Chapter 33 #2
Elric merged his body with the statue and prepared to put on a show. All the candles flickered as though a gust of wind had blown through the temple, but the air was still. Then a deep groan rumbled through the room, a rasping growl that echoed in the silence.
He strode out of his statue and crouched on the dais before Alexander. Darkness clung to him in strings, like some primordial ooze birthing him out of his own statue, strings of it dripping onto the floor in wet, echoing plops. Slowly, he looked up to meet Alexander’s gaze.
Someone gasped.
Another screamed.
Then all fell silent again as they stared at the god who had just appeared before them. A god who rose before Alexander and cupped his chin in his hand. He made the young man look at him, so that they both knew this moment was very, very real.
“You’ve done well,” he said, his voice amplified by magic and power. “This kingdom is full of those who have forgotten who I am.”
He let his gaze linger on all the sacrifices left at the altars of his siblings. And the hatred he felt in that moment was very real. He hated that all of these people had seen value in his siblings yet constantly overlooked him.
He was a god, one more powerful than any of his siblings, but they had never seen him as worthy of their attention.
Instead, all these mortals had looked at him as a visage of evil.
Shadows begot madness, and therefore, he was evil.
Surely there wasn’t anything good in a creature who served a coven of witches, who fed the creatures they had long feared.
All that anger stretched out of his skin. He could feel it growing in waves of darkness that spread out from his throat like a cape, joining the wings that slowly emerged from the statue behind him and grew wider as he stood to his great height.
“Perhaps I need to remind you all why I am called the Deathless One.”
Then he felt it. The thrum of sacrifice pulsing through the connection to his coven. He could feel that blackness stretching throughout the kingdom, seeping into his skin and bloating him with even more power.
He lifted his arms above his head and released his shadows to snuff out the lights.
One by one. And then he filled the statues of his siblings with dark magic.
They all stepped down from their pillars, the crunching of stone echoing in the room.
Screams joined the sound of stone on stone.
And soon enough, he strode out of the building with the ghosts of his siblings walking behind him.
Or at the very least, the stony visages of the gods who once were.
A crowd had gathered in front of the temple. Their gazes turned to him as he spread his wings wide at last. It had been such a long time since he’d allowed his magic to really stretch around him, to be the glorious god who had once terrified this kingdom.
“Where is my coven?” he snarled, the words cast out like a net around the people who stood and stared at him.
The stone gods around him turned as one and began to walk through the Pleasure District. He followed them, pausing only when someone fired a shot at him. It was a brave young guard wearing a navy suit with sparkling gold buttons.
Elric reached into his own chest, where the shot should have hit his heart, and pulled the crushed bullet out. Black blood seeped through his fingers, but when the bullet clinked onto the ground, the man was already lifting the musket again.
“Don’t,” he said, pointing at the man with a clawed hand.
The guard started to squeeze the trigger, and Elric unleashed all the rage he’d been harboring for ages.
Shadows crawled free from his body. They scurried like rats up the man’s legs, biting into him with teeth and claws that shouldn’t exist on mere wisps of darkness.
So many innocent souls watched in horror as they crawled into the man.
Biting, gnashing, gnawing through his skin until they were visible lumps beneath his pale flesh, racing up his torso and arms, coming out of his throat in a wet gush of blood that sprayed onto the person standing next to him.
The woman froze in shocked silence for a moment before releasing a bloodcurdling scream.
Good. Let her scream. They should all be terrified of what he could do and what he would continue doing if they failed to worship him as he deserved.
Anger still seethed underneath his skin.
Some of these people had continued to worship his siblings, believing his siblings were more worthy.
Even after centuries, it was still a bitter ache in his soul.
He was worth their adoration. Far more than his brothers or sisters, because he was the only one who had ever fought for mortals.
As he strode through the streets, he allowed his shadows to disappear into the skin of anyone who tried to attack him. Witnesses cried out that a monster was in their midst and that he would be the death of them all. The end had come, and the god of death had returned.
These people hadn’t seen real magic in centuries. Now he was going to show them all just how powerful he was.
The town square was filled with people barely held back by the bubble of magic that surrounded his witches.
Five of them, all seated cross-legged on the ground with their arms around each other.
They swayed back and forth, chanting in a black tongue that had cast more curses than spells in its time.
The runes etched into the ground around them were starting to wear thin from all the weapons that cracked against their magical shield.
With a flick of his fingers, he strengthened each of those runes, searing them into the ground so that no manner of cleaning would ever remove them.
Agnes looked up, and then Elissa. Both of their faces were streaked with dirt, and he could see Hugo looming behind them.
It had likely taken every bit of self-control for him not to push people away from the circle, but the man had managed, knowing how important it was to demonstrate the strength of the coven’s magic.
And for that, he would be rewarded just like all the others.
Elric looked up at the sky. Fluffy clouds surrounded a sun that merrily beat down on a scene straight out of a nightmare.
“My coven!” he shouted, and everyone who had been trying to get to the witches froze.
They turned to see a god with dark wings silhouetted by the sun itself.
And then he let his wings spread ever wider, the grin on his face one of pure euphoria as he drew every ounce of bitterness from himself and let his magic fly free.
“Let us bring night to this cursed kingdom, and plunge it into unending darkness until the very world repents.”
Their chanting grew louder, filling the town square with an eerie song of witchcraft and madness as his shadows boiled above them to blot out the sun.