The River of Skulls led the pair to a craggy pass in the mountains that bordered the barren plain. The sides of the pass drew up high and narrow, bringing the couple into a shadowed canyon. The group welcomed the relieving cool, but it made the sinister faces of the skull rocks dark and foreboding, their grim smiles eagerly encouraging them onward.
As the canyon deepened in gloom, Vantaiga’s cooling relief was replaced with an eerie chill that ran through her body. Hidden from the sun, the rocks here were no longer white but ghastly greens and blacks. In the dim light, they looked more like the heads of rotting corpses.
The camels grumbled and moaned with unease as their steps became more unsteady. The canyon now converged to a chasm. The beasts’ broad feet scraped and ground into the rocks. Syffox spurred them on, but they hesitated to his command. A light emanating from around a bend made them resist going forward.
Vantaiga leaned down to stroke the camel and ease its fears. But as she looked more closely at the chasm floor in the new light, she could make out the forms of actual corpses. The camel’s feet stamped and cracked the bones with a sound like that of rattling branches. She stifled a gasp and burrowed herself into Syffox. “We are entering a crypt!”
Syffox stiffened when he looked down at the ground. He pulled the pack camel to him and retrieved his bow. He commanded it to string itself and tried to focus enough magic to give it a test pull but found he couldn’t. Weak and embarrassed, he turned to Vantaiga. “I can’t use my bow.”
Vantaiga caressed him lightly on the arm and gestured for him to put the bow away. “Take ease, my love. Your bow will be no use here. Give me your faith so I might have some strength to confront him with.”
Syffox put away his bow, realising how futile it would be against Festor. He wrapped his arms around her. “My faith against Festor? Now who’s the mad one?”
Vantaiga leaned into his embrace. “You said I should have more faith in you.”
Syffox kissed her to push away thoughts of the morbid canyon and to focus on the affection of his Goddess. He closed his eyes to immerse himself in feelings of being with her while he chanted a prayer to the forest.
Vantaiga savoured the power of his prayer flowing into her as she coaxed the two camels around the bend into an almost hallway-like gap in the mountain. The far end was obscured in glaring light. The snapping and grinding of bones gave way to sodden footfalls on a softer surface. A buzzing crescendo of flies filled their ears, and the stench of death filled their noses.
Vantaiga focused on the camels and the opening ahead, not daring to look down at what they strode upon. She winced as the camels stumbled out of the crack and into the brilliant expanse beyond.
Syffox stopped his praying, and the couple blinked into the light, forcing themselves to survey their surroundings through dazzling blindness. With watering eyes, the two realised they were back under the searing rays of Coronus. In the midst of the shimmering heat, they found themselves surrounded by thin, towering figures stretched out to the sky.
Dried and tattered remnants of skin hung off stretched out, white, corpses reaching upwards with lowered heads. They moaned and swayed over the couple, their arms split and elongated and their fingers splayed out, begging to Coronus for the merciful release of death. Pained from the light and sickened from the figures, the couple looked away and closed their eyes to block out the sight.
Visions of Festor’s throne flashed through Vantaiga’s mind. These were the giants that belonged to the skeletal hand Festor used to mount corpses on. What was the unbelievable secret that Hydar kept about these beings? What true madness was it that led Festor to destroy such things? Why were the gods not outraged? Why did they not tell her?
Through the ringing buzz of insects and the groaning creaks of the giants, the sound of footsteps on sand and bones intruded on Vantaiga’s racing questions. An assault of disjointed words in a myriad of voices lashed out in Festor’s unmistakable speech.
“”
The two opened their now adjusted eyes to scan the surroundings with better vision. Festor danced to them gleefully through the towering white giants that reached up in the agony of an unending dying. Spinning, he held up his own hands to join them in their pose. He bounced among their skeletal legs with a broad grin, so happy that Vantaiga had come to see his paradise.
Vantaiga let out a low, distressed gasp. The figures that reached out in agony to the sky before them, these tormented towering giants that Festor called his children, were not beings to suffer eternally for the mad god, or divine creatures discarded by the heavens. They were trees: stark, broken, dead trees.
