greystend - Tumblr blog

greystend · 6 days ago

Text

Eating Gods

TW: blood, gore, unhealthy relationship dynamic, cannibalism

You don’t know when you started eating your god. You’ve always been in the shelter of his arms, tucked under his chin, safe in the cradle of his hips. Now, his elbows are poking into the sides of your esophagus, his head nestled near your uvula, his shoulders crumbling under your molars.

There’s a moment where you’re acutely aware of how long it’s been since you last heard the thunder of his voice—the lightning crack of his screams—and your hands convulse around his ankles, stopping their forward push down your gullet.

This is not a holy act.

Your panic would stop your throat if he wasn’t already in it.

Tears swell as you gently pull at his legs, ensuring that they’re not bending the wrong way, that you don’t cause your god more damage than you’ve already wrought. Your teeth ease from his skin, unpleasant like unwelding taffy, and it’s like a dam bursting. Blood fills your mouth, hot and sweet, more than should be possible from his small form.

It washes the panic from your tongue on the way down, burning through you with divinity. You gag at last, your throat fluttering against his crown, and blood pushes around his still body and out of your lips, cascading down your chin, staining your front red.

Your gentle grip on his legs hardens as the blood keeps flowing; you’re going to choke. He’s not dropping from your mouth when you tug, so you start to yank. Long strings of red saliva dangle from your chin as yanking turns to twisting and twisting to clawing. Your nails cut so deeply into his legs that your grip is slicked red. Your hands slide from him and you—god help you—you feel the desire to swallow.

You collapse to all fours, chest heaving and and stomach lurching with the boiling liquid and overwhelming horror of it all. You heave around him.

You god doesn’t move.

———————————

Your father once told you that belief is a prison.

He insisted on the mundane school your siblings went to, the one that talked about physics and proper language that didn’t sound at all like the murmurings deep in the earth.

Your mother and your aunts are the ones who told you that belief could be power. They told you it could be love. They told you it could be companionship. They told you it could be everything.

Sitting alone in your room, unable to go outside with asthma constricting your lungs, watching your brothers and sisters playing on the lawn,well... even one of those things seemed like a blessing.

That’s when your search started, all the way back in your twelfth summer, alone and dizzy from lack of oxygen.

It was a bad start.

——————————————————————

It’s a bad start now, waking up on the floor of your apartment, something cold and tacky under your cheek. You gasp for breath, your arms and legs cramping, and gasp again as the muscles in your jaw lock before they stretch. It’s been years since you’ve passed out under the lack of air, but the feeling is the same. Like parts of you are dying, losing sensation, and then flaring back to life with a painful rush of blood.

What’s not the same is the knowledge already swimming to the surface.

I tried to eat my god. My god.

He’s not in your mouth, the only trace of him the smell of copper and the taste of iron. You open your eyes to confirm that the wetness under your cheek is blood and saliva. There are tiny footprints leading away from the pool, uneven and staggering. They’re headed for the kitchen and, as they go, they grow.

You nearly pass out again with the wave of relief. You were able to resist the urge to swallow, he’s alive. You’re not sure what killing him would have done, but you’re glad you don’t have to find out.

On the heels of that is dread. It sinks down into your stomach and almost sends you collapsing back to the ground. You pant as you force your legs to take your weight, standing like a newborn deer, arms trembling from the effort of pushing yourself upright.

He’s going to be so angry with you.

You wrap your shaking arms around your hollow stomach—hungry, still hungry—and stumble to the kitchen.

The man standing by the stove is...indescribable. You can say that he has hair the color of the flame. You can say that his eyes sparkle like pyrite. You can say that he towers over you, lithe muscle and porcelain skin. You can say all of these things but it feels like sacrilege every time.

Your god doesn’t like to be named.

“I,” he says, “am not angry.”

He is though. You can feel the weight of his anger pressing against your skin. Electricity in the air. His eyes are so soft on you though that you can’t say otherwise. You fall to your knees. “Thank you. Thank you.”

He sighs. “Rise. I am not angry, but we do have a problem.”

You don’t want to get up. You want to stay on your knees in front of him, the cold linoleum seeping to your bones. His anger is a heavy cloud above you, ready to choke the breath from your lungs. But he is your god and you believe his word is law.

You stand back up. You don’t meet his eyes, studying the way his bare toes press against the kitchen floor.

He reaches out and takes your chin in his hand. He can be warm if he wants to, humming with power, but he’s not now. He’s ice cold, the grace of him simmering somewhere deep, deep down. You wonder if your attack took power from him.

It must have. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so very angry.

“What was the one thing I asked of you, Honey?” He draws your chin up as he speaks until you’re forced to meet his eyes. “Tell me.”

