Coughing and hacking, Tsia strained against her restraints just enough to turn her head to the side and spit out the blood that had spattered across her face. Jasper’s blood.
She watched in confusion as the horrible little woman stalked toward Jasper’s crumbled body, unable to comprehend what had just taken place. Why did he do that? She’d been enraged when she thought he'd succumbed to Yas̆gah's demands, but a sliver of her had understood. Perhaps, loathe as she was to admit it to herself, she’d even have taken the deal. After all, why should everyone die? But what she couldn't understand was why he’d chosen to kill himself. Was the guilt too much to bear?
Tsia watched as Yas̆gah stalked toward his body, her face a mask of fury. With a wave of her hand, his body lurched up into the air and the woman slammed it against the wall again. “Did you think you could make a fool of me?” She screamed.
Jasper’s body bounced across the ground and landed beside the sepulcher where Annatta was bound. Her anger still not sated, the demigoddess raised her hand again when a dull, crimson light erupted from the torque around his neck. The body resisted her commands as a red mist seeped across his body, shrouding it in an inscrutable haze.
She tried again to raise his body from the ground, but it would not budge. “What sort of magic is this,” she muttered to herself as she took a cautious half-step back. Her caution was well advised, but profited her nothing, as a long, red tendril exploded from the mist. Yas̆gah threw herself to the side with supernatural speed, rolling across the ground well out of the tendril’s reach. And yet, Tsia watched in confusion as the tendril, instead of missing her as it should have, somehow wrapped itself around the demigoddess’ neck.
A tug of war ensued as the red vine pulled Yas̆gah toward the body. She did not go without a fight. Grabbing hold of the sepulcher, she hacked at the tendril with her dagger, slicing through it time and again, but it reformed the instant it was destroyed, and the sepulcher’s stone crumbled beneath her grip as she was dragged toward the red mist. Her fingers clutched at the pavement, carving deep grooves in the ground, but the tendril was inexorable, and with a final scream of fury and fear, Yas̆gah disappeared into the haze.
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The first thing he felt was the cold. Not the biting, endless cold of Kas̆dael’s realm, a cold so deep that it vanquished even the faintest memory of warmth. No, this was the cold of a 90s supermarket in the summer, a chill that only felt good if you were already dripping with sweat.
Jasper lay on his back, staring up at a dark ceiling above that faintly glimmered with a metallic sheen. The absence of pain puzzled him; he had only foggy recollections of what had happened after plunging the dagger into his chest, but he had still been alive long enough to feel half the bones in his body being shattered by Yas̆gah. His hand inched down his chest, feeling in vain for either a dagger or a hole. What the hell?
Flipping onto his stomach, Jasper pushed himself off the floor and looked around. It was only then that he realized how truly odd the place he’d found himself in was.
On his left side a rough, stone roof stretched a few feet before ending in a precipitous cliff. The floor was covered in dust and cracks, with a pair of footprints winding around his body. The only thing on the clifftop itself was a small, clay object that looked a bit like an abandoned bird bath. A large, jagged crack extended halfway across its basin, preventing it from holding any moisture, and he quickly ignored it to focus on the view below.
A great city lay at the bottom of the cliff - great in size, that is, though certainly not in majesty. Small squat buildings of mud and thatch that rose more than two or three stories high stretched for as far as the eye could see in every direction. There was no sign of plan or order to them, nor of any artistic design; in flagrant disregard of fire codes, the houses were clustered right on top of each other without any breaks save for the haphazard streets that occasionally broke them up.
The cramped roads swarmed with life, thousands upon thousands of inhabitants whose shuffling, jerky walk reminded him more of zombies than humans. Here and there, strange beings with the torsos of men but the head, feet, and wings of birds, flitted through the air, squawking and screeching at the city’s inhabitants with enough of a cadence that Jasper guessed it to be a language rather than mere animal sounds.
Above the city was just blackness - no sun or moon bent their light to the misery below, nor could even the faint glimmer of the stars be seen. The only light to be found was the thousands upon thousands of tiny pin-pricks that gleamed through the tattered windows of the mud abodes.
As Jasper gazed down on the mud-brick city, a bitter breeze brushed against his back and he spun around. The rough pavement on which he was standing continued for perhaps a hundred feet past where he’d fallen before being slowly submerged in the gentle rise and fall of sandy dunes. Spiky blue grass waved frantically in the gusts of wind that buffeted the dunes, and between their peaks he could see glimmers of a sea so dark it was almost black - awakening a primal fear. It was sheer luck, after all, that his mindless wanderings had not taken him into the icy and eternal grip of those waters the last time he had been here.
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Jasper’s stomach churned and he dropped to his knees as he heaved his guts out on the ruined pavement. There was little to empty, but that did not stop his retching from producing burning mouthfuls of acid that he spat out in the dust.
“Pathetic.”
Spinning around, Jasper was already reaching for his essence as he turned to face his enemy. The petite brunette looked a bit worse for the wear. Her neck was swollen with a large red welt and a large chunk of her robe had been torn to shreds, but fire still burned in her eyes.
