GRP Chapter 1

"God, save us."

In the darkness of the prison, the frightened people whispered. Please, if you can hear us, deliver us from this place. O Spirit of Talla, O Warden of the Forest, O Steadfast Root of the Sacred Tree, O Moonwave of the Deep Sea.

As many gods as there were prisoners, that many names were called, each a separate groan of supplication. But those desperate prayers were ground to nothing beneath a larger noise.

"Anir—Ryvalle!"

The air shook. Bwoooo—the war-horns, shaking the sky, and outside at every pulse of that sound thousands of voices took up the call: Anir—Ryvalle. Anir—Ryvalle. The roar of it rose and rose without pause, until the ears went numb.

"Anir—Ryvalle!"

"Thou most radiant among the Five Giant Gods—receive these offerings, and in thy mercy, look down upon these unworthy ones!"

Thousands of zealots filled the vast space to every edge, every one of them on their knees with hands pressed together, every one of them staring at a single point: the enormous golden altar, raised high enough to catch the sun before it touched the ground.

The altar blazed in the light as though to prove the giant god's greatness in solid form. The zealots wept openly. They did not appear to see the skulls scattered across the altar steps, nor the dried black-red stains that had soaked into every seam between the stones.

BOOM.

The earth groaned from somewhere far off. A skull that had been rocking gently in the tremor toppled and rolled—down dozens of steps, along the gilded path, until it struck the prison door and stopped.

"No—!"

The prisoners convulsed, screaming, clawing toward the corners and walls even though there was nowhere left to go. Into the fingernail marks already gouged into the stone, new ones were being cut.

They say light is hope and darkness despair. The situation was no different here. The prison, where shadow ran deep, was the pit of it—and the door, the one point where light came through the iron grating, was the hope. The only possible way out.

But hope is never given freely. It also requires courage. The madness blazing outside the door was more than enough to burn every scrap of courage the prisoners had left. The only thing any of them could manage was to tremble, and to force the breath in and out of their bodies.

BOOM.

The same shudder that had sent the skull rolling returned.

Boom. Boom.

The ground-shaking sound drew steadily closer. Outside, the zealots shrieked the name of whatever was coming.

"Anir—Ryvalle!"

The Giant God of Ryvalle—the vast western reach of the continent. The zealots had elevated the giant with the word reserved for chiefs, rulers, kings, and absolute sovereigns alone: Anir.

It was a name already making waves across a continent that never knew a quiet day. The stories that traveled farthest were of the worst kind—how the god had slaughtered hundreds of heroes sent to stop it; how it had devoured a gentle god alive. And the fervor of the followers had done as much for the name as the atrocities had. Burning with a sacred mission to make the Giant God of Ryvalle the one true god of the region, they had torched every surrounding village and city, forced conversions, and gone so far as to abduct children and newly-come-of-age women as offerings—a fact that had made them the common enemy of a growing number of factions.

Not long ago, word had come that the Thul'Mhoriae Alliance was assembling a punitive force of heroes and mercenaries. But what use was that to recall now? The prisoners held their breath and let their tears fall.

"O most mighty, most powerful, most holy God—receive these offerings and bestow thy blessing! Anir—Ryvalle!"

"Anir—Ryvalle!"

"Anir—Ryvalle!"

"Bless us!"

Each sound swallowed the one before it and grew larger. The heat of the devotion was like a storm—violent and absolute, sweeping everything before it.

BOOM.

The ground lurched and a vast shadow fell across the door. Every last scrap of light vanished. The inside of the prison became dark as night arrived. The breath of the prisoners who had been weeping and screaming cut off. Outside went the same way. The thundering chant of Anir—Ryvalle died all at once, from thousands of throats simultaneously. As though every sound in the world had been extinguished.

Then the noise came.

Guuuu... The sky vibrated, and the earth vibrated under it. It was the sound of earthquake and thunder at once.

A god’s voice was like the sounds of the natural world—beyond what a mere human could grasp. Before that vast presence, the prisoners could only bow their heads.

"The god has answered!"

"Wet the altar with the blood of the offerings!"

"The offerings!"

"Death!"

"Blessing!"

"Glory!"

The zealots screamed in a frenzy, flung about by their own excitement. The war-horns shrieked and split the air. Doom doom doom—the drums, fast and unbroken, and hearts began to beat in time with them. At the sound of approaching footsteps, the prisoners came apart with terror, pressing against the walls, crying out.

