There was a third knock on his sanctum. Ouranos closed his book and slammed it on his black stone desk. “By the fates and all that is holy, what is it NOW?!”
The first blinded scribe poked his head in. “My Lord, a delegation has arrived.”
“A delegation?”
“From both the pantheon of Hennamin and the pantheon of Garralos.”
“Blast it, I told them already I don’t plan on taking sides in this pointless war!”
“How about ending the war?”
The door opened farther, revealing Nisi and Mónos standing on the other side.
“Think about it,” Nisi continued. “No more forced arbitrations, no one pestering you. You’ll have all of eternity to read your forbidden books.”
“But…how?”
Storgen scooted himself in, sitting on a chair that had some wheels rigged onto it. “By declaring this war felonious.”
* * *
The Fortress of Froúrio sat like an immovable sentinel, a keystone in the crescent bay. Sweet winds ran though the jagged rocky formations rising up out of the shallows, spring flowers blossomed from crevasses in the rock face of the surrounding cliffs. The gates of glowing stone sat heavily in the waters, barring passage to the river system beyond that led to the capital of Agadis.
Shells exploded in the air, creating dark alchemic clouds and streaks of sizzling metal. Heavy mortars thudded into the cliff walls, exploding from within and tearing free hundreds of tons of rock to crash down into the frothing waters below.
In the bay, hundreds of warships sat in formation, bombarding the fortress with a relentless torrent. It was as if the whole world were coming apart. Mountains trembled, rivers were thrown free of their beds. The sea parted, was pushed aside, then came crashing back in again, slapping against the ancient defenses. The very air seemed alive with lead. Like streaking swarms of insects, remorseless steel tore at the fortress walls, ripping apart the merlons and shredding the embrasures. The defenders returned fire, heavy boulders flung impossibly high by enormous trebuchets, slamming into iron hulls. Metal twisted and buckled, seams popped open and welds tore. A destroyer nosed-down into the harbor, her crew scrambling for the lifeboats, but for every ship that was felled, there always seemed to be three more to take her place.
At the center of the vast flotilla sat Ekdíkisi tou Sirend, like a whale amongst sharks. Its cannon thundered in a regular staccato, blasting apart cannon emplacements and splintering trebuchets.
In the skies above, dragon riders swooped down, plucking men and women from the ships, smashing apart guns, and setting entire ships alight with magical fire. The humans who fought on both sides were like ants trampled by elephants. Volleys of fire would shred through the soldiers, tossing up severed limbs and heads. In many places, men would be hit with so many bullets that their bodies simply came apart. Sailors vanished beneath gouts of dragon flame, and alchemic lightning transformed others into ash where they stood.
Relentlessly, inexorably, irresistibly, the fleet drew further and further into the harbor, shooting dragons out of the sky, blowing apart the turrets and bastions along the cliff faces, and forcing their way through the underwater defenses with brute force.
Mermaids attached explosives to the ships beneath the water line, the detonations lifting them clear up out of the water, bucking their flailing crews high into the air. They came splashing back down with holes torn into their undersides, listing and sinking with frightening speed.
The hippocampi counter-attacked, galloping beneath the waters. They fought with the mermaids, circling and thrusting, churning up the waters with maelstroms of bubbles and blood.
In the skies, harpies dove at the Erotanian airships, smashing apart propellers and tearing air bladders. The airships fought back, spraying black, alchemic fire at the winged harpies, reducing them to cinders. A crippled airship toppled out of the sky, crashing atop a fuel ship. For an agonizing moment, the two vessels crumpled into one another, the force of the impact fusing them. Then the fuel cells ruptured, and the ships were lost amid a titanic explosion. Whole vessels were overturned, fortress towers were knocked over by the shockwave, and dozens of surrounding warships were blanketed by sticky, burning jelly.
Satyrs fired their etheric ballistas, minotaurs hit airships with blasts of superheated air, lahmians bathed ships in darkness and shadow, and sphinx caused entire ships to crumple like crushed tin.
