Kill the Gods

by E. Michael Mettille

  On this particular occasion, the room was exceptionally dark. Everyone else seemed asleep, and the butcher was not at his post. Despite a throbbing in his head making it extremely difficult to focus, it seemed to be as good a time as any to escape the place and avoid ending up on the butcher’s block. Chagon was probably already dead. He had been healthy when they arrived. Based on the attention Theiron had been paying to the meat on his bones, the old healer was only helping him to get him healthy enough to feed the village.

  Tarantian slipped silently out of the bed. The dusty wood planks of the floor were cool on his bare feet as he crouched low and scanned the room. One of the bodies on a bed across from him farted and mumbled something before rolling onto its side and settling into some loud snoring. The rest of the room remained completely still.

  Two doors led out of the place. Though he only remembered bits and pieces of entering the vast room, he knew the door to his right led out into the street. He had no idea what lay on the other side of the building, but he hoped it were a better path to freedom than a well-lit road. He decided to take the door to his left, despite the fact it was right next to the table where that awful butcher chopped up men by dim candlelight.

  He moved slowly, quietly across the floor, crouching as low as he could and pausing to scan the room at the end of every bed. Everything remained quiet except the occasional creaky board. Each time he found one, he stopped to scan the room. The short journey seemed to last forever, but he finally made it to the door. He grabbed the handle to turn it but paused. After all the care he had taken to make the exit, charging into a crowd of folks who just might want to eat him would be a horrible failure.

  Instead of turning the handle quickly and charging out into the unknown, he slowly stood until he could see out the small window. A thick shade covered it. He pulled it back to expose the smallest sliver of glass. There was a small porch on the other side of the door. It looked nearly identical to the one in the front of the building, but there was no well-lit road beyond it, just a short dark field bordered by the security of a thick bank of trees. The pounding in his head was an inconvenience, but he was certain he could make the trees.

  “What on Ouloos are you doing out of your sick bed?” Theiron’s voice was musical, almost like he sung words rather than speaking them.

  Tarantian’s heart would have sank into his boots had he been wearing any. Where had that sneaky old bastard been hiding? He had been so careful not to make a sound. None of the other patients—or victims more like it—had made a peep besides the snoring farter. The sinking feeling gripping his spine threatened to knock him to the ground until it occurred to him that even with a throbbing headache splitting his head in two, he was a soldier who had probably taken as many lives as the old healer behind him had healed for the butcher. Though an inconvenience, the old man was an obstacle he could conquer.

  “Some folks, like me, are good at sending souls off to the Lake,” his voice carried the calm sureness of one who completely believed what he was saying as he turned toward the man, even if it was a lie. “Other folks, like you, are good at stealing souls from the Lake. You are very good at what you do, and I am feeling much better. I would like to leave this place and get back to the trail.”

  Theiron’s smile was warm and genuine as he said, “I appreciate the compliment, but you cannot leave. The people of this town need to eat, and you must repay our hospitality.”

  “Please let me go on my way,” Tarantian dropped the authority from his tone. “I would much prefer to not kill you, but I intend to leave this place.”

  The healer laughed hearty and deep, “I have little to fear from you. I know your condition better than you do. That pounding in your head,” he paused, “it hurts, does it not? Of course, it does. It has your vision all blurry and your balance off kilter. You are not leaving this place. Return to your bed. Your end will be painless, and you can rest knowing you provided nourishment and will live on as a member of our tribe. You will die an honorable man.”

  The vile wretch was correct. The room was fuzzy for Tarantian, his head throbbed like a spear would slam out of his forehead at any moment, and the muscles in his legs cried out an agonizing song as they trembled under his weight. None of that mattered. If he were to be someone’s meal, it would not be an easy one. He charged.

