"The cauldron?" Richard asked.
I glanced in the direction of Chiemsee Lake. "It's gone. No one will ever see that abomination again."
He nodded, seeming satisfied. "Then it was worth it."
Smiling to him, I shut the door. I only wished I could believe my own assurances.
— Field Report from Lady Helen Meadows, 1945
UPDATE:
A pair of divers have discovered the cauldron in Chiemsee. It is intact. Recovery or destruction of it are considered Top Priority.
— Master Alex Turgen, 2001
GOD-KILLERS IN OUR MIDST
James Lovegrove and N.X. Sharps
When men come face to face with their gods, it generally means they’ve died.
In my case, it means I’m going to die.
Probably horribly.
I’m brought to Kha’cheldaa in chains, ascending to heaven in a fiery chariot — or, if you prefer, a fusion-powered reusable shuttle craft. But most people’d call it a fiery chariot. Because most people are dumb.
The journey into near orbit is smooth; the squad of Templars escorting me are rough. For example, as we disembark at Kha’cheldaa’s docking bay, the captain of these goons thinks it’d be funny to stick out a leg and trip me up. With my hands manacled behind my back the only thing I have to break my fall with is my face.
Then, for good measure, as I try to get up the same guy clubs me on the back on the head with the pommel of his sword. Could have used the butt of his sidearm, but this way is more ceremonial, I guess.
Stilclass="underline" fucking ouch.
“Not such a free thinker now, eh?” the captain jeers. “Not with a bump like that on your noggin.”
His subordinates roar with laughter. It’s pure comedic gold. No way are they being sycophantic minions or anything.
After that hilarity I’m force-marched along a broad tubular corridor, one of the many spoke-like arms that radiate in all directions from the hub of Kha’cheldaa. Viewports show us planet Earth in all its glory. The terminator between day and night is crawling across its surface, but few lights twinkle on the black landmasses below. Cities no longer blaze with neon after sunset like they used to. I can just about remember a time when they did, but that’s a couple decades back, long gone.
It’s a benighted age, a dark age, this new age, this age of the Savior Gods.
Gravity in Kha’cheldaa is weird. Feels like there’s no real up or down, although me and the Templars stick to the floor normally enough. The air smells metallic, slightly burnt. Our footfalls have blunted echoes. I’m taking in these sensory impressions because it’s all I can do. I can’t have many minutes of life left. Might as well clutch and savor each precious remaining second of it.
A couple of antechambers, more Templars, some scurrying servants. The Savior Gods like to have mortals guarding them and waiting on them hand and foot — gives them a warm, fuzzy glow inside — and these people have been led to believe it’s an honor to have been chosen for the roles. To live in Kha’cheldaa and be of use to our deities is a privilege, the kind you’d sell your very soul for. Right?
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help feeling some of them are at least wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into. There’s furtiveness in their body language, a secret fear in their eyes. The gods aren’t known for their restraint and good behavior. Word is, things can get pretty rowdy up here. There are rumors: abuses, humiliations, rapes, random killings — things to make even Marquis de Sade blush. Omnipotence — it can go to a god’s head, you know.
Finally the core chamber, Kha’cheldaa’s heart, the huge sphere that is the throne room of the gods.
And lo and behold, they’re all waiting for me. The full complement. The Big Twelve. Some sit, some stand. There’s food on the tables, drink in tankards, and the light here is coruscating and dazzling, a million hazy rainbows criss-crossing, and I think I hear music, like choirs and orchestras, distant halleluiahs crescendoing and falling. Meanwhile Dominions, tucked away in recesses set high up in the chamber walls, maintain sentinel over their lords and ladies, poised to descend on any aggressor with wings of steel and flame.
I’m supposed to be impressed.
Secretly, I am.
But fuck if I’m going to show it.
The Templars drag me forward. Make me kneel by not so gently booting the backs of my knees. The captain shoves my head down with a gauntleted hand.
“Bow, humanist dog!” he orders.
He actually says that. Humanist dog. Like he means it. Like it isn’t just what he thinks the Savior Gods would expect him to say.
Trakiin waves an imperious hand. The Templars are dismissed.
Trakiin, god of all gods. Trakiin the Father. Heavyset, grey-eyed, all-wise. He’s stationed in a chair that’s about five times the size it needs to be. Its back looms sheer, chalk-cliff white, arched and spired like some cathedral tower. He doesn’t so much sit in it as occupy it, like an invading army. His robes hang in iridescent folds off his massive shoulders. His hair and beard are grey as thunderclouds.
Got to admit, I never thought I’d feel genuine awe in his presence. I know what this dirtbag really is. I know him for a lying, cheating charlatan, organiser of the greatest con ever perpetrated in history.
But still, he has a… majesty is the word. It’s there. It’s undeniable. He looks every inch a deity, even though he’s anything but. If I weren’t on my knees already, it’d have been hard to resist the urge to genuflect before him.
“So,” he says, in a voice like tectonic plates grinding.
The word resonates around the throne room. It’s just one empty syllable but it sounds like it encompasses universes.
“This is he,” Trakiin goes on. “The leader of the expedition. The mortal who dared venture where it is forbidden to go. Who sought ‘proof’ that we are not who we say we are.”
I’m going to reply when Xorin steps forward.
I hate this guy. He’s such an asshole. Xorin, God of War, son of Trakiin. You’ll never find a stupider god, or a bigger bully. He’s like every low-IQ, over-muscled jock you ever knew in high school, mashed into one.
“Let me have my way with him, father,” he implores. He’s got a fist clenched, poised. It’s nearly as big as my head. His chin is nearly as big as my head. “Let me show him how disobeying your will is a bad idea.”
“No, my son. Not yet. Answers first. Then you may have your fun.”
But Xorin has little self-control, so he whacks me in the face, taking a down-payment on the violence he’s going to unleash later.
For a moment all I can see is whiteness, all I can hear is a ringing in my ears.
I spit out a tooth and some blood, then raise my head.
“Someone open a window,” I say. “I think a butterfly just brushed past me.”
This enrages Xorin, as I expected it would, and he draws his fist back for another punch.
Trakiin stops him, as I knew he would. Or at any rate hoped.
“Xorin, stand aside,” he booms. “Now!”
Reluctantly Xorin moves off, muttering, pouting. He goes to the side of his mother, Hlaarina, who puts an arm round him and pats him and comforts him like the overgrown baby he is. Hlaarina is, of course, Trakiin’s twin sister as well as his wife. Who knew gods and hillbillies had so much in common?
Trakiin rises, saunters over to me, hands clasped behind his back.
“Name,” he says eventually.
“You’re the god,” I reply. “Shouldn’t you know it already?”
“I do, Ethan Nash. I know all there is to know about you.”