Gods of Rust and Ruin

by Azalea Ellis

  “What!?” Adam, Sam, Jacky, and Zed said in unison.

  Chanelle whimpered, frowning at the heightened tension.

  “This is a stealth mission. Recon. There’s no need to bring everyone along, and it will be safer if people who don’t need to be there stay behind.”

  “Wasn’t the plan to get stronger, and maybe get Torliam to rustle up some reinforcements from his royal family, before you went rushing off to confront another god? The last time this happened, we had to fight. Sam almost died!”

  “Exactly. You guys don’t need to do this again. You’ll be safe, whether or not I complete my vision.”

  “I’ve been training, every day,” Jacky said, clenching her fists. “And I still have a lot of Seeds left, if I need them. It won’t be like that mock battle, or when Vaughn beat us. I can be useful, Eve.” Her voice was hard, but her eyes were almost begging.

  Adam nodded. “She’s right. What if you meet the other group, and they’re hostile? If they’re from NIX, they’re almost certainly going to be hostile. If you do get into trouble, you might need help. We all have different skill-sets, and that’s what makes us so effective as a team.”

  “There’s no way you’d let one of us do something stupid like this by ourselves,” Sam said, crossing his arms over his chest like that was the end of it.

  “It’s dangerous,” I said weakly. “This is one of the strongest gods, and I’m almost certain he isn’t going to be friendly, if the vision was correct. I plan to observe from as far away as possible, but if some of the things Torliam and I found are correct, even that might not be safe.”

  Adam ran a hand through his hair. “You do realize why that’s not a good argument?”

  Zed spoke, finally. “You’re the leader of this team, Eve. But you’re not the boss of me. I’m coming. And you don’t need to worry about me. I know you hate what NIX did to me, but at least I can protect myself now.” He turned to Jacky. “You need a hand packing?”

  She relaxed a bit, and nodded sharply. “Yeah.” She didn’t look at me as they left.

  Blaine pushed his glasses up, and met my gaze. “I think you are foolish to even consider going alone, but I will be staying in the village with the kiddos. And Chanelle, of course. If something were to happen, they will need someone to protect them. And my first loyalty is to my family.” There was a question in his voice, almost like he expected me to protest.

  “That’s fine! I would prefer you stayed here.”

  He nodded, though the sad little look he sent me wasn’t at all subtle, and left.

  Sam went to follow after Zed and Jacky, but looked at me uncertainly, and then shot a questioning glance at Adam.

  Adam waved a hand at him. “I’ll keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t try to escape. Go pack.”

  Sam nodded, and left.

  “Seriously?” I groaned.

  “Don’t pretend you weren’t thinking about escaping,” he said, grabbing me by the arm. “Come on, we both need to pack, too.”

  Torliam grabbed Chanelle by the hand, and pulled her along with Adam and me. “Your underlings are not very obedient.” I could hear the grin in his voice.

  “I’m not a servant,” Adam snapped.

  “Not a very good one,” Torliam said, shaking his head.

  The whole team was ready to go in less than an hour. We already had packs ready with the supplies we needed. Add some water and food rations and we were finished.

  “Do you have to go?” Kris said, picking up on the tension of our group, as we stood around outside the back of the elder’s house.

  “Knowledge is power,” I said. “It’s too dangerous not to go.”

  “That’s ironic,” Zed said.

  Sam frowned. “Wait. If he’s the God of Knowledge, does that mean he knows everything? Won’t he know we’re coming?”

  I shrugged “If so, he already knows, so what difference does it make?”

  Blaine frowned at me till we left, and the kids made me promise to communicate back to them with the VR chips.

  Birch had grown big enough that we had to adjust the straps on his little pack. His wings were less fluffy than they had been, though I suspected it would be a long time before he could attain any significant speed or distance when traveling through the air.

  The villagers gathered to watch us go, chattering amongst themselves. The news about what we were doing had gotten out, and they seemed to be excited about my “quest.”

