by Terah Edun
And so far, the goddess standing before them had certainly shown no signs of being any different. She was small and stunning and therein lie the problem. To them she was no different from their wives and daughters. To Ciardis however she was increasingly the living embodiement of death and destruction. Though it would help if she would act like it.
Aside from the rather beautiful display of swordsmanship, there’s nothing to show it, Ciardis thought critically as she noted that the goddess’s sword had disappeared but could just as easily reappear soon enough.
“We’ve been preparing,” shouted out a conclave member who just hours before had accused Ciardis of being an undue influence on the prince heir…and that was putting his words kindly.
The goddess shrugged. “Your pitiful defenses are nothing against my abilities, even though I gave you years to prepare ahead of my advance.”
“Gave? General Barnaren sacrificed his life and many of his men to pass your three tests, to give us time,” snapped out Ciardis Weathervane, unable to stay silent in the face of the slight against a dead man who had given everything for the cause.
“So he did. In fact, I only promised you half a year if you defeated my wards,” the goddess said with no remorse. “It seems that now your time is up.”
There were subtle shifts around the room as weapons appeared out of nowhere and even the kith surged forward in order to fight.
“I think, milady, that it is your time that is up,” the prince heir said as he moved forward with hard eyes.
7
Ciardis’s bad feeling settled in her stomach like a knot that wouldn’t leave.
Perhaps it was because of the way in which she’d grown up and the people she had learned from, but Ciardis knew that you didn’t just mess with a god. Villagers had fairly simplistic rules. The one most appropriate to this situation that came to her mind was, don’t sass someone bigger, older, and stronger than you.
A goddess fit all those qualifications.
Eyeing the conclave, Ciardis figured some of them would be learning that lesson today, the hard way.
As much as she wanted to rid spoiled nobles and merchants alike of the notion that they were the pinnacle of the food chain, she didn’t happen to want to do so while she stood amid their ranks and potentially in the line of fire at the same time.
So before something they would all regret happened, Ciardis spoke up. “If you are who you say you are, let’s call a truce and talk peace.”
It didn’t escape her attention at that moment that she was essentially repeating the same arguments Sebastian had earlier with the nobles who had so curtly dismissed his claim of rightful rule. The conclave seemed to be beyond petty grievances and was very much willing to agitate and align against anyone whom they saw as in their way.
Like a hive of angry bees in attack mode, Ciardis thought miserably.
That is a perfect way to describe them, Sebastian said with an internal chuckle.
Ciardis struggled to keep a straight face as the goddess pinned her with a curt but interested gaze. “Peace?”
It would have been discourteous to show any amusement at his joke, but Ciardis had been in quite a few dangerous situations before and evil villains tended to think they were being laughed at when that happened.
So she kept her composure and calmly replied, “Peace.”
“That is the anathema of who I am,” the goddess responded. “Why would I talk peace with you when I live for war?”
Ciardis lifted her chin. “If you wanted war, you would have made it happen a long time ago. Your hordes have stood at our gates for years. Surely you don’t want this any more than I do.”
Ciardis noted that she wasn’t the only one in the room who was tense. Thanar’s fist was clenched as though he was ready to punch something…or fighting an internal battle.
But he said nothing, so she didn’t call attention to him, though she could have used more support to hold back the hive that was itching to sting.
“You mistake my interest in your prattle for actual morals,” the goddess said. “I had heard interacting with you mortals was an amusing pastime, but I had no idea the fun we could have until now. Especially when you meet my pets.”
“Pets?” scoffed a merchant.
“Pets.” The goddess shrugged. “I believe you call them the living dead.”
“Oh yes,” said the prince heir dryly. “We’ve met them already. Not quite the surprise you were hoping for.”
The grin that appeared on the woman’s face made Ciardis’s flesh crawl, and any remaining disbelief evaporated like water on a hot summer’s day.
She was who she said she was.
Which was why standing here and staring her down just made Ciardis want to crawl into the closest hole and die. But she couldn’t, they couldn’t; they had no choice. No one was going to rush toward the doors and risk a sword in their backs. No one wanted to be the first to turn tail and run.
You overestimate the conclave’s collective intelligence, Thanar said with grimness. They’re just fools who think they are not in harm’s way.
They couldn’t be more wrong, Ciardis thought back.
He didn’t respond, but it didn’t escape her that this would be the patron goddess of not only war, but the shambling creatures that would have gladly devoured her whole in the city of Kifar.
Worse than dead, they were parasites living in the shells of what had been their natural human forms. If the woman could open a portal to her pets, well, they faced a fate worse than death at this moment. Ciardis could practically feel her skin sloughing off just thinking about transforming into one of them.
Ciardis snapped out of her gruesome thoughts when several things happened at once.
“I don’t care if you’re the latest reincarnation of my ill-tempered dog,” called out one woman. “If you think you can come in here and bark orders, you are wrong.”
“Let’s end this,” shouted one bloodthirsty noble in a mad rush.
