ósma
That bloody hotheaded moron! Moon-touched daughter of a stray cat! Did her parents drop her on her head as a child, or had she inhaled so much smoke her brain turned black!? Damnit all, he spoke twelve languages and didn’t have enough words in any of them to describe how stupid a move Palmira had just made!
When they got back to the guild he was going to tie her to a chair and read her the Adventurer’s Guidebook front to back until she could recite it in her damn sleep!
ósma let out an angry huff, forcing himself not to curse out loud. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had to deal with headstrong adventurers before, but somehow this had still surprised him. Maybe he’d just been mistaking practicality for maturity. She was still young and new, for all that he was going to box her ears once he caught up to her.
Gently, of course, because his hands were massive. But it’s the thought that counts.
But that was for later. For now, his silver threads chased the girl’s scent through the alleyways, snaking between ancient cobblestones and overgrown windowsills. The Old Quarter wasn’t quite poor, but it was certainly old, and that had never quite felt so obvious as tonight.
ósma glanced over his shoulder, swallowing a frown. Lorenzo and the two Rodina kids were having nearly as much issue keeping up with his stride as he’d had with Palmira’s, his much longer legs allowing him to bound one step for every three of theirs. Only the girl was in any way keeping pace, muttering quiet prayers between each heaving breath. An ugly part of him whispered that he should just leave them behind, that they were just slowing him down, that there were three of them and they’d be fine on their own. The much more sensible part of him strangled that thought in the crib, because splitting the party again would be downright suicide in a crisis like this.
Still, he couldn’t help but wish he’d brought faster allies. Mattias or even Chiara would have left him in the dust in comparison.
As he begrudgingly slowed down to let them catch up again, his frown deepened for an entirely different reason.
…He smelled smoke.
The familiar slam of heavy boots against stone reached his ears. And as the kids finally caught up ósma held a hand out to stop them, his massive arm blocking them from view of the monster that approached.
Walking out of the darkness, the empty eyes of his long dead brother met his own.
“Shit…” the Rodina boy muttered, bringing his fancy spear to bear.
But ósma gently pushed him back, shaking his head.
“You all go on ahead,” he told them. “Find Palmira, make sure she doesn’t get herself killed. I’ll hold this thing off here.”
“ósma…” Lorenzo trailed off, rolling a seed between his fingers. He eyed the zombie with dread. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, damnit!” the Orc snapped, a silver thread worming its way around the kid’s wrist. “Now hurry up, we don’t have time to waste! I’ll put this sorry bastard out of his misery and catch up to you after! Now, go.”
Lorenzo gave him one last uncertain look before nodding, his new lady-friend following his lead without much more complaint. Only the Rodina boy seemed to continue to hesitate, but after a murmured conversation with himself his resolve quickly hardened.
“The undead are weak to holy magic,” he offered as a parting piece of advice, as though he didn’t already know that. But he wasn’t going to waste time pointing that out, only watching from the corner of his eye as the three kids ran down a side alley, taking themselves far away from the horror that plagued ósma’s darkest nightmares.
…Perhaps he wasn’t as sensible as he might have believed. Hah, hotheaded adventurers they were, one and all.
He turned his full attention back to the zombie before him, considering it with a furrowed brow. It had been decades since he’d last seen his brother. Back then he’d had a wool shroud covering his ruined face and a saint’s arc around his neck. Yet now glowing cracks knit skin long rotted back together, silver light pouring from each deadly scar. And beneath those glowing scars was an Orc who looked exactly as he did in their youth.
It only served to drive home the unnaturalness of what had been done to him.
Once they’d been the same size, but age had bent ósma’s spine as surely as it had weathered his face. Now to meet his brother’s empty eyes he was forced to look up, and it was in this moment more than any other that let him know there was nothing of his brother in this monster, for the man would never let him live down being the shorter of them.
