Chapter 49: Ch. 48 Godsbane

Inside, the cathedral had an almost barren feel, large pillars supporting the high ceiling and little else there to see. Despite that, the smell of old earth and the dingy light gave it such atmosphere, as if every step drew them deeper into the past, approaching the time when gods walked the earth and the race of man were but children playing in the mud. While some of the clergy around spared the group a look or two, no one questioned their presence, the priestess leading the way with her husband right behind.

Deep within, they passed through a lively lounge, the priests’ quarters and priestesses’ quarters either side, beyond which was a kind of library, scribes copying scripture in silence but for their scrawling. Deeper still was a modest hall, shrouded in darkness, lit only by burning incense, air thick with the heady smells. A few pews either side of the aisle sat around forty, podium prepared with a bible and unlit candle.

Finally, so deep that they surely had nearly made it to the other side of the cliff, they came to a set of double doors. Although made of old wood, it had a freshness, and there was a part cut out in the centre wherein a bell hung, gleaming as if new.

The priestess whispered to her husband, then he turned and asked, “If the hero could summon the gods.”

Sammy didn’t need to be told twice and, holding out her arm, she called forth the divine power in the shape of a bow, in her other hand an arrow appearing. With grace, she drew and let loose and the bell rang true.

“May the hero find her contemplation rewarding.”

That blessing followed her as she went between the first set of doors and the second, then she was in the chamber, smothered in silence and darkness.

Yet the avatars of the gods showed clearly.

An old thought coming to her, she realised that, surely, the person who had designed the cathedral in Formadgo and painted the glimpse into the gods’ chambers, he had based those images on these statues—the same statues as those in the small chapel behind Dremma Cathedral. It was perhaps no wonder that he showed them all as fair skinned when their statues were made of marble.

Divine power stirring, her thoughts stilled. She looked around, counting, finding twelve—but with a space and, in that space, a pedestal remained. So faint she could barely see it, but see it she could.

A name she did not dare say: Lilith.

“So thou hast arrived.”

Beside the gap was Liliana, chin high, looking down at Sammy. However, Sammy had no problem meeting that gaze. “Deliver my third blessing and I will be on my way.”

“So eager—thou hast no questions?”

Sammy’s mouth quirked into a smirk. “You’ve proven yourself a coward, unwilling to face me and unwilling to answer me.”

Liliana laughed at that, an unsettlingly divine laughter that sound like, if just a touch sharper, it would cut. “You know, I heard an interesting question.”

While Sammy found that a rather sinister statement, what unnerved her more was the slip of tone, as if Liliana was taking off a mask. “Good for you,” she said, voice measured.

“I wonder, would you still love Julianne if she became a man?”

So the hammer fell, Sammy’s blood running cold, a sudden and intense rage burning at her sense of control. “If the sky was made of milk, would the cows be ducks? Don’t waste our time with absurd questions.”

“Is your love not so strong?” Liliana asked, brimming with acrid humour.

“I love her with all my heart, but it is not some perfect, unchangeable thing. A god is surely powerful enough to change her into someone I do not love. However, remember what I’ve told you: without her, I have no reason to save this world. She is not my weakness, she is yours, so you would do well to not taunt me over this.”

The darkness flickered. “What hollow your talk of love is.”

“How rich coming from Lilith’s other half,” Sammy said, not a slip of the tongue.

A moment of calm followed, then the storm as the divine power coursing through Sammy’s body rebelled, trying to force her to her knees, to make her kneel and beg for forgiveness. And she fought with all her will, giving herself just a moment to think—but that moment was enough and she forced out the divine power from her body. It left her weak and unsteady, standing by chance more than will, but if she fell then it was at least under her own weakness.

“I will sooner die than kneel to such pathetic gods,” Sammy whispered, lacking the strength to speak louder.

Her body softly swayed, consciousness wavered. A candle in the wind. Silence, silence then a crackle, that divine power she threw away returning with a vengeance, writhing within her muscles and bones. All she could do was clench, trying to keep the scream inside.

Until finally the pain numbed. Her next breath came in as a gasp, relieving her burning lungs, eyes blinking away the tears before they spilled. Deeper than the pain, in her very soul, was an unwillingness to show the gods any weakness.

Breaking her silence, Liliana spoke. “I gave your life meaning, I gave you what you wished for, and this insolence is my reward?”

Far more than anything else, those words chilled Sammy and filled her with an overwhelming fear. “What do you mean?” she asked. Staggering forward, she came right up to the statue and forced divine power into it, trying to pull Liliana back. “Answer me!”

But no answer came.

The ordeal having taken its toll, Sammy fell to her knees, mind pounding. Slowly, she pulled herself together and eventually stood up, but the punishment lingered, her muscles at times twitching.

