Chapter 29 – The False Goddess

Chapter 29 – The False Goddess

 

Joren stood amidst filth and ruin, guarding a gate of rusted iron.

Even now, he still had not grown used to the way his eyes could see in this pitch-black dark. The world had become a place of blurred edges and drained color, all of it rendered in ugly shades of silver and black. Wet stone. Rust. Moss. Old water creeping sluggishly through cracked channels cut into the floor. The underworks beneath Elysium had once been grand, perhaps, in the ancient days when the city had first been built in the sacred valley.

Now they felt like the rotting veins of a corpse.

The thirst gnawed at him without pause.

It clawed at the inside of his throat and chest and belly, a ravenous ache that no ordinary hunger had ever resembled. Beyond the simple need for food, it was compulsion, obsession, a feverish, all-consuming craving that made every pulse in the distance feel unbearably vivid.

His fingers tightened around the shaft of his spear until his knuckles ached.

Not yet. Not unless he absolutely had to. The thought had become a prayer by now. A ragged, desperate thing repeated over and over in the dim corners of his mind.

He had been a son of Elysium once.

A guard, like his father before him, and his grandfather before that. A man sworn to keep the peace, to defend the weak, to stand at the city’s gates and trust that his life meant something clean and honorable.

And now here he was.

Standing underground in a place of chains and cages and stolen people, breathing in the scent of blood while monsters called him brother.

His stomach twisted. What was he doing?

You have nothing to feel guilty for, dear.

Lady Camila’s voice slipped into his thoughts like silk dragged through poison. Smooth. Velvet-soft. Intimate in a way that made his skin crawl.

They are refuse. Drifters. Foreigners. Criminals. The sort of people no one will ever truly miss. Your life is worth hundreds of theirs. So feed, my dear. Feed and flourish.

Joren swallowed hard. Was that right? It never felt right. But if he stopped trying to believe it, then what was left?

This had to be temporary. It had to be. There had to be some way back.

He was still Joren. Still a husband. Still a father. Still a man who had held his little daughter in his arms and promised, with all the foolish certainty of a loving parent, that he would always keep her safe.

He had never once wanted to feed on his wife.

He had never once wanted to feed on his child.

That never happened.

He was not a monster. He was not.

Beside him, Malric unfastened a flask from his belt and took a long, indulgent swallow. He let out a low sigh of satisfaction as he lowered it again.

The scent hit Joren at once. Copper-rich. Thick. Sweet enough to make his vision swim.

He trembled so violently his spear butt scraped faintly against the stone.

Malric looked over at him with something halfway between amusement and pity. His eerie red eyes gleamed wetly in the dark.

“You newcomers are always like this,” he said. “Fighting. Brooding. Pretending you’re above it all.”

Joren kept his eyes fixed forward.

“Why torture yourself?” Malric went on. “Why reject the gift?”

“It is not a gift,” Joren rasped.

His own voice sounded wrong to him now. Too dry. Too thin. As though something inside him had already begun to hollow out.

“And I will not be staying long,” he forced out. “I will beat this. And I will return to my family.”

Malric barked out a laugh loud enough to bounce off the low stone arch overhead. “Keep telling yourself that, mate.”

Joren bit his lip and said nothing.

Malric took another drink, then held the flask out toward him. “Here,” he said, almost kindly. “Stop making this harder than it needs to be.”

The scent drifted closer. Joren’s mouth flooded with saliva so suddenly and so shamefully that he had to turn his face away.

“Just drink,” Malric murmured.

There was something in his tone now. A low, coaxing pull. The subtle cadence of corruption speaking through a willing mouth.

“You’re one of us now. You’re stronger than they are. Better than they are. Why cling to the weakness of your old life?”

Joren stared at the flask. His hand twitched. One sip. Just one. He was so thirsty.

The sound of soft footsteps echoed in the darkness, measured and unhurried. Joren and Malric looked up as one.

“Who goes there?” Malric barked, all traces of warmth vanishing in an instant. He straightened and leveled his spear toward the tunnel mouth. “Identify yourselves!”

The figures emerged slowly from the dark.

Joren frowned. It was a truly odd little party, so strange in this buried place that for one bewildered second his mind refused to make sense of them.

A small, sharp-eyed boy. A woman in a plain cloak. A golden-haired child.

The child should have stood out immediately. She was beautiful in the soft, luminous way only little children could be, all bright hair and cherubic features and impossible sweetness.

And yet something about her seemed to slip strangely through the eye. Pretty enough to notice. Forgettable enough to lose the moment one looked away.

The woman was the opposite.

She should have been unremarkable. And yet the moment Joren truly looked at her, the world seemed to narrow around that single act. She lifted her gaze, and their eyes met.

Joren stared as if entranced.

Such a vivid and beautiful color, he thought as if in a dream.

They were the color of sunlight.

The sunlight he had forgotten.

Something inside him gave way.

Memories surged up so fast and so painfully that he nearly choked on them.

The endless flower fields of Elysium in full bloom.

His daughter laughing as she ran barefoot through white petals and summer grass.

His wife seated on a picnic cloth beneath the open sky, lifting one hand to shade her eyes while she smiled at him across the distance.

The smell of fresh bread. Temple bells at dawn. A hymn carried on spring air.

Home.

His mother’s hand resting warm and firm atop his head when he was small and tearful and ashamed after doing something wrong.

The moment shattered.

He was underground again, surrounded by damp stone and blood and ruin.

But he had already known. He had always known from the moment he laid eyes on Her.

How could he not?

In this endless darkness, how much had he yearned for Her grace? How desperately had he begged for Her salvation?

His knees gave out beneath him. His spear clattered to the stone.

He bowed so quickly he nearly struck his forehead against the floor.

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“Goddess of Life,” he whispered hoarsely. “Great and Merciful Mother.”

His voice broke. “Your wayward child begs for your mercy.”

Beside him, Malric made a strangled sound of disbelief. Joren did not look at him.

He could not.

He kept his head bowed low and stared at the wet stone beneath him as shame and desperate relief tore through his chest all at once.

“I never wanted this,” he said, and hated how broken he sounded. “Please. Please save me.”

For a moment there was only silence. Then came the faintest sigh.

Even that soft sound felt sacred.

Joren looked up. The Goddess had lowered her concealing hood.

In the pitch black darkness, she seemed to shine with her own light, until all that he could see was Her.

She was beautiful in a way Joren did not have words for.

Beyond beauty. Beyond grace.

Like all the gentlest things in life had been gathered together and given form. Summer sunlight over white stone. Wind through flower fields. Warm hands. Safe places. Every childhood prayer spoken in trust.

Looking at her hurt. Looking at her made him want to weep.

Malric recoiled with a hiss, his face twisting into naked panic.

“No,” he stammered. “No, no, no. That’s impossible.” His red eyes widened until they looked feverish.

“You should be dead,” he spat. “Be gone! I deny you! This is our world now!”

The Goddess turned towards him. She was not even angry, that was the worst part.

Her gaze was cold and indifferent. Final.

Something black and oily burst from Malric’s body in twisting ribbons of smoke and rot. It streamed from his mouth, his eyes, his skin, all of it unraveling at once as he convulsed in place. Then he collapsed.

By the time he struck the floor, he was already dead. What remained was little more than a dry and shriveled husk.

Joren stared in horror. Was that what the corruption had already done to him? Was that all he truly was beneath the skin now?

He dropped his forehead back to the stone.

“Mercy,” he whispered. “Great Goddess, mercy.”