“S?ońce,” he growled, the name a condemnation and a prayer. He flexed his massive fingers, threads of silver flittering between them. “I don’t know if you can hear me. But if you can, know this—by the blood we share, I will return your soul to the heaven it deserves. …And if I’m talking to nothing but a monster wearing your skin then at the very least I will end this desecration of your corpse.”
The monster shifted its weight, its armor creaking in a way that was unnervingly alive. But its eyes were hollow, staring at him unceasingly. It raised an axe—their father’s axe, damn it—and readied itself, muscles that were not its own flexing and cracking with the motion.
ósma took breathed in, already weaving his web. When they had been young his brother had always been stronger than him. He’d been more agile, more gregarious, more heroic then the old Orc had ever been.
But his brother had died decades ago, and though ósma may not have the raw strength of youth, age had only sharpened his mind. And he had enough tricks up his sleeve to fight a Demon Lord if it came down to it.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
He would fight this bastard, and he would put him back down in the hole he’d dug for him years ago. By the Goddess he could accept nothing less.
Then once he was done here, he was going to chase down that little idiot and make her regret running ahead if it was the last thing he did.
-
Palmira
Palmira severely regretted everything she’d ever done that had brought her to this point.
Silver flames roared, destroying everything they touched with merciless heat. They surrounded her on every side, sight and sound alike consumed by the divine inferno which showed no sign of ending. It was less a magical spell and more a force of nature, a cataclysm which could only be weathered, not defeated.
And in the middle of it all was Palmira, just trying her best to stay alive.
Red flames battled silver for dominance, only barely able to beat them away from her flesh. She held Morte before her, the staff as immune to holy magics as ever, but he made a poor shield against such an all-consuming flame.
“Why do you run, little girl?” The Lich-King’s voice weighed down on her shoulders like an unwanted hand. She snarled, igniting her whole body as if that could somehow chase him away. “When it is so much easier to give in?”
“I’ve already been ‘cleased by fire,’” Palmira snarled, batting away another blast of silver flame. “And I don’t plan to ever deal with that again!”
She was on her knees, she realized distantly. She hadn’t realized when she’d fallen, so focused was she on holding her staff aloft. The cobblestone was melting beneath her shins, bubbling and boiling in a way she’d only ever seen in the volcanoes of Iscrimo.
She began to sink, but could do nothing to stop that. All she could do was survive, and pray the storm might soon end.
“Innocence is the domain of the untested,” Rosalina’s voice was soft, yet the crackling of the flames seemed to bow out of the way to let her be heard. “The Child is innocent, for it cannot know any better. But as the Goddess decrees, all childhoods must end. For to cling to innocence into adulthood is to deny the world’s cruelties, and in doing so allow them to fester. Therefore, the Goddess declares that innocence must be purged, lest its sweet siren song blind the world to its own sins.”
With her words the flames seemed to cool, stone and flesh no longer melting at its touch. Yet in their place they dug deeper, burning what normal fire was unable to touch. Silver slid past red unimpeded, colliding with her body before she even realized what was going on.
Palmira hissed as her skin turned red, something she wasn’t sure existed smoldering beneath her flesh and blood. This was not a fire which burned the living, but a fire which targeted something much deeper.
It was then she realized she couldn’t continue doing this. She had to get up, to fight back, but just surviving took everything she had. She considered bringing Malocchio out before dismissing the thought. He was still damaged, and she didn’t like her odds trying to close the distance. What would she even attack, in this sea of fire?
“I don’t understand!” Morte finally snapped, his voice like a bucket of cold water against her mind. “The Goddess hates necromancy, there’s no way she’d turn a blind eye to something like this. And even if she was, nothing Rosalina’s doing should be granting her this much power!”
Palmira managed to force herself onto one knee, barely conscious of the way the molten stone sloshed around her feet.
“How blind you are, boy,” a rumbling chuckle thundered from the Lich-King’s mind. “Rosalina’s connection to the Goddess is absolute.”