Yet she embraced it, looked within for her third and final blessing. Deeper, further, as if pulling at her very soul—and for all she knew, she may have been. It began as a spark, the sound like tapping together two small stones, then grew to a crackling. Pleased with that for now, she extinguished it.

The short meditation had given her body time to recover, walking out calmly, doors sealing behind her.

“Have the gods left any instructions for us?” the man asked.

Sammy softly smiled. “Not at this time, so I presume you are doing a good job.”

He happily translated that to his wife, then translated back for Sammy. “The church offers the hero hospitality? I think that is the best way to say it.”

“Thank you, but we must decline,” Sammy said. “The day is young and we mustn’t dally.”

“Good luck, then. And thank you for the miracle—it is extraordinary,” he said, face scrunched up from his smile.

In the same quiet fashion, the group left the cathedral and then Sammy, Julie, and Ma carried on leaving, picking up their horses and packs on the way. Nothing unnecessary was said until they had left the village.

“We are heading north now?” Ma asked.

“Yes, any northern port that has ships heading towards the great rivers,” Sammy said, only to pause and try to remember what those rivers were called in Lapdosian. “That is… mother rivers?”

Ma eagerly nodded. “Yes, mother rivers, I know, I know. Okay, I get you to good port for that.”

Julie’s turn to speak up, she asked, “Sammy, the wild beasts?”

Sammy’s gentle smile melted and she focused. “They are keeping their distance, but I think… yes, when we stop for lunch, we shall deal with them first.”

“What you need me do?” Ma asked, tone unusually serious.

“Well, it is hard to say ahead of time…. I suppose to be another sword and shield if they come close? As long as I am not swarmed, it should be fine, and I can heal any injuries we sustain that do not kill us.”

“Okay.”

While the mood wasn’t exactly sombre, Sammy and Julie both felt the day less bright without Ma’s jokes and jabs, but neither complained. Even though Ma had mentioned fights before, including a couple of deaths, there was something different about being hunted by wild beasts, so much more deliberate than the chaos of a robbery. Sammy had also read about ancient wars that weren’t so much about the battles as avoiding them, of how thousands could line up on either side and the skirmish end with barely a hundred dead.

However, that wasn’t the case with wild beasts. They would come and there would be no retreat for either side. Cornered by death.

Despite that, Sammy didn’t worry, better things to do with her time. She intently focused on the strange sensations she felt and loosely tracked some wild beasts keeping pace with them as the others fell behind. So she urged their group faster, diverting from the well-travelled road to dirt roads that meandered around what passed for hills in these parts, and eventually chose the battleground.

Atop a sizeable mound with a good view of the surrounding dryland, they readied.

Without a word, Julie helped Sammy prepare the war bow, then picked up a sword and shield. Sammy’s sword and shield. Standing at Sammy’s side like that, she remembered the little exchange her wife had had with Ma: “Julie is as much a hero as I am.”

The praise still prickled, hard for her to accept. She had spent her life training for these moments. It felt so hollow to compare herself to Sammy who had this forced upon her and yet rose to the occasion. But Julie contented herself knowing that, if needed, she would rise just as high. Through everything that had happened, she now knew how she thrived at Sammy’s side and nothing could take that from her.

As for Ma, they stood warily behind wife and wife, eyes scanning the horizon, constantly checking behind despite Sammy’s assurance that the wild beasts were ahead. Their only solace came from how calm wife and wife’s horses were—if horses of all things weren’t afraid, then there was no reason for Ma to be.

“Here they come.”

Sammy’s words broke the calm, the storm arriving with the distant drum of hoofbeats, darkness flooding over the horizon. But the horizon was far and, even at a gallop, they had to wait an agonising few minutes before they could even pick out individual wild beasts. Shapes liked horses, a haze of corruption surrounded their desperate charge, ever louder, ground shaking.

There was no patience this time. As soon as Sammy thought the arrows would reach, she began to draw and loose, each arrowhead coated in divine power. Acrid smoke billowed where the arrows landed, horrific squeals like wet logs burning underpinning the stampede, wild beasts collapsing in skids and tumbles, quickly devoured.

But she only had twelve arrows and that barely counted for a third of the horde. No time to switch to another, she threw down the war bow and took the sword and shield from Julie. Then, heart pounding, she dug deep and pulled, divine fire spilling from her hand as readily as water from a bowl, pouring down the hill in a roiling wave.

The wild beasts skidded, momentum carrying them to the crest of the wave, a few pushed into the flames and writhing as it consumed them. Those left staggered back, kept at the base of the hill for the seconds it took the fire to run its course, not even grass to feed on.

