The gods began to walk away, on their way to their own part of the dangerous scheme. Morph stopped and turned. “Good luck Kestrel, and be careful,” his father told him with a smile, and then he turned away again and followed Krusima around the curve of the catwalk to another catwalk that led into the gloomy darkness of the temple’s upper floors.
And then Kestrel was alone.
He vaguely saw Wren standing nearly halfway around the catwalk, and he thought he detected Stillwater, already in place in the darkly shaded spaced above the partly-elven girl, ready to offer her help. Kestrel looked down at the floor of the temple’s inner sanctum below, where he saw a trio of Viathins enter the room and approach the throne of their god.
Kestrel stood alone, and knew that he was in a dire situation. Though he had told Stillwater that he could take care of himself, the fact was that he could not grasp his powers – he had not recovered them after being drained of energy by Morph. Kestrel had an enchanted knife, and he had a few arrows left with his bow, and he had a staff and plenty of battle experience, but he had no great ability – no energy or power with which he would be able to protect himself.
His mind wandered to thinking about Putienne, and he imagined her as a yeti, standing with her thick, resistant hide beside him, fending off attacks and defeating foes in close combat. And then he thought of her as the half-elf beauty he had last seen her as, the girl whose friendship with him was imprinted by a divine spark.
There was a noise below, and Kestrel turned his attention down, hastily pulling his bow off his shoulder as he did, expecting to see the first stage of the assault begin with the Skyes entering the room. Instead, he saw that the Viathins were reporting to Ashcrayss, and he listened intently to the faint words from below.
“The enemy has been destroyed, my lord,” Kestrel heard one of the monsters report. “They were trapped in the top of a tower, and we toppled it to the ground, killing all of the invaders and their filthy little assistants.”
“That pleases me,” Ashcrayss slowly rumbled. “What of the way to return to their world? How will we begin to plunder the softness and delicious richness of their lands?”
“The way to the lake remains sealed, and we cannot force it open from the inside of the cave. We will have to use an army of slaves from that land to open it from the outside,” another Viathin answered slowly. “But there are other ways to return to that land to resume our conquest,” he added hastily to forestall Ashcrayss’s displeasure.
“But in the meantime we cannot build our strength by consuming the Inner Seas,” Ashcrayss said with anger.
“There is another way to that land, a direct connection, and we are working to develop it. The portal is some distance from here, and its outlet in the Inner Seas is on an island. You may wish to move your temple in this land to be closer to the new portal,” the Viathin answered.
“And what of the third portal you have found?” Ashcrayss asked.
Before his Viathin followers could answer, there was some occurrence that Kestrel could not hear that made all the occupants of the temple chamber turn their heads. It was the arrival of the Skyes, Kestrel realized. They were throwing themselves into the fray, making the sacrifice of being the first fodder the Viathins and Ashcrayss would consume in the battle that was about to erupt.
Kestrel’s heart filled with emotion at the thought of the Skyes, and he was goaded by the memory of the tears he had seen brimming in Wren’s eyes. He put his staff down, pulled out a arrow from his nearly empty quiver, and fired the first shot at one of the Viathin guards near the door to the chamber.
The monster fell with the arrow in his chest, and pandemonium broke out in the chamber. Kestrel pulled his knife and threw it at the other guard closest to the door, then fired another arrow at a third Viathin guard.
“Lucretia, return!” he called, and he held out his hand to capture the returning weapon.
Just as his fingers closed around the haft of the knife, a paralyzing ray of energy shot forth from Ashcrayss’s clawed hand and struck Kestrel, enveloping him in a dark red halo of energy. The beam stayed locked upon him as it lifted him off the catwalk and lowered him to the table by the firepit.
He felt a horrible sense of needles stabbing every inch of his skin as long as the ray held him in its control. When he was above the firepit, and the energy ray ceased, he dropped several feet to the flat surface of the heavy stone table and landed in a heap, then lay there gasping in pain. A trio of angry Viathin guards came rushing over to Kestrel, and raised their spears threateningly.
