Chapter Eighteen

“Cordially signed, The Old Lord of De’Adara,

Divine Regent of The Golden Sphere,

Her majesty’s (legal) husband,”

 

Leshin died.

(O child, kin of my fallen daughter’s most ancient foe)

Perhaps it happened the moment the Fountainhead reached in and tore out her soul. Perhaps it happened when her skin split open at the seams, as bark sprouted over her exposed muscles and sinews—when her fleeting soul drained like blood from an open wound as the endelwood slaughtered every fragment of her mortal form. Twigs and leaves wriggled out from her fingertips, her elbows, her shoulders; her airway closed as roots tunneled through her tender lungs; and the moment her limbs were lost to her, they lit on fire and burned.

(Ye who taketh the path of En’Del, second to the first-fallen God of Gods.)

Agony and panic overtook what little remained of Leshin’s senses. The flames scorched their way up her neck, consumed her from the inside out. And just as she realized what a mistake she had made, the bark and flames reached her face.

(Ye mortal who bears the weight of our failure, who tosses certainty to the unknown.)

The flames burnt out.

(All of this is for thee, my dear daughter. The last flickers of my once-Divine Will.)

Her sister stared at her, awestruck. Leshin stared back from still-Kinfolk eyes, the edges of her mask fusing with the charred wood of her immortal form. She glanced down at her hands, wreathed in familiar armor of winding roots and vines, all swirling up her arms and legs to meet at the base of her jawline, where her blessed mask cradled her mortal face in a loving embrace.

(As ye hath sacrificed thyself for vengeance, so shall I sacrifice my mind once more.)

She peeled the mask off and gazed into the design she had so carefully carved the night before, now merged and expanded by the spirit of her Divine Mother. Its patterns were now emblazoned in deep green, expanding into fractalline twists and curves. Where once she would have struggled to even glance at the intricate tessellations, now she simply traced her eyes over its elegance, following each of her carvings in directions she’d never imagined could exist. She could see inside the wood as easily as she could see the outside; as easily as she could see left, right, up, and down, she saw around, through, over, under, and in between. The whole world had unfolded, and suddenly walls were nothing more than points of interest in a continuous skyline around her. Scale didn’t matter. Gazing straight through her living armor, she could spy tiny cells of blood squirming through the capillaries between her webbed fingers. And yet, it felt right.

(May ye live on, and carry Me wither thou goest.)

Tears burst from her eyes, and they flowed freely from the mask’s eyes as well.

(Remember my name, my child.)

“Shin’Torani…” Leshin whispered, the name coming to her as naturally as her own.

(For finally we are one)

And Leshin spoke with two voices: “We are that which comes at the expense of faith. Life in death, when death is defeat and misery is triumph.”

As Leshin wept, she once again placed the mask over her face; she reveled in its warmth as it clung to her like a second skin. Her black, curling hair flowed freely in an unseen breeze, as though she were standing underwater. And once she looked on to meet her sister’s gaze, she finally saw the truth her mortal mind had obscured in its futile attempt to envision the ineffable.

Nothing more than a malformed human corpse, wilted and withering, mangled and mutilated. Of the dead girl’s humanity, only her teeth remained. The rest of her flesh was consumed by ashwood and desecrated with a throbbing, inflamed, bleeding slab of obsidian etched with eldritch runes that even Leshin’s immortal eyes could not comprehend. The girl’s body creaked and groaned with every excruciating movement.

This was agony incarnate. And Leshin knew she was painfully outmatched.

“We are futility’s end,” she continued nevertheless. “The third path unjustly denied to you. And though you may slay us, you may never conquer us. Thus saith I, the One Who Refuses.”

The dead girl took a step back. Her empty, scratched-out eye sockets seemed to scan Leshin’s much taller form up and down. Her ragged, stale breath shuddered. “So, that’s where they come from,” she whispered.

“You did not stop me,” Leshin said as the flood of new sensations faded into the background.

“I—I swore I would not,” the Al’Ruon replied.

“Thank you.”

The Al’Ruon bared her teeth. Blood trickled from her gums. “It isn’t fair.”

“No. It isn’t,” Leshin said.

