Twilight of the Gods

Her hands shake as she lifts the delicate china tea cup to her lips. She tries to take a sip of the tea, but between her jittery arm and the jostling train, the hot liquid spills all over her lap. She yelps, quickly jumping from her seat.

An old couple nearby looks at her disapprovingly. She stares right back with the same disdain, daring them to say a word. They look away, their cheeks red with discomfort.

That’s what I thought. What a bunch of Ylivian snobs.

She dabs her skirt with a handkerchief, trying in vain to rub off the tea stain. Daeva was not a naturally clumsy person nor was it normal for her to have the jitters about anything. But she couldn’t have disobeyed Anhel without consequence. She still shared a body with him, a body that he occasionally wrestled for control of.

You’re going on a fool’s errand, he said. We’re not going to get away with this. The Elysians certainly won’t be pleased.

She rolled her eyes. Since when did he care about what the Elysians thought? Didn’t they take everything from you? I thought you wanted their destruction.

They made us who we are and they’re the only ones who can undo it. If we go back, we can finally be our own selves, he said. There was a weariness in his voice, an exhaustion she knew all too well. She was tired of not having her own body, but as far as she was concerned, Anhel didn’t have one to go back to.

I can always find a new one. Once our bond is broken, we can go our separate ways. And she would be mortal again. No, she would be dead, a rotting corpse on the cobblestone. Far from the invincible God she had become.

And would that be such a bad thing? Yes. It would. She answers him without her usual caution.

She hadn’t been alive for long, but she knew that she didn’t want her life to end like this, with her disguised as an Ylivian on her way to torch a monastery. Daeva wanted revenge on the Elysians, but more than anything, she wanted those memories from her past life back. She wanted to know the girl lying on the cobblestone, to avenge the person she couldn’t be anymore.

It’s not useless, she said, anticipating Anhel’s usual words about not looking into her past.

I wasn’t going to say that. I was just going to suggest that we go back to the temple. Please, abandon this foolish plan of yours.

She gazes at her reflection in the train window. Pale skin, pale hair, and those awful pale eyes — all classic Ylivian features. She frowns. They didn’t suit her face well. The lack of color washed her out, making her appear ghostly. It’s like I’m already dead.

Daeva had done many little things to ruffle the feathers of the Elysians. She knew that if she did make the trek to Otherworld, Ezra would be the first of them to try to punish her for her sins. Eventually, she had to face the consequences of killing all those Hounds.

She didn’t regret a single death. No amount of blood could ever be enough for the suffering she endured at their hands. It didn’t matter that her victims weren’t just soldiers. Sons, fathers, brothers — anyone who served or worshiped Ezra was fair game. And that included his nuns and monks.

She remembered the cold indifference of the nun that had shot her, her arm aching like the arrow was still in there. She tries to hold on to the resentment she felt from then, the anger and outrage from the pain. But it was no use. She knew the nun had no choice. Without a soulmate, she could only live as a tool of the Elysians. And that was something Daeva was all too familiar with.

Guilt reddens her cheeks. In another life, she would have been just like them. Even now she lived a life similar to theirs, serving a higher being. That was the curse of being a Solitari, of being made less than others. She was just slightly more indestructible than them.

Just because you’re a God, doesn’t mean you should abuse your power. There’s still time to turn back. That angel you’re so fond of won’t even know that you left, Anhel said.

She scoffs. Since when had he become so benevolent? What had happened to the chaos deity she swore herself to?

What’s the point of being a God if I can’t take advantage of my power? She taunted him, knowing that he would have nothing to say. He had centuries to abuse his abilities and carve the world into his image, hardly a place for him to lecture her in.

He was silent. A smile of smug satisfaction spreads across her face. He couldn’t stop her with the weight of her potential sins when his wrongdoings outweighed hers. But her joy was short-lived. There was a bitter irony in having the moral high ground as a soon-to-be mass murderer.

Her eyes shift to the snowy mountains outside the window. Icy bits of hail clink against the glass, playing a melody of light discord. She could feel her insides shrivel at the thought of being in the cold. In some ways, the warm Myranian climate had spoiled her.

