And in the heart of those millions of swords and shields, their brother would walk, towering over the humans, soaking in the power of their faith.
“Brother. . ” Ashhur said, but the words of surrender, of hopelessness, seemed impossible to form on his tongue.
“No,” Karak said. “Follow me to the castle. All is not lost.”
As they ran, the ground shook beneath their feet, vibrating from the river of flesh and armor that poured in from the west. Screams of fear joined them, and Ashhur could hear cries of surrender, men and women kneeling and begging to be spared. None were. The time for surrender was before the walls were breached, before the demons filled the air and dumped burning pitch onto the great city.
At the door to the castle gathered the last of the defenders, a paltry hundred. There was no hiding the fear in their eyes, but they stood tall. Even at the end they had faith in him, Ashhur realized. Had faith there would be salvation for them, a way their god would protect them. But there wasn’t. The end had come, for all of them, for against Thulos’s blade, even gods could die.
“We need time,” Karak shouted as they arrived. “Descend the hill, and hold it with your lives. Even a single heartbeat may decide our life or death!”
They saluted and rushed down the hill. Ashhur watched them run with pride. Karak, however, put his hands on the doors of the castle and closed his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Ashhur said. “What is it. . ”
“Quiet,” Karak said. “There is a way, but only if she hears us.”
“She? Who?”
“Celestia.”
Ashhur could not believe it. That was his brother’s last and only plan?
“What makes you think she would aid us?” he asked. “When we were there last, we destroyed her world, nearly ripped it asunder.”
“We were whole then,” Karak said. “Now we are but broken pieces of Kaurthulos. She will know this. She will understand. Where else have we to go?”
“There are thousands of other worlds,” Ashhur said.
“And we only know the way to one.”
Karak closed his eyes again and murmured prayers loaded with magic and power. The door shimmered, turned translucent for a moment, then returned to normal.
“It matters not if she heard you,” Ashhur said when his brother’s prayers halted. “What creature or army could she send to us to aid in our battle?”
“I do not seek aid,” Karak said. “I seek sanctuary.”
With that, he pulled open the doors to the Golden Castle. Instead of the fine hall within, filled with paintings and lined with a vibrant red carpet, there stood a swirling portal of violet and shadow. In its heart Ashhur saw stars twirling, planets and moons revolving in a constant dance. A cold wind blew from the portal’s center, and even through his armor he felt its chill.
“You would have us flee?” he asked.
“What other choice do we have?” Karak asked. He looked to the portal, and Ashhur joined him. From within he saw a feminine shape, a hand beckoning. Celestia would accept them even after all they had done? It seemed bewildering to him, but she was a goddess herself, and her actions were her own. But to leave their world, their people, his beloved city of Allaketh?
“We failed here,” Karak insisted as Thulos’s army converged from all directions. “We let humankind grow unchecked. We thought our teachings would be enough. But it will never be enough, not unless we keep a close hand. Not unless we ensure loyalty with every breath we take. Let us go. Let us make amends in a world where Order and Justice may still have a home.”
Without waiting for an answer, Karak stepped into the portal and vanished.
Ashhur looked back, gazing upon his burning city. He listened to the cries of the fearful, the crackling flames, the soldiers dying at the bottom of the hill. And then he saw his brother marching through their ranks, face hidden with a great horned helm. The God of War. The conqueror of all.
“Never again,” Ashhur swore. “And my people. . please, forgive me.”
With that, he turned and stepped into the portal, felt reality shift around him, slipping him through the stars, to the realm of the goddess Celestia and the land she called Dezrel.
CHAPTER 1
Karak’s eyes shone with liquid fire that burned through the morning mist. The god paced across the dead brown earth covering the valley in which his army camped, his gaze constantly returning to the walled township that loomed in the distance. Velixar saw anger in his stare; anger that grew even more pronounced whenever he looked at the massive tree that had risen from the ground, sealing the gap in the wall his fireball had created. The deity’s giant hands curled into fists, and the brightness of his eyes intensified. It was only when he turned his head to see his near fifteen thousand children busy at work that his stern expression softened even the tiniest bit.
The morning air was crisp, and the evening dew still lingered, causing Velixar’s cloak to cling to his flesh. Though a cool wind blew, the High Prophet felt no chill. The fire burning inside him, stoked by the demon whose essence he had swallowed, was all the warmth he needed.
He had risen before sunrise along with Lord Commander Malcolm Gregorian, joining the one-eyed man in awakening more than two hundred of the soldiers who had been sleeping fitfully in their tents. There was much work to do: bark that needed to be stripped, stakes that required sharpening, sanded timber that had to be fastened together with twine and iron nails. It all filled the wide expanse of the valley with a bustle of activity as saws ripped through wood and hammers thumped.
Yet despite the soldiers’ work, despite all the lessons Karak taught them, progress was maddeningly slow. They’d built sixty ladders, stacked neatly in twelve piles to the left of the construction site, but they had only managed to finish three meager siege engines over the eleven days since their initial attack on Mordeina’s walls: two solid towers and a single catapult. The rest of the partially formed engines sat useless throughout the valley, half-formed giants awaiting the necessary materials to complete them.
It wasn’t the soldiers’ fault, Velixar knew; when Ashhur, Karak’s brother god, had created a legion of grayhorn men to defend his people, he had stripped the land of life, which accounted for the dead grass crunching beneath their feet. The trees of the nearby forest were brittle as spent tindersticks, crumbling away in a rain of dust when struck by an ax. A weakened Karak had tried to raise more trees from deep within the soil, but it seemed Ashhur had decimated the land to such an extent that nothing could grow there any longer.
“It will be years until this earth is fertile again,” Karak had told him with a growl. “I have no time for this.” And so the soldiers carried their axes a mile toward the Gods’ Road, chopped down the trees in the healthy forest, and lugged the trunks all the way back to the camp, where they could be stripped and quartered and assembled into tools of war.
Velixar eyed the workers, sweat dripping off their brows as they slaved away. He did not like the weariness in their expressions, or the labor in their movements. Each hammer seemed to weigh a hundred pounds; each plank lifted with a grunt as if it weighed ten times that much. The soldiers were tired and hungry, and each morning he noticed that a handful who had been working dutifully the day before had disappeared in the night. The previous evening he’d ordered the Lord Commander to have the camp watched while it slept, and Malcolm’s sentries caught six soldiers attempting to tiptoe out of the valley under the cover of darkness. Those six were now fastened to a post in front of the camp, beaten and bound by throat, wrist, and ankle, pleading for mercy with any who passed within earshot.