“No!” shouted Ciardis—not intending to spare the goddess, but to halt a massacre. She didn’t know what the others were thinking, but she could feel the power radiating from the female who stood looking down upon them all with a smirk with every breath Ciardis took.
The power was overwhelming.
And the goddess wasn’t actively performing any rituals. Nor did she seem to be trying to project her magic.
She just existed. How could they not recognize that amount of strength standing before them like a leashed wolf ready to snap out of its chains?
But none of them seemed to care. Bodies were in motion all across the room.
Sharp teeth passed inches from Ciardis’s arm, their kith owner rushing headlong to confront a god.
The sergeant-at-arms stepped forward and swung a mighty blade made of pure fire.
While a woman snapped out an innocuous-looking fan with wicked, sharp blades hidden in the tips of the ribs.
Even Thanar got involved.
I guess he’s no longer going to fume on the sidelines, Ciardis thought in disgust as she lunged for a fourth attacker, trying to get them to hold back, but they shrugged her off so fast and almost casually that she barely kept herself from being swept aside.
For a moment time slowed and she saw the room as it was.
Weapons raised, faces frozen in anger, and mouths open in mid-shout. It was like a tableau from a painting in a noble’s enclave. The start of a battle none of them could win. Not the way it was set up now. But Ciardis knew very few options were presenting themselves in the seconds that felt like eons. She hesitated for a few seconds as she watched her fellow conclave members charge to their deaths, but in the end Ciardis Weathervane knew she had no choice but to support their actions.
They were either all in now…or the goddess would kill them all one by one.
The goddess, for her part, was unperturbed by their rush to action. Perhaps she had even anticipated it.
Boredom even crossed the goddess’s fa
ce as she caught the sergeant-at-arms’ ax mid-blow as it descended.
Ciardis’s breath caught in her throat as the fiery blade sliced into the goddess’s palm but didn’t rend flesh.
Instead it just stopped and the goddess casually lifted the blade into the air as the man held on tight. But the sergeant-at-arms hadn’t become a renowned warrior lord for nothing. He was both agile of mind and light on his feet. With barely a pause he let go of his weapon’s handle and swung a mighty fist straight for the goddess’s breastbone.
The sergeant-at-arms had enough force and power behind his blow to knock a grown man clear across the room.
But again, that wasn’t what happened.
It wasn’t the goddess who screamed in pain when his blow landed but the sergeant-at-arms himself. It was a bellow of excruciation as every bone in his hand shattered on impact. The goddess’s armor was apparently as powerful as the deity herself.
Then she made quick work of her second opponent, who wielded the dangerous fan, by flipping the ax end over end and decapitating the opposing woman mid-blow.
When Thanar and the kith leader who had valiantly rose to the occasion met her on the tabletop simultaneously, she simply grabbed Thanar with a shoulder-crushing crunch and tossed him into the wall like a rag doll.
He didn’t just slam into the paneled southern wall, he cracked the stone that lined the façade. Thanar remained where he landed, slumping to the floor, unconscious as far as Ciardis could tell.
The other conclave members, human and inhuman, barely hesitated as they threw themselves with ever-growing fury at their opponent. Each one she discarded like a silly child with casual snaps of their bones and some easy cuts of her sword.
Ciardis actually thought the people who the goddess attacked with the sword got off easy. They were in a better place with almost-instantaneous death.
Others in the room weren’t so lucky with one poor individual hunched over a table, trying to keep the guts the goddess had so casually ripped out of his abdomen from falling to the floor.
He wouldn’t be alive for much longer.
For her part Ciardis stepped forward and faced the goddess as another person fell to her merciless blows.
She didn’t come at the goddess in a run. Instead Ciardis deliberately caught her attention and called up her magic.
With a raise of an eyebrow, the goddess released her grip on the head of the woman she held aloft in one hand. It didn’t help matters as she’d already crushed the woman’s skull, but like a cat done playing with a toy, the goddess didn’t care. Ciardis noted almost casually that her victim happened to be the half-woman, half-weapon which terrorized the room just before.
But the goddess casually stepped over the woman’s remains and walked toward Ciardis Weathervane, and Ciardis could focus on nothing else.
Her weapon was unsheathed and Ciardis saw death in her eyes.
Then another man, miraculously whole and unharmed, ran from a corner of the room with a furious yell. He was armed with nothing but a table leg as he approached from the side.
Ciardis had barely blinked before the goddess had raised her sword in a sweeping arc.
She cleaved him in half from the start of his groin to the top of his full head of hair.
Ciardis had never seen a man cut in half before.
She couldn’t stop the horror from overwhelming her face.
The goddess read her reactions with almost-wicked joy.
Ciardis shook her head as she stood there in shock.
“Well, he came at me,” the goddess said almost apologetically.
Ciardis wanted to say so many things. Yell so many things. But she was conscious as always that the goddess’s mood, although maniacal was almost benevolent. She shuddered to think of what she was like angry.
From across the room, Ciardis heard a shout of challenge. “I think you want me, goddess, do you not?”
