Twilight of the Gods

He stabs her multiple times. The first time the dagger punctures her skin, the pain is fresh. She cries out from the wound, stumbling back. She still thinks that she can run and save herself from her fate. That is the kindness of the first stab.

It lasts for a few seconds, which is the amount of time it takes for him to pin her to the cobblestone and sink his blade into her again. The several stabs that follow are not as kind. He’s angry with her and she can’t remember why. But she knows that he’s furious because he’s stabbing her more than he needs to.

Blood runs down her chest like a great red waterfall. Her dress is ruined, reduced to mere scraps of fabric clinging to her body. And she’s fighting him with every ounce of strength that she has left, kicking and screaming with all her might.

It’s an unfair battle between his blade and her teeth and nails. No one comes to help her. It’s nighttime in the brothels. Her fellow prostitutes know better than to come out and save her. Or at least she hopes they know better. The more likely scenario is that the madam had locked the doors.

She did say she was leaving after all. She was going to be a scholar, a woman of knowledge. They had laughed at her when she told them about her dreams. Were they laughing now that her body had been desecrated?

She can’t see his face, much less recognize her attacker. His mien is so twisted by rage that it resembles a mask more than a face.

Still, she fights him. Her carriage will be here at any moment to take her to the university. She needs to live. She has to live.

But all hope is lost when he plunges his blade through her chest right through the skin above her heart.

Daeva wakes up, gasping for air. She could still feel the blade in her heart and the blood on her chest. She looks down at her body, half expecting to see it peppered with stab wounds.

To her surprise, her torso is soaked in inky blood. She quickly unbuttons her nightgown, her fingers slipping over the metal circles. There, beneath her collarbone, was the source of all the blood.

She gingerly touches the old scar that had marred her body for the entire duration of her immortal life. She had never known where it came from. It had been some vague reminder of her time as a mortal, back when her blood was red and her heart was full.

Nyx had made good on her wish. The memories of her past life were trickling in. She was piecing together the puzzle of who she had been. Of course, the nightmarish jigsaw barely made any sense. She would need to be patient and wait for all the pieces to fall into place.

But Daeva was not patient. She never liked suffering more than she had to.

She replays the memory in her head, unsettled by how easy it had been for someone to hurt her past self. The attacker’s face was burned into her retinas, a monstrous sight that was barely human.

She knew what happened after that well-placed stab. He had run away, horrified by the sight of her. The corpse of her former self was left to rot on the streets for days and it would have, if not for Anhel. She must have taken it upon herself to track him down once she became a God, to avenge her mortal body.

But everything afterward is hazy. Somewhere between her resurrection and her escape from Otherworld was the outcome of her revenge. She was certain that she would’ve never let her assailant run free. She would’ve repaid his crime with a knife in his chest.

“Daeva, you’re bleeding.” Uriel is at her side, using a warm cloth to wipe away the blood on her chest.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” she said. Her blood stained the bedsheets, soaking through to the mattress.

“Your sarcasm is not appreciated,” he said, pressing his lips to her scar. He was applying angel’s saliva to her wound, slowly sealing the cut with every lick. It was not erotic at all. He was serving her as angels were supposed to serve Gods.

Unfortunately for Daeva, it felt more sensual than it should’ve. She flinched every time his tongue traveled over the opening of the wound, simultaneously feeling the sting of pain and the tingle of pleasure.

It was entirely too much for her.

She squirms, trying to hold still. She needed to wait for her wound to heal.

He’s an object, she reminded herself. Think of him no different than the towel.

But he wasn’t a towel. He was an angel, shaped like a person. She couldn’t pretend that he was anything less than the man who had her affections. And she would be lying if she said that being licked by him while in a scandalous state of undress didn’t do things to her.

Mercifully, he stops as the flow of blood slows. He pulls away, his pink lips stained with the ink-black fluid.

Again, she gets the feeling that she’s corrupting him. Maybe if he had served anyone else, he would’ve remained pure.

The image of Iris tearing off Uriel’s shirt comes to mind. Well, maybe not anyone else.

When the Board had told Daeva to find Iris’s secret, she knew it could be a number of things. A part of her strongly suspected infidelity, an affair between her and Hubert behind Sabine’s back because of their unusually close friendship. But the reality was stranger, somehow more horrific.

Iris was a God. There was no other way to explain the black blood that poured from the cut on her face.

“I thought Haydn and I were the only ones left.” She had voiced this thought to Iris as she was restrained to the table.

