I Want To Go Home - 30

Deities and Usurpers

Climbing up the stairs with the toxin of Nemza’s stinger flowing through my body proved to be something of a mistake. My head began to spin as I made my way up. I tried to shake it off, to push through the confusion, but—

-

The monsoon was late this year. That was bad news for our farm. I worried how Nilam was going to take the stress. We may not have ever been truly in love, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care for him, and he was already so—

-

“Emily!? Are you alright?” Aara asked, as I realised she and Sukura were steadying me.

“I’ve been better, but we can worry about that after,” I replied. “Nemza is at least as hurt as I am and we can’t give her time to recover.”

Neither of them seemed to like that reply very much, but they also didn’t argue.

We reached the top of the stairs just as Ne’avo had managed to bash her way through the magical barrier. She hissed her cousin’s name before charging in, even as Uké’el called for her to slow down. There was a risk of traps, but it seemed Ne’avo was filled with a fury that would not be delayed. The rest of us could only hurry after and hope she didn’t get herself hurt.

Thankfully Nemza had apparently not had time to leave us any nasty surprises. Well, beyond a handful of Janzori that Ne’avo has sliced through as she charged into the great hall where the throne sat. She made it there ahead of the rest of us, rushing into the great chamber.

Only to be lifted into the air by magic. Tiny threads I could just barely see, and that seemed at risk of snapping if she continued squirming. They were holding for now, though, as the rest of us entered the hall. The more she fought the more tangled up she seemed to become, grunting in frustration.

“Dearest cousin, have some manners while you’re a guest,” Nemza rasped, supporting herself against a raw stone monolith that seemed quite out of place in the throne room.

It was clear she was struggling to stay standing, and that even holding a small black goblet in one hand seemed to be taxing her. If we just—

-

Running down the town streets, Rodica and I laughed merrily, thrilled to be free of our lessons for the day. The way her cheeks flushed with the exertion left my own growing warm. Even if I knew the nuns sa—

-

“Well, that’s some good news!” Nemza said, before bursting into a manic laughter, pulling me back into awareness of the present.

I found myself once more leaning against Sukura, having slipped out of consciousness for another moment. What the odd visions that were flashing before me meant, I couldn’t guess—well, no. I did have a guess, but I didn’t like where it was going. So I was doing my best to ignore that.

Instead, I focused on looking up to glare at the dark sorceress, straining to stand on my own. “I just have to out last you. And I have allies.”

“While I have a goblet full of godly blood. Cheers,” she said, shakily raising her drink before downing it in desperate gulps.

As soon as she finished drinking it, she dropped the glass, her whole body spasm as she fell to her knees. “This is going to hurt both ways… oh well…”

“Godly blood?” Sukura asked as those of us still on the ground advanced cautiously to where Nemza was now thrashing about on the ground, hissing and cursing as she writhed. “Where—how would she get that?”

“I… I don’t know,” I whispered.

Laughing maniacally as she twitched about, Nemza arched her back to look at us. “You left a source unguarded!”

Then, with a kick that seemed little more than a directed spasm of her painful thrashing, Nemza hit the monolith and caused it to turn. Each of us stared in shock as it rotated about to reveal a frighteningly pale and unconscious small form chained up to it, dangling by wrist manacles set roughly two metres in the air.

“Kel!!” Uké’el shrieked, rushing forwards as the rest of us stared in horror.

Before she could cross the distance, however, Nemza was on her feet once more. In a flash she had her hand around Uké’el’s throat, lifting her into the air.

Not only had her injuries vanished, but there was something changed in her. Her skin, already impossibly pale for a Moon Elf, had changed to an almost glowing sort of pale turquoise. Her scorpion tail had re-grown its stinger. Long thin horns had sprouted from her forehead. Most unsettling of all, her aura of magicka had flared to a level I realised now I had only seen briefly before.

When I had met Loj and Gauza.

Which meant… Nemza had turned herself into a deity.

Or, at least, a good approximation of one, for the time being. The way the mana was pouring off of her, it seemed likely to be a temporary affair, but not so brief we could retreat and wait it out.

Especially not when Kel was still bleeding badly.

No other choice, I called upon my last reserves of strength to charge ahead, drawing a magicka blade to swing at her. It seemed I warranted enough effort to make her drop Uké’el, but that was about it. She parried my magical blade with her bare arm, before blasting me in the face with a burst of searing magic. I collapsed onto my back, in too much pain to make any serious effort to scramble away from her.

Her foot slammed onto my chest, the force harsh enough I was certain I felt ribs cracking.

“You really were a waste of your potential, you know that?” Nemza hissed, leaning in so that her face grew uncomfortably close. “Your blood will let me achieve a more permanent apotheosis, though. So you’ll prove to have a use to your existence.”

She raised her arm, summoning some new terrifying spell before driving it into my still good shoulder, new pain racing through me. While I was still screaming from that agony, I saw that she was starting on another dark magical attack. My mind was in no state to even brace for the pain. About all I could do was let a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable fill me.

It was likely I was going to die here. As well everyone else. Then Nemza would become a deity, consuming my abilities the way the current gods had drawn our power from the Moon God. My legacy was to be the greatest failure in history… wonderful.

Before she hit me with whatever she’d had planned, however, a spray of strange tendrils burst from the ground, smashing through the stone floors. These were physical, rather than magical, and seemed to come in such endless numbers to be able to restrain even a goddess.

My head fell to the side in exhaustion, and I saw that Aara was apparently controlling whatever they were. With that distraction, Sukura rushed to my side, helping me to sit up while Uké’el worked to get her son down from the stone plinth.

“Are you ok?” Sukura asked, propping me up.

“No, but…” I started to say, until I felt a wave of mana building up under the web of root-like structures encasing Nemza.