  Theiron was quicker than he looked. The shoulder Tarantian had intended to plant into the healer’s gut missed. All he managed was a loose arm around the old man’s hip. It failed to take him down, but he was able to grab a firm hold of his robe. The momentum was enough to send both of them tumbling across the floor. By the time they stopped rolling, Tarantian’s back was against the dusty planks of the floor, and Theiron held a small wooden club aloft above his head.

  The club raced toward Tarantian’s face. Luckily, instinct was his friend just then. His legs shot out and pushed the old man back. By the time they were both back on their feet, the club was sailing toward his face again. The old man’s forearm felt stronger than he expected when he blocked the blow. Whether it was the cause of Tarantian’s condition or the old man’s might, he would not be an easy win. Tarantian swung a stony fist at the old man’s face. It missed. Not only was he deceptively strong, but he was wily too.

  It quickly became clear to Tarantian that he would not be able to charge through his opponent like a raging tubber. He inhaled a deep breath through his nose and released it through his mouth. By the time the last bit of air had passed his lips, his heartrate had begun to slow, and his focus had grown razor sharp. He raised his hands up before his face and prepared to defend himself.

  The hand-to-hand battle stance earned another hearty laugh from the old healer, “Do you suppose I would release a vicious mountain scarra in my home? I have healed your wounds, fought off the infection which would have killed you had I not intervened, but I have not restored you to your former glory. I have given you many elixirs. Some saved your life, and others dampened your strength. You could not defeat a child with your fists right now.”

  It all began to make sense. The healer was not strong nor fast, Tarantian was just groggy and weakened. He did not care. He was a big man, stronger than most, but he had sent more than one warrior who was bigger and stronger than him to the Lake. His timing had to be perfect, and his technique impeccable. He waved the old man to attack.

  Theiron’s wicked smile plumped up his cheeks as he feigned a strike at Tarantian’s head. The arm the soldier shot up to block the attack was a ruse. When the old man followed up with a low strike toward his ribs, Tarantian took the blow and captured the old man’s arm under his own. He would not be able to hold the arm there for long, so he wasted no time. The old man’s nose exploded in a spray of blood when Tarantian’s forehead smashed into it. Twisted and broken, the skin on its bridge had split into a deep gash. Tarantian pounded his head into the same spot again. Theiron’s cheeks cracked under the weight of the attack. With the old man’s arm still trapped in his left armpit, Tarantian threw his right elbow at his jaw. Only after that blow did he release the healer’s arm. By that point, the club was easy to snatch away. Once he had a firm grip on it, he pushed the old man down and pummeled his head with it until he stopped struggling.

  Theiron was still twitching when Tarantian got off him, but his soul was already on its way to the Lake. The commotion had woken some of the other victims in their beds and shackled to the walls. A certain groaning from across the room caught his attention. The voice was familiar. He raced over to the slumping form. It was difficult to make out his companion’s features in the dim light, but there could be no doubt it was Chagon hanging from those bonds.

  “I thought you dead,” Tarantian whispered as he removed a gag from Chagon’s mouth.

  There was little strength behind Chagon’s words as he replied, “I fear I’d be not long for this world had you not found me. That old healer has the key to these bonds. Free me, and let’s be gone from this horrible place.”

  Other wo
uld-be victims began slithering from their beds. Whether crawling, limping, or walking upright, most headed directly for the door. Tarantian worked his way through the suddenly crowded darkness until he made it back to Theiron’s still corpse. It took a few moments of rifling through the deceased healer’s robe before he found a small key. Time suddenly seemed an enemy as both doors of the building hung wide with folks trying to escape becoming dinner for the village. All those bodies moving through the streets were sure to attract attention.

  Tarantian raced back to Chagon and asked, “Can you walk?” as he freed him from his bonds.

  “Well enough to get out of this horrid place,” Chagon replied quietly.

  “Hey,” a raspy voice called out in the darkness. “Would you leave us here to die?”