“Stop!” Ashcrayss bellowed. “Let me see this foolish mortal. I thought we had killed all the invaders.”
As he spoke, there was a sudden noise at the door, and the Skyes came scuttling in through the open door; he realized that he had started his actions too fast. He had misinterpreted the movement of the Viathins, and his hastiness had upset the schedule of the whole planned ambush. Whatever happened henceforth, it would not go as planned.
“What are they doing here? Someone put them under control,” one of the Viathins spoke.
“They do not respond!” another Viathin said a second later.
Four Skyes suddenly stacked themselves atop one another, then lifted one of their company up onto the table top where Kestrel laid, recovering from his pain.
He saw a guard raise a spear to skewer the Skye, then an arrow from Wren streaked down and struck the monster in the throat, making it slowly topple over.
“Another?” Ashcrayss bellowed. He stood up from his throne. “Send guards up there!”
From his standing vantage, Ashcrayss glared at Kestrel’s location, suddenly recognized him, then screamed in fury. “It is the Destroyer, the un-expected foe! How did it come to be here? You said it was dead!” he shouted at the Viathins that had reported to him, and he shot a bolt of his energy at one of them, killing his subject.
Kestrel saw the distraction in the posture of the guards who menaced him, and he released Lucretia, flipping the knife at one of the two remaining guards who stood next to his table, and then he rolled off the sticky surface, and fell to the floor atop one of the dead Viathins.
A quartet of the Viathins had left the room to pursue Wren. One Viathin stood across the table from Kestrel and lunged at him as he tried to stand up, supporting himself with his staff. Another arrow from Wren struck the Viathin, and there was a new roar of anger from the guards going after Wren up on the catwalk, a sound that changed to panic as the human ambush was unleashed on the unsuspecting monsters.
Other guards on the temple floor began to run towards Kestrel, moving away from where their god stood, as Kestrel pulled his knife free and threw it again, then helped the Skye on the table return to the floor, setting off a fervent conclave of clattering chatter among the creatures in the temple.
And at that point, Ashcrayss bellowed in rage, and unleashed his fiery stream of red energy once again, capturing Kestrel, and raising him off the floor and into the air, encased in a burning shell of inescapable, torturous energy. He pulled Kestrel closer, and looked at him, then released a stream of angry epithets.
“You, Kestrel the meddler, Kestrel the destroyer, Kestrel the filthy part-elf, part-human, all trouble,” Ashcrayss sneered. “You thought you won, but I have survived – I don’t know how you did, but your time is over now!” and with that angry shout, the Viathin god made his energy around Kestrel start to squeeze him tighter.
“No!” a new voice said in a profoundly quiet but penetrating voice. A bright yellow shield appeared in front of Kestrel, severing the reach of Ashcrayss’s ray, so that Kestrel’s pain was removed, and he dropped to the floor.
A glowing yellow circle floated down to the floor, and Kestrel realized that it was a Skye, or like a Skye, one that was standing upright on its side instead of its feet. And it was large, and it was glowing. It was Tullamore, the god of the Skyes, still alive, revitalized by the worship of the Skyes who had been part of the rescue party, the Skyes in the
temple chamber at that moment.
“Your dominion here is coming to an end,” Tullamore said.
“Your life itself is at an end,” Morph added, stepping out from behind the throne, surprising Ashcrayss.
“What is this? All my weak and vanquished foes together?” the reptilian god laughed harshly.
Krusima stepped out on the other side of the throne. “I am hardly vanquished if I and my people are here!” he said.
With that distraction drawing Ashcrayss’s attention, Morph reached out and pointed at Ashcrayss, creating a feeble stream of green light that struck the monstrous god in the side of the head, using every bit of power the hobbled elven god could muster.
“What is this?” Ashcrayss sneered.
“And what is this?” Tullamore repeated the question, unleashing a stream of his own equally feeble yellow energy to strike Ashcrayss in the same spot. The combination of the two powers seemed to multiply their effectiveness, making Ashcrayss squirm.
