Impure: Godslayers

The wind carried the laughter of the priestesses from one of the towers that surrounded the temples.

“Please goddess, do it one more time,”

“Yes,”

“Just once,”

Avida put a hand up, quieting the pestering priestesses, who all were in the large pool with her. She looked at the water gushing in from a valve in the wall. It flowed into the large bath and out of the wide drain at the side of the bath. As Avida twirled her index finger, the water in the bath began to stir. It was like an invisible spoon was churning the water. Vera who was sitting on some cushions at the other end of the room, reading a scroll, laughed gingerly at the giggling priestesses. When Avida grew tired of performing for the priestesses, she stepped up and out of the bath as a lady wrapped a long cloth around her. Then she leant on the window ledge and looked down at the temple grounds. Whilst drying her hair, Avida giggled at the gossiping priestesses.

“This is the life, bathing with a goddess,”

“I do not see why all mortals do not live a life of complete servitude to the gods. They would rather wax and wane under the will of some King,”

“I was at the ... market the other day and I even heard a merchant say that the three godly weapons have been found and he hoped with the weapons, the children of the light gods will rise,”

“What?”

Avida stopped drying her hair and listened attentively to the controversial turn that the conversation had just taken.

“Yes and another said that is why the great god Drazo has stopped answering prayers, for he is preparing for battle with these god-slayers,”

“What did the ... King do about it?”

“What did you say?” Vera asked as she suddenly put her scroll to the side.

The priestesses all turned to the Vera, who had a confused scowl on her face.

“I asked what the King-”

“Not you. Athella!” Vera snapped.

Vera’s disproportionate response asphyxiated the good spirit of the priestesses. Athella sniffed uncomfortably and stuttered nervously.

“That they say that…that the great god Drazo has stopped answering prayer, for he is preparing for…for battle with these god-slayers,”

There was a deafening silence as Vera looked around frantically, like she had lost something in the bath chamber.

“All of you leave us!” Vera exclaimed brusquely.

Hesitantly, the Priestesses grabbed their clothes as they stepped out of the bath.

“Now!”

The priestesses all scurried out of the room with their clothes barely covering their wet bodies. Vera strode towards the double doors. Looking suspiciously at the hooded Priest who stood guard, Vera grabbed the door handles.

“What is it Vera?” Avida asked.

Vera narrowed her eyes at the guard, who was looking back at her, before shutting the door.

“How long have you known me my goddess,” Vera said as she walked towards Avida.

“All my life,” Avida replied.

“Do you trust me?”

“Your worship of me can only be surpassed by the care you have shown me since infancy. If there is one mortal whose words I could rely on, it would be yours Vera,”

“Then please listen carefully to what I have to say…” Vera begged.

Avida had never seen Vera so apprehensive in her life. She sat on a heap of cushions and attempted to pull Vera down next to her.

“What I have to sa-”

Vera promptly ripped her hand from Avida’s grasp and strode to the doors with a look of suspicion in her eyes. As she opened the door, two priests staggered in through the doorway.

“What are you doing here? I told you to leave,” Vera snapped.

“We must attend the goddess at all times,” a priest retorted.

“I shall attend her. What can you do that I cannot? Huh protect her, do you think a goddess needs protection from two mortal men or is it not you who require her protection?”

Vera’s reasoning proved too astute for the priests who looked at each other blankly.

“Leave us,” Avida said.

The priests bowed and left the room hesitantly as Vera shut the doors.

“I have never seen you like this Vera. What is the problem?”

The people of Freydal were livelier than they had been all year. The blaze of several fires could be seen around the towns as the people cooked, ate and crafted. The mead-hall was especially bustling because a great feasting for the King and all his Jarls from the surrounding villages; had already begun. As night fell, the feast soon turned into a wild celebration; however there was one who did not partake of the festivities.

“My King, have you taken leave of your senses?” Kilowulf asked.

“Watch your tongue, I may be old, but I am still King here,” Aldur barked groggily.

“Forgive me, but to test Ragnaghast in this way is folly,”

“How else can we spur an altercation between him and the god-slayers?”

“These are no gods my liege, they are but children and only three. Ragnaghast will descend to our land, kill them and we shall promptly follow”

“If he kills us all, who will be left to worship him?”

Aldur’s words seemed to have struck a chord in Kilowulf, who muttered something under his breath.

“My king the god-slayers wish to speak to you,”

Aldur looked to the servant who had just addressed him.

