‘They’re fighting! Just outside the city, you can see them from the walls!’ A woman yelled as she ran by, shouting to the entire square. ‘The gods themselves!’ She yelled, disappearing from sight as she hurried off. Elske’s heartbeat picked up, excitement stirring his blood. This was the moment he had been waiting for, a chance to see the gods surrounded by the ghosts of their followers, to see whether the resentful souls were consumed.
Making his way to the wall was no easy feat, everyone was pushing to get close to the edge, to get the best view of the battle between gods themselves, an event that hadn’t happened for centuries. The firebird prophet stood on the battlefield, a powerful spell summoning a giant murmuration, which wheeled and dived overhead, bearing down on the prophet of Hiriri. The tree god’s own prophet rallied, her staff, a burning bush of bougainvillea flowers topping it, flared with flames, sickly green things that contrasted with the brilliant red of the blossoms, trailing a thick trail of smoke and ash. Several flowers fell from the staff, whisked off by the breeze. The blossoms seemed to multiply, green flames still flickering at their edges as a host of them increased exponentially. The wind lifted them further, a flurry of petals, thick and violent. The flower storm whipped into the flock, the flames catching on the birds feathers, causing them to shriek. Red flames appeared, flaring up from beneath their feathers, drowning out the green flames, the firebird’s own competing wildfire overcoming the other prophet’s. The murmuration wheeled above, dark birds with red flames trailing behind them now, a flock of firebirds at the god’s command.
‘Where are the gods?’ Elske asked no one in particular, confused. A woman looked at him askance, ‘the prophet or Tuzo carries the god herself in her cloak, wearing the sacred fabric summons the god to live in the body of the wearer, why do you think the woman has burned to death? How else could she be walking if not for the god walking in her body?’ She snorted at his ignorance. Elske was shameless, ‘and Hiriri?’ The woman sighed, ‘and Hiriri’s prophet is well, actually just a prophet. She’s human mostly, though her body has metastasized the sacred fossilized tree, bones first, the god is slowly taking over her body. She’ll be dead in a year, turned to stone and a new prophet will take her place.’
She turned to him, apparently willing to talk now that she had started, ‘it’s strange, they’re usually good at avoiding each other, I wonder what brought them both out here.’ The Hiriri prophet pulled something from her tunic, a book of leaves. Ripping out the spine she threw the pages in the air, the text on them turning the fronds to stone, which froze for a moment in the air before blasting towards the other woman. Tuzo’s prophet managed to avoid being stoned to a second death just barely, diving toward the ground, rolling gracefully before standing back up, her sword sweeping out of her belt in one smooth movement. The crowd quieted, listening for her song.
Her voice began low but clear, as if the very air was made to carry it, projecting the sound across the battlefield to the onlookers. Elske understood what Voche meant now, the sound was eerie beyond belief, warbling like a bird but far far deeper than any bird would be, a strange and complex syntax to the sequence. She made a slice with the invisible blade, and Elske could see the air cleaved before it, a vacuum arc sweeping towards her enemy. Unable to dodge the wide arc, the prophet of Hiriri dropped her staff to the ground, where is smoldered, quietly contained. She leaned into the cut, forearms up to block the majority of the blow from reaching the rest of her body as the rest of the displaced air fluttered her flowing robes behind her.
The wind blade severed her arms to the elbow, the flesh falling with a heavy thump to the ground, but almost immediately branches grew, stone branches with blooming flowers of stone, fossilizing rapidly after their birth. With thin stone twigs tipping her fingers she picked up her fallen staff, dust puffing with each flex of her joints. Despite the separation from its master, the flames were still bright but unburning, not even singeing the petals of the living bush topping it. With a triumphant motion, she stuck the staff in the ground before her, the roots thickening out of the wood of it, twisting around the staff to reach to the ground, sinking into the soil and traveling just beneath, a trail of broken land in its wake as it surged towards the other prophet.
Tuzo’s prophet made a cut to the soil, trying to impede the growth before it reached her, but the roots were growing too fast, her marks falling just behind the tip. Reaching the woman, they grew up her legs, leaping upwards, crawling over her, surging into her mouth. The prophet’s body flared in flames, burning away the advance, but at a price. Her own body was melting as well, down past any remaining skin, deep into the muscles. The smell of meat filled the air as she let out an enraged shriek, collapsing to the ground and writhing, before finally falling still, only the smallest twitch of her fingers lingering, spasms of her decaying body. Following her dying scream her cloak rippled, shucking itself from her, before lifting into the air and taking flight, transforming into a huge bird, its feathers a fire too bright to look at. The transformed bird looked at the other prophet. The prophet’s last move had been too much and the woman had continued to turn to stone, her skin hardening into stone tree bark, whirls like eyes springing up as her insides became tree, stoney bones jutting out from beneath ruptured flesh. Her staff stood before her, burning down like the wick of a candle, fallen petals at the base, marking the woman’s time left living on this earth, eventually leaving only a harsh ashy mark on the ground. Giving a harsh laugh reminiscent of the prophet’s sword song, the bird flew off, leaving the scene of the combat in her wake, no more thought to her fallen followers.