After Odi’s betrayal, Ylivian stories claimed that Anhel created the snow so that the ice would keep him away. The plan backfired and the cold only brought Odi closer to Anhel, inspiring the Ylivian proverb, “love is carved out of ice.” Plenty of Ylivians took the saying seriously, planning their weddings in snowstorms and gifting their soulmates jewelry made of ice crystals.

Daeva thought that was a load of horsecrap. If she had a soulmate that did any of that for her, she would flay them for their stupidity.

Those stories are wrong, Anhel said. I never made the snow. The cold was always there. But it did bring him to me briefly. There was a wistful tone to his voice. All the tales knew that Odi never stayed for long.

The train halts at the station. She leaves the carriage, wrapping her coat tightly around her body. Then, she embarked for the monastery.

She had her backstory well-rehearsed by the time she met the guards at the gates. It had been an easy story to come up with, a life lived by many young women who passed through their doors. She was a young maiden who, upon coming of age, was kicked out of her home. With no soulmate, she would have no access to rations. Given her lack of skills, she couldn’t seek a job. And since prostitutes were more frowned upon in Ylivia, she had no choice but to seek shelter with the monastery.

She would be just one of many sob stories heard at those gates.

They let her through, not even bothering to make eye contact. As she suspected, they didn’t care for the girls. After all, there were only two guards at the gate.

She pulls out Miekka, her trusty pistol, and shoots them both in the back. Their bodies fall to the snow with soft thuds. She stares at the monastery’s fortress, waiting for someone to notice what she had done.

When no one comes, she walks up the steps. It had been too easy killing the guards. She had an eerie feeling that someone made it that way for her, like they had been anticipating her attack.

The feeling persisted even as she strapped homemade bombs to the foundations of the monastery, sneaking past nuns in their white habit. It was like the walls had eyes, stalking her every move. Even when she left the building and waited for the explosives to detonate, it was like the monastery was watching her, holding its breath until its eventual destruction.

She stood a few hundred feet away from the structure, her face a still, indifferent mask as the walls of the building crumbled before her. She heard screaming in the distance as the nuns and monks were crushed by the fallen stone.

Daeva stands there for a minute longer than she should, staring at the ruins. She was waiting to feel something — relief, satisfaction — from destroying something that was dear to Ezra. But all she could feel was a hollow emptiness.

She wasn’t used to it. Whenever she slayed Hounds or whomever she pleased at the moment, she usually got a thrill out of it, a release for her pent-up bloodlust. But those men usually fought back.

The nuns and monks were just lambs waiting for their slaughter.

Something moves in the distance, a slight shift in the snow that catches her eye. At first, she thinks it’s just the rubble settling in. But then she sees a pale, translucent hand sticking out of the snow. One hand became two hands and she soon found herself staring down an army of ghostly nuns, each armed with a set of bow and arrows.

Any guilt she had felt over their deaths vanished. Of course these nuns practically had nine lives. Ezra would never let his precious servants die that easily.

She quickly turns on her heel and runs away just as the hail of arrows rains down on her. A few get stuck in her arms and legs, but she continues to run, her lungs hurting for more air.

The soft footfalls of the nuns trail after her, slowly catching up. She fires a few bullets at the apparitions, watching their forms dissolve upon contact. More nuns surged ahead, replacing the ranks of the fallen.

Her eyes darted frantically to the horizon, searching for a place to hide. She heads for a village, hoping that the nuns wouldn’t spot her among the throngs of people. She’s lucky that there are so many people out in the market today.

She quickly ducks into the crowd and chooses to slouch behind a meat stall once she loses them. She lets out a sigh of relief before wincing at the pain of the arrows in her limbs.

I told you it was a foolish errand, Anhel said. She rolls her eyes. Leave it to an ancient chaos deity to give you an “I-told-you-so” speech when you’re injured. She yanks one of the arrows out, watching the blood pool from her leg like a spilled pot of ink. When the wound doesn’t close up, she lets out a loud huff.

Elysian weapons. I should’ve known. It’s not like an army of ghostly nuns would have regular arrows. It confirmed her suspicion that the monastery had been expecting her.

She thinks back to the screams she heard when the building collapsed. They were expecting her, but they hadn’t prepared to die because of her. She had a feeling Ezra didn’t have the courtesy to give them that warning. Still, they followed his orders obediently, even in death.

Her ears prick, picking up the ghostly murmurings of the nuns. She needed to go home before they found her and dragged her back to Ezra.

