“Hey, it's okay,” Liam said, holding up his hand.
Mary panted for a few moments – then stood up. She brushed her palms along her butt and shook her head. Her breathing slowed. Her tail slowed. Liam bit his lip slightly as he watched her getting more and more settled. He had to wonder about those clothes. Christianity was more... restrained... than some other religions. Like all things, the actual history of the Church and sexuality was long and complicated, but in general, it shook out to being more abstention than wild, paganistic orgies.
So…
Why the hell was Mary dressed in what amounted to a fetish nun outfit for a world without latex?
Seeing his look, Mary frowned. “What?” she asked.
“I, uh, was just wondering about your outfit,” Liam said. “But we can talk on the road. Are you willing to head back to the City of the Dead Gods?”
Mary blinked at him, those beautiful, golden eyes of hers filling with confusion. “You are going there? But...” She shook her head. “Are you mad? There's an army of lizardmen there. God is there!”
“Yeah,” Liam said. “And we're going to blow him up.”
* * *
“So, disguises.”
“We need disguises?” Liam asked, looking back over his shoulder. This wasn't as useful as it could have been, as Tethis was standing at his side and remained three feet tall. He lifted one arm to look down at her as she stepped past him to glare down at the City of the Dead Gods. She didn't respond for a few moments, green finger rubbing her chin.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“We're on the other side of the world,” Liam said. “And this isn't Earth – no photography, no internet.”
Tethis looked at him. “A flaxen haired giant of a man, easily a head taller than every single other person in Purgatory not named Thor, bearing a glowing magical longsword made a metal that only exists in the ancient depths of antiquity, accompanied by the most beautiful valkyrie-”
“Aww, thanks Tethis!” Meg called from the back of the cave, where she was busily packing up their supplies.
“-anyone's ever seen, you're welcome Meg.” Tethis sighed. “And we're a good month's sailing away from any jungles, so people might even notice that a goblin's with you.” She smiled slightly. “And let's not even forget that our guide was crucified by these people.”
“If it helps,” Mary said, her voice soft as she stepped up to stand beside the two of them, her fingers laced together, “I wasn't targeted specifically.” Her fingers went to the ichthus that hung from around her neck. “I mean, no more or less so than everyone else in my city block. We were all declared saboteurs and heretics.”
“Were you actually saboteurs?” Liam asked.
Mary shrugged. “Is it sabotage if a smith breaks a bronze blade slightly more than he should otherwise? Is it sabotage if carriages are crashed by inattentive drivers and stock is stolen because guards pay little heed? Is it sabotage if alchemists go to bed early and waken late?” She spread her hands. “I think it can only be expected, when you are forced to worship a false god at spear tip.”
Liam smiled. “You seemed to think he wasn't so false last night.”
Mary frowned. “I have...” She paused. “Reconsidered my opinions.”
“Why's that?” Tethis asked but she sounded like she was only half listening. Her eyes were affixed on the distant city. She looked speculative.
“Well,” Mary said. “You are here, are you not?” She smiled at Liam. “With your godkiller?”
“Oh, we are so calling it that,” Meg said as she came to the front of the cave as well. Their belongings had been packed into a trio of backpacks, with the heaviest gear loaded into Meg's pack, which she had looped around her shoulders, the pack containing a frame that gave her wings clearance. It wasn't enough to let her fly freely, but she could at the very least do a bit of aerial maneuvering. “We're calling it that, right Liam?”
“I was going to call it Little Boy, but that should do,” Liam said.
“Little Boy?” Mary's brow furrowed. Meg, though, punched Liam in the shoulder.
“What's the rule?” she asked.
“No naming things after Earth things unless they also sound cool,” Liam said, rubbing his shoulder. Meg had put slightly more force in that punch that she did sometimes. He could almost feel a bruise there.
“Exactly. Little Boy,” Meg said, scoffing. “Godkiller is much more dignified.”
“So, Tethis, have you figured out a spell to disguise us?” Liam asked.
