They arrived at the watering hole around the same time their daylight began to fade, which by Callan’s estimates marked roughly the halfway point of their journey. A glance behind showed the pythian notably in the distance, and only a slight skein of smoke still in the sky around it from the abandoned village.
As the small army of refugees drew closer, the body of the slain dvorak rose before them like a small hillock, eliciting worried murmurs from many in the crowd, and even fresh outbursts of tears from several children. Kivi strode to the front.
“Do not be alarmed! The beast that lies in the distance has long since departed for the Cairn. It poses no threat to us beyond its smell.”
“What does she mean by—Oh.” By now Callan had moved close enough that when the wind shifted, he got a full smack to the face. Right. The dead dvorak had been lying in the baking sun for the last two weeks or so, plenty of time for scavengers and other carrion to have their way with it.
And by the sounds of retching from the line of lud, they very much had been doing just that.
The group moved to skirt around the enormous beast and continued on to the watering hole. Once they were there, the smell blessedly faded into the distance. Glancing back, Callan saw several small animals emerge as if from nowhere and return to worrying away at the dvorak corpse. He wondered how many meals their practice victim was providing to the local fauna.
At least the dvorak wasn’t going to waste.
On the far side of the small body of water, an impromptu camp formed in minutes. While the lud hadn’t been given much time to salvage their belongings, quick as the fire had spread through their village, they had still somehow managed to locate a half-dozen tents, along with numerous bedrolls and cooking utensils. What little food they had was barely enough to make more than a meal or two out of, but Callan hazarded that wouldn’t be an issue. By this time tomorrow they would all be ensconced in Xeph’s temple.
The food there might be close to two-thousand years old, but at least he could personally attest to its edibility.
Soon, most of the community were seated on the ground or atop a few logs that had been dragged into the camp to form a small semicircle. Callan found himself relaxing on a stump, Kivi to his right and Shamain to the left. A smiling lud boy of no more than nine and with a puckered scar on his cheek handed him a bowl of steaming spirebeans, darting away the moment he took it.
The boy returned a moment later and placed a similar bowl into Kivi’s hands. She smiled and gave his arm a light squeeze before taking it. “Thank you, Ishe.”
“Ishe?” Callan turned, but the boy had already disappeared back into the crowd again. “That was Ishe?”
Why does that name sound familiar? Xeph asked.
“He’s the boy. From—” Callan couldn’t bring himself to finish. Fortunately—or unfortunately, maybe—Xeph filled in the gaps.
Ah, the youth we witnessed being tortured. It appears he’s made a full recovery.
“Gee, very compassionate, Xeph. I hardly think his recovery was the problem,” Callan snapped, feeling a bad mood settle over himself. The god didn’t appear to notice.
Yes, yes, it is a tragedy what happened to him and the rest of his village. Now that these lud are in our care, we shall see that such a fate never befalls them again. I may be a god of stone, but I hardly have a heart of one.
“You don’t have a heart at all,” Callan pointed out. Xeph squawked and said something further, but his attention was elsewhere. Suddenly the beans in his lap held even less appeal than they did before.
“Here. See that these make it to whoever needs them the most,” he said, shoving the bowl into Kivi’s hands. She looked up at him in surprise.
“Avatar? You need to eat to restore your strength after today’s battle.”
“I’m not hungry. Besides, I’ve got something else I need to deal with right now.” Rising, he stalked from the circle, the lud separating for him like Moses parting the red sea.
Outside the circle, the rest of the camp was quiet. A few lud stood near the outskirts keeping watch, and several others were clustered near the edge of the pond, gathering water for drinking or washing or any of a dozen other reasons.
Callan made for a pair of lud standing alert and on edge near the far side of the camp. Unlike the others watching the prairie for danger, these two looked inward, at the four individuals tied together and seated in the dirt, their once formal robes torn, their faces disheveled.
Both the guards jumped at Callan’s sudden appearance and made various gestures of greeting, as if they weren’t entirely sure what was proper. In hindsight, they probably didn’t have any idea, but then neither did Callan, so it didn’t really matter.
“I need to talk to that one,” he said, gesturing to the forfiliin who sat in the middle of the prisoners. “Can you untie him for me?”
“Are you certain that is wise, Avatar? If he were to escape—”
“If he tries to escape, I’ll just chase him down,” Callan said. Ligo glanced up, face swollen and puffy, and their eyes met. A nasty grin crawled across Callan’s face. “Trust me, he’s not stupid enough to try that.”
Without further comment, the lud untied the prisoner, and Ligo, archon to the goddess Zavastu, climbed unsteadily to his feet. Now that he no longer had the blessings of his goddess, he seemed somewhat deflated, a shadow of what he had been that morning.
Or maybe the beating Callan had given him had done more damage than he’d thought. Not that he particularly cared either way.
