Bloodchild

by Anna Stephens

  With one savage move, Dom ripped open the godspace inside his head and he gave the Dark Lady everything that he was. Everything. A barrage of emotion, of guilt and fear and revulsion, a thousand hurts and little indignities and wrenching losses and more guilt and shame, shame, shame all flooding through him and into Her, a ceaseless assault She neither expected nor knew how to withstand. She’d wanted everything and that’s exactly what he gave Her.

  And from the other side the Dancer came too, both of Them inside him and wrestling for possession of the godspace, fighting and clawing and tearing him and each other apart, and then the Dancer poured Her Light through him and into the Dark Lady. Light to burn, Light to sear and bubble and penetrate. Light to kill.

  The Dark Lady wrenched away, braying in agony and one of the tentacles solidified into an arm, a hand, and then a long, tapered finger and She speared Dom through his right eye. The last thing he saw before blindness and agony took him was Light, unstoppable, pouring from his mouth and skin and bathing Her in its awful purity.

  ‘Now,’ he yelled into the blackness inside him. He saw Rillirin again. ‘Now!’

  The Fox God attacked.

  CRYS

  Tenth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

  Edge of Deep Forest, Wheat Lands

  ‘Dom, no!’ he screamed, but then Dom was tumbling into the snow and the Fox God was moving, propelling them across the icy ground towards the monster, still twice his height. Gosfath was still preoccupied with ripping Himself free of His Sister, and the Dark Lady was bleating and clawing at Her face – the Light that had shone so impossibly bright from Dom’s mouth and eyes had burnt Her and She was mad with it.

  Crys launched himself at the Blood Lady, silver light blasting from his skin and staggering Her, adding to the ruin of Her face. Not as strong as the Light, but enough to deepen wounds already made. His left foot landed on a knee and he clambered up like a squirrel.

  The Blood Lady made a grab for his throat, seeking the rest of Her essence, enough to strengthen Her, enough to cast out Gosfath from His own body and heal Her hurts. Crys swayed beneath the flailing arm, got both hands on Gosfath’s neck, then worked one under the god’s chin, settled his knee against the slab of His chest, and twisted.

  Nothing.

  He twisted again, harder, and Gosfath’s head juddered around, the neck crunching. Then it spun back, so fast Crys lost his grip and the god’s snapping mouth just closed on his flailing hand, severing his little finger. He screamed and his light flared brighter, sealing the wound and scorching Gosfath, making Him squeal in turn. He flailed away, ripping apart from the Dark Lady, red and pale flesh separating, strings of meat and tendrils of smoke trying to haul them back together again. The opening Crys needed.

  He plunged both hands deep into the cavity and more silver light flared and blasted into raw flesh.

  The sounds the gods made were distilled madness as the stench of a mass grave enveloped Crys. A red hand gripped beneath his chin, thumb and forefinger grinding either side of his jaw, squeezing so hard he had to open his mouth. His light faltered and the flesh slammed together around his wrists, trapping his hands inside Them. Again They began to shrink, using Their bulk to replace the burnt flesh, using up Their own essences, but now Crys was trapped too and he yelled, straining as the god-stuff tried to suck him bodily inside.

  Another hand, slender and feminine this time, small as a girl’s, stuffed its fingers past his teeth as he screamed, depressing his tongue and questing towards the back of his throat. He jerked, gagging, but the hand pushed in further, remorseless.

  ‘Where is it? Give it to me. Give me my essence.’

  A wrenching, tearing pop and crunch in his jaw, and Her hand went in past the knuckles and Crys couldn’t breathe, trapped inside a writhing, mutating form up to the elbows now and the Dark Lady’s hand in his throat.

  Legs kicking and making no impression, Crys pulled, felt the flesh give and then suck him back in deeper, planted his feet on Their chests and yanked harder, shoulders popping.

  Bite.

  If he could breathe he’d have screamed as he forced his jaw to close. His teeth went into the Dark Lady’s hand and he ground them together, shaking his head like a dog with a rat. The fingers in his throat paused and then … melted into a thick muscular tube that slithered free of his throat with a slurp.

