Bad Faith

by Jon Hollins

  Will no longer fell through the sky. He was the sky. And the sky was him. And the world was him. And all the energy stored in it, every scrap of power was his. Every heart that beat was his. And he was it.

  It was too much, too great. It was everything. It was monumental. It was power that would crush him utterly.

  But also, it was power that meant he could not be crushed.

  He was god. The god. The one god.

  He held Barph in one hand. He had him by the scruff of the neck, Barph’s head lolling back, throat exposed for a killing blow. His body seemed sunken in, decrepit, almost deformed. His fingers were withered claws.

  Barph turned sunken eyes upon Will. His lips worked. He licked at them with a dry tongue.

  This was the architect of all Will’s pain. The mad god who had sought to destroy the world. The god of nothing. The avatar of anarchy. The motherless fuck who had killed Lette.

  Will snarled. Because he could do anything. Anything. Any revenge he wanted could be his.

  Barph’s eyes danced apart, came back, managed to focus for a moment. “Eight hundred years,” he whispered.

  Will didn’t care what this whoreson had to say. He didn’t have to care what anyone said anymore. What anyone thought. There didn’t have to be any more fear or embarrassment or disappointment. That was all behind him now.

  “Eight hundred years planning for vengeance,” Barph mumbled, “and not a moment spent planning on what I’d do once I’d had it.”

  Will remembered being sent to the Hallows. He remembered the feeling as Barph had torn out his throat. He remembered how close he had been in that moment to redeeming all of Avarra. How much hope had been in his heart. He remembered exactly how much Barph had hurt him.

  He felt the power of an entire world sluicing through his veins. He could do anything, be anything, have anything.

  And, he found, all he wanted was revenge.

  Barph had closed his eyes. Had possibly stopped breathing. Will found he didn’t care. He didn’t have to care anymore.

  His hand went down. His fingers plunged into the flesh of Barph’s neck. And he tore. He slashed. And with a spray of blood, he ripped out Barph’s throat.

  There, he thought, and the whole of creation thought it with him. Now you get yours. And he raised Barph up above his head, and as Barph had done to him, he did to Barph. He drank the dead god’s blood.

  This is my revenge, he thought. This unmaking of you. And he felt all of creation cheer with him for it. Because they had to. Because he wanted them to. Because his will was theirs.

  And there was more power. Gods, there was more. With each drop of Barph’s blood that hit his tongue there was more. And more. And more. And he could feel his skin ripping trying to contain it. And he simply made more skin. He could be anything. Do anything.

  He could remake the world. He could save it. He could finally make everything right. He could mend all ills. All woes. And nobody would complain. Nobody would make idiotic suggestions and ruin it all. None of them anymore. Not once. Finally he could just do the right thing and be left in peace.

  He was god.

  But in his heart he felt Lette still. That little scrap of her that could never die, that she’d left like the tip of a glass blade in his guts.

  Well, she said, look at you now. Hanging in the sky and covered in a god’s blood. And to think I found you in a cave. My farm boy. What sort of mess are you going to get yourself into this time?

  He could do anything.

  He could make the world perfect.

  He could make the world fair. And good. And kind. He could make people happy. He could end disease, famine, war. All of it. It was in his hands. He could make everyone live perfect lives.

  Eight hundred years planning for vengeance, and not a moment spent planning on what I’d do once I’d had it.

  There was another voice too, urging him, crying out for him to make the world kneel. For him to make them shout his name. For him to demand love and worship and prayers and hymns, forever and for always.

  Make them pay obeisance, said the piece of the Deep One still lodged inside him. Make them beg for your mercy.

  How many other injustices had been heaped on his head for him to get here? How many others were there left whom he could punish? Whose wrongs against him could he right …?

  What sort of mess …?

  Gods … gods …

  Except there weren’t any gods. There was only him. Only him to decide the fate of everyone.

  And gods, gods, gods, he did not want it. He didn’t want that. He was terrified of that. Of the power inside him. It was going to fucking kill him. And if it didn’t, then he was going to kill everyone else.

  “I don’t want this,” he said. But there was no one to answer him. No one else left.

  He could do anything …

  Could he … could he give it away?

  And so he tried.

  CODA:

  GOOD TIMES

  80

  The End of the Beginning

  Lette gasped.

  Air rushed into her lungs. It came with pain. Searing pain. This was the air for a scream. For the last rattle of life. This was agony. This was—

  This was …?

  It was nothing. A breath. An inhalation of bright morning air as she sat on the edge of a hill, looking out at a field of flowers.

  What was this?

  She tried to remember where she’d been, what she’d been doing.

  “What happened?” she asked Will. He was sitting next to her on the hill. “What’s going on?”

  He turned to her, and he bit his lip. “You’re going to be mad at me,” he said.

  “I am?” Then she nodded. That seemed likely.

  “You died,” Will said.

  She tried that on for size. Given where her head was at, she thought maybe it wasn’t the most outlandish thing she’d heard.

  “Was it your fault?” she checked.

  To his credit, Will only hesitated a second. “Yes,” he said.

