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ziracona · 2 years

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We’ve lived on the edge of a heart for the last four hundred years.

You grow up knowing that, you know, and it sounds so normal. So routine. We learn the world works on the decaying remnants of the old world, and that’s life, but it’s so different to see it.

I got a job working at the power center when I was just twelve. You can only work a few hours a day that age. You got school, and life, and laws that say it’s bad for you. And the work’s easy; all I did was bring people papers and drinks, one room to the next. Wait for a while until called. It was like chores at home. That, and my sister had done it before me, so I knew the routes going in, and I was fast; I was good. I wanted them to be impressed.

I guess they were.

When I turned fifteen, I got a job working basic cleaning. I got the older janitors to teach me repairs. I was good at it, and if you opened the windows on the second floor at night, you’d hear the concerts down the hill, and it was almost magic.

It was during a meteor concert I first saw the god. I knew how the power station worked, in theory, but they keep security tight close to the core, and usually I wouldn’t have been allowed near it with my rank. One of the old men in the job had fallen though, and injured himself late in the winter, and had to be taken to the doctor. The other oldest staff member usually there was out of town visiting family a few villages away, and that left just one of the younger men, and me. I’d offered to help, and rather than take all the lower floors alone, he’d said ‘sure why not,’ and let me though.

There was no one to stop us. And I’d earned trust. Honestly though, I hadn’t done it expecting to see it. I mean, I was curious generally, but I knew by then even if you were in the room, things were usually all bolted closed. Really though, I was so worried about Alberto, all I was thinking about had been him, and how close he was to the age of my own grandfather when he’d died last year. There wasn’t room for curiosity past fear and superstition.

The concert down the hill was playing loud though, a lunar event. Beautiful, probably, but I wasn’t thinking about having to miss it. I was thinking about Alberto, and trying to not think about Alberto, and trying to make my heart go slower, and the mop in my hand.

There were lights that activated through rune when you got close in the inner rooms, and I walked past a long wall of a massive tank, like an aquarium I’d seen once visiting the coast. Runes lit it blue and red as I went past, and thought about Alberto, and my grandfather, and the concert, and the mop. I kept telling myself, “I did the right thing. I stayed, and I worked a double and did his job, so he’ll be okay. It’s only fair. It wouldn’t be fair for him to die tonight while I’m working his shift. This will keep him safe.” It wouldn’t be like grandad, and the trip I’d passed on two nights before his death, to see friends instead, because I thought I had time.

I looked at the floor and I mopped till the runelight glowed in them, and focused on doing everything right. Everything. On meaning it.

And then I’d felt something move.

I can’t describe the immense horror of feeling something that size move in a room at night alone. It’s like the shadow of a mountain. It’s like the things you think are past your bed as a child.

And I saw my perfect runelight flicker in the tiles like something had passed between them and me, and turned to look up in that massive, empty fear of the night before that moment multiplied, and there in the tank was a humanoid figure I hadn’t realized was one at all, because it was five times as big. Its palm was the size of my head, and it shifted in that dark glowing tank, and I saw things that had looked like reeds move with it and registered them as chains. Its eyes were shut, but as I found swirling masses of matted black hair in the liquid, and what must have been a face beyond them, its eyes opened a crack. I saw glowing grey and black light in them, and they found me on that 2/3rds of a perfectly mopped floor, and pinned me to it like the corpse of a butterfly in a collector’s box.

I had never felt so afraid and so sure if something else wanted it, I was just going to die now.

The chains didn’t matter, the tank, the facility. It was too big for anything to possibly matter. So I stood there, hearing music of falling stars from the living humans below me what felt like a planet away, just waiting, for this big thing opposite me to will me dead.

It did not. It just looked at me, unmoving, like some corpse in the water. If I hadn’t been able to feel its gaze, I might have been able to really believe it was dead. But I knew it was watching me.

For about ten minutes I stood there looking at it, mop dripping water onto my perfect floor, too scared to move or think. And then slowly, fear beat out fear. I began thinking ‘No. You’re failing now. You stopped. You had to do his job perfect. He’s going to die.’ Louder and louder until it pounded in my head, and there was no room for fear of this god either past it, and I took my mop, and shakily went back to working.

I felt its eyes on me. I felt its eyes follow me. But I couldn’t stop, and so I didn’t.

I finished that room, and the next and the next, until the whole floor was done, and I went home at 10:00am two hours before my own shift should be starting, and collapsed, and when I woke up and returned to work after an hour and a half of sleep, and Hannah told me Alberto had pulled through, I believed it was me. I believed with immense relief I had traded with the universe last night this time and won it fair and square.