  We set off at a light jog, Jacky and Zed both grinning crazily at each other as the villagers called out well wishes to us. “I can’t say I’m averse to a little bit of fame,” he said.

  Adam and I rolled our eyes at him.

  For the first few hours of running, we didn’t communicate, except to relay what little information we had on the God of Knowledge, and to warn the others about the columns of light that seemed to be his power. I wore warmer Estreyan clothing over my vest, but the chill still slipped inside, and my breath fogged in the air.

  Birch ran beside us for a while, but quickly tired from keeping up the pace and moved to a lazy spot perched on top of my backpack, claws dug in and wings furled so as not to affect my balance.

  Torliam navigated for us, traveling diagonally toward the other Players on an angle that would have us catching up with them in a little over a day, if nothing changed.

  The terrain morphed from the evergreen forests that had surrounded the secluded Estreyan town to rolling mountain ranges, interspersed with wide, lush valleys. Crystal clear streams and lakes speckled the valleys, and the greenery was sprinkled with tiny early-winter flowers.

  I’m not sure if it was because of Torliam’s presence, but the only large wildlife we saw was at a distance, and none seemed inclined to attack us. The solitude only heightened the ethereal beauty of the place.

  Further out, these strange . . . growths started to appear on the plants, in between the crevasses of the rocks. They looked like golden rods, or columns, reaching out toward the sky from every high place. They shone with a strange, harsh light, throwing shadows that were unnaturally dark. It should have been beautiful. Instead, it was creepy, like watching maggots crawl out underneath the lid of someone’s wide open eye, eating live flesh instead of waste. It felt like they were watching. I could almost feel the light, sinking through my clothes, my skin, maybe even my thoughts.

  Something was wrong.

  Torliam felt the same. I could tell by the way his eyes never stayed still, drawn to the formations though they struggled to look elsewhere—anywhere else.

  Birch growled, the sound low in his throat and constant.

  “Sentinels? Like from the mural?” I whispered to Torliam as we ran, letting my words ghost out along with my breath.

  He nodded, grim-faced.

  My heart rate picked up a bit, and I had to force my claws not to come out in response. We traveled in silence again then, except for Torliam occasionally re-orienting us toward the other group of Players. The farther we went, the larger the rods grew. Some of them looked like they had been boiled, bubbles forming from the surface. Those ones were always shorter, as if they had been stunted, and everything around them was long dead. Once, a column crumbled away near the bubbles as we passed, seemingly unable to bear the vibration of our footsteps.

  Menace prickled in the air. To my Wraith Skill, the columns glowed with power, similar to the way strong Players did, or the rocks and water of Behelaino’s mountain.

  We stopped for the night on the side of a mountain where the rocks on either side provided a modicum of shelter, not long after darkness descended. We ate a cold meal of rations. There could be no fire, of course, and though the technology for portable hand-heaters no doubt existed on this world, we hadn’t brought any. With how low-tech the village seemed in general, I wondered if they even had any.

  Birch crawled inside the front of my borrowed clothes, burying everything but the tip of his nose away from the biting cold. He pressed his face against th
e side of my neck. His cold, wet nose touched my skin periodically, and the water in his breath condensed into a clammy sheen, sucking the warmth extra quickly out of that area.

  I tucked my knees up against Birch’s back, and wrapped my arm around them, trying to present as little body area to the outside as possible.

  Torliam took the first watch, but with the occasional sounds of monsters in the distance, and the biting cold that I was completely sure had frozen the inside of my nostrils, I couldn’t sleep.

  “Lean against me.” Torliam’s low voice came out of the moonlit darkness. “Back to back. Soldiers do it, in my world. We can share each other’s warmth, and if I arise because of a threat, there will be no need to shake you awake.”

  I shuffled over to him, ignoring Birch’s annoyed grumble, and pressed my back against his much larger one, then tucked myself back into a ball. Heat radiated off his alien frame, and I relaxed a bit in the warmth. “Thanks,” I muttered, before dozing off.

