Goddess by Liv Savell (autobiographies to read txt) 📕

around their wagons. He scooped his palms together, as if holding the group, then gripped the invisible currents of magic he was manipulating. The earth around them groaned, a sound Meirin found more terrifying than screams of pain or the clash of battle. Horses whinnied and bolted, yanking free from their riders, one wagon careening behind the frightened beasts. People jumped out to avoid being dashed to pieces as the animals charged recklessly off. As Mascen pulled his hands apart, the road shook and heaved like a bucking bull. Meirin could see the travelers fall. She thought some might be praying or begging for their lives. Whatever God they worshiped couldn’t help, not against Mascen.

With a flourish, he yanked his hands apart, and a seam appeared down the center of the road. He pulled wider, and the crack in the earth grew into a depthless maw. People scrambled away from the fissure, but the sides of the road were tilting, down towards the break. A funnel to drop innocent travelers into his pit. Horror kept Meirin frozen, unable to think. How could she stop that? How could she save the people from him?

In clumps the people, clinging to the sides of the earth, fell into the fissure, supplies from their wagons and livestock following suit. The last human screamed as she tumbled down into the pit, and the spell on Meirin broke.She stumbled forward, snatching up a rock. “Stop! Stop!” Desperation yanked the words from Meirin’s throat, but Mascen didn’t react. He pushed his hands back towards each other, and the earth complied. The fissure was closing.

The screams, frightened and painful before, grew frantic. The people would be buried alive beneath tons of rock and earth, suffocating in a lightless pit. All because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because Mascen didn’t want Enyo and the others to get their bodies back.

Maoz crashed past Meirin, but he only made it a few steps before Va’al tackled him to the earth. “You fool!” She heard the trickster God say, “There is nothing we can do now.”

Delyth’s hand struck Meirin’s shoulder, like a hammer striking an anvil, and she jerked to a stop. She turned, but instead of seeing the warrior, her eyes landed first on Esha. The old priest’s face was dust-marked and streaked with tears, but there was a steel to the Goddess’s spine that Meirin hadn’t noticed before. She was yelling at Delyth, but it took Meirin long seconds to put the words together. “Take the humans, and go!”

Delyth dropped her pack and turned to Meirin, shaking her. The warrior’s eyes were almost all white, the sclera eating up the blue. “Leave your things. I can’t lift that much weight.” Despite her confusion, Meirin complied. Were they going to simply flee?

What else could they do?

Already Etienne had dropped his pack, Esha shoving Aryus’s horn into his hands. For protection.

“But— Those people!” Meirin wanted to help. Maybe if they dug up the area, some would still be alive?

“Meirin, those people are dead.” Delyth’s voice was heavier than a rain-pregnant cloud and just as dark.

Of course, they were dead, but shouldn’t they check? Be certain? The road trembled again, and Meirin glanced back to Mascen, who hadn’t moved from his place beside the path. Watching them. Soaking up every detail. He loved the chaos and fear. Instead of answering, Meirin slung her arm about Delyth’s shoulders. Etienne mirrored the movement and then stretched his long arm across Delyth’s body to grip Meirin’s side, hand fisting in her tunic. She did the same, and Delyth’s strong arms looped around each of their hips.

The warrior half lifted them by the waist as she took several shuddering lunging steps forward to gain speed. She beat her wings downward, lifted off the ground a foot, fell back down. Struggling to keep her balance, she tried again, run-stumbling forward. It felt as if they were falling, like the ground was rushing up to meet them, but instead, it began to fade. Delyth gained height in ungainly hopping thrusts, her neck corded with strain. But they were aloft. They were moving away.

Behind them, Mascen grew smaller and smaller, but Meirin could feel his pleasure for miles.

Chapter XXI

Eleventh Moon, Waxing Crescent: Eastern Branch of the Afonnieder

How many nights had she sat by a fire, just like this one, watching supper cook and listening to Etienne and Delyth practice magic? How many nights had she gathered around any sort of campfire, perhaps with her fellow warriors or clansmen, and shared stories and wine? But never with the company she currently kept. Never with hostile Gods trapped with half their powers locked away. Never with lovers torn apart and the fate of so many hanging precariously in the balance.

Her heart was heavy as a river stone. Those people, those poor people, whose only faults were being friendly and turning to aid them. Crushed to death. Buried and suffocating with the bodies of their friends and family surrounding them.

Meirin shuddered, not cold but chilled all the same. And all they had done was flee. Etienne and Delyth said it was all that could be done, but Meirin knew that wasn’t true. She could have tried.

Instead, she turned tail and fled like a coward.

They had met up with the Gods just before sunset, miles down the road from Mascen’s butchery. Esha and Va’al had thought to grab their packs so at least they had tents to sleep in and food to put in their bellies.

The fire popped, bringing her attention from the past. Maoz laid an additional log atop the blaze and settled back on his haunches, the flames lighting his face from below. “We cannot hunt while we are hunted.” He had said something similar before. When Mascen had known where to wait for them.

Esha found a place to sit beside the God of Beasts, putting the fire between her and Enyo where the other Goddess sat in her usual position