She felt cold in an ethereal way. She felt like she was in an ocean, and she was the ocean. The ocean was black and it was still.

There was a light behind her. She couldn’t see the source, but she could see its rays reach over her shoulders into the ocean.

That light felt warm against her back. It could burn her, but it didn’t. Its name was Ganthy.

She was here before. She was here many times, but she hadn’t been here in a while.

But… if she was here now, that meant that…

There were whispers behind her, far away. She wanted to turn her head, but in this dream she was paralysed as much as she was lucid.

The whispers sounded panicked. There were two of them and they were coming for her, rushing. The hairs on her neck stood as the whispers came into her ears.

Ailaurus sat up and threw the blanket off of herself. Ganthy was sleeping beside her. Treyus slept in a bed on the other side of the room. She stared at her legs for a moment, waiting.

H̶̟̅e̸͙͘l̶̝̃l̷̥̀ỏ̶̯?̸̧̊

She jumped out of the bed. “Where have you been?” she whispered a yell.

Ĺ̵̙o̵͔͛o̴̧͊k̶̺̒i̶̮͐n̵̝͑g̵̟̈́ ̷̗̄f̴͇̃ó̶̥r̸̪̀ ̶͗ͅỹ̶͎o̶̬̐u̶̧͛.

She paced the room. “What happened? I was… I felt lost. I thought he’d killed you somehow. What did he do?”

H̷e̸ ̴c̶u̶t̵ ̶u̸s̷ ̷o̵f̴f̸ ̷f̵r̵o̴m̷ ̴y̷o̵u̶.̸ ̴W̶e̵ ̶d̴o̸n̴'̸t̶ ̵k̶n̸o̸w̶ ̸h̶o̵w̵.̶

“Is there a way we can stop him from doing it?”

The spirits said nothing for a moment.

W̷e̷ ̷w̴e̵r̷e̶ ̴u̷n̵p̴r̴e̸p̷a̴r̶e̵d̶.̴ ̵I̸f̴ ̵w̵e̶ ̷s̵e̷e̸ ̸i̶t̴ ̷c̶o̷m̶i̴n̴g̶,̸ ̵w̷e̶ ̸c̷o̷u̵l̵d̴ ̵h̷o̵l̴d̵ ̶o̶n̷t̴o̵ ̸y̷o̷u̴.̸

Ailaurus nodded and sighed. She sat on the bed and got under the blankets, moving slowly to not wake Ganthy. She told them what had been happening. She told them about how they’d almost been killed, but were saved by a vampire. She told them about the vampire’s story on how vampires came to be. Vampires existed to hunt power. Power was always a concern to the gods. She theorized that everybody had it, however little. Sacrifices and religion… they were schemes to farm what little power every person had inside them.

Light was coming in through the window now. Ailaurus wasn’t tired. Even if she were, the happiness she felt for getting her spirits back made up for it. All of them up early, they were ready for the final stretch of their journey. Before they left, Treyus graciously thanked his friends at the inn for letting them stay for free.

This side of the isles, it was cold. They were near the Sneulands, where everything was covered in white. Treyus, being Banak, was raised in snow. Ailaurus came here at a young age, but she never got used to it. For all of Ganthy’s short life, it had never felt a proper cold. Ailaurus carried it, both to keep it warm and to keep its bare feet off of the damp ground. They were close enough to the Sneulands to get some of its cold, but not enough to get any of its snow. When the clouds fell, it wasn’t pretty. It was just wet and inconvenient.

Treyus and Ailaurus stopped and looked at each other. “And so it comes to an end,” he said.

“For now.”

“For now.” He nodded.

Ganthy lifted its head off of Ailaurus’ shoulder and looked at Treyus. “Make sure you nag Ailaurus to bring you to visit my tribe,” he said. “I’ll show you what it’s like to live a life among beasts. Perhaps we shall go find one of your namesakes.” He patted Ganthy’s head, then smiled to Ailaurus and walked away from them, to the isles that were white with snow.

Ganthy looked at Ailaurus, then back at Treyus, confused. Why was he leaving?

Ailaurus hiked Ganthy up and kept walking. Ganthy continued to watch Treyus until he was too far to see.

“Your life is going to change,” Ailaurus said. “For better, I hope.”