“I don't think I can,” Tethis said. The she frowned at the fact Meg and Liam both looked disappointed. “I'm a healing wizard. Doing basic energy channeling is one thing, but creating raw illusions out of thin air? Extremely complex ones like making you not look like you? That's a bit beyond me, no matter how despondent you look.”
“Well, you're a biomancer,” Meg said. “Why don't you just change us physically?”
Tethis rubbed the bridge of her nose with one finger. “Yes, that's much easier. And all the mass you would need to lose to hide those wings will just vanish won't it, because it's magic, we don't have to actually do any work.” She muttered similar things under her breath as Meg sent Liam a wounded expression.
“Well, why not a glamor?” Liam asked.
“What part of raw illusions-”
“No, not an illusion. Don't make us look like anything. Just tap into the part of someone's brain that says that things are normal and rub it.” Liam nodded. “Most of the things people see are approximations based off what their brain expects to be there, right? Take advantage of that with your biomantic manipulations.” He wiggled his fingers at those last two words. Meg nodded eagerly, using one wing to hug Liam's shoulder.
“That...” Tethis paused. “That could work.”
“Robes too,” Mary said. “To make us less distinct.”
Liam gave Mary the thumbs up. She looked somewhat taken aback, her brow furrowing as she looked at the lifted thumb. Liam lowered his hand, kicking himself. Right. Different cultures. Tethis, though, had pulled out her crystal foci. She tossed it from hand to hand, then got to work. Drawing magic into herself took a few moments of focusing, then shaping it and throwing it around the four of them was a matter of minutes. The glowing diagrams that she painted into the air were oddly curved and sinuous, rather than the more geometric patterns that she normally used. Once she had finished creating the patterns, there was a loud crack and the patterns vanished.
“Did it work?” Meg asked.
“We'll know when we get there,” Tethis said as she pulled a set of robes from her pack. “When they stab us.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Liam said, pulling his own robe on – then taking out a spare. “Mary's already shown, they'll torture us first.”
Mary didn't look amused. She took the robe and held it up, her golden eyes narrowing as she gritted her teeth. “I hate wearing these things,” she said. Liam looked from the robe to the outfit she was in. He looked back at the robes.
Mary saw his look and frowned at him. “What?”
“W-Well, I'm not trying to denigrate your order, Sister Mary,” Liam said, trying to sound respectful. “But on Earth, nuns don't, uh, wear that.” He coughed. “People who, uh, pretend to be nuns do. For, uh, reasons.” Mary's eyes narrowed. Then she scowled, her fangs flashing.
“Lilin are hot, Mister Vanderbilt,” she said, thrusting her thumb to the cleft between her breasts, touching the thin leather strap that crisscrossed her chest.
“You can say that again,” Meg murmured in his ear.
“No, I mean, we're-” Mary shook her head. “We're physically hot!” Thin streams of smoke were starting to trickle from underneath her black hair as her tail lashed from side to side. “I don't wear this because I want to flaunt my body, I wear it because if I don't wear this, I drop from heat stroke before the twelve bell!”
Liam held up his hands. “Whoa, sorry. I didn't know. And I didn't mean to be offensive. Honest.
”
Mary shook her head, then threw the robes on over her head. She squirmed, wriggled, then got her arms through the sleeves. Her tail bunched up under the back and she writhed her hips from side to side, trying to get it comfortable. Liam stepped over, pulling a knife. “Here,” he murmured, grabbing the robe, then carefully slicing a thin slit in the fabric. He tried to not loom over Mary but just standing near her made his head spin slightly. His nose flared and he breathed in her smell. It wasn't the scent of someone who had been staked out in the desert and left to die. It was a smell that reminded him of spas and saunas and massage parlors. Scented oils and spices. His cock hardened against his pants and he found himself leaning into her presence slightly. Her tail emerged from the hole he had cut, prodding him in the chest.
“Do remember I am a midwife of the Holy Mother, Mister Vanderbilt,” she said, her voice stiff.
