Chapter 22 #2
They called their impulses “divine revelation.”
This wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that Heaven’s King could sit back in his chair, fold his fingers behind his head, and not lift a finger as others did the dirty work of his colonization for him.
The land would be his at the end of the day.
The rest was negligible.
I remained between Love’s home, hoping she enjoyed her final moments of peace, as the army crested the far hill and the enemy came into view.
To my surprise, Heaven had indeed volunteered a few of its men to stand side by side with a so-called pagan god and Hell’s most treasonous citizen.
The angel was unfamiliar—some asshole with a blue-green, scaley, fish-like albacore shimmer—who matched his uneasy strides with the angry, frothing god of wrath, war, and flame.
Heaven’s glinting bastard was flanked by one other presence I’d suspected for hundreds of years but needed to see with my own eyes to believe.
An hourglass shape.
A cloud of inky tendrils, floating on a wind of their own.
The smiling, confident stride of a succubus.
Izi had been issued a fair warning.
She’d killed Shala when she thought I’d become too attached to mortals, believing it was her role to nudge me to play, rather than manipulate Love.
She’d toyed with my mortal, her culture, our fate.
When the threads of time had begun to weave new tales, she’d become relentless, finding new ways to orchestrate our story.
Her fingers remained in my life, manipulative, self-inserting, jealous, persistent.
Perhaps she’d only meant to teach me about obsession and its double-edged sword. Then she’d kept me from my human for hundreds of years while Love was tortured; convinced me it would undo prophecies projected upon us. And when I finally returned to the surface, I played along in name alone.
I put no seed in mortal bellies. I fathered no children. I kept the final semblance of our connection to us.
She should have fled.
Instead, she’d fed information to Heaven and Jarovid alike.
Izi loved the sound of her own voice. If I gave her the chance, she’d grandstand before the battalion, monologuing her grand intentions, taking the spotlight one final time.
I wouldn’t allow her the luxury. Her intentions were twofold, both boring and transparent.
On the one hand, if she fed information to Heaven and they won, their claim to Love would delay the Apocalypse.
In her eyes, she’d save Hell, sparing the civil bloodshed of demon versus angel.
If she got her way, she could delay the End of Times and the lost lives that went with it for decades, centuries, or possibly forever, should Love choose their king and his afterlife.
But Izi was too strategic to put all her eggs in one basket.
She drifted between Jarvid and the angel, feet not touching the snow, hair a darkened cloud around her as they grew closer, closer, closer.
Seeing her beside an angel was an absolute joke.
What honor could they have if they’d allowed their pawns to be moved by the dripping talons of someone I’d once called family?
Her other motive wasn’t hard to guess.
If Heaven failed to convert Love, she’d force my hand. I’d attach myself more ferociously, more violently, inevitably jumpstarting the prophecy I’d been avoiding.
She was so desperate for relevance that she’d dug herself a grave of delusion.
I almost felt sad for her.
Almost.
A crack of thunder. A stampede of feet. A battalion of—
What the fuck?
A feminine shape tore my attention from the looming throng.
A flash of silver and red, a smattering of freckles, and the wicked glitter of wide, doe eyes that delighted in destruction broke from the tree line.
A legion could hide. Their shadowy, spindly nothingness disappeared, undetected, no matter who was looking, but this?
She’d giggled as the Viking age collapsed. She’d welcomed Hell without knowing my title or purpose. I thought Loki was the Nordic god of chaos, but there was something in this entity drawn to downfall rather than mischief.
Who the fuck was she, and why was she here?
I knew the Slavic gods, and she was not among them.
In fact, I recognized her from the flaming villages along the fjords.
She’d been chaotic even then, but here, with her red and silver streaks, her speckled face, her face-splitting grin, there was no hiding.
We were too far south from the Nordic empire for her people to pay their visits.
But she wasn’t walking with the throng. She was walking toward them.
“Wait!” I called out to the flame-haired Norde.
She twirled. “Hey, Prince! Thanks for a shot at the end of the world!”
I coughed through my surprise. “Are you—”
She lifted a dainty hand to her brow in a salute.
“Team Ragnorok.” A flash of pearly whites, a glint of joy, a swish of forest-green skirts, and before I could guess at her name, she offered her battle cry.