Ganthy rested its chin on her shoulder, watching the forest slip away behind them.

“But you will like it here… No more Zathiri. No more sacrifices… You will be able to play and grow as a child should.”

She made it sound as if they were almost there, but they still walked for some time. Their arrival was signaled by yelling. Ganthy looked ahead of them. A stone wall with a wooden gate stood high. People stood atop it; some had spears and some had bows. One of them, looking down at Ailaurus, smiled then turned to show a hand signal to somebody on the other side.

Things knocked each other and the gate opened slowly, scraping across the ground and leaving streaks in the mud. “Welcome home, Woman of Hell!” the man yelled down at her. She smiled and waved up at him. She walked forward, off the wet ground and onto the cobblestone path. The man at the gate welcomed her and she smiled at him and continued. Ganthy looked at all the buildings, high just like Bridge City’s. Ailaurus put Ganthy down and held its wrist. People all around looked to see who was let in. Some of them went on with their lives. Some of them smiled and came to greet her and Ganthy was forced to hide behind her as she walked. The curious people tried to interact with it, but Ailaurus stopped them and explained that it was still adjusting.

They all looked at it and its stumps sympathetically. They looked sad, but they smiled. She took the first opportunity to get away from everyone and walked Ganthy into the city, towards good smells, into a hall where people sat at rows of tables with bowls of soup. She got a bowl for each of them and sat in a quiet corner where they could eat in peace.

When they were done, she took it to the edge of the city, on the side facing more of the Sneulands. The building here was lower than those in the rest of the city, with only one floor, but it was wide. It was like its own little village, surrounded by a garden. Ganthy was fascinated with all the colours and shapes of the flowers as they walked the path to the door.

Just as for any of her other missions, coming here was the end of it… It had been bothering her, but she never properly thought about she would handle this. Ganthy was a special case. She’d saved children before. Some of them had their parents with them. Some of them didn’t. All of them knew what they were getting into and where they were going.

Ganthy hardly ever knew what was happening around it. Ganthy was a child in the barest sense. It was young. Mentally it was barely human. Any humanity that it had now, it had developed with Ailaurus and Treyus. The sense of the world that it had, she and Treyus were the ones who allowed it to develop.

The way it stuck to her thigh wherever she went, she knew that whether she liked it or not she had been playing mommy for a while now.

She stopped before they got to the door and she looked at Ganthy.

“… This is the Asylum, Ganthy. This is going to be your home,” she said.

It looked at her with its clueless eyes.

“The people here, the children especially, are like you. They are… confused. You will be taken care of. The workers here will help you deal with that confusion.”

It didn’t do anything. It just looked.

She didn’t know if it understood, but she hoped it would soon. Ailaurus led it to the door and she knocked. They didn’t wait long before an old man opened, saw who it was and smiled. “Ailaurus!” he said.

She smiled back and brought Ganthy in. “How are you?” she asked.

“Happy. You’ve been gone for a while this time. Are you okay?”

“I’m alive and I’m looking forward to sleeping. In a bed. In my bed.”

The man laughed and looked at Ganthy. “Who’s this?” he asked. He spoke in a way that didn’t scare Ganthy. He was smiling and he was happy, but he didn’t have that energy that everybody always had. He spoke clearly, but he was quiet.

Ganthy looked at him and for the first time, he’d met a stranger that didn’t make him want to disappear.

“His name is Ganthy,” Ailaurus said.

The man crouched, smiling gently. He put his hand forward and said, “Hello, Ganthy. My name is Anayes.”

Ganthy looked at him. It put one of its stumps forward. He didn’t look at the scars and he didn’t even hesitate. He took Ganthy around the wrist and shook it as if he were shaking a hand. “It’s nice to meet you… Did Ailaurus tell you that this used to be her home?”

Ganthy looked at Ailaurus. It barely caught what he just said, but he heard Ailaurus’ name.

The man stood up. “What happened to him?”

“He was meant to be a sacrifice. Twice, actually. Um… He wasn’t raised properly. His name used to be Lamb. They were always planning to sacrifice him.”

“That’s… new.”

“I know. It has something to do with power. I still don’t know what it means, but he’s powerful and Zathiri isn’t the only one after him.”

“And the hands?”

