But then again, why had those thoughts never come to light about the people he was staying with? Beside that first initial reaction when Konrad had stood over him, he had never even considered lifting a hand against his benefactors. Konrad had been exceedingly kind to him and Victoria helped him on relearning everything he should have supposedly known… but any other person that they met, the thought of killing them where they stood was always present.
“But that said,” Konrad cleared his throat, as if sensing Triglav’s mind had been elsewhere. “You know you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need to. God know you’ve been a great deal of help to us. You’ve helped us to accomplish more than anything we could have on our own. Just worried you’re missing out on some big, beautiful life you forgot about.”
Triglav nodded and slowly began to turn back to his meal, his mind spinning.
*****
He could not get Konrad's words out of his mind. Despite how many times he and Victoria went into town, despite how hard he worked in the Eberstarks’ field, he could not escape the thought that there was a life he could not remember. As subsequent days passed, he had fallen sullen, not engaging as much with Victoria when she spoke – at first it was not on purpose, but once he realized what he was doing, it was hard to stop. There had been days when she would try to hold full conversations with him, that normally he would have been enthralled to listen to, but all he did was grunt in response.
At first, she spoke at lengths more than ever, as if noticing his depression and trying to pull him out of it. But when he refused to speak with her, she let him stew in his thoughts. He resented the cold that took over his persona, but again, did nothing about it. It was not until after a full week of his moodiness that she tried to speak to him again.
“So, who do you think you once were?”
He turned toward her and cocked an eyebrow. “What?”
“Well, clearly you’re stuck thinking on the past, so why don’t you share your thoughts with me? Who do you think you were before the amnesia?”
“I don't know,” he grumbled, shrugging his shoulders. When he realized she expected him to elaborate, he sighed. “I really do not. A warrior. Of some sort. I don't know. Someone who was good at fighting.”
“Well, your size would definitely work in your favor if that was the case.” She slapped him on the arm, beaming wide with a smile that pulled him slightly out of his thoughts. “Could you imagine if you were a baker? Being stuffed in a tiny room, suffocated with the heat of the oven? I can see you wearing an apron, meticulously kneading each roll of dough!”
Her laugh did him well, and for the first time in a while, he smiled. “I would do no such thing. I can little stand to wear these itchy shirts, and you think I would wear an apron? Not likely, my lady.”
“Okay, fine. How about a spinner? You seem to have quite the picky sense for clothing. Sitting at a wheel all day spinning thread must have been how you built up all those muscles!”
“Oh, sure. And I wager that I sang songs waiting for a princess to save me from my labor.”
She bent forward as she laughed, almost losing the reins. The smile spread across his face a little wider. He was not sure why he had been so preoccupied with his past. What was past, was past. He could not do anything to change it, and he supposed eventually the dreams would cease. What was actual was the present and all of the work he was doing with the Eberstarks.
He heard an unfamiliar noise and looked down at the horses. They whined strangely and it looked like Victoria had to struggle to keep them on the path.
“Whoa, whoa boys.” After some struggling, she was finally able to get them under control. “That was… unusual. They never act up like this.”
Triglav’s brows bent as a scent assaulted his nostrils. He knew what it was, having smelt it whenever a fire was lit, but the strength of the odor threatened to choke him.
“Is that… smoke?” Victoria’s voice wavered as she looked around nervously, her eyes finally locking on a plume that rose above the tops of the trees. Triglav had been so preoccupied with his mood, he must not have noticed it.
They passed the last group of trees that blocked the way to the farm and Victoria’s jaw dropped, only the slightest quivering sound emanating, the reins dropping completely from her hands. The farm, the plots – everything – was aflame. It looked like something from his dreams, the way the flames covered everything, engulfing the once prosperous town in death. Triglav grabbed the reins and pulled the horses off to the side of the road. Once they stopped, whinnying loudly as they turned away from the heat, he leapt out of the wagon, taking a sword out he had procured at the market some time ago. He turned once to Victoria, cutting the air with his free hand.
“Stay here! Do not get out of the wagon!”
“But…”
“I said stay!”
He took off running before she had a chance to respond. He realized he had been more forceful with her than he wanted to be, but he could not risk anything happening to her. As he drew near, he saw people standing in front of the source of the blazing inferno. He recognized them instantly from the attire.
Cultists.
“Ah, Triglav. So we were right to believe this is where you have been hiding out, my lord.”
The man leading the group he had not seen before, but among those surrounding him he remembered as some of the survivors of the first group. They had that same wild look in their eyes as they clutched weapons that Triglav noticed with anger were coated with dripping red liquid.
“Your people have called me that name before, but I am not the deity you believe me to be! But for the destruction you have wrought upon this family, who I will be when I send your souls to the underworld will make no difference!”
Triglav raised his sword in the air, but the leader raised his hand and shook his head. The man stopped, for what reason he could not say, but something about the way the cultist leader held himself made Triglav believe he was more important and knowledgeable than any others he had met.