Where is my god? Where is the merciful being who looks down upon this world—the great presence I have served all my life with perfect faith—why will you not save me?

Gods are all-powerful. Gods do not abandon those who follow them. The larger the despair grew, the more of their faith in it broke away, piece by piece.

"Is there truly no god who will save us?"

An old woman's parched lament escaped into the air. Whether you called on divine mercy or denied the gods entirely, the situation did not change. No salvation, no divine judgment. The only real thing was the sound of quiet laughter that had risen from somewhere inside the prison—small enough that in any ordinary life it would have been unremarkable, but here it felt nothing short of unreal.

The old woman lifted her head from the floor. She didn't need to search for who had laughed. While everyone else was pressed into the corners and the edges, there was someone walking toward the door with an unhurried, easy stride—a gait that had no business existing in a place made of nothing but tears and despair.

She understood then that he was the source of that brief laughter. She had noticed him before. In a prison large enough to hold a hundred people, he had stood out from the start. His height and his face were secondary considerations. Throughout the entire time they'd been held here—while others wept and screamed and collapsed and called out to every god they could name—this man had simply sat with his back against the wall, perfectly still. He looked as if he alone were sitting in some entirely different space—not a prison—and so her gaze went to him, unbidden.

Now he was walking to the door without a glance at the mass of prisoners huddled together. He stepped into the one place where the light fell. The breeze caught his black hair and moved through it gently. The full weight of the sunlight narrowed his eyes. He looked less like a prisoner facing death and more like someone standing in a flowering meadow, welcoming the spring. Not a trace of misery or fear anywhere on him.

He turned and looked at her. He had clearly known she was watching him before she had fully decided to be.

His mouth curved in a small, easy smile—confirmation that the laughter she'd heard had not been an illusion.

"Why?"

"...I beg your pardon?"

"Why you keep staring."

The old woman opened her mouth, then pressed her lips shut again. The drums beat, and the zealots outside were singing in their mad voices. Surrounded on all sides by a future with no way out, she found herself unable to think what his rank or this pointless exchange could possibly mean.

He spoke to her in casual address, without the slightest consideration for the difference in their ages. The familiarity of it was so complete it didn’t read as rudeness—more like the reflex of someone who had never needed to consider rank in any room.

"Ah."

He said it as though something had occurred to him.

"Because I laughed?"

After a brief hesitation, she gave an awkward nod.

"But the famous Priestess of Lannae herself is the one saying there's no god..." He smiled wide and clean, all teeth. "A slow awakening, for someone like you. Faith from before you were born. Decades of blood-grinding discipline. All of it—for nothing. Isn’t that right?"

The old woman's face burned with humiliation. He studied her for a moment longer, then turned away with the expression of someone who had already lost interest.

The lock clattered and caught—Chk-clunk—and the prison door shuddered. The zealots had arrived to take the first offering. The collision of key and iron made an unpleasant sound. The prisoners screamed as though being torn open. The door scraped wide along the stone and swung open. The zealots' faces were flushed red with excitement, their breathing harsh and shallow. The perpetual burning of hallucinogenic herbs somewhere outside had produced this result. Whether it also blurred their sense of guilt was uncertain, but the zealot holding the noose grinned at the weeping children without any visible trouble.

"How kind."

The man thanked them pleasantly and walked past them out of the prison. The manner of it was entirely natural. The zealot who had, without meaning to, opened the door for him stared in bewilderment with his noose still hanging from his hand.

An offering leaving the prison of its own accord was impossible. They all had to be dragged, howling and weeping, occasionally soiling themselves, hauled to the altar like animals.

But this man was different.

He walked the gilded path toward the altar. Steady. Unhurried.

The old woman stared after him in a daze. In the blazing sunlight, his black hair lifted softly in the wind. The drums beat full and heavy, and the war-horns pealed up toward the sky—sounds that, in any other context, might have scored the triumphal return of a conqueror.

The old woman reached for a half-remembered thread. It concerned the most famous black-haired hero on the continent.

'Surely not...'

Had the punitive force dispatched by the Thul'Mhoriae Alliance arrived already? The spark of hope, which had been long cold and producing only smoke, began, cautiously, to catch.

She watched him grow smaller in the distance.