Twilight of the Gods

They called Sabine the “Beloved One” because of what she promised the mortals. If they worshiped her, she would give them and one person they chose paradise in Otherworld. As long as their love for the person that they chose was true, they deserved a place among the ranks of her devotees.

And what was more true than the love between two soulmates?

After the Gods fell, there were fewer soulmates born in the Mortal Realm. Love was no longer a decision made by celestial beings, but left to the devices of the ephemeral. The Kings of Myrania and Ylivian made their decisions accordingly.

In Myrania, on his throne of the sun soaked continent, the king kept a rotation of seven beautiful concubines. Rosemary still remains his favorite, but her youth won’t last forever. There are rumors that another concubine, Zephyr, has been spending more time with him. If Rosemary wants to secure the king’s favor, perhaps the binding promise of marriage would do the trick. Or better yet, a budding heir in her womb.

North in Ylivia, the abstinent king takes no lovers, preferring his own company above all else. The bards say that he’s as cold as ice, an attribute that has scared away more than one eligible suitor much to the dismay of his mother. But the presence of an injured peasant boy in his castle may change that.

For the hopeless romantic, true love has disappeared from the Mortal Realm. But Sabine the Beloved has been generous enough to offer passage for lovers to paradise, preference given to soulmates. She has a steady stream of devotees, many believing in the lover’s heaven that she has constructed in Otherworld. After all, nobody leaves after they get in.

“It will be hard to get her alone,” Daeva said, after she explained Sabine’s gospel. “If she’s not with her worshippers, then she’s with Hubert. We should hope that whatever we steal isn’t on her. To figure out what the Board is asking, we need to sneak in as fake soulmates. See what she does with the mortals.”

Haydn shook his head. “We can do that without pretending to be soulmates.” To demonstrate, he summoned his glamour, blending into their room.

She whistles, impressed. “How long can you hold that for?”

“A few hours,” he said, reappearing. “But we need to stay together. If I lose touch with you, my magic won’t work.”

He holds out a hand, offering her his power. She takes it, feeling the cool glamour slide over her skin. She’s impressed by Haydn’s abilities once again, but a nagging suspicion lurks in the back of her mind. How was he able to use his powers when they were all trapped by the Binding Chains? She makes a mental note to ask him this later.

They descend into Sabine’s lair, blending in with the shadows of the stairs. A dozen or so people enter the small atrium, all couples chatting happily with one another. Light shines through the windows, illuminating their figures. Daeva looks at them with envy. Each and every one of them had someone to call their own.

Haydn was also looking at the pairs, but there was a different expression in his eyes. Rather than bitterness, he gazed at them with sorrow because he too had someone. He just needed to find her.

Suddenly, Daeva had the strong urge to yank her hand away from his. If it weren’t for the gravity of their task, she would have allowed herself to do so.

Sabine materializes before them, resplendent in a scarlet gown that matches the shade of her lips. There was an ethereal quality to her that the other Elysians lacked. Her skin glows with a luminescence rivaled only by the moon. The new devotees look at her with naked awe.

She takes her time greeting the worshippers individually. One by one, they each fall under her spell.

There was a personal touch to her interactions with them. The way she smiled or nodded at her worshippers wasn’t the same. Every bit of affection she doled out was calculated, tailored to the individual.

It was no wonder that many mortals considered it a privilege to be chosen by Sabine. Her presence alone was a blessing.

As she went to each of them, she slipped a metal circle onto their palms. Daeva’s eyes widened. Conductors. The worshippers with the greatest potential for magic, regardless of which Elysian they served, wore them. Yet here she was, giving them out like pieces of candy.

Power crackled in the bodies of the six couples. Their eyes glazed over and their backs straightened. They had ceased to become the light-hearted mortals that stepped foot into Otherworld. In that instant, they were mindless soldiers.

Chills ran down Daeva’s back. She had never seen an Elysian exercise absolute control over their followers. Usually, the devotees needed to be trained, broken down and remolded into pawns for the Elysians’ Boards. Yet here she was, witnessing indoctrination happen in a matter of seconds.

“She’s controlling their minds,” Haydn whispered. He sounded both impressed and horrified.

Steal from Sabine what she took from others.