  He woke me after a few hours and we switched places, me facing outward into the unknown of the night. I’m not sure if Torliam slept or not, but Birch crawled out of the front of my clothes and into his for the extra warmth, so I was a bit colder until my watch was over.

  When the sun rose, we did the same, stretching and preparing for another long day of traveling.

  Jacky wiped a runny nose on her sleeve, then punched Zed in the arm when he said, “Eewww!”

  “If you catch a cold, I can heal you,” Sam said. “But if it’s not serious, I’d better conserve my energy.”

  “No,” Jacky grunted. “M’fine.”

  Birch crawled out of Torliam’s clothes, but when his paws touched the ground, he hopped around in shock at the cold and then jumped to me, begging for me to carry him with little pitiful mewls.

  I scowled at him. “What kind of pet abandons their owner to the cold half the night and then wants to be carried in the morning?” I muttered.

  He blinked at me, wide, human eyes looking completely innocent. He mewled again, this time even more pitifully, and lifted his front forepaw for a few limping steps, as if it was injured. Then he stopped and looked back to me, obviously wondering if I’d bought his ‘poor-little-kitty’ act.

  I sighed gustily and held out my arms to him, once again tucking him into the front of my clothes with only his head peeking out under my chin. “I guess I forgive you.”

  Torliam snorted loudly, and when I shot a narrow-eyed look at him, he shook his head. “You are a slave to his every whim,” he said. But he reached out and briefly scratched the top of Birch’s head, somehow-warm fingers brushing against my chin in the process.

  Adam stayed silent, and glared at everything for pretty much the whole day as we traveled.

  I’d been sending sporadic Windows to Blaine and the kiddos, but the farther we traveled, the higher on a mountain I had to be before they would go through. I knew there was nothing they would be able to do to help if something went wrong, but being cut off from outside communication made me antsy.

  It was late afternoon when Torliam stopped us. “We are drawing close to them, and most likely also converging on him.” He drew two lines on the ground to represent our path and the path of the other Players, and circled our future intercept point.

  We proceeded slightly slower after that, wary of being noticed by either the Players or the god. My awareness was stretched to the limit, and felt a bit sore, like a muscle I’d stretched too far and too long. But it was useful, because I could feel the ambient energy shining through the air as we approached something gargantuan and powerful, though still too far away for me to sense directly.

  “We shouldn’t get any closer,” I said.

  Torliam nodded, then pointed to the top of a nearby mountain that was taller than the rest. It would be a good vantage point.

  We all climbed up the back of it in tense silence, hurrying now to get high enough before the other team either reached the God of Knowledge, or the sun went down and reduced visibility.

  We reached a good vantage point and moved around to the side of the mountain so that we could peek out behind a rock.

  Adam and Sam stopped a few feet down, and turned to face outward. “We’ll watch the rear,” Adam said. “I don’t trust this place.”

  It was about thirty minutes before sundown, and the shadows of the mountains stretched long, and grew longer almost fast enough to track their progress.

  I poked my head over the rock in front of me, and looked down onto the God of Knowledge for the first time.

  Chapter 20

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  — Dylan Thomas

  The god’s valley was covered in gold. The shrubbery seemed to be made of it, as did the rocks and dirt, from the floor to halfway up the surrounding mountains. Golden columns shot up high, weaving and connecting together almost like a . . . shrine. Or like an open-air, majestic chapel, with one column shooting from the joining point of the others, reaching high into the sky.

  The god himself looked like a huge, Greek statue made out gold, more human than the other two gods I’d seen. Or maybe, more Estreyan would be a better word. No human was quite that perfectly sculpted. Or that gargantuan.

  His back was turned to us, and I had an absurd curiosity to see whether his . . . bits, were realistically proportioned, or baby-small like the statue of David.

  I pushed that thought out of my mind as I saw that he faced the other team, who had come from the far side of the valley.

