David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

Neither was the male. Kayne bounded through the throng, roaring, trampling soldiers beneath his claws. Ashhur slammed his palms together just as the lion hurdled toward him. The god’s fingers knotted together, and he clobbered the male upside the head, snapping Kayne’s head to the side and sending him soaring as well.

“KARAK, SHOW YOURSELF!” the deity roared.

“You will only face the true god of the land if you prove yourself worthy!” said another voice, softer but no less threatening, from behind her. She turned just as the soldiers guarding the portcullis parted, revealing a man she recognized standing there, his eyes glowing red, his cloak fluttering even though there was no breeze.

“Jacob, stand aside,” Ashhur said coldly. “You do not frighten me.”

Jacob Eveningstar? thought Moira. Here in Veldaren?

Beside her, Patrick growled.

“I am Velixar,” the cloaked man said, laughter playing on his lips. “And honestly, my Lord, I should frighten you. Even the gods trembled before the beast.”

The man who had once been Jacob slammed his hands together. A massive arc of black light shot forth, swallowing all in its path. Moira was caught in the wave and sent careening through the air along with at least two hundred others, Patrick included. They all landed in a heap fifty feet away, clearing a path between the god and the man who challenged him.

Moira groaned and shoved at the men piled atop her, trying to get loose. Nearby she heard Patrick cursing. Armor creaked, dying men moaned out their last breaths. But the one sound Moira didn’t hear was the clash of steel on steel.

She finally wedged herself free from the tangled mass of humanity. Patrick was nearby, his powerful arms quivering as he tried to pick himself up off the ground. She ran to him, urged him to stand. The fighting around her began anew as Moira and Patrick fled to the shelter of the half-demolished stables nearby. While the others waged war, their attention was fixed on Ashhur and the First Man.

Ashhur held out his hand, and a radiant sword of pure light appeared in his grip.

“This ends now,” the god said.

Moira couldn’t turn away.

Castle gates didn’t exist. All that mattered was Ashhur. He would assail the deity while Karak remained inside the castle, waiting for the moment Ashhur was near defeat before emerging to finish him off.

He reached into Karak’s deep well, siphoning the god’s power as he had done many times before. Drawing upon the fount of knowledge of the demon inside him, he reached across time and space, deciphering ancient spells and incantations, building up his inner reserves, imprinting them onto his brain. He cast out a wide web, drawing energy from not only the God of Order but the God of Justice as well. I am the child of two gods. I am the child of ALL gods!

Velixar’s body thrummed with energy, the very air around him growing unstable with charged particles, as if his tiny pocket of creation existed wholly separate from the world on which he stood. Electricity caused the pendant around his neck to vibrate. Thunderclouds billowed before his eyes, lightning crashed. Never before had he swallowed this much power. His nerve endings were on fire, pushing well past the threshold of pain. He ignored a speck of cowardice, which cried, It is too much-too much! For Velixar knew it was never too much. The demon whose name he had taken had told him so.

He closed his eyes, and the labyrinth of magic opened up. Millions upon millions of intersecting lines, like dust motes flittering through multiple shafts of light, became clear. For the first time Velixar understood, truly understood , the nature of the universe, the connection between all things, the web Celestia had woven, built up and over those that had come before, stretching all the way back to the beginning of time itself.

And in the middle of it all stood Karak and Ashhur, faulty vessels of once-powerful cosmic entities, entitled to the power of the universe but restrained, limited and made solid, by singular ideals.

It was Ashhur he focused on, illuminating the filaments of living energy that connected the deity to his multitude of marching corpses, bringing them to the forefront of the web. With the secret revealed, he leapt forth, snagging each of the threads in his own ever-growing web, pumping his influence into them.

The Beast of a Thousand Faces had once commanded an army of the undead, now so would he, even if he had to rip control from a god to do so.

He felt Ashhur’s pain as his energy traveled along the ethereal filaments and surged into the god, contaminating his essence. The thread doubled in width as Velixar and the deity fought over control, but he couldn’t sever Ashhur’s connection. The undead stopped moving, the contradictory orders passed along the invisible threads locking them in place.

They struggled, god and man-turned-god, the tide shifting one way then the other, then rolling back again. Ashhur suffered, the toll of his weakened state made all the more horrific by the constant push and pull. Velixar felt none of that; he was beyond pain. Though he knew his soul was expanding far beyond what should have been possible, he felt nothing but the exhilaration of conflict, of power, the thrill of driving a god to his knees.

Potency continued to pulse into him. The cosmic dust of the universe seeped out of his pores. Velixar expelled more and more of himself, a conduit draining energy from one source and shoving it into another. Ashhur was falling, failing, growing weaker by the moment, but the deity wouldn’t surrender. Velixar grinned, his hair lashing about his face, and poured as much as he possibly could into the spell. The threads binding the undead swelled, became volatile. It was then that Ashhur did relinquish control, and Velixar withdrew in horror. The energy he had hurled in an attempt to thwart the deity instead surged into the undead in a single, violent current. The corpses expanded as the force infused them, their every particle alive with more power than their frail forms could hold. The bodies exploded, filling the afternoon sky with torrents of blood and bits of bone.

The energy snapped back into Velixar, causing him to recoil from its force. His knees buckled, but he didn’t fall. The pain returned. His view of the web crumbled, revealing the battle that still raged, the combatants bathed in the falling blood of the undead. But still he felt vital, he felt strong . And then Ashhur stood from the swarm of battle, himself bathed in blood. The deity beat back the Judges, who attacked him on sight, and then bellowed to the heavens.

“KARAK, SHOW YOURSELF!”

“You will only face the true god of the land if you prove yourself worthy!” Velixar called out. The soldiers who had been guarding him, including the Lord Commander, scattered.

The deity leveled his gaze at him. “Jacob, stand aside. You do not frighten me.”

“I am Velixar now,” he shot back, laughing. “And honestly, my Lord, I should frighten you. Even the gods trembled before the beast.”

There were thousands of people between he and Ashhur, and Velixar again drew on the endless pit of strength, creating a violent wave of dark energy that threw everyone, both friend and foe alike, into the air as if they were scraps of parchment caught by a gale-force wind. When it was done, an expanse of bloodstained cobbles stretched out before him, he standing on one end and Ashhur at the other. Those tossed aside, the ones who were capable enough stood up and began fighting once more.

Ashhur held out his hand, and his ethereal sword grew from nothingness. The god then ran forward, streamers of blood trailing behind him, the glowing blade held above his head, ready to cleave him in two.