  Crys sucked in a breath and headbutted Her, kneed Gosfath in the face, lunged in and bit at His ear. Inside Them, his hands clenched and squeezed and ripped until, with a joint bellow of hate, They ripped open and released him. Crys hit the ground and rolled, his jaw flapping loose. Silver light burnt around his head and he felt the muscles and bones in his face reset, click and snap back into place. He screeched at the pain, there and then gone.

  Crys got up and his legs tensed, telling him to run. He even took a few steps away from the cavorting, blood-hungry god-fuck reaching for him. Ash wouldn’t blame him – he wanted him to get away. Crys wanted to get the fuck away. The Fox God … couldn’t get away. The fate of the world sat on His shoulders, whether He wanted it to or not.

  Not. So bastard not. But that still didn’t mean He could run. The Fox God had come here to die, and Crys had to let it happen. Because somehow, their death would save the world. He just hoped it would be worth it.

  Life is always worth dying for.

  Crys spat in the snow, clearing his mouth and throat of coppery saliva. He breathed deep, bringing the world into startling clarity as adrenaline surged through him and bolstered the courage that wanted only to wane. The Fox God rose inside him and when a black tentacle shot out and wrapped around His waist, it was the Fox God who smiled. ‘Welcome, Sister. Welcome, Brother. How can I help?’

  ‘Give me back my essence,’ the Dark Lady said as Gosfath clawed at Her and black tentacles whipped and writhed behind Their heads, a crown of madness.

  He grimaced. ‘It won’t heal you. Nothing can do that. It’s time to let go.’

  The Dark Lady’s face twisted and She began to laugh, though the words quietened Gosfath, who watched with something like hope. The Fox God held out a hand to Him, and He took it.

  ‘You are not as clever as you think, little god,’ She said. ‘You do not see as far as I. But you’ll help me anyway.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Fox God said, nodding, ‘I can do that. It isn’t too late, for either of you. Renounce the Path you have walked for so long, return the divinity you stole from our Mother and be welcomed back into the Light.’

  Dom’s blood smeared Her arm, Her perfect face. The Fox God placed His fingers in it. ‘You have done much evil, Sister. So much. Led astray an entire nation, bathed in blood so long that you have forgotten what it is to be clean. To be loved with a pure heart. This body you say I have hidden in, the heart and soul of this man, they’re clean. They love purely, not oblivious to the consequences but accepting of them. Return to the Light and you too can feel that love.’

  The Dark Lady wheezed her mad cackle again and a thick rope of black muscle slashed down, breaking His grip on Gosfath’s hand. The God of Blood growled, a low rumble of threat, and any peace and stillness in Him was gone. Once more He began to tear at Her, seeking division. Autonomy. Freedom. She rammed more of Herself into Him so They both squealed and bucked, the tentacle holding the Fox God shrinking as She spent Her essence on controlling Her Brother.

  ‘I said you were going to help me, you puny godling,’ She groaned. ‘You, not your Flower-Whore Mother. But when I’m done with you, the Dancer’s next.’

  Crys surged up in their shared consciousness, screaming a warning, but the Fox God let His head fall back, inviting what He knew was to come.

  A dozen more black tentacles whipped from the Blood Lady’s chest and impaled Him, through the belly and ribs and groin and shoulder, sinking deep into mortal flesh and immortal spirit. Sucking. Drinking.

  Killing.

  She found the essence of Herself He had consumed in Rilporin to shatter Her into no
thing but a wisp of will, lost in the void, and She devoured it. And then She found His essence, the beautiful silver shimmer that reflected Her twisted, warped body and soul back at Her so She couldn’t help but see Herself as others did.

  She screamed as the Fox God screamed, Her shame the equal to His grief, and slammed a last, thick tentacle into His mouth and down His throat, sucking out the breath from His lungs, the very life of Him.

  As the Fox God was pulled from him in great draughts, Crys slid back into the spaces He had occupied. It was like coming home to an empty house, abandoned by a loved one, a hollow, haunted shell. And with his return came the knowledge of his impalement, hanging suspended by ropes of horn-tipped muscle that pierced him in a dozen places. Bled him. Killed him.

  He couldn’t breathe, a lung collapsing as She siphoned the air out of him like a monstrous bellows made of flesh. He wasn’t even bleeding as She drank that too, but worse than what was happening to his body was the moment by moment loss of the Fox God, the greater, better part of his soul, like having a limb torn off slowly enough he could watch it happen.