Sneering, the Elysian explained that there had been an entire pantheon of Gods. Ten, to be exact. Gods weren’t easy to kill. The Elysians were foolish to think that it had been easy. Without her help or the Boards that Nyx gave them, they would’ve lost the war.

“Why would you betray your own people?” It was the first question that came to Daeva’s mind.

“Because we were going to lose. We lost the moment Nyx decided to side with the Elysians. So I changed my name and pretended to be one of them,” Iris said. “They were tired and hungry refugees at the time. A stranger with a fake past bearing food was not going to be questioned.”

“They slaughtered the Gods. They will kill you if they know who you are,” Daeva said.

“It will be your word against mine.” Iris sounded triumphant when she said that.

“They won’t have to listen to me. The evidence is on your face.” Iris’s expression fell at her words. The same blood that ran through Daeva’s veins also flowed through her body. It would only take a cut to expose her.

“What do you want?”

Thus, the second link on the Binding Chains was broken, under the condition that neither Daeva nor Uriel would reveal Iris’s secret.

The false Elysian decided to hide until her cut was healed. She couldn’t risk being revealed so easily. But that didn’t mean she lost her bluster. She still had the gall to invite Uriel to bed with her. He politely declined.

Before Daeva left to return to the Elysian’s palace, she asked one last question. “What’s your real name?”

Iris paused for a moment, contemplating whether answering her question would harm her. She decided it would not.

“It was Eris. I suggest you don’t use it,” she said.

Daeva wondered if there were any other Gods in hiding who had done the same thing that Iris did. Maybe they were pretending to be mortal, stuffed inside a house with the few angels they were able to save. But that was wishful thinking. The only one that survived was her precious Uriel.

If there were old Gods lurking beneath the cracks of the Earth, they probably wanted revenge like she did. She had no doubt that their fury was greater than hers, but she was the only one that could get justice for them.

Back at the Elysian’s palace, Haydn sat outside of Ezra’s window drinking a steaming cup of coffee. He had found a way to pass the time in the long hours he spent cloaked in glamour. He made sure to angle the cup in a way to hide the vapors. He was certain that a steaming crow would attract suspicion.

Ezra had continued his everyday routine of eating, sleeping, and reading, but the pace at which he did so became more frantic. His books doubled in number and his notes grew messier, his once neat handwriting reduced to an indecipherable scrawl. He took more spontaneous naps at the Board, clutching his doll frequently.

Haydn had been wrong. There was not a moment that Ezra did not spend with that doll. The Elysian had started to sleep with it, clutching it in his vise-like grip even while he was unconscious. He tried to get it out of his hands by transforming into a bug and tickling his hand.

No such luck. The maneuver earned him a firm slap instead.

But he was fortunate that Ezra never bothered to check the white box at the bottom of his drawer. He was too busy to partake in whatever perversion had earned him those women’s items. Evelyn’s ribbon would not be missed.

Haydn noticed something strange about the doll. Aside from its resemblance to Ezra, there were moments it seemed as if the toy had sentience. Sometimes it would move an arm or adjust its blue button eyes. The white chess pieces on the Board would move in sync with the doll, eating up black pieces on the opposing side.

At first, he assumed that this was normal. All of the Elysians must have dolls that aided them with their Boards. But a few hours of snooping around proved otherwise.

Ezra hid his doll from the others. He never bragged about its abilities or offered to procure one for his fellow Elysians. Judging by the notes he kept locked up in his desk drawer, the doll was a tool of his own creation. It was Ezra’s tether to the Mortal Realm, an advantage the other Elysians didn’t have. Much like how Daeva and he were stuck in Otherworld, the Elysians were similarly confined. But while the Gods were coerced by Nyx to stay, the Elysians needed to remain in Otherworld because of necessity.

After all, their powers came from Otherworld. He figured this out when he overheard a conversation between the devotees.

“Why doesn’t the Charitable One visit the Mortal Realm? With his abilities, he could ease many people’s suffering,” one of them said.

“Excellent inquiry,” the other said. “You joined us when the snow began to thaw so I won’t scold you for your ignorance. Our Lord Ezra is a powerful being. He gave us our abilities, something I can never repay him for.”

To demonstrate, the devotee touches the grass, bringing about a cluster of flowers.

“But Lord Ezra is not invincible. None of the Elysians are. He saw that he had the ability to better the world and came to us, ready to cure mankind of all evils. Alas, the moment he stepped into our realm, his abilities left him. His wonderful gift could not be used the way he intended. But that didn’t stop our fair Lord from blessing us to carry out his good work in his place.”

