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

nor had he said that she must give him the sword. Simply bringing it to him did not mean she necessarily had to hand it over.

Though how she could stop him from taking it, she had no idea.

Reluctantly, the warrior nodded. In the end, she could not refuse him, could not risk everything she had worked so hard for. Could not risk Alphonse. “If you swear to not harm Enyo or her human Vassal, I will bring you Calamity.”

Mascen held out his hand. “Isn’t it human custom to shake?” As soon as Delyth’s hand slid into his, Mascen’s grip tightened, pulling her close, a snake coiling around a mouse. Mascen’s thumb brushed the inside of Delyth’s wrist, and with that unwelcome touch came pain. Delyth seized, struggling to wrench her hand away, but he held it longer, tighter, as though to prove he could. “So you don’t forget.” He turned away, a dismissal. “I would avoid Caerthleon if I were you.”

On her wrist was the red-black shape of a thumbprint, a gruesome reminder, and yet it did not feel like a binding. Though she had been loath to enter into another oath, the lack of sound and pressure made her uneasy.  All she could think of as she stepped away was that Mascen had not actually agreed to the bargain at all.

What, then, had he gained?

⥣          ⥣           ⥣

“She was just going to scout ahead, right?” Etienne was trying to sound casual, but there was an edge of concern in his voice.

Usually, whenever Delyth left to scout, she returned before he had time to even enjoy the moments alone with Meirin. This time, however, they’d been walking alone so long that they’d fallen into an easy silence.

What then, had kept her?

Etienne dismissed the idea that she had gone on without them. The artifact was still in his bags, and he doubted that she would leave them to fend off Enyo alone.

Unless, of course, she had reached the same conclusion they had and was leading Enyo away to give them more time…

Meirin squinted ahead, and Etienne was reminded of their conversation on travel. She wanted to see more of the world, to understand more. To their right, the curve of the lake had been visible for days, but it was beginning to reveal the strange shape of a building perched on one of its islands. It was impossible to tell just what stood there from this distance, but the outline seemed strange to Etienne. Malformed somehow.

Behind them, the eastern branch of the Afonneidr had faded into the distance, and ahead, nothing was visible but the gradual change of open plains into more structured farmland. They must have been nearing a town, but the longer he stared, the more his eyes began to water.

“Is that smoke?” Meirin asked, voicing the question that Etienne had not yet thought to voice.

He peered at the sky up ahead, filling his lungs with warm air. How had he missed the acrid scent on the breeze? It was strong now, coating his senses in the smells of burning things. The atmosphere before them was thickening, making it more and more difficult to see what was ahead. The haze suggested that whatever was burning had been doing so a long time. Why hadn’t someone put it out? Etienne pressed on, his long legs burning with the now-familiar sensation of exertion. The land was curving upward, hiding whatever lay beyond behind the hill. “We should be able to see more from the top.”

⫸

Meirin gasped when they reached the top of the hill. To the right, there lay the lake and its strange islands. Spirals of smoke rose up from the building there, but it was not the source of the fumes. The road continued north, but off to the side, a trail led to what had been a settlement. Buildings were torn apart and smoldering, and even from this distance, they could see figures in the streets, strewn about and unmoving. Hurt? Dead?

Without speaking, Meirin broke into a run down the rough path, zig-zagging to slow her pace as the hill’s downward trajectory increased her momentum. Reaching for a spear that was no longer latched to her shield, Meirin entered the village ready to fight, protect, help. Anything.

She stopped short at the first fallen body, its face disfigured from being left in the sun for several days. From the way it was dressed, she suspected it had been a man in real life, but it was only rotten meat in death.

The putrid smell made Meirin turn and heave, her stomach recoiling at the horror. Never in her life had she ever witnessed something so foul. Magots bored into the eyes, the skin blue and bloated. She could see what he had died of. Both his legs had been torn from their sockets. One lay a few yards away; the other was nowhere to be seen.

She vomited again.

Battle was supposed to be glorious and honorable. This man just looked like a doll a child had grown bored of. Discarded and misused.

✶

Etienne stepped past Meirin, his heart beating a heavy tattoo in his chest while his eyes moved from corpse to corpse, taking in the swell of thick lips and cheeks, the purple of fetid decay. The sheer horror of it was too vast to comprehend, and yet he found that he could not look away.

Several yards into the settlement, Etienne stopped, all the hair on his arms and neck rising. He had heard something, a small stirring, and scanned for the source.

What could still live in this place?

Behind him, with their back to a charred but sturdy wall of stone, the indistinct figure of a child sat, bald and burned black along one side of their body. The child stirred again, blinking pain-dazed eyes and peeling the burned arm slowly from their chest where they had been cradling the injured limb.

Flakes of skin, black and sticky, were left clinging to