Their trunks and branches were bleached bone white from the sun with only fragments of wizened bark left to protect them. Tears fell down Vantaiga’s face as she gaped over the scene. They were at one end of a valley surrounded by rugged mountains. A dark scar that snaked its way from one end to the other suggested a long-dead river.
The valley floor was empty but for a few stands of skeletal trees. The ground was covered with sand and bones and broken branches. It was a dead and lifeless replica of Vantaiga’s own valley paradise. Syffox merely gawked, speechless at the landscape.
Festor giggled. “”
Vantaiga was horror-struck at the thought and could only stammer in confusion, “How-how can this be?”
Festor laughed again. “” Festor’s eyes beamed as he danced on the spot. “”
He skipped towards Vantaiga and with his filthy hands, half guided, half pulled her from the camel. He tried to coax her to dance with him. “”
Vantaiga shoved him away and cried out again in anguish, “How can this be?”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Festor’s shoulders fell, and he looked up at Vantaiga, crestfallen. “” His grating voices stammered out through sniffles. “” He hung his head as brackish tears rolled down his face. “” His voices grew dark and grim. “”
Vantaiga began stepping away from him as a wicked smile crept over his face. “
almost took my forest. They almost took my children. But ”—he leaned in close to her with an erratic whisper—” He cast his arms wide and spun around with a grand, shouting chorus, “” His myriad of voices faded into a singing echo as it rolled through the dead trees and across the blighted valley.
Vantaiga’s brain raced for something to say, but she couldn’t think of anything that could have meaning to the lunatic god. She was still reeling from the implications of the dead trees before her, and his jarring speech wasn’t helping.
Festor fixed her with a twinkling gaze. “”
His words jolted Vantaiga to attention. “What? No!”
He reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. “” He gleefully pulled her. “”
“No!” Vantaiga tried to break free of his grip but didn’t have the strength.
“
have to. Your mate ” Festor opened his mouth wide to reveal a sea of crazed faces, all bellowing out in laughter, beckoning Syffox in.
The mad god looked up to Syffox and gestured for him to come over but instead an arrow bit into his shoulder. Syffox had managed to regain enough focus to finally pull his bow. He was too weak to draw it with any meaningful force—certainly nothing meaningful to a god as powerful as Festor.
Festor was puzzled at first by the sensation of the arrow in his flesh. He let go of Vantaiga to examine the shaft protruding from him. A second and third arrow struck his chest. Festor looked at them in puzzled scrutiny. He then looked to Syffox with bewilderment as a fourth arrow struck the god.
Festor’s only reply to Syffox was a confused, questioning look. Then, with a dismissive wave of his hand, the sand beneath the camels turned white and seethed into a pit of writhing maggots. Syffox cursed out loudly while the camels brayed in panic. Kicking and thrashing wildly, Syffox’s mount threw him from its back.
With disgusted horror, Syffox landed in the maggots. He squirmed and tried to pull himself back onto the camel. Any exposed flesh the larvae found, they bit into. With little strength to escape, Syffox would not last long in the pit.
Vantaiga looked between Syffox and Festor for a moment, then flew next to the stand of dead trees. She cursed back to the mad god, “Festor! I’m also the Goddess of Life, and I can destroy your paradise!” She grasped the nearest tree and released a bright wave of green that engulfed the tree.
The tree sprang to life, and its withered branches burst into a full canopy of lush foliage. Vantaiga collapsed to the ground with a groan as the wave continued to the adjacent trees, bringing them into bloom as well. The green magic flowed down the valley, restoring everything it touched with blooming leaves and flowers.
Festor stood stunned for a moment, shocked and aghast, at the incredible display of power that consumed his valley. Overwhelmed at the burst of beauty, he jumped up and down and pulled at his hair.“” He raced to the trees but then stopped short, so repulsed by their vibrant life he couldn’t bring himself to go near them. He ran in circles beating his head in anguish.
Vantaiga darted to Syffox and the camels submerging into the wriggling pit of maggots. Fighting the urge to gag, she jumped atop the nearest camel and pulled Syffox close. Too weak to keep his composure, Syffox was losing himself to hysteria. He looked about in wild-eyed confusion.
