Goddess Liv Savell (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📖

in her hands, she held no weapon. Mascen laughed, not even bothering to stop her. What could she possibly do? Hit him like that dark-skinned clanswoman had before they resummoned their bodies? He would hardly feel it if he felt it at all.

And then she was on him, but Esha didn’t try to hit him at all. She just reached out with both hands and held his face, gently as Enyo ever had when he was very small.

Mascen couldn’t move, couldn’t look away. His whole world was the palest of blues.

And then he felt them. Every tormented creature he had slain or injured. Men, women, children, animals. He felt their fear of starvation as their fields burned, felt the townspeople’s dread of death and subjugation. He died with a mother, body thrown over her child. Died again with an old man in his bed. He was a child, body ruined by fire, looking up at the winged priestess, begging her for a relief she offered, swift and dark. He was Illygad herself, crying out for the scars he had left in her skin.

But, no. That wasn’t true at all. He was Mascen, their savior from the old ways and the ignorance of their own paltry existence. He was doing this for them, to lead humanity into a new era beneath his rule.  And he would not listen to these lies any longer. He growled, struggling to push himself out of Esha’s control just as she placed a kiss on his brow.

“No!” The cry was torn, harsh and guttural, from his lips and he flung her body away. It made a wet slap against the stone of a nearby building, but he hardly registered it. Mascen had felt the God mark that time, felt it as she added her power to the spell that meant to lock him away. And he would destroy her for it, maim her so severely that it would be centuries before she recovered.

Only there was Maoz again, dashing in with that damned spear aimed at Mascen’s chest. The Lava God only just managed to avoid it, stumbling back over the uneven cobblestones in his rush. He did not fall, but already Maoz was turning, charging again.

Well, let him come. Mascen was ready.

This time when he stepped aside, Mascen took hold of one of Maoz’s curving horns, using the Beast God’s own momentum to fling him away. Mascen kept his hand clenched tight around the horn, and with the sickening crack of breaking bone, he tore it free, spraying the courtyard with blood.

Maoz’s scream of pain shook the very foundations of the city.

❂

Enyo rounded the corner in time to see Maoz go flying, his skull a wreck and one horn still held in her son’s clutches. Flower petals drifted behind Mascen, strangely delicate against the violence of the scene before her: blood splattered stone and Esha’s limp body. Mascen hadn’t seen them yet, so Enyo shouted to distract him, calling out childhood pet-names like insults. As he turned to look her way, Aryus appeared, as they tended to do, dropping down on a phantom breeze to bash Mascen upside the head with their own artifact.

“A horn for a horn!” they giggled, wings pumping to regain the height necessary to escape Mascen’s furious blow. Her son’s swing was wide and poorly aimed, and Aryus was already too far out of reach. The God of Disaster staggered, shaking his skull. He was hurt but still standing. Some part of Enyo hesitated. He was her child, her firstborn. And here he was, fending off five Gods on his own. Any mother would be proud.

Aryus lifted their hand up to their lips and blew across their palm. Where the breath landed, more petals bloomed in great, billowing gusts like fistfuls of birthing-day wildflowers. There was no wind, but neither did the petals fall. They wound themselves into long lines, solidifying into a living, snaking rope that coiled around Mascen’s legs, his torso. He growled but was unable to keep himself from kneeling. Shadows sprung up from the cracks of the cobblestones to pin down Mascen’s legs, and as he bellowed, Enyo’s stone leaped up to claim his wrists, hauling him down prostrate on the ground.

Va'al winked into existence next to her, watching with unblinking eyes as their son struggled despite the bindings they had put him under. Always a fighter.

Maoz was first to stagger over, disoriented but grimly smiling as he dipped his fingers in his own blood and clawed them across Mascen’s belly. Symbolically disemboweling him as a bear might. Or a wolf.

Enyo looked away. Tears of rainwater pricked at her eyes.

“No! You dancing lunatic, I’ll rip your throat out if you come near me!” Mascen hollered, but Enyo still couldn’t make herself turn to him. Couldn’t bear to watch. Aryus would have marked him by now; she was the only one left.

Mascen howled, and Enyo gritted her teeth. It had to be done. He was mad. He had no respect for the lands. He wanted her weak and subservient, and she would never be that. Enyo turned back to see Mascen bucking and thrashing. White froth bubbled at his lips, flying onto the stone with his screams. She could see Va'al’s shadows starting to flicker. The earth was keening as it tried to hold him back, and even Aryus’s vague grey eyes were widening with something like concern.

She had to strike now.

Enyo leaped, a second too late realizing that Mascen was by far stronger than she had ever known. Rocks, shadow strands, and flower petals exploded outward, a blooming cloud of debris. With all her strength and speed, Enyo had no time to move, no time to protect herself. The concussive force of Mascen breaking free was upon her in the space of a hummingbird’s wingbeat, and then she was flying, the world a blur around her. The wooden posts of a merchant’s stall broke against her spine, adding their splinters to the storm of rubble, and then her