The goddess paused a foot away from Ciardis and tilted her head back, as if to capture more clearly the voice of the person taunting her.
“Oh, I will get to you,” the goddess told the prince heir. “Have no fear.”
“How about now?” the prince heir taunted back.
Ciardis could barely see him. He was weaving back and forth between guards, hoisting up those who could still fight and getting them ready for battle.
Ciardis knew what Sebastian was doing. He was giving her more time to think. More time to live.
But she didn’t want to live anymore if living her life meant being surrounded by endless death. Perhaps it was time to join the friends and comrades who had so bravely walked into the darkness before.
“Do you really think you can do more than all of your fallen allies?” the goddess lobbed back. “I can’t believe this is the ‘great’ enemy I am supposed to face. Would you children feel better if I unarmed myself?”
“Why don’t you come over and see what a proper mage can do?” the prince heir sniped as he raised a sword to eye level.
Satisfaction and interest entered the goddess’s eyes.
“Fine,” she said casually as she turned away from Ciardis Weathervane.
Then she whipped around so fast, Ciardis didn’t even see her move.
Instead of using her sword, she swung the back of her hand at Ciardis’s torso so fast that the Lady Companion couldn’t move out of the way in time.
The blow felt like being hit by a runaway horse, and Ciardis heard the bones of her rib cage crack as she fell to the floor in a world of pain. She almost fell unconscious from the pain and she saw flashes of light behind her closed eyelids as she fought to breathe, the pain worsening with every tiny puff of air that entered her lungs.
Just don’t breathe, there’s a thought, Ciardis thought woozily as she tried to keep her head from spinning and herself from crumbling from the pain. At least she was still among the living.
“Use your power to surge attack!” she heard Sebastian scream at her before he was too entangled in a fight with the goddess to do more than keep himself alive. Even then Ciardis saw that was predominantly due to the personal sacrifices of Sebastian’s remaining guard.
Use the lighting as an attack? Ciardis thought. She knew he was right but she needed more than just her own gifts to make the attack strong enough to fell a goddess.
She needed pure unadulterated power.
“Use mine,” said a voice nearby, barely more than a whisper.
Ciardis managed to get up on her knees, barely upright. Still she managed to turn a bit and noticed a pallid noble with shattered legs by her side.
“Use my powers,” he said while holding out an offering hand.
“And mine,” said the foxlike kith leader, who by some miracle was still alive though he lay almost completely underneath the heavy marble tabletop that the goddess had casually flung on top of him.
Ciardis didn’t hesitate. She latched on to their gifts, and hers, and Thanar’s, and Sebastian’s.
Together they just might be enough. She just needed more time.
But my time has run out, Ciardis thought desperately as the goddess finished with Sebastian. He sank to the floor like a limp noodle and no one was left to distract the goddess.
The goddess looked around the destroyed room with a bit of a smug expression.
Eyeing the dead and the dying with contempt, she declared, “As I said, I am the goddess of death and destruction, and you mere mortals are insignificant blips of noise who had no chance of ever defeating me. I gave you time and I have come to collect my debts. Too bad you present such a paltry defense, though.”
One man—lying spread-eagle on the ground—his shoulder bone clearly showing through his torn flesh and his vision destroyed in a mass of ripped flesh, said through harsh breathes, “Suck rocks, you hag.”
Ciardis watched the goddess and her heckler as she cradled her cracked ribs in one hand and tried to call up just a bit more of her power reserves to throw into the magical lightning for one final attack. She w
as dreading what was about to happen but recognized that the goddess’s focus on the man would give her a chance.
He was brave, Ciardis decided as sweat beaded on her brow and the man struggle to sit up a bit while leaning over on his remaining good shoulder.
He had to be in so much pain, but still he was defiant.
Defiant even as he heard death prowl toward him. When the goddess reached him, she casually put a booted foot on his torn shoulder.
The scream that echoed from his throat would haunt Ciardis for the rest of her days.
He was pushed back with little resistance to the ground as the goddess leaned forward, careful to put just enough pressure on the wound to maximize pain but not render him unconscious.
Ciardis almost vomited.
He couldn’t see her, but the man’s focus never wavered from the goddess looming above him.
Perhaps he can sense her magic, Ciardis thought cynically as she tried to keep her feelings in check. It helped that she too was in immense pain. The pain helped clarify her mind and focus her thoughts. There was nothing else, no worries, no fear, just purpose.
Then the magic was ready.
Ciardis didn’t hesitate this time. Nor did she deliberate on the right or wrong of the attack.
Instead Ciardis launched the most powerful lightning bolt she ever made within seconds of draining all the magic possible from her five outlets. It formed into a pure energy bolt that arced across the room and hit the goddess dead center in her exposed back.
Targeting an opponent who was turned away in battle wasn’t a very noble thing to do. But Ciardis Weathervane was well beyond noble at the moment.
She wanted to kill the goddess and she’d do anything to make that happen.
So when her powerful attack hit the goddess just as she’d intended and no shield was flung up to stop it, Ciardis cheered internally as shouts broke out across the room.
