Page 31 of Ride or Die
A craftsman had carved it—from the ornate hilt to the shattered end of the blade—as one piece.
A fractured sob cut its way free of Anunit’s throat as she beheld the weapon.
“Anunit?” Stroking her soft cheeks, I forced her attention onto me. “What’s wrong?”
A soft ripple of energy brushed my senses as a faint resonance hummed in my bones.
The same resonance, now that I thought about it, I always felt in the presence of Alcheyvaha remains.
“The god killer blade,” she rasped, her voice breaking in tandem with her heart.
Dinorah.
That was one of Dinorah’s bones.
No wonder Anunit wailed beside me. Dear God. That sword was all that remained of her daughter.
“Fang of Dinorah.” Ithas hummed. “That is the name it was given by the artisan who forged this truly fascinating piece.” He closed his fingers over the hilt, angling the ruined edge toward us. “This weapon ended an entire pantheon of gods, and in so doing, birthed a precious resource.”
“The remains of the Alcheyvaha aren’t a resource to be exploited by greedy gods, and that sword should be laid to rest among its people.” I held out my hand. “As the guardian of the Alcheyvaha, I demand you return it. I will see that it’s given proper funerary rites.”
“That, I cannot do. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to a patron of mine.”
There was no point arguing with god logic, they were too entitled, so I set the matter of ownership aside and attempted to ferret out the other gods involved in my creation. “Then why do you have it?”
“The Alcheyvaha believed that Berchem’s family killed Dinorah and, in his grief, he killed himself.”
Berchem.
A faint buzzing at the base of my skull drowned out his next words, but I shook off the disorientation. That was it. The name forever on the tip of my tongue. How did I know it? What did it mean?
“The truth is far worse,” he was saying when my ability to concentrate returned to me. “Berchem wasn’t allowed to end his life and join his mate in the hereafter. No. His family wanted him to suffer. Eternally.” His gaze lowered to mine, and I glanced away quickly. “They bound his powers and sold him to a god as a slave.”
As the pit in my stomach tunneled deeper, I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “No.”
He couldn’t mean... That was impossible. There was no way.
“Allowed to live. Forced to exist without her. To know that their love caused the downfall of her once mighty people. His agony...” Ithas inhaled softly, “…was exquisite. The self-loathing alone would have fed me for centuries.” He shook his head. “Sadly, I wasn’t the god they approached with the bargain.”
The dull thump of my heart made it hard to hear him. “It was Dis Pater.”
“To summon Dis Pater, they marked the soul of one of their own. Sacrificed another of their family so no one who came after would dare defy their rule.” He chuckled at their folly. “They offered Berchem when Dis Pater came to collect. Dis Pater wasn’t interested in the chaotic potential, but he knew the story, and he had always been a collector of cursed items.” He lifted the blade. “He agreed to take Berchem, under the condition he was given the blade, Dinorah. He claimed it was so the young, power-hungry pantheon couldn’t use it against him as they had the Alcheyvaha, but the truth was Dis Pater wanted to possess its lethal potential. Leverage to hold over all our heads should any of us dare cross him.”
Hot tears stung the backs of my eyes. “Berchem’s own family hated him that much.”
“Yes, well, species rise and fall. I have seen the birth and death of infinite races. Mankind has endured.” I heard the pride in his voice. “But mankind is also fickle in its beliefs, and gods require consistent worship to survive. Godkind can evolve, but their potential for growth is stunted by that exact changeable nature in their food source.”
“As you said, Dinorah is a weapon that could slay another pantheon of gods given the chance.” I wished I hadn’t spoken its name when Anunit sucked in a sharp breath, but I leaned in to this new topic, eager to escape the heartbreaking tale of Berchem and Dinorah. “Why would Dis Pater entrust it to you?”
“The Alcheyvaha are extinct.” He spoke to me as if I were a child. “But their magic lives on. Imagine if we could do more than siphon residual energy like sucking marrow from the bone. Picture a new generation of gods capable of harnessing the limitless potential of the burial grounds, no longer reliant upon human worship to sustain them.” His eyes glitteredwith possibilities. “A living demigoddess—a demititan—with Alcheyvaha blood can tap into that collective power, absorb it, share it with others. She would shake the heavens until Olympia itself fell, and her offspring would provide fine husbands and wives. Conduits of a power mightier than any before seen.”
Demititan? Demigoddess was bad enough, but this was next level confusing. Cue identity crisis 3.0.
“You said it yourself. The Alcheyvaha are extinct.” I got a very bad feeling about where the missing edge of Dinorah had gone. “Dis Pater told me I’m not Alcheyvaha, so how can their blood run in my veins?”
“Bone marrow creates red blood cells. A specimen this old would normally only yield DNA samples, but I spent the better part of a century coaxing an inch-long piece back to life within a host by performing the bone marrow transplant on infants.” He ran a thumb over the broken end. “None of them survived adolescence.” His brow knit into a frown. “That was the moment I decided my next embryo would possess two distinct blood types, that of its Alcheyvaha donor and that of its own. Chimerism is what they call it. Though you are chimeric in so many beautiful ways.”
The dullness in Anunit’s eyes terrified me when they met mine, as if she were no longer seeing me.
