Chapter 3
Elric wasn’t certain he wanted to leave the manor again. The last time they’d left, he’d found himself having to save Jessamine’s life. Again. And he grew tired of saving her from death itself. The Pleasure District had its dangers, but his memories of the place were old.
Long ago, he had visited the Pleasure District many times with his brothers, the women there ready and waiting to service a god. They’d always disappointed him, though. While there were plenty of powdered and perfumed women to tempt him, none of them had power.
He’d always sought women with some form of magic. He liked to feel their energy in his veins when he kissed them. He enjoyed the sparks that literally flew when they both indulged in each other. Perhaps that had always been his downfall.
As he stood before the crumbling statues of his family, he stared into what had once been his brother’s visage.
The God King was known throughout the realm as the supreme warrior, worshipped by soldiers.
He gifted people the ability to fight through any pain, endure more than any other in this realm, and still continue forward in the name of their god.
“What would you do?” he murmured, even though he knew his brother could not respond.
The answer had always been simple when it came to the God King. When something scared him, his brother simply killed it. He’d remove it from the world and then he didn’t have to fear it anymore. But that had turned him into a creature who existed solely on destruction and terror.
All these people thought they were being guided by benevolent and wise creatures. Instead, the gods had brought their own people to ruin, and suffered for it in turn.
“It is odd to see a god in this room,” Sybil’s voice echoed.
“Why is that?”
“It’s hard to imagine that a god worships.” She walked into the room with her hands tucked behind her back, her eyes on the floor and not on him.
“Is it worship if I’m speaking to family?” He contemplated the statue in front of him before sighing. “I suppose some might say it is. That’s what you do, after all. You walk into this room and you speak to us.”
“That is my understanding of worship, yes. We beg for answers or help, and a god sometimes answers. Sometimes they don’t.”
“I remember a time when we were all together. When the gods walked the earth and I had no questions or difficulties. I was still young, compared to the others. They were my guides. More than just family, they made certain I didn’t lose my mind to the pressure and the responsibility of the coven of witches who followed me. ”
“Do you have all of your memories back, then?”
Most of them. Some were still hazy; perhaps they always would be. He remembered being created. Born out of a witch’s blade and so much raw magic that it had splintered him into the creature he was now.
Elric feared what that meant. Touching the memory proved futile as it hovered just out of his reach. His origin was still not something he could see clearly. But he knew with certainty that at some point, each of the gods had been made.
They stood for a while in silence, both of them surveying the monolith of a god who had once lived.
This depiction of his brother had him in full armor.
There was a helm on his head with only a small cross to see out of, and the black gems that formed his eyes still gleamed in that hidden space.
Eyes that saw straight into a person’s soul and could sear their flesh from bone.
He heard Sybil’s sharp swallow before she spoke. “I forget that you had a relatively small following, compared to the other gods. You had a coven of witches, but they had…”
“Thousands,” he filled in for her. “Thousands of followers who prayed to them every single day. So often I thanked my luck and the magic of the realm that I did not have as many. There is no way to exist without disappointing all who need you. I know it plagued him.”
“You rarely disappointed us, if it makes you feel better.”
It didn’t.
Because not disappointing them had required sacrificing so much of himself. He’d let them carve into his flesh time and time again in their pursuit of power and seen only the rare handful who even felt a modicum of guilt for it.
Then Jessamine walked into his life, and she had a different mindset. There was no pain with her. No sacrificing. She needed his power, true. But she had refused to use him the way others had.
His voice was low, the question barely audible. “If I hadn’t let them scorch my bones with curses or shape their runes with my organs, would they ever have made me a god?”
Sybil’s tiny intake of breath was all he needed to hear. Elric knew the truth. They had seen him as a weapon then, and nothing had changed in the many years since. They hadn’t seen a being with thoughts or feelings when they had stolen his magic. All they saw was a tool.
And once he had performed his job, they threw him to the side.
“We loved you,” Sybil finally said. “We worshipped the ground you walked on. And when you were alive, we treated you with the honor you deserved.”
He looked into those tormented eyes that knew the words she said were a lie. He took one step toward Sybil, his most faithful follower, and pressed her hand to his chest, where his magic tangled through her fingers.
“Do you feel this?” he asked.
“I have always been able to feel your power.”
“And you know the wound I give you all so that I may gift you power more easily?”
Without hesitation, Sybil shifted the fabric away from the fissure that ran down her chest. The one that now writhed with dark shadows, stuffed full with power. “Always.”
He touched the ragged chasm that would never heal and breathed out a long sigh. “This is my mark. A symbol of the same wound I once bore. A centuries-old scar that will never heal, so I will never forget the pain your kind inflicted upon me so that I could become a god.”
He remembered those days. Not his life as a man, because those memories were long gone.
But he remembered being made. The pain, the torment, the months of serving as a sacrifice and losing every piece of himself, all of it culminating in godly power that had consumed him.
They unmade him, so that he could be reborn.
She stared up at him, eyes wide with unsaid words. She shook beneath his touch, and he had to wonder if it was with fear. But then she bit her lip and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything we did to you.”
He shook his head and dropped his hand from her chest. “It is in the past, Sybil. You were not even part of my last sacrifice.”
“I could have said something.”
“And done what?” He spat the words, harsh but with the ring of truth. “What were you going to do? You who were the weakest among them. A witch who barely even took the magic so that no one would notice her? You were nothing but a child in those days.”
“I was forty years old.”
“And I was hundreds of years old!” He turned his back to her, unable to look at her. “I could have stopped them at any point. I was the one with the power. I was the god.”
The silence between them was deafening. He’d berated himself over this countless times, and still the wound festered.