But I wasn’t surprised.

Dreams of that thing haunted me after, for several months. Watching me. Following me. I felt it in dreams about my grandfather, where I tried to make it to see him, and failed.

I got sick with those dreams.

And then a year later, just seventeen, they started letting me into the room with the tank again, to clean as Alberto’s helper. It always seemed asleep now, when it was where we could see it, and it wasn’t always. Floating like a corpse.

I wished it would look at me again. I felt like if it did, at least maybe the nightmares would be about being eaten or crushed, not the death of my grandfather.

And then one night, waking from that nightmare in a cold sweat, I’d thought about the way the stillness had felt the very first night I’d seen the monster, and about the way I’d felt like I’d beaten something the next day, and I went back to sleep and the nightmare willingly.

I remember that dream. My grandfather was there, looking at me and crying from the other side of a tank wall, lit up blue and red from runelight, and I couldn’t reach him. Behind him, there was a blackness like lengthening shadows that I knew was death, reaching, reaching, getting closer and closer to him as his palms pressed on the glass I couldn’t break through to save him, and I knew like every other time he was going to die, and I would not save him. And off far to the right, was the body of the god, watching with those glowing grey and black eyes. Silent.

I did not pound on the glass. I did not cry and beg or fight. I placed my palms opposite my grandfather’s and said “I am so sorry I didn’t come to say goodbye. I didn’t know. I would trade anything if I could.”

And something in the dream had said, ‘but you cannot, not like that,’ soft, like the touch of your mother’s palm against your face as a baby, and I believed it this time.

“Please forgive me,” I said to the grandfather in the dream I had let die.

“Forgive yourself,” he said in a voice I thought I’d never hear again, even in a dream, “Say goodbye now.”

He smiled.

I said, “I don’t deserve it.”

He said, “You do. We both want it, so you do. It’s fair.”

So I said, “I love you.” Which meant “goodbye” more than ‘goodbye’ could, and I saw he heard me before the shadow reached his back and took him with it, and I woke up crying, but, I felt better for the first time I ever had with a cry, and there were no more nightmares after that night.

That day, the thing in the tank watched me.

For just a second, as I was leaving. I remember looking back at it when Alberto was already through, and saw glowing eyes for an instant before they shut. It was substantially smaller even in that short time, than the first day I’d seen it, but still huge to me, and it terrified me, that sight, but I also felt relieved. Like the only thing worse than it alive, was it dead.

No one knew much about what our city god had been, or if they did, they didn’t say.

I asked someone who’d been at the station a long time once, and he hazarded ‘law, or storms?’ because of the village history and locale. I wondered if it was either at all. I guessed it didn’t matter. Gods had been gods: all pretty much the same. And we all knew the stories.

Over a thousand years ago now, there had been the age of gods. They controlled men; they bought and sold us, used us, siphoned off our belief into power, killed us, drew us in for worship and controlled us with fear, and hate, and desperation. Demanded blood, demanded lives, demanded sacrifice. We worshiped them, and they gave us power, a little. But only ever a little. And then, almost a thousand years ago now, we had realized they could be beaten.

And for the life of us, had we.

We had fought back against their oppression, and we dragged them down to our level. We had been used for eons as power for them, but our ancestors turned those tables. We built traps, and curses, and used our belief as a weapon against the things that had tormented us for thousands of years for it. Mages and artificers found ways to reverse the power—ways to siphon off a god’s domain, and make that power for us. We took them down, and tied them down, and we took it, all. And for nearly a thousand years, we had it. Power, and freedom. Not always peace, but our wars were our own. We were no longer pawns to gods. They were dead now, and our future was ours.

Well, most were dead. Apparently, when my grandad was a boy, that had actually been a huge problem, and people everywhere panicked. We hadn’t realized that the gods could be used up until they had no power left to give, and died outright, but it started to happen, and how could we possibly replace that? Our whole cities were built on their backs. Sometimes literally. But the mages and artificers had found a way, like before, and we did replace it. We had developed new dams, and alchemy, leylines—we even harnessed lightning itself. It would be different, sure, but it was no longer a real concern by the time he’d met my grandmother.

Amazing, how much could change so fast.

