by Dante King
“My soul is, but my body has been dead for hundreds of years.”
“I resurrected Isu, and I’m pretty sure I can do the same for you. These gauntlets... I can use them like I used Grave Oath, right? They’ll point to your spirit in the Sea of Souls, and I’ll be able to travel up there and pull you back.”
“You need a body to pull me back into, Vance.”
“All right, well, I’ll just kill some asshole who deserves to die anyway and put you in their body.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I can only be resurrected into my own body.”
“But you said you’ve been dead for hundreds of years… Surely, all that’s left of you now is a bunch of dusty old bones?”
“Yes, that is all that’s left of my body now. But if you were to gather all the pieces together and perform the resurrection correctly, my body would be regenerated. New flesh and skin would sprout from those old bones, and they would be filled with marrow once more. I would return to my physical prime and occupy the same youthful body that last existed hundreds of years ago, when I was murdered.”
“Murdered?” I asked.
“Would you call the Purge anything else? There’s no point in sugarcoating what those zealots did. They murdered us, plain and simple. And the monsters who did it didn’t stop there. Pieces of my desecrated body were scattered all across Prand. I, the Goddess of Wind, was thrown to the winds… a cruel irony.”
“Wait a second,” I said, “if your body was hacked up, and all the pieces scattered all over Prand, then how am I ever going to resurrect you? You said that your skeleton needs to be intact for this to work.”
“You have my hands, now,” she answered.
“I have gauntlets, not hands.”
“Look under the altar, and you’ll see an old wooden chest. In it are the hands that once wore these gauntlets.”
“And the rest of your body? The hands are just a start, and look what it took to find my way into this place. It’ll take me decades to find all the rest of you!”
“It would,” she answered, “if they had not all been collected already.”
A flame of hope flared brightly within me. I noticed, though, that Xayon’s voice was growing fainter and fainter by the second, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hear what she was saying.
“Someone collected the pieces of my armor, and my bones with it,” Xayon continued. “This person is a great hoarder of artifacts of the Old Gods. Think, Vance, think… who do you know who is a great collector of ancient religious artifacts?”
“Holy shit,” I gasped.
Xayon’s body—all of it except her hands, which I now had—had been sitting under my nose my entire life.
“My uncle,” I whispered. “That lying, thieving, two-faced piece of troll shit… It’s right there in his—my!—castle’s vaults, isn’t it?”
“It has been all along.”
“That does it,” I growled, my gauntleted hands balling into tight fists. “That fucking does it. No more getting sidetracked, no more delays. I’m going straight back to Brakith. I’m going to resurrect you, Xayon, and I’m going to take back what my uncle stole from me and make him fucking pay for everything he’s done. I’m not sure what order I’m gonna do those things in, but believe me, I’m gonna do them, and fast.”
“Hurry, Vance,” Xayon murmured, her voice barely audible now, a shadow of a whisper. “There isn’t much time. My bones are almost dust now, and once they’re gone, so too is any hope of resurrecting me.”
“Don’t worry,” I answered. “I’m not going to waste another second.”
I couldn’t decide whether things had taken a turn for the better or for the worse. But the time for retribution had come. For Rami, for Elyse, for me, for all of us. We would need all our power to finally avenge ourselves and set straight age-old wrongs.
And I would bring down nothing less than the power of a Death God on those who stood in my way.
I turned on my heels and strode briskly back into the main chamber. I made a beeline for Rami since she needed to be the first to hear what had happened.
I took off the gauntlets and handed them to her. “She’s alive,” I said, looking straight into her eyes. “Xayon is alive. When I put these gauntlets on, she spoke to me.”
She dropped to her knees, her eyes welling up with tears of joy and gratitude.
“I knew it,” she gasped. “I knew the Wind Goddess was alive!”
“Don’t get too excited though,” I said as the others gathered around us. “Xayon can’t make you Fated, Rami. Not yet. I’m sorry, but she’s too weak for that.”
“No,” she murmured, her tears of joy turning acidic, becoming tears of sorrow. “I came all this way. I’ve been devoted to her for all these years.”
“Wait.” I got down on my knee and took both of Rami’s hands into mine, then gave them a gentle squeeze. “Don’t despair. Xayon is still alive, even though she’s weak. And she can grow stronger. But what’s more… I’m going to resurrect her. I’m going to bring her back to life.”
“Ha!” Isu scoffed. “And how do you think you’re going to do that, Vance? You’ve barely been a god for a day, and already your ambitions vastly exceed your abilities! After the Purge, Xayon’s body was cut up into many pieces, and they were scattered all over the land. Not even I, in my prime, could have resurrected someone who’d had that done to them.”
“You’re right,” I said, an admission that took her by surprise. “I don’t have the ability to do that. But the thing is, if the pieces of her body are all returned to one location, all put together again, then resurrecting her is something that I can do. Quite easily, in fact.”
“Are you saying that you know where all of the pieces are?” Rami asked.
I walked over to the altar, dropped down onto my hands and knees, and pulled out a small, dusty chest. I opened it up, and sure enough, two skeletal hands were inside it. I pulled them out and showed them to everyone.
“I have her hands, as you can all see. And I know where the rest of her body is now, too.”
“Where?” Elyse asked.
“My uncle has it,” I growled. “So we’re going there to get it from him. And while we’re at it, you’re all going to help me get back everything that diseased goblin’s dick stole from me. What do you say, are you all in?”
“Yeah!” cried everyone—everyone except Isu, who simply scowled and nodded.
I put down the skeletal hands and picked up my new favorite weapon, the bone kusarigama. “No more getting sidetracked. No more delays. We’re going to Brakith.”
End of Book 1
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About the Author
Dante King is an author of Men’s Adventure fiction in various flavors. His books involve strong male protagonists who know what they want and do what’s required to get it.
You can connect with him at DanteKingAuthor.com
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