For a while, the two stood in silence. While Leshin waited for her foe to speak, she realized that she could feel the depths of the oceans surrounding the temple, touch them and run her Arms through them as easily as if she stood right beside them. And as she cast her essence down into them, the embers of her Divine Mother’s long-dead Will trickled through the waves. Yes. She could use them all—all the waters of the earth. All at once. Even that may not be enough, but she could fight. For once, by God, she could fight.

“Are you going to kill me, then?” she asked.

The Al’Ruon sobbed, a terrible, grating sound like the shriek of an old door hinge mixed with the whimpering of a child. “I—I—Leshin, I don’t…” She staggered back, doubling over and slamming against the edge of the table.

“I s-s-see now that you were a—a test from the start,” she said, scratching at her eye sockets with both hands, “I have failed to lead you to righteousness—I am my sisters’ keeper, and I have failed to—to… Oh, how our father tears away everything… The truest expression of his love…”

She steadied herself and stood up straight, adopting a half-hearted smile. “I—I am sorry, Leshin, but I will not disappoint Papa again.”

And so, the Al’Ruon snapped her fingers.

Leshin slammed through wall after wall after wall, stones shattering as she burst free of the temple and careened into the earth. Her body broke against the ground, yet she continued to tumble on, burrowing deep below the bedrock, until she finally came to a rest.

Holy shit, she thought as the pain hit.

She shrieked. Were she still mortal, she’d be a red smear by now.

And yet, her Divine Mother’s Will flared. Her powderized bones reformed and set into place with a series of sickening cracks. She shook her head, failing to find her feet in the tiny tunnel. Which way was up and which was down was a little unclear. There was water on either side of the planet, but one ocean felt closer. So, she reached for it and pulled an Arm from the bottom of it deepest depths, boring through the sea floor. In a matter of moments, water dripped onto her head. Then, the thin wall between herself and the tunnel she’d dug burst. Sputtering mud and rocks from her lungs, Leshin did her best to manipulate the waters and scrape the walls around herself away. Her fluid Arms then pulled her out of the hole, whirling her up through the ocean floor and toward the sky.

Only when she finally breached the surface did she register that touching water had not sapped her ability to Sling. 

Leshin gleefully treaded water, thrilled just to swim again. She glanced around. Stars shone above. The temple was miles away, towering above the distant tree line of the island it sat atop. As she looked to her right, she finally saw the flickering torchlights of The City, half-obscured by the tides.

I’m free, she thought.

“You disappoint me, High Sister,” the Al’Ruon said from right behind her.

Leshin jerked, instinctively wrapping herself in water and tossing herself into the air. Slinging dozens of spiked Arms, she stabbed at the stone in her foe’s chest, but the Al’Ruon vanished before the blows could land. Leshin whirled around just in time for her face to catch the back of the god’s hand.

Again, she flew through the air. Her neck cracked as she collided with the temple. Stone buckled. She rammed something hard. When she opened her eyes, she found herself right back in the dining room. Dust trickled from the ceiling.

As the Will forced her head to crunch back around, her vertebrae realigned with loud pops. Leshin gasped, already bringing her focus back to the oceans. She raised the tides, straining as she felt her waves topple over trees and rush up the temple walls, smashing through the sound barrier and accelerating faster yet.

“So as before, I cannot simply Will you away,” the Al’Ruon said, appearing before her again. “Simple injuries do not suffice—but if I tear you apart, well…”

Leshin slammed her massive Arms through the walls and jabbed them at the Al’Ruon’s heart yet again, but the waters turned to mist, flooding the room with steam. She dashed away blindly, lunging toward the table so she could grab Smirk’s Fountainhead, but a hand caught her wrist.

“You cannot escape, High Sister. All must serve the gl—”

Leshin decked the god straight in the teeth.

“Fuck!” the Al’Ruon howled, clutching her bloody mouth. In an instant, Leshin burst away and yanked the mask off Smirk’s suit, which crumbled into a pile of vines in its absence.

(Ah, connection at last) the mask said. (Faithful child of En’Del—)

Shut up, need to think, Leshin thought back as she hurled the full bulk of her vaporized Arms against the floor. Stone buckled under the solidified mass of compressed vapor. Leshin dove in hole she’d opened. Water flooded into the halls around her, and she flung as much as she could Sling back up through the ceiling, hoping to stall the deity for even a few moments longer. She landed on solid rock, in the middle of a hallway not too far from the servants’ quarters. She thanked her Divine Mother that she’d deciphered the temple’s confounding layout so long ago. Leshin sprinted to the left. The basement stairs lay just ahead. If Ilaki and the others had come through, she could just run straight there and get the mask to Smirk.

