Set Fire to the Gods

by Sara Raasch

  She hadn’t truly wanted to be ordinary. She loved igneia, the sizzle it left in her heart, the heat that felt like the very essence of life. She loved that it connected her to Char in a visceral, scorching way. They were both made of embers and passion, and no matter what Ignitus did to them, they would always have that connection.

  But Ash knew that her Fire Divine abilities were one of the biggest sources of strain in her mother’s life—the fear that if Char failed, Ignitus would turn his attention to Ash.

  The flame snuffed out in her mother’s hand and the coin sank, unlit, into the vast black abyss of the well.

  Char had snatched Ash into a hug. “Never wish that. Don’t let my concerns worry you. You are perfect as you are. Perfect.”

  Ash had become that well now.

  She was a long, endless chasm, cold and desolate and echoing with the sluggish thump-thump of her heartbeats like the distant drip-drip of water on stone.

  She was that coin too. A soot-streaked wish plummeting down, down, down.

  The air stank of mildew, straw, animal dung. Hands released her and she dropped face first onto a straw-covered stone floor. Horses whinnied; a hoof stomped.

  She was in the arena’s stables.

  “Ready a prisoner transport!” ordered one of the Deiman guards. Others were around her, more than the two centurions who had hauled her out of the preparation chamber.

  “We sent the last metal carriage off with that Metaxa boy. All we’ve got are these wooden ones—”

  “Wood is fine.”

  “But she’s Kulan, sir.”

  “The Father God said she’s been drugged. She won’t give us any trouble.”

  Ash tried to push herself upright, but her arms wouldn’t support her, the muscles rigid with cold.

  She was so cold.

  Mama. Her throat scratched with whimpers. Mama—

  Anathrasa had taken her igneia. She had taken Ash’s fire.

  Her vision spun, seizing on the sandaled centurion feet standing nearby and—a lantern. Another. A third. Flickering and pulsing around the stables, orange and red and hazy, delicate gold.

  Ash shifted. Her fingers crawled across the straw, picking through stone and mud to reach for the igneia.

  The lanterns didn’t heave toward her. The firelight didn’t waver.

  Please.

  She stretched, fingers bobbing.

  Please. Mama.

  A sob fell out of her mouth. It was as though her last, feeble memory of Char had snuffed out, plunging Ash into a desolate reality.

  Her mother was gone.

  Ash was gone.

  Everything she cared about. Everything she loved. Everything that made her her—it was all gone. What was left if she wasn’t Fire Divine? This shell of a girl, sobbing on the dusty stone floor.

  The lanterns heaved at the blurred edges of her vision. The only thing remaining in her was something she had never done. Something she had shied from, feared, hated.

  She looked at a lantern flame. Willed her vision to focus.

  Ignitus.

  Would he hear her if she prayed? She wasn’t Divine anymore. She was nothing.

  “Ignitus,” she said out loud. “Ignitus, help me—”

  A centurion hauled back and kicked her in the stomach. “Shut up! You, there—get a move on, will you? Gotta get this one locked up. Geoxus’s orders.”

  Wheels rumbled across the stone, sending vibrations up Ash’s body. She twisted, coughing blood down her chin, and saw a windowless, boxed carriage harnessed to two horses.

  Her teeth chattered. Numbness prickled over her fingers, her toes, and her mind was starting to spiral. She was cold and tired—but she could not get into that carriage.

  Ash drew in a breath and held it against the shivers that tried to break her apart.

  “Get her up!” a centurion ordered.

  Rough hands grabbed her arms. Ash went limp between the guards, her eyes on the transport, its open door showing a black abyss within.

  If she got in there, she would never come out of the darkness. And she needed to be out.

  Purpose surged through her, a thin rope she grabbed onto and held squirming to her chest.

  She would stay out of that carriage. She would focus on nothing else.

  The centurions dragged her forward a step.

  There were four guards in these stables with her. It was likely that all of them were Earth Divine.

  Ash’s head dipped between her shoulders and she saw a short sword at one centurion’s hip.

  She let her body weight, what little remained, fall heavily.

  The guards cursed. “What’d the Father God do to her?”