When the gods we kept chained in our cities as power cores first began to die, those gods simply vanished. There had been panic with the first few—long before my grandad was born—but, by the time he got his first job, we had accept the loss of a resource, and found something to do with it. Now, when a god died, we made something of it. After all: we were saying a last goodbye to a whole era of our history. Now, when one was on its last legs, someone was chosen from that city, and granted the honor to kill it. To become a God-Slayer. And someday, someone would be the very last one. The last God-Slayer. And god, I wanted it.

I knew I wouldn’t be the last, of course; by the time I was eight I knew that—numbers had dwindled, but we were hardly down to two or something. That didn’t matter. I had just wanted to be one of them, as a boy. Someone who might be remembered forever, a nail in the coffin at the end note of the remnants of our oppressors. It had been like a fairytale.

It was why I took this job, originally. Why I had worked so hard.

By the time I got my wish though, I’d forgotten it had been, as a boy, what I’d wanted and worked and traded in all the life I would never get back for a shot at.

It was early morning, and and I’d walked in still sleepy for my morning shift, and there was energy in the air. The workers were chattering together in excited undertones, and I felt excited too without even knowing why, and hurried over to find out too.

“You’re in time,” hissed Kanne at me, almost vibrating with energy, “quick! The name collector moved to the next floor but they’re still making rounds!”

“The—” I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my skull. “TODAY?”

They were all nodding.

Nobody had to tell me twice. I ran. I passed the tank room on my way, and it was empty, and I felt sick with adrenaline. Even if I didn’t get picked, which was what, one in 15 to one in 20 odds? I-I would see it! I was there ON the day.

I found the man collecting names and he gave me a little black card and white chalk. I scribbled my name down and dropped it into the slot in his box, and raced back to my friends with his whispered, “Small staff today. It’s the two men from the overseers, you four on cleaning staff, the two technicians, and one enchanter. I never put in my own,” ringing in my ears. One in seven odds.

One in seven.

We waited on the ground floor for the announcement. The others kept glancing my way and grinning at me. I must have looked stupidly excited, I guessed, but I didn’t care at all. It was like a dream.

“Will they let us watch?” I asked suddenly, it having not occurred to me before they might not.

“Dunno,” said Wis thoughtfully, the youngest above me here today, and in his forties.

I hope they do. I prayed silently.

“As you all know,” came a quiet, level voice I knew even having heard it only a handful of times, as the manager of power stations on the area. We all turned and looked towards the horn amplifying sound from a few floors up and stopped breathing. I mean, I did anyway. I had to assume we all did. “Today, we have a God-Slaying. The old god of this city has reached its final death throes, and is being taken down. This is a monumental honor, and the reward for dedicating your life to a job I know is not easy, or especially rewarding compared to some others most days. Today, it is the most rewarding job of all. As is tradition in the southern region, we draw lots for the honor of God-Slayer, among all those in daily service keeping the local power core site running in person. There are less than twenty gods remaining now, in our world. Let’s see who one of the last slayers among our kind will be.”

I waited, wishing I could hear the rustle of papers. ‘Arano’ I thought, picturing the white chalk letters in my head and pleading for them with the world.

“‘Gav.’” came the manager’s voice.

YES! What?? I thought in rapid succession, I-Is there someone last-named ‘Gav’ here???

The rest of cleaning staff had erupted in cheers and were clapping me on the back, whistling, calling congratulations and giving hugs.

“Is that me?” I asked them, dumbfounded.

“You know your own name, right?” laughed Kanne.

“But I put my last—didn’t we-?” They were all grinning at me.

“Mmm I put your last name,” agreed Kanne with a sparkle in her eyes, “But one of the boys must have not.”

“I genuinely thought we were doing first names,” said Wis, flushing, and Alberto had given a toothy grin and tilted his head to the side.

“Wait—all of?”

They were all nodding. Beaming at me.

“Don’t you want-” I started desperately.

“Not as much as I want to see you get it,” grinned Kanne, “besides, wasn’t mine I guess anyway.”

Alberto gave a nod. “You’ve got a long time to enjoy it.”

“And cleaning staff sticks together,” added Wis, shutting his eyes and gesturing carelessly with a hand, “four in seven is better odds—”

“Odds of one of us winning would still be four in seven,” I laughed, and realized I was crying, and he grinned at me and clapped me on the shoulder.

“You earned it, kid. Go get it.”

They smiled and moved me towards the stairs, laughing and clapping my back and talking, and the horn above us called my name again and asked me to make my way to the artificer’s chambers.

The two men from the overseer branch met us on the way down and chatted, friendly and enthusiastic. I asked one if he’d ever seen this before, and he said this would be his fifth time. That was almost unimaginable to me.

