“That was… inspiring,” Alexander said as they walked out into the sun.
“Don’t talk.”
“Sorry, I just… I don’t know how to act around a god.”
Elric turned his gaze to the sky and took a long, deep breath. “Listen to me, boy. You have a very simple job. Just tell people who I am. I will make sure that they believe you. We will do a lap of the Pleasure District, causing as much chaos as possible, and then we will join the witches, where we will make a final display that will ensure everyone in this kingdom knows I have returned.”
“I know you explained it, but…” Alexander had to hurry to catch up to him. “But why are we doing this again?”
Elric paused, stopping in the middle of the street and staring down at Alexander. Gods did not need to explain themselves to anyone, least of all a trembling worshipper like this princeling. Licking his lips, he looked around them before he just… stopped. He didn’t want to hide anymore, and he didn’t care if people overheard him.
“To give her time. Because if everyone in this district is looking at me, then no one is looking at her.”
With a determined nod, Alexander removed the tie around his neck and loosened his shirt. He rolled his sleeves up strong forearms and then took a deep, steadying breath. “Right, then. Where are we going?”
“I thought we’d start in the temple.”
“Do you want me to sacrifice to you?”
It wasn’t what he had planned, but… “That would work. I can emerge from my own sculpture. Should startle many people.”
“It’s a good time of the morning to go. Quite a few people visit the temple. It is a spectacle on its own, but also, there will be many visitors there this time of day. Considering no one seems to know what happened at Fortuna’s home yet, there are also quite a few visitors from other areas of the realm who have never seen this place before.”
It was good enough. They didn’t talk until they strode into the temple, and Elric was surprised to feel magic here. Someone had been making sacrifices in this place. Even though the gods were dead, they still clung to the hope that if they prayed, someone would answer. Few dared pray directly to him, however.
Alexander strode right to the statue, and Elric let himself fade into the shadow realm. He watched as other people looked askance at Alexander lighting incense at the Deathless One’s feet. A few people even muttered that surely he didn’t know who he was sacrificing to—until Alexander set the burning incense down at his feet and stared up at the statue that Elric and Jessamine had desecrated only a few days before.
“Deathless One,” he called out, a tinge of desperation in his tone. “Our kingdom is falling to pieces. We give our fealty to a man who murdered his wife, our queen, on the very day of their wedding. My soul is shattered with sadness for the infected who die in our streets with no one caring that they are ill. We are broken. And there is no other god to save us.”
An elderly man chuckled. “The gods are long gone, boy. No one’s listening. You might as well be talking to stone.”
Elric merged his body with the statue and prepared to put on a show.All the candles flickered as though a gust of wind had blown through the temple, but the air was still. Then a deep groan rumbled through the room, a rasping growl that echoed in the silence.
He strode out of his statue and crouched on the dais before Alexander. Darkness clung to him in strings, like some primordial ooze birthing him out of his own statue, strings of it dripping onto the floor in wet, echoing plops. Slowly, he looked up to meet Alexander’s gaze.
Someone gasped.
Another screamed.
Then all fell silent again as they stared at the god who had just appeared before them. A god who rose before Alexander and cupped his chin in his hand. He made the young man look at him, so that they both knew this moment was very, very real.
“You’ve done well,” he said, his voice amplified by magic and power. “This kingdom is full of those who have forgotten who I am.”
He let his gaze linger on all the sacrifices left at the altars of his siblings. And the hatred he felt in that moment was very real. He hated that all of these people had seen value in his siblings yet constantly overlooked him.
He was a god, one more powerful than any of his siblings, but they had never seen him as worthy of their attention. Instead, all these mortals had looked at him as a visage of evil. Shadows begot madness, and therefore, he was evil. Surely there wasn’t anything good in a creature who served a coven of witches, who fed the creatures they had long feared.
All that anger stretched out of his skin. He could feel it growing in waves of darkness that spread out from his throat like a cape, joining the wings that slowly emerged from the statue behind him and grew wider as he stood to his great height.
“Perhaps I need to remind you all why I am called the Deathless One.”
Then he felt it. The thrum of sacrifice pulsing through the connection to his coven. He could feel that blackness stretching throughout the kingdom, seeping into his skin and bloating him with even more power.
He lifted his arms above his head and released his shadows to snuff outthe lights. One by one. And then he filled the statues of his siblings with dark magic. They all stepped down from their pillars, the crunching of stone echoing in the room. Screams joined the sound of stone on stone. And soon enough, he strode out of the building with the ghosts of his siblings walking behind him. Or at the very least, the stony visages of the gods who once were.
A crowd had gathered in front of the temple. Their gazes turned to him as he spread his wings wide at last. It had been such a long time since he’d allowed his magic to really stretch around him, to be the glorious god who had once terrified this kingdom.
“Where is my coven?” he snarled, the words cast out like a net around the people who stood and stared at him.