“Good, take this fool out of my sight”

Kilowulf scowled as he was ushered away by the servant. Meanwhile the three boys stood up from their table and walked towards the throne at the back of the mead-hall.

“We have eaten and are well rested for the entire day yet your Ragnaghast has not come,” Osy said.

“It has been over twenty years since a fire burned, on a day that was not the Fire Festival,” Aldur explained.

“Well the sky is dark. With your leave, we shall start a great fire to goad Ragnaghast,”

“Do as you will. I will leave some of my horsemen out here with you,”

“There is no need,”

“I insist. I and the people shall retire for the night! Daughter retreat to your room,”

Joyta looked at the three boys.

“I hope there will be enough of you left to mop up,” Joyta mocked.

The Princess’ luscious blonde hair swung behind her, as she turned and walked away.

“I really do not like her,” George whispered.

Lee stroked his chin and watched the alluring motion of Joyta’s body as he spoke.

“I do not care for her tongue, but everything else is just righ-”

“Lee start the-”

Osy’s interjection was in turn interrupted by Lee.

“Right away,”

They ran through the crowd and towards the double doors of the mead hall.

“Singe stay inside it is not safe here,” George said as he urged the monkey onto a table close to the doors.

Lee walked towards the doorway, closely followed by Osy and George. As he made his way out of the large hall, Lee’s hands burst into flames. He shot explosive balls of flames at three isolated parts of the settlement, creating three small fiery pits.

“They are too small. We need one huge flame,” George said.

“Fine I shall become the flame,” Lee bragged.

Lee inhaled deeply and clapped his hands together. Instantly, the red and blue flames on each hand burned bright gold and consumed Lee’s body. George and Osy were temporarily blinded by the glare of Lee’s flaming gold body.

“A flame that will not move,” Osy said.

“What am I a statue?” Lee snapped.

“George,”

“Love to,” George said slyly.

Suddenly the ground around Lee jerked. Before Lee could utter a word, he was enveloped and hoisted in the air by a thick column. The column comprised of hundreds of rocks, meshed together by thick hardened soil.

“What are you doing? Release me,” Lee shouted.

“I am sorry but we cannot have you doing something reckless or insane at the first sight of this god. We plan to survive this battle,” Osy said.

“You think you can fight a god without me?” Lee exclaimed as he squirmed.

However his efforts to free himself were fruitless.

“Oh but we will not be without you. While Ragnaghast is mesmerised by your flame we will attack his exposed flank,” George said.

“So I am to be bait,” Lee asked.

He was utterly flabbergasted.

“Not bait more like …ah” George stuttered.

“A decoy,” Osy chimed in.

“Yes a deco-”

Suddenly there was a crashing sound accompanied by a scream in another section of the settlement. A horse came galloping towards them, and the horseman yanked its mane, causing it to stop in front of the boys.

“He is here!” the horseman announced.

“I should kill you. Get into the pool so I may drown you, lest I drown in your sea of lies,” Avida scolded.

“Please Goddess you must believe me. I was but a child and yet I will never forget it. Your mother wished for you to be called Hydro before she fell into Drazo’s hands. He intended to kill her; the only fact that stayed his hands was that from his very first taste, he became addicted to her blood or that of the demi-god within her. The moment you were born, he slayed your mother,” Vera said tearfully.

She held Avida’s hand tightly in effort to comfort her. However comfort or lack of it thereof, was not Avida’s issue.

“Lies, he treats me like a daughter. I have his eyes,” Avida contended.

“All those with a god for a parent, have a golden tinge to the whites of their eyes. Besides, what about his other children?”

Avida stood up and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.

“Yes…what about my siblings? They inherited his taste of blood, and his fangs, I got his eyes,”

“They are not his children and neither are you. He is a most demonic spawn of the dark god of old, Drazo is incapable of having children… well in the conventional way perhaps. He drained his mother of her blood whilst he was still in her womb. He was born of a buried corpse,”

Despite Avida’s loud gasp, Vera continued to talk.

“He drained those two mortals and filled their dry veins with blood from his own. That is how he has children, through death. Your time has passed my child; now that the other offspring of the light gods have resurfaced he will have to kill you.”

“No he is my father,” Avida snapped tearfully.

“Even if his addiction to your blood has somehow morphed to some malformed semblance of love, the other gods will never let him keep you alive,”

“I am his daughter and he is my father. I will hear no more lies mortal. He loves me,” Avida yelled stubbornly.