And run she did. Light distorted around her as she pounded her feet against the cobblestones so hard that they vaporized in her wake. The air in front of her went up in flames, then turned to plasma, licking against her wooden armor. And yet, she never felt out of control—no, she had perfect reflexes. Moving like this was so easy. She couldn’t help but laugh. I punched God in the face!

Then, a hole opened in her chest.

A golden javelin stuck out from the floor, having ripped straight through her. She tumbled forward in searing pain, and the mask slipped from her hand. It clattered to the ground.

The Al’Ruon stomped on Leshin’s back, crushing her spine into dust. Leshin didn’t dare scream. She’d learned to fight the pain of mutilation long ago.

“I’d forgotten how strong your ilk can be… Eons dull the pain of old wounds, you see. You would have known that, Leshin, if you’d had the strength to—”

A spike of water lanced through the Al’Ruon’s neck and severed her head, which tumbled to the ground, grinning dully. The beast had just barely managed to duck fast enough that Leshin’s Arm had missed her heart. Regardless, Leshin Slung volley after volley behind herself as she grabbed the mask from the floor and burst off the ground, the hole in her chest knitting itself as the deity’s black blood trickled in between the cobblestones.

Finally, the stairs—

The Al’Ruon kicked Leshin in the small of her half-healed back, rocketing her down the stairwell and nearly burying her within the bowels of the earth again. But Leshin’s Arms had followed her down, and she just managed to catch her ankle with one. Not even bothering to right herself—she just had to get there—she reared back her Arm, then flung herself down the hallway so quickly that the world around her seemed not to move at all. As she hurtled through the air, she finally caught the blurry sight of her five mortal sisters staring down the hall in shock, frozen in place—mere statues to her relativistic perspective.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t placed have any Arms at the end of the hall to catch herself, so she sailed through the wall. Thus, she careened into the night air, tumbling out of control before impacting one of the tidal waves off the shore that she had summoned earlier. As she allowed it to swallow her, she grit her teeth and pushed the wave back toward the prison hallway.

And right as the Al’Ruon appeared behind her again, Leshin ducked below the deity’s golden spear and clocked her up the chin. The beast streaked out of the water and disappeared into the sky.

Teary-eyed, mask still in hand, Leshin stumbled into the prison hallway and stood before her sisters, who had just managed to cut through the cell door with the Arms from their serving bowls. As time resumed, they gaped up at her, horrified at her seemingly unfathomable form. Blood began to spill from their eyes. Leshin marched right by them and slammed the mask onto Smirk’s dumbstruck face.

“Please, please, please tell me you still know how to fight,” she begged the man as endelwood sprouted across his emaciated body.

“Y-y-ou,” he rasped in a shockingly deep voice as his long-slit tendons knit themselves back together. Bare ribs filled in with muscle and fat, then disappeared behind plates of blue-painted endelwood. “Y-you are l-lucky I recall how t-to s-s-speak at all.”

His shackles burst seemingly at a thought. He staggered to his full height, towering over Leshin, even as she stood more than twice as high as she used to. The ancient mask he wore flared to life as his matted locks of blonde hair began to swirl into tight braids that drifted on a silent breeze.

“L-Leshin?” Ilaki squeaked out from behind her. Leshin turned and stared down at the tiny Kinfolk below her. Most of them were thoroughly soaked. And as they looked at Leshin, their eyes continued to stream with blood. “Is—is that you?”

With a smile, Leshin removed her mask. The five priestesses gasped at the sight of her.

“You really… What happened to you?” Ilaki said, choking back a sob.

 “I’m so—so sorry,” Leshin said, awed at how small they were now—what was she, ten feet tall? Twelve? “You have to get out of here. Please. There’s nothing you can do. She’ll just use you against me.”

“Leshin…” Shina muttered.

“S-sorry about the bleeding… I’m not sure how to stop that from—from happening to you. God, you’re all so tiny now.”

