Godhood
HOLLOWAY
They stood on a ridge above a mortal city and watched the wave of death emerge. Just a few at first, stumbling from the ruins. Then dozens from the plains. Hundreds from the mountains. The transformation spread outward. In every corner of the continent, fluxborn became fae, and fae became death.
The city in the valley below was on fire. He tasted the smoke. A man in a green cloak fell with a blade in his back. A woman sobbed over a small body.
He felt the balance tilt away from humanity. Still nowhere near an equilibrium.
He lifted his hands, and light pooled in his palms. When he flexed his fingers, the air straightened itself, light bent at new angles.
The grass at his feet turned brown and crumbled to dust. A halo of corrosive power spread from wherever he stood.
He could stop the bloodshed down below. He had that power. Maybe he should care, but he didn’t.
He didn’t remember arriving here.
One minute he was looking at his friends. Fingers laced with the prophet’s. Then the channel system overloaded and white fire licked up their legs, and then—nothing.
Someone else—was it the prophet?—was inside his head, sifting through his memories like fingers through sand. Taking what it wanted. Discarding the rest.
A mother’s laugh. Rain on summer evenings. A thumb brushing his knuckles.
Gone.
The reasons those things mattered.
Gone too.
The man he’d been before had wanted something. A name lingered on his tongue—Cordon—like the memory of a bitter taste. But it wouldn’t quite stick. The memory kept slipping away.
“Holloway.”
The prophet’s voice pulled him back into his body.
Holloway. That was his name. When had he forgotten?
“The bloodshed here will play out within the week,” the prophet was saying. The fae were quitting Haven and turning east. “They will seize the shipyards in Gateway and move on to Vaelis. When we arrive, the city will be ready to receive us.”
“How do you know?” Holloway asked.
The prophet’s smile sharpened. “I see further than I used to.”
“Are we going to Vaelis now?” Holloway asked.
“We have someone to collect first.”
The prophet’s hand found Holloway’s face, a thumb tracing his jaw. The touch was cold, numbing everything that was wrong beneath his skin. Glimmers of feelings froze and withered.
The numb was pleasant. He wanted more numb.
“Do you remember our companions?” the prophet asked. “From before?”
Faces flashed through Holloway’s mind, but he couldn’t hold their names. They slid away like water.
The prophet’s smile sharpened. “Forget them. They were a disappointment, in the end.”
The shadows around Holloway’s wrist tightened. He leaned into the prophet’s touch. I live to serve. The echo of an old oath hummed between them—tugging, soothing, erasing choice.
Maybe it was okay that he couldn’t remember. He let the fragments of memories fade.
“Where are we going, then?” he asked.
The answer didn’t matter. He would follow the prophet anywhere. He had nowhere else to go.
The prophet’s hand slid to the back of Holloway’s neck, pulling him close. His voice dropped to something almost tender.
“There’s another in the bloodline.” A pause. “I know where to find Merit Salaren.”
“Merit,” Holloway echoed.
The name came out flat, hollowed of everything it should mean. Some distant part of him remembered a girl. He’d cared about her. The feeling lingered like an echo, orphaned from its source.
Something in him tried to resist, hadn’t he promised to protect…but the oath in his palm burned, and the feeling died. The prophet’s fingers traced down Holloway’s throat.
“Merit Salaren is alone. Estranged from her family. We can use that.”
Holloway followed the prophet away from the burning valley. Behind them, thousands of fae marched toward the coast. Ahead of them, a woman in exile that his prophet wanted to collect. And somewhere out there, the friends he left behind, with names he couldn’t remember.
The grass died where he stepped. Reality skittered and smoothed in his wake. The prophet moved ahead, and he followed.
The man he’d been had wanted something. Justice, maybe. The god he was becoming had the power to take it, if he could remember why it mattered.
Is there still good in him, or is he already gone?
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No Saints Left Standing to find out.