At least Daeva finally understood the Board’s task. But the matter of accomplishing it still mystified her. As the devotees followed Sabine, the Gods trailed behind. Haydn effortlessly alters their camouflage to match the new setting.

Sabine leads the devotees to a medical room and instructs them to lay on the cots. They obey without hesitation, flattening their bodies against the folding beds. The strong smell of rubbing alcohol and blood floods Daeva’s nostrils. It takes everything in her not to vomit.

One by one, the devotees are called to a man behind an ominous set of white curtains. Daeva’s nausea intensifies.

No, she thought. It can’t be.

“Are you alright?” Haydn whispered this to her, gently touching her shoulder. Daeva loosens her grip on Haydn’s hand.

“I’m fine,” she muttered. Her head spins. “I need to take a seat.”

He obliged her request, leading them to a set of white chairs. She stares at the devotees lying in the cots, a sense of helplessness clawing at her skin. She wanted to scream at them, to tell them to run away. If Sabine was doing what Daeva thought the Elysian was doing to her new worshippers, then she was truly a monster.

As much as it scared her, she needed to look behind the curtains. But she stays in her white chair, glued to her seat.

The past freezes her. Memories with Sabine play in her mind, unbidden like a macabre puppet show that she’s forced to watch. By then, she had been certain that nothing was worse than the torture she endured under Julia and Iris. How naive she had been to assume that she had already experienced the height of her suffering! By the time she had reached Sabine’s hands, she was a burnt corpse, peppered with dagger marks.

Her cursed godly flesh had quickly healed soon after, much to the dismay of the Elysians. She was, in their eyes, irritatingly unbreakable.

Sabine welcomed the challenge. She had an intellectual view of Daeva’s suffering. Rather than seeking outright to break her, she asked why godly flesh was so resilient. How could they replicate the regenerative properties of her skin, and thus gain immortality?

Well, Daeva was a woman, wasn’t she? God or mortal, she still carried a womb, which meant she could create life.

They wanted to take everything from her. But even Julia and Iris had their limits. When they sliced her flesh or burned her skin, they were careful to avoid certain areas of her body. It was their twisted version of courtesy, the tiniest glimmer of humanity in their black souls.

Apparently, it was a courtesy Sabine didn’t possess. She was convinced that the answer to all of her questions about the Gods lay between Daeva’s legs. Specifically, she theorized that the key to immortality was in Daeva’s eggs. There, in Daeva’s ovaries, were thousands of unborn Gods with abilities that they could take for themselves. Her brethren, the rest of the Elysian Council, disagreed. Only Hubert took her side, but even he had his doubts.

“I don’t understand,” she had said. They had been arguing in front of Daeva as she lapsed in and out of consciousness. “Why wouldn’t my plan work?”

“It’s too risky,” Ezra replied. “If we bring her children to life, they could overthrow us. It will start another war.”

It was from this logic that the rest of the Elysian Council concluded that it was better that Daeva didn’t have any children at all. Nevermind what Daeva herself thought about her own bodily autonomy. The decision was made by a vote of five to two, with the majority deciding that she should be forcibly sterilized.

The task was left up to Sabine, who was terribly unhappy with the verdict. As Daeva laid prone on the operating table, the Elysian towered over her menacingly, armed with a surgical knife. She would do many other things to Daeva before tying her fallopian tubes, horrific things that included skinning her body to create scientific diagrams and slicing her organs to see how long she could function without them. Daeva had a sneaking suspicion that Sabine had found a way around what the other Elysians had wanted for her, but she hadn’t been consciousness enough during her torture to be certain.

It was irrational to think that Sabine was doing the same thing to her devotees. Still, Daeva imagines the surgical knife parting fleshing soft flesh and puncturing arteries.

Sweat slicks the inside of her hands. If it weren’t for Haydn’s glamour, she was sure that he would be able to see how disturbed she was.

“Let’s look behind the curtains,” he whispered, keeping his voice low.

“Why?” Her voice comes out more defensive than intended.

“Don’t tell me that blood makes you squeamish,” he said. “Isn’t it obvious? Sabine is taking something from her devotees. Whatever it is lies behind those curtains.”

He was right. Even though she already had her own suspicions of what that something was, she couldn’t be too certain. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, his suggestion was clever. But the thought of doing so made her queasy.