“Uriel,” she whispered. “I summon you.” She blows a long, mournful note, hoping that it would signal to the angel that she was in an emergency. She was losing a lot of blood and starting to feel very cold.

Daeva tilts her head to the sky, expecting to see that familiar shower of golden glitter. Instead, errant snowflakes fly into her face, making her feel colder than she already was.

Where are you? The murmuring of the nuns was growing louder, vibrating against her ears as if they were right next to her. With every second that passed, she could feel panic slowly seep into her chest.

“Uriel, please,” she said, careful not to make any noise. “I need you.”

A cold hand clamps around her arm. She turns around, expecting to see the gold eyes of her angel. Instead, she found herself looking into the face of a very angry, dead nun.

She quickly jumps away, firing a bullet at the nun. More ghosts surged around her and her finger twitches on the trigger nervously. There were a few hundred of them, more than the bullets she had in her possession.

Got any bright ideas? She asks this to Anhel, hoping that the old deity would have a solution.

You should have listened to me, he said, lecturing her. We wouldn’t be in this situation if you had heeded my warnings.

She groaned in frustration. I’m sorry, alright? I was wrong and you were right. I promise I won’t do anything like this again. You have my word.

He chuckles. Very well, then. This won’t be a very pleasant solution.

She felt her guts boil and immediately knew the sort of solution he had summoned. She braces herself for the acid coming up her throat and wonders, for the second time since her rebirth, what sort of unholy creature she was going to summon then.

The monster climbs out of her mouth, dripping in primordial ooze. She spits on the ground, trying to get the taste of creation out of her mouth.

The creature immediately leaps at the nuns, grabbing the ghosts with its six arms and shoving their forms into its gaping mouth. She crawls behind the beast, watching it wreak havoc on the dead nuns and nearby stalls.

What is that thing that just came out of my mouth? The nuns were firing their arrows at the monster, but the weapons were bouncing off its soft rubbery hide.

To be frank, I’ve forgotten. These things went extinct a while ago. Killed off by the mages, as all of my more dangerous creations were. Dreadful shame. They are very efficient at killing, he said.

Can it bring me back to Myrania? She thought about Uriel, who still hadn’t heeded her call. If she could reach him soon enough, he could patch up her wounds.

It’s not a riding animal, he said. He seemed offended by her question.

It is if I try hard enough, she countered. She was desperate for a way back. She briefly entertained taming the beast. It seemed terribly difficult, given her physical state, but she figured she didn’t have much of a choice.

But before she could think her plan through, something heavy strikes the back of her head, knocking her unconscious.

When she woke up again, she found herself tied up on the saddle of a horse and held in place by a nun. She tries to shake off the woman’s hold, but the nun strikes her shoulder, forcing her to remain in place.

Daeva noticed something strange about the nun. She wasn’t translucent like the ghosts she had fought before. The woman was solid and warm. Real. Living.

“Why aren’t you dead? I thought the monster ate everyone.” She assumed the beast would have done a thorough job given what Anhel had boasted of its skills.

“You should be ashamed of what you’ve done to my brethren. Hundreds of lives — you truly are evil! Unfortunately for you, I was buying goods at the market when you had set off that explosion. I lost many good women from that act of terrorism. As for that monster you summoned, we were lucky that the monks got here in time. Whatever it was, we couldn’t kill it, only contain it in some vessel.”

So she had missed a few nuns in her explosion. She should’ve known that not all of them were going to be in the monastery. She briefly wonders where the monster was contained, but she doubts the nun would reveal its location.

“Where are you taking me?” She was surrounded by a mixture of nuns and monks on horseback, with some of the apparitions that were hunting her down walking beside her. One of the ghosts gives her a look so foul, Daeva was certain she’d be dead if she weren’t immortal.

“Trial,” the nun sneered. “Our lord Ezra wants to judge you. If it were up to me, I’d have him kill you. But he isn’t a sinner. He’s a fair and honest being.”

She froze with horror. She wasn’t ready to see him, not after all these years. She tries to roll off the saddle, but the nun keeps a tight grip on her.

This was it, her worst nightmare. She had tried to avoid it by making the trip to Ylivia but now there was nowhere to run.

She had to face the Elysians.