Everywhere, there was death and carnage. Slaughter ruled the hour. Men and beastmen screaming, fighting, retreating, loading, firing, advancing, fleeing. Stone and steel were undone as easily as torn paper. Soldiers fell like stalks of wheat. Wounded warriors cried out in pain. Many of the dying called out for their mothers. The waters of the harbor ran red with blood and black with oil.
Moving into range, the Ekdíkisi tou Sirend trained its horrible weapons at the magical gate. For a terrifying moment, all was silent, then the cannon thundered. Shells the size of buildings slammed into the stoneworks, the sorcery that held them together straining under the bombardment. The defenders sent out etheric torpedoes, but the escort ships blew them out of the water. They launched balls of molten stone, splashing onto the prow of the Ekdíkisi tou Sirend, her hull twisting and popping from the heat. From down below the sea floor, jagged crystal rocks were grown, rising up like spears, skewering the battleship from below and flooding her lower decks. From the sky above, a comet was called down, slamming into the command tower and crushing it into a toppling mass of twisted metal and screaming sailors.
But the crews fought on. Again and again, the mighty warship hammered the ancient defenses, the very air shuddering from the shockwaves. Ekdíkisi tou Sirend began to sink into the bay, crystal daggers as big a mountains piercing up through her topdeck from below. Finally, with one last devastating volley, the mighty gates of Froúrio cracked.
Many miles away, Sirend, Lord of Waters stood atop the highest spire of the underwater city of Ygrós, capital of the hippocampi. Entirely carved from glowing crystal, the city resonated with power as Sirend engorged himself on ambrosia, gulping down entire barrels at a time, all the while his shifting blue skin glowing brighter and brighter. The hippocampi gathered around him like a school of seahorses, their city trembling under the power gathering.
Sirend’s immortal frame strained under the pressure of so much power, the fabric of his robes tearing apart as his body grew. His skin became unbearably white, and even the hippocampi had to avert their gazes. Sirend surpassed the need to imbibe, soaking in the ambrosia directly into his body. Streams of golden liquid trailed out of hundreds of barrels at once, flowing into his swelling form.
Sirend let off a long, droning groan, as if he were a tick about to pop. The waters trembled around him.
Finally, the last of the ambrosia was absorbed, and the elder god opened his eyes, his gaze etching deep channels into the seafloor, the touch of his skin boiling the seawater around him.
He held out his hands and a stream of light impacted a hippocampus, bloating its body like a puffer fish. The stream touched another hippocampus and then another, forming a circle around the temple with interconnecting stars within it. That circle in turn energized an alchemic channel surrounding the entire underwater city, trails of pure ethic fire flashing to life in jade and lavender flame. And that in turn, set alight one mighty circle, dug over the course of decades, a great oval surrounding the entire Erotan Empire and all of its islands. The sky became red, ash and cinders rose up from the seas, and the light of the sun, moon, and stars was swallowed whole by the bloody pallor.
“Now…” Sirend spoke, the entire planet quaking from the power of his voice. “…witness the power of an elder god!”
The alchemic circle became blindingly bright, and the seas shifted.
Back at the Fortress of Froúrio, the waters of the harbor parted as if by some enormous invisible hands, the mighty warships scooted aside as if they were toys.
An impossibly large jet of water fired t
hrough the parted waters, striking the fortress gates with a mountainous stream of compacted water. The defenders disappeared, vanishing before a tidal beam as if they had never existed. The battlements came apart, the turrets and bastions imploded. The fierce canyon walls eroded away as if they were melting. The magical gates buckled innards, and with a deafening scream, burst wide open.
The miracle continued, the seawater rushing upstream, filling the river delta and deepening it. Fresh waters were turned around, the swelling rivers flowed in reverse, and the invasion fleet as carried along with it.
