Vassal by Sterling D'Este (ebook reader computer TXT) 📕

Enyo only gave Tristan a scorching look before meandering on. “I suppose if you are too afraid, Tristan, Ba’oto and I could fly up to Thlonandras and leave you here?” she crooned, knowing full well he’d rather swallow his tongue than miss her regaining her powers.

༄

Delyth just walked past the others when she landed, too tired to pay attention to their squabbling. They came across another pit triggered some time ago by the looks of it, and a felled tree.  It seemed someone had caused a landslide because the path completely disappeared beneath a pile of rock, dirt, and debris. Perhaps the traveler was buried under all that stone.

Delyth wondered what they had possibly been hoping to achieve in taking this path. There was nothing at its top but bones.

Enyo had only snorted at the sight and climbed up and over the heap without a backward glance. Her cheeks were red from the sun, and she was panting, but her eyes were ablaze as if she could see her precious basin already. Feel its weight in her palms. For a while, they hiked in silence, and whatever surprises the trail held for them, Enyo steered them safely around.

Delyth saw the temple first.

It was less impressive than she had imagined. The cold, beautifully cut marble of the pillars had crumpled beneath the weight of the roof. The walls gaped open in places from the wounds time had inflicted upon them. Trees grew from its center. Lichen and vines splattered the stone, crept from the doorways.

It was still beautiful.

But also broken.

The priestess turned away before either of the other two remarked on the distant temple. She dreaded reaching it. Dreaded the chance that she might fail Alphonse in keeping the artifact away from Enyo.

Still, she would have to try.

Beside her, Tristan had noticed the vista, his eyes wide. He whistled low. “They just don’t build that way anymore.”

Enyo turned quickly to peer across the rock and boulder landscape to see Thlonandras. A sound escaped her throat. Raw and primal and somehow deeply, deeply frail. Fingers covered in dust and dirt came up to wrap about her throat tenderly as her eyes caressed her temple’s curves and edges. The sunlight gleamed in her tawny locks, and Enyo seemed to draw strength from the very sky itself. “Ma’oh,” she whispered.

⚄

Tristan entered the temple beside Enyo, just as he would have in times long past, the two of them striding before any mortal followers.

He smiled grimly.

Soon those times would be possible once more. Enyo’s basin was finally within reach. No one stood in their way.

When Enyo paused a few steps in, Tristan stilled as well, his lungs filling with crisp air. No other God’s temple had been placed so high above the common earth, so close to the heavens. Not even Tha’et, for all they were his domain.

The interior was much like the outside. Worn. Damaged in part. And yet still, she stood. Strong against the elements. A testament to the artisans of the old world and to their devotion to the Gods they served. It was laid out simply, just a finely masoned stone floor at the center of which stood an altar, empty but for a single, rough wooden basin.

Enyo’s artifact.

Tristan took another deep breath and turned to Enyo, just in time to watch Delyth step around her. The halfbreed tookeven, measured paces towards the altar, her eyes focused ahead and her face blank. She paused a breath standing before the bowl, no doubt bathing in the force that Tristan could feel brimming from the artifact even where he stood, feet away.

So much marvelous power.

Delyth picked up the bowl, her hands steady, obviously to bring it to her Goddess, ever the faithful priestess. Even now, when she stood to lose so much.

Tristan had to hand it to Enyo.

She had always inspired such devotion.

The halfbreed turned around, her eyes moving from the basin to Enyo. Tristan couldn’t believe that her joy didn’t show through that stone facade. It was too great a moment to hide it. Even his grin was genuine for once, splitting his face and making mounds of his cheeks.

Nothing moved for a long heartbeat. The priestess didn’t step forward.

Instead, she did the unthinkable.

Delyth launched herself through one of the crumbling walls and up into the sky.

❂

A disastrous scream ripped through Enyo as she watched the warrior, her priestess, launch herself into the sky. The trees groaned, their roots straining with the sudden wind lashing at the mountainside, desperate to grab the traitorous whore and slap her back down to the earth.

The mountain shrieked and rocks older than time shuddered, hasty to bow before her wrath.

Enyo’s gaze burned brighter than the sun. Pure, molten gold. She flew out of the temple, watching as her winds battered the priestess and her basin, refusing to let her climb, to let her escape.

Enyo would dash the bitch against the mountainside, splattered and nothing but bits of bone and gore. She’d dance through her remains and retrieve her basin, which could never be broken.

Still, the priestess fought against the currents of air, mighty wings flapping, gaining inch by treacherous inch.

Enyo snarled and turned on Tristan.

“Give me your dagger,” she snapped, holding out that mortal hand. So useless. So pitiful.

༄

Gods, damn Enyo and all her magic.

Every muscle in Delyth’s back strained with the effort of keeping herself in the sky. Fire laced her shoulders through her wings. Her abdomen was tight with the stress the sky exerted upon her frame. Her breath came in gasps.

But she was pulling away.

She could feel it in the way her wings cupped the tumult. In the way the ground before her receded.

Her progress was small. Slow.

But she could do this. For Alphonse.

She could save them both.

Below, Enyo and Tristan were smaller than children, but she could still see him hand the Goddess his dagger, her molten eyes flashing.

Suddenly, freedom didn’t look so sure.

Delyth couldn’t dive now. She would never regain the height she needed in this wind. She’d be trapped—pinioned to