  “Damn it—get her up!”

  One of her arms dropped free as the guard bent to grab her waist—and she moved.

  Ash grabbed his sword’s hilt, drew it, and swung it back. It sliced into the man’s thigh and he shrieked.

  Orders flew. Armor clanged, stones jostled into the air, but Ash lost her body to momentum. She deflected a centurion’s raised stones with her blade. She ducked under his lifted arm and hurled the sword with all her remaining strength. The blade twisted through the air and caught another soldier in the arm, eliciting a sharp yell that riled the now manic horses.

  An arched doorway stood at the rear of the stables—it would lead back into the arena. Ash scrambled for it.

  Her knees gave out. She slammed forward, head jarring as her chin struck the stone floor.

  It took a full breath before she felt the heaviness of stones encasing her ankles, holding her down.

  “Put her in the gods-damned carriage!” The lead centurion’s furious yelp rattled the walls.

  “That’s strange,” another voice said. “I don’t remember damning a carriage.”

  Ash knew that voice. Why did she know it? Her body spasmed, involuntarily curling in on itself but for her trapped legs. She was fading, darkness, ebbing into a void—

  Flame swelled into the stables, rising higher, stronger, brighter.

  The centurions screamed. Horses bleated—in fear, not in pain, Ash noted dazedly—and hooves clapped the stone as the beasts fled. The fire must have freed them of their restraints.

  Another surge of fire; another screech of men in pain.

  And then Ash was warm.

  Something scorching encased her from head to toe. She inhaled as though she hadn’t managed a full breath in hours. Her muscles relaxed; her fingers unclenched.

  She looked up.

  Ignitus knelt next to her on the stable’s floor. Scarlet robes wrapped around his body and rippled over the straw. A braid holding his hair back had come loose, but his mind was clearly roiling with thoughts, a simmering rage twisting his face into a scowl.

  One of his hands was out over her, washing fire just above Ash’s body. It wasn’t close enough to burn her skin but it disintegrated the stone imprisoning her ankles and warmed every frozen crevice, trapping heat under her fireproof Kulan reed armor.

  He looked down when he felt her watching him.

  “You didn’t fight them,” he noted with a scowl. “Not with igneia. And you’re shivering.”

  Ash didn’t speak. That was her explanation, her wail of agony—just silence.

  The scowl stayed on Ignitus’s face, and Ash realized that he wasn’t angry at her, but for her.

  He dropped his hand and the fire went out. She still didn’t feel whole, and numbness fogged her thoughts, but she was no longer unbearably cold.

  She managed to push herself upright.

  Only the stone floor, walls, and ceiling remained. All the wooden dividing walls and storage closets were burned away, and a pile of cinders that must have been the carriage lay in the middle of the room—next to four bodies.

  “You killed the centurions.” Ash’s voice was gravelly.

  Ignitus huffed but said nothing.

  She looked at her god. He sat with his hands limp on his thighs, jaw working and eyes distant in a way that sa
id he was calculating.

  Even weak and spent, she found that she no longer feared him. Maybe because there was nothing left that he could take, and far worse creatures than him had shattered her.

  Ignitus didn’t look at her. “Anathrasa did this to you.” It was a question she didn’t have to answer. “I can’t give your igneia back to you,” he continued. “Putting energeia straight into a mortal could kill you.”

  Ash was too numb to even feel disappointed. “You knew she was alive. You’ve known all this time.”

  Ignitus stiffened. “I suspected a lot of things that I could never prove, and neither of my so-called peaceful siblings could ever just take me at my word.” He grunted. “I knew Geoxus wanted something else out of these wars—he’s been such an aggressive pain in recent years, and he got Aera and Biotus to turn against me too.” He cut his eyes to Ash, his jaw twitching with contained rage. “She’s working with Geoxus. Isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that gladiator? Madoc. He saved you by using anathreia.”

  Ash was silent too long.

  Ignitus frowned. “Have you sided with her, then? Anathrasa? Even after—” He motioned at Ash, referring to her lack of igneia.

  “No,” Ash instantly said. “I didn’t side with her. And neither did Madoc.”