“What’s it like?” I asked as we reached the artificer’s room.

It was clean and bright, which was the polar opposite of it in active use. The man gestured to a door on the far end I’d only been through a maybe twice before, ever. There wasn’t anything back there really, an empty room for a purpose I hadn’t guessed before.

The man considered my question as we moved towards the door. “Strange,” he decided, and he gave me a smile, “They fight usually. I’ve seen them go silent once too. It’s almost reverent, to me,” he added like he was surprised to find it, “seeing the end of an era. Finishing what we started.”

He ran a rune sequence against the waiting door, and it slid open, and he turned and gestures for people to wait.

“Gratifying too,” he decided, giving me another glance, “Like you can breathe easier with one more of the those gigantic empty leeches finally gone.”

I gave a nod.

“Okay. We’re taking him in first,” he addressed the staff behind me, which now included Reysa and Lili the technical repairs duo, and the assistant who’d collected names. “Once it’s ready to commence, the rest of you will enter the viewing area, through that door,” he pointed to a door on the left side of the room, then glanced at his partner, who gave a nod and me a smile, and they showed me in.

It had been years since I’d seen this room. It was empty, aside from pillars and a little pedestal, usually. But today, there were chains, and a mechanism I hadn’t seen before.

“What is that?” I asked, staring at the humming thing.

“It’s the same as the one in the basement, just smaller and concentrated,” replied the overseer.

Ah, a ward then. We had discovered a long time ago when we fought the gods, that there was very little we could make that hurt them, but we could capture their own energy and turn it on them, and the energy of any god could hurt another. These things stored that power, and imbued it through materials like chains, or the liquid in the tank our god had been kept in. The way they enchanted the energy, a god encased in it was unable to do the things we heard stories of them having done in the past: use their domain to crack open the sky and rain down fire, vanish and appear on another country, kill you with a look. They just became big dead bodies, not quite dead, like our god in its tank.

“You have the right to choose a weapon,” said the second man from overseers, gesturing to a set that was hung on the wall by the door.

Oh, I thought, feeling something between excitement and nausea at the sight. I really get to do this. I’m going down in history. I’m going to kill a god.

There was an axe, a sword, a spear, scythe—which I could not begin to imagine the self-confidence or impressiveness of choosing, a mace, a bow, and a dagger. I looked at them long and hard, heart beating out of my chest. I could see the faintly glowing coating of god energy on them. Enchanted for killing gods. A god killer. Such a magnificent weapon seemed too good to be real.

But here it was, and here I was, and the sword felt like what the hero would choose in a story, but I was a cleaner, whose friends had given me a gift, and I was to kill a god, and I remembered the way the overseer had said ‘almost reverent’ about killing the last of these things, and I reached out and took the axe.

It felt right in my hands. Impossibly heavy, but, somehow that was good. I knew it would kill in one blow, which hadn’t worried me before I chose it, but I was now enormously relieved not to worry about.

“Well chosen,” whispered the overseer with a friendly smile, nudging me in the ribs with his elbow.

I smiled back and straightened up, and walked over near the podium where I was directed. Across the room, I saw my friends ushered in and watching through glass, waving, staring. Excited too. And now maybe a little afraid, awestruck.

I’m ready, I told myself, turning to face the door the overseer was opening.

It opened, and six men from the overseer’s office came through, holding chains and weapons with coals at the tips. There was a track system in the roof of the room, and as they hooked chains into it, a mechanism started up, and dragged the thing towards me, surrounded by its guard.

It came fighting and stumbling, screaming, trying to break free, and I was dumbfounded.

I had never once seen it speak in the tank.

It had gotten so small, it was almost my size now, and it looked like a man, skin dark and ashy grey tinted like someone who’d lost too much blood, bedraggled thin curls matter to its head. The eyes still glowed fiercely.

The overseer began to speak, noting history and official rites, chronicling our event today, but I didn’t hear any of it. I heard the god scream and struggle. There was no room for other sounds past that. Shackles were secured around its hands and feet, waist, and neck, and the mechanisms in the ceiling and floor kept dragging it towards me, arms chained together behind its back, feet awkwardly apart and chained to the tracks in the floor so it kept stumbling and falling, and being caught by the chain around its neck that kept on dragging it towards me, and I followed the mechanism with my eyes and realized it would drag the head down on top of the pedestal and hold it still for me. For executing.