  Lette nodded. “Is that what I’m going to be pissed about?” She didn’t feel pissed yet. She felt … What was it?

  Content?

  When was the last time she’d felt content? She wasn’t sure she was going to let Will spoil that for her just yet.

  “A little bit,” Will said. “But probably not mostly why.”

  That also made some sense. “Go on,” she told him.

  He shifted his weight. He was wearing a rough work shirt and pair of trousers. His hair was tousled and his skin was suntanned. There were more lines around his eyes than she remembered.

  “Do you remember fighting Barph?”

  A flash. A glimpse like lightning in a summer sky. Standing in a field of the dead. Hope and horror mixing in her in equal parts. Essoa below her. Barph towering above …

  Then gone. Then sitting here with the blue sky above her and the green fields below. With a lone seagull arcing in the sky. With the scent of wildflowers on the breeze.

  “Where are we, Will?” she asked.

  He bit his lip. “Do you mind if I get to that in a bit?”

  “Am I going to be pissed about where we are?”

  “So,” he said. “We were fighting Barph—”

  She decided to let it go for now.

  “—and I made a terrible plan. And you were killed.”

  She nodded. Pieces of it were coming back to her now. Ugly pieces. But she had borne ugly before.

  “I don’t seem to be dead anymore,” she said. “That does a lot to get you off the hook.” She tried to smile even as the memories undid her feelings of ease.

  “Please, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you all this while I still think it’s a good idea.”

  “Get it out,” she said. Maybe she was going to be pissed at him because of how he told stories.

  “So you were killed because of my shitty plan,” he said. “But then I came up with another plan.”

&
nbsp; She cocked an eyebrow. “A shitty plan?”

  “We went to the heavens. We took on Barph there.”

  An eye roll this time. Because there were few plans that could have been shittier.

  “Seriously, Will?”

  He chewed his lip again. Then licked it. In Lette’s opinion he was overestimating how attractive hesitating made him. “I won, Lette,” he said. “I actually won.”

  Lette put a hand to the side of her head. “I think there’s something wrong with my hearing …,” she started.

  “No,” he said. “I’m serious. I killed Barph. Or … I tricked all of Avarra into killing him. And letting me win.”

  Her mouth hung open just a little bit. “It’s … it’s over?” she asked. “Barph’s dead?”

  He tried out a tentative smile. “We won, Lette. We had our revenge.”

  She couldn’t quite believe it. She looked around. She’d missed it—the final fight.

  She’d been dead.

  Another lightning flash of memory. Of searing pain. Of unending agony. Of lying on the grass, feeling her breathing die. All of her die. And then … then …?

  “Will?” she said. “There weren’t any Hallows left. When I died, I went to the Void.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I was unmade.” She said it before she became afraid of the idea. When it was still nebulous and not quite real. And her sense of contentment was halfway down the hill now, fleeing from her for all it was worth.

  “I replaced him,” Will said. He said the words flatly. As if it were nothing.

  “Replaced?”

  “When they killed Barph,” he said. “They made me a god, Lette. The god. The only god. All of the power of divinity. All the power of the Deep One inside of me. They made me all-powerful. They gave me the power to do anything I wanted.”

  She blinked at him. It was too much to really take in. They made me a god. As if he were telling her the sky was blue. What did he expect her to do with that information?

  And then a revelation.

  “You brought me back,” she said. “You brought me out of the Void.”

  “Yes,” he said. And he did smile at that. And it was like the sun breaking through clouds. It was like being alive again on a sunlit hill, with seagulls in the air and flowers all around.

  “Holy shit, Will.” She kissed him. She held him. She leaned back and stared at him. He was grinning like a fool. “You can do anything?” she asked.

  And he said, “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “You know how I said you were going to be mad?” he checked.

  And gods … every time with him. Every time.

  “What did you do, Will?”

  Another hesitation dragged out beyond the point of charm. “I, erm …,” he said, working his hands furiously. “I gave it away, Lette,” he said.

  “What?” She didn’t understand. She heard the words, but they didn’t carry meaning.

  “It was too much, you see,” he said. “Only a little bit of it had been too much … That was how I got you killed. By thinking only my way mattered. Only my will and my plans. That killed you. And it drove Barph mad. He wanted to unmake the world, I think. At the end, anyway. And this was so much more. So much worse. This was everything. I could pull you out of the Void. I could fundamentally break the rules of the world, Lette. No one should have that sort of power, Lette. It corrupts absolutely.”

  She stared at him. “The power …,” she managed. “You gave it away?”

  Gods, the things she could have done. The world she could have made. The jackasses she could have silenced. The injustices she could have ended. The world …

  And surely Will could have made that better world too. But … but …

  “You gave it fucking away?” she shouted at him.

  Birds, wheeled away, squawking.

  “I knew you were going to be pissed,” he said.

  She was very close to hitting him.

  “Who the fuck did you give it to?” she demanded.

  “Everyone.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Who the fuck do you mean, everyone?” She wanted him to be very specific here.

  “I …” He took a deep breath. “I split it. I split it between every sentient being on Avarra. I gave it out equally. To humans and dwarves and elves and centaurs and giants and … everyone.”

