbed down the courtyard wall. My feet touched the ground, and the ground knew no mercy. Knocked time and again, I was fighting against the crowd to find Vera. To run away, leave this place behind, and stand in the uprising against the Torrance crown.
A man ran into me, and I was belted to the ground. No steel came, but stampeding feet surrounded me. I crawled to a row of vases, coughing and gasping at each impact. I stood beside the courtyard wall, but I did not see Vera.
“No!” A cry quaked the courtyard.
I knelt down beside the vases, hiding as best I could, my eyes pulled to the cry, and—
No.
Too many times this night, the touch of death surmounted life. Beside the brambles of thorns, Jarl Thranen was dragged down to his knees. His cries showered me in grief, but I could never understand the grief he now carried. Within his arms, arms sworn to protect his kin, the jarl’s son, Poe, lay in eternal rest.
“My son!” His weeping filled the courtyard, drowning out the turmoil of battle and leaving us with the consequence of such dark days.
“Come back to me,” he begged.
Agony unfolded. My eyes were torn open. It was as though I’d come up for air and choked on it all.
Soldiers became but brushes of gold on a canvas, and those—the broken who wept over the fallen—became the subjects.
A woman was glossed in tears. She cradled her daughter. The little girl wore a crown, fashioned from exquisite flowers outside these gardens. The mother held her daughter’s hand, so small, but the daughter did not hold her mother’s.
A man of the king wailed his wife’s name over us as she stumbled into his arms, arrows in her back.
“No, no,” he wept again and again. Her ribs no longer rose with the tide of her breath.
“I love you,” he cried.
Knelt beside a fallen Volant, a Feytra cradled his head. I nearly stepped to the Feytra, but I recoiled further back as a soldier rushed past the Feytra and cut her throat. Her blood covered the Volant’s tattooed crown.
My heart was carved out. I did not know how much more hollowing it could endure.
Everything changed in this moment. I heard the cries. I heard a hundred cries, breaking past the war between gods and man and reminding us where war brought us. In the end, we all stood either survivors or the fallen. And, in the end, we’d all mourn the same.
As I hid from the crowds, I began to wonder what it was all for.
If the gods were to triumph and leave Andrael in a bloodbath, would the realm’s fate be any different in the hands of Shadows?
Deceit watched through my eyes, still. Quiet.
Jarl Thranen rocked himself where he sat, cradling his son one last time.
Rhoswen, Deceit whispered. You must leave this place.
Gazing around me, Vera’s curls were still lost, and I did not doubt she had fled with the others. I hesitated to rise, to leave all these people without solace, but there was no solace I could give. The crowds were lessening, opening up, as the Chosen escaped.
My feet dragged me towards the gate, but only for a moment. I stopped before I had purpose in my steps.
He shone through the haze of those running past.
At the other edge of the courtyard, beside the pillars to the castle’s entrance, he was there—dark hairs tangled in warfare, eyes sharp as obsidian. His jaw was tense, carved like stone. My chest pulled tight, like a wound to salt. It wasn’t relief seeing him. I needed to leave, and I needed to leave him behind. But the sight of him, alive and fighting, clawed at me. The ache of my heart burned my lungs. This wanting, it…
It was agony.
Alistair’s eyes were locked onto his opponent.
I stepped again, nearing the gates, nearing my path to the rebellion, and to leave Alistair behind. To leave all of this behind. But then, there was another—
Keiran, server to the God of Plague. His hand reached out, tipping his toes nearer and nearer to Alistair from behind. In a trice, within my mind, I saw the man with green, boil-ridden flesh—the disintegrating hairs as decay found him before his final breath slipped from his lungs.
That… That would not be Alistair’s fate.
The Everlaides crash down, my soul flourishing.
It was all of me, everything I was, that twisted my heels against the stones and ran away from the gate and towards Alistair. I needed him. I needed him to dawn another day.
“Alistair!” I cried, my heart leaping from my chest.
He did not hear me, and Keiran took another step. I was swarmed by a fleeing crowd, thrown into bedlam. Stabbing elbows in each direction, my hand broke through the wall, and I wedged myself out. My speed did not lessen, though neither did Keiran’s.
I charged towards the awnings and pillars. The Chosen who battled Alistair came into view.
My breath clung to my throat.
Bloodletter.
In Carnage, Moira swung her hammer at Alistair, Alistair pivoting back. At the end of her strike, her arms hung for a moment. Beads of sweat covered her face. She was losing vigor.
I was still at a distance, but perhaps close enough to shout and be heard.
Keiran stretched out his fingers to Alistair, and I stretched out mine.
“Alistair!” In my cry, hilt in hand, the Lord of Raven slit his eyes to the corner as I ran to him.
“Behind you,” I yelled.
Alistair lunged his pummel against Moira’s temple. The Bloodletter knocked into a pillar and fell to the ground. Alistair twisted around, quick and sharp. Before a breath could be had, he extended his blade to Keiran, and in a swift slice, Keiran’s hand was severed at the wrist and fell to the ground.
A cry rang in my ears. Keiran clamped his wrist, blood pouring from between his fingers. He looked at me, tears soon to follow, and he cursed my name with eyes drenched in crimson and betrayal.
“YOU!” The voice tore into me, cavernous and raspy.
Air left my body. My eyes veered from Alistair, my stance following. Taison’s blood stare was upon me. He skulked beside the fountain that once trickled clear waters, hammer secure in one hand, and a severed head in the other.
“You damn traitor!” Taison wailed. Throwing the head to the ground, he spun his hammer. Beneath his torn shirt, each vein throbbed over his boulder muscles. Endless lives fell to his rage, blood covering him as though it were a prize.
“I will make you bleed.”
Taison prowled like a beast. Blood was oil, his god anointing the onslaught, but it was not Wisdom. Wisdom was absent. She wasn’t here. Only Carnage. Brighter than the bloodmoon above, his eyes marked the next soul to fall to his hammer. It was no lord, no soldiers, not even Alistair himself. In the beating rage, Taison’s stare pounded me like thunder to steel… or a hammer to flesh.
My body stiffened as though I were already dead.
I was the Bloodletter’s next victim.
“Run, Rhoswen,” Alistair called. “Run!”
Taison’s hammer struck the stone ground as a fury convulsed his arm. A snarl clenched his teeth, the Bloodletter chomping for my soul.
His stride lengthened, his speed swelled, sprint deepening into a hunt, and—
I was the hunted.