“Ah, great lord. Your coming back into this dimension must have torn your memories asunder. Were there a way that we could have better heralded your coming, we would have embraced it. However, those of the Eldar used their fool before we were able to finish with our own summoning rituals. I am just glad that the dark ones were not alone in returning.”
Fool? Eldar? Summoning…? They all touched spots in the empty bank of his memories, making him believe there was great weight to them. His head hurt more than ever before.
“I don’t…”
“Of course you don’t remember, my lord. As I have said, we had no way to prepare for you coming back to our world. But now, you are here with us once more! Come with us, my lord, and we will help all that we can to restore you back to your former strength and reunite the three heads!”
Then it hit him again; the words, especially speaking of the three heads, caused his brain to work in overtime, trying to recall lost memories as they threatened to burst forth from the depths of his mind. He almost relented, thinking going with these people to be the best course of action, but then he saw the pyre and came back to the moment.
“The only fools I know are those before me,” he said through grit teeth as he readied the sword once more. “If I am truly the god you believe me to be, do you know what you have done in desecrating this farm?! The people that lived here are good people.” Then he paused, realizing that he had not seen Victoria's father anywhere. “Where is Konrad?”
The cultist leader closed his eyes, bowing his head. “We had heard that you had become attached to these mortals, clearly the result of the amnesia. In order to restore you to your former glory, we knew what had to be done.”
The man stepped aside and behind him, the rows of their followers parted to reveal a statue, smaller than the one of ‘Triglav’ that he had seen when he had first awoken. It took him a moment, but his heart dropped in his stomach when he realized that body parts were strew
n about the three heads. In the mouths of the lion, ram, and dragon were two arms, two legs, multiple organs, and at the base was a human head, the eyes rolled back and the mouth open to reveal the cut out tongue.
“We have offered him, the man you called Konrad, as a sacrifice in your name.”
Nothing could stop the rage he felt, flowing through his body, through every muscle and bulging vein. He rushed at the leader with his blade held high, but another stepped in his way to take the killing blow that swept across his entire body. As the first drop of blood hit the ground, Triglav was an unrelenting force of destruction. He leapt forward in great bounds through seas of people to try and get to the leader, but he wove back behind lines of supporters, deeper and deeper until Triglav found himself surrounded by men in every direction.
His blade became one with his arm, swinging and slicing in every direction possible. His foes barely could mount a defense as he came at them. With his spare hand he would occasionally strip the weapon from his foe’s hands and use that as a temporary offense. When the weapon would dull or break, he grabbed at his foes and threw them into one another, and occasionally would slam his head into the face of another and crack their nose.
His fury could not be quelled. He stopped caring about finding the man who had incited all of this and decided he would save him for last. He would kill each and every one of these bastards who had defiled the Eberstarks’ home; the place he had been taken in and worked so hard to keep prospering.
One by one they fell, slaughtered beyond recognition as the silver of the sturdier blade of his could not be seen beneath the thick coat of blood. It was then he realized that the cultist leader was the last man standing. He stood at the base of the statue, a sadistic gleam on his face as he held both hands up.
“Yes! Yes! The sacrifice worked! Before this statue, every life you have taken has been to make you stronger! You are the demon of the battlefield that you once were! None can stand before your might!”
It was the first time Triglav had stopped to think about the overwhelming count of bodies. He looked about him and realized there had to have been seventy to eighty-five dead people all around him; men and women of various ages, and even, he realized with great disgust, some very young cultists who all fought to believe he was the great three-headed god of war. He was disgusted with himself for all of the carnage, but then, when he really reflected on the fight, he realized with some sickening feeling, that he felt alive. Traces of memories of battles fought millennia ago starting becoming clear in his mind.
They started returning, at first like a slight spark of light, but then like the flames that burned so bright all around him, he started remembering who he was. Years worth of struggle against the Eldar Gods, the argument with Perun over their seal, the damning void, and who he was. He was Triglav, the three-headed god of war. And this man had reawoken him.
“Thank you.” Triglav held his sword low as he walked forward, his expression inscrutable. “Allow me to repay you for your efforts.”
The priest was practically drooling at the deity as he stepped forward. Triglav’s expression turned sinister as he stood before him, scowling down at the man who waited for his prize. Triglav wrapped his free left hand around the throat of the cultist, lifting him up off the ground. He could have crushed the windpipe if he really wanted to; he could feel the muscles buckling under his grip, but it was just enough to cause the agony he desired. He raised the kicking body two feet in the air and looked ahead of him.
Thrusting his arm forward he impaled the body on the horns of the ram, grinning sadistically as the man howled in pain. He stepped back as the blood spurted on him, drenching him in the thick liquid. It was the first time that he had fully embraced the dark thoughts and he felt an overwhelming rush of emotions; but on the forefront of his mind was an unbridled glee.