Ilaki and Shina blushed, glancing up and down her now-massive form. If only she wasn’t wearing the armor, she’d be able to give them a real show. Hopefully they wouldn’t bleed out at the sight of her naked body.

She shook her head, refocusing and glancing around for the Al’Ruon. Nothing.

“You are called Leshin?” Smirk slurred from behind his mask, stumbling behind her as though he’d forgotten the basics of walking.

Leshin frowned. “Yes? I’ve spoken to you hundreds of times…”

He rolled his eyes—an action Leshin could somehow read despite his face’s concealment. Immobile as his mask was, it somehow reflected his emotions as easily as anyone else’s face would. Sadly, she imagined the same effect wouldn’t come through for her smaller sisters.

“Never introduced yourself,” he said, bending over with his hands on his knees, wheezing. “Just showed up and started—started talking at me.”

“Oh,” she said, taking a few ragged breaths of her own. “My apologies. Bit rude of me to—oh, God, it’s hard to—whoo boy, she hits hard.”

“No doubt the beast is… merely angered,” Smirk coughed. “Needs only sever your head to kill, but it likes to—to drag things out. It will not…”

He trailed off.

The Al’Ruon stepped through the shattered stone wall, her doll-like feet clacking against the algae-coated stone. She clasped her hands behind her back, standing straight with an air of elegance that contrasted her grotesque form.

“Sisters,” she said to her five priestesses, “it is not safe for you here. Begone, and return to your quarters until I come to fetch you.”

The five women stared at each other, unsure if they could even help. Leshin had soaked all of them to the bone—except Ilaki and Kilini, who had stood just slightly to the side as the waters rushed by—and though they had all trained well, they could do nothing.

“A-almighty God,” Ilaki said, “we would not dare to abandon—”

“Oh, shut up already,” the Al’Ruon snapped. “I see this entire flock of mine is tainted. I may as well begin anew, mightn’t I?”

Leshin stepped forward, gathering the waters around her feet. “Leave them be,” she said, slapping her mask back on. While the Slinging hadn’t dried her body out, that didn’t mean going all out for so long had no effect on her. Everything hurt.

“Worry about us instead,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” the Al’Ruon said. “A serving girl and a prisoner. The real threats, here.”

Flexing her Arms, Leshin lowered her stance. “If I’m just a serving girl, then what are you? Aren’t we meant to be the same, your eminence?”

“Fuck you,” the Al’Ruon hissed, and the five priestesses shrank back, shocked. “Honestly, Leshin? Just fuck right off. Do you know how many times you have fucked up over the years? How many ills, how many errors you have made—stupid, idiotic errors, every one of them—that I could have torn your throat out over? I coddled you, I gave you so many privileges, and I sacrificed so much for you, and you thank me by forsaking everything I have raised all of you for! And at the same time, you have the—the gall to say you love me at the last second? How dare you—how fucking dare you!”

Smirk wrinkled his nose. “Is it… coming on to you?” he asked Leshin.

“She’s my sister, imbecile,” the Al’Ruon snapped.

Smirk looked a little too proud of himself for throwing the deity off. He smiled. “Honestly, that might make it wors—”

A golden javelin pierced through his mask, impaling his right eye and jamming into the wall behind him. He shrieked, clutching at its glittering shaft, trying to snap it in two. But no matter how hard he wrung it, the javelin held its shape.

“There is a reason I cut out your tongue, Chalzaera,” the Al’Ruon said. “Pathetic whelp—thirty seconds of freedom, and already you forget your place.”

Leshin and the priestesses cringed at the sight of the man sliding the javelin out through the hole in his skull. The wound only healed once he managed to fully remove the weapon’s cursed blade. Blood poured onto the cell floor; the moss lapped it up, turning red.

“This was your third path?” the Al’Ruon asked. “This was what everything came down to? Divinity or… or this? You chose this, Leshin?”

Smirk panted, but he clenched his jaw and took a long, centering breath. Wordlessly, he bent his elbow and dug his fingers into his own flesh, grasping the bone under his bicep. The cartilage snapped free. His forearm hung limp as he drew his humerus like a sword, and it emerged much longer than it had any right to be. The thin, curving blade of bone glinted with an ivory sheen, its razor edge dripping with Smirk’s blood. Perhaps six or seven feet long, it was the most brutal weapon Leshin had ever seen. And as Smirk’s wound healed and his elbow snapped back into place to meet newly grown bone and sinew, Leshin summoned up her waters again, straining at the effort of raising the entire ocean’s surface to the temple walls.