  The man hanging from shackles next to where Chagon had been bound was the source of the query. Yes, I would. That was the first thought to cross the soldier’s mind, but it was not his final answer. It seemed another time, but when he had accepted the crest of Havenstahl he vowed to defend all who call the great city home. Though this village was a bit off the beaten path, it fell under the protection of that great city. It fell under his protection. As Tarantian thought about it, it did not matter to him where the man was from. Whether he hailed from the city itself or one of her villages, or from somewhere across the Great Sea, he was a man who needed defending.

  “Wait here,” he said to Chagon. Then he worked his way around the room freeing all those shackled from their bonds.

  The first one followed along as he freed the others, thanking him profusely as they worked their way around the room. He remained by Tarantian’s side right up until a deep voice called out from the back of the building, “And where do you think you’re getting off to?”

  “Sorry, friend,” was all the man said. Then he was gone, racing as fast as he could out the front door.

  Tarantian spun to face the owner of that voice. He knew it was the butcher before he laid eyes on the brute. He shot a look at Chagon to keep him seated on the bed where he had left him, and then focused his attention on the vile thing who cut flesh from his own kind to feed his own kind. The man was big and thick through the arms and shoulders. A small part of Tarantian wanted to grab Chagon and run away from the fight. In his current state, he had barely managed to beat an old man. The brawny fellow barring the door might represent his last battle. But there was a bigger part of him that simply could not do that. He had no idea how many men that bastard had butchered, but he decided right then there would be no more.

  He still gripped the bloody club he had used to beat the healer to death. Though the small thing felt good in his hand, it offered little reassurance considering the man he would be brawling with clutched a cleaver in his own, the same cleaver he had used to separate the meat from the bones of who knows how many men. Hopefully, Chagon would not be captured by the same duty which kept him from fleeing. If he could keep the butcher busy long enough, perhaps the green farm boy could escape and let someone know about the horrible place where men eat men.

  And then the butcher was gone. It all happened so fast it barely registered. A massive, hairy arm ending in a horrible claw dug into the big man’s face and dragged him back out through the door. Three deep breaths were all it took to expel the shock of what Tarantian had just seen and allow his brain to register signals from his other senses. Growling, screaming, bones breaking or popping from sockets, and sloppy sounds that could only be a beast eating flesh filled the dark room. The grizzly mongs had found the quiet village.

  Tarantian crouched low and made his way to the bed where Chagon still sat. “We cannot stay here, but it is unsafe to leave,” he whispered.

  “There is a stairway in the back corner,” Chagon whispered back. “I do not know where it leads, but I saw the butcher taking...” his eyes grew misty as he paused, “parts down there.”

  “That sounds far better than what is going on outside of this place,” Tarantian decided. “Show me where.”

  Chagon led the way toward the stairway he described. It was little more than an opening in the floor with wooden stairs leading down. There was a wooden door at the bottom. It opened easily. The room on the other side of that door was even darker than the room upstairs. Tarantian did not need light to know what horror they had walked into. He remembered the smell. It was like yesterday’s battlefield when you go to retrieve your dead. Flesh rots quickly in the blazing sun. It probably rots more slowly in a cool room under the earth, but the smell is the same.

  “Get on the ground,” Tarantian commanded. “Bury yourself in the dead. They will cover our scent.” The instruction sounded even worse to his ears than it had in his head, but grizzly mongs were hunters not scavengers. Those beasts would not eat the rotting flesh of corpses. If Tarantian and Chagon hoped to survive, they would need to blend in with the dead.

  Besides the smell—which was overbearing—burrowing into a pile of carcasses is mostly just a psychological challenge. They were dry and cool for the most part. It was knowing they hid beneath a pile of meatless corpses that was the real problem. They did not feel any different than the bones of other animals, aside from maybe their shapes and sizes. The fact was small consolation. Both the men hiding beneath that pile of death knew what hid them. Luckily, the sounds of live things being cut down and devoured by vicious beasts above their heads was even more horrible and terrifying than lying under a blanket of bones and dead flesh.

