James West - The God King

As his understanding grew, he saw a fleeting shadow under her luminous, shimmering beauty change into a monstrosity. From within, tentacles pushed against her translucent skin, distending and distorting once perfect flesh. Before he could cry out, her hand streaked to his chest, her touch was hate and agony.

“You would know who I am, Kian Valara?”

An ugly purple tongue, incredibly long and slick, flicked out between her fangs and slid between his lips, probing at his teeth as if for an intimate kiss, then slithered back with a horrid squelching sound. He gagged on the reek of corpses.

“I am Peropis, Eater of the Damned, Queen of Demons and Ruler of Geh’shinnom’atar !” Like thunder, her voice rolled through the palace, quivering its foundations, before gradually fading. In the ensuing hush, she leaned close and whispered, “Will you accept what I would give, or will you deny me and suffer for a thousand and a thousand lifetimes?”

All that Kian was quailed in fear … but his fear served as a keen blade, deftly cutting away the fog of confusion born of her presence. His gaze rolled toward his fallen friends, Hazad and Azuri, his brothers … and the corpse of the woman he had barely known, yet loved with all his heart. He would not despoil their deaths by accepting the accursed gift of this creature, which had given rise to the living weapon that was Varis, who in turn had brought about their deaths. If his destiny was to suffer, then he would gladly do so, even if it meant only that he remained undefiled by human weakness and treachery against the memory of his companions.

“Keep your gifts, demon whore!” Kian roared.

Peropis instantly dropped him to the floor, regarding him with a menace unlike any he had ever known. He almost wished he could take back his defiance, but knew that everlasting pain was better than bowing to such a damned creature as this.

The last of her beauty broke apart, while that which lived under her skin ripped completely free. Splits showed in spectral skin, lashing tentacles sprang from her torso, legs, and arms. As she continued to change, his bowels boiled to water, his tongue withered like a worm dropped on a blistering rock. Every muscle in his body began to shiver, and his skin seemingly tried to crawl off that dancing meat.

With a cry, Peropis lurched forward on her own legs, and also upon a writhing tangle of thrashing black appendages. The motion was sickeningly inhuman, a rolling, bouncing gait. Her fingertips ruptured, exposing talons as black as her fangs, and she reached for him, her arms thinning as they lengthened.

“As you have chosen to deny me, now you will taste my wrath!” she cried, spraying the air with spittle that carried the putrefying stench of bodies dragged from swampy graves.

The force of her words smashed into Kian, sending him sliding over cold stone toward the blazing portal to what could be no less than Peropis’s domain, Geh’shinnom’atar , the Thousand Hells. His fingernails clawed frantically at the smooth tiles, dragging him to a halt bare inches from falling into that nightmare realm.

At a deranged shout of protest, Peropis abruptly ceased her attack and wheeled, her twisted and tentacled figure swaying.

Varis, snarling like a rabid wolf, jabbed his dagger in her direction. “You gave me your gift! It is mine, not another’s. With it, I will destroy you- though not just yet .” He spoke as if he held the power to do so and, as impossible as it was to conceive, Peropis recoiled as if she, too, believed.

Varis turned toward Kian, eyes burning like molten gold, his godlike flesh swollen, leaking rivulets of dark blood. Kian’s gaze widened as he realized that he could see an ethereal, silver radiance flooding into Varis from all directions. Some hitherto unknown part of Kian reached out and touched that luminance, recognizing it for the very essence of life stolen from the world around him. In that flow, he sensed the deaths of hundreds of people, perhaps more.

Kian had half a heartbeat to consider Varis’s atrocities before the youth slammed into him. With impossible strength, Varis drove him toward the portal. Kian wrenched himself sideways at the last instant, and his back slammed against the searing edge of that terrible gateway. He screamed as an enormous heat melted a groove in the flesh around his spine. He strained with all his failing human strength against Varis, trying to hurl him to one side. Varis, surprised by Kian’s resilience, fought to keep hold, veins bulging in his neck and brow, muscles standing out like cables of unyielding steel from his unnatural skin. For a moment, they were equally matched … but only for a moment.

Varis suddenly drove Kian’s skull against the edge of the portal. The stench of his own seared hair and skin filled Kian’s nostrils, then blood, cool compared to the fiery heat roasting him alive, began to dribble down his neck. Seeing the advantage even as Kian blinked against the fog of a swoon, Varis heaved forward again and again, trying to batter the mercenary’s skull to a pulp.

Kian quickly neared the extent of his strength. He was close to failing, dying. Then another, sharper pain swelled in him. All that he had his companions had struggled to achieve had been a waste. I have failed them … I have failed all.

Without warning, Varis relaxed and stepped back, just enough to ram his dagger into Kian’s middle. Then Varis moved farther away, his features alight with triumph. Regret washed over Kian as he slumped to his knees.

Gazing numbly upon the hilt of the dagger protruding from his belly, Kian was startled to find a blue glow drifting from his wound and his hands, and then from every inch of his skin. Though he was not sure how, he surrendered the powers of creation that he had held back, letting them flow outward. Neither Varis nor Peropis seemed to notice the delicate aurora surrounding Kian, as they gazed upon him with otherworldly eyes.

As the powers of the gods spread outward from Kian, he grew weaker, becoming again as he was born, a creature of frail flesh. In his heart, though he had never embraced or understood the powers that he held, it felt good and right that he should cast them away.

With that justification alive in his mind Kian steeled himself, jerked the dagger free of his bowels then, with all his waning strength, forced the powers of creation from himself in a single, massive blast, wanting more than anything for it to rip away the same powers from Varis’s flesh. What had been visible to his sight alone burst forth, washing the Golden Hall in a brilliant glow. Blue fire licked around Peropis and Varis, stunning them both, but otherwise leaving them unharmed. Or so it seemed at first.

Varis looked mutely this way and that, as the sky-blue radiance began to fade. “No,” he muttered in disbelief, staring at his hands.

Kian clenched a fist to his belly and sagged to his side, eyes wide with wonder. I did this, my desire for it to be so , he thought, stunned. For the first time since seeing the youth enter the temple in the swamp, Varis looked as he had, a highborn man-child full of pride, ambition, and discontent. No longer was he a god made flesh, nor even a man in appearance, but only a boy again.

“Do something!” Varis wailed at Peropis, sounding like petulant child. “I demand that you give me your full blessing! No more lies, no trickery, give me the gift you promised!”

Peropis spoke in a voice full of menace. “I warned you once to never make demands of me. I give what I will when and of my choosing … and I take what I will when I desire.” Her black gaze rolled toward Kian. To him she said, “It would seem that I, indeed, chose wrong. I give you this final chance to decide your fate. Will you accept?”