The goddess suddenly burst through the throng of dark Glee and with one powerful swipe, tore out Iben’s throat.
Shrieking her anger, she turned and raced toward Richard even as he was charging toward her.
As they came together, she swung at him with a claw. He dodged to the side and it just missed his face. Without pause, he brought his blade around and severed the claw before she could withdraw it. The sword flashed in the moonlight and just as quick the other claw was off.
She stopped dead in her tracks as her big black eyes blinked in stunned surprise.
While her followers had gone to Richard’s world to fight, she never had. Because of that, she was all angry bluster and intimidation without the fighting skills or experience to back her threats. She had never come face-to-face with anyone like Richard who was not intimidated by her.
Before she could react, Richard was already using all his strength to power the blade around in an arc. It severed her head in one clean strike.
The goddess’s head, as it flew up and back, made one slow turn through the air as strings of blood were pulled around after it. Glee stood frozen as they watched what they could never have imagined.
The clawless, headless Golden Goddess dropped straight down as if she didn’t have a bone in her body.
The crowd pushed back to be out of the way as her head completed several revolutions in midair before it thudded down heavily on the rocks in their midst and took a few odd bounces before rolling to a stop. Her stunned followers backed out of its way as if it might bite them, or yell at them.
All the howling rage and fury came to an abrupt halt.
A number of the Glee with Richard cried out then and fell to their knees around Iben’s body. Their distress at his tragic death was sad to see.
Richard immediately turned to the threat from the goddess’s followers, expecting a furious onslaught of claws and teeth. Instead of charging in to fight them, he stopped as he saw them slow to a stop. They all briefly gazed down at the body of the goddess before moving on to come forward and stare at the dead Iben.
Glee wrapped in water weeds protectively surrounded their dead friend, many on their knees beside him, weeping. They all crowded around, reaching out to touch their friend, clearly devastated that he had been so violently slain by one of their own kind.
After Sang, grieving, had gently touched Iben’s body, he stood in a rush to face the enemy. Tears of rage ran from his large black eyes, his third eyelids trying to blink them away, but more continued to flow.
He gestured angrily with a claw down at Iben’s body.
“Look at what you have done! This is what you all wanted? Look at what you all have done to one of your own kind! Look! Glee should never harm Glee! Never! Your Golden Goddess did this! You all did this! You are all responsible!”
If Glee could look shamefaced, those Glee watching him standing over the body of his friend certainly did. Many hung their heads. Others looked away in disgrace.
“This is what you wish for our world?” Sang cried out as he swept an arm out in anger. “This is what you wanted? This is your way, now? To kill other Glee?”
Other grieving Glee behind Sang stood after touching the body to gesture down with a claw, demanding that the enemy look at what they had all been a part of.
“Is this how you want to live now?” one of the others asked as he got up from kneeling by Iben. “This is what fills your hearts? This is what you wanted? Your own kind to be murdered? This is what you all would do to other Glee? To us? None of you are as good as this one was. He rushed forward because he wanted to tell you all to please stop your ways and return to the way we have always lived. But you instead killed him! What kind of beasts have you become?”
The guilty Glee stood around, watching but not interfering, some holding their claws behind their backs, while others hung their heads, all of them clearly not knowing what to do.
The fight had been taken out of them.
Finally, in the unbearable predawn silence, one of the enemy slowly approached and pointed with a claw. “You are covered with water weeds. Is that so that you were able to cross the drylands to come in and surprise the goddess?”
Many of the Glee who had come with Richard nodded.
Then, the masses of Glee that had been hanging their heads began to step forward and do the strangest thing.
63
At first, a few of the enemy Glee slowly, timidly, began approaching the Glee still kneeling around their fallen friend. When the first reached Iben’s body, the Glee who had been kneeling stood and moved back so that the others could see what their beliefs had wrought. Many of Sang’s Glee bared their teeth as they hissed. Richard thought that their meaning was clear enough.
The first Glee to slowly shuffle up to Iben went to a knee beside the body. Richard and Vika shared a look, wondering what it could mean, and what was going to come next, but with that look they wordlessly decided to let it play out and see what happened. Richard still had his bloody sword in his hand, so if things suddenly turned violent, he intended to show them what violence really was.
The twin storms of rage were still roaring through him. His blade had come out in anger and tasted blood. It wanted more. This time, if a battle broke out, they were already in their home world and would not be able to vanish to escape certain death.
The Glee that approached first and went to a knee gently pulled off a strip of the float weed from Iben’s body. As Richard and Vika watched along with all the silent Glee, he ate the piece of water weed.
To Richard, it looked almost like some kind of sacred ceremony or statement that this one Glee, at least, wished to give up the path he had been on and return to their traditional ways.
As that Glee stood and moved aside, another came forward and took his place. He, too, pulled off a short piece of water weed and ate it while the Glee with Richard stood back beyond Iben’s body, out of the way, and watched.
Soon, all of the Glee were lining up to come and kneel before the dead body of one of their kind. Each in turn took a piece of float weed and ate it in a kind of reverent expression of their sorrow. Richard took it as a wish to return to their ways.
Before long, the flutter and float weed, and the scrum under it, had all been eaten, except for the layers around Iben’s neck that were covered with blood. There were still a vast number of followers of the goddess who hadn’t had a chance to eat some of the water weeds that had protected Iben, so instead, they began mingling in among the Glee who had been with Richard, looking like they wanted to take pieces of the water weeds off of them as a suitable substitute. The Glee covered in water weeds all held their arms out so that their former enemies could all partake of the water weed in a symbolic gesture.
If any of them were speaking, they were not doing so in a way that allowed Richard and Vika to hear anything they were saying. He supposed they didn’t want outsiders to hear their apologies and pleas for forgiveness.
It took quite a while for all the Glee to come up and take a piece of the water weed. As they gathered around, waiting their turn, some of the Glee wrapped in the weeds began pulling off strips and handing them to the ones waiting their turn in order to speed up the process.
Richard didn’t see a single Glee leave, or express defiance. They all looked genuinely remorseful at the death of one of their own kind.
He finally sheathed his sword. He was thankful that it had done enough.
He also didn’t see a single Glee pay any attention to the body of the Golden Goddess lying in a heap by itself. None of the Glee mourned her death. There were so many of the Glee, it took over an hour before all of them were able to collect and consume a symbolic piece of the water plants that had long been part of their staple diet and way of life.