“The Stone,” Smirk snarled. “Aim for the Stone.”

The Al’Ruon scoffed. “This again?” she said. “Honestly, Adjutant, I’d have hoped you’d have learned your lesson by now.”

Smirk set himself into a low, defensive stance, and Leshin followed suit.

They waited.

“So, what?” the Al’Ruon said, crossing her arms and grinning with that intractable smile yet again. “You intend to allow me the first move? Well, well, lucky me…”

With that, she reached both her hands over her head. Seven shimmering spheres coalesced around her, six by her sides, one between her hands. As they grew and grew, they burst with light and flame.

But then they all collapsed. Each shrank to the size of a pinhead, and the space around them stretched as their sheer mass warped the fabric of reality. And yet, their mass only swelled further and further, until each became pure black voids the size of Leshin’s head. The Al’Ruon cut a terrifying silhouette. Her hands stretched toward the sky, her corpse encircled by seven holes in reality.

“You know,” the Al’Ruon said as the seven spheres whirled around her, “the trouble with omnipotence is that it gives you far too many options. In the end, though, the classics always work best, don’t they?”

(H…eresy) Leshin’s Divine Mother whispered in the deepest recesses of her mind. (De’Adara is… no m…ore)

She didn’t get long to ponder whatever that meant. The Al’Ruon pointed forth and one of the spheres shot at Leshin faster than light itself. Leshin darted to the side, but just too late. The black hole hit her in the gut.

A void opened in her stomach; her organs stretched, turning to strings of blood and stretching into the singularity. Thus, the sphere devoured her flesh: it tore through her ribs and exited just under her armpit, nearly cutting her in half. She slammed into the cell bars. Both her lungs were gone—she couldn’t even cry out in pain. The agony of reforming took her once more, and she met Ilaki’s bloodshot eyes as her spine knit itself back together.

God’s attendant, a woman Leshin loved more than life, gaped in horror at her.

The Al’Ruon cackled. Smirk darted at her, but she waved her black holes forward. He weaved around three, jumped over one, and sliced the last in two with his blade. The pieces rippled back together like drops of water and devoured one of his arms. But Smirk fought on, running his blade through the Al’Ruon’s gut. As he twisted around her, he slashed through her wooden flesh and tore up toward her obsidian heart.

Then, she vanished.

Smirk’s blade, covered in black, oily blood, had touched the obsidian slab’s edge, but nothing more. When the Al’Ruon reappeared behind him, she grabbed one of her black holes, rammed it into his chest, and held it there. He struggled against her grip, but the dead star gorged on his flesh—the hole in his torso widened further and further, reaching ever closer to his neck.

Leshin whipped God away with an enormous Arm, flinging her through the cell bars and into the night air beyond. She just barely missed the priestesses, who were, again, essentially statues.

Thankfully, Smirk’s bisected body managed to reform, the edges of his upper half swirling into fleshy strands of wood, which latched onto his waist. It took several seconds for his body to recover. When it did, he gasped.

“N-not good,” he said.

“Oh, my,” Shina muttered as Smirk lifted his mask and spat blood onto the floor.

Ilaki and the others were all frozen. Kilini and Nikime’s tunics were stained red and black from the sprays of blood, and everyone was soaked from head to toe in Leshin’s waters.

“Should we be… helping?” Mikele asked.

“No!” Leshin hollered.

Ilaki recoiled. “Then what did you train us for? We must fight!”

“Are you not seeing this? What would you even do?”

None of the others looked eager to answer that question, but Ilaki stormed up to Leshin anyway.

“F-fine. Whatever. Do it all on your own, Leshin.” She clenched her jaw and took a long breath. “You need space. Get to the arena. Don’t leave the temple; it’ll kill everyone in The City just to get in your head. And be careful.”

With that, Ilaki grabbed Shina’s wrist and darted down the hall. The other priestesses followed.

“C’mon,” Leshin told Smirk as she pulled him in the other direction.