You swallow when he lets go. You don’t struggle against the grip his gaze has on you, even when it feels like pincers digging into your brain. “You asked me to fast.”

He nods. “I asked you to prove your devotion to me. I asked that you show me that, even without my power, you would remain loyal. Steadfast. You failed, Honey.”

“Please.” The word bursts from your lips like a whimper. Uncontrolled. “Please, my god, I—it’s been so long. I couldn't—I needed— I need you.”

You’d agreed to this with your head in his lap, his grace buzzing against your lips. He’d asked you to empty yourself, to prove yourself, and you said yes. No food passed your lips, prayers fell like a litany and you held fast to your faith when he didn’t answer.

Weeks. Weeks of water and the hollow echo in your spirit where you’d made room for him. You’d tried. You’d tried.

But then he didn’t answer. And he didn’t answer. And he didn’t answer.

“I would not have asked you this,” he says, “if it was going to be easy.”

“I’m sorry,” you say. You reach for him, fingers trembling. “Please, I can be better. I will be better. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—I need you to be with me.”

Your god smites you carelessly. A bolt of lightning that strikes at your fingertips, singing them, and a wave of power that sends you back to your knees in front of him.

He doesn’t move, looking down at you with glittering eyes. “If you had had faith, you would have been rewarded. I planned to make you my priestess. Always by my side. Entwined.”

Companionship. You feel something leaving you and going to him. Hope, maybe, or desire. It lights his eyes and it’s easy to imagine him looking at you like that forever.Your hope reflected back at you. “Yes. Please. Please.”

He shakes his head. “You’ve ruined it, Honey. I needed the power of your devotion and you couldn’t do it. All of this effort I’ve gone to—wasted. You didn’t believe in me.”

“I do,” you gasp. “I do. Please, I-I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it however I have to.”

“Do you swear?” He asks. His crouches down in front of you and pulls aside the loose neck of his shirt. Clear on his neck are impressions of your teeth. “Do you swear that you can do it this time?”

You flinch at the marks you’ve left on him. Your god. You’re so weak to have done this to him. Unworthy. “Yes. I swear, I won’t let you down. I won’t do that again. Oh god.”

“We will see.” He stands swiftly and glides around you. “Don’t disappoint me again.”

He’s out the door before you can turn around.

————————————————————

You’re fifteen when you find your god in your locker. He’s emerging from the lump of clay you took from the art room, a forearm sticking out here, the crown of his head pushing up there.

All around him, the sigils you’d used to call him are smoldering, the thin notebook paper curling under the heat of magic. Embers drifts down onto the top of his head like snow and, when they touch, the strands of his hair go from the white of the clay to a fiery red.

You skip class to be with him. Your locker is out of the way, nearly in the shadow of the gym, and you hide there whenever you sense a hall monitor or teacher come near. You watch your god drag a body around himself in increments and hope that the magic you laid is strong enough to sustain him through this process.

Please, you pray. Please let what I’ve done be enough. Please let this work.

It’s the first and most powerful prayer he answers.

——————————————————-

Your second attempt at fasting is worse. This is the third week without food or prayer and you’ve lost almost too much weight. The only thing sustaining you is the burn of your own magic, searing you from the inside out.

Your body screams. What are you doing? What are you DOING to yourself?

I am proving my devotion, you tell your magic, the rumble of your stomach, the deaf ears of your god. I am strengthening my faith.

You go to work. One day your god will provide for you, will open doors for you, but right now it’s your job to keep yourself alive. You work at a call center. It’s barely enough to pay rent, but that’s okay.

You won’t have a grocery bill this month, so that’s a savings right there.

There are new faces in the boss’ office, all in profile as they listen attentively to whatever Mr. Dobson is saying. You can’t hear them through the glass, but you know the speech he’s giving. Stick to the script. Call a floor supervisor if there are any questions not on the script. Avoid giving out your name and talk people into staying on the list.

There are always new faces here. You came in three months ago and now you’re one of the longer term employees here. Turnover is quick when payment is slow.

You watch the people on the other side of the glass as a customer complains bitterly in your ear. There’s a man with an aura of power amongst this batch. His hair is long, to the middle of his back, and his jaw is strong. You can see black markings where his sleeves are pushed up and he looks strong and well fed, physically and spiritually.

It’s rare for you to see another of your kind. Rarer to see another of your kind with the scent of a god so heavy around them.

“I’ll definitely make a note in your file,” you promise the customer absently. You turn back to your computer with difficulty. It’s intoxicating, the power pouring off that man, but he’s not your business. Other gods and their worshippers are not your business. “Can you walk me through the problem again?”

The customer is more than happy to begin their rant all over again.

————————————————————————-

You are seventeen the first time your god tells you that you are not enough.