What moments before were shallow streams now bloated to mighty rivers, gouging deep into the earth, slithering up the mountains as if they were a living thing, the warships carried like riders on some giant snake. They flowed upstream at a frightening pace, bypassing dozens of layers of defensive structures and barricades. What few defenders rushed up to attack found themselves drowned in the irresistible wave of water and steel.
Inside the capital, hundreds of thousands of humans and beastmen rushed into basements and cellars. Children screamed, looking for their parents, and the elderly struggled to move fast enough as the ground rumbled and the heavens shook.
The fleet sailed up the side of the mountain, leveling their guns at the exposed city, and loading their shells for the first volley.
Just then, the mountain peak above the capital split, the elder goddess Reinala rising up amid a flow of lava, her hair flowing around her like a wild, living thing. Like her former husband, she guzzled down hundreds of barrels of ambrosia, her body growing brighter than the noonday sun.
The people of the capital cheered, praising Reinala and praying in thanksgiving.
But as the last of the ambrosia was drunk, Reinala turned her attention not to the fleet of warships at her doorstep, but to the islands across the sea.
Raising up her hands, the vast oceans shook, the stony seafloor beneath them shaking as great fissures opened up, revealing red-hot magma bubbling beneath.
Now, the people of the islands cried out as one, errant waves crashing along their shores, towers toppling, buildings cracking, walls fracturing. They ran to their wives and children and headed for higher ground to escape the rising waters.
Reinala was attempting to bathe the islands of Erotan in molten lava.
Sirend burst out of the depths, his eyes glowing with rage. “Reinala, how dare you threaten my empire!”
Reinala ignored the fleet of warships about to destroy her capital and flew up into the air towards him. “How dare I? How dare you, you cheating dog!”
The two elder gods sped towards one another with frightening speed, dragging the clouds through the red sky. A tidal wave followed Sirend, a rolling mountain of stone rubble following Reinala.
As they moved in to clash, all the mortals on both sides cowered behind anything they could find, clamoring over one another in abject terror.
“Sirend and Reinala, stop this instant!” came a booming voice.
All became bizarrely still. Sirend and Reinala turned to the source of the voice, and found a swirling green portal atop the mountain peak. Storgen wheeled himself though, using a staff to push himself along.
“You!” Reinala snarled.
“You!” Sirend spat.
“Yes, it is I, and I have come to…”
“DIE!” Reinala cupped her hands and released a blast of energy, clipping through the air and igniting the mountain trees as it streaked towards Storgen.
But as if reached him, it splattered against some invisible barrier around him and dissolved without effect.
Reinala looked at her hands. “What?”
Storgen cleared his throat. “As I was saying, I have come to…”
Now Sirend fired, blasting two beams of pure power at Storgen. They diffused before him without harming him.
Storgen dusted himself off. “Well, that was rude.”
Sirend stepped back in shock. “Impossible.”
Storgen sighed. “Are you two done?”
“NO!” they shouted in unison, combining their powers and firing a gout of prismatic fire right at him. Once again, the flames wasted away as they reached him.
The humans and beastmen all looked on in wonder at what was happening.
“That’s the only thing you guys can agree on, huh?” Storgen asked. “That you both want to kill me?”
“Yes!” they shouted together.
“It’s so nice to be loved.”
Sirend held out his rippling blue hand. “Cease your impertinence, human. We will not be spoken to in such a manner by such a small being.”
Storgen looked around. Every eye in both armies was fixed on him. “It’s true. We humans are small. We're weak. We're frail. The smallest little scratch can become an infection and we die. We live such short lives, we must seem like shadows to you. You barely bother to learn our names.”
He held up his staff. “But because we are weak, we band together. We look out for each other. We protect one another. We build great cities because we cannot live in the cold. We build tall bridges because we cannot leap. We construct great ships because we cannot swim. We are great because we are weak, and we always have each other.”
He pointed at the two gods. “But you, you will always be alone, and I pity you.”
Reinala was aghast. “You…pity us?”
“Blasphemy!” Sirend roared. “Soldiers, kill him!”