In that time, Sammy wasn’t idle, drawing on her new blessing and combining it with the experience of performing a miracle. Taking the needle, she pierced, only for a bolt of lightning to fall instead of a colourful raindrop, and it struck the wild beast in front. There was no smoke, no horrific hissing, simply a huge gap through the wild beast—and into that gap it bled its very essence, losing shape and becoming a puddle of boiling tar, soon enough to be gone.

She did not admire her work, and the other wild beasts did not go quietly, every bolt of lightning ever closer as they scrambled up the slope. Yet the ones that made it found their prize to be death all the same and Sammy’s sword swung much quicker than her mind sewed, blade glowing with divine power to consume the corruption.

Until there was nothing left but the acrid smoke and hissing.

Sammy breathed heavily, her mind a mess and body lethargic. Without anything else to kill, she simply stood there, a tool waiting to be picked up again.

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Then Julie touched her, breaking the spell. “You need to clean yourself,” she softly said, and drew Sammy’s attention to the droplets of corruption eating at her clothes and skin, only now feeling the pain.

Unthinking, Sammy used divine fire to cleanse the corruption. After a few more breaths, thoughts returning, she drew out some holy water and healed the marks, pain fading. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, just on my clothes,” Julie said, pointing out a few holes on her sleeves, but nothing had gone through the inner layer.

Sammy smiled and gave Julie a peck on the lips, resting her forehead against Julie’s after. “My wife is so clever.”

Behind them, Ma cleared their throat. “I am okay too, thank you for asking,” they said.

Sammy chuckled, Julie too, and that made Sammy come in for another kiss, this one lingering more than a moment. “More are coming, but slower. We should eat and drink before dealing with them.”

“We cannot… outpace them?” Ma asked.

On the way down to collect the war arrows, Sammy said, “Now I have all three blessings, I want to practise. The journey north will be difficult.”

“I see,” Ma said.

They gathered the arrows soon enough, easy to spot the large shafts amidst scorched earth, but the arrows were undamaged, their staining superficial.

Then they returned to their horses for food. They ate quickly and drank, and Sammy excused herself a moment while Julie tactfully kept Ma’s attention away from her peeing wife. Then there was a silence that dragged out questions.

“Mrs Sammy,” Ma said, “can you not… use that divine bow? The one for the bell?”

“It is, how to say it, wasteful? I can use a bow easily, so better to use my body and my focus. Not to mention that the… weight of the war arrows carry the divine power into the wild beast, otherwise it would take longer to consume them.”

Ma nodded along, then silence followed until they asked, “And that… rain light?”

“Lightning?” Sammy asked in Lapdosian.

“Yes, that—what is that? Three blessing?” Ma asked.

Sammy smiled. “It is not quite the same as the lightning when it rains, but it is similar in essence. The third blessing is what is called godsbane. In simpler terms, god-killer. To stop the spread of corruption, I have to kill the… avatar of the fallen goddess Lilith.”

Stopping there, Sammy explained again in Lapdosian, then returned to Schtish.

“Godsbane destroys divine power and corruption is divine power from a fallen god. So I… make it appear near the wild beast, and it is drawn to the wild beast. Once I am better, it won’t show, instead appearing inside the wild beast.”

Ma nodded along, then silence followed until they asked about Sammy’s other blessings, drawing Sammy into more long-winded explanations of divine fire, holy water, blessed water, the difference between divine fire and divine power.

All the while, Sammy followed the unseen threat lurking beyond the horizon. When it finally emerged, she calmly answered Ma’s last question and then rose to her feet, Julie quickly following. “Ready the horses,” Sammy said.

“We not fight?” Ma asked, frowning as they stood up.

“I am testing myself,” Sammy said and then turned to Ma with a smile. “What happens if a bow is drawn too far?”

Ma loosely understood what Sammy meant, expression turning sombre. “Mrs Sammy….”

“Pray do not fret—unlike a bow, I can feel when my limbs splinter,” she said. Funnily enough, that didn’t reassure Ma at all and they could only be thankful that the other wife hadn’t heard.

The wild beast that crested the horizon resembled the first Sammy had met, that lumbering giant which had ruined her birthday party—and a wing of the Royal Palace. As large as a building, covered in oozing and bubbling corruption, eyes like someone had dropped polished obsidian boulders into a pit of tar. It opened its maw, tendrils joining the top and bottom jaw, not exactly showing teeth, more of the like-obsidian, but jagged shards; its gangling arms had similar claws, digging into the earth with every step and leaving behind furrows.

Even as far away as it was, its grand size was apparent. “That is no beast, but an abomination,” Ma muttered in Lapdosian. “How does no one track it?”