Liam nodded, stepping back. He might have personal disagreements with the chastity demanded by certain sects of his faith but he also knew the difference between having a belief and being a bigot.
The latter forced the former on others, at the end of the day.
Of course, there are some beliefs that should be forced on others, an argumentative part of his brain muttered. Like, say, women have equal rights, being racist is bad, democracy is good, and so on. Wait, can you force that kind of belief? No, now that I think about it. But you can protect the right to have it, I suppose. Also, fortunately, most people who are against those things are also inclined to enforce their views with swords. And it is acceptable to kill them if they try and kill you first.
Liam paused in his considerations.
Holy shit, I miss Facebook. I need people to debate who don't just agree with me or distract me with their boobs.
He shook his head, gesturing to his friends. Attired in glamors and in robes, the quartet set out for the City of the Dead Gods.
Three
Liv walked beside the horse that the Golden Git road on and rubbed her finger along her slave collar.
“How can the same shit happen to the same person twice?” she muttered.
The Golden Git looked at her. “Huh?”
Liv scowled at him. “Nothing,” she said. Then, smiling brightly, she said: “So, I don't suppose you want to tell me all of your plans, goals, aspirations, troop movements...”
The Golden Git chuckled. “If I told you anything, Liviana of Sparta, you cannot possibly hope to trust that it would be anything but a lie. Unless, of course, telling you the truth would serve my purposes. You know this – and I know this. Thus, by the unavoidable dictates of the logic that you Hellenes so tirelessly forced into the world, you would be forced to disregard everything that I say as useless. Or worse than useless. And so I suggest we cut to the end result and not even bother.”
“Do you just really like hearing yourself talk or do you want to impress me?” Liv asked, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Yes,” the ugly lizardman leading the group said.
Liv knew their names – she could meet a new squad and affix their names in her mind without a moment's hesitation. That didn't change the fact that she wasn't about to give them the consideration that it took to use them, even in her thoughts. The ugly lizardman was the ugly lizardman, she wasn't about to get him confused with the big lizardman, or the lilin.
She shot a glance back at the lilin. She was leaning half out of her saddle in an impressive feat of horsecraft, her legs hooked around the broad belly of the beast, her hand on the saddle horn as she plucked rocks from the dirt path that they trudged along. There were a lot of rocks and scant else – the Basilisk Desert had given way to the foothills surrounding the Barrier Mountains. Boulders were strewn here and there, but many of them had been shattered over the epochs of Purgatory into a fine collection of pebbles and rocks. What wasn't covered with pebbles had dirt. The only respite from the desolation were a few shoots of plant life that emerged here and there, and even that was closer to gray than green.
“Vazt,” the Golden Git said, his voice holding an edge of warning.
The ugly lizardman shrugged.
“How long has my father been working with your god?” Liv asked.
“Two years,” the Golden Git said.
Liv frowned. She did some mental math.
“It was my God's idea-” Liv could hear the capital letter there. It chilled her and she wasn't sure why, until she realized it was how Liam referred to his Christian god. “-to start the war between Sobek and New Athens. Why do you think your father sent you after Megara the Messenger in the first place?”
“He's a war god,” Liv said, shrugging. “Seemed to be enough reason.”
The Golden Git snorted. “Athena is a war god. Ares is just an infantryman who couldn't manage to seduce Aphrodite and can't stand the sight of his own blood.”
Liv bristled. The fact she had thought and felt the same thing about her father didn't change the fact that the Golden Git had no right to speak about him that way. She started to imagine how nice a golden scale coinpurse would look but then her senses screamed at her: danger. She narrowed her eyes and looked around. Elves were natural born predators. Heightened senses, vision that picked out patterns and identified them better than even humans, and minds that could remain cool and calm in the face of even sudden danger. Immortality, also, had a hand in it. When you lived forever, you could get actually good at a task, not merely acceptable, as humans considered it.
“What is it?” the Golden Git asked.