“You shall die for this!” he shouted.
“Not if you die first!” Kestrel shouted in response; he found an unknown and untapped means to touch his own limited powers, and he added a stream of his blue energy to the assault.
When the blue energy struck the yellow and the green energies, they all flared outward in a corona of intense brightness as they fed each other and harmonized their powers, so that suddenly Ashcrayss screamed with pain and horror.
“Release the powers you took from us!” Morph shouted. He began to walk back and forth, always keeping his hand pointed and his energy directed at Ashcrayss. “End this assault, end the ravaging of others. We want our powers back!” and with that he stopped his pacing, held out his other hand, and pulled thin air towards himself as though he were grabbing an invisible handle that hung in the air in front of him.
In response to his gesture, an explosion of green energy flew away from Ashcrayss in a wave, leaving him and flying towards Morph, while causing Ashcrayss to shrink in size. The green power struck Morph and staggered him back a step as he absorbed the energy. He grinned in delight, then clawed the air again, and a burst of yellow light was wrenched from Ashcrayss’s suddenly shrunken body, and flew towards Tullamore, entering the god of the Skyes and brightening his glow instantly, giving substance to the image that stood in front of and protected Kestrel, while Ashcrayss shriveled once more from the withdrawal of power.
Morph triumphantly grabbed the air again, and a bundle of brown energy flew out and merged into Krusima.
“At last!” the human god crowed in a loud, triumphant voice, as Ashcrayss shrunk again, shriveling down to the size of a raccoon.
“No, I am a god!” a tinny voice issued forth from the small cretin on the throne.
Krusima reached over and raised a mighty, glowing fist, then smashed it down on top of the remnant of the Viathin god, and when he did, a devastating wave of pure white energy exploded out in all directions. Krusima, Morph, and Tullamore were all in immediate proximity to the death of the god, and each of them absorbed a portion of the energy. Kestrel, standing a dozen steps behind Tullamore, felt the energy strike him, and he felt his own feeble energy flare up in response to the infusion of new power.
The Viathin guards still on the floor of the temple all fell, and smoke began to rise from their flesh, while the stone walls around the exterior of the room were pitted and jarred loose by the force, as mortar between stones was pulverized to dust.
Kestrel was knocked to his feet again, stunned by both the force of the energy and the profundity of what had happened. A god had been truly killed, once again, but it seemed this time to be true death for the evil divinity. It was an extraordinary event, and even amidst the feelings of pain and confusion and dizziness, beneath the quivering sense of power that took residence in his body, he felt the shock of a god dying.
He was glowing, he saw. He raised his hand and looked at it, and saw a blue glow emanating from his flesh. He felt the energy that had been liberated from Ashcrayss still within him. He looked up and saw Tullamore, glowing brightly as well, giving off rays of yellow light, while Morph was emitting rays of a soft green glow, and Krusima stood triumphant, his arms raised over his head, his size swollen to twice what it had been before. He too had a glow, a brown miasma that seemed to hang upon him, glowing, not obscuring the view of the victorious god.
Kestrel tried to rise, and found it surprisingly easy. He thought about getting up, and his weight seemed to disappear, allowing him to float up to his feet. It was extraordinary. He looked up at the catwalk far above, and saw no sign of Wren, or the humans.
The Skyes were circling around at an extraordinary speed, moving in an aimless way towards Tullamore, and he saw that they gathered together at the feet of their god. “Great Father, we know you, we love you. Thank you for your power!” they repeated over and over again.
“I am glad to be back with you, my friends,” he replied, and he let his yellow glow shine directly downward onto the Skyes, illuminating them. “Let us leave this terrible place and seek a place of greater beauty.”
“Wren? Stillwater?” Kestrel called. “Where are you?” he shouted, and he heard his voice reverberate off the ceiling of the chamber far overhead.
“Kestrel?” he heard Woven’s voice call from someplace in the distance.