  “Intriguing. I suspect that will really inconvenience her and my brother.”

  Ash wilted. “Why didn’t you side with her?” The question gathered others as it came out. “Why has Geoxus targeted Kula—it’s because of her, isn’t it? But why aren’t you on his side? Aera and Biotus are part of it. Aren’t they?”

  Why, she wanted to scream. Why Kula, why us, why—

  Ignitus was quiet a long moment. “I first told Geoxus my fears about Anathrasa not being dead. It was right after we’d defeated her. I kept asking him about it over the years. He’s always known how I felt about her and that I would never side with her. So he’s been whittling Kula away to nothing, making sure I won’t have any resources to fight back with, it would seem.” He sighed and bit the inside of his cheek. “But you should know that I didn’t want this for any of my children.”

  “Didn’t want what?” Ash asked with more bite than she had ever given to her god. “Death and pain? You may not be on the side of a deranged goddess, but that doesn’t absolve you of the suffering you’ve inflicted on us.”

  Ignitus closed his eyes.

  “You sent my mother to her death.” She said this because she had to. Because she wanted this monster to feel it. “You waited to tell Rook about Lynx’s death. You—”

  Ignitus’s eyes flashed open. “I told Rook about Lynx’s death as soon as I got word of it. The infirmary staff didn’t tell me through fire—they sent a letter, and that letter took days to reach me. I reprimanded them for that slight, you know. I told them from now on—”

  A growl built in Ash’s throat. She didn’t want his excuses. “You still told Rook about Lynx before our fight. And then you killed him.”

  Ignitus gave her an offended look. “Rook stabbed me.”

  “You’re immortal.”

  “With Anathrasa seeking revenge, I couldn’t be too careful.”

  Ash’s chest bucked wildly. Was he implying that there truly was a way to kill him? And Anathrasa knew it?

  Ash shook her head. “No—you don’t get to make this about you. You’ve killed endless numbers of us. How can you claim to want anything better than our deaths?”

  “You have every right to hate me.” There were tears in his eyes now. “But I’ve been trying to make things better. My siblings keep staging wars against me. I fight, not just for glory, but for Kula. I have to push my gladiators, because if they fail, thousands suffer.”

  To see Ignitus heartbroken would have once made Ash sing with joy. Now, though, she wanted to weep herself—she understood the pain in his eyes. Worry for Kula. Guilt that he had tried his best and still gotten people killed.

  It was an intimate, wrenching connection, and Ash realized the truth that had been knocking at the door of her soul for days:

  Ignitus was a monster, but killing him wouldn’t save Kula.

  Anathrasa was alive. Which meant she had survived her god-children’s attempt on her life, and if she could regain her power, she would no doubt seek to restart the butchery she had wrought on the world centuries ago. How had she done it then? Had she manipulated the anathreia in mortals and warped them into an army that slaughtered those who resisted her control? Could gods be defeated at all? How could anyone possibly stop a force like her? She was weakened—but could she be killed?

  “This isn’t just about a war anymore,” Ash managed. Her throat swelled. “Madoc can control anathreia. Geoxus wants to use him to enhance his own powers and invade the other countries. He had Anathrasa threaten to take Madoc’s energeia if he doesn’t obey.”

  Ash didn’t mention the rest of Geoxus’s plan—that he thought Madoc could take a god’s energeia too. She didn’t want Ignitus to see Madoc as a threat.

  Ignitus rolled his eyes skyward. “That damn fool. No one can use Anathrasa. Geoxus is so power hungry, it probably wasn’t difficult for her to manipulate him.”

  Ash stiffened. “She can take energeia, but that’s the extent of her powers.”

  Ignitus dropped his eyes to Ash with an exhausted smile. “Anathrasa was once queen of all the gods. She was manic and controlling and wanted to force the world into obedience—she could, with some of the weaker-willed mortals. We tried to kill her—we thought we had. But, obviously, we failed. And she’s had centuries to plot her revenge. Whatever Geoxus thinks he’ll get out of her is, I fear, a ruse that will only feed into something far worse.”

