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

setof God hands, the gate buckled with the sound of shrieking hinges and splintering wood.  They might have well wrung a ceremonial gong to let Mascen they had come, but it didn’t matter. Her son knew anyway.

The few mortals still in the streets when the gate fell scrambled out of sight and into their warrens. For all that the Gods had been gone from this world for three hundred years, the humans still knew enough to run.Buildings sprung up like weeds, branching off into neat little rows. Streets fanned out before them. It was time to start the hunt.

Without a word to the others, Enyo turned toward a street wide enough to fit two wagons abreast. Three hundred years ago, the largest, finest paths were carved to the steps of the temples. If she knew herson, he would have made his perch there, in the grandest seat of power the city had to offer. Even better if it had once belonged to an Old God. He would see it as an insult and a reclaiming both; anything less would be beneath him.

Despite the smoke choking the air, Caerthleon appeared mostly intact. Buildings stood whole, the smell of blood absent as she hurried across cobblestones. Mascen hadn’t been reaping fear and destruction exclusively, it would seem. Of course, he was clever like his father. Like those Overseers before. Like his kin. He knew pure destruction would only make the slaves rise up.Better to use just enough to keep them weak and subservient, not enough to make them defiant.

Enyo slowed her run to a walk as she came within sight of the largest temple, erected for Esha. The dome polished to a blinding silver, the steps swept by acolytes. Intact. “Mage?” she spoke into thin air, feeling the mark beneath her ear, painted in blood and herbs.

“I haven’t seen him.”

So Mascen was still lurking in his lair.

Enyo hissed and leaped onto the steps leading up to the temple. It took her three bounds before a bolt of lightning dropped from the sky, and all the world devolved into noise and pressure.The Goddess flew backward but remained on her feet, skittering to a stop in the shadow of the neighboring buildings. He must have been storing up his energy for that blast, to keep it hidden and ready. Not a cloud in the sky.

She laughed. A trick. Always a trick. “Mascen! Come out and face me with dignity!”

Instead of an answer, the earth shook in a concussive rhythm of one-two, one-two, one-two. Footfalls. Keeping her eyes glued to the entrance of the temple, she watched spiderweb cracks form in the stone floor.

When Mascen finally appeared, Enyo growled. Pitless eyes, poison-red hair, skull-white skin; the contrast only complemented his immense size and aura of power. The air around him rippled in visible heat. A volcano ready to erupt. Well. She knew a thing or two about volcanoes.

Without warning, Enyo struck, her hand reaching out as if to grab him, despite the distance of some forty feet. Stones flew at Mascen’s form, encircling him in a prison composed of the cobblestones and the granite the temple had been hewn from. It held him only for a breath, and then that too exploded, cloaking the streets and steps in debris.

She blinked, protecting her eyes from the dust, but that was all he needed. In that single instant that her gaze was shielded from the world, Mascen took off. Curse it all, he was as fleet-footed as she.

Flying after him, Enyo’s vision became a pinpoint, fixed utterly on her prey. There was a shuttering, a cracking in the air around her, and suddenly, she could see nothing at all. Wooden planks and squared stones piled atop of her, burying her beneath the entire second and third floor of the building Mascen had pulled from its moorings. He had wanted her to chase him, so he could drop his trap atop her.

It did not hurt; nothing did, anymore, but it took her long seconds to drag herself from the rubble. When she did, Mascen was gone, and Enyo’s scream of fury echoed after him.

⚀

Va’al watched Enyo race down the broadest street, and then he disappeared.

All around him, the Shadow Realm bloomed, flickering tongues of black like fire drawing over his sight. Caerthleon was still before him, though faded, greyed out as though less real than the darkness that lay in its alleys. The sky was atmosphere-less so that the stars and galaxies and nebulae of the universe above were clearer than any lens could make them. Va’al sighed, the motion peculiarly empty without air to push through his lungs. It was good to be home.

In truth, “Shadow Realm” was a misnomer, for this was not a world. It was a place between, a doorway leading to a hundred worlds, a million—a gateway from everywhere to everywhere else. The Cursed Realms called those who could slip into the in-between Drifters, but Va’al had not known he was one until they tried to destroy him. For centuries after that first headlong fall through the shadows, Va’al had feared being discovered by other Drifters sent after him to complete his punishment, but it seemed as though the sheer number of possible universes protected him. As always, he felt a slight, heady fear. The number of realities was so unimaginably large, infinitesimally stretching into the unknown. Never-ending.

It would be so easy to stray too far, to lose himself forever.

Va’al shook his head like a wet dog. He knew not to lose himself in thoughts such as those. Besides, there was work to be done if he wanted to once more live in total freedom. He took a small step, and Caerthleon blurred, buildings and streets melting into so much formless grey matter only to solidify a heartbeat later. Va’al now stood in the city center, a great stone plaza with stalls set on the edges, now abandoned. In its center stood a fountain, if it could be called such. This was