Chapter 26 Solace
Solace
The glass of wine I clutched tightly in my grasp shattered against the wall of the semi-permanent structure I had the blessing of calling mine for the foreseeable future. The deep-plum alcohol stained the maps tacked haphazardly to the walls, soaking the parchment to the point of obscurity.
They were useless now, and not just from the wine that saturated the pages.
There was no southern alliance as the map indicated.
No territories to call upon. No Mages and Vessels to recruit.
Just two cities—Alivar and Iluul, neither of which had any interest in joining the ragtag bunch of misfits that my last descendant’s generals left here. Yes, those who stayed were loyal sycophants. But they were loyal to a crazed extent—almost unusable in their desire to prostrate and defer.
It was annoying.
I needed pliable idiots, not religious fanatics.
I’d sent one of the less intense leftovers to Alivar to deliver my message of alliance and prophetic vision for the future of Elyria with me at the helm.
All that was returned was the Vessel’s decapitated head, warm blood still oozing from the fibers of the grain sack, the exposed sinew rough and stringy as if it’d taken a good few hacks to get through his neck.
Why even go through the effort of cutting off his head? Why not use magic?
I was, of course, then informed of the collapse of the Northern Crystal Mines. Even though it was located in the northernmost part of Elyria, it was apparently considered ‘neutral’ territory as it was the only place in Elyria to find crystals to hold magic for Mages to draw upon.
Apparently, with the collapse of the mines, Kaos’ final Truthsayer was hoarding the crystals that were recovered, only gifting them to his Mages while simultaneously Bonding others at an alarming rate.
Ergo, the southern cities were no longer able to obtain crystals for their Mages. Which meant, not only were they using their abilities sparingly, but neither city had citizens with the desire to sacrifice themselves to, what they considered, a lost cause.
Pity.
As a powerful, eternal being, I’d thought my conquest of Elyria would be simpler. Quicker. Without all of this incessant planning and maneuvering.
Usually, brute force and hostile takeovers were my brother’s thing, and I was more partial to underhanded schemes. Theoretically, this situation I found myself in really should play to my strengths.
But I’d felt a distinct shift in my own immortality with the death of the Last Matriarch—my body was colder, my mind more sluggish. As if the very thing that tethered me to my immortal soul was fraying.
Which I supposed wasn’t actually far from the truth.
Each of the gods had tethered their souls to their direct descendants—they were literal living, mortal pieces of the gods.
Once those mortal pieces were all destroyed, that piece of the tether no longer existed.
It’s also why we took extra precautions to place a second tether on an inanimate object.
It gave us a second defense if all of our descendants were somehow killed.
It’s that type of trickery that proved us victorious over our siblings in the last Godswar. Their descendants turned on each other, killing with brutal efficiency, which allowed Kaos and I to swoop in and eliminate each god, absorbing their innate powers.
After all, only a god can kill another god. And whoever kills a god must take the deceased’s place—it’s how Kaos and I ended up with more abilities than we were originally gifted from Fate. It’s also why Fate locked us away for centuries. We were too powerful, and he feared us.
As he should.
Kaos and I were allied from the beginning, in agreement with every plan, every step.
So the sudden change in my brother, his inability to see what we needed to do, was concerning. He was too concerned with his last descendant’s moves and motives, too consumed with locating our soul artifacts.
I couldn’t disagree on their importance, but they seemed much less of a priority than amassing followers.
The soul artifacts were missing for centuries, ever since we were imprisoned on Meru, and would continue to stay missing until the time was right.
If no one had found or destroyed them by now, then I felt they were safe for another few weeks.
At least, that was my original thought. My takeover of Elyria, which should have taken weeks, was now stretching to seven, eight months. Much too long.
And now, with the apparent apathy of the southern cities and the lack of crystals for Mages, it appeared my plan would be delayed even further.
Well, we can’t have that.
I studied the maps affixed to the wooden wall—the wine still slowly descending in rivulets—contemplating my next step.
I could join Kaos in his search for the artifacts, but that would just vindicate him.
I scoffed at the thought.
Definitely can’t have that.
My eyes scanned the southern territories, my eyes easily passing Alivar and Iluul, no longer interested in expending my limited number of sycophants on cities that couldn’t see the benefit in assisting a goddess—their future queen.
A mistake that sealed their future fate.
Once I held the entirety of Elyria within my fist, their reckoning would come—swift, sure, and brutal.
I tapped one long finger against my lips, lost in thought as the heat inside the ramshackle hut grew stifling.
Even immortal beings weren’t fully immune to temperature changes.
An insect buzzed incessantly in my ear, lazily flying in front of my face every minute or so. The sound and constant need to swat at it was rather annoying and, eventually, I simply plucked it from the air.
Holding it suspended between my finger and thumb, I tore my gaze away from the useless maps to the irritating, foul creature I’d captured.
It struggled vainly against my hold, its ugly round body twisting in fear, the animalistic need to escape, high.