He waited until the body stopped squirming before sheathing his sword and retrieving the parts of Konrad off of his idol. He looked toward where the cultists had their wagons and found a large tarp to swaddle the parts in. He covered them all; the limbs, the entrails, and with a great sorrow he took the head and wrapped it up. He placed the wrapped pieces on the ground beside him and then looked toward the statue. He could not lie to himself. He was Triglav, and this idol, damnit all, had given him a gain in battle prowess. In the past, he would have welcomed with open arms such a sacrifice, but Konrad was not one of those people that should have been killed in his name.
He picked the statue up with both hands, the priest still dangling, and raised it above his head. To a mortal man this feat would have been impossible, but with his herculean strength, the object felt weightless. With a thrust of his arms, the idol flew into the burning wreck, caving the remains inward as it joined the inferno.
Triglav exhaled deeply. The bodies of his followers at least deserved to be burned and he still had to bury Konrad’s body, but he felt himsel freeze, colder than ever his returning memories could fathom. Victoria stood about twenty feet away, her hands held over her mouth, tears flowing freely down her face. Triglav looked down at the ground, at the pieces that lay wrapped up, that Victoria believed to be a full body. His heart hurt. He had never felt this way about a human before, but these people had been beyond kind. They had shown him generosity like none ever when he needed it the most.
“Victoria…”
“Did… Did my father suffer?” The words were choked by emotion, barely understandable.
Triglav considered telling her the truth, telling her he made them all pay for what they had done to her father and their farm, but ultimately, he did not want her to feel the same kind of pain that the cultist leader had felt before he perished.
“He fought against the men that attacked and they killed him quickly. Your father died bravely, with no pain.”
She turned away from him, sobbing deeply. The smile that had brought him so much joy and taken his mind off all of the self-anguish was nowhere to be seen. She wept out of a loss greater than any he had ever experienced. He stepped forward to her and turned her around, trying to think of what to say to ease her pain. He had taken so many lives and so many had been sacrificed in his name, but he did not know how to deal with grief.
She wrapped her arms around his torso, burying her head into his chest. He had not realized his shirt had been torn off in the fighting until he felt the warm liquid that poured down her face, dripping down his chest. His arms dangled limp at his side as he struggled to look down at the mess of auburn hair. Eventually he brought one hand up to hold against her head and the other held her back, doing what he thought the mortals called a ‘hug’.
*****
While the fire stilled burned, Triglav threw the bodies into the blaze. Two to three at a time he would heave his once-followers, saying silent prayers for each of them. Despite the nauseating stench that human flesh gave off as it burned, Victoria refused to return to the wagon. She insisted on digging the grave for her father. He would not let her touch the body though. Once they had both finished their tasks, he let her say her final goodbyes before placing the body in the grave. She covered his resting place and let a few more tears seep through.
Triglav turned away, looking to the distance past the tops of the trees.
“Victoria… I am deeply sorry. All of this happened because-…”
“I know.” He turned back at her. She was looking down at her father’s grave, but her gaze was a bit more resolute, her expression hardening. “I… I don’t understand how, but somehow… you are the god Triglav. I do not know why or how, but you are he. I should have known from the start, but I thought it was impossible for a deity to walk among mortals. It truly makes no sense, but with all of the strange happenings around these lands lately, I suppose I should not be surprised. I had heard tales of your followers, of supernatural beings that came with the quakes, myths that once upon a time your kind lived among us… But I could not believe there was any truth to it.”
“Believe it. All of it is
true. My kind has fought to save humanity against an evil known as the Eldar Gods for millennia longer than I can remember. Our followers have always existed, and this quake that you have spoken of, I am sure that is the result of our release from the prison that housed us, known as the void.”
“I see… That is very confusing, but I will try to understand.” She nodded but still did not meet his gaze. “What will you do now?”
He looked back toward the distance where he had been focused on originally. “Now that I know the truth, I need to go to the place where my brethren once called home. Starybogow.”
She turned to him, her gaze quivering as she stared. “Whatever home you once held there is no more. You have heard the word about the darkness linger-…”
“They are minions of the darker gods of old.” Triglav tried to keep the cold out of his voice, but as his memories returned, so did much of his personality. He was filled with hatred for the people that were responsible for bringing him back. Was he better off sitting in the void, stuck forever without coming back into contact with humanity? “I need to return to Perun. There is much I need to discuss. While my memories have started returning, there are still many holes. I believe my three heads have been separated and reuniting with them is the only way that I can ever be whole once more.”
“Then I am coming with you.”
Triglav looked at her, pressing back the sneer he felt coming to his lips. “No. I thank you for all your help, but you cannot-…”
“I am going with you.”
He was stunned. No other human dared speak to him that way, but no other human had seen a side of him he thought nonexistent. She had seen, arguably, his most mortal side and helped him recover from the brink of death. She was indeed different. The sneer completely faded and a smile began to form.
City of the Gods - Starybogow Page 11