“Walk with me,” he said, then set out moving through the camp, not looking to see if the priest followed him. The crunching of stones underfoot a heartbeat later told him what he expected to hear.
They moved away from the camp, until the sounds of lud voices had faded into the distance. Only then did Callan stop. He turned around. With the last vestiges of the sun’s light casting gray shadows around them, he could just barely make out the archon’s face.
Ligo studied him in turn. At last, he spoke. “If you release me and my fellow priests now, I can promise to beg mercy for you from my mistress. However, if you continue this farce of holding us prisoner—”
“Shut up.” The forfiliin winced at the tone of Callan’s words and fell silent. “I have a question for you. The lud prisoners. What were you planning to do with them?”
“The... lud?” Ligo seemed confused by the question. “We were sending them north, to Zavastu’s holdings in the Reach. Lud make good slaves. It would be a waste to leave them here when they’d be better served—”
Again, he cut off with a wince, this time as Callan manifested a Wurmchain in his hand. The chain was noticeably longer than it had been before, forming a coiled pool on the ground at Callan’s feet. A notification popped into his vision but he dismissed it with barely a thought.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“You figured they’d be better served living as slaves, rather than remaining in the village where they’ve lived for generations?” His words had a hard edge to them.
“They’re lud,” Ligo said, as if that explained everything. He eyed the chain in Callan’s hands warily.
“Not to me, they aren’t. Not to us.”
Ligo drew in a breath, then straightened, some of his courage apparently returning to him. “Listen, yeth, this god that resides in you, they may have seduced you with promises of power, but any you might hope to gain will only be a drop compared to what my goddess possesses. When she learns of what you’ve done, she will find you, and then there will be nothing to stand in the way of her wrath. But if you let me go, you might have time to flee, to find somewhere to hide far enough away that she loses interest. The Badlands are vast, and even Zavastu’s reach does not extend past—”
“I thought. I told you. To. Shut. Up.” Callan snapped the chain, the scales cracking the air like thunder. Ligo went silent. “Your goddess isn’t here. There’s just Xeph-Zul-Karatl. And me.”
“What hope do you have before the might of the goddess?” There was a desperate note to Ligo’s words. “When she comes for you, there’ll be nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.”
“Oh, I’m not planning on running or hiding.” Callan dismissed the chain, and the archon sighed with visible relief. “Either she’ll be smart and trade our people back for you and your fellow priests, or she’ll be stupid, after which she’ll learn exactly what it means to mess with a god of stone and mountains.”
“You can’t truly believe that,” Ligo said. “My mistress will destroy you! Even I was almost more than a match for that weakling god in your head. If I still had my temple—”
“But you don’t, Ligo.” Stepping forward, Callan pressed his nose right up against Ligo’s own. This close, his bulbous eyes were almost too large to see all of them. “The only one with powers here is me. I suggest you remember that.”
Activating Shape Stone, he pulled at the rock beneath them, squeezing his palms together as it flowed around Ligo’s feet. The forfiliin winced, in pain this time, and glanced down. He tried to lift one of his legs, found he couldn’t.
“What is this?”
“A reminder.” Callan turned and started walking back toward camp. “Sleep well, Ligo, if you can. I’ll send one of my priests to collect you in the morning.”
“Wait, you can’t—how am I—Avatar! Come back!” Ligo’s cries faded as Callan marched on, refusing to look back, simply enjoying the petty revenge for what it was.
It might not make up for what Ishe and the other villagers had suffered, but it was at least a start.
----------------------------------------
Kivi ducked inside of the tent, bobbing her head at the sight of Callan seated on a bedroll. “You wanted to see me, Avatar?”
“Yeah, thanks for taking the request so late.” Callan watched as Kivi eyed the bedroll, then realizing what she must be thinking, a blush spread up his cheeks. He quickly gestured to the space in front of him, and the lud girl dropped down into a cross-legged position. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk with you about since we left the village, but the opportunity never came up earlier.”
“Of course. Whatever my avatar desires, it is my duty to see that desire fulfilled to the utmost.”
Dangit, phrasing! Callan thought, chagrined. He must have grimaced, as a curious frown crossed Kivi’s face, but he quickly waved it away. “That’s sort of why I called you here. We’ve been talking—Xeph and I—and we’ve come to a decision about who to choose as our high priestess.”
“Avatar, are you certain you wish to choose now?” The frown on Kivi’s face deepened, her brow furrowing. “The members of your clergy are so few. Would it not be better to grow the ranks first, then select a worthy candidate from a sufficiently large pool?”
Callan shook his head. “Nope. Xeph and I both agree on who we want. No time like the present.”
“Very well.” Kivi bowed her head. “Shamain is an unusual personality, but I know she’ll serve well as your high priestess. You honor all lud by choosing one of us for such a noble position.”
Without meaning to, a snort of laughter burst from Callan’s lips. Kivi looked up at him, and he started laughing harder.