  Torliam’s arm pressed against mine. His eyes were wide and intensely focused down below. Tension fairly radiated off of him.

  As I turned my attention back to the uneasy meeting down below I noticed the valley wasn’t quite as flawless as I had first thought it.

  Some of the columns had crumbled away, or were affected by those strange stunting bubbles. The God of Knowledge’s left arm was peeling like he’d been a victim of the worst sunburn in living history, one of his knees chipped away at the bend in the back of his leg, and his molded illusion of hair left dust trails every time he moved the slightest bit.

  I frowned. It almost looked like he was rusting. But gold didn’t rust, did it? It tickled a half-formed idea in the back of my mind, but I was so focused on the scene below that I didn’t pay attention, and it slipped away.

  The Players, moving toward the god from the far side of the valley, had brought less than a full squad. Or maybe, some had died along the way. The ones I could see looked a bit bedraggled, and some had minor injuries.

  I squinted, doing my best to see more clearly against the light of the setting sun on my face.

  One of the Players stepped forward, away from the rest of the group. He was probably speaking, but I was too far away to hear. He dropped to one knee in an obvious show of respect.

  Was that . . . Vaughn? A shiver of cold wracked me as I noticed another familiar face. “It’s Kilburn’s team,” I murmured.

  “If I didn’t wanna do it myself, I’d wish goldilocks would just kill him,” Jacky murmured back. It was the first unnecessary thing she’d said to me since we left the village.

  “I know why you have come—cuddle.” The God of Knowledge’s voice resounded out and upwards from down below, loud, smooth, and almost nondescript in its perfection. It was like an amalgamation of so many pleasing voices blended together that the end result was unremarkable. But . . . “cuddle?” Was that an Estreyan word?

  I looked to Torliam for confirmation, but he just shook his head with a frown, and gave a one shouldered shrug.

  “You think—apple—gain power from—” That time, he just cut off, like a recording where the sound glitched out. “What arrogance! Instead, you will—hairless—my sustenance. Give thanks for this opportunity to—beefcake—a role in maintaining my strength.”

  I’m pretty sure the group down below wasn’t expecting that any more than I was. They lost a couple precious seconds exchanging looks of wary confusion. It was more than e
nough time for the god to act.

  They all suddenly went stiff, and wide-eyed. Vaughn was kneeling, and just low enough that his face was in the shadow of the mountains, unlike the others. He was only illuminated by the strange glow from the golden beams. I saw his eyes flash with two pinpricks of reflected light, like a nocturnal animal.

  The god strode forward smoothly, only the tiniest limp apparent from his decaying knee, and picked up two of them by the neck. They didn’t react, and he tossed them bodily over his shoulders, into the area surrounded by helixes that I had earlier thought of as the chapel. Two more followed them, but the fifth, he didn’t throw.

  He clamped down hard on her arm right below the shoulder with one hand, then twisted right below that point, like taking the cap off a water bottle. Then he tore the broken arm away, and raised the bloody end to his mouth, letting the blood drip down into it.

  The pain seemed to have released his victim from whatever trance she was in, because she started jerking and screaming. But she didn’t reach for her shoulder, or even try to escape his grip. Instead, her remaining hand tore at her own eyeballs, digging at the soft flesh till they were just bloody, pulped holes in her face, blood streaming down her cheeks like tears.

  The arm stopped streaming blood, and he bit into it, bone and all. I could see the edge of his jaw from behind, chewing slowly and swallowing like he was at a formal dinner rather than holding a hysteric human in his hand and eating her raw flesh. His too-perfect voice vibrated the hairs on my skin as he moaned in pleasure.

  I was frozen, my own mouth seeming to alternate between dryness and the overabundance of saliva that prefaced violent vomiting.

  Jacky must have felt the same, because she ducked back down behind the rock, vomiting in the quietest way she could manage.

  The girl’s teammates weren’t reacting, still caught in their trances, until suddenly one of the taller columns broke for no apparent reason, crumbling at the base and falling to the ground.