She shrugged then looked down at it. “The people who raised him were cultish. They weren’t right in their minds.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The man put his hand out. Ganthy looked at him. After a moment, it put one of its stumps in his hand. Then Ailaurus started backing away and Ganthy tried to grab onto her leg with the fingers it no longer had. It looked at her. She tilted her head, walked slowly, waved at Ganthy.

Ganthy watched her… Was it being left? Was this place another church? Was it going to be made to sit in dark rooms and wait for a sacrifice?

Ailaurus turned around and walked away. Ganthy didn’t know what it was feeling, but it went away quickly. This was just what it deserved. It shouldn’t have gotten comfortable.

Anayes stood there with Ganthy, watching Ailaurus. “Would you like to walk in the garden?”

Ganthy looked at him, then he led it outside to one of the bushes.

“Blue,” Ganthy said.

“Yes,” Anayes said, “Blue.”

Ganthy recognized these butterfly bathtubs and sniffed them. It went from one bush to the next, to the next. New colours, new smells. They weren’t hiding behind trees. They were just there. Anayes followed it through the garden.

“Do you have a favourite colour?” he asked.

Ganthy looked at it. “Purple,” it said. It smiled a bit.

Anayes smiled back. That smile was a good sign. If Ganthy was happy, it was present. Anayes stopped following Ganthy and walked to a bench. Ganthy soon followed him and sat down.

“Ganthy,” he said, “Who do you worship?”

Ganthy looked at him. “Zathiri,” it said meekly.

“And the other gods. What do you think of them?”

Ganthy stared for a moment. “… Weak. L—Liars.”

The man nodded. “You were going to be killed for Zathiri, right?”

Ganthy shook its head. “Sacrifice.”

Aneyus nodded. “Sacrifice. And what happens when you are sacrificed?”

Ganthy stared again, then showed the scar on its neck where the priestess cut him.

“Yes and… you die.”

It stared at him stupidly.

“Are you okay with dyi— Are you okay with being sacrificed?”

“My blood will be for something greater than me,” it said clearer than anything else it’d said and without any time to think about the question. It even straightened itself up when it said it.

“Okay… And Ailaurus? Zathiri wants to sacrifice her also.”

“… Her… Her death will be for something greater than her,” it said, but this time it didn’t have the same conviction.

“Is Zathiri greater than you? Is he greater than Ailaurus?”

Ganthy paused, then nodded.

“Why?”

“He… Made the world,” Ganthy said uncertainly.

Anayes nodded. “Why does that mean he is greater?”

Ganthy stared.

“How do we know that Zathiri made the world?”

Ganthy stared.

Perhaps these questions were too hard to be asking a child; especially one so stunted. That was okay. Children’s minds were like clay. He didn’t need Ganthy to understand. He just needed it to be receptive. He needed it to be doubtful, cynical, looking for answers.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said and stood, holding out his hand. Ganthy got off the bench and held out its stump.

He walked Ganthy through the gardens, around the building to the back where the city just opened itself to forests again. “Zathiri says that he made the world. Arreta says that she made the world. Zion says he made the world.”

Ganthy listened and looked at Aneyus. It actually knew these names.

“All the gods say that they made the world. All the gods say that they made us. They say that they are powerful. They say that their power made everything. Omnipotent and omniscient.”

They walked over a mound of dirt that formed over a smooth rock formation that stretched off in both directions.

“They are powerful, but they ask for sacrifices. Why do they want sacrifices?”

He explained these things to Ganthy, not expecting it to understand much but hoping that the mind of a child could grasp some of the thoughts.

“Yes, Zathiri may be strong. He may be able to take our lives, but why would he? Why does his strength entitle him to worship?”

They continued walking. Aneyus went quiet. He led Ganthy over another dirt mound. In the distance to the side, toward what looked like the Sneulands, it saw curved, stone spikes pointing to the sky like fingers curling to take the clouds.

They got to a steep hill, too high to see its peak. A dirt path zig-zagged up gradually towards the top making a gentle path to walk.

Ganthy was a companion once again, following somebody around, but it felt different. It felt lots of doubts. All this mention of gods and Zathiri with such a disrespectful tone made it want to hit Aneyus. He was a heathen! He was a sinner!