Vantaiga grabbed his chin and forced him to focus on her. She gave him a quick, stern command. “Fold us out of here!”
Shocked and crazed, Syffox shouted back, “You have magic. You fold us out of here.”
She shook him. “It’s gone. I put all I had into an illusion. It’ll crumble in seconds. I don’t have enough magic to fold. Your faith is not
strong.”
“I can’t. We’ll be lost.” Syffox was sinking further into the maggots. Vantaiga leaned out to reach the other camel. She clenched her fingers into Syffox’s shoulder and shook him violently. “I can guide you. Just cast the spell!” The pain and her distress brought Syffox to focu. He cast the folding spell as best he could to the first place that came to mind, even though he had no idea how he would get there. The air about the group swirled inwards, and they disappeared with a sullen thump, taking a portion of the maggot pit with them.
***
Many priests and priestesses could always be found by the sacred spring of Hydar’s gift to Vantaiga. As the life-giving source of her first forest, it had been built into a fountain shrine in gratitude to the rain god. The water flowed from the fountain into a pool where the faithful of the forest would often come to relax and worship.
So, when a whoosh of wind followed by a catastrophic splash announced the arrival of a giant ball of maggots crashing into the pool, it sent shrieks of horror throughout the onlookers. The elders of the Order rushed to the shrine to deal with what they thought must be an attack.
They quickly realised it was not a perverse monster defiling their shrine but a pair of terrified camels and a single bedraggled figure pulling itself through the water. They breathed a sigh of relief to realise they weren’t being invaded.
Then with a burst of water, Vantaiga erupted out of the pool with a euphoric cry. Water cascaded over her, and magic rushed into her. She let out a blissful moan that sent a wave of joy and vigour out into the surrounding forest and followers. No one was immune to her elation—even her most stoic priests wept with joy at her rapturous return.
Syffox, happy his Goddess found relief, was content to pull himself from the water and collapse at the side of the pool. Vantaiga changed into her human form and donned a covering of soft mosses with small, colourful flowers. Breathing heavily with relief from her desert ordeal, she flowed up next to Syffox.
Syffox was gasping on the ground when she slid up next to him. A group of clerics came to attend, but she shooed them away. With a wave of her hand, she gathered the maggots that clung to Syffox into a ball and with a flash of heat and smoke, obliterated them. “That was horrible, my love. Don’t ever convince me to go into the desert again.”
Syffox only stammered, “I… you… we…” He then succumbed to fatigue and relented with, “Yes, Goddess.” He weakly laid an arm across her lap while a question bubbled up to his mind. He drew in a ragged breath to find more strength to speak. “Since… when could you guide a fold?”
Vantaiga lay next to him and soothed away his sores from the maggot bites. “I found out when I played with magic while ethereal. It’s actually quite easy to do when you don’t have a physical form.”
“Thank you for that surprise. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because if I told you, you would have folded us out of the desert to stop my suffering.” She wrapped her arm around him and squeezed. “I was saving it for when you couldn’t summon any more water, and we couldn’t go any further.”
Syffox tried to suppress a defeated sigh at the lost opportunity for his own plan. “I guess I’m glad things didn’t get to that point.” He let himself rest and enjoy the soft, cool grass before speaking again. “And I’ll have you know; my faith is plenty strong.”
Vantaiga kissed him on the top of his head. “Of course it is, my love.”
Syffox lay on the ground while he tried to process their months of ordeal and the revelations of Festor. “So, Goddess, not only am I still cursed, but we actually have a bigger problem now.”
Vantaiga rested on his back, still breathing heavily from the relief of being back in the forest. “No, my love. We have a heaven full of bigger problems now.”
Novicius in Arte Medica A Novice in the Art of Medicine
Medical School is a Warzone. Ashrahan was failing. Then, the System woke up.
Quote: Synopsis: Sleepless nights, borrowed notes, and caffeine. When exhaustion drags Ashrahan to the edge, a silent system awakens, transforming patients into interactive lessons and textbooks into living networks of surgical precision.
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