The landscape of Granon’s soulscape was dominated by an oppressive darkness, centered on the hollow remains of a home. It was a bleak place, made of flimsy walls and whispering shadows. Or it had been. Gone were the walls, and the broken hopes they contained. The darkness lingered, hemming in two figures and lurking in every forgotten corner.
Granon rose to his feet, his knees and arms trembling as he pushed off the ground. His fingertips wandered the width and length of his body, making sure everything was what and where it should be. Azarus reached out his hand at eye level, and patted Granon on the knee. By his judgment, Granon now stood taller than his father. He would tower over the skinwalker if this change was both physical and spiritual. That remained to be seen.
Regardless, in terms of true giants, Granon’s new physique was an ant’s compared to Kuscal’s standard form. Azarus preferred this height, though. It had all the poetic sense Kuscal lacked. A son, seeking the strength to overcome the challenge that laid his father low. A giant, standing on the shoulders of those that came before in an era of increasing diminishment. To Azarus, Granon stood head and shoulders over the petty, greedy god who only sought to protect his own power.
Azarus beamed up at Granon, not bothering to pretend to be intimidated by the mortal’s newfound height. It was a thought that never passed through his mind. The giantkin was still a trembling little boy at heart. Time would tell if he had the dedication to follow through with the choice he made. Until then, there was no reason to doubt him. The die was cast the moment Azarus reached for Granon in the mirror.
“Fight till the last drop, my little giant. Win or lose, wager everything on yourself and I will be proud.”
Granon clenched and unclenched his oversized hands, forming and reforming them into titanic fists. He nodded once, short and sharp, the same way Moka tended to.
Azarus reveled in the expanding feeling that filled his chest. He watched Granon’s transformation and felt the treacherous creep of hope and expectation travel down his spine. Resisting the tugging sensation of the chains that bound him, Azarus basked in the moment as long as he could. Soon, all the cards would be on the table. Granon would display his conviction and commitment to fight for all to see. Win or lose, for better or for worse.
The tugging on the other end of the chains became urgent. It demanded Azarus’s attention and compliance. Azarus let a slow breath out through his nose, staving off the demands for a moment more. He flexed his will, claiming a portion of Granon’s soulscape as his property. From the portion, he built the likeness of a small shrine tucked away into the roots of a majestic tree. Outside of the shrine, a brazier burned with tri-color flame.
With a voice like a sigh, Azarus left his last instructions and let the chains whisk him away. His words lingered even after he was gone.
“Worship me here.”
His words were twofold. Azarus was betting Granon was smart enough to figure it out, but it might not matter. You could lead a horse to water, but you could not force it to fight a monster wearing its father’s skin.
Azarus opened his eyes, facing the Mirror of Eons. His first thought was that his horse metaphor was not quite right. He was fairly certain he could, in fact, force a horse to fight a skinwalker, depending on how much access he had to his domain. His second thought was one of relief. In the mirror, he could see that time had slowed to a crawl while he was playing with Kuscal and negotiating with Granon.
Moka and Granon stood side by side, facing the gloating skinwalker. Dirt walls and the sides of empty dwellings hemmed them on either side. A plump moon and a sea of stars illuminated the world in soft shadows. High above their heads, a river of wind attacked the towering pillar of clouds that rested on the mountain peak.
Moka held her chin high, facing the skinwalker with a straight back and squared shoulders. Exhaustion shone through her ruby eyes. Her minor gift of Vigor had all but failed her. It was carved into every inch of her battered body. Regardless, she held herself like someone who wouldn’t know the meaning of surrender, even if they were bound head to toe in white flags. She held her wooden spear tucked under her elbow like a lance, ready to fly towards certain death.
Granon leaned forward with his hands splayed. His furrowed brow framed damp, overly bright eyes. He seemed moments away from breaking down in a panic. However, he faced the skinwalker, his lips set in a firm line. His weight was forward, every line of his posture showing his intent to fling himself at the skinwalker. He was not allowing his fear to rule him.
The skinwalker watched its prey with a lazy eye. It sat on its haunches, licking a single talon with its elongated, barbed tongue. Hanging from its grotesque antlers, Zmei’s dismembered arm waved as if to say hello.