In my head I had always thought it would be like a mock fight, ceremonial, or…entering a cage, with a silent giant thing, labored breathing, putting it down. Like opening the top of that tank and aiming a harpoon down while it lay there still. I felt suddenly like I wouldn’t know what to do now when the moment came, and might do it all wrong, and I tightened my grip on the axe to stop the shaking in my hand.

No one looked at me though. The men around the bound god shoved and prodded it forward with their full attention, until it was dragged to the ground in front of me with a shout, and they hooked the chain around its waist to the floor so it was trapped kneeling, feet too, and head suspended against the pedestal by the one around its neck.

It was wearing tattered remnants of an outfit I should have known, but didn’t. Flowing and formal, but so old.

“Having reached the end of its usefulness to us, the god of Malcove will be slain by one of her citizens: Gav Arano,” came the overseer’s voice. I looked up and saw him raise his arms. “We dedicate this ending to the memory of the ancestors strong enough to end the age of gods, as we take our final steps in burying the last embers.”

“Stop!” shouted the god in desperation. It fought to wrench itself back up and couldn’t, and cursed in frantic frustration and fear, trying again anyway.

I looked at the overseer and he gave me a nod.

Feeling like I wasn’t really there, I raised my axe. This is a god, I told myself, staring at the wretched thing at my feet, I’m really-

“Stop! Please!” shouted the god, dragging its head to the side as far as it could to look up and see me, and I was so shocked to hear that word from a god, that I did. “Please, stop!”

“Go on,” came the overseer’s voice encouragingly as I stared at the thing with my arms raised.

“No!” called the god, turning its head to look from me to the overseer and back, then staying on me, “Do not go on! Why?” it begged, somewhere between rage and despair, “Why do you do this to me?”

“It’s alright,” said the overseer to me again, ignoring the thing, “go on.”

“Answer me!” shouted the god, frantic, “You!” it shouted, turning its head painfully far back and to the side to see me, “Why! What have I done?”

“You know what it’s done,” said the overseer to me, “It’s a god. Go on; slay it.”

I moved, and the god’s eyes fixed on mine and went wide, ragged with hate and fear and desperation. “‘Slay’ me?” Its voice cracked. “‘Slay!?!’ Look around you! This is no heroic god-slaying! It is an execution! And I have committed no crime; you are a murderer, showering praise for a murder!” It jerked against its chains futilely. “I am bound! I am unable to flee, or fight back! I have initiated no challenge! I am a prisoner! You have locked me away and tortured me for hundreds of years, and now you have used up my life, you will kill me for it!”

“They get like this sometimes, trying to talk their way out at the end,” said the overseer, nonplussed, “You don’t have to listen.”

“No! You will hear me!” shouted the god in a panic.

Someone activated the mechanism it was chained to, and its neck was dragged down hard against the pedestal with a pained cry and held there flat against it, so it couldn’t look up anymore.

“You coward!” It shouted, trying to see me anyway and failing, starting to cry, “You coward!! You will not even look me in the eyes and face what you’re doing when you take my life?!”

“Go on,” said the other overseer, much more quietly. I hadn’t heard him come over, but he had, and he put an encouraging hand on my shoulder, “It’s all talk. It can’t hurt you.”

“That is the point,” cried the god, voice seeped in bitterness and despair and hate, “I cannot. I am a god who served this land for three thousand years, and you are going to slaughter me like a cow!” It tore at its restraints again and screamed in rage when they held. “How do you justify it!?!” It shouted at the room of humans it couldn’t see who had come to watch its death. “You call my people monsters! ‘Unfair, unjust, leeches,’ for using you, and then you take us and trap us in walls to suck the life from for hundreds of years with no trial! No justice, no reason! You treat us as if we were all the same!”

“You are all gods,” said the second overseer with a twinge of annoyance, addressing it finally, “You are the same. You earned what you’ve been given. Accept it with dignity, or die in a pathetic tantrum at the end. It won’t change your fate.”

“The same?!” echoed the god, choking on the word in despair, “You would judge your entire species for the worst acts of a few?”

The man rolled his eyes and gave me a tired, reassuring smile. “They usually die with a little more dignity than this one. But these make a better story.” Again, he placed his hand on my shoulder encouragingly and gestured to the axe. “You don’t have to wait for it to finish spitting at you, Gav. Go on. Cut off the poison words at the source. It may talk a big game, but it’s harmless. You’re the only one with power here.”

I nodded slowly at him, and hefted the axe. Then I moved, slowly, over in front of it, and it looked up when it sensed me getting close.