“Not all of your worship is directed at me,” he complains, laying flat out on your bed. He’s nearly the size of a child now, plumping up on the sweet wine you sacrifice to him. “I won’t ever be all I can be with what little you give me.”

You blink. You’re at your desk, writing prayers in your holy book instead of doing your math homework. You feel like you do nothing but think of your god. “I—I don’t worship anyone else.”

“You do,” he accuses. He sits up and points at you. “You break bread with non-believers. You fill yourself with sustenance made by a woman who doesn’t acknowledge me. Your weakness weakens me.”

You didn’t think of it like that. You thought of it as spending time with your family, something your father and mother made clear was expected of you even with your new god. Your mother’s god doesn’t have a physical form so Dad can’t ban her from the table, but yours does. Your father doesn’t want to eat with your god. “Oh.”

“If you want to be with me,” he says, “if you want me to do all I can for you, you can’t stay here.”

Your brow furrows. “I still have school. I need to be able to provide for you, so I need to go to—“

Your god grows. It takes magic from you, the power streaming from you to him, but it’s him that chooses the form. He sprouts up another foot. Two. Three. His face takes on definition, his hands grow strong, his eyes change from black to yellow.

You slide from your chair in front of your god and press your forehead to the ground in prayer.

“I am your god,” he says from above you. “I provide for you so long as you stay with me.” His power falls around you like the sun, warm and welcoming. “You will stay with me?”

“Always,” you swear. You look up into his grace and feel the urge to kiss his feet. You do. “Always.”

His smile is the first blessing he gives you.

———————————————————

“Hey, Amanda!” One of your coworkers calls from the break room. “Come meet the new guys!”

Amanda is the name your parents gave you. You don’t mind it, but it’s not the life you chose for yourself. Your god renamed you when you chose to follow him and now the only name you feel your spirit respond to is the one that comes from his lips.

You head into the break room. It’s half the size of the call floor, but that means it’s big enough for six large, round tables and about thirty chairs. Massive.

Tana is the one who called your name. She’s a beautiful college student with bright green hair and too many piercings for most of the straight-laced jobs in this county. She’s holding court, facing you, sitting in the middle of the three tables in use. The new employees are mixed with the old and they’re all having a fairly good time chatting and filling the newbies in on the tricks of this place.

The long-haired man—the one who smells of another god— is sitting to your right, twisted toward another employee. You head left, away from the tantalizing feel of his healthy aura.

“Guys this is Amanda,” Tana introduces you with the sweep of her hand. “You got any trouble finding the right form, she’s got your back. Great memorization.”

There’s a murmur of greeting from around the table. The long-haired man is one of the last to turn, a warm smile on his thin lips. His eyes widen as they land on you for the first time, blue power sparking deep in his dark irises.

Hello, you whisper to him, mind to mind.

He stands abruptly, takes two steps, and vomits before he makes it to the trash can.

————————————————————————-

You’re seventeen when you leave home. Your god demands it and even packs your things for you, making sure there’s plenty of room for his shrine in your single suitcase.

“Belief is not an easy path,” your mother says. Her god is twined around her aura like a cat, watching. It has not touched you once since your god emerged from his clay. “You knew that when you started.”

“That’s it?” Your father demands of her. “That’s all you’re going to say? She doesn’t have a job! Or a diploma! She’s seventeen, she’s not going anywhere.”

“That’s no longer our decision,” her mother says. She turns to go back inside. “She belongs to her god now.” Not once does she look at your god standing on the sidewalk behind you.

“No,” you father says. “No, Amanda, you’re my child and you’re not going anywhere with that thing.”

His words make this easier. Anger heats your blood and stills the fear-adrenaline in your hands. “My god is not a thing. Do not blaspheme him.”

Your father gapes. He recovers quickly. “Get back in the house. You don’t understand what you’re doing—“

“I do.”

“—the world isn’t easy, Amanda,” he says over you. “You don’t have a job, no way to sustain yourself, no place to go.”

“My god,” you say, lifting your chin, “will provide.”

“I’m your father,” your dad says. “I provide for you and I am telling you not to go.”

You can feel your god’s impatience like dust against the back of your neck. “I have to go.”

Your father starts forward and hits the barrier your god erects between the two of you. He stands there, stunned, for a moment, hand pressed to the thin air so hard his palm turns weight. Panic shoots through his eyes. “Amanda?”

You bite your lip to keep the I love you behind your teeth. You can’t love anyone but your god now. Your god holds out a hand to you.

“Amanda!” Fear. Panic. Desperation. “Amanda, don’t go with him! Come back!”

You let your god lead you down the street. Your father is screaming now, pounding on the magic that holds him back. You and your god have been planning this for days. Your father is a small talent—he can’t break a ward you’ve worked for days on. Not without your mother’s help.

The last glimpse of your father is of him, on his knees, shoulders heaving with his sobs, pleas trailing after you.