Azarus blinked, and the world in the mirror snapped into motion. The sound of howling wind rose to a crescendo, causing the skinwalker’s eyes to flick up to the mountain peak. There, it saw the titanic pillar of clouds being torn apart by raging winds.
Moka’s attention locked onto the spear in her hand. Her moderate gifts of Reason and Foresight worked overtime as she noticed a sudden shift. Acting fast, she slipped Granon’s hand as he went to throw her. Then, everything changed.
Azarus’s attention flicked to the side of the mirror, where a new screen appeared, addressed to Granon.
Boon [Miraculous Boon of Azarus] Granted!
[Miraculous Boon of Azarus]: In exchange for your lifelong servitude, the god Azarus has granted you a chance to tip the scales. Use it wisely.
That was what Granon saw. Azarus’s screen peeled back the layers.
[Miraculous Boon of Azarus]: Granon gains temporary access to Moderate gifts of Luck, Might, and Savvy. Over time, effects will disperse. Some residual changes may linger.
Azarus was too busy watching Granon like a hawk for changes to roll his eyes. He did not let that keep him from sneering in the departing screen’s direction. All those Divine Points, all that effort, and the screens dared reduce his boon to a fleeting list of gifts? Pathetic.
To Azarus’s satisfaction, the screens downplayed exactly how much his intent affected the outcome of the boon. A mote of brilliant tri-color flame rose from between the crease of Granon’s furrowed brow. It drifted over his head, bursting into a halo of spinning fire as soon as it reached its apex. Granon’s bright eyes followed the motion, tearing away from the screen in front of him, which obediently dismissed itself. The tri-flame halo rose, expanding as it did so, going from the size of a crown to a ring of fire wider than Granon was tall. The halo seamlessly split into three separate rings, each ruled by a single color but containing the other two as glittering sparks moving through rivers of fire.
The first to move was the emerald ring. It collapsed so fast it looked like a shooting star. Breaking into two at the last possible moment, the flames plunged into Granon’s uplifted gaze. Sparks of emerald flame shot from his eyes. His gaze shifted without warning, leaving behind the burning halos and landing on the distracted skinwalker. Before he could process what he was seeing, Granon was already stepping forward.
With its attention fixed on the wind shredding the clouds, the skinwalker missed Granon’s initial transformation. Moka, to the side, did not. She touched her forehead and muttered a prayer that tickled Azarus’s ear like an intimate whisper.
“Thank you, Lord of Chaos, for your incomprehensible works.”
Azarus absently flicked the mirror where Moka stood. He was going to have to do something about that. This run, Moka’s respectful dedication was at least partially because of a misunderstanding. It was convenient, but the misrepresentation could not stand.
As Granon took his second step, charging toward the monster, the golden halo of fire flared. Tongues of flame reached out from the ring like the spokes of a wheel, forming into a sphere in the center. When the sphere reached its threshold, a pillar of golden fire descended, washing over Granon’s skin. With each subsequent step, the fire soaked into his skin, giving it a golden hue. His steps grew heavier and stronger until they broke the earth and caused the surroundings to tremble. He ran with the quaking footsteps of a giantkin twice his size, but did not grow a single inch. The phenomenon made Azarus feel a smug satisfaction. It tickled his sense of poetic justice.
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The gray halo descended, condensing in on itself as it settled over the crown of Granon’s head. It pulsed and gray ash fell. Syncing its rhythm with the beat of Granon’s heart, the halo sent cloud after cloud of ash spiraling down. The ash draped across his head and shoulders, trailing behind him like a deteriorating cloak. Or wings.
Azarus made a mental note that his domain manifested as fire and wings. It felt like a clue into his nature he had ignored for too long.
The skinwalker’s gaze snapped back to his prey. It was too late to dodge. Granon was bearing down, his eyes leaving a burning trail of emerald fire. In the night air, his skin looked like pale, burnished gold. Gray embers billowed out from beneath his outstretched fingertips like smoke from signal fires. The packed dirt trembled so hard it broke like stone beneath the force of his footsteps, leaving impact craters in his wake. The three diminished halos had merged back together and dully swirled over Granon’s head.