“I don’t give a fuck about Heaven and Hell.
I’m here for the end of the world. I don’t know if you’ve read our Prose and Poetic Edda, but we’re not about to let Heaven have the last word.
If you help us to the finish line? I’m on your side. ”
I was ready to fight this battle with my legions. I searched the tens of thousands of hours of tutelage for rhyme or reason an entity from a neighboring pantheon would prance gleefully into a battle that most definitely wasn’t hers.
“Norde!”
The bellow stopped her mid stride.
“I’m not here for you. I have no quarrel with the Nordes, but the treaty stands. If you get in the middle of—”
Exasperated, she popped a hip. “The Nordes are among the only pantheons that share your end-of-everything tale. I exist to burn shit to the ground. You’re not my king. You can’t keep me from the action.”
“I don’t need your help with the Slavic pantheon. If you’re seeking some allegiance with Hell for you or your people. I don’t know that this battle will result in—”
“Take the fucking win, will you? Let a girl have some fun.”
The Norde dashed into the forest. I didn’t know her powers and couldn’t speculate as to how much help she’d be, but the time had come.
Fine. I’d kill her later if I had to. There was no line I wouldn’t cross.
The humans crested the threshold as their invasion began.
The immortals spotted the flame-haired entity before I had a plan of action.
So much for my cover—
The thought ended with a crackle as the Norde picked up the angel by the throat, a shimmering arch of teal and shine, and slammed him into the ground.
Holy shit. She hadn’t blown my cover. She was my cover.
A chance like this didn’t come twice.
I sliced through the air, able to ignore Heaven entirely, two fists shooting through the veil before my body landed on the far side.
We sprinted into one another with a resounding clash.
I grabbed a fistful of Izi’s hair with my right hand and Jarovid’s ear with my left, slamming their skulls together as my legion descended.
Izi fell to the snow, scrambling on the ground with wide, black eyes in the instant it took her to understand how royally fucked she was.
She vanished in a predictable flash, leaving me alone to face the sneering god of war.
Soldiers threw their body weight into doors until the wood collapsed.
Husbands, fathers, citizens dashed heroically into the fight, screamed like cowards as they dashed into the woods, or wet themselves as foreigners ransacked their village.
Women wailed as their homes were set ablaze, some throwing their bodies on top of their children to protect them, some picking up weapons, some scooping infants against their breasts as they hid beneath logs or under snowbanks. Chaos descended within seconds.
I ran backward, my sights stuck to the enemy.
“You’re finished, Prince,” Jarovid sneered.
Eyes wild, fists at my side, I backed further and further toward Love’s house. “Don’t you dare.”
I watched his pupils as they darted from me to the house I’d marked with blood. His lips pulled back from his teeth as his eyes locked on her home.
“No.” I pressed against the logs, arms stretched wide.
A tar-soaked laugh oozed from the corner of his lips.
I forced myself to freeze as he did what I needed him to do.
No words existed for my agony. No vocabulary for my shame. No proverbial hell dark enough, painful enough, cruel enough to atone for what I needed to do. I awaited a binding treaty, shattering at each footstep that brought us closer to its breach.
I didn’t deserve Love. I wasn’t worthy of her knowing my name after what was about to happen.
But…
There was no ‘but’.
For me to take my vengeance, for every god in every pantheon to tremble at Hell and its wrath, I wrapped my fingers around the intrusive gaze of every deity who dared to use my human, my Love, as a pawn, so across time, across lands, across faiths, no one would dare to repeat the mistake.
But to keep her safe, I had to become unworthy of her love.
My tenth tear—the one that had been dancing along my lids from the moment I landed in her mountain village—spilled at last.
I loved her enough to find her, to fight for her, to spend life after life after life with her.
I loved her enough to call a summit that surpassed kingdoms or geography or politics in the name of our treaty.
I loved her enough to sacrifice my kingdom.
And now, I loved her enough to sacrifice her.
Unseen claws grabbed my heart and ripped it into two.
Teeth shredded its remnants. An eleventh tear fell.
A twelfth. I couldn’t count the salt that spilled as I listened to Love and her family, as venomous testosterone overrode Jarovid’s logic.