“There,” Liv said. Yes, he was a bastard and his lilin had clapped her in a slave collar, but they were so far off the beaten path that anything unfriendly they ran into was more likely to eat her than free her. Her chin jerked towards a boulder that looked like it had been sheared in half in some ancient battle. She had seen a hint of movement there. Looking close, she saw another hint.
“Vazt, Anix,” the Golden Git said.
The ugly lizardman and the big lizardman drew their swords.
The first weapon that flew from behind the boulder took Liv aback. She had expected spears. Crude ones, but spears nonetheless.
Instead, it was another rock. Not as big as the boulder, but still large enough to turn her head into mush if it contact. She sprang forward, wheeling off one palm as the rock hit the dirt where she had been standing moments before. Earth and pebbles went flying as a volley of other rocks came sailing out from behind the boulder. The two lizardmen spurred their horses into motion, moving carefully and slowly despite the pressing need of battle. The ugly one, at least, had his shield on his arm before he started moving. The big one was slower, trying to guide his horse, move forward, and get his shield off his back all at the same time.
Liv rolled her eyes, then shot forward. She sprinted across the pebbles, darting to the side to avoid other projectiles, and then brushed past the big one. Distracted by his shield, he barely realized she had his sword.
“Oi!” he shouted.
The Golden Git, though, didn't countermand her.
The ugly lizardman, seeing her making for the boulder, scowled, then swore in his native language. He swung off his horse, lifted his shield, and started forward on foot. He kept up the cursing as a rock smashed into his shield, causing the metal to dent with an ugly, unmusical sound. Liv, though, had reached the boulder and skirted around it. Behind it were-
“Ugh!”
The creatures were hideous. They looked as if some bored deity had taken chunks of animals and pressed them together without care for function, form, or fashion. Fur melded with scales, while jointed arms ended in writhing tentacles that seemed more at home with beasts from the depth of the Platonic Sea. Eyes were mismatched and often wildly out of proportion and wrong – both in placement, size and quantity. But no matter how ugly the three beasts looked, they were ferociously strong, considering they were ripping chunks out of the boulder – not picking them off the ground.
One flicked his tentacle and sent a boulder flying
at Liv. Liv ducked under it and sprinted forward. Her sword plunged, tip first, into the center of the tentacled beast. The bronze bit, but sluggishly, and even with all her weight and all of her strength put into the blow, she only felt the blade sink a few inches in. Bright purple blood and orange puss spurted from the wound as she jerked backwards, whipping her sword to the side to get some of the gunk off of it. The ground between her and the beast hissed and the sword started to smoke.
“Oh wonderful,” Liv muttered.
The ugly lizardman chose that moment to save her life. He sprang from around the boulder and, with utter economy, cut into the arm of one of the other monsters at the narrowest joints. The arm hit the floor, still holding the rock that it had been about to chunk at her head.
Liv didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, ducked a fist, then slashed at a monster's face. She cut at the forehead, the cheeks, the fingers. She didn't try and go for any flashy finishing blows – she just wanted to disable the thing. The faster it was blind, deaf, and utterly maddened by pain, the better. Soon, her sword had lost the first inch of blade, the bronze crumbling away under the monster's blood. But the creature was flailing around wildly with what limbs it had left. It's good arm smashed into the side of another creature's head – pulping it with a sound not unlike a melon being dropped from a rooftop.
The ugly lizardman, she saw, had the same idea. They both stepped away from their horribly wounded enemies.
Looking at each other from across the battlefield, their eyes met.
The ugly lizardman nodded at her.
She nodded back, smiling slightly despite herself, her breath coming in short pants.
Then the big lizardman crested the boulder, holding one of the thrown chunks of rock over his head. He grinned. “My turn!” he bellowed, then threw the rock down as hard as he could. It struck the creature the ugly lizardman had wounded right in the center of their head. Said head crumpled inwards, sloshing orange blood and black, viscous goop onto the ground. The critter writhed, then hit the ground. The last one fell over – bleeding to death on the ground.
The Cross Guard (Purgatory Wars Book 3) Page 6
