Chapter 36 #2
Gods, they were fucking. So many of these humans were trying their best to fight it off, but the Sun God had always been far too tempting to them.
He had walked into a veritable orgy.
“Enough!” Jessamine’s shriek was so loud, so thunderous, Elric clapped his hands over his ears as they started to bleed.
It kept going. The fury, the horror, the sheer frustration that burned through everyone in the clearing. He looked up, squinting his eyes through the pain to see the smoke had frozen in place, no longer even moving with the breeze until it turned to ash.
His brother’s jaw dropped. “How are you doing that?”
Elric needed to warn her that she was using too much power at once.
He was too far away, but he could see the sweat on her brow.
She was pushing herself too hard, using too much magic.
She could burn herself out like that, and a physical form could only take so much magic without breaking.
Already he could see that it was causing her some pain.
Then light speared out of her again, those wires wrapping around the Sun God. But they weren’t manifested now. They were coming out of her. The wires were threads of herself, ripping out of her being and holding them in place. Like she was slowly unraveling herself.
“Jessamine!” he shouted, heading her way.
“Get rid of them,” she snarled. “I want them out of my kingdom for good.”
Elric hesitated for a brief moment, just long enough for Ajax to show up.
His brother appeared in the pantheon in full God King glory.
He wore all his old gleaming armor, so tall he must have made himself ten feet at least. He looked like one of his own statues had come to life.
In one hand was a spear taller than the largest human, and in the other, a shield so wide it could have been used as a boat.
“Jessamine Harmsworth,” his brother shouted. “You could have been so much more than this! At my side, we would have ruled in golden glory!”
His nightmare snarled like the feral creature she was. “And I still would have killed you in the end.”
“Jessamine, you can’t fight him on your own,” Elric shouted.
“Take care of them, my love!” There was no arguing with her tone, not when she lunged away from him, and not when the two golden gods locked together in a light so blinding, he had to shield his eyes from the sight.
The faster he got this over with, the faster he could return. So he plunged his hand into the chest of the Crone and the Sun God and hurled them into his realm.
It took time to chain them. Precious time that he feared he did not have.
He hadn’t been gone that long, just a few heartbeats, but when he returned he was struck by the image of two invincible beings fighting each other to the death.
In all his years, he never could have imagined both Jessamine and Ajax to be equally yoked.
But they were. Their powers damn near matched.
Though Ajax had many more years of experience in spell casting, Jessamine wanted her revenge far more.
He watched as spells dripped from her tongue, sending raw magic into the air.
These weren’t spells to make things grow, to bind, or even to injure.
No, the words that came out of her mouth were a reckoning.
It was a curse that wrapped around Ajax, one that stole his breath every time he tried to cast a spell.
For the first time in many, many centuries, perhaps the first time ever, Ajax looked afraid. His eyes were wide beneath the safety of his helmet. His movements were rushed, sloppy. Even the ancient language seemed to come to him slowly as he fought her off.
But Jessamine? The spells never once stalled from her tongue.
She spoke with passion, as though she had been born speaking the old language of the gods.
And the magic that spewed out of her fed upon those emotions, those feelings, that perfect precision until it had woven around Ajax in a massive knot.
It was a web, Elric realized as he reached her side. A giant spider’s web that had caught his brother within it, strand by sticky strand.
“You cannot do this to me,” Ajax growled, slicing through it with his spear, but even that had started to get stuck. “You cannot do this to your king!”
“I see no king,” Elric said, placing his hand on Jessamine’s shoulder and feeling her pull at his shadows to add to the web. “I only see a frightened man.”
The shriek of disbelief that came from his brother was met with a blinding light as Jessamine poured the rest of herself into this spell. A spell that would destroy the last and greatest god who stood in their way. A god who had taken so much from her, and deserved this death.
When it was done, the God King fell straight back. The very ground itself shook as his massive body hit the ground.
They’d done it.
He couldn’t believe it, but they had. His brother was now there, waiting for Elric to take his soul to the prison where the rest of the gods would remain for all eternity.
Jessamine wavered underneath his grip and then fell to her knees as well.
“Nightmare?” he asked, going with her onto the ash-strewn ground.
His heart seemed to stop. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. All he could do was look at her and fear the worst.
She was unraveling now. Her arms looked like ribbons, her hair little more than wisps of frayed edges.
She was like a doll that had been played with too hard, plucked and pulled in every direction.
Even the shards of her magic that held her together were weak, some of the pieces sliding off of where they should be.
“What is happening to me?” she whispered, trying her best to speak even though the pieces of her body were starting to fracture, just like they had before.
He nudged a part of her jaw back in place. “You pushed yourself too hard.”
“What do I do?”
He held her jaw up for her, because every time he let go of it, it fell again. “You’re going to return to that realm I showed you. The glowing one with all the wheat, your beautiful field of flowers, your trees. I need you to go there, my love. Heal for me and wait for me.”
“But my body…” She gasped as another shard fell from her chest.
“I will take care of your body.” He scooped her up, ignoring all the shards that rained down from her like glass, like a broken pot, like she had shattered once again. He risked more pain, all so he could kiss her shaking mouth. “Trust me, nightmare. Trust me to finish this.”
He needed her to. Because he’d promised her a kingdom, and now, he couldn’t even give her that. He couldn’t give her the throne because she was a goddess, and he needed to give her something.
“Rest,” he murmured again, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You killed them all, you wonderful feral beast. I will do the rest.”
He could feel her drifting away, leaving an empty body in his arms that slowly withered. Her beloved, wondrous, beautiful body that had done so much for her turned gray in his grip. And then, with none of that golden light to hold her together, it crumbled to ash in his arms.
Elric stayed there, frozen on his knees. The ash left dark smudges on his arms, his legs, across his chest where she had once been. Like the ghost of her still remained.
Then he turned his furious gaze upon his brother.