The skinwalker reeled. It crossed over itself in its hurry to scramble out of the way. Maintaining the presence of mind to defend itself, it lowered its twisted antlers like a thorny shield. Granon’s eyes blazed green. Gray ashes coated his hands like gauntlets. He slammed into the skinwalker like an avalanche.
Granon’s outstretched hands latched onto the creature’s antlers. He planted his feet. The ground creaked beneath his tremendous weight. With a mighty roar, he heaved, twisting his arms and back like he was wrestling a ship’s wheel in a storm. The monster’s back legs slipped out from under it as Granon wrenched to the side. It slammed, back first, against the dirt wall, embedding an impression of its bony back. Muscles bulged beneath Granon’s golden skin as he yanked the skinwalker’s antlers back in the other direction. The skinwalker twisted with the motion, hands and hooves scrabbling at the dirt, desperate to keep Granon from snapping its neck.
Azarus’s attention flicked to Moka. Living up to his expectations, he found her cradling the tip of her wooden spear in cupped hands. A quick inspection revealed she had caught a tri-color spark and was breathing life into it. It did not take long. Moka’s Major gift of Savvy at work, no doubt. A snap like a frozen branch in winter echoed in the alley.
Azarus focused back on Granon. The skinwalker was tearing at his chest with its tongue and talons. Each strike seemed to pass through a tendril of ash, softening the blows. Even weakened, the skinwalker’s talons left bloody furrows on Granon’s golden skin, turning his chest into a shredded mess. Granon ignored the blows, choosing to leverage the antlers to jerk the creature’s neck back and forth with no regard for defending himself. The skinwalker’s rear legs limply pawed at the ground, disconnected from the rest of its body.
Granon released the antlers with one hand and pulled back his fist, no longer content with holding the beast. Azarus half expected Granon to spout a witty comment, but all he did was growl. To his credit, it was as if the spirit of an ancient wolf inhabited his body. Ferocity, fueled by pain, fear, and rage, saturated the sound with such intensity it was almost a physical thing.
The once haughty skinwalker scrambled backwards on its hands, twisting and pulling its antlers with all its might. A crack like lightning pierced through Granon’s rumbling growl as the branch of antlers he was holding snapped off. His punch passed close enough to the skinwalker’s face that it left a smear of ash across the polished white bone.
Too injured to hide and too arrogant to run, the skinwalker lunged forward, mouth wide open to devour Granon’s flesh. An effective strategy, in Azarus’s experience. He could not fault the creature. However, it had forgotten it was facing two foes. Three, if you counted the god orchestrating its demise.
The first flaming rock caught the skinwalker in the cheekbone, right beneath its blackened eye socket. It exploded in a small fireball, the force of the impact pushing the creature off target. Instead of his sternum, it latched onto Granon’s arm, desperately burrowing its tongue into his flesh. Moka’s second projectile was already flying from her makeshift sling. She stood on top of the leftmost dirt wall, looking down. Her coat and blazer were gone, displaying the white-collared shirt and suspenders she wore beneath. She had planted her spear, butt-first, into the ground next to her. The tip burned like a torch, casting colored light.
Before the next projectile landed, Moka picked up a loose rock and dipped it into the tri-flame. The fire clung to the rock like an alien moss, eating away the outer edges and shaping the rock into a sphere. Heedless of the burns covering her claws, Moka dropped the rock into a cloth sling, cut from her coat. A coat which was now a pile of disposable slings at her feet. She whirled the burning sphere overhead, releasing it after a handful of rotations. Without looking where it landed, she dropped the smoldering piece of cloth and grabbed another one.
A fiery hail of stones coated in Azarus’s domain battered the skinwalker. It raised a hand to ward off the blows, allowing Granon the space to slip a hand to where it was gnawing at his shoulder. Forcing his hand between its jaws, skin like ash gauntlets working overtime to keep his fingers attached, he grabbed its thorny, tubular tongue. His thumb and forefinger flush with where the tongue pierced his body, Granon pulled up and out. With his other hand, he grabbed the monster’s antlers and pushed with all his might.