“Riders, flay him alive,” Reinala added.
The men and women looked at one another, unsure of what to do.
“How dare you defy us!” Sirend said.
“Don’t blame them, they are merely trying to obey the law.”
“The law?”
Storgen wheeled aside with a dramatic bow, and the glowing form of Ouranos stepped through the portal, dressed in his judicial robes and carrying an immaculate golden book in his hands. Nisi and Mónos stepped though behind him.
“What is this nonsense?”
Ouranos sniffed. “Sirend, Lord of Waters, and Reinala, Mother of Earth, I am here to oversee your fifty-fourth divorce proceeding.”
Reinala threw out her hands. “Right now? We’re kind of busy here.”
“Yeah, it’s not really the time,” Sirend added.
“It must be now, lest you commit an actionable offense.”
“Actionable?”
“Explain yourself.”
“Ahem. According to the divine decrees that both of you imposed on all gods, no god may, by direct or indirect means, attack the property of another god without duly declaring a writ of war beforehand. In other words, you are forbidden to make war unless you are in a state of war.”
“We know the law, Ouranos. We wrote it.”
“You wrote the law, but you failed to exempt yourself from it.”
“Wait, what?”
“Impossible.”
“See for yourself.”
“Give me that.”
Sirend snatched the book way and began to flip through the voluminous tome. “The law doesn’t apply to the elder gods. I’m sure of it.”
“I verified it myself,” Ouranos explained. “Young Storgen here brought it to my attention.”
Reinala sneered at Storgen.
Storgen smiled sweetly.
Sirend looked up from the book, his eyes becoming pale. “He’s right.”
“He’s right?”
Sirend attempted to compose himself. “This oversight is amusing, but I fail to see how it has any bearing on our current war.”
“As a matter of fact it does. You see, a god cannot declare war on his or her own lands. To do so would be absurd.”
“And?”
“And you two are still married.”
“Nonsense. Sure, we have not yet worked out every detail of our financial divorce, but the marriage itself was dissolved hundreds of years ago.”
“You declared the bifurcated divorce yourself,” Reinala argued.
“That is true, but the case is tec
hnically still being adjudicated by me. If I were to declare your dissolution void, it would break divine law for you two to continue this battle.”
Sirend stood up straight. “Is that a threat?”
“Not at all. I am, and will always be, an impartial judge. I will rule based on the evidence presented.”
Reinala threw out her hand. “You want evidence? I caught this clodflapper with my sister.”
“Very good, I will ascertain the veracity of this claim. Nisi, if you would please take the stand.”
“Oh, this is absurd.”
Ouranos gave them both a sidelong glance. “You both bound yourself to my decision, did you not?”
Sirend folded his arms. “Very well.”
Reinala was not so cordial. “You foul little deity, when this is over…”
The golden book they had bound themselves to began to vibrate and glow.
The mountain top reformed itself into a seat and Reinala sat down petulantly. “Fine.”
Ouranos waved his hand, and a podium made of clouds appeared in front of Nisi. Several demi-gods stepped through the portal and began to transcribe.
“Nisi, for the record, you maintain that you never had or desired to have a romantic relationship with Sirend,” Ouranos asked.
“Yes.”
“Yet you received gifts and love letters from him.”
She held out her hand, and a pile of silvery-papered scrolls with great wax seals appeared in her hand. “Yes.”
“That’s a lie,” Sirend belted out. “Those are forgeries.”
“They are not,” Nisi shot back.
Ouranos held up his hand. “The court has not recognized you to give testimony at this time, Sirend.”
Ouranos nodded, and Nisi continued. “It’s the truth. I confronted him in private because I wanted him to stop sending them to me. He was married to my sister, I would never consider it in a million years. That’s when Reinala found us.”
“You were the one who sent letters to me,” Sirend insisted.
Ouranos waved his hand and the podium reformed itself in front of Sirend. “All right, Lord of Waters, please state your claim.”
Ambrosia Page 103