  And he couldn’t scream at the loss. She’d even stolen his voice.

  Silver lines and black traced across Her features, replacing the red, remaking Her in pewter and shadow as She emerged from the shell of Gosfath like a reluctant crab. Four arms, four legs, two spines leaching away from each other.

  Gosfath’s face was twisted with a terrible haste and He pulled, splitting Them, ripping Them apart and roaring at the pain of it, but pulling anyway, desperate to be rid of the parasite that was His Sister.

  The Dark Lady’s body had been destroyed, but it no longer mattered. She used the silver godlight that was the Trickster, twisting and moulding Him into a shining silver net, a woman-shape, into which the black smoke and fleshy strands of Her essence poured.

  Gosfath was pushing Her out and She let him, just as eager to be separate and all Herself again, and through the umbilical cords She had deep in Crys’s body he could feel Her. The silver shape wasn’t strong enough, wouldn’t sustain Her for long, but long enough for Her to execute the next part, the most audacious part, of Her plan.

  Tired.

  Fading.

  Three of the tentacles skewering him popped free and Crys dropped a little, bare toes scuffing the grass, the drop and jerk tearing more things inside and the pain so big there wasn’t a word for it. The tube came out of his throat and he managed a shuddering inhalation that might be his last.

  There was no more Fox God inside him, no more Dark Lady and She, separate now from Her Brother, let him drop without further thought, a broken doll discarded in favour of a new toy.

  Gosfath was whole again, but He was not a happy god. He brayed at the sky and roiled the clouds, churning them like butter until thunder muttered and lightning stabbed into the earth, blasting snow into steam and killing birds on the wing.

  The Dark Lady was black smoke within a silver shape, Her face and arms and torso clothed in skin. Her golden eyes met Crys’s, so smug that under different circumstances he’d have punched them shut, and then She focused on Gosfath. ‘Brother,’ She purred.

  The God of Blood roared. ‘Kill,’ He bellowed, raising His fists at Her. He slammed them into the ground, knocking soldiers and Mireces from their feet hundreds of strides away on the hill. Crys bounced where he lay.

  ‘Kill you.’

  The Dark Lady nodded once, not with disappointment but with utter indifference. Gosfath, God of Blood, Her Brother, Her Lover and companion of a millennium, was a mere insect. ‘So be it.’

  In His brash confidence, Gosfath was probably the only one who didn’t expect it. More tentacles of smoke and muscle, hollow, unstoppable feeding tubes, sprouted from the Dark Lady’s silver-wrought chest and slammed into Him. Each time She created one, it used up a little more of Her strength, but the vitality She drained more than compensated.

  Crys lay in the snow, turning it red with what little blood he had left, and he watched the Dark Lady consume Her Brother-Lover to finish creating Her new body.

  The God of Blood roared and fought, clawing at the flesh and smoke tentacles, but the Fox God’s strength bound to the Dark Lady’s was too much for Him to overcome and He began to come apart even as She solidified, weaving His essence into Hers, into the Fox God’s, a black-red-silver net of divinity: hate and madness and rage, and silver, shimmering love and humour that had no place there and enraged Her further.

  She needed Him, but She couldn’t bear what He was; His joy and forgiveness burnt Her even as He clothed Her in power. An endless screeching hurt She would never quite be rid of. It brought the faintest of smiles to Crys’s bloodless lips.

  Gosfath fell to His knees, His roars now wails, the violence in His face subsumed by incomprehension, by sudden, all-consuming betrayal. ‘Sister,’ He cried, one red and flaking hand outstretched.

  Her only response was the disdainful, utterly contemptuous curl of Her perfect lip and then He broke, shattered into a million splinters of red light that winked and faded like sparks whirling upwards from a fire.

  Gone.

  The Dark Lady stretched and pirouetted in Her new form, learning its limits, its abilities. She was a hybrid, an uneasy roiling mix of three gods, three forces, but She imposed Her will on the other two. Eventually, She’d crush Them into nothing but whispers in the back of Her mind.

  Crys wheezed a laugh, found another breath insinuating its way into his labouring lungs. And then another. Not quite dead. Not yet.