For a moment, the skinwalker could resist. It dug the talons of its free hand into Granon’s back, pulling itself closer with incredible strength. However, Granon was not trying to pull the tongue out of his own body. He was trying to pull it out of the skinwalker’s. Inch by inch, the muscles attaching the tongue to the skinwalker’s throat gave way.
Feeling pain and sensing danger, the skinwalker tried to pull away. It planted its warding hand to push off the ground and released Granon’s back to claw at the hand clutching its tongue. A lucky stone struck the skinwalker in the crook of its elbow as it went to leverage its strength. The explosion caused its arm to buckle, robbing it of its expected support in a critical moment. Granon’s eyes were emerald infernos as he capitalized.
Granon pushed and pulled, drawing from an endless pool of strength. His wounds smoldered, the burnt edges reaching for each other. Using his grasp on the creature’s antlers as leverage, he forced it to the ground with one hand, using the rest of his body to pull up with all his strength. The tongue ripped free in a gout of blackened blood.
The skinwalker tried to speak. All it could manage was a dark gurgle, blood leaking from the bony jaws of its deer-skull face. At last, it tried to flee, pulling its broken body across the ground by its hands, using its strength and reach to move fast. A constant rain of tri-colored fireballs kept it off-balance despite its speed.
Granon’s eyes burned as he watched the skinwalker run. A dim gray halo hovered over his head, illuminating his face in soft shadows. He took a step forward, then hesitated, his gaze drawn to his torn chest and the barbed tongue still buried in his shoulder. For every heartbeat he wasted, the skinwalker pulled itself further away, back toward where they had left the elders.
Azarus could see the scene playing out in his mind. Granon squandering this opportunity with his indecisiveness. The skinwalker recovering its strength by feeding on the others. Then, a final reckoning featuring the strengthened monster and a diminished Granon. Or Granon could finish what the skinwalker started, right here and now.
Thankfully, Azarus’s champion also saw reason. A fiery sphere took Granon in the back as he hesitated for a moment too long. The explosion knocked him forward, despite the cloak of ashes blocking the bulk of the blast. He stumbled to keep his balance. His eyes flashing with anger, Granon shot a look in Moka’s direction. She screamed at him, shouting the same words over and over until it sounded like an undulating war cry.
Confusion, then understanding, flashed behind Granon’s eyes. Moka was screaming, “kill it.”
Granon’s features hardened. He titled his head back and screamed his defiance to the open sky. Mid-roar, he yanked the still twitching tongue out of his shoulder, blood flowing from the open wound. A fraction of a second later, the blood slowed, then stopped. The wound smoldered. It was as though the hole in his shoulder was burning itself closed, replacing wounded tattered flesh with fresh, unmarred muscle and skin.
Rope-like, barbed tongue in hand, Granon chased after the skinwalker. His legs beat the earth like a drum, building momentum with each heavy step. The skinwalker used its claws to scramble up the dirt wall. It slipped. Granon’s charge, like a cascading series of earthquakes, caused the relatively loose wall to collapse like sand under the skinwalker’s bulk.
Relentless, the skinwalker tried again, finding success in its diligence. Granon caught it by a trailing hoof. He half pulled it down and half used it as an anchor to climb up, still clutching the skinwalker’s tongue in hand.
The emerald fire in Granon’s eyes burnt to embers as he clawed his way up to straddle the monster’s back. What remained was a mix of cold-fury and something else. That something else reminded Azarus of when he had first seen the giantkin, harvesting gourds with the same look in his eye.
As Granon wrapped the skinwalker’s own tongue around its neck, batting away its furious struggles, the fury faded and only the dead-eyed look of someone doing distasteful, but necessary work remained. The skinwalker fought to the end, prolonging its life in every way it could, as all living creatures tend to, even gods. It was a long, slow process. The howling wind thankfully dulled the sound of wet gasps and heavy breathing, as the skinwalker fruitlessly tried to twist out from beneath Granon.
Azarus paid special attention near the end, when Granon leaned in close and whispered in the skinwalker’s ear.
“Fe, fi, fo, fum, here is your son. He reeks of your blood and fear. You thought this would be easy, fun. But here you are, slaughtered like deer.”
With a final choking gasp, life left the spirit. Granon grabbed it by the antlers, twisting its neck until it broke with a ringing crack, making sure it was dead.