“In lieu of love for you as a daughter, he loves you as a lion loves a lamb,” Vera explained.

“Shut up,”

As Avida yelled she shut her eyes, squeezing out tears on her cheeks and she clapped her hands over her ears. Vera seemed to have had enough of trying to appeal to Avida’s compassion. She stood up and gruffly tugged Avida’s hands from her ears.

“You are nothing to him but a meat bag, a sack of godly blood!” Vera admonished loudly.

Instantly she received a slap to her face which sent her falling to the floor.

“Get in the bath so I may drown you,” Avida said coldly.

Vera rubbed her bruised cheek as she strained her old knees, in an effort to stand up.

“Alright my goddess. But please after I pass from this world, go through the drain, to the city and far from here. Stay hidden stay near water at all times you are stronger close to your element,”

As Vera spoke, she was about to head to the bath but caught a glimpse of the closest tower through the window. It was filled with priests, all armed with drawn bows.

“Get down” Vera screamed as she pushed Avida to the ground.

Avida landed roughly. She screamed as a volley of arrows ripped in through the windows. When the sound of whizzing arrows had subsided, Avida looked up, only to see hundreds of arrows planted into the wall. A sea of arrows blanketed the wall. However, there was a section which had remained untouched; it was in the shape of a person. Wide-eyed, Avida sat up only to find Vera lying prostrate on the ground. She was shocked beyond comprehension at the horrific sight before her eyes. This was because every inch of Vera’s body was riddled with arrows. Suddenly there was a banging knock on the double doors.

There was the thudding of giant footsteps in the shadows, as fires around the settlement were extinguished, by what seemed to be a sharp breeze. The night was filled with the dying screams of Freydalis horsemen and the whining of their doomed steeds, as the inhabitants of the settlement cowered silently in their homes.

“Lee, burn brighter,” Osy hissed urgently.

Instantly the colour of the flames on Lee’s body morphed from gold to a red tone. As the colour changed, so did the size of the flame, until it was so large that Lee’s body was like the wick of a candle at the base of the flame. The night was lit by this one flame, revealing the bodies of fallen horsemen, splayed around the settlement. On the other side of the valley stood a giant, with the throat of a squirming horseman in his life-snatching hands. The giant stood eight feet tall as ugly as he was cruel. He was bare footed and wore what seemed to be the pelt of a grizzly bear around his waist. His exposed pale skin was tainted blue by the stinging cold climate. Throwing the limp body of the horseman to the ground, the giant turned towards the light and his eyes widened with greed.

“Ragnaghast no like kill children ...so much, but if they stand between me and fire...well,”

Laughing momentarily at his dim-witted joke, Ragnaghast began to flex his large shoulders as he walked towards the boys.

“His eyes?” George muttered with a confused tone.

“George,” Osy called out.

“On it,” George answered nervously.

He clenched his fist, and his pupils turned up behind his eyelids.

“Release me,” Lee yelled.

“Silence, let him concentrate,”

As Osy spoke he looked at Ragnaghast, who was getting even closer.

“Anytime now George,” Osy said nervously.

Ragnaghast was barely several feet from them.

“George!”

As Osy screamed, Ragnaghast reached out a hand in mid-stride. A thick, wide wall of hard soil shot out of the ground in front of the boys. Ragnaghast groaned as he staggered back. When another ten feet tall wall with equal width as the last erupted in front of him, Ragnaghast was forced even further back. He massaged his bruised forearm and laughed in stupefaction. Meanwhile George had awoken from his trance, as he held his rock necklace with both hands. The texture of the rock rapidly spread to his hands and up his arms, until the skin on his arms was no longer pale and soft, but grainy and hard. George stood up and punched the wall in front of him with both fists and all his might. The force of George’s strike sent both walls toppling on Ragnaghast. Concurrently, Osy looked at the nearest corpse, and opened his mouth wide. A tiny green ball of light, shot out and hit the corpse, penetrating its dead skin. Almost immediately, the corpse sat up abruptly and opened its eyes. With its pupils radiating an eerie green light, the resurrected horseman stood up and grabbed its weapon. Summarily it was joined by three other resurrected, whom Osy had just resurrected.

“Slay him,” Osy commanded.

