Page 1 of Mischief Maker
Chapter One
Kireth
Footsteps.
I jolt awake to the sound of crunching leaves and twigs as someone passes through my forest. It’s likely an innocent human is simply searching for wood to chop or game to hunt. Many years have passed since anyone disturbed me, and then it was only a young boy picking berries.
Immortality has been boring these last few centuries. In the old days, gods like me were everywhere. We ruled the world and kept mortals in their place, occasionally deigning to help them because they made such wonderful playthings. We needed humanity to worship us to continue on.
Then, slowly, the mortals began to change—building new tools and discovering new ways of living that didn’t include us. Eventually they stopped believing in magic. In the old ways. In us.
Without anyone to worship us, we faded into memory, which for many of the greater immortals gave way to oblivion. The bigger the god, the harder they fall, as they say.
Now I, on the other hand, am a minor immortal. I have one temple, built deep in the forest, that has long been overgrown by twining vines and thick undergrowth. It is where I rest, possibly for all of eternity.
So, like I said, a relatively tedious life. I’ve grown accustomed to the idleness, to watching the world pass by. Weeks and months are nothing to me, barely a shiver, the years mere blinks. A decade is a soft breath. Perhaps someday I, too, will fade into oblivion, once the last mortals who remember me are gone.
Imagine my surprise when a small hand tears at the vines and greenery that’s grown all around my temple, disguising it like part of the forest. One by one, the branches are torn away, revealing crumbling stone underneath.
I’m fully awake now, curious about who has discovered me and is now seeking me out.
My visitor is a young woman, dressed in a simple dress that looks like it’s seen much better days. Her brown hair is scattered and dirty, her hazel eyes determined as she frantically tears off the last remaining brush, freeing my temple from the clutches of the forest at long last.
How does she know I’m here when so many others have forgotten me? And what does she plan to do?
I wait with burning curiosity as she studies the runes carved into the stone. Her mouth moves but no sound comes out, as if she is testing out the words.
Surely she can’t be here to summon me. It has been hundreds of years since anyone uttered my name and spoke the words to call on me. I was sure that everyone had forgotten how.
And then I hear her voice. It is like a new harp, a simple but beautiful song falling from its fresh, soft strings.
“I beseech you, O Lord,” she intones. Some of her dirty brown hair falls over her face, and she pushes it back behind her ear. She wavers, as if unsure this is the right path to follow.
If I were currently corporeal, I would be leaning forward, listening carefully. As it is, I am hovering on the edge of my physical form, waiting for the words that will manifest me.
She can’t mean to bring me out, can she? If she does, there will be chains around my hands, circling my feet, binding me to her will. I will be a slave again, existing only to do another’s bidding.
Why, then, am I excited for it? Perhaps it’s that I miss the fresh air, or that I have not felt the sun’s rays on my bare skin in so many centuries.
“I come to you on my knees,” the young woman says, and it is true—she kneels before my temple, her hands clenched in the moss that has grown thick around the base. “As you once promised us...”
She pauses, thinking hard. It’s been so long, I’m certain no one still knows the words. This is where she’ll falter, where she’ll fail, and I will remain entombed here.
“As you once promised us, please grant me your aid, and I will be your supplicant.”
The words tickle my very essence. Truly, the time has come.
But what does this mortal being want with me?
“O Lord, who goes by the name of...”
Once more she trails off, and I wonder if she’s changed her mind. All she needs is one more word, and I’ll be set free again.
Set free only to be shackled.
“Kireth.”
Faela