  Chapter 34

  The Voyeur

  The garden atop Alharin was as lush as ever when Ijilv materialized near the calm pond. He offered a casual glance to the fishes swimming the clear waters. Some were too big. They seemed out of place with their silver scales flashing in the bright sun. The others, orange ones and white ones, some spotted, some blue, they seemed to fit, but, truthfully, none of them belonged. Everything on Brerto’s mountaintop paradise was a foreign visitor from somewhere else the god had willed to be there, a mishmash of things from places on Ouloos he loved. Ijilv enjoyed the illusion, inhaling the sweet perfume of flowers wafting across a gentle breeze and basking in the warmth of the afternoon sun.

  The god from the east, the great hawk as he was known, strolled slowly through Brerto’s garden. There was no need to rush. Things moved along as they should, and he had spent precious few moments away from the darkness of his hidden tower at the edge of time and reason. He certainly had a few moments to spare enjoying the fruits of his brother’s effort.

  That brother, Brerto, stood just inside the entrance of his cave. His eyes were tightly closed. The tension dug deep lines into the flawless skin of his face. His staff glowed as bright as a thousand suns. The reason for all that effort lay before him, Cialia, the Dragon, self-proclaimed bane of the gods. She was a power beyond reason or understanding. The control Brerto held over her was dangerously thin. Ijilv watched in silence, smiling at the struggle.

  “What are you waiting for?” Kallum’s voice rang out in Ijilv’s head.

  Ijilv’s smile only grew, “For the Dragon to complete her journey, of course. There is no doubt I could scatter our brother to the wind if I so desired, but why expend our energy? The Dragon will do that for us. Then we will gather him up, and he will be one with us, even more powerful than we are at this moment.”

  “That stinks of cowardice,” Kallum scoffed.

  Ijilv chuckled at the jibe. “You were always powerful but rash, my beloved brother. That is why the lad of Lake defeated you so easily. Of course, the Dragon is far more powerful than any of us, but you fell far too easily. If you had even the slightest hint of patience, you would be free to terrorize those who worshipped you rather than trapped, helpless within me.”

  “Beloved,” Kallum spat. “If I were truly your beloved, you would have stood beside me rather than cowering in wait to shackle me when I was unable to defend.”

  A god’s eyes snapped open—horrible and beautiful—and cast a negative glow against the bright light of his staff. “
You invade the sanctity of my garden,” he said to Ijilv.

  “I do,” Ijilv agreed. “Kallum, our mighty brother, is with me. His strength is mine, and soon yours will be as well. We will all be together, a power like none other on Ouloos or any plane of reality.”

  A seeming impossibility, the glowing of Brerto’s staff grew even brighter. “You will find I am not easy to subdue.”

  Before Brerto could do anything to defend against his brother, Ijilv boomed, “SITTU AHU!”

  The glow of the god’s staff did not dim, but his horrible eyes slammed shut.

  “What did you do to him?” Kallum asked.

  “A simple spell,” Ijilv’s tone was relaxed once again. “I commanded him to rest.”

  “Magic?” Kallum hissed. “I ended magic after Merkhal’s failure. It no longer exists.”

  Ijilv shook his head, “What you call magic is nothing more than bending the rules of reality and morphing them to fit your will through our eternal connection to all things through Coeptus. You did not end that connection or any being’s ability to access it. You simply convinced yourself, our brothers, and all who worshipped one or another of you they no longer could.”

  Then Ijilv, smug in his control over his brothers, sauntered casually over to Brerto. He put his mouth close to his brother’s perfect ear and whispered, “The Dragon will defeat your illusion. She will triumph and scatter you to the wind. You will be mine.” Then he looked down at Cialia, “What illusion has he concocted for you? What terrors play out in your mind?” Turning his head back to his brother, he added, “I want to play this game with you. Let me in your head, brother. Let me play with your illusion.”