He pointed to Ragnaghast, who had just ripped through the debris and stood up. The resurrected horsemen charged at Ragnaghast. However, he dispatched of them as easily as when they had been alive. When their broken bodies fell to the ground, the eerie green light left their eyes. They swirled and whizzed around in the air until they shot back into Osy’s mouth.

“What now?” George asked.

“I will hit him high, you hit him low,” Osy said.

They both looked at Ragnaghast who only seemed to have been antagonised by their previous efforts. Suddenly Osy became a wraith and flew like a ghost towards Ragnaghast. Inches away from his target, Osy became solid again, driving his head into Ragnaghast’s throat. Simultaneously, George ran forward and punched Ragnaghast’s knee-caps. If Ragnaghast was exasperated before, he was enraged now. Quickly recovering from the critical attack, Ragnaghast stomped George down to the ground. However, George shielded himself with his stone arms. Meanwhile as Osy was falling to the ground, Ragnaghast plucked him out of the air and hurled him at the mead-hall. Then Ragnaghast took his foot off George, and kicked him. George’s body rolled along the ground like a ragged doll, until he smashed into the side of a house. Buried under the debris of the demolished house, George groaned out of consciousness as the stony skin on his visible arm crumbled to pieces.

“No,” Lee yelled.

Ragnaghast massaged his throat as he limped towards Lee. His eyes were wide with greed as Lee squirmed harder than ever. Despite his final desperate effort, Lee found himself face to face with Ragnaghast; unable to move anything from his neck down. Ragnaghast inhaled gently, and a tongue of flame slithered from Lee’s body and into his nostrils. Inexplicably he opened his mouth and tongues of flames rushed into his facial orifices. As the flames were ripped from Lee’s body, he began to gasp, for it felt like a sharp breeze was taking his breath away.

“Stop it you are killing him!”

Ragnaghast could see Osy limping towards him in his peripheral, yet his gluttony would not let him stop eating Lee’s flames. Osy was so injured that he could only maintain a hobbling pace; as the last of Lee’s flames was sucked away, whilst Ragnaghast grew nine feet tall. Ragnaghast smiled with satisfaction and looked at his inflated muscles on his arms and legs. Lee was swimming in and out of consciousness, but even with his hazy vision, he could discern that Ragnaghast had grown larger.

“Time to go my little firefly,” Ragnaghast said.

He put his hands around Lee’s head, which were now so big that they made Lee’s head look undersized. Ragnaghast did intend to uproot the boy’s head from his body, but then he paused for a moment and his eyes lit up with excitement.

“You know what I will keep you alive. When you are rested I shall feed again until I am satiated and that will be your life… my little Firefly.” Ragnaghast sniggered cruelly.

Ragnaghast winced as he suddenly became weak and felt a faint stinging sensation spreading from his thigh. He turned his head to find Osy was holding on to his left leg, and this was inexplicably leeching the life out of him. Bellicosely, Ragnaghast snatched Osy up. As he held Osy upside down, Ragnaghast realised that the boy’s bruises had already being healed.

“Nice trick boy, leeching my life and making it yours. It might have worked too, if not for all the fire I ate,” Ragnaghast boasted.

Subsequently he flung Osy into a nearby house. Osy smashed through the wall of the crude structure, bringing the roof down. Remarkably, a single inhabitant survived the disaster, yet she could not stop screaming as a result of the nerve wracking ordeal. The uncontrollable screams came in short intervals and were enough to awaken Lee from his stupor. He rocked his head up, only to see the beautiful woman that he fancied, crawling out of the debris. The screams were also having an effect on Ragnaghast. With his greater size Ragnaghast seemed to have gained greater senses, for he clasped his hands around his ears and groaned like a madman. The piercing sound penetrated the width of his palms, rattled his ear drums, exhausted his nerves and brought tears streaming down from his bloodshot eyes.

“Silence,”

As Ragnaghast yelled, he turned and began stomping towards the screaming woman. Lee lost all reason. The thought of the giant trampling the object of his desire seemed to fill Lee with wrath, which fuelled him almost instantly. He yelled as his body was consumed by a blue flame so bright that it could be seen for miles in the snowy night. When the blinding flare of Lee’s flames finally died down, everyone was silent as their eyes adjusted. Ragnaghast turned to see the steady blue flame burning on around the boy. The column of sand and stone which imprisoned Lee was now a pillar of congealed glass and soil. Lee had broken free, leaving nothing of his prison but a friable mound.