Page 134 of The Lost Reliquary
None of this began with me.
And it doesn’t need to end with me either.
I slump back into the wall of bones, letting out a deep, aching breath. There’s no reason to fight, not anymore. Not if I don’t want to. Gingerly, my fingers creep to the wound in my side, which is leaking slower now. I wanted freedom. Here it is. Freedom from the Goddess, from the constant rending of my contrary feelings for them. Maybe this isn’t the way I’d fantasized, but severing that divine leash, making it beyond the boundaries of the map—it was always a bit of a longshot. And this was never my game. No, this contest between divinities began long ago, ebbing and flowing in its consequence, chewing through players dedicated and ignorant alike.
This was never my game, and I was never going to win it.
“But that’s life, right?”
Alastair doesn’t respond.
Just beyond the boundary of the apse, Tempestra-Innara succeeds in immolating another of the heretics, the heat of it reaching me like a caress. On the other end of the Cathedral, Osiron has partially encased Caius in stone. It spreads over the Arbiter like a film, though he breaks it away nearly as quickly as the divinity can replace it. I can’t find Nolan. Between the flames and the storm creatures, smoke—or maybe fog—fills the Cathedral, turning the scene before me into something out of a fever dream.
What a godsdamned mess.
Tempestra. Osiron. Their conflict is nearly over. And now, as theend approaches at a reckless pace, it turns out I don’t really give a fuck which one wins. Numbness begins to encroach, a welcome sensation as I settle against the gilded ossuary, only one question still quietly itching at me, and that’s whether I’ll hang on long enough to see who comes out on top.
Across the Cathedral, Osiron manages to fully envelope Caius in the webbing, while closer by, Tempestra-Innara battles the last two remaining heretic storm-monsters. Despite their earlier successes, something has shifted. Their flame has withered, still burning, but no longer blazing with the same strength as before. I thought I was past caring, but when they falter, knees hitting the very spot where they once claimed me as their own, a smile rises. My fantasy, or some small sliver of it, played out, if not fulfilled.
A trembling begins, barely noticeable beneath my growing lack of feeling. But it doesn’t dampen my contentment.
Let it come. I’m satisfied.
I’m ready.
But the low vibration isn’t death. An explosion thunders through the Cathedral, filling the air with glass, with stone, with screams. When these clear enough to see what has happened, Osiron is no longer on their feet. The deity has been thrown into the Cathedral doors, which are now cracked and splintered. The Whisperer tries to rise once, twice, then falls, bleeding from countless wounds.
And Caius… he’s freed himself from Osiron’s stony enclosure, energy crackling off him in a way that eclipses both true divinities. From my vantage, I can see his eyes, hostile and dark as a hurricane, and just as unforgiving. Storm crossed with Flame and fully unleashed… Caius bears downs on Osiron’s remaining heretics like a feral bear, tearing them away from Tempestra-Innara and ripping through them with an anger that is nothing short of ravenous. Bit by bit, piece by horrific piece, I watch as the tide of battle turns against the first god in favor of the last. Osiron’s heretics are dead or dying, and what’s left of the Goddess’s devoted begin to appear out of the devastation, including—curse the relief of it—Nolan, absolutely painted in gore.
Just like Tempestra-Innara, who rises shakily, a smile of triumph spreading on their face.
“My Chosen.” Their voice is weak but clear, cutting through the death cries of the final heretic-creature. “My son, you have done—”
Caius whips their way with a flash, sharp and bright, a lucent blade that seems to pierce as deeply as Avery’s knife.
But not nearly as deep as my blood mother’s scream. It rips through what’s left of me, shredding what is already in pieces, turning existence blank for what feels like eternity. Until it isn’t, and my vision resolves to find Tempestra-Innara sprawled on the stairs to the nave, fully half of their body charred black. Caius stands above them, a foggy miasma pouring from his eyes, skin charred and cracking with the power roiling just below it. Some kind of fluid—I’d rather not know what—pours from the corners of his mouth, sizzling as it hits the stone below. Then it—because whatever I’m looking at clearly isn’t Caius anymore—begins to growl, a rumbling, savage sound utterly devoid of humanity.
“Alastair, I’m beginning… to think that messing around with the blood of dead gods… is a universally bad idea.” And I laugh, a sound that comes out half sob, because Tempestra-Innara is dying. I know it like I know my own death is creeping closer.
So does everyone else left in the Cathedral. There’s the thick beat of realization, followed by the plummet, that shattering of pure devotion to what can no longer be saved. An opening of an endless, heart-rent chasm. The cry that tears from Nolan is a sound I could have lived—died—without hearing.Anguishfalls short as a description; what emits from him is the cry of someone who’s entire existence has been undone. He lunges at Caius, raising his battle-stained sword with both hands…
That foolish, godsdamned idiot—
… and plunges it directly into Caius’s heart.
Futile horror floods me, but I can’t look away. Not even though I know what’s coming… and that Nolan’s end will be much, much worse than anything I’ve witnessed so far.
Caius coughs once, thickly, staring down at the weapon skewering him. Then the growl returns—the low, impending thunder of reprisal—at the same moment the divine flame ignites around the hilt of Nolan’s sword. An inferno bursting to life, it races up the blade to Caius, engulfing him. There isn’t even an attempt at resistance—Nolan’s strike is so swift that there is barely time for a single, abruptly strangled screech.Then only the flame, followed by ash, which crumbles to the stone floor, swirling in the air like bits of snow.
But whatever Nolan has done, it comes at a cost. No longer held fast by flesh, his sword falls free, and he collapses. Not dead—I can still see the rise and fall of his chest—but pushed well passed his conceivable limit.
Silence falls on the Cathedral, a stillness tinged by smoke and blood.
Then: footsteps.
Osiron’s, as they make their way down the center of the Cathedral, past what few devoted are left. “Go,” they order as the mangled doors of the Cathedral fly open.
The survivors waste no time obeying. Except for one: Avery. I feel a trickle of relief seeing him stagger out of the destruction, one hand pressed to the back of his head, battered but alive.
