Micheal sat as he prayed. It was the only natural position for him; he wasn’t one of those crazies that could pray and perform daily tasks, at least not yet. He didn’t pray for riches or power, nor did he pray for revenge as the others often thought of him. He prayed to the gods a promise: A promise that he would kill each and every one of them. 

Sitting on the cold stone floor of the orphanage, Micheal prayed to the Gods the visages of their destruction. He could imagine the screams, how they racked the mighty earth and tore asunder the great mountains. He thought of eldritch blood flowing in rivers, each one hundreds of spans across. He thought of those mighty skeletons; bone behemoths that they were, decorating the hills and valleys, becoming new mountains in their own right. He thought of the Gods of the Rhezket, and their billowing beards, and imagined lighting each of them aflame. He thought of the Datslow and their Gods, who valued their beauty so, and how he would strip them of it alongside their flesh. Finally, he imagined his own people's Gods. Those elder Gods that thought themselves so above it all, and he imagined the scenes of their torment. He reveled in each moment, as he had each and every day the last two years, and as he would each and every night and day to come.

He imagined each scene vividly as he prayed, and he wished only that the Gods would turn their all-seeing eyes while he did. In each prayer, there was a challenge. To pray to ones God was to gain power. The power of the shadow of a God was a mighty thing, after all, diluted though it may be. But in Micheal’s prayers, there was not a speck of his desire for power. He would receive none of their gifts because the Gods are as fickle as they are mighty, and he had no want for their borrowed strength. Micheal did not pray for power as others did. He prayed to let those mighty elder Gods know that they would be mighty only so long as he must allow them.

The candle at Micheal’s feet was snuffed out, and with it, his most valuable time of the day. No longer could he “commune with the Gods’’ as the old stuffy priests at the orphanage claimed. They would see him still, and hear his prayers, but no longer would the shadow of their taint fall upon him. They had no interest in anyone who prayed outside of their ritual. 

“By the briny and the blue…” Micheal cursed at the candle and its still-smoking wick, though cursing by those same Gods left a foul taste in his mouth. He made sure to keep his tone low, as those same stuffy old priests would not take kindly to his cursing in the Nero-Un’s own church, but old habits would not let him stop himself completely. 

Micheal stopped himself from kicking the small wax candle at his feet and rose to face the window in front of him. As he couldn’t stop himself from cursing the Gods' names', the chains of habit made him study himself as if he were a child waiting for his first apostle. 

A slight frame, one without the dense ribboned muscle of the old-sworn, and lacking any defining apostle as some of the new-sworn were inclined to seek, met his study. Old gray robes - in the style of the court-run orphanages - kept him decent. His hair he kept short to the scalp, leaving only enough to keep himself from being bald, as was the style of his homeland. So too did he keep the muddy brown hair of that same homeland. Though in his eyes there were none of his homeland's gifts, but instead a parting gift of the lower Gods. Gone were his favored brown eyes, replaced with the mark of a God. the whites of his eyes were a complete abyssal black, and there was no pupil to be seen. A line of white - the mark of the fair - was in its place.

An old hurt throbbed in Micheals's chest as he studied those eyes - his - eyes. He had been angry at first, but with time anger ebbs, and now he could only acknowledge them as his and move on. He couldn’t even rip them out if he tried. He had done just that, after all. 

He noticed no change in his appearance from his prayers and was pleased with that result. If he’d changed it would mean the shadow of the Gods had been taken in by him, and that he would not abide. He would not accept the drip-feeding of those fickle fools.

Turning away from his mirror, Micheal left his room in the lower halls of the orphanage's church and headed toward the breakfast hall. (The priests’ insisted it be called the “hall of worship to those mighty beings - blessed of the sea - who have granted unto us meat and wine.” even the other orphans disagree. Leaving Micheal, for once, in the majority.) it would be watered-down porridge or stale bread for breakfast, but it would do. Sleep was not a meal Micheal thought he could survive on for long. 

The stone hallways of the orphanage's lower halls had a way of being impassively cold. They said that in other parts of the world, the underground was a warm and humid place, but as Micheal moved through the maze-like halls of his home, he could not bring himself to believe it. How would someone know how warm it was if they couldn’t see the mist of their breath? He thought. Truly, the world was a strange place.

Exiting the lower hall, Micheal arrived at the central church of the orphanage, where each hall's representative would pray. It was a wide and beautiful room, with arched ceilings of chandeliers and masterful stonework, a place that Micheal detested to admit was the single most opulent room he’d ever been in. Red curtains adorned the walls, and tapestries decorated those without windows. Somehow it was beautiful, rather than gaudy, and Micheal could never quite understand how.