He could have stopped them, but he didn’t.
Instead, he allowed himself to hate them, letting the feeling brew more and more until it consumed him.
He’d been weak back then, a god begging for power and worship.
To deny them what they asked would have weakened him.
It would have left him vulnerable to his siblings.
Elric had created his own doom back then. And now, he was walking right into it again.
“What did your siblings say at the time?” Sybil’s words trembled, as though she feared what he would tell her.
She should. Their advice had not been kind. But his siblings were known to be cruel. He had been the god with the bleeding heart.
“They told me to destroy the coven and start anew. There will always be witches, and they will always need a patron. Burn the coven to the ground. Savor their screams. Take back my power and create a new coven to worship me as the god I was.”
“Perhaps this is your opportunity to do just that.”
Was it? The mere thought tangled his guts into a mess of knots.
He’d seen these women and the tattered rags of their pride.
He’d watched them sell their bodies, their time, their very souls so they could live in a world where people looked down upon them for something they were born with.
Helping them had never been a choice. It was just a question of how far he was willing to go.
“Why are you here?” he asked, tucking his hands behind his back and taking another step away from her. “I assume you need something for preparations?”
“I came to ask if I could stay here.”
“No.”
“Deathless One, I have helped you both before, but I do believe—”
“No.”
“Elric,” she breathed, using his true name for a rare moment. “I am afraid. This is the home of the coven, and if we leave it…”
“Then someone else might take it? Indeed. Someone else may come to this crumbling ruin and see that it still has use. There will be no more witches here, Sybil. We will not bring another coven back to this cursed place. We move forward and we move on.”
Her shoulders tensed with every word, but she did not argue, merely ducked her head in a sharp nod before leaving the room.
Elric feared he had been too hard on her. He knew the depths of her anxiety in leaving the place that had been her home for centuries. She’d been here, alone, and these walls had given her comfort. She’d lived with the ghosts of the past for too long, though.
If she stayed, those ghosts would consume her soul.
He turned his attention back to the statues behind him, but he did not see their stony expressions. Instead, he focused on the new tether that had wriggled its way into his soul. Like the witches, he had a well of power from which he drew.
All the actions he’d taken of late had drained that well significantly. But he hadn’t used any power in many centuries. There was still plenty left to share with a witch who had gifted him so handsomely.
Accepting a sacrifice took time. He had to allow the magic to gather in this realm, and even then, the spell needed to rot the surrounding ground.
Wherever a witch had made a sacrifice, there was a black mark on the world, which made it even more surprising that the witch had sacrificed a cow right in the middle of a field.
Anyone who saw that black stain would know instantly what had happened.
Taking a deep breath, he followed the magic and felt his form disintegrate and then re-form.
One moment he was in the manor, and the next, he stood in a field of wheat among knee-high yellow fronds.
Wind waved the stalks of gold in a subtle breeze.
Crows wheeled overhead, their caws grating at his ears even as he saw what they feasted upon.
The bloated body of the cow lay in a circle of flattened wheat, fallen where it had been killed while grazing. Its long tongue lolled out of its mouth, where even maggots and flies refused to land.
The black stain of the sacrifice leached into the ground, spreading around the beast and pulsing with power. It waited for him, and who was he to deny such a gift?
Elric bent, feeling his form warp and distend with power as he crouched beside the reeking body to accept the witch’s sacrifice.
Black ooze cracked out of the cow’s splitting skin and rolled toward him in strings of inky goo that latched on to his wrists and body.
The dark magic consumed him, clinging to him like a cape that billowed from his shoulders and boiled in waves of movement.
A faint sound reached his ears, one that made little sense for an empty field with a dead cow and crows above his head—but the soft gasp was expected from someone spying on a feasting god.
He looked up, feeling the magic already writhing underneath his flesh. Tiny fissures of black ink had reached up his face and were already pooling in the sockets of his eyes.
A farmer stood there with his mouth hanging open and his face white as parchment.
He was a stout man, born ready for a life of hardship.
His hands were worn with calluses. His clothing was simple and well-used.
Leathery skin had long been burned by the sun’s touch, but it was the man’s eyes that gave away who he was.
There were laugh lines all around his face, the deep grooves of a man who knew what happiness was, and that was the only reason Elric allowed him to live. If he had revealed even a hint of violence or greed, Elric would have killed him instantly.
Instead, he gifted this man with the sight of a god.
He stood, feeling power stretching around him. The great cloak of ink spread from his shoulders like raven wings. His frame grew taller than he normally was. Wider, longer, stretching until the very sky seemed filled with night.
The man began to pray, whispered words of shaking fear that claimed he would be a good man if the gods would protect him.
“There are no gods,” Elric said, his voice deep and booming in the field. “None but me.”
The farmer fell to his knees, vowing to be a good man for the rest of his life. He would not allow any to sway him. If there were gods, then he would worship them until the very last moment of his life. Spare him.
Family.
Farm.
Love.
The same words everyone spat as they claimed value in their lives not worth saving.
There were a hundred men just like him. A hundred men more who were gone and forgotten.
And still a hundred more yet to be born.
This man was just a drop in the ocean of humanity, and losing him would in the long run affect nothing.
But Elric was not the same god he once had been. Now he had a voice in his head whispering that people had value. That even after they had killed him so many times, there were still people worth fighting for in this kingdom. And that voice, that soft feminine voice, calmed his rage.
So he stood there, allowing the man to drink his fill of a feasting god. He enjoyed the fear coursing through the man’s veins, let it linger in the air, and then drew it deep into his lungs.
“Tell all what you have seen here today,” he intoned, spreading a warning before he left for the manor. “For I am the Deathless One, and I have returned.”