“Avatar? What is the matter?”
“You don’t honestly think we’d pick Shamain, do you? Kivi, the new high priestess is you!”
“What?” The lud girl’s eyes widened in shock. “But... I cannot serve in such a position! It is better gifted to an elder, one who has lived long enough to understand the world better. No, I simply cannot!”
“I don’t think you really get much choice in the matter,” Callan said, finally getting his laughter under control. “Also, don’t sell yourself short. You’ve been amazing, right from the beginning. You volunteered to join the priesthood without hesitation or thought about what it meant for your future. You stood by, willing to put your life on the line to protect your village. And afterwards, when the village was on the verge of falling apart, your words pulled everyone together. Xeph wouldn’t have all these new followers if it weren’t for you. I probably wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t saved me that day. Nope, it’s decided: you’re our new high priestess, and that’s that.”
“But...” Kivi looked down, her hands wringing the folds of her dress. “I... Avatar, I don’t know how familiar you are with lud society, but I’m... I’m Daisa caste. That means—”
“Shamain already told us,” Callan said. When Kivi looked up, he continued, “She also told us that once you became a priest, you weren’t Daisa anymore, you’re Leadership. Seems like that’s a caste worthy of being made a high priestess, isn’t it?”
When Kivi didn’t speak, he reached out and scooped up her lower pair of hands in his own. “Kivi.” The girl stared at him, her eyes wide. “Xeph and I didn’t make this decision lightly. If it’s not you as our high priestess, it’s nobody. We might as well turn around and march right back to the village.”
Only because without a high priest we can’t access most of the temple’s functions, Xeph grumbled. Callan mentally shushed him, not that he expected the god to listen, even if he could hear. Instead, he focused on Kivi.
“I... if Xeph-Zul-Karatl is certain, Avatar, then of course I will accept.” She swallowed nervously. “It will be my life’s mission to live up to your expectations.”
“My only expectation is that you live your life to its fullest,” Callan said, grinning at her. “As for Xeph... Well, maybe bringing in a few more followers wouldn’t hurt.”
“Yes, of course!” Kivi’s face brightened. “I already have several ideas for that. There are many smaller villages on the surrounding plateaus. I think if we select a few representatives to seek them out and inform them of Zavastu’s defeat, this might incentivize them....”
She continued on, talking of her plans. Callan sat back, listening with a smile on his face. It seemed the matter was settled.
When she finished, Kivi rose to her feet. “I should let you get some rest, Avatar. The three of us have much work to begin in the morning.”
“Hold on a second Ki—Ah, High Priestess.” Callan turned slightly to the side. “Xeph, is there anything we need to do to make this official?”
No, the title has already been awarded to her. High Priest—or priestess, in this case—is more a matter of administration. There are no additional powers or gifts that are bestowed for possessing it like there are with titles like Archon. I have accepted her as our High Priestess, so the temple should as well.
“Okay, fair enough.” Turning back to Kivi, Callan nodded. “Looks like you’re all set. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“Very good. Avatar. Xeph. Sleep well.” With that, she slipped from the tent.
Callan flopped back onto his bedroll, sliding his hands behind his head. “What a day.”
That is an understatement if I ever heard one. Still, it all worked out for the best. We gained many new followers, and you are one step closer to being permanently free of the wasting sickness that consumes you.
“I suppose.” Staring up at the ceiling of his tent, Callan frowned. “Things are going to change now, you realize that?”
Of course. With more followers, there will be administration duties to attend to, bureaucracies to form. At the very least, we will need to organize the labor of these lud for as long as they reside in the temple. There is much work that will need to be done to make it habitable once again.
“Well yeah, that too, but I meant for us. I’m not the weakling I was when I stumbled into Kivi’s village. We’re going to keep on getting more powerful, enough so that we can keep everyone safe. I won’t let myself be in a position like I was with Ishe ever again. From now on, we tackle our problems head on. We do whatever it takes to come out on top. To make sure nobody under our protection gets hurt again.”
That is... an ambitious goal.
“It is, but it’s better than standing around and doing nothing.”
Even if the consequences may mean our destruction? What if we find ourselves facing an even more powerful threat in the future?
“Then we’ll just have to make sure we’re equally powerful.”
You make it sound so easy, mortal.
Callan shook his head. “Of course it won’t be. We need to work our hardest. Not just the two of us, but everyone that joins your religion. But the way I see it, we either get powerful enough that nobody can threaten us, or we worry about gods like Zavastu crushing us for the rest of our lives.”
When you put it like that, then yes, I suppose our only way out is through.
“Good. We’ll start tomorrow with getting your temple restored. Then it’s time to start expanding.”
I agree, human. Now, rest. We can talk more of your plans for the future once our present situation is not such an open question.
“Alright. Sleep tight, Xeph.”
You as well, Callan, you as well.