—————————————————————

“Shocking, right?” You get the first word in, not liking the way the new guy is waiting for you outside work. “Don’t know if you really needed to throw up about it, but, hey, maybe you’ve got a weak stomach.”

The new guy—Neil—isn’t vomiting now. He’s pale, a little ashy, and his aura is tucked carefully out of sight, but he’s not vomiting. “Your god is draining you.”

If he is, you think, it’s because I didn’t have enough to give. You roll your eyes to make him feel dumb. “I’m fasting. This is standard.”

“I’ve fasted,” Neil says. “It didn’t turn me into a walking black hole.”

You scoff. “Right.” You move to go around him. The last bus is coming soon.

He steps to the side to keep in front of you. “I’m serious, Amanda. I can feel your hunger. You’re doing a...superhuman job of keeping it contained, but it claws at me. You’re starving physically and spiritually. That’s not how a fast works.”

You bare your teeth at him. “You don’t know anything about my religion.”

“No,” he says quietly. Opposite his tone, he plants his feet more firmly, making it clear that you won’t be getting around him. “Fasting is about separating your physical needs from your spiritual needs. You’re supposed to feel closer to your god during it, not...not whatever turned you into this.”

That...that actually sounds nice. During the first fast, you’d felt okay when he was still spending the night at your place. Then he’d gone to travel, to find followers and believers, and things had gone downhill from there.

You imagine what it would be like, the hunger gnawing at your stomach, but your heart filled with him. His grace. His benevolence. You imagine what it would be like to have him with you, even if you can’t see him, and it’s good. It’s so good. It’d make you feel so strong. You could face anything, even starvation, with him in your life.

Neil can tell what you’re thinking. “See,” he says, the sound of his voice breaking the dream, “see how it should be?”

You jerk back. Horror descends. You’d let yourself entertain the idea of taking from your god again. You’d fantasized about going against his orders now.

And it’s all because of Neil.

“You can’t shake my faith,” you snarl at him. You’re trembling as you rush around him. “I have faith.” The last bus is nearly here, caught at a red light ahead.

“Faith only works if something’s actually there,” he calls after your back. His tone is not so quiet now. It’s harder and there’s magic ringing in it. “Think about that.”

The bus rolls up. You lunge for the doors when they open. You won’t let him shake your devotion.

You won’t fail your god again.

———————————————————————-

Your apartment is empty when you get back. Your eyes ache from holding back tears, not wanting anyone on the bus to see your fear. Your anxiety. Your panic.

“Please,” you pray, “please, I need you here. I don’t need you to do anything, I just need you here. Please.”

You feel even more alone as your prayer bounces back as cold, hollow words.

You rub your hands up and down your arms, trying to chafe warmth into them, and go to take a shower. The water scalds you, but it’s not enough. Only he can warm you now.

There’s too much room to think about Neil’s words without your god to distract you. Maybe if you weren’t so hungry, you could resist, but you are.

Or maybe you’re just weak.

You don’t know the point of the fast. You think you did at first, but now you can’t even imagine why you need to be without food and him. Was it something about power? Your hunger gives him power? But if that’s why, then why do you need to avoid the blanket of his grace? Why can’t you even pray to him, something you’ve always done, have written books about, have spent days doing?

You don’t understand.

——————————————————-

You nearly don’t wake up in time for work. Your entire body hurts and your eyes feel glued shut. You’re almost too weak to stand and it’s a terrifyingly long moment before your magic kicks in and feeds strength into your atrophying muscles.

Your power alone is not going to be enough to sustain you if the fast doesn’t break soon.

The bus is overwhelming. You don’t have enough energy for your normal shields and humanity’s emotions pour over you. The woman sitting at the front wants to claw off her own face, so tired of the way the man across from her is looking. So tired of all the men looking. The man across from her is bitter and hurting from scars echoing up from his past. The children in the back are anxious and alert, their mother exhausted.

You focus on the teenager across from you listening to music. He likes the song he’s listening to. You use his enjoyment to drown the rest out.

Getting off the bus is another trip. You sway when your feet hit the ground, off balance, and instinctively send a tendril of power down into the earth to steady you. Only you don’t have the strength to do it and you wind up on your knees, blinking at the weeds that are coming up through the sidewalk’s cracks. The bus hums behind you, pulling away from the curb and chugging down the street without noticing.

You can’t afford to be late to work. You swallow hard and focus on one thing at a time. First, you need to get one foot underneath you. Then the other. Then you need to use your hands to push up and stand.

It’s probably not a good sign when you don’t actually remember doing any of those things, but you’re halfway across the parking lot to the building before you realize it.

Please give me the strength to get through this, you find yourself praying. You know he won’t answer, but belief is in your blood. You pray. I can do the rest. I just need the strength.

