Chapter 71 Samson
SAMSON
The Great Serpent is an ancient and capricious god. With scales like the moons and eyes like the terrible deep, She controls the seas and whips fire into obedience. Her power is mighty, and always, it comes with a price.
—from The Legends and Myths of Sayon
She gave it to him willingly. Her Agni flooded his senses with an intoxicating heat that made his veins strum as if plucked anew. Skies above, it felt good to feel power again. His Agni flared, licking up Elena’s spark with eager hunger.
The mountain rumbled as the old god sensed the blending of the two Agnis.
Butcher, it sang.
He could not summon fire without his urumi, but with Elena’s Agni, he did not need it.
A blue flame, so strong and fresh it made him laugh in bewilderment, leapt from his palms. The Jantari rushed forward.
Distantly, he remembered their faces. The condescending officer.
The cruel king. The stupid soldiers. With an almost mindless ease, he flicked his hand, and his flames leapt.
Screams filled the air.
All the pain, all the abuse and loneliness and trauma, melted away as he felt the power of both his Agni and Elena’s twine together.
Lock together.
Bind together.
Butcher, Butcher, Butcher.
Shadows rustled within the snakeskin, coalescing, wriggling. Suddenly, the dead snake began to move. It rose, silver scales flashing, and the hollow voice of an old god echoed through the chamber.
“You stupid, beautiful idiots,” it said.
Samson reeled, stunned at the familiar voice. “Yassen?” he gasped.
Somewhere deep within the mountain, there was a laugh. Low, rumbling, like tectonic plates rubbing together. Its tremor carried up his knees to his head, his skull vibrating.
“Not quite,” the old god said.
Shadows bled outward, forming a triangular head that seemed to sniff the air and shudder in pleasure.
“I speak through a voice loved and lost to the Agni,” it hissed. “But a voice is only a voice. A voice is not enough.”
The blue flame in his palm rippled, impatient. Samson curled his hand, and the flame grew, wrapping down his arm and torso. Elena whimpered in his arms. Her Agni flared, afraid. She must have realized he was drawing too hard, too quick, but Samson held on. Made her stay.
I’m sorry, he thought. But I need you.
He turned to the dead snake. The shadows had lengthened, forming a crown of antlers that towered above its head like jagged blades.
“Great Serpent, I have come to free you,” he called.
It laughed. The voice, Yassen’s voice, grew more distant, static, as if it came from the darkened bowels of the earth where the carcasses of old gods lay entombed.
“You do not have the power or the will to free me,” the old god rumbled.
“I have Agni and a song,” he said. “A song of the sea.”
The snake sighed. It sounded like a low hiss, rippling down its body and the mountain. In it, Samson felt the old god’s loneliness, its longing. So keen and familiar to his own. They both were strangers trapped in a foreign land. They both craved the open sea and the unending sky above.
“Sing it to me,” it rasped.
He swept his arms, and his flames shot forth, engulfing the snake. The ore’s light swooned in time with his inferno as his voice carried through the chamber.
“There lies a flame, blue as the sea,
True and strong, it remains in the deep,
Beyond the sun where only the shadows can reach,
Master of the realm is the one I seek.”
The mountain trembled violently as Samson sang. Rocks cracked. Stalactites crashed with heavy booms, but he kept on as the Serpent hissed in pleasure, grew in power.
“Agneepath, Agneepath, Agneepath,
The path of the three.
The sand, the sun, and the sea.
Rise, Great Serpent,
Rise, O Preserver,
To Seshar, to the son of the sea.”
A great roar rolled through the chamber, the mountains, and the land beyond.
The old god laughed. It was working. The mountain shook, and the Serpent’s voice shed its veneer for the deep truth beneath.
Its scales darkened, took form. His flames twisted, crawling up its spine as something more solid replaced its ghostly face.
The old god opened an eye. It was deep and blue and terrible, beautiful and dark and unlike anything Samson had ever seen. It pinned him in place.
“It is you, Agni of three,” the Great Serpent sang.
Its diamond-shaped pupil bore into Samson, but he did not waver.
Samson inhaled, drawing even more of Elena’s Agni. He could feel her resisting, but she had already given him so much. He was like quicksand. The harder she struggled, the more he took.
“Sam,” she whispered.
He should have felt guilt then. Remorse, even. To take and take, to do nothing but devour. But he had always been a hungry man.
He let her go and stepped forward.
Elena gasped, but he did not hear her. He did not see her limp body crash to the floor or the light fading from her eyes as he stood before his god and reached.
“My son,” the Serpent crooned.
He touched Her scales. Suddenly, heat—white-hot, electric—zipped up his spine. The Serpent screeched, shadows exploding in shards of black and silver. But there wasn’t triumph or euphoria in its voice.
There was pain.
A deep, heart-wrenching agony gripped Samson and twisted viciously. He howled, doubling over.
Meanwhile, the god thrashed, slamming against the wall, the ceiling. Meanwhile, the mountain shook as if it was not stone but water, and a rock had cracked its still surface.
Meanwhile, Elena lay curled at his feet, his name strangled upon her lips.
Samson felt something integral break then. A splintering.
He saw two things at once: Elena before a great fire that spoiled, a darkness growing within its core.
And a metal coffin with a lone figure, someone at once horrible and familiar. Samson felt wrong upon seeing it, as if he was trespassing on some ancient god’s sleep.
But then the god stirred.
Two beautiful, awful golden eyes snapped open.
The Phoenix laughed, and Samson screamed.