I narrowed my eyes as it beat its wings erratically in tandem with its twirling legs, the attempts to escape becoming desperate.
Annoyed and bored with its inability to understand that it was dead the moment I’d trapped it with my fingers, I squashed its body with a forceful pinch.
A small, satisfying crunch sounded just as the irritable sounds of its wings ceased beating.
I flicked the insect away onto the packed sand floor of the house before wiping the greenish slime from the fly’s body on a spare sheet of parchment resting on the desk in front of my chair.
Almost immediately, a scorpion scuttled from a dark corner of the hut to the carcass, grabbing it between its pincers before scurrying back to its hole.
Maybe that’s what Elyria—what these blasphemous cities—needed: a display of godly power to make them fall in line. My gaze strayed to the wine-stained map on the wall and caught on Cellia, a smaller city in the Borderlands near the site of the massacre of my Keepers.
Yes, we’d start there. Small like that fly—their destruction or alliance wouldn’t tip the scales one way or the other, but it would create notice. Force the other more prominent cities to bow.
Eventually, I’d draw the eye of Kaos’ incompetent Truthsayer. Right now, he treated my presence in Elyria like that fly—inconsequential and annoying.
My anger and hostility grew until it was a burning thing, ripping through my bloodstream and causing a ringing in my ears.
How dare he. Kaos should have put him down ages ago, when he still had descendants to choose from. Now he was stuck with this flagrantly rude imbecile.
I’d make him notice.
And then, I’d make him pay.
“You have a choice.” My voice rang with an otherworldly quality, silencing all other noises in the puny section of town these people called their ‘square.’ “Join me. Fight on my lines to take back Vespera from the Warlord, or die.”
My words hung in the air, echoing throughout the street and over the heads of the hundreds of humans gathered. They were a bedraggled bunch, many much too old or much too young to really be an effective fighting force.
But they were bodies.
Fodder for the front lines against the last Truthsayer’s well-trained Mage army.
Perhaps I could just stick some swords and other pointy objects in their hands instead of arming them with crystals.
My eyes quickly scanned the shocked and silent crowd, noting that many of them had very little power, their magic barely a trickle in comparison to some Mages I’d felt in my very long lifetime.
I sighed inwardly.
No one had yet made a move in regard to my offer. It was as if time had frozen still.
Either that or they were simply too dumb to make the right choice.
Wind whistled between the dilapidated structures—some of the homes and businesses were built with mud and straw, others fortified with log beams. All of them were sad and in desperate need of repair.
Was all of Elyria like this? I was starting to second-guess my desire to rule this place, my nose wrinkling at the thought.
“Sorry, ma’am, but we didn’t quite catch yer name?” A grizzled older man stepped from the congregated mass of people, some of them still holding their washing baskets or whatever they’d come to do at market.
Anger rose hot and heavy in my veins. A cruel smirk lifted the edges of my mouth as my eyes flashed with danger.
I heard Kaos sigh audibly to my right, and I sneered.
This imbecile has sealed Cellia’s fate.
“You dare disrespect me,” I seethed. Lightning cracked in my palm as the air began to whip around my head, though my hair remained untouched.
Fear—pure and delectable fear—rose in the crowd of gathered villagers.
Screams tore from the mouths of women and shouts from men as children began to cry.
Baskets and carts were abandoned, women scooping children into their arms as they tripped on their dresses and feet to escape the fate they could see written in my expression.
I ignored their scrambling—very few would make it out of here alive; all with purposeful intent, of course. I had to have some mouths to explain of the terror they saw here, of the awful power of Solace, of the return of the gods.
My feet left the ground and I floated, suspended in air as I watched the men slowly create a line, shoulder-to-shoulder, in an attempt to block my progress through their city.
“Do you not bow before your goddess?” A snarl ripped from the mouth of one of my rabid soldiers.
We’d lost more than a handful due to dehydration during our trek out of the Stepstones and across the desert, but it was no matter.
The villages we visited in the Borderlands would either join our cause and replace my missing numbers, or they would die.
There was no other option.
A few men instantly fell to a knee on the ground, showing me the deference I deserved.
“Take them,” I called, my voice ringing with otherworldly authority. A few soldiers moved to pull my newest recruits from the group of Cellian men. Their line of defense shifted to cover the open spaces, but it was much more sparse than before.
“We do not bow before tyrants. We didn’t durin’ the Sundering and not durin’ the War of Northern Aggression. We may only be simple merchants and traders. And we may fall here today. But we can return to the ground knowin’ we did our part in stopping you.”
“How . . . quaint,” I patronized. “But make no mistake, you do not have the power to stop me today. No one has the power to stop me,” I hissed, magic swirling around my body.
I watched as a few men grabbed crystals from their belts, their pitiful magic pooling in open palms, while others white-knuckled knives. I even saw an antiquated sword.
“I am Solace, and I accuse you of treason. Your punishment?” I paused and the air crackling in anticipation as everyone waited with bated breath. “Death.”
Then, my army attacked.