“Wait! Please wait! W-We do not go on to a second life like you; we simply end! And still, you will take all our time and kill us like it’s nothing, and then call yourselves champions and just! You must see it is not! We are not the monsters!”

It got no answer this time, and it could sense the plea had failed. Breath heaving, and eyes full of tears, it held my gaze.

“Wait! Wait—will you not wait even a few minutes to give me time to reach some peace?”

“What would a god pray to?” asked the first overseer, somewhere between amusement and disdain.

Its expression shattered at the words, and it stopped looking at me and stared at nothing with wide eyes for a few seconds, then it hung its head and was silent.

I raised my axe.

“Do you even know what I used to be the god of,” it asked hopelessly, and I could hear it was crying in its voice, “Fair trade. I was the god of fair. trade.” It turned its hopeless face up towards mine a last time and looked its own death in the eyes for mercy. “I never massacred your people, or used them. It would be against my nature to have even tried. I protected deals between people who wanted it. I protected you. Many of us protected you, and look at what you have done.”

Its eyes were swollen, and stained with dirt and tears, its face so full of misery.

“You used to remember me,” it pleaded, despair in its eyes, “you used to like me. People would come to my temple on top of the mountain to ask advice, and blessings on their plans. To offer trades for the sick and dying. Sometimes they would leave gifts, to thank me, and I always got to think of ways to thank them back. Fair trades.”

The last words had been a whisper.

“Why,” it asked me and no one and everyone who had lived the last thousand years. Asked for justification, justice.

“Gav.” A prompt, almost a reprimand this time. I looked up and over, and the first overseer gave me a tired smile. “They’ll say anything. You can’t listen to a god; they would lie about anything to get what they want. It’s alright. Slay it.”

“Slay?! Call it what it is! Murder!” shouted the god, “I am alive! I have done nothing, and given everything, and still you have betrayed me! You know it is wrong!”

I looked up at the room around me, at the others, my friends, watching me across the room, waiting. Concerned. The guards, agitated by my delay, wanting to step in. The overseers nearly exasperated with my hesitation. The one at my side gave me a nod when I looked his way.

“Okay,” I whispered back, and I turned and I readied my stance again, hands sweating now. I raised the axe high above my head.

The god screamed in rage and despair as I moved. “We should never have cared for you monsters at all!” Frantic, it fought at its restraints till it bled, and tried to find me with its eyes, but I was too directly above it now. “You want to kill a god!? You want to rip away my life!?! Then take it!” it cried at the death it couldn’t see, and I watched a last something break in it, “Take my last trade! Take my life, and the curse you earn with it! My hate will follow your blood, eating away at your life and soul and everyone you love until you have NOTHING left, like you leave me! Take what you deserve!”

It was shaking. And it was alone. More than anything I could imagine.

I didn’t swing. I watched it. It couldn’t tilt its head high enough to see above my legs, and after a few seconds of terrible waiting for the axe to drop, the tension went out of it and it just went limp and cried, silent. Weak and hopeless.

“Why?” it asked the room in despair, “Why will you not even look me in the eyes when you kill me? How is that not fair?”

Fair.

I swung the axe.

As hard as I could.

And I let go, and watched the blade embed itself in the enchantment mechanism sending god energy coursing through the binding chains.

The mechanism made an awful sound, and suddenly the air was full of shouts.

“Go!” I shouted at the God, willing it to flee.

It did not.

It made a sound like a gasp, and there was an overwhelming surge of energy in the room, like electricity in the air of a storm, or smoke and heat inside a burning home.

I saw guards rush it, heard friends and strangers shout alike, and watched the god snap its chains in an instant and with a surge of power come upright, and grow.

In a millisecond, it changed, until it was towering like that first night in the tank. Like all those nights in my dreams. Hair floating, eyes glowing like stars, ashy skin glowing faintly of a grey like smoke.

And it began to laugh, long and desperate, and not entirely sane, and guards slammed their weapons into its legs and it didn’t even take note.

“Yes! Yes! NOW see what you’ve earned!” it shouted with relief and a vengeance, and its voice was clear like before, but so loud it hurt, and it raised a finger and a wall exploded, shattering debris on the first of the overseers and burying him. It felt a stab from a guard finally and glanced down, and swung at them with a hand. It was like watching a cat bat a mouse, and the four it hit were hit so hard they went through the wall. The last two it turned to look for and brought a foot down on, crushing them to pulp beneath it.

Everyone who could move was running now. Everyone but me.