Ganthy’s simple mind didn’t comprehend much, but it comprehended that Aneyus was somebody it shouldn’t trust.

“Have you heard of the Stormeater?” Aneyus asked, interrupting Ganthy’s mind and jumbling its thoughts. They could see the top of the hill now. “A leviathan of the skies. A creature that feeds on lightning. There are beasts like the Stormeater who show more careless power in their mundane lives than the self-proclaimed gods have demonstrated in their threats against heathens.”

Ganthy understood that sentence, mostly. There was something stronger than Zathiri. That made it feel insulted. There couldn’t be something stronger than Zathiri. Thought, it had never actually seen Zathiri do anything…

They were almost at the top now.

“The gods said that they made the world. They came first. They are above the world. Yet, we’ve seen the power of the world, but never the power of the gods.”

They made the last step onto the top, onto flat ground, facing more of the Sneulands, but Aneyus turned Ganthy to face the way they’d come. He walked Ganthy to the edge of the hill overlooking the forest.

They stood quietly.

…

It took Ganthy a moment, but the picture made sense eventually. It had seen a skeleton before. Those giant curved stones clawing at the sky were the bones in the chest. Those smooth stones they’d walked over were legs. There, right at the far edge of the isle, separated from the Sneulands by empty space, was a skull looking at them. Ganthy breathed in slowly and loudly.

“Ganthy,” Aneyus said, “God may not die as easily… But he sure does rot the same.”

All of those years spent worshipping and praying and meditating and dedicating its life to Zathiri… This was its first time seeing a god… Here was god, and he was dead.

“Your life is your own. I don’t know what power it is that you have, but that power belongs to you, not them.”

When they’d returned to the ­­­­­­ Asylum, the first thing that happened was a bath. It was unlike one it’d ever had before. The water was comfortably warm, it smelled nice and the smell stayed on it afterwards. It was given new clothes. The sack that it had worn for so long was gone and Ganthy had a white shirt, brown pants and shoes. The caretakers introduced Ganthy to the other children, but when they played, it stayed aside. When they had supper, it ate alone.

It had its own bed in a room with lots of other children. It was fed well, three times a day. Sometimes they had a sweet fourth meal. For its first three days in the Asylum, while the other children played, it would sit aside wherever they were with its legs crossed and meditate until the caretakers called it for food or to bathe. That was what it was supposed to do. That was what it thought it was supposed to do. That was all it knew to do.

Then, on the fourth day, it wasn’t sure why it did any of it.

It wasn’t in the cult anymore. Nobody worshipped anything here. The only time it heard Zathiri’s name was in its head, during its prayers before sleeping or after waking.

While the children played in the garden, Ganthy sat aside along the wall of the building and it couldn’t bring itself to meditate anymore. It watched them run around, playing with toys, chasing each other. It looked at the caretakers, who watched over the children… Nobody cared that it was meditating.

It stood up and walked towards the other children, keeping an eye on the nearest caretaker. She looked at it and it froze. She smiled and it realised that there were no consequences for not meditating. That was the first day it played with the other children.

It was the only day that it played with the other children.

It started watching them. It started drifting through the days. Life began to feel like a dream under the blanket of the growing sense of godlessness. It didn’t know what was real. Praying, once a spiritual ritual, felt like an action of delusion. It reached a point where, worrying all the caretakers by going missing, it walked itself through the God Grave to the top of that hill to see the skeleton one more time and it was real. This wasn’t a dream. The world that it knew, where a being named Zathiri was divine and where divinity was all that mattered, was gone.

But if there was no god, then what was there?

It heard a rumble. It felt the rumble.

It was the middle of the night. All of them were asleep until whatever that was woke it. There was very light rain, it heard. It was soothing… Whatever the rumble was, it was gone now. Maybe it just imagined it?

Ganthy closed its eyes.

The room flashed white and it opened its eyes and looked around.

There was nothing.

Then the rumble came, louder this time, and Ganthy shrunk into the blankets and its pillow with its eyes wide open. It sounded as if the sky was cracking and falling. The door to the bedroom opened. Aneyus poked his head in, looking to all of the children and making sure they were okay. Ganthy, frozen in fear, stayed still and quiet.

Aneyus left.

Ganthy stared at the shutters. What was it? Was it over? Would it happen again?