  She squatted next to him. ‘You are amused? Perhaps I shall keep you, a living embodiment of agony, a perpetual reminder to those I shall rule of their fate should they do other than worship and love me.’

  Crys dismissed Her words with a blink. ‘You are a fool,’ he croaked with a smile that he knew had nothing of humour in it. Still his mouth stretched and he stretched, inside, for the Fox God. He was there, just, in the silver net the Dark Lady had stolen. Crys brushed a finger against it and the connection solidified – for the last time. His smile became genuine.

  ‘Fool,’ he repeated. ‘For we are Trickster, and it is in our nature to deceive.’

  There was a blast of laughter from inside and all around, and the silver light that was the divine spark of the Fox God, moonlight on gossamer, began to fade.

  Fox God, lord of cunning and the once and always Son of the Dancer, played His last and greatest trick: He died.

  The Dark Lady lurched to Her feet as She felt the disintegration begin. ‘No!’ She screeched. ‘Not again. I will not allow it. This cannot be.’

  ‘And the godlight will lead us all, to death and beyond,’ Crys breathed, his heartbeat stuttering in his ears. ‘Follow Him, Lady. Follow Him to the Light and the Dancer and beg Her forgiveness. Die as He dies. As Gosfath has died. Find some peace.’

  ‘No,’ She screamed again, but the silver net rippled, rippled and then blew apart, shatters of light bursting across the field and the hill and the warriors, racing each other, joyful and laughing and gone.

  Weakened, with nothing holding Her together, with no more strength to steal, the Dark Lady lashed out even as Her form billowed and deformed. She reached for Her followers and sucked the mortality from hundreds of them, thousands, but it was not enough. She was goddess – mere human life could not sustain Her, not in this extremity.

  She roared and wailed and bleated, and Crys lay there and watched Her, and found himself sad, but there was no way back now, nothing that could stop the inevitable. Cracks appeared in Her face, Her form, cracks that opened on to an utter absence of everything, until into that absence She fell.

  Consumed, at the end, by Herself.

  ‘No coming back from that,’ Crys croaked. ‘We did it.’

  A gust of wind blew across the fields, a lingering malevolence whispering from it, and then it, too, was gone. In its place, clean and pure and silent, the snow began again and through the white curtain a figure was sprinting towards him, curly hair plaste
red to his brow. Crys’s breathing hitched, skipped, settled.

  Ash skidded the last strides on his knees, catching himself before he slammed into Crys’s side. His hands slid beneath his shoulders and lifted him to his chest and Crys gasped as his shattered insides ground together. ‘Crys? Crys, it’s me, it’s Ash. We won, love. We won.’

  ‘I know,’ he breathed. ‘Love you.’

  ‘I love you. I love you, Crys. Just hold on, Hallos is coming and—’

  ‘Ssh,’ he managed. ‘Hold me.’

  He heard Ash’s heart crack and wished he could spare him the grief, could save him as Ash had saved Crys and shown him the world, but he couldn’t. Ash pulled him closer, draped one of Crys’s arms around his waist and pressed his lips to his temple, his brow. ‘Rest then,’ he breathed. ‘Just rest, my love. I’m here.’

  Thank you, Foxy. Time to say goodbye was all I really wanted.

  The snow fell, silent and serene. Crys Tailorson, major in His Majesty’s Ranks and husband of Ash Bowman, fell with it.

  MACE

  Tenth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

  The hill, edge of Deep Forest, Wheat Lands

  For the second time in his career, there were gods on Mace’s battlefield. He liked it even less than the previous occasion.

  As in Rilporin, the gods’ arrival had driven the Mireces and East Rankers into a crazed, reckless bloodlust that nearly carved Mace’s army into tattered ribbons. As it was, they were shoved back right to the summit of the hill and once the enemy was on the same flat ground, the tempo of battle sped up, not even the howls and otherworldly roars from the field below enough to deter them. Madness shone in every face and gleamed from every tooth exposed by writhed-back lips.

  The Wolves had abandoned the wood and the Krikites had been pushed up the flank of the hill, both too outnumbered to hold any longer. They’d linked up with the Rank and now the ragged survivors were hard-pressed on three sides and nowhere much to go. He called for the square and they put their backs to one another and they prepared to fight to the last.