  “Literally everyone?” she asked. She tried to think it through, tried to be the rational one here. “You made everyone on Avarra a fucking mage?”

  “I gave Avarra back to her people,” he said. And he was so gods-hexedly earnest. So … passionate. “I made it fair. Maybe not right. And maybe not good. And maybe not what it should have been. But I made it fair. That’s the best I think I could do.”

  And gods piss on him. From a great height. How did he always make a believer out of her?

  “So wait …,” she said, still trying to understand. “Who are the gods now?”

  “There are no gods.” He smiled helplessly.

  “You got rid of the gods?” And she knew they hadn’t been in their heavens when she’d died, but this seemed bold even for Will.

  “No,” he said. “They’re still … just here. With the rest of us in Avarra. They’re mortal. But I gave them some divinity too. I gave it to everyone.”

  “Everyone?” She was still having some trouble with that. She had met a lot of people in her life, and some of them were arseholes.

  “It was the only way to be fair,” he said. And then another hesitation, which she knew was the prelude to some truly monumental stupidity. She arched an eyebrow until finally he said, “Even Barph.”

  She almost choked on her own tongue. “You said you killed him!”

  “I did,” Will nodded. “I did. Or the people did. Or … it’s complicated. But … well, see … before I gave the power away, I did do a few other things.”

  “Like bringing fucking Barph back to life?” She was patting herself down for knives. Will seemed to have brought her back to life without any knives on her person. Which was apparently the only rational thing he’d bothered to do recently.

  “Yes,” he said. “There were quite a lot of people to bring back, actually. You. And Quirk. And Balur …”

  “You killed Balur?” What the fuck …? How long had she been dead for that he’d managed to do that?

  “Well, technically Barph—”

  “Barph, who you brought back to life?” she checked.

  He looked sheepish. “I knew you would be mad,” he said.

  “Of course I’m fucking mad,” she snapped. “You tell me you achieve victory, and then you tell me you bring back our enemy from the dead!”

  “I think he’s a lot better now,” Will said. “I don’t think he wanted to be the only god. He just wanted his family to know how much they’d hurt him, and be sorry for it. And I think they really are. And he knows it. And really, it’s only a scrap of divinity. The same amount you and I have.”

  And that … that was …“I?” she said.

  “Everyone, Lette.”

  She was divine. At least … a tiny part of her. She reached out, tried to feel it. And perhaps there was something different there. Perhaps a bare flicker of possibility.

  “You can meet him in a bit,” Will said.

  “Who?” She felt Will was being purposely unclear.

  “Barph,” he said.

  “What?”

  “He’s back over that rise,” Will said. “They all are.”

  She looked back at the hill, the flowers reaching up to its peak, the sky and the future beyond that.

  “Who is?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he said. “Balur and Quirk and Afrit and Cois and Lawl and Klink and Toil and Knole and Betra and Barph. All of them.”

  “You said Balur died …,” she managed.

  “I brought him back,” Will said. He tried out a smile. “Everyone sent to the Void, I brought them back. And I
put the Hallows back. And I put Gratt and his army back. I just … I put everything back together. I did use it for that. And then I gave it up. I gave it to you, and to all our friends, and to everybody.”

  She just … she just …

  He put the world back together.

  The whole fucking world.

  And she’d been dead.

  And he’d gone into the Void and brought her back …

  “Oh, and the dragons too,” he said. And she could have sworn that he ducked.

  “What?” Her voice screeched at the blue sky.

  “I put them back on Natan, though,” he said. “Which is where most of them were. But … I … I made it nicer for them. So there’s lots of food. And gold. I thought perhaps if they were happy there, and not here, then perhaps they’d leave us alone. And, well … Barph had wiped them out. And that seemed like a lot. And Quirk would have been sad. So … I did do that too.”

  He gave her a nervous smile.

  And … and … gods. “Will …,” she said. But she wasn’t sure what words came after that.

  He winced a little. “How mad are you?” he asked.

  “I …,” she said. And still … What did you say? What did she say? Here, now, confronted with this? “I …,” she said again.

  “I couldn’t think of a better way.” He shrugged.

  “It’s just …” She tried to formulate it as best she knew how. “You put the world back together,” she said, “and it didn’t even occur to you to maybe just set aside one single barn full of gold bullion for us?”

  “Oh,” he said. And he licked his lips.

  She shook her head. “An island of gold for the dragons, but for you and me …”

  “Well.” He held up his hand, like a polite schoolboy.

  “This,” she told him, “better be fucking good.”

  “You remember,” he said, “how I told you everyone was waiting for us over the crest of the hill.”

  And she supposed that somewhere in the slew of madness, that had been communicated.

  “Yes,” she allowed.

  “They’re on a farm,” he said.

  “A farm?” she checked.

  “A pig farm.” He nodded eagerly.

  And that … that took a moment. “You were a god,” she checked. “And you were so powerful that you could go into the Void and save my life. So powerful you could re-create the Hallows. So powerful you brought the dragons back from extinction and gave them an island of gold.”