Leshin panted; Smirk wheezed. They’d left a bloody trail all the way up the stairs, through the hall, down another flight of stairs, through an upside-down version of the kitchens (which Leshin had eventually come to realize was just for show), and into the arena.

The Al’Ruon had not yet reappeared, but Leshin knew it was a matter of time. Whatever the beast had planned for them next, she had no choice but to fight back. For now, she and Smirk stood alone in the arena. The empty bleachers surrounding them in a semicircle seemed to mock Leshin. How many times had she sparred in this room? She crossed around one of the four pools and pulled her old Slingpan off the rack by the benches, hoping it would help even a little.

“Any ideas?” she rasped from behind her mask.

“You can control the water?”

“More or less.”

“An impressive Art… So few consequences.”

Leshin cocked an eyebrow. “Unless you’re mortal.”

He hefted his ivory blade and traced a wistful finger along the edge. “Unless you’re mortal…”

Smirk whirled through a quick kata, testing his forms with the blade. As Leshin watched, she cringed. So many years immobile had robbed him of skill. He shambled through his steps and tripped during one of his turns.

“Most of my Arts are for healing—but I do have one that might help,” he said, beginning another kata. “If I can hit the beast’s heart, it will surely die. But the effort will delay my recovery. I can manage fifteen shots from my right hand—fifteen more on my left if we’re out of options. But the beast won’t give me time to regrow my fingers once they are gone.”

As Leshin considered his plan, she wrinkled her nose. “She’s toying with us,” she said. “There’s no need for her to fight up close. She could blast us to pieces from space if she wished.”

“Of course it could,” Smirk said as he finished his kata. He came to a rest with his blade stuck through the gut of an unseen opponent. Sighing, he gazed up at a ceiling speckled with stalactites. “And yet, it gives us time to plan, so that it may break us. It hands us the reins to its own defeat, for it is an arrogant beast.”

“Is that so?” the Al’Ruon said from the doorway, silhouetted against the light from the hall. All Leshin could make out was that horrible smile. “More arrogant than mortals dreaming of killing God?”

“Y-you are not God,” Leshin said. “If God ever existed, they are long dead.”

“Bold of you to say,” the Al’Ruon said. “And a bold location to choose for your grave. This is where you have been training our sisters, no?”

“Where else?” Leshin said.

The beast placed her hands on her hips and glanced around the room, its blindingly white teeth glimmering in the torchlight. “You know, I used to host blood-matches here, a long time ago,” she said.

“I’d assumed as much.”

“Who knows? Once I’ve finished with you, perhaps I’ll bring them back. I’ve missed them a bit—I think it’s been long enough. Your sisters seem to have taken well to your lessons. Perhaps they would make good gladiators.”

Leshin growled.

“Either way,” the deity continued, “if it is a blood-match you want, then we need an audience, do we not?”

The Al’Ruon snapped her fingers, and the five priestesses reappeared, seated on the bleachers. Kilini screamed; Mikele swooned like she was about to faint; Nikime shivered and grabbed Kilini’s hand; Shina wept; and Ilaki stood up and rushed down the stairs. She stood at the edge of the arena and locked eyes with Leshin.

“Don’t,” Leshin said, holding up her hand. “I’ll be fine.”

“Touching,” the Al’Ruon said. “You shall make a fine example for my flock. Do pay attention, sisters! This will not take long.”

The Al’Ruon snapped her fingers, and her seven black holes punched through the wall behind her. Leshin and Smirk weaved around them, but each one simply circled around whenever it passed by. Leaping over two as they crossed underfoot, Leshin hopped onto her Slingpan and flung herself at her enemy, tackling her and striking her in the teeth. She clawed at the obsidian slab, but the Al’Ruon kicked her sternum, and she sailed into the air where four of the spheres burst through her shoulders and hips, completely severing her limbs from her body.

As she fell to the arena floor, Leshin watched the Al’Ruon dodge Smirk’s blade, only to shriek in disgust as one of Smirk’s fingers split open, revealing a blood-soaked finger bone, which rocketed out and slammed into the deity’s shoulder with the directed, concentrated fury of an exploding star. The bone erupted into flames, and the Al’Ruon’s long-dead flesh burned. The temple shook; the earth trembled with it.