He slashed through the wood-hewn cottage with a point to prove.
He emerged, sword dripping, dark eyes gleaming with his wicked grin to see me standing twenty paces back, arms held away from my body, feet poised for launch.
The second hand of the clock ticked once, then twice before he understood his mistake.
My legion swarmed him, anchoring his feet, his hands, his writhing, bulky worm of a worthless body as I turned into an eagle. Sharp, raptor claws dug into one eye while I dove my beak into another.
The pain was enough for him to burst free, sword swinging. Blood poured from his sockets as he continued to wield his weapon, flailing sightlessly.
A grunt, a step, another useless arc of his sword as my legion swarmed him once more, quicksand immobilizing him in a thousand shadowed hands. He called on his allies, but no one answered.
My body ripped into pained oblivion as I became a grizzly large enough to tear his sword arm from his shoulder. I chomped through skin, feeling the popping of tendon, the snapping of bone, until metal clattered to the snow.
I’d expected more of a fight.
The war raged on around us, tapered only by a nameless ally on a journey of her own.
Despite our efforts, I knew the village would fall.
By morning, the invaders would plant their flag and declare a new god.
But not before I eliminated the one who had brought the enemy to their borders.
I stepped into a man’s shape once more as I plucked the sword from its still-gripping hand.
We would have lost, had it just been one demon against a war god, an angel, a succubus, and a thousand human warriors. The village was already in ruins. There was one last battle within its charred remains.
An entity—too powerful to be fae, too chaotic to be a goddess of any order I understood—had taken care of the heavenly problem so I could focus my attention.
While she hadn’t stood against me, I couldn’t be certain she was on my side either.
And yet, her efforts left me alone for this final, choking moment.
Thousands of wriggling limbs pinned him in place, two crimson rivers rushing down his face, shoulder spurting where once his weapon had been, as I came a breath from his face.
The proud god jutted his lower jaw. “I didn’t realize Hell’s prince was a god-killer.”
I scoffed. “Yes, you did.” The screaming began to die as the last of the village’s people were slain. I sensed the heartbeats of those who hid or fled, but knew it was only a matter of time before their hope was gone, too. This massacre had only one ending.
“Heaven?” I asked. “Really?”
He didn’t have to see me to know where my eyes would be. He maintained his defiance. “The enemy of my enemy, you piece of shit.”
It was too bad he couldn’t see my eyes roll.
“You’ve had it out for me before you called your fucking summit.
” He sucked blood and saliva into his mouth and spat his belligerence onto the snow at our feet.
“I’m why you called your fucking conclave, right?
A humiliation ritual before every god. All because I’d listened to your cunt of a sister about drawing you out. Fuck you, and fuck that whore, too.”
I twitched at the barest of news.
Izi had done…what? Oh, I was already going to kill her, but this was one more notch in her wickedness.
I was a cat with a mouse, and I didn’t play with my food.
The war god’s time had come to an end. “You know what, Jarovid? You’re right. You did motivate the summit. You made history. Good for you. Now,” I pressed the tip of his blade into his throat. “Any last words?”
He snarled. “You won’t get away with this. I’m a god. My pantheon will come for you. You’re nothing. You have no name. No cults. No purpose. Instead, you’re wrapped up in these damned ticks, these fleas. They’re mortals, you short-sighted fool. They’re just humans. And you—”
“Tut, tut,” I chastised lightly. “Not just humans. My human. She’s more special than you’ll ever be. And you, once mighty god of war, have just ensured no one will avenge you.”
A high, clean ring cut through the crackle of flames and sobs of the few living victims.
The wind howled.
The snow turned into ice.
And a god’s head rolled, sockets unseeing, tongue lolling, as I proved to the world that I meant every word.
Iridescent, immortal blood dripped from the blade.
I was a god-killer. The sword, on the other hand, was not.
One day, whether in weeks, or months, or ten thousand years, Jarovid could fight his way back to the surface and reclaim his seat in his pantheon, should they accept him.
My choice of weapon was a tenuous, threatening olive branch to all watching.
I made good on my promise.
My mercy would not be shown twice.
No one would harm my human and live to tell the tale.