One foot up. Then another. On shaky legs she forced herself to her feet.
“That’s the issue! All priests are connected to the Goddess! That’s how they get their power, they pray and their faith is rewarded! That’s how it is with all gods. But she’s not connected to anything!”
One step. Two steps. Three—!
Palmira swung Morte’s staff with a cry of both rage and agony. Flames which burned red then blue then white not from faith but sheer heat poured from his empty eye sockets as she brought it down like the Goddess’ own warhammer. Unable to see, unable to aim, all she could do was pray she hit something.
Her prayers were answered.
Morte’s skull slammed into the Priestess’ arm, tearing through flesh and shattering bone. It was not elegant nor skilled, little more than the desperate strike of a cornered animal.
It was enough.
The divine onslaught was cut off instantly, silver flame vanishing without a hint of smoke. Palmira blinked the spots out of her eyes from the sudden darkness, only to blanch as she realized how close she suddenly was to the other woman.
“…Oh,” Morte whispered with horror. “She’s not connected to anything.”
“It’s not so confusing, my teacher,” the Priestess smiled, reaching out with her good hand to pat Morte’s skull. She placed a hand reverently against her own chest. “My power comes from the Goddess. That is all it ever has and ever will come from.”
“No, your power comes from yourself.”
Rosalina cocked her head. “There’s a difference?”
Those words… didn’t make sense. They couldn’t compute in Palmira’s mind, because the only answer she could come up with was absurd.
“…What are you doing, Rosalina? What heresy have you been preaching, that you worship yourself above Her?”
“It’s no heresy, my teacher,” she frowned, gently shoving Palmira away. “Merely a better path. A more righteous path. One you yourself revealed to me, long before Aethric and I ever met.”
“…I did?”
“Don’t you remember, boy?” The Lich-King boomed with vile laughter, forcing her to stumble back even further. “The Second Book of Babylon, the Revelation of Sin. The greatest feat mankind had ever achieved. A feat that is all too repeatable.”
“…No. Please tell me even you aren’t arrogant enough to…!”
“When Mankind first crossed the Starlit Sea following their banishment from paradise, they found this holy land, governed by five gods,” Rosalina whispered. With each word her arm cracked and snapped, forcing itself back into shape. “Refugees all, they sought asylum with the divine. Four refused. One, foolishly, did not. And so under his watchful eye did humanity build their greatest city—Babel, the city of God.”
“The city which was destroyed!” Morte snarled. “The city which ruined everything, and brought about the Age of Dark where the sun never shined! The city which nearly wiped out humanity time and again through their own Godforsaken hubris!”
“Yet is it hubris, if you succeed?” The reply which came was slimy as it was posh. The voice of a learned man whispering forbidden secrets into the king’s ear. “A Godless race stole a God. And only through the jealousy of the weak and unambitious did the War in Heaven even begin. We would have prospered, if we had just been left alone.”
“Don’t you worry, my teacher,” the Priestess smiled, gentle and reassuring. “This won’t be like last time—because there is nobody left to oppose us. Things cannot continue as they are, you know this. The Goddess hates humanity, even as she twists us to worship her. But she hasn’t realized that we can twist her back. And isn’t that wonderful? Is that not the greatest form of worship? To remake the divine in our own image, until we are unable to tell us from them?”
She was crazy. She had to be.
“It will be simple,” Rosalina whispered, ironclad in her mad zealotry. “It has always been simple, we have just forgotten how to do it. One piece at a time, I will replace parts of her with parts of me. With her mouth I will speak, until she only speaks with mine. With her eyes I will judge, until she only judges with mine. With her hands I will bless, until she only blesses with mine. With every step I walk I shall blur the line of mortal and divine. Until eventually, it will become silly to suggest that there was ever any line at all.”
“That is what will happen. The twilight of the Divine, usurped once more by mortal hands. Drop by drop. Cell by cell.”
“Until there is only me, Rosalina, the Goddess.”