Technically, as the representative of the lower halls, he himself should have prayed here, but he wouldn’t bring himself to be among the bastards of the other halls. Everyone knew the representative of the lower halls was a joke. What purpose did a representative of the lost have in the first place? The lost had no rights, and no power. Their existence acknowledged only because of the might of the first king, who demanded their protection. Such as it was that Micheal lived in a church orphanage, where the “lost is found”. He practically laughed at the thought.

“You!” a voice spat. “Lost boy, what are you doing here? This isn’t a place for your kind, you know” the voice continued on. Its nasal cadence, only made worse by an oft-broken nose, was the trademark of one of the other hall leaders. Micheal thought his name was Aryth, leader of the first hall. Looking at the bullfrog's face confirmed the name, and his grey church robe, one with a single black line engraved upon the shoulder, confirmed his rank “This might be an orphanage, but we don't take animals.” and there it was. Micheals's favorite word to hear. Animal. lost. Someone forsaken by the Gods. powerless. the comments he could ignore, it was only natural that the petulant new sworn would decide he was an easy target. To a one, they were power-hunger pricks, and Micheal hated them for it, but he’d also accepted that a long time ago. But his powerlessness? His being forced to listen to the rat bastard in front of him spew the bile that was his insults? “Funny that you mention that, oh great leader of the first, and second-lowest, hall. Because I’ve been long meaning to ask how you yourself found sanctuary here. To think, I’d be housed in the same orphanage as nert’s anus that could talk!” Micheal said, doing his best to keep a conversational tone.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He heard sniggering at the frog-faced boy and considered leaving it there. It would be likely that he’d have to deal with it later, but it probably wouldn’t devolve into violence. “What did you just say, lost boy? Did you want to repeat that?” Aryth asked under barely hidden fury. Already his expression, normally likened to a particularly ugly toad, had twisted into a sneer. He had practically spat the words at Micheal. “I called you a talking Nert’s anus capable of speech. Clearly, I forgot to mention you were also incapable of listening. Perhaps you take after the anus of a Nert more than I had thought.” Micheal said. He cursed at himself inwardly at that. It was no secret how one became the head of a hall. Micheal himself had done it. All you needed to do was beat the brine out of anyone who thought you shouldn’t be head of the hall. He suspected that last insult would earn him a demonstration of exactly how Aryth had become the representative of the first hall.

Micheal saw Aryth’s face turn to a mask of rage and disdain. It was as if the God of war himself had taken to his mind and embued it with the warrage in its most pure form. Micheal did not see, however, the apostle that him. Nor did he hear it, or feel it coming. He did feel his body being flung toward the lower hall. He also felt his limp body make contact with the sharp points of the stairs, where he felt his arm, hip, and rib; snap, crunch and crack, respectively. 

Micheal was pretty sure he would have passed out at that point if it weren’t for the incessant, nasally laughing of that toad of a man. It forced him awake. “Is that all it takes to take out the leader of the lower hall? One measly hit with my apostle? You really are useless, Mikey,” Aryth said, laughing. Micheal despised people shortening his name. Especially people that called him Mikey.

His good arm was in front of him before he knew it. His rebuttal died on his lips as his cracked rip screamed at him for silence. That was fine. All he needed was his arm. If he could move his arm, he could fight. He could continue crawling his to that brine-filled bastard. “Yo…. you…”, he wheezed.

Micheal crawled to the base of the stairs. His arm, hip, and ribs all screamed at him to stop, but he didn’t listen. His body was his, and it would listen to him whether it liked it or not. Micheal didn’t even stop at the base of the stairs. He just crawled right up them, and into the central hall. Aryth laughed at the crippled animal before him, and the rest of the orphans laughed along with him. Their laughs fell on the deaf ears of Micheal. He never spared a second for them. He just kept crawling toward Aryth. He didn’t even notice Aryth was busy showing off his apostle to the bloodthirsty onlookers.

Some of them had shouted for Aryth to ‘finish off the animal’ and Aryth lapped up the praise like a child receiving his first apostle. Aryth waved his red scythe-like apostle back and forth as he laughed. Micheal guessed his patron God really was the war God, given the scarlet red. Still, he pushed on, inching his way along the cold stone floor of the central hall using only his unbroken left arm. 

Not one of the spectators saw the determined fury in Micheals's eyes, or the way he pushed on despite the pain pulsing through his body with each breath. In each of their eyes, there was only scorn and delight at watching this forsaken boy crawl along the floor like the animal that he was. Aryth laughed the loudest of the lot, and Micheal, beginning to feel the darkness of unconsciousness at the edge of his vision, pushed toward that sound even harder.