You collapse just inside the double doors, the rough wallpaper painful against your skin and the tile hard against your ass. You pant, head reeling, trying to convince your body to try one more time. Just one more time.

“Right,” someone says. “Hold on a sec.”

You blearily watch dark shoes and jeans march away from you, further into the building. You hold your hands in front of your face. Have they always been so thin? So shaky? You press them against the ground, uncaring of the dirt that’s always piled into the corners of the office, and try to reach the healing strength of the earth again.

“That boat’s long passed,” the voice says again. They’re back and you squint up to see Neil standing over you. His hands are in his hoodie pockets. “You’ve had a god now. You can’t be an earth witch.”

That sounds right, but you don’t want it to be. You curl what little magic you have left back into your core, letting it go back to trying to warm your rattling bones.

“We’re having a sick day, you and I,” Neil says. He leans down, sliding his hands out of his pockets, and picks you up. He does it so smoothly and quickly that you hardly register it happening. “Please don’t die on the way home.”

You realize he means his home, not yours. “I can’t. It’s Wednesday.”

He pushes open the doors with his shoulders, taking care not to bang you against them. “Your holy day?”

You just manage to nod. The sun hurts your eyes. Neil is carrying you to a black car. You hope he doesn’t put you in the trunk.

“Good,” Neil says with satisfaction. He doesn’t put you in the trunk. He puts you in the passenger’s seat and buckles your seatbelt. His hands are so gentle it nearly makes you cry. “Your god should be looking for you then.”

You sleep. Or you pass out. You’ve done a lot of the latter, not so much the former in recent years.

——————————————

You wake up to something hot pressing against your lips.

“Drink.”

Warm liquid pours into your mouth and you swallow convulsively. Then the flavor registers, bursting across your tongue and filling your senses. Chicken broth. It’s good after your weeks of fasting and you open your mouth for more before you realize what you’re doing. It’s another two spoonfuls before your brain turns back on entirely.

I am breaking my fast without my god’s permission, you think. Then, when that doesn’t horrify you like you think it should, I am letting someone spoon feed me.

When the spoon presses against your lips for the fourth time, you don’t open your mouth. You open your eyes.

The woman looking down at you isn’t human. You don’t need the tatters of your strength to tell that. Her skin is a lovely red, softened by pink cheeks and eyes, and her hair is a swirl of pastel clouds. She has your head in her lap, one hand on your chin, and she looks very disappointed that you aren’t preparing yourself for the next bite.

“Come on,” she coaxes. Her voice is deep and rumbling. Like thunder. “One more bite.”

You roll off the couch faster than you think you will. The little bit of food has given your magic a boost. You hit soft carpet, bumping into a coffee table, and scramble to sit up. Your erratic movements knock the chicken broth on the table onto the ground, the warm liquid rushing over your hand.

The goddess on the couch looks at the bowl of soup on the ground mournfully. “Oh, it fell.”

“I have a god,” you tell her. The panic you should have felt upon awakening is seeping in. Your nails curl into the carpet and the memory of the soup pouring down your throat feels like a sin. “You’re not my god.”

“I should hope not,” she says.

“It was just soup,” Neil says from behind the couch. He’s wiping his hands on a dish towel, eyes even on yours. “It wasn’t a gift.”

Your lip curls. “Everything they do is a gift from a god. Don’t try to trick me.”

“Sometimes,” the goddess says, “soup is just soup.” She smiles and her teeth are tiny and pink. “I’m Luna.”

Her name rocks you, rattling your defenses. You gape at her. “You told me your name.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “How else would she introduce herself?”

You look between Neil and Luna. She’s still smiling at you, eyes still kind, but you see what you’ve been missing. “He didn’t call you.” If he’d called her, Neil would know more about gods and the meanings behind their names. Luna. Moon. Power in the night.

“He did, in a way,” she says. She holds out a hand to Neil and draws him down on the couch beside her. He’s taller than her, but she doesn’t seem to mind the way he he has to look down to meet her eyes. “We both needed each other.”

Neil smiles at her and presses his lips into her hair. Her eyes shine with his quick prayer, like quicksilver, and then it’s gone. There’s the smell of cayenne pepper in the air.

“If no one called you here,” you ask, “then how did you get here?” Gods aren’t from earth—you have to bring them over. That’s what you’ve been taught. That’s what you know.

Luna smiles, close-mouthed. “It was a long, long time ago.”

Neil frowns. “You called your god?” His brow furrows, but his body language is still relaxed against the goddess. “People can still do that?”

“Very few,” Luna says. “Only those with the old books. The old power.” She watches you. “The old gods would have treated you better, child. These young ones don’t have any respect. They don’t know how very lucky they are.”