He shot four more times, landing three solid blows on the Al’Ruon and rocking the planet off its axis. Leshin felt the oceans resist the sudden movement, and she struggled to hold them away from The City, for as much good as it would do at this point. Smirk shot six more times, and most of his bones landed. But none hit the Al’Ruon’s heart—she lazily slapped away the three that came the closest, taking the others in stride. Even while her wooden body burned, she yanked Smirk’s wrist and dragged him to the floor, then beat on his face with her fists.

Smirk lay motionless. The Al’Ruon summoned a cloud of mist to suffocate the flames and turned back to his fallen form. She picked up his bone blade and sauntered over to his neck. Right as she turned to Leshin—probably to gloat before she beheaded the man—Leshin summoned an Arm from the pool behind the Al’Ruon and slammed it against the deity as hard as she could. His blade landed in the sand, just narrowly missing Ilaki.

Leshin launched herself up, and she collided with the Al’Ruon in midair. They slammed together and hurled upwards. Leshin’s head went fuzzy. Right before they impacted the ceiling, however, the Al’Ruon simply Willed their momentum away. Gravity disappeared. Leshin hung in the air, flailing her arms uselessly. Her watery Arms, however, were suddenly mobile. Without the shackles of the earth pulling them down, she realized, she didn’t have to worry about her Arms outweighing the pools they stemmed from. She could simply push the water up and into the air.

Cackling, Leshin raised all four pools and lanced the Al’Ruon through the torso. As before, the deity had no trouble redirecting the blows away from her heart, and impalement barely fazed a being whose entire existence was pain.

And so, Leshin took yet another backhand.

But this time, she didn’t end up tunneling through the ground. She hit the sand, but it held solid and knocked the air from her lungs. She gasped. Stalactites fell from above and stabbed her through all of her joints. The rock turned to gold, and Leshin knew she was trapped. As gravity returned, her Arms fell to the floor and splashed against the sand, soaking in. She heard a snap—she felt the waters of the ocean evaporate. The Al’Ruon had Willed away all the water on the entire planet.

Leshin couldn’t move her head. She listened in horror as Smirk screamed. The room shook with fiery bursts from his hands. Once or twice, the Al’Ruon shrieked in pain. But Smirk never seemed to hit his true target. And so, Leshin counted.

Fifteen, nineteen, twenty-six… thirty.

Shortly thereafter, the Al’Ruon reappeared in Leshin’s line of sight, carrying Smirk by the face.

The deity tossed the broken, fingerless man at Leshin’s feet. His wounds weren’t healing. “That bond of yours didn’t absolve you of your vow, did it?” she asked.

“Of course not,” Leshin spat. “Fuck you.”

“Indeed?” Grinning, the Al’Ruon leaned in, her face up against Leshin’s. “Then what do you have to say to the sisters you failed? What truths will be revealed with your final words? Go on. Say them. Leave your legacy here in the dust.”

Leshin’s eyes watered. Her Divine Mother thrummed with pain and effort, but no matter how Leshin struggled, the golden stalactites held fast. Those seven black holes whirled around the deity that hovered above, waiting for the final strike.

The Al’Ruon had won.

Easily.

And how could I have ever expected anything else?

As Leshin considered her last words, she found herself silently relieved. She had done her best. Even if her best wasn’t quite enough, she had still saved herself from a terrible fate without succumbing to pain. From the start, there was no other way out. She had taken the only path left to her. For no mortal could ever—

An ivory blade jutted out from the Al’Ruon’s chest.

It pierced straight through the obsidian slab at her very core.

Black blood dribbled onto the sand.

The Al’Ruon looked down. Smirk lay on the ground, broken. Leshin was pinned under the stalactites. As the strength left the god’s legs, she crumbled to her knees. Her dark spheres evaporated into thin air, and Leshin saw the face of her savior.

Ilaki stood behind the deity, cheeks stained with blood, clutching onto Smirk’s blade for dear life.

“Hi, c-cupcake,” Ilaki said, breathless.

“H-hi,” Leshin said back.

The Al’Ruon shivered, cradling the slab in her chest as it splintered against the blade. She glanced back at her assassin.

“N-n-not you,” she whispered as her heart ceased beating and she slid to her knees. “It was—it was supposed to be—supposed to be Leshin. Why, P-Papa?”

So ended the reign of God.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDU_Txk06tM