There was a flash. Ganthy readied itself. All that came, long after, was the whispers of a rumble far away. It stayed tucked, watching the flashes and listening to the rumbles. The sound it made was alive, as if it was speaking to Ganthy and it felt beckoned by it despite the fear.

Ganthy lifted the blanket off. There was flash again and it froze, waiting for the rumble. When the rumble came, it felt exposed and wanted to return to the safety of its blanket, but it wanted to see the source of this voice more.

Leaving its shoes, it walked to the bedroom door, opened it, walked out. Every time there was a rumble, it froze. What was fear, turned into admiration. What were moments of shock, became moments of appreciation. That sound wasn’t hurting it.

Ganthy left the Asylum from the back, into the God Grave, into the drizzle. The little drops of rain didn’t bother it, nor did the feeling of the soil.

The sky flashed white and Ganthy froze again, the admiration reverting to fear. The rumble echoed through the forest and it wondered if it should return. The light flashed again and it could see that, whatever it was, it was on the other side of the hill. The rumble came again. It continued. It walked over the dirt mounds over the leg bones. It climbed the dirt path up the hill. The closer it got, the louder the rumbling was, the stronger the fear that it felt but even stronger was its desire to find the source.

The light flashed again and the rumble came stronger than it had ever come before, but it was so close to the top that it didn’t bother stopping. It came out on top, its back to the God Grave, facing the Sneulands on the other side of the space between the isles. Snow was falling there, as it regularly did. Above the white lands, a creature like the ghost of an insect swam through clouds, weaving in and out of visibility, jagged strings of light dancing on its back.

Aneyus told Ganthy what this was. This was a Stormeater.

A jagged shape flashed from the clouds, through the creature’s body, to the ground. It was so bright that Ganthy closed its eyes. Then the rumble came and the fear it brought hollowed Ganthy out and it dropped to its knees.

It stayed there, its eyes shut tight and its hands over its ears. Was it dead? It thought it should be. Something so far away, so bright and so loud… It would have to have killed it.

When it opened its eyes, it looked at the Stormeater, sailing and twisting through the sky, the standing lights wiggling as they slid down its back.

This, that it was witnessing, was power.

This, that it was feeling, was true fear.

All its life, it was convinced that it should lay its life down for someone whose face it never saw.

Here it kneeled, unwillingly, in the presence of something that it had only just discovered. If it wanted to take Ganthy’s life, it would. Ganthy would never see it coming. When it happened, Ganthy wouldn’t know. There would be a flash. There would be a bang. Then, there would be nothing.

It was always ready to die, but here, it felt death. It understood its mortality through the shaking in its body. For the first time ever, it was truly afraid of dying.

This creature was power. Ganthy had spent its life preparing for this moment. It sat and crossed its legs. It closed its eyes and looked for the light within itself. The drizzle became a light rain. The flashes came in clusters.

Ganthy harnessed the light in its chest and it opened its eyes, looking at the Stormeater, presenting its power to the beast.

The Stormeater, at first coiling through the clouds, slowed to a stop. It looked at Ganthy, its body still and the storm still with it. The flashes stopped. The rain turned back to a drizzle.

It was so far away, but it looked straight at Ganthy and the power that it presented in its chest. It drifted towards Ganthy as if it were shifting the world around it.

Ganthy was afraid to die, but this was what it deserved. This divine creature had a right to Ganthy’s power.

It stopped. It floated there over the empty space between the Sneulands and the Godless City. It stared at Ganthy. Ganthy wondered how it would die. It wondered if it would hurt.

The Stormeater turned upwards and dove into the clouds. The rain fell hard and the storm ripped through the sky in a series of claps that made Ganthy’s ears ring. It returned to its feeding grounds, stimulating the clouds over the Sneulands and letting lightning course through its body.

Ganthy stared, soaking wet, drops sliding into its eyes.

Ganthy stared at the Stormeater, a marvelous creature that fed on lightning. It could traverse the isles in a matter of seconds. It could level the mountains if it so wished. It could wipe out every living thing on a whim.

God saw Ganthy. God stopped, saw and acknowledged Ganthy and the power that it offered. God didn’t care.

It had the power to take and to demand sacrifice in exchange for blessings.

And yet...