“We can look,” she said, despite every fiber of her body screaming against it.

Haydn pulls her up and they walk silently to the heavy white curtains. Her heart is beating so fast that she can feel it at the tip of her ears. She’s a ticking time bomb and if he pushes her far enough, she will explode.

The first thing Daeva spots is the glint of a surgical knife. She nearly faints, but she forces herself to watch as the surgeon slices into the devotee’s skull. With practiced precision, he goes underneath the bone and begins operating on the worshiper’s brain. She shivers, remembering Sabine doing something similar to her. The Elysian had taken out parts of her brain and watched as they grew back. Daeva had lost her senses from the operation. If it weren’t for Anhel’s guiding voice, she would have gone insane eons ago.

As she stared at the mortal’s exposed brain, she found herself wishing for the old God’s voice in her head again. Even if he disliked the confines of her mind, talking to him had been comforting. Granted, most of his words after her escape from Otherworld had gotten her into more trouble than she could have ever wanted.

Still, he had been a friend, the only one who understood her suffering because he was forced to live through the same experiences. There was no bond stronger than one formed through a mutual hellscape. Once she broke all the links of her Binding Chains, she was certain that she would be able to hear him again. But until that day came, she made do with squeezing Haydn’s hand. She was not entirely alone in witnessing this.

The surgeon takes out a tiny piece of the devotee’s brain before sewing their skull back together. He dumps it into a metal tray before opening the curtains for the next patient.

They ogle the brain matter for a few seconds before watching the surgeon perform the procedure again on another devotee. From every person, he took a piece of brain matter. What he was trying to accomplish on behalf of Sabine escaped her.

In the periphery of her vision, she spots a stack of papers. She makes out a few hand-drawn diagrams of the brain, images that were no doubt created from dissecting her head. She recognizes the different parts of the brain labeled in Sabine’s cursive scrawl: cerebellum, occipital lobe, parietal lobe, frontal lobe, and temporal lobe. But there was a part of the brain circled in red that she didn’t recognize. She squints and reads anterior insular cortex.

Before she could figure out what it means, Haydn pulls them out of the curtains. Sabine had entered the operating area, missing them by only a mere centimeter.

“These are the last batch of devotees,” the Elysian said. “I trust that you’ve had enough practice with the previous ones not to make any mistakes this time.”

“They’ve all gone perfectly well, Beloved One,” the surgeon replied. “But I must remind you, recovery will take a while.”

“I understand,” Sabine said. “It must be done right if my plan is going to work. Your contributions to the cause have been extremely valuable. I have a team of scientists working on hastening the recovery process. There’s no point in engineering the perfect warriors if they’re going to die immediately.”

The surgeon makes a noise of agreement. “I will continue with the surgeries. But there’s something that concerns me.” He lowers his voice, whispering something indecipherable.

After a while, Sabine pulls back the curtains. “Carry on,” she said. “I’ll take care of the matter.”

For a brief moment, she makes eye contact with the spot where Daeva and Haydn were standing. Daeva cringes, certain that Haydn’s glamour had failed. But then Sabine turns away, sauntering toward the rest of the devotees.

“Do you think she saw us?” Daeva tightens her grip on Haydn’s hand as if it might strengthen the glamour.

“No,” he said. “My glamour has never failed me before. The magic is foolproof.” He paused. “But I think she saw something else.”

They walk further into Sabine’s lair, hoping to avoid the Elysian. Something was afoot, a plot so sinister that Daeva strongly suspected that even the other Elysians didn’t know about it. After all, if Sabine had truly created the “perfect warrior,” her fellow brethren would demand that she share the knowledge so that they could make some of their own.

If Daeva had to hazard a guess, she’d say that Sabine was preparing for war.

They walk into a dark room at the end of the hall. Rows of weapons line the walls, confirming Daeva’s theory. But certain things didn’t add up.

She lets go of Haydn’s hand, inspecting the weapons. There were no royal crests at the handles of the swords or the center of the shields. Whether Sabine intended to fight for Myrania or Ylivia remained a mystery. But it was clear that the weapons were for magic users, made for the ease of connecting to their Conductors.

The door slams behind them, startling the pair. They both turn around to find Sabine at the entrance.

“Gods,” she said, her voice piercing the silence. “I’ve been expecting you.”