There was no way the others could get to safety in time. All I could do was throw myself forward, wrapping a magic shield around Nemza and the filaments. The shield held for a brief moment, absorbing just enough magical force to ensure it was a just barely non-lethal shockwave that blasted us when the shield did break.

I was thrown into the air, slamming back first into a pillar. Pain shot through me, and then—

-

In the humid privacy of the jungle, while we were out hunting, I told my father I was a woman. He stared at me confused, and then—

-

Standing at the altar, I was empty as I gave my wedding vows to the man my family had chosen for—

-

Watching my mother stir the food in the wok, I wanted to—

-

The memories began to flash by too quickly to latch on to. They were no longer moments but simple feelings. Then impressions of feelings.

Then I was standing in a chamber made of the solid clouds of the realm of the gods. Loj, Gauza, Parazen, and others stood around me, while I was in chains.

“You have been nothing but trouble, Vazehr. We need unity, as long as the forces of Discord are out there,” Loj explained.

Looking to the others, I hunted for any signs of dissent. Parazen looked uncomfortable with the affair, but there was resignation in his eyes. He’d told himself this was a necessary evil. His look of defeat was the best hope I found among the assembly.

“Obedience is the word you’re after, Loj. Not unity,” I said, even as I knew I had lost. “You want the power of the Moon King for yourself.”

“We all agreed on the hierarchy. You accepted my position as leader,” Loj replied in a dismissive tone. “That I would be the strongest of us.”

“I accept the idea of your command. You’re the best warrior of any of us. Traits that make a good military commander do not always translate to a good peacetime leader, however,” I muttered.

“The enemy is still out there,” Gauza said, as much to herself and the others as to me. “We only managed a tentative ceasefire. Not a true victory.”

“Mhm. And that is the reason we will keep you at the ready, Vazehr. But you must be somewhere you can not cause trouble. So, I offer you two options,” Loj said, “you may join the Stone Queen, who you care for so deeply, and wait in the depths of Abattus with her. Or you may have your spirit placed in a nearby realm, living as a mortal, but ready to be called to us if needed.”

Both options stung, both only a step above death. “I would see what you did to the world from Abattus, while having no ability to stop you. If I must be powerless… let me have an existence where I might still remember hope and love.”

That answer did not seem to please Loj, and I gained some small satisfaction from that. It did not make what followed any less painful, however…

-

My eyes shot open, to see a desperate battle before me. Not far from me, Sukura lay on the ground, bleeding but still breathing. Across the half collapsed throne room, Uké’el was cradling the stump of what remained of her left arm, Kel laying behind her and looking closer to death than life.

Nemza’s attention was focused on the two still standing members of the party. It seemed the blast had broken Ne’avo free, the princess still in her bloodlusted fury. While she would no doubt have been losing her battle with her monstrous cousin on her own, Aara was still supporting her, able to limit Nemza’s fighting ability with what I now recognised as fungal mycelia.

All but endless fungal matter, brought on by Nemza’s own actions. She had killed an entire continent’s worth of plants and animals. But she had not stopped nature, for nature was death and decomposition as much as it was life and growth. Even though Aara was letting out shrieked and panicked laughter as the battle raged, I could feel her determination to awaken the continent’s forces of decay.

She had good odds of succeeding, if she were given time. I realised that as other memories of the sum of all my lives from the present back until my time as Vazher flooded into the depths of my mind. Aara had stumbled into being more powerful than she likely realised. Unfortunately, Ne’avo would only be able to buy her so much time.

And so I had to act. Bringing my hand up to the wound Nemza’s stinger had given me, I felt through my body, to reach the traces of Discordance she’d injected. I isolated them with magic and pulled, drawing them out of my body with a wave of relief. Then I stood up, the various wounds of my body beginning to close up without that poison in my veins.

Holding out my hand, I forged a new blade from my mana, not a fragile and ephemeral magicka blade, but a true magical construction like the sword of Loj. A solid manifestation of my magical will.

“Your actions have been weighed, Nemza, Mistress of Darkness,” I announced, remembering the words of judgement I’d used long ago. “You have been found guilty of unforgivable crimes.”

Breaking free of the latest rush of mycelia and pinning Ne’avo, she turned to me, a look of surprised confusion on her face.

“How are you…” she began to ask.

I pointed my blade towards her, aimed at her chest while I still stood some metres from her. “It takes more than that to kill a deity… all you managed to do was get me close enough to death to feel across the barrier to my past lives. Back across three thousand years to remember my divine nature.”

For the first time, a look of fear flashed across her face. She let go of Ne’avo and charged towards me, releasing a burst of magical attacks. In return, I let go of my sword, allowing it to follow its new gravity to plunge into her chest before raising a magical shield against her attacks. I held the shield up for no longer than necessary, though, and dashed forwards to grab the sword and draw it from her chest.

With a two handed grip, I swung it through her right arm. Cleaving it from her body just a burst of mycelia erupting from the ground to pull that arm down into the earth to be devoured. Then I plunged the sword into Nemza’s gut, and drove forward, to shove her into the nearest wall. I could feel her temporary godhood draining from her as she squirmed on the blade, the injuries draining her limited mana reserves as her magic tried to heal her.

“You may beg for forgiveness,” I hissed, keeping her pinned against the stone, “ but you are beyond it. It is better for you to accept death and let it end sooner.”

She snarled, spitting dark bloody saliva into my face. “This isn’t over. I have made promises that go beyond death.”

“Then I will have to kill you again. But I will,” I replied, sliding the sword up with all my force to cut a long slice through her torso.

Towards the end I saw the edges of her wounds at last begin to dissolve to dust and I stumbled back, taking a moment to ensure she was indeed leaving this world.

At least for now.