Page 105 of The Merciless Ones

To my horror, she nods. “They have been preparing for this day since we woke,” she says companionably, as if she’s not even bothered that I understand what’s happening any more.

A deep instinct tells me this is because she has a plan for how to deal with me, but I’m so caught by the horrible things she’s saying, I don’t even know what to do any more.

She continues on without hesitation. “They find this part of our feeding distasteful, however. The others have always been squeamish. They seem to forget that death and life are all a circle, inextricably intertwined. That is why I have made it so they will sleep until I have given them enough power. That is our pact: I feed; they absorb, a most pleasing arrangement.”

I feed; they absorb. The words seep into me, colouring everything an awful, boiling white. Of course, the other goddesses know what Etzli is doing, have approved it. I was just their pawn – a small, movable piece in an elaborate and loathsome game between the gods.

I glance around the room – all those deathshrieks lying there, covered in vines and rot. I can see some of their bodies melting away at the edges, the same way that boy Etzli killed did. Is this what they’ve been doing all this time to keep their power growing – eating male deathshrieks behind the doors of this chamber? What else have they been eating that we don’t know about? Suddenly, all those stories I heard about the Gilded Ones eating children come flooding back, and for the first time, I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt that these goddesses – these demons – would eat children if they could.

I stare at the Gilded Ones, their massive forms so distant and cold. Yet that gold covering throbs around them. The gold that connects all of them the same way the vines connect Etzli to her victims. To their victims. Nausea surges to my throat, mixing with the pounding in my skull. Oh, Infinity, I feel sick. It feels as if everything I’ve ever eaten will erupt out of me.

Etzli rises, glides down the stairs, an expression shimmering in her eyes, one I can’t quite place. “You weren’t supposed to be able to penetrate our cloak. We wrapped it around this entire hall, and yet you managed to breach it. Managed to bring that abomination with you.”

She gestures languidly at Emperor Gezo, and another group of blood-eaters blooms on him, threading their roots deep into his body. The former emperor releases a pained shriek as the vines slither and throb like leeches. Within moments, he’s melting too, his flesh and bones disintegrating to nothing, leaving a mass of writhing vines on the ground.

I just stare, unmoving. I don’t even know what to do any more, don’t even know how to feel. Emperor Gezo was once my enemy – the man responsible for so much of my pain. Yet suddenly, he’s less than dust on the floor, a mere trickle the vines are lapping up.

Vines created by the demonic creature I once considered one of my mothers.

I look up at Etzli. “You didn’t have to kill him. Not like that,” I say.

“He was always marked for death, you know that, Deka.”

With the blood-eater on his side. The mark of Etzli’s displeasure, her hunger… How long had she been feeding on him while I watched, unaware? How long had she been savouring him, the way White Hands does her palm wine?

“There are more merciful ways to kill,” I reply.

But I don’t even know why I’m bothering. The creature before me is not what I thought it was. It is not a god; it is a demon from the darkest pits of the Afterlands, and it has the nerve to call itself one of my mothers. I try to turn away, try to move, but my feet won’t let me. I must be in shock. That’s the only explanation for why I’m still standing here, my mind frozen in disbelief.

Etzli floats up from her seat and circles me. Even though her body wafts across the air like a sunbeam, every instinct tells me she’s not a being of light and air but, instead, a predator, stalking its prey. The hair on my skin rises as she approaches nearer. She seems to notice, because she smiles. “There are more important considerations at hand, Deka. You were able to ignore my command, brush it off. How is that possible?”

That young deathshriek’s cries. They’re what woke me up, brought me back to reality. But I don’t say that to Etzli. Instead, I glance at her again, but from out of the corners of my eyes this time. I can’t look directly into her eyes, can’t allow her to trap me in another illusion.

“How many times have you commanded me before?” I know it must have been at least once or twice.

A slim, sunlit shoulder rolls negligently. “Not many,” Etzli replies. Then she muses, “This must be because you have been taking off your collar, naughty child.”

Collar. The word sears through me. Not necklace, not gift. Collar. Just like the animal they see me as.

“No matter,” Etzli says, suddenly sounding determined. “We will bind you more securely this time.”

She reaches towards me, her mouth beginning to form words – more commands to bind me, no doubt; to make me her mindless instrument once more. But I won’t allow that. Not now. Not ever again.

I move so fast, my atika slides through Etzli’s ribcage before she even notices me there. It’s barely more than the smallest kitchen knife, compared to the goddess’s massive size, but it’s enough to do the trick. Etzli screams as shimmering white gushes out, her ichor coating me. Behind her, the other goddesses tremble on their thrones, ripples of pain passing through them as well.

“What have you done, Deka?” she cries, but I barely hear her. Lightning is jolting through my body.

And then I’m somewhere else.

I am shimmering.

We are shimmering, our colours sparkling so bright, we eclipse our collective – what remains of them. The ones that designated themselves female have long gone, surrendered themselves to the mortal world. And the ones who designated themselves male are no better. Green and white flow through them: envy and hatred. Deadly emotions. Human emotions. Emotions we were never before capable of. And that’s not all. Something else has emerged inside our siblings now – a new, worrying colour. It splinters and cracks, a sickening, shrieking white that ebbs and flows in great waves.

Madness… It has infected our collective.

Unease slithers burnt purple through us as we contemplate our errors. We have made them in multitudes recently. Allowing the others in our collective their obsession with humanity, that was the first and greatest of our errors. They sought to fashion the humans in our likeness. Sought to guide them to a higher existence. Instead, the opposite happened. The humans didn’t become like us; we became like them. For now, our siblings, as they call themselves, exist only in Otera, the empire of four connected continents. We, the only remaining singular of our collective, have protected the rest of the world’s humans, kept them safe and hidden from our siblings. As we hide behind a veil of our own making – one different from the one that separates our siblings – so have we hidden the rest of the world from our siblings’ eyes. But eventually, the others will turn their attention there. They will continue onwards past Otera, that madness splintering further and further through them until they destroy the entire human world.

We sigh, a very human expression we have learned to indulge in recently. Waves of soothing greens and golds waft through us. A rainbow shimmers across a bright-blue ocean, dolphins dancing in a merry masquerade.

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