“Will you take this gift, freely offered?”
Sojo spoke to the desert. As she’d marched the last few miles the sand had thickened beneath her feet. It felt like a paved road after all the days of shifting grains. Unlike the endless dunes this was a singular rise, a slope that stretched for miles and set the energy bestowed upon her to resounding, pounding a beat in tandem with her heart as she walked.
The fog had thickened until she strode through memories as much as landscape. When it cleared she was kneeling in front of a pale man, a personification of the desert itself in robes of woven sand and holding a glowing spear.
“Yes,” the desert answered.
She reached out to the man. He seemed surprised by the gesture but helped her to her feet. “I am Dez, one of the few remaining to this place. Would you ask a boon from me, in return?”
“Please,” Sojo said, and she tried to clear her thoughts of the lingering fog. “I’ve had visions all through my travels here. I’ve read stories of the only one of your people to travel to my country, and there was a question he was never able to answer. Even the fragments in my head can’t seem to remember.” She looked up at the sky, at the streaks marring the pure blue all radiating from the center of the Sink. “What happened here, to the land, to your people, to your god?”
Dez nodded solemnly, and indicated that they should walk on, up the endless slope. “Two hundred years ago, the leaders of the seven major sects met to discuss a worrying thing. The minor gods that filled roles in our pantheon were vanishing. At first it was only a few, those sworn to Kain and his purposes, but over time the minor presences were lost in all the sects. This worried the Sworn, though they felt no change in their masters.
“Kain’s Sworn were unconcerned, they argued that they had been struck first but without great suffering or loss and reassured that no upheaval need come from it. The leaders dispersed and all thought the matter settled.
“But soon after, Laban’s worshippers discovered someone had stolen symbols of their master from her altar in the dead of night. They laughed at the fools who would openly defy their god, whose very realm was that of fate and the paths of our choices, but also feared the purpose they might serve. It was not long after that her worshippers were found dead on the roads, bodies untouched save to take the artifacts they carried.
“In the end a communion was called of all her worshippers, and it was only the ill and unmovable who did not attend. They met to discuss and warn, prepare and predict, and for the most devoted to taste from the energies of the collective power to gaze into their future. No one knows what they found, as the building burned down with all inside.”
Sojo walked silently beside him, not wanting to interrupt him for even a moment, but no words followed. Dez’s face was grim as if he was remembering people he had lost himself, though she knew he couldn’t be that old. He sighed, and spoke as they continued up the slope.
“Those who hadn’t attended spoke of voices going silent, or whispering in the night the faintest of pleas. All mourned, and all searched for the culprits, but none would be found.
“You see, Kain had made a discovery. He had been biding his time for generations, rewarding those who would carry out his commands without hesitation; those who would be consumed by the power that he granted. When he had forged a group who would obey, the god of Consumption followed his nature. His people took the sigils of other gods and laid them on his altar. He corrupted the intent within, stole the power of minor gods, and eventually took their influence entirely.
“It was no accident his first prey was the god of fate. Without her guidance, and with the stolen power to gaze down many paths, he claimed each god in turn. Of course, his followers were hardly stronger than all others combined, but each sect he consumed increased their power.
“And it was clear he granted more than any other master to his Sworn, for they moved fast and struck hard. After each battle his enemies were fewer, and in desperation the remaining gods gave their people ever-greater gifts. But soon it was only Enaia who remained, goddess of war and patronage. She clad her Sworn in holy vestments and weapons with edges of burning light, declaring war on the darkness itself.
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“Our greatest battlefield lies here in the heart of the Sink, and it is here you will find the end of our empire. We’ll be at the summit soon.” Dez gestured ahead of them, as if looking at something beyond the continued rise. “At the height of the battle, the mages felt a strength rush through their veins unlike any before. Their guiding whispers fell silent and Enaia’s Sworn trembled. Raw fire flew through the air and the ether itself felt it might unravel, and take the world with it. With a crack of thunder and the cries of hundreds of doomed chattel, the world collapsed around them.