“My people – come to me, my people!” Krusima bellowed loudly.
Tullamore began to walk towards the door, his parade of followers dutifully lining up behind him.
“Welcome to the great family; you deserve the elevation,” he told Kestrel as he passed. “I will look forward to working with you; I am going to need your help.”
“My lord,” Stuart called, as he led his group of fighters into the chamber from a small side door Kestrel had not noticed. Wren and Woven were with the humans, and Stillwater continued to hover over Wren, Kestrel was happy to see.
“I am myself once again, Stuart, Gates, Lark,” he spoke in a voice that seemed to reverberate. “And I’m ready to lead you back to our own lands now that we’ve accomplished all that I had hoped to do here. Thank you, thank you for all your sacrifice and help.”
“Kestrel, are you,…why,…. You’re glowing,” Wren stuttered as she broke away from the humans to approach Kestrel.
“I don’t know why,” Kestrel replied. “I’m glad to see you alive,” he added.
“We’re all lucky to be alive,” Wren said, “After you started the battle too soon!”
“We do not care about that, for we all are alive now!” Stillwater replied.
“Is the evil god dead?” Woven asked in his own language.
“He is, isn’t he?” Kestrel asked Morph, who walked over to join the group. “Ashcrayss is really dead? I thought he was once before.”
“He is truly dead. This time there are no worshippers in another land who are left to keep his rapacious spirit alive. He cannot recover from this; he is dead and gone, and his race will soon be extinct,” Morph said assuredly. “Unless you would like to become the new god of the Viathins?” he asked Kestrel with a twinkle in his eye.
“What an awful thought!” Kestrel said as he made a face.
“But maybe you could turn them all into nice, peaceful creatures. You’d be their god after all. You might as well find someone to be a god to, and I don’t want you taking any of my elven followers from me,” Morph told him.
“What are you talking about, my lord?” Wren asked.
Morph suddenly sprinted away, and ran a series of laps around the perimeter of the chamber, moving so fast that he was only a blur of shining green light, and then he was back in position. “That felt good!” he laughed.
“Do you see Kestrel’s glow?” he asked Wren. “Your cousin was struck by the expulsion of Ashcrayss’s original energy, the material that made him a god. As Krusima killed the evil one, the vitality, the creative essence of divinity was expelled from him. It struck Krusima, and myself, and Tullamore of the Skyes; we all are divinities already
, and so we absorbed it. We already had received our powers back from Ashcrayss, so it was of little consequence to us.
“And some of the Viathins here on the floor,” he swept his hand towards the charred bodies that lay about the room, illuminated by the glow coming from the gods and Kestrel, “they received the divine power as well, but as mortals, they could not withstand its power, and they were killed.”
“And what about Kestrel friend?” Stillwater asked slowly, staring at Kestrel as he enunciated each word distinctly. “He is still alive.”
“Kestrel was not a mortal,” Morph answered. The humans were coming over to him, leaving Krusima as they heard and were intrigued by the tale Morph was spinning. “He is a demigod – my son. And so he was able to withstand the effects of the energy, and interestingly, he seems to have actually absorbed it and adjusted to it.”
“So what does that mean?” Kestrel asked, astonished by the details of the throne room battle that had occurred so violently and quickly.
“It means that, in a sense, you are a divinity, a god,” Morph said, and he stopped speaking to listen to the reactions of the others, all of who could understand his speech, despite their different races.
“Kestrel god is a god?” Stillwater asked in glee. “Wait until I tell Odare this! She will no longer be able to play her little pranks upon a god. You’ll protect me as well, won’t you Kestrel god?” the imp asked.
“A god?” Wren asked scornfully. “Kestrel’s a nice–enough cousin, and the second best archer in the family, but certainly not a god!”
Kestrel stared at his glowing hands in astonishment, the thought of divinity something so unthinkable that he could not comprehend it.
“Kestrel, use your energy to open things up in here; lift the ceiling off this temple,” Morph said casually.
An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) Page 24
