Cameron Johnston - The Traitor God

Without a weapon like Dissever it would be impossible, but that minor detail wasn’t why they needed me – others far more reliable had spirit-bound weapons. I wrench the knife free and light bleeds from the wound. My hand is poised over the chasm in his chest, sparks of living lightning crackling from the organ to wind around my fingers.

Blind fury twists one side of the god’s face: the Worm of Magic manifesting an animalistic survival instinct all of its own. The other side is a mask of incredible concentration as he fights to keep his body motionless, but he is failing. It seems that the mind of a god is easier to break than the body.

I plunge my hand into his flesh, gagging at the sensation of beating muscle and ascended human blood flowing up my arm. My fingers touch the thrumming crystal, the god-seed at his centre. Light explodes in my mind and I vibrate with unfathomable energy. I wrap my hand around the crystal and pull. His flesh stubbornly resists. I put one foot up on the altar and heave. The god-seed tears free in a fountain of blood. I gag, spitting blood as Artha screams and convulses. The tower shakes. Then he flops down unconscious, his wounds closing. The shaking ceases and the lightning stops. All is silent apart from my terrified panting.

I collapse to the floor, entire body trembling, and try to scrub his blood from my face with a ragged sleeve. Power, absolute blissful power, throbs in my hand, flows into me even as Artha’s blood sizzles against my skin. This is the secret to ascension, a false Gift crafted from a flawless crystal of solidified magic, one capable of channelling more raw magic than anything of mere flesh and blood ever could.

I can be a god! I can take this power and do anything I wish, can cast down every bastard who… who… I shake my head groggily. No. That isn’t me, and that wasn’t the deal. I am human and intent on staying that way. I force my shaking hand to stretch out towards another figure coalescing from the shadows. I drop the source of the god Artha’s power into the waiting hands of the Lord of Bones. The old man’s white-bearded face is grim and riven by cracks of sorrow. He says nothing, only nods thanks for doing what he couldn’t, then dissipates back into the darkness, taking the god-seed to wherever it has to go. Stolen power thrums through me.

Artha’s chest rises and falls, his body twitching in the throes of foulest nightmare. I press my hands to either side of his head. He is so diminished, a mere Gifted mortal now, albeit still an ancient magus of such potency that he will stand head and shoulders above even the great Archmagus Byzant himself. As demanded, I begin using my power to wall away his memories. No other living magus is skilled enough to even attempt an act so deep and complex, and the other gods are either unable or unwilling to do it themselves.

I struggle to navigate the roaring floods of mental anguish and turmoil, to hide it all away beneath layer after layer of obfuscating walls, to twist his mental pathways away from the sources of his unreasoning rage. The changes to his Gift wrought by the Worm of Magic blindly resist at every stage but those Worm-wrought changes too are eventually bypassed and isolated from future thought.

When Artha wakes he will have no recollection of being a god or of having any magic beyond a certain innate physical strength and sturdiness impossible to hide. He will be spared memories of fields of rotting flesh picked over by crows and human scavengers, and of devastated tenements filled with the torn corpses of men, women and children slain to assuage his frequent rage. He will finally be free of the blight consuming his mind, instead blessed with a peaceful life tilling the soil of a small farm far to the north. I’m not sure he doesn’t deserve to die here, but the Lord of Bones said that thousands of years of service and sacrifice demanded otherwise, and I didn’t have a choice: Charra is sick and the Arcanum will burn Layla alive if I don’t complete this task.

It is the hardest, most exhausting thing I have ever attempted, hour upon hour of gruelling effort with his Gift fighting my foreign magic every step. Without the stolen power and my absolute need to protect those I love, it would be impossible.

Finally, somehow, it is done, and after a brief rest I begin the long descent. Much later I saunter out through the shattered door of the god’s tower and light a soggy blood-stained roll-up from the flaming wreckage. Artha’s “death” cry still echoes weirdly through the city as my plume of smoke twists into the air. Phantasms drift through the night and animals all across the city scream and scrabble in fear-frenzy as the ground shakes underfoot.

I flash a grin at the ominous black form of Lady Night, the god’s face a serene silver mask. Thick as thieves, her and the Lord of Bones. The gods owe me, and I will make sure they honour the debt. The bargain was struck and only the suicidal welch on deals with gods. The only one to suffer will be me, but I am fine with that.

“I’m gasping for a drink,” I say to her, my throat parched and my lips burnt and cracked. “You buying? I’m sure you lot can stretch to that.”

Icy eyes glare out from behind the mask, silver pupils as broken as the moon. My grin melts. “It is time for you to leave Setharis, Edrin Walker,” she says, her voice deceptively soft and melodious. “Forget, and never return.”

I swallow and nod. It was worth it.

Her power sears through my being, locking everything away.

Shock ripped Nathair from my mind. “Alive?” His hand squeezed my throat harder as he forced his way back into my mind. I convulsed, choking, blood gushing from my nose. “Artha lives,” he snarled, licking his lips. “He taught you how to kill us, and those two crusty old liars had a hand in it. Damn them, how did they know I would betray them given the chance? What else have you hidden from me?”

He tore my mind wide open, shattering every lock and door; all except for one, an old barrier of a different nature. He cursed me, but it wasn’t my lock, it wasn’t my door, and I hadn’t even known it existed. Somebody else had blocked off that part of my memory long ago and hidden it from me – but he didn’t care about that. He ignored the burnt-out part of my mind and focused his entire attention on tearing that last barrier apart to bathe in the hidden memories.

Beyond that last locked door lay the great and wonderful Byzant, my friend and mentor. All the times the elder magus had helped me, listened to my worries and soothed my fears – except, now, everything was changed, darkened, and my horror was complete. I now knew what that bastard did to me.

Flashes of Byzant strapping me to his chair flicked through my mind’s eye, Nathair watching and laughing voyeuristically as I relived the vile sensation of Byzant being in my head, adjusting things to make me into the bitter and contrary bastard that I was – ensuring that I’d build myself an early pyre. It was no wonder that all magi of my sort to appear in the last five hundred years had died young. They were not allowed to live. Those bastard elder magi refused to take the risk and made it look like every one of those poor fools had done it to themselves. Lacking my true Gift for such magics, Byzant utilized a crude but effective alternative to my own techniques, one that exploited my trust in him.

My world rocked, any sense of self torn free. I was not the hard drinking, wild-eyed rebel I thought I was. All I had ever been, Byzant had crafted. Paranoia and self-doubt crippled me, but then came anger. He had made me one thing, but I had burnt that old Walker away.