Your knees are going weak again. The soup’s already burned through your system. You sway, one hand going to your head, the other going against the wall. “I have to go.”

“It’s her holy day,” Neil tells his goddess.

Luna raises a pale blue eyebrow. “What prayers could you offer your god like this? What devotion? You’ve got nothing left inside. Stay here.”

Her words strike at you. You’re not enough.

Judging by the way Neil looks at you, you might have said that out loud.

“Child,” Luna says. There’s sorrow in her eyes. “Child, of course you are. With the right god, you are. Your spirit is emaciated, horribly so. This god doesn’t care for you the way he should. He’s not good for you.”

You think of your god dangling from your lips. You flinch, arms going around your fragile ribs. “No, I’m not—I’m not worthy of him. I—“ You clamp your lips around the urge to confess. You don’t know where it’s coming from. Confession is for your god’s ears and your god’s ears alone. “I have to go.”

“You can’t,” Luna says matter of factly. You knees give out on you, sending you to the ground as if to prove her point. She smiles thinly. “And it would be cruel of me to help you back to him.”

Neil jerks back, alarmed. “Luna, we can’t send her back to him. He’ll ki—“

She presses a finger to his lips. “Hush, dear one.” Her eyes are even on you. The array of emotions—the sorrow, the judgement, the horror—it’s all gone. She’s perfectly still as she watches you. The perfect judge. “Call him, child. Call your god to you.”

You’re already shaking your head. “No. He doesn’t like being called. I won’t do that to him.” You’d compelled him—summoned him—once before. You still bear the scars of the wounds he inflicted on your psyche to this day.

“Then pray,” Luna says. She stands, leaving Neil on the couch behind her. “Pray for him, child. If you don’t, I will.”

She swells over you, a terrifying cloud of red and thunder that you can feel in your bones. She’s serious and, you think, thinking about making you call him anyway.

You pray. There’s a goddess here. Please, my god, I’m sorry. I need you. Out loud you say, “He may not come. He has many other believers, better ones than me to see today.” He’d told you so, last time he came.

Luna laughs. It’s not a pleasing sound. “Has he convinced you so thoroughly that you mean nothing? You made him. He’ll come.”

The door flies open, a wave of cold and wind rushing through the room. Your god stands in the doorway, freezing, eyes like stones, hands clenched to his sides. “I’m her god. That’s why I came.”

If you could, you would crawl across the floor to his feet. “I’m sorry, my god, I didn’t know what to do—“

Neil is sitting rigid on the couch. “Luna, it’s him. He’s the one.” He brings a hand up over his eyes, blocking his sight. You can tell the action blocks more than just his vision. He’s covering his third eye like a child cowering in the dark. “He reeks.”

Your god’s eyes flash. “Rude. Very rude.” He looks at Luna and it’s like he can’t sense her like you can. Or maybe he’s just too strong to be afraid. “Control your follower before I do.”

This time, when Luna laughs, it makes you revise your thoughts on her previous laugh. That one—the one without humor, without affection—wasn’t unpleasant. This one is. Mean and sharp. Cruel. “Don’t get above yourself, young god. You may smell of power, but your flock is starving to give you that illusion. I am too old to fall for party tricks.”

“It’s not a trick,” your god snarls. He slams the door behind him and he swells, growing one foot. Two. You cry out as his reach sucks at the little bit of magic you regained and his eyes slide to you. His lip curls. “You broke your fast, Honey.”

“Honey,” Neil says. His eyes are wide. “You took her name?”

“I’m sorry,” you say. You fall onto your forearms, fighting against the black pulling at your mind. “I didn’t mean to, they—“ Blaming others is weakness. You swallow. “I didn’t mean to.”

Your god isn’t satisfied with that. He stretches his hand to you and twists it in mid-air. You brace for pain, for your magic to disappear, for the air from your lungs to vanish, but nothing happens. The air in front of you is shining pink. Like Luna.

“Ah,” Luna says. She’s only got eyes for your god now. “That’s how you’ve done it then. You told them to fast and, rather than filling them, you took. I thought it odd that I hadn’t heard of a god powerful enough to break a good witch’s barriers and take their magic. I didn’t hear of one because there isn’t one. Just a pathetic little immortal tricking humans into lowering their own shields. A regular vampire, aren’t you?”

Your god’s hands clench at his sides. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” Neil asks. He’s shaking, but not with fear. There’s fiery rage in his eyes and his magic laps at you like lava. “There are three dead with the smell of your power inside of them. How many of your followers have ended up like Amanda? Worse? How many more names have you taken?”

“I’ve taken nothing more than the sacrifices owed to me.” Your god’s magic is like ice. Steam creeps from the corners of the room where his magic steals the heat. “I did what I had to with the lot I was given.”