“It moves at great speeds in the night and avoids towns and cities, and I believe it is… losing shape from being so near to me,” Sammy said, never taking her eyes off of it. “The ones before too, they followed us at a distance until closer, then broke into a desperate gallop. I think when not enraged, they are more like shadows or animals made of darkness.”

“To think, such a beast could appear without warning. I dare say I shan’t sleep soundly until I hear news of Lilith’s fall,” Ma said.

“I’ll try not to keep you waiting.”

Julie thought nothing of their foreign conversation, instead drawn to the wild beast, reminded of the beginning of their journey, of where it would end, of the moments between. And in the midst of her reminiscing, there was a moment of overwhelming pity that disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

“If I lose consciousness, we continue to the port—understand? No good will come of waiting for me,” Sammy said.

Pulled out of her thoughts, Julie said, “Yes,” and Ma said, “Understood.”

So Sammy took a step forward and stared at the distant wild beast. Even after their talking, it was still twice as far as the war bow could reach.

In her mind, she regarded the world as a fabric, the needle sliding through her and attaching a thread of godsbane, pulling it and pulling it, the distance making it harder, like stretching to her limits and feeling her muscles tear from the overextension.

But she didn’t stop and tore those muscles that they heal stronger, searching for the stain in the fabric and, needle shaking, pierce through. Instantly, a crackle of light appeared in the distance, darting into the wild beast, thunder coming as an ear-splitting roar, rain falling as huge droplets of corruption dribbling where the godsbane had struck.

And she didn’t stop, desperately stabbing at the fabric, crackles and flashes, roar turning to a scream to a whimper, the wild beast becoming a cloud raining corruption.

Limbs creaking, Sammy held onto the last of her strength and stared the wild beast in the eye, taking the needle and—

Julie winced, the sight of corruption streaming out of its eye painful to see, only for her mind to then blank, instinct taking over as she lurched forwards to grab Sammy before she fell.

“Sammy?” she anxiously asked, turning her wife around.

“I’m ffine, jusst exhaussted,” Sammy said with a slight slur, eyes half-closed and smile weak.

Julie believed her wife, pushing down her panic and, as instructed, brought Sammy to the horses. Instead of sitting separately, though, Ma helped Julie move the packs from Hope to Faith and then helped Sammy onto Hope, Julie holding her wife upright as they rode together.

None of them looked back to see what had become of the wild beast; if they had, they would have been racked with pity, impossible for a compassionate being to look upon its death throes and not feel an echo of the pain. In the end, there was nothing left of it but the grooves of its claws upon the land and the scorched ground where it lay to rest.

The afternoon passed in a tense silence, Sammy only speaking to have them slow down, the other wild beasts keeping a distance. So they kept their usual pace and rested in the early afternoon before continuing on until dusk.

“Let me help you down,” Julie softly said, dismounting first.

Smiling, Sammy asked, “Are you not simply looking for an excuse to feel my softness?”

Julie froze, her hand certainly feeling a rather soft place of Sammy’s. After a second, she pushed through it, half-lifting Sammy down and then kept an arm around her wife, something which Sammy did not object to.

While wife and wife shuffled around, Ma handled the stabling of the horses, then caught up to arrange their rooms in the inn.

The middle-aged woman regarded Sammy with little sympathy. “Ay, the Little Miss found out the world not so soft as her carriage?” she said, a conspiratorial tone accompanying her polite smile.

Ma tensed up, the depth of their sudden rage at those words unfathomable. But, like a lake, no matter how deep it went, the surface stayed calm. “We were attacked by wild beasts and she insisted we spent the afternoon travelling despite her exhaustion, so I think you will find she is not as soft as her carriage.”

Without waiting for an answer, Ma took the keys and left, thinking to themself that Sammy really had left a mark—how long it had been since they’d last felt anger.

Back to Schtish, Ma said, “We eat in rooms?”

Not waiting for Sammy, Julie said, “Yeah.”

“Let’s settle in and then I get dinner,” Ma said.

Sammy chuckled as she and Julie shuffled into their room. “I finally show some weakness and now I am treated as an invalid,” she said lightly, humour in her voice.

Though Julie felt some embarrassment at being called out like that, she carried on supporting Sammy to the bed. “If a twig snaps, it’s nothing to worry about, but if a royal oak falls….”

“Then it is a good thing I did not fall.”

Julie lowered her head, softly smiling at those words, trying to hold back the tears. And she succeeded, at least until Sammy drew her into a hug, gently rubbing her back, filling her with such a feeling of safety that all the emotions she had suppressed finally spilled out as tears.

“Not even the gods can separate us,” Sammy whispered.

“Is that a promise?” Julie asked, meaning it as a joke, but failing to make it sound like one.

“It is,” Sammy said.

Julie believed her wife.

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