This narrative was repeated among the devotees of the other Elysians. Haydn understood their fanaticism. He too had a cause he devoted himself to eons ago, back when he lived a simpler mortal life. But as a God, the whole endeavor seemed childish. The true intent of the Elysians was obvious. They granted their devotees powers to exercise control over them. Every little white piece on the Boards was a mortal soul tethered to an Elysian. It pained him that they couldn’t see the blatant manipulation.

The Gods used to do something similar, picking Chosen Ones to go on quests on their behalf to fight petty battles with each other. In that way, they were not so different from the Elysians pushing chess pieces on their Boards.

But what truly made the Elysians stand out from the Gods was that they did all that whilst being mortal. Somehow, within the tiny crumb of their lifespans, they managed to topple the centuries-long influence of the Gods and amass an unimaginable amount of power. They were a group of well-worshiped monsters.

Haydn was no different. He killed one of the most powerful Gods to find his lost soulmate so he didn’t entertain notions of moral superiority. He came to Otherworld to get what was his and he wasn’t leaving without her. Nyx had given him her word. If she lied to him, he would do to her what he did to Odi.

That was how their world worked after all. It was dog eat dog, father against son, and mother against daughter. Why else would the Elysians have killed the Gods who offered them hospitality?

Haydn drops his cup of coffee, the china shattering on the ground and the coffee seeping into the grass. This attracts the attention of a devotee who only notices a crow on a window ledge. It’s an act of carelessness that’s uncharacteristic of Haydn, but the God is too stunned to notice.

Never in the several hours that he had spent observing Ezra would he have expected to see a woman in the Elysian’s room. Maybe the occasional devotee covered in a nun’s habit would grace Ezra’s presence, but certainly not a half-naked giggly woman. He shifts his glamour into that of a beetle, crawling into the room to get a closer look.

Ezra unbuttons the woman’s dress with a speed that suggests that he was no stranger to bringing random women to his bed. She playfully slaps him and he climbs on top of her, burying his face into her neck. Haydn reddens. He was about to get a free show.

The Elysian leaves a trail of kisses from the woman’s throat to her bosom, cutting off her laughter. “Oh, stop it,” she said, breathless.

Haydn glances at a wall, unable to continue watching. He wasn’t fond of voyeurism, preferring more to be an active participant, yet he turns back to watch the pair.

Ezra never did anything that didn’t serve him. So why bring a strange mortal woman to bed? Maybe he needed to release some sexual frustration, but Haydn knew any of his devotees would be glad to provide this sort of “service” for him.

The reason soon became apparent as the woman thrashed under Ezra, struggling to free herself from his grasp.

“Let me go! I didn’t agree to this,” she cried out, pulling her clothes over her body.

“Stay still,” Ezra said, his voice dangerously low. “I said I would purify you. It is my duty to uphold that promise.”

A chill went down Haydn’s spine. He was not witnessing lovemaking. Lovemaking was different – gentle, soft, and tender. Whatever Ezra was doing was anything but that.

A terrible thought came to his head. Was this what had happened to Evelyn? Had she been left at the mercy of Ezra’s desires? He suddenly wanted to rip off his glamour and punch Ezra, to stop whatever it was he was doing to that woman.

But before he could do so, Ezra took the woman’s head into his hand and twisted her skull sharply to the right. A sickening crack falls on Haydn’s ears. The woman’s body falls limply onto Ezra’s mattress.

He stands there in the room, horrified yet relieved. The woman’s suffering had ended, but at what cost?

Some part of him hoped that Evelyn had never been in the room. She was alive, unlike the corpse tangled between Ezra’s sheets. The Elysian snips off a piece of her hair and unclasps her necklace, placing the items on his desk. Haydn’s skin crawled. He had hoped for too much.

Ezra caressed the dead woman’s body. Bile rises to Haydn’s throat. The corpse twitches, the leftover nerves running through her skin.

Haydn crawls out of the room, unable to get away fast enough. Outside the palace, he vomits his breakfast into the bushes. He wished with all his might that he could pluck out his eyeballs and grind them to fine dust.

Stalking Ezra had left him with more questions than answers. But he knew one thing for sure. No matter what had happened to Evelyn, he vowed to ruin Ezra before he left Otherworld.

The Elysians were indeed the well-worshiped monsters he thought them to be.