Your head flies back at that. They just said that human lives have been lost. Like you. Worse. He’s not denying it. He’s not denying it. Your heart beats hard in your chest as you wrestle with that realization. Surely, it must have been righteous, these deaths? He’s your god, it had to have been righteous.

Luna snorts. “You had to steal human magic? You had to rip their essences from their souls to feed yourself? You’re not a god, young one, if you must take to live.”

“Do not,” your god snarls, “presume to label me.”

It occurs to you that your god may have other reasons besides vanity to shy away from scrutiny. It’s a blasphemous thought.

(Is it?)

“How many?” you ask Neil. You don’t realize that you’re turning away from your god, seeking Neil’s eyes for the truth. “How many have died?”

“Three,” Neil repeats. He lets you probe into his mind until you can feel the truth. The rage is almost too strong to get through. “Two more on their way. Not including you.”

Your god’s power wraps around your throat. You gasp, clawing at the band, and don’t fight as he uses his grip to turn you. His face is red, teeth flashing. “I wouldn’t have had to do it,” he hisses at, you, dragging you forward, “if not for you.”

“Me?” You choke when he steps forward, faster than you expected, cracking through Luna’s barrier to wrap a hand around your neck. He lifts you like that until you’re back on your feet. Then he lifts a little more until the only thing in the world is his flesh against yours and his nails digging towards your spine.

“If you had followed my word, no one would have died,” he says. His eyes slide from yours, not waiting for his words to hit home, to look at Luna and Neil. “Shall I tell them why you’re being punished?”

Your first thought is confusion. You’re being punished? That’s not right, you’re fasting, fasting isn’t supposed to be a punishment. Then you realize what he’s saying and your face flushes. Your hands go to his wrist, pleading. “Don’t.”

Your god throws you back to the ground. “None of my followers would have had to die if not for her. She got greedy, lazy on the power of my grace. She’s a god-eater.” His lip curls. “Or, rather, she tried to be.”

The word hangs in the air. Neil’s head swings to you, instinctive. You find that you can’t meet his eyes. You can barely draw in breath to breathe. You prop yourself up on your elbows and let the words crush you. God-eater. Betrayer.

Luna’s face gives nothing away. “When?”

Your god must see something in her that you’ve missed because there’s a smile of victory on his lips when he answers. You can feel his smugness echoing down the bond. “Less than a month into her first fast. I couldn’t hurt her to get away—she’s my first believer. You know how they’re special. But she betrayed my trust and if it weren’t for my other believers I would have died.”

The shame of it nearly kills you right then and there. Your heart stutters in your chest and you look down at your clenched fists. You want to tell them that you had no choice; you were so hungry, so very hungry. But, in your heart, you know that to eat your god is a sin and you tried. You tried.

Maybe laying on the floor between two beings who won’t even look at you is what you deserve. No, it’s more than you deserve. You killed three people with your sin. That’s more than you can ever atone for.

Luna nods slowly, her pink eyes very steady. She asks, “So you drained your believers of power—all of whom were fasting—to save your own life.”

He shrugs and there’s brutality in the motion. He’s still so very angry. “Yes.”

Luna hums. Her eyes drift to you, considering, before roaming back to him. “She called for you, didn’t she? Oh, not in the first week. Our believers are always so devout that first week without us. But then the second week comes and they break. Just a little. They call and what can we do? We’re gods.”

She takes a slow step forward.

Your god doesn’t notice. “We’re gods,” he repeats. The cold around him eases as he lets the words roll off his tongue. He likes them. “I visited her in the third week, but she wasn’t grateful for my presence. She tried to consume my flesh.”

“So you killed three of your followers to get back to full strength,” Luna says. She takes another of her steps, like a lion stalking through the grass. “Reasonable, right?”

There’s a rising tension in the room. Even as you are, you can feel it. Like a storm cloud about to break.

This time, your god takes a step backward when she steps forward. He seems a little less relaxed when he says, “Right.”

“Wrong,” Luna says. She stops moving, four feet away, but it feels close. Too close. “A god who can’t provide for their believers doesn’t deserve to have any.”

You should stop this. You can see the writing on the wall now. Luna is an Old God, a Powerful God. A Vengeful God. You can see the hunger around her mouth and around Neil’s. You can see it and you should stop it, but you can’t. Three lives. Three lives. You made your god. You failed to stop him. Those lives are on you.

You watch Luna get ready to strike.

Your god bristles, steam bursting in the air around him as his aura flexes. “How dare you—“

Luna lunges. She’s been pretending to be slow all this time with the easy nods and timid steps. She’s fast and your eyes can’t track her movement from in front of you to where she slams your god against the wall by his throat. She leans forward, her pastel hair crackling, and hisses, “A real god doesn’t ask for their believers to fast so that they can gain power without giving anything up. A real god would have seen his followers starving and given them his very blood to satiate the hunger. You’re a leech, a vampire, and your neglect has nearly ruined all who were fooled by your facade.”