  Dread hollowed Ash’s belly. No matter what Anathrasa’s true plan was, Madoc stood at the center of it.

  She tried to get up, wobbling onto her knees. “We have to go to the palace. We have to—”

  She pitched forward, the room spinning. Ignitus caught her shoulders.

  “Steady now. We can’t do—”

  “Let her go.”

  Ash blinked and saw Tor framed in the stable doorway. Flames danced up his arms, highlighting Taro and Spark on either side of him.

  Tor glared at Ignitus.

  Who had his hands on Ash’s shoulders, her body wilting in his grip.

  Ignitus sighed and released Ash, who wavered but managed to kneel upright on her own.

  Tor dropped to the ground and grabbed her. “Are you all right? He said he heard a prayer from you here. What happened?”

  He clearly meant the scorched stables. The burned bodies. Ash alone with Ignitus. How the last time he had seen her, she had been racing out of the arena after Madoc.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, because she couldn’t lie and tell him that she was fine. Even the thought made her stomach sour. The void inside her throbbed, aching, empty hands grasping for igneia that wasn’t there.

  She had thought loneliness was a void. This was a void. Loneliness had been a chip in a vase.

  Ash touched Tor’s shoulder until he pulled his focus away from Ignitus. “I know you’ll hate me for saying this,” she whispered, “but right now, Ignitus is our best chance of getting out of Deimos alive. He’s on our side.”

  Tor’s face went gray. “What are you talking about?”

  Ash told him everything that had happened. How Madoc saved her life. Geoxus’s plans to subdue the world. Anathrasa, revealing herself and taking Ash’s igneia.

  Tor jolted at that. Behind him, Taro and Spark gasped.

  Ignitus beat dust from his robe as he stood. “I’ve sent messages to my other god-siblings about Anathrasa before. It always bothered me that there was nothing left when we defeated her—they all thought her body vanished with her anathreia. But then Geoxus, Aera, and Biotus started targeting Kula, and Geoxus, especially, was so smug. More than normal. Something changed, has been changing, but Hydra and Florus ignored my worries because there was no proof. This is pro
of now, I’d say.”

  “How did you defeat her last time?” Ash asked. In all the stories of their victory over Anathrasa, there were no hints as to what exactly the gods had done.

  “Anathreia is the combination of all six energeias—fire, earth, animal, air, water, and plants. That was how she made us, at the beginning; she took a piece of her soul and split it apart. We knew we could never defeat her individually, as she’d always be stronger than any one of us, and we couldn’t risk all six of us attacking her at once. She’d only give us one chance to fight her. So”—Ignitus gave a grim smile—“we decided to make a single vessel just as powerful as she was. One vessel, one shot, one fight. We took the strongest mortal we had and each put pieces of our energeias into her.”

  Ash’s eyebrows shot up. “You created a Soul Divine mortal?”

  “In a way. She was more of a vessel for our energeias. Our fighter lured Anathrasa into what became the first arena—and so that fighter was the first gladiator. She managed to drain the Mother Goddess of her anathreia. Or most of it.”

  Ash wheezed. I can’t have a gladiator involved again.

  Ignitus had said that to her when she’d confronted him about letting her help.

  “The threat you feared wasn’t a gladiator—the solution was a gladiator,” Ash said, breathless.

  Ignitus scowled. “I don’t think such a solution will be possible this time, though. That gladiator was still mortal in the end—she’s been dead for centuries. We’d need all the gods to put pieces of their energeias into a vessel again, and if Geoxus thinks Anathrasa is his to control, he’ll never rise against her.”

  “Wait.” Ash’s heart kicked up. “You can give me igneia back?”

  The fall of sympathy on Ignitus’s face was sudden and soft. “It isn’t that simple. Putting pieces of our energeias into a mortal proved . . . costly. Many mortals died before we found one who could withstand a god’s direct energeia. And as for us—” Ignitus pulled his hair to the side, tugging free the gray-white strand. “We were not made to break apart our souls like Anathrasa did when she made us. She’s the goddess of souls; we are not. Giving away our energeia is to give away our very beings. It started to kill each of us. We had to stop, or—”