To Face a God

Lightning cracked across Azoriel’s armor in slow pulses, lighting the shattered stone beneath his feet in flashes. The smell of burned metal hung in the air, and every breath tasted like it. I’d seen storms before. Grew up with them, out where my tribe used to camp. Hells, even became a Booyagh and learnt to wield the storms. But this was worse, because the storm had a face.

Faerbor’s face was gone now, twisted into something ancient and terrible, but I could still see hints of him in the way the head moved, the way the shoulder shifted when the being inside him turned to face us. The man who’d dragged our sorry group together, who’d shared drinks and stupid jokes around a campfire, was buried somewhere inside that towering body. That might’ve been the worst part. We weren’t just fighting a god. We were fighting our friend’s corpse.

That, or how damn bad his maul hurt.

Nira moved first, already bleeding badly. She lowered her lance and charged, not slowing despite her injuries. The lance drove into Azoriel’s chest, and he slid back across the floor. I saw it for a second. The Storm Lord - ancient god, breaker of cities, big ugly guy from the statue out front - staggered. Nira drove the lance deeper with a roar.

Lightning exploded from him as an answer. He swung his maul once, brutally fast, catching Nira across the side, sending her flying across the chamber. She slammed into the wall hard enough to crack the stone and slid down it, barely staying upright. The next strike came for Mar. Or… the top third of Mar, anyway.

The sorcerer Mar barely had time to squeak before the maul came down. The impact shattered the stone floor, and for a second, I thought that was it. Then the dust cleared, and Mar’s head popped up from the rubble.

“Missed me!” he squeaked.

Lightning blasted him across the chamber.

Azoriel raised his maul for yet another strike, but Beatrix was already there. The monk moved like a landslide. Her hands struck in a rapid blur, each hit hammering into gaps in Azoriel’s armor. The last strike landed with a burst that rippled through the Storm Lord’s body.

A wave of lightning blasted out from Azoriel, throwing Beatrix backwards and knocking the wind out of everyone in the room. A bolt caught me square in the chest, and for a second the world went white. I collapsed to the floor as my bones buzzed like they’d been turned into tuning forks.

I spat blood onto the floor and pushed myself back up.

“Alright,” I muttered to myself. “Storm god time.”

Cold gathered in my hands. Ice started forming in the air as I pulled the sea’s power up through my chest and out. When I let it loose, it roared forward in a cone of ice and wind. The blast swallowed Azoriel completely. Frost crawled across the stone floor and up his legs. The spirits I’d summoned from the deep surged in with the storm, clawing and biting at his towering form while I slammed waves of water into him again and again.

When the frost cleared, Azoriel was still standing. But the armor covering his chest had cracked, and ice clung to his chest. Lightning flickered weakly along the maul. As he stood there, he finally started to look hurt. I couldn’t help myself.

“Ha!” I barked. “Told you. Storm god.”

Fe thundered past me on her horse before the words had even left my mouth. She leaned low in her saddle, her flail blazing with supernatural power as she swung hard enough to break stone. The strike detonated with an explosion that rattled the chamber, and for the first time since the fight began, Azoriel dropped to one knee.

Tiares stepped forward, raising her holy symbol with determination. Golden light poured out from her, and I felt ribs knit themselves back together, burns fade, strength rush back into limbs that had been ready to collapse seconds ago.

“Get up,” she said quietly, and so we did.

Finally, the kobold that had made up Mar’s body stumbled forward with his gavel. He swung. The gavel bounced harmlessly off Azoriel’s armor.

“…worth a try,” he muttered.

Azoriel knelt in the center of the chamber, lightning flickering unevenly across the cracks of his armor. Frost clung to his chest where magic had bitten deep, and the maul in his hand dipped slightly toward the ground. He was breathing hard. I blinked at that. Gods, apparently, could bleed.

Nira pushed herself from the wall she’d been thrown into. Stone crumbled from the crack behind her as she staggered forward, lance clutched in white knuckles.

Beatrix rolled her shoulders and stepped back into stance, blood dripping from her chin but her feet standing steady.

Fe pulled her horse around for another charge, the flail already beginning to glow again.

Tiares lifted her shield to advance, divine warmth glowing from her holy symbol.

Mar’s head dragged himself from the rubble besides the two other kobolds, sparks crackling around his claws as draconic magic built between them.

I felt the sea still churning in my chest.

Azoriel looked up slowly, golden light flickering across his eyes as he watched us close in.

We didn’t stop. I raised my staff, gathering the last scraps of storm I had left. Azoriel was surrounded.

Then the screaming began.

Not in the room, but inside my skull. It felt like someone had driven a spike straight through my brain. Thoughts shattered instantly into white-hot agony. I dropped to my knees with a choked cry, hands clawing at my temples as blood started pouring from my nose and ears. All around me the others collapsed the same way.

The kobold who acted as the legs jerked violently, eyes bulging. Then his skull burst with a wet pop.

The body kobold lasted a heartbeat longer before the same thing happened to him. The two headless bodies slumped to the floor, leaving only Mar’s head writhing and shrieking in pain.

As suddenly as it had arrived, the pressure started to vanish, but we all still lay stunned. I forced my head up.

Zerak stood at the far end of the chamber, lowering a hand slowly. Her long glaive dragged across the stone floor as she walked towards the center of the room, where Azoriel still knelt. He straightened as she approached.

“Zerak,” he began. “I-”

“Enough.”

Her voice wasn’t loud. It was calm, cold.

“You struggle against mortals,” she said, stopping in front of him. “I did not free you to watch you bleed.”

Lightning flickered along Azoriel’s armor.

“I have only just returned to this world.”

“And already you make excuses.”

The Storm Lord went silent, and after a moment, he stepped back. Just once. Yielding the battlefield.

Zerak turned her attention to us. One by one, we were forcing ourselves upright again. I staggered to my feet. Everything hurt.

“Alright,” I croaked through gritted teeth. “Round two.”

Zerak watched us with an unreadable expression.

“You are already dying,” she said. “And still you rise.”

For a moment, there was something almost approving in her eyes.

“Good. Warriors should fall standing.”

Nira charged her first. Zerak moved once, glaive flashing through the air. Nira’s lance shattered, and the returning strike hurled her across the chamber like a rag doll. This time, she did not rise.

Mar’s kobold head fired a desperate bolt of lightning that Zerak caught on the glaive and turned aside. The glaive came down and pinned him to the stone.

Beatrix attacked like a whirlwind, fists blurring through the air. Zerak parried every strike before opening the monk from shoulder to hip with a single clean cut.

Fe lasted the longest after that, managing three swings of her flail before her and her horse went down together beneath a sweeping arc of the blade.

Tiares stumbled towards me, managing one last prayer before Zerak put the blade through her chest. The golden light faded from the room.

Then it was just me. Typical. Storm god of the goblins, last man standing. Figures. I raised my staff, sea breeze flowing weakly along the wood. Zerak approached without hurry.

“Tell me,” she said. “Do your people sing of storms?”

“Yeah,” I said, coughing blood. “Mostly about me.”

The corner of Zerak’s mouth twitched.

“Then die well, little storm.”

I hurled the last burst of magic I had left. It struck Zerak square in the chest and vanished like rain against stone. The glaive pierced me a second later.

As I fell, I caught one last glimpse of Azoriel standing behind her, lightning crawling across his armor as he watched the bodies scattered across the chamber floor.

Guess the world still knew how to face a god.

Just not how to win.