Though, he was a bit stouter than you. He had more meat on his bones to carve off.
“And where is this god now?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Use—imagination—Moros.” Shivani plunged her freshly sharpened blade through Finnian’s ribcage.
He ground his jaws to keep from groaning out, but the sound slipped out of his throat. Agony welled up in his chest. The gush of blood coated his insides like ash to fresh paint.
Use your imagination in Moros?
His teeth chattered and his head went light.
He clenched the muscles in his arms and legs to keep his blood pressure from dropping and clung to a focal point in the back of his mind, far away from the wails of pain echoing up his torso.
Use your imagination. You are in Moros.
Shivani ripped the knife free and stepped back.
The release was as painful as it was relieving. A river of warmth consumed his pant legs. Ragged, wheezing breaths escaped him.
He rolled his neck to lift his head. “Enlighten me.”
With a casual stroke of her arm, she flung the blood from her blade to the side. It splashed and stained bright crimson along the dark stone of the wall.
Finnian focused on her mouth, watching for her response.
Her lips quirked, as if she found his sudden curiosity towards the subject amusing. “The god is trapped inside his own purgatory. He’s no longer a High God. Lost that title decades after he was imprisoned.”
Apersonalizedhell created by Cassian. If Finnian had to guess, his father would be in a similar place.
“Do enjoy our time together, Finny, because the same brutal fate awaits you.” She inched closer. Her tight ponytail pulled back her brunette strands, revealing the glossy bronze skin of her cheeks smudged with his blood. The tip of her blade pressed against the skin of his throat. “Now, be a good boy and tell me where the Himura demigod’s blood is?”
The rush of his internal sounds slowly quietened, making it significantly easier for him to hear her out of his left ear against the silent background of the room.
He stared at her, expressionless, keeping the view of her lips in his periphery to avoid mistaking any of her words—with the added benefit of provoking her. “If it’s the Himura demigod’s blood you seek, why doesn’t Lord Cassian simply go steal some from the veins of my darling nephew?”
Naia, with her new title as the High Goddess of Eternity, remained an uncertainty to the Council. They would not risk starting a feud until they learned more about her power.
The executioner snapped forward, baring its barbed teeth, clearly unamused. A deep-chested growl rumbled in the space between it and Finnian.
Shivani retracted the blade from his throat and examined the sharpness of the tip. “I suppose the time has come for me to leave you to the executioners. This one seems rather testy and in need of a meal.”
Finnian gauged the beast invading his space—nose absent, two rows of teeth split across its face. Its wrinkled, leathery skin looked as if it had once been the flesh of a human, melted and burned to a crisp, the remains solidified. It was truly a horrendous-looking creature.
Prior to his time in Moros, he’d never actually seen an executioner’s face. They were notorious for keeping them hidden in the depths of their hooded cloaks or behind their masks—ashen and made of the bones probably scattered throughout Moros.
Seldomly did Finnian think anything of them. Monsters existed all over, born from divine power or from the wombs of deities. Their intimidating statures, insidiously tall and lanky, and their reputations as devils lurking in the shadows of the Land of the Dead had never frightened Finnian.
That was, until they escorted him into the godsforsaken dungeon he was currently in, bound him in place, and feasted on him for days on end.
He’d black out and have to crawl out of an abyssal landscape—one of Cassian’s illusions. The High God would appear before him, and in a blink, Finnian would descend back into that umbral darkness.
The executioner’s reptilian eyes flickered with an edge of excitement that made Finnian’s skin writhe. If he were honest, the last thing he wanted was to endure another round of the fiendish creature ripping him apart with their teeth.
Out of the two evils, he preferred the goddess of slaughter.
“How many times are you going to let them feast upon my flesh in the name of your defeat?” Finnian gave an exhausted chuckle, dropping his head to focus on the rosy puddle collecting beneath him. The prickling sensation was already dissolving beneath his skin and numbing the misery. “It is no wonder you are a mere middle goddess.”
Shivani forcefully gripped Finnian’s long hair and ripped his head back. Pain ruptured across his scalp like pinpricks. A humorous type of pain compared to the horrors she’d inflicted upon him in the passing months.