Micheal did not have an apostle. A gift from the Gods to serve their chosen, who were said to be the shadows of the Gods. Micheal had forsaken the fickle Gods, denied their gifts, and in doing so became lost. So lost that the Gods could never find him again. He was powerless. 

But Micheal remembered becoming lost. He remembered that miasma, as it clawed its way down his throat. He remembered being forsaken by the Gods as they tore that tiny body to pieces for its transgressions. He remembered all too well what it felt like to be truly powerless. He also remembered what he found in the miasma. That object, in the cold darkness at the edge of consciousness. It was the promise of the elder Gods. those that were there before the Gods, and those that will remain long after. They are not fickle beings as the Gods are. Nature is not fickle. The earth is not fickle. The sky does not favor or detest. They simply are.

Micheal hated them, as well. He hated them for not saving his sister and allowing the Gods to take his family from him. He hated them just as much as the old Gods and the New, and he would see them die along with the rest. Alas, the gifts of the elder Gods are not so easily refused. 

Micheal, chosen of the elder Gods, crawled his decrepit, broken body along the stone floor of the central hall. He was weak, and he would not deny it. The only apostle to his name was the trick of a lesser wind God; the eyes that were his most hated feature. He had no weapon, no trick, no secret technique. Only the will to fight and one good arm with which to crawl.

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Aryth Selent laughed at the crippled form of the boy at his feet. This “leader of the lower dorm” was the lowest of any of the leaders. Even he, as the lowly leader of the first hall, the hall of the New-sworn, those sworn to the weakest of the lesser Gods, was able to beat him easily.

His one and only apostle was the blood scythe before him. It had a long, red hile, tipped with an even deeper red scythe on its end. It needed his blood to bring it into existence, and for that it was strong. The lesser war God, Arythx, Aryth’s namesake, had given him an excellent apostle. Using it to crush the pathetic and the weak was exactly as intended, and so he feared no reprisals for this act. Some of the other lesser Gods frowned upon such pointless cruelty, but Arthyx desired it above all else, and Aryth was happy to oblige.

With one final heft of his scythe, Aryth attempted to decapitate the animal at his feet. No one would miss the runt of the pack much. Maybe he’d get an earful from Sam later, but she’d just have to live with that.

With the power that his prayer had left him with, Aryth was easily able to swing the scythe down upon the boy's head, and with sharp anticipation, waited to meet the faint resistance that was the boy's neck. Crack. 

There it was. The runt's pitiful little neck would be split in two. The sound of a snapping neck was music to the young man's ears, and he bellowed his powerful laugh into the hall. Looking down to see the beautiful decapitated head of his victim, Aryth’s laugh caught in his throat. 

There was no scythe biting into the floor. Nor was there a rolling head to give his God (and himself) what he so desperately wanted. Where his scythe met was a white and black crystalline shield, cracked severely in two, over the fierce eyes of the runt. 

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Micheal looked at the crystal dome around him and screamed in an incomprehensible scream of defiant rage. He had been tainted. He had an apostle.

Already he could feel the crystal eek its way into his blood, making its way into his soul. He tried screaming for it to get out, to leave him to his death, but it wouldn’t listen. The gifts of the elder Gods are not up for negotiation. Nor are they bound by the notion of prayer. They are as the earth is. Immovable, irrefutable. 

Once more screaming, Micheal felt the crystal reach his bones. Each crack mended with black and white crystal, held together in proper order once again. His once broken ribs exploded in agony with each word, but Micheal couldn’t care less. Internally the crystal-coated each and every surface, organ, and bone in the most exquisite display of pain that Micheal had ever known. Even the petulant screams of Aryth were drowned out completely by the pain.

Micheal thought he felt Aryth’s scythe bite into him a few times, shattering bones and crystals alike. But the work of elder Gods cannot be tampered with before its completion, and the agony overwhelmed him. He could feel the crystal creeping into his blood itself, and finally, he passed out.

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Samantha Cald looked at the bruised and blackened form of her oldest friend, and felt a tear tug at the corner of her eye. She schooled her expression, but the burning in her throat and the wetness at the edges of her eyes told her it hadn’t worked nearly as well as she hoped.

They said he was barely alive after Aryth and his apostle were done with him. The only thing that saved him was one of the priests getting annoyed they were bloodying the carpet. Micheal was only alive because someone decided the carpet might get dirty. That thought made Samantha incredibly sad.

Looking at the rise and fall of Micheals's chest, she wondered if he felt the same.