I could only stand frozen in shock and horror, watching this thing I had done, and then it turned its head and saw me.

Oh no.

I thought to run, but I only made it back a step before it reached for me, and I thought, this is pointless, I’ll never make it, and I didn’t. It grabbed me with a hand as big now as I was, and lifted me off the floor towards itself, and I felt the most immense terror I ever had.

“Wait,” I tried to choke out as it brought me even with its face, and I realized then it was beaming.

“Thank you!” it said, “Do not worry. You will be safe.” Its expression changed, and it narrowed its eyes at the rest of the room. “And everyone else in this miserable city will not.”

It raised a palm.

“Starting with this hell prison that has taken everything I had. It may be too late for myself, but I swear, I will take it with me.”

I felt a huge wave of energy surge around us.

“W-Wait!” I shouted in terror.

It stopped, and glanced at me.

“Wait please! I-I know you’re angry,” I begged, staring up at this massive horrifying thing that had looked so human moments ago, and now could swallow me whole if it chose to, “And you’re right! What was done to you is unforgivable! But please—there are people who haven’t hurt you here! M-My family lives minutes from here: please don’t kill us!”

“Tell me where your family is, and I will spare them,” it agreed, and it turned its attention back to the building.

“No wait!”

It stopped again.

“I-I—P-Please, not just them! I-I am like everyone here! If it wasn’t for luck, I wouldn’t have been the one with the axe; I’d be one of the ones fleeing! They don’t know, the people in town! We don’t even understand what gods are! Please! Th-The people like me who work here, even, cleaning! We’ve never known any better; they are good people; please, don’t kill them!”

Its posture changed a little, and it tilted its head slowly, eyes on me.

“Please! Y-You said you wouldn’t judge everyone by the worst actions-”

“-Of a few,” it finished. It looked away, thinking, then slowly lowered its hand, and the expression in its eyes changed and the excitement was replaced with sadness. “Very well,” it whispered, “You showed mercy. So will I.”

There were sirens blaring now, and people shouting.

I was sick with all kinds of fear, but somehow this thing being shredded with magic after stopping would have been almost as bad to watch as it razing the town.

“People will come-” I started.

“Attention!” The god projected its voice, and I heard it echoing from halls all around me, everywhere, deafening, “This building will be leveled in four minutes. You have until then to clear it. If you value your life, do not re-enter.”

It stood there for a moment in the blaring of alarms, looking at nothing, glowing, but less bright. I saw the power that had come around it begin to fade, saw weariness and wear beneath it again.

“I am going home,” it decided, and it smiled.

Everything vanished.

There was a bright white light, and I had to shut my eyes, and when they opened, we weren’t in the building anymore, and I wasn’t being held in a hand.

I was standing on the grass on a mountainside—my mountainside, I realized, because I could see the whole city built into the side below us, sprawling down to the coast. N-Near the top, I thought shakily.

I turned, looking for the god, but I didn’t see it. Nothing but a massive, empty grass flat here near the peak, scrubby brush, a few old boulders covered in moss. I was alone. W—how? What do—?

Below me in the valley, I heard an awful sound, and turned to look, and watched as the power center shattered. A beam of grey light tore through its core like a geyser, and eviscerated the place I had spent the last ten years of my life in an instant.

As the light vanished, fear gripped me, and I stumbled to the edge of the flat, and for a horrible few long, long seconds, I expected to watch the whole valley shatter like that.

It did not.

Heart beating uncontrollably in my chest, I let myself stumble back from the edge finally, and fell to the grass, sick with fear and relief at the same time.

Behind me, there was the sound of a metal clink, and the relief vanished.

Nerves frayed, I rolled onto my stomach and scrambled up, ready to fight or run. It took only an instant to find the source. There, about twenty feet off, lay a figure on its side in the grass.

As I stood, I recognized the god. Small again now, like me. Arms and legs and neck still shackled, just to broken chains now, and they clinked quietly as it ran its hand along the grass there weakly.

Unsure what to do, I watched for a moment, and then walked over and knelt a few feet to the side.

It heard me coming and looked over and watched, and gave me a sad, weak smile as I joined it.

“What happened?” I asked, very unsure myself, “Did…destroying the power center..?”

“No. I am dying,” it answered quietly, none of the panic from before, “You knew this. Your people have taken all the life I had to give from me. I’m out of belief, and out of time now too. I may have sped things up by a few minutes, but there was no other end for me.”

