Page 95 of A Haven of Brimstone and Darkness

The blade withdraws and I collapse forward, more blood oozing from my body and spilling in a rush over the stone.

“Kiera!” Theos’ shout is followed by lightning across the sky. It tears through the air, slamming into a nearby statue and turning the entire upper half into dust. Bits of rock fly around me, falling onto my head, sticking in my hair. I cup one palm over the place between my breasts where blood gushes out while with the other, I hold myself aloft, trying not to collapse.

How could she?

“Daughter mine?” Tryphone’s voice is unsure as Ariadne steps around my fallen body to stand before the God King. Gone is the woman from the underground prison and in her place is a Goddess. A true Goddess crackling with power.

I gasp, each breath causing such agonizing pain that it threatens to force my mind into obsidian darkness. I cannot pass out now. If I do, all that awaits in the gloom is death.

In a movement so fast that their bodies become blurs, both Ariadne and Tryphone jerk away from each other as a figure appears between them. His chest bare and coated in blood, Kalix’s eyes are wild as he jerks his chin back and forth, watching the two Gods.

My breath wheezes from my chest. I cannot help it. Trying to breathe is squeezing everything inside me too tightly. Try as I might, the sound escapes, dragging his attention to me. Kalix’s eyes widen and then I see something inside him—an emotion I’ve never seen reflected in those jade eyes of his.

Fear.

Kalix is afraid.

“Kill them!” Theos screams. “Kalix! She betrayed Kiera! Kill them!”

I part my lips and cough, blood bubbling free, flying out to land on the ground and collect in dots around me. When I next try to raise my head and see Kalix’s decision, they’re gone. They’re all gone and a fog of white rolls in.

I don’t know how and I don’t know who—butsomeonehas called forth the Void of the In Between and all of the creatures that reside within it.

Rapid,shallow breaths. In and out. My body locks up as I drag my barely living corpse across the fog. I ignore the suggestion from before to remain still in this place. If I stay still, I’ll die and I cannot die. Not yet.

“Theos!” I croak out the name. “Kalix!”

There is no response. Instead, all I hear are the distant sounds of metal-on-metal clashing back and forth. Grunts. Curses. And something worse … slow footsteps.

I drag myself away from the approach, whimpers creeping past my clenched teeth as each movement seems to tug at the skin of my open wound.

Come on, damn it. Heal.I silently order my own body as if it will listen.What’s the point of being a Mortal God, of having these powers if I cannot use them, if I cannot heal myself?

A tree appears out of the gloom and I crawl towards it—on my hands and knees and then on my side when those give out too. It seems so close and yet so far away, but I grit my teeth and close my eyes and continue the slow forward movement. I don’t stop until the bark is under my nails. Only then do I open my eyes.

Relief is short lived though as I look up into the branches and freeze. The white wood of the large tree is shriveled and thin, stiff and smooth to the touch. Bark shouldn’t be smooth. I run my hand over the surface of it, testing the texture. It’s not just smooth but tiny little hairs dot the trees exterior.

I glance up and up and up some more and horror to my horrors, a face appears over me. Open mouthed, screaming, pained and crying out in silence. I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep myself from screaming along with the face only to accidentally shove my own blood over my tongue.

Malachi. Enid. Several other faces I don’t recognize line the trunk of the tree. The petrified tree … just like the wood used during the Cleansing ceremony.

Memories strike at my mind. Like vicious little fangs, they sink into the soft weakness of my thoughts and tear through to find what’s inside. Flashes of bodies, those same bodies as before appear behind my eyelids when I slam them shut. My body ontop of Ruen’s. Kalix on top of mine and Theos … oh dear Gods … all of us, together as one. Moving in sync.

Fires erupts behind my eyelids and I choke back a sound, swallowing it into my throat before it can emerge. I remember it all now—the Cleansing, the sex, the insanity that had befallen us. As the memories seep back into me, my limbs grow heavier and sag under the weight of tiny pin pricks. Almost painful, but not quite, the sensation is accompanied by the swell of power in my chest. And though there is relief at feeling my own abilities return to me, the horror of what we’d done remains.

Oh … Gods …we’d rubbed the ash from that wood into our skin. It wasn’t wood at all. It was them. Their bodies, devoid of life and power.

Leaning over the nearest root, I grip tightly to its surface despite how the texture makes my skin crawl, and I heave. Contracting and releasing, my body expels the nothingness and bile in my stomach and the bile.

Sick.

Twisted.

Taboo.

None of them deserve to live. The Gods are worse than animals. Even most animals shy away from eating their own young.

“Kiera!” I’m so wrapped up in my horror that it takes me a moment to recognize the voice in the fog.

---