“No,” your god gasps. His hands scramble for her wrist, much like yours did when he had you by the neck, and his skin where he touches her blackens. Deadens. She’s sucking the life from him. “You can’t do this! They were my believers to do with what I willed! I did nothing wrong!”

Luna laughs. Your god’s power is flowing into her, making her glow from within. Her hair is a mess of light. “But you did.” She leans in again and kisses your god on the forehead like a child. “You didn’t let her eat you.”

She drinks your god down like wine, his screams ripping through the air. He cries. He curses. He screams for you to help. You clap your hands over your ears, but you can’t find the strength to close your eyes. Your god, your god, your god, your GOD—

“AMANDA!” His voice is barely legible, but your name (your real name) rocks you to your core. He’s staring at you, eyes wild. He’s no longer man-sized. He’s looks like he did all those years ago on your bed, face plump from the sweet wine you sacrificed. “Amanda!”

You didn’t realize the power in those syllables, the strength, until your god gave them back to you. You’re Amanda, a witch, a woman, a person. You crafted your god from clay with your own two hands and he’s supposed to be different. He killed three people. You sit up, your name like iron in your spine, and meet his eyes. “Goodbye, Lorcan.”

He howls as the last of him is swallowed by light, eyes only leaving yours when he loses them both. His power streams into Luna’s open mouth, following the lines of her throat as she pulls apart your god atom by atom until all that’s left is energy.

Then she turns to you.

“Ah,” Neil says from where he’s kneeling. At some point he’d fallen to his knees, hands clasped in front of him. Supplicant. “From whence it came, it must return.” He turns to you with wonder in his eyes. “You called him. You really called him.”

“It’s time to finish what you started,” Luna says. Her voice is nothing like it was before—it’s as if a hundred people are speaking at once. The sound of it rings in your bones, in your head. Light spills from her mouth. “Open up.”

The shock of everything means that you don’t understand for a long moment. When you do, you nearly dry heave. She wants you to take your god back into yourself, eat of his essence like you tried to do weeks ago.“No, no I can’t. I’m not—I’m not a god-eater.”

“You summoned divinity, child,” Luna says in her hundred voices. She kneels in front of you, ignoring your attempts to get you weak arms to drag you away. “There is no running from that.”

“No,” you gasp. You turn your face away as she leans toward you, eyes shining with pyrite. “No, keep it, I won’t—“

Luna’s mouth seals over yours. It’s not a kiss. Your god’s essence—his soul— floods into you, scalding hot and icy cold all at once. You scream against the goddess’ lips, hands coming up to push at her face. Lorcan slips down your throat, immense, too much, and he burns. You can feel what he is —what he was—ripping at the well of your magic. Changing it. Embedding himself in it.

Your body flushes with new life. Your blood burns just as hot as the energy, pushing out the weeks of toxins that have built up in it. Your skin fills out, plumps up, flushes. Your vision clears so that you can see Luna hasn’t closed her eyes. She’s watching your transformation, pink eyes emptying of Lorcan’s color.

Everything human about you is consumed under the onslaught of power. Luna’s right—there’s no returning divinity once it’s been called up. There’s only reclaiming it, breaking it and transforming it until it’s something you can live with.

When she pulls away, you’re no longer screaming. Your crying and your tears are so cold that they steam against your warm and rosy cheeks. You’re mourning. For your father who might have seen this coming. For Lorcan who wasn’t the god he needed himself to be. For yourself for all the things you’ve lost, then and now.

“Welcome,” Neil says softly from over Luna’s shoulder. He looks different now, a pall of humanity hanging over his face and a magic-fire shining bright in his chest. “Welcome, young goddess.” He drops back to one knee, head bowed in supplication.

To you.

“Welcome, sister,” Luna says. She sits back on her heels and extends her hand to you. “Amanda.”

Your name rings with power, falling from her lips. You reach for her hand and pause, staring at your skin. There’s a glow coming from your bones. Divinity. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

Luna looks sad. “It’s what you needed. Rise, Amanda. Your old god left two believers behind. You must attend to them.”

The bonds flare to life when she mentions them, shimmering in the back of your mind. You can feel the believers now. Weak. Fading. Something surges in you, a will that you’ve never felt before, powerful and all-consuming. You need to get to your believers. “Take me.”

“They may be saved,” Luna tells Neil. She helps you rise and leads you to the door, your hand in hers. “She’s strong. There might be hope yet.”

“There is,” you say. You feel it like fact. Like truth. “There is.”

“Hallelujah,” Neil says and closes the door behind you.

----

Thanks for reading! (Patreon)

770 notes · View notes