“…I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

And I was sorry for it. Sorry that I’d spent thirteen years dreaming about killing it. Sorry that it had been trapped and hurt for hundreds of years. Sorry I had needed to ask it not to kill everyone who had hurt it. Sorry that I still was not thinking of it as ‘he’.

“Thank you,” it said like it meant it, and it smiled weakly at me.

It let out a shaky breath, and rolled onto its back and looked around, and I thought it would cry.

“This was my temple,” it told my, eyes on the sky above us, “There used to be trees here. People planted them for me. So many. You could sit on one and hang right over the edge of the world here, look down at the city below. It was a stone temple. Your people made it for me by hand.”

I watched him in silence.

There were tears in his eyes again, but I knew the kind this time. It was the same as the way my mother had looked telling me stories about her childhood with him, when we buried my grandfather.

Love.

And loss.

“It was beautiful,” he told me with a shaky smile, “Rough and imperfect. Repaired many times, and people would etch things into it as little gifts. After time, old words wore away and new ones covered them, like a tapestry. Children would write their name for the first time here, to trade for bravery for school. I loved it.”

The love became sadness, and it was almost unbearable to watch.

“They tore it all down. All of it.” He looked at me. “I cannot even sense the stones of the foundation. All of it has been destroyed.” He looked away again and tried to smile. “I had thought. That the trees might have made it. They wouldn’t have known, that those were mine, would they?” He asked me, almost desperate to be right. “Or did…the people who used to come see me help them tear it all down? Did…”

He was quiet.

“I don’t understand,” he said finally, very quiet. He looked at me again. “Am I wrong? Have I done something terrible I do not comprehend?”

I couldn’t possibly know. But at the same time, I thought I did,

“I thought I was doing well,” he promised the sky.

and the answer was no.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

He looked at me and studied me for a few seconds. “I had not thought there were humans like I knew left,” he said with a slow smile, “I am glad you are not gone. You are named Gav?”

I nodded.

“Zesham,” he told me.

“Zesham,” I echoed.

He smiled.

For a moment he closed his eyes, and then he looked up at the sky again. “I wanted to come home to die,” he told me, “This is the only home I’ve ever known. I was not a major god. Only god of here. But my home is destroyed. Along with all memory of me.”

He shut his eyes. I watched him cry in silence and wished I knew how to comfort someone dying.

Slowly, I reached out and placed my hand against the one he had wrapped around blades of grass.

He felt strange. Cold, like a corpse, but vibrating or humming, like a cat almost, or a tremor. Zesham opened his eyes when I did it, and looked over. At my hand, then me.

“You worry,” he said like he was very surprised to find it.

“I…” I thought about my grandfather. Alberto. My life. Debts, regrets. Deaths. “I wish I could have saved you.”

“…I am okay,” he told me, and I knew he was lying. He tried to smile. “This is my earth.” He dug his hand in, and weakly held up a handful of loose turf for me to see. “They cannot have taken the dirt too. The temple, the gifts, the flagstones, the trees, the flowers. But not the dirt. They would not know it was mine. But it must be. There is still dirt here, and they would not have brought in new, so it must be the same I used to walk in, and that knew the roots of my trees, and the sounds of the footsteps of people coming to see me, and weight of my flagstones. So, I made it home still. See? Even after all that is lost.”

I squeezed his hand gently.

He tried so hard to look proud. His breath was ragged and his skin ashier.

“Yes, you did,” I agreed quietly.

“So. I think. I will go to sleep in my home, and not waking up will not be so terrible. And I have one human who has stayed by my side, so I have the rare honor, for a god, of…of not…” he was struggling to speak, but he managed it, “d-dying alone.”

And he smiled weakly at me and looked happy, almost. And shut his eyes.

I held his hand and watched. I wished I could think of something to say. Goodbye but not goodbye. Goodbye but right, like my grandfather, and I knew I was about to run out of time.

“I wish you would stay,” I whispered finally.

And I could see he had heard it, and knew it meant goodbye more than goodbye could.

I watched death come for him like a shadow, and I thought, ‘I would trade you anything for it if I could.’

And suddenly. That was a thought like it hadn’t been.

#original fiction #short story #fantasy story #fantasy #ive wanted to do this seqjence so long. no beta we edit after post as fools #wow auto so youll correct 'its' to 'it's' 800 times i dont want it but you just let me type 'seqjence' huh #tumblr keeps EATING THE LAST FOUR FUCKING PARAGRALHS OFF ANYTHING I WRITE??? it’s there in edit but not posted what the fuck #me writing

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