The Broken Pieces(66)

Most of the camp was asleep, but he did not expect Valessa to be. Her gifted form had surpassed such a mortal need. At her tent he gathered his strength. Miles away his body lay unconscious beside the river, but his strength was the essence of his soul. It burned with fire, with faith, for why should it not? He was Karak made flesh, the god of Dezrel come to save them all. Into the tent he stepped, and he discovered Valessa’s capabilities for blasphemy had stretched even further than he gave her credit for. In the cot beside her slept Darius, the traitor paladin.

For one brief moment he dared feel fear. He remembered his shame in Willshire, when he’d fled from that glowing blade. But his strength had been like that of a child compared to the power he wielded now. A needed lesson, he told himself. A reminder that his power could indeed be limited if he closed his mind and did not fully embrace his godhood.

“Hello Valessa,” Cyric said, focusing his attention on her. He didn’t need to introduce himself, for her whole body shimmered with fear at his entrance.

“How are you here?” she asked.

At this, he laughed.

“You stand before your god, yet ask such simple questions. Is that your deficiency? Is that why you so easily gave into fear and cowardice?”

There was no way for her to deny it. Her terror held her immobile. Cyric walked closer, and a red glow shone from every surface of his body.

“You’re not my god,” she said, but it was such a weak denial. “You’re a madman.”

“Mad, perhaps,” he said. “I am mad when I see you walking free in this world. I am mad when I see others spitting in the face of the one who gave them life. But you’re wrong about one thing, Valessa. I am not a man.”

He outstretched his hand.

“You no longer deserve your gift,” he said. “And so I take it back.”

She started to scream, but he silenced it in a heartbeat. Power flowed from his hand, and it tore at her form. He knew she could feel pain, and what she did feel must have been intense, but it was nothing compared to what she’d feel as the eons rolled along and she burned in the purifying fires of the Abyss. The woman crumpled to her knees, and she flashed with shadow and light. Her mouth remained open in a silent, wordless scream. Tears ran down her face, and when they touched the ground they were red like blood. She looked so pitiful, so weak, but Cyric hardened his heart against mercy. This is what he’d come to do. Valessa had been given enough chances to make amends.

“Enough,” said Darius, and that single word sent a shiver through the soul-being of Cyric. Chastising himself for his fear, he turned and smiled at the traitor paladin.

“He awakes,” he said. “Not that it will change anything.”

Darius grabbed his sword from beside the bed as Cyric pointed a hand toward him. From his palm shot a great beam of shadow. The beam struck the light of Darius’s sword, and then they battled as Cyric tried to pour more of his power into his attack. Being separated from his body by such a great distance weakened him, but against a faithless wretch like Darius, he knew he still possessed enough. Willshire was an aberration, the mere stumbling of a child learning to walk. Curling his fingers, he poured his righteous fury into the attack. The beam halted, and instead a shadowy sword shimmered into being, striking at Darius from behind. He spun to block, but not in time. The blade passed through his armor and into his flesh. It did not break skin, and no blood splashed. Instead it set his muscles aflame, filling him with spasms that left him gasping on the floor, arms and neck straining into awkward positions. The sword fell from his grasp, the light on its blade fading away.

“Where was I?” he asked, turning back to Valessa. She still knelt, struggling to maintain form. Her skin was translucent, her features hazy and without color. She looked like an unpainted doll. The gift of Karak still flowed through her, and with a wave he beckoned it back. No longer would she profane her god. No longer would her existence eat away at his subconscious.

Shadows bled out of her, from her eyes, her nose, even the tips of her fingers. Her mouth hung open, and she thrashed upon the ground. Then she melted. It was the only way to describe the death happening before him. Her body turned liquid and ran into itself, bones like jelly, flesh peeling away to nothing.

“Stop it!” Darius cried before his jaw locked tight.

Cyric smiled. This was it, the final moments…but then as the last of the darkness was revoked, she still remained. His smile faltered. The skin and hair were gone, Valessa stripped down to her very essence. For a moment he did not see, but then the light shone. He recoiled in horror. What had happened to her? She had been one of the unfinished, a being blessed with a shadowed, shifting life, yet now the light of Ashhur burned within her. Her body reformed, the skin shimmering back over the light. When Valessa’s eyes reopened, a fury burned in them far greater than ever before.