“Kain’s sorcerers had taken all the symbols of the seven gods and burned them in the center of the field. God of war Enaia was, but no match for a pantheon corrupted to one will. Kain’s last opponent was devoured, and only he remained.
“They fell, all the rest of them, as the world sunk. Hundreds of feet it slid, until it eventually found new purchase. In the center of the battlefield a spire of rock had been expelled and left a hole, vast and bottomless. A hole to the sole surviving god.
“All knelt. First, they saw the fist of Kain rise above, and fall to grip the earth. Then the other. He drew himself upwards, and as he passed through the portal his being became flesh, and he joined us mortals in agony. He roared in defiance that this world might harm him, and when he did not die he smiled. We saw in that smile our hopes betrayed, for it was a jackal’s smile, the smile of a hungry beast gazing upon its meal.
“He stood tall, he smiled, and the earth betrayed him. The edge of the hole collapsed and he fell to the immaterial once more. From the shrieks, we knew his agony. From their slow silencing, not by a loss of pain, but by a loss of will, we know he did not recover.”
Dez smiled, his face mirroring his god’s. “We know the truth: our gods, our final god, they are all dead. But as his flesh burns and decays, it spews forth the power of death. All that might have been of him is being released, in such potency that our land is reduced to sand and grit. Our people are no more, poisoned by these miasmic clouds, his holy effigy.
“Some, though, do not die. We are the last devout of Kain, who have turned from harnessing his magic to expelling it like the poison it has become. We are as the gods once were. Powerful, nigh-unchecked, but surviving only by our will not to indulge. All that remains to us is waiting for our power to fade, and life to return where now there is only sand.”
Dez stopped and gestured forward. They had crested the summit and stared down at a crater crossed by a cracked pillar of stone. In the center was a ring of darkness, shadow hiding a void in the ground that descended into myth. Sojo stepped forward to look but felt Dez’s hand grip her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t go too close. Few return. There is a compulsion, staring into the god’s abyss, to join them in a last communion. Only faith can say where that might end.”
Sojo nodded and stepped back, feeling shivers run up her spine despite the heat. She was staring at something between religion and blasphemy, reality and dream. How would she ever explain this, when she went home?
“Is there something I can bring back, then, to show my people that these stories are true? Something to convince them?”
The man looked at her curiously, eyes tinged with sadness. He reached out to tap the ring resting on her collarbone. “Haven’t you understood by now?” he asked softly. “That trinket has protected you, given you shelter from Kain’s curse because you brought it home. You’ve marched for days without food or water, sustained only by its energy. You’re dying here, like all of us.”
Sojo shook her head. “Can I take it back, then? Go back to the Sink’s edge where I can survive, and give it to you there?”
Dez frowned. “You carry a shard of his essence, of the blessing of Kain. For hundreds of miles it protected you to return to these lands, to our hands, and now you expect to leave with it again?” He stepped closer, hand clenching tight around the ring on her necklace before she could blink. “This is not yours. It never was. And it belongs in our hands.”
He stepped back from her and snapped his fist to his chest, tearing the necklace away, and in her head the fog vanished. She looked around at the foreign landscape, sweeping her gaze from the man dressed in furs and across his fang-studded spear to the barren ground around her. The land felt suddenly alien to all her senses when the hammer-blow of weariness struck her. She teetered for a moment before collapsing onto the ground, an agony of aches exploding across her body. Sojo looked up to see Dez whisper to the inset glass.
“Thank you for your gift,” he said.
As her vision swam a shimmering began to surround him, as if waves of heat were billowing from his feet. Oily blackness poured from his ring, wafting to the ground, with wisps rising like curls of steam. All began to darken and fade.
Her vision was failing, and the last thing Sojo saw as the edges burned away was his grin, before shapeless void took the world. Then all went dark, and the light did not return.