“To think I was prepared to take you as my apprentice. You are weak, unfit to seize the reins of power,” she spat scornfully. Yas̆gah flicked her hand toward him, and Jasper felt his feet leave the ground. As he soared backward, he desperately drew on his essence, struggling to cast Spectral Wings, but his progress was halted in mid-air before he could even release the spell. For a moment, it felt as if his body would be torn to shreds as two, opposing forces fought for control, but the new presence won, and he was gently lowered down onto the sands.
“You?!” Yas̆gah snarled. “So the cowardly mistress finally shows her face.”
Soft steps crunched in the frozen stands as someone walked up beside him, and a long, black dress brushed against his arm. “Kas̆dael,” Jasper gasped in relief. “Thank god.”
"Goddess," she corrected with a smile. As he stared into her deep, blue eyes, it took him a second to realize she wasn’t wearing her usual veil, revealing for the first time her full face. Her skin was pale as the moon itself, highlighting the deep red, blush of her lips, but that, at least, he’d been able to surmise from the glimpses he’d caught through the black lace. What the veil had hidden though were the pale, blue tattoos that extended from the corners of her lips along the breadth of her cheeks. Though seemingly similar in purpose to the ones that graced his hands, the intricacy of their whorling patterns made his own look as elegant as a stick-figure drawing taped next to a Raphael.
“New look?” He asked flippantly as he rose to his feet and brushed the sand off his clothes.
Ignoring his question, Kas̆dael brushed past Jasper and positioned herself between him and Yas̆gah.
“Been doing some renovations, Cassie?” The woman laughed mirthlessly, gesturing over her shoulder to the strange mud city beyond. “Got to say, never thought you’d abandon your marble temples and spacious pavilions. Did S̆uhrurru get a little too quiet for you?”
“Tis not my realm,” the goddess replied. A flicker of concern creased Yas̆gah’s brow, but she smoothed it away quickly.
“Something to do with that damn necklace, I'm guessing?” Kas̆dael stayed silent, and the woman shrugged. “Fine, don’t tell me. It doesn’t matter, because whatever you were trying to do, it didn’t work. She raised her other hand, and a dark, black object glinted ferociously in the dim light. “I’ve even got the damn dagger with me. All you’ve done, my lady, is serve yourself up on a plate.”
Readying the dagger in her grasp, the small woman shifted into a fighting stance. “You know if you just had agreed to do what you’re supposed to do, none of this would have happened.”
“Who are you to decide what I’m supposed to do?” The goddess responded frostily.
“Someone who has the guts to do what needs to be done. How long will you bend to the will of a dead god? How many times must the universe die - how many times must you die - before you were shaken into action? No more!” The woman yelled.
“What difference does it make to you? I am the one who sacrificed myself time and again, not you. I am the one who suffers alone in the darkness while the reborn gods create life anew, not you. No wrong has been done you, yet you drape your words in righteousness to disguise the truth. You only worship power, power for yourself, and nothing more. If I’d realized that then, I would have smote you down the moment you prostrated yourself before me.”
“But you didn’t, and now,” the woman flipped the dagger in her hand, “the only one smiting anyone today is going to be me.”
Plumes of dust trailed behind her as she shot across the plains toward Kas̆dael. Jasper reached for his glaive to help but stopped as Kas̆dael waved him off. “I will hold her. You need to finish the ritual.”
Finish the ritual? I thought I did.
With a crackling boom, Yas̆gah vaulted into the air and held the dagger high. Time seemed to slow as she arced down toward Kas̆dael, the glittering serpent’s tooth aimed straight for the goddess’ heart.
Kas̆dael tried to dodge, but invisible walls closed in around her. Jasper watched in sick horror as she bounced off the force fields back into the trajectory of the blade a mere fraction of a second before Yas̆gah descended.
Then a horror of another kind filled him a massive black vine erupted from her mouth. Gleaming like the dark waves of the oblivion sea, the column of darkness intercepted Yas̆gah. Thick, thorny tendrils wrapped tight around her torso as the vine drove her into the ground. It flung her back in the air, preparing to smash once her again, only for the vine to fall limp as the petite woman slashed the jagged blade through its core. With a wave of her hand, she sent a shower of rubble flying toward the goddess which was promptly intercepted by a dozen new tendrils.
“Come now, my lady, weak tricks like that won’t save you,” the woman laughed shrilly.
Focus. Tearing his eyes away from the divine combat, Jasper wrenched the torque of his neck and read the inscription again.
“I offer my blood to the netherworld as food. May the dead eat of it so that I might arise as a sheep that consumes the wolf.” What didn’t I do? Wasn’t it just a metaphor for self-sacrifice? Frustrated, Jasper’s eyes roved around the frozen hellscape, looking for any sign of something that might help him finish the ritual. He paused as he noticed the strange, broken bird-bath again. Its presence seemed incongruous in the otherwise barren lands. Could it be?