GRP Chapter 23

A deep, dusky dark had settled over the land. Mariaeks was still among the humans.

People were not particularly concerned with who she was or why she was there. The events that had just unfolded had left too much chaos in their wake.

After the yak god departed, the Paldoa sisters had swept off somewhere, cursing richly, declaring they would find the son of a bitch and cut him into 188 pieces. A crowd had surged after them, crying that the mad dogs were loose and had to be stopped somehow. If one were being precise, they seemed more like mad birds than mad dogs.

Found herself standing alone in a corner of the crowded thoroughfare, people flowing past on all sides. The few glances that had found her fell away as soon as she pulled her hood lower. It was a habit: suppress the breath, dim the presence. Among the large, loud humans, she became something less than a pebble on the road.

She could have slipped past the outer wall without a single person noticing. Returning to the castle would have been even simpler. She could leave. Her feet stayed.

The young god's body—frozen and still beyond the fortress wall—kept appearing at the edges of her sight.

'Tell the master of this land: cremate the child with the white flame that lights the night.'

The god's words, which she could not make sense of, were also part of what kept her feet in place. The master of this land—that could only mean the man. The hero Garthe. A man for whom overwhelming power, a brutal nature, and the deep-soaked smell of blood all fit as if they belonged to him.

To entrust a child to the hands of that violent human—the one she found strange to call a hero? Even knowing the god's own child had been killed by humans?

Her thoughts were tangled. Whatever the case, the man needed to be here for any resolution to occur. She had not expected to find herself waiting for someone she had hoped would never come back.

"Are you waiting for the Anir?"

The question landed precisely enough that Mariaeks turned. Oze—harder to find in the dark. Mariaeks swallowed. Had he recognized her and approached deliberately...

"Mariaeks?"

"...Yes."

"You must have missed him terribly."

Had she ever looked at another person this coldly in her entire life? Oze couldn't even see her expression, yet he smiled as if he'd anticipated the reaction.

"That was a joke."

"It wasn't funny."

"I thought it was."

Oze laughed—bright and easy—unclasped his cloak, and settled it around Mariaeks's shoulders.

"I meant to bring this to you sooner, but the Paldoa sisters had started going wild and I had to go deal with them. They don't really listen to other people."

Trouble was visible on his dark face. Mariaeks thought of the youngest—the smallest of the three, presumably—the one who had had her wings seized by the soldiers earlier. Who had knocked down each of the men grabbing at her wings and limbs with brisk efficiency, declared "I do not listen to those weaker than myself!" and spat once before flying away.

By any measure, including divine power, those women seemed exceptional even among Garthe's subordinates. That Oze had managed to restrain them suggested he might be considerably stronger than he appeared.

"Oh—already?"

Oze's murmur broke her thoughts. He smiled broadly in Mariaeks's direction.

"Your instincts are good, Mariaeks."

His face turned toward the darkness beyond the far end of the fortress wall.

"The Anir has returned."

Exactly ten minutes after those words, the lord of Olgidphaenn came home.

Word had been sent ahead, and the Paldoa sisters, Oze, Samthyeon, and Garthe's subordinates had all gathered noisily before the fortress wall.

The man on the great black horse swept his gaze over the assembled faces without particular interest. Mariaeks, hood pulled low, hid behind a large soldier and watched him in secret. Dried blood, darkened and flecked, covered Garthe's face. He looked genuinely terrifying.

The subjugation that had been expected to take anywhere from a week to a month had concluded in three days. She could not begin to imagine how fierce the fighting had been. For all that his expression was as composed as ever, the force radiating from him was sharper than usual.

"I don't recall ever seeing anything good when all of you are gathered like this. So. What happened?"

Samthyeon approached Garthe and relayed the full account of what had occurred. The Paldoa sisters had been delayed in returning to the fortress because of a separate assignment: tracking a group of regressors who hunted gods to consume their hearts and flesh in pursuit of greater power. They had recently found traces of regressor activity near Olgidphaenn, and following that trail, the sisters had made their way back to Fox's Den Fortress first.

As suspected, the regressors had been posing as mercenaries at Fox's Den while Garthe traveled the continent, hunting gods throughout his absence. When Garthe returned, they had attempted one last hunt before fleeing Olgidphaenn—seizing a brief gap in his attention—and that was today's event.

Thanks to that, the entire regressor group at Fox's Den had been swept up at once. The Garthe receiving this account did not look particularly pleased. That a man with the corners of his mouth lifting could still appear purely threatening seemed genuinely remarkable.

Samthyeon's account moved toward its end. At the part about the god asking for the child to be cremated, Garthe's eyebrow moved.

The man moved through the dark night air. The subordinates in his path cleared it quickly. Mariaeks ducked behind another soldier. A cold glance seemed to brush her for a moment. She looked up, but Garthe's gaze was fixed on the white body, far ahead.

He stopped before the body of the god who had not yet finished growing.

Unlike the others, who looked troubled, his face was composed. It did not seem like suppressed feeling—it seemed as if the situation produced no feeling in him at all.

"Thul'Mhoriae."

White breath left Garthe's lips. Mariaeks knew the meaning of those words, murmured low. In the gods' embrace.

Wind moved. The man's black hair dissolved into the dark night sky. A warm wind drifted and grazed Mariaeks's cheek. On a land that was always frozen, a wind this warm. Mariaeks followed its path with her eyes. It ended at Garthe.

What unfolded was remarkable. The man's face slowly brightened. Light entered his dark eyes. Warm white light began to wrap around the frozen body.

Oh—Mariaeks let out a breath. Not white light. White flame, burning white.

The white flames spiraling around the god grew and gathered, rising in a waterspout high into the sky. The dark night turned white. In the vortex of light, hair and clothing rippled steadily.

"This is Olgidphaenn's funeral rite."

Mariaeks only listened to Samthyeon's voice beside her.

"To dissolve into earth and water, fire and wind—that is what we call returning to the gods' embrace. But Olgidphaenn is the one place where that is impossible. This land freezes everything—the living and the dead alike. Bodies from a hundred years ago are found perfectly intact, even now."

Thul'Mhoriae. In the gods' embrace. Mariaeks turned the meaning over.

"The Anir's flames hold the power to destroy what has form and return it to the gods' embrace."

After a long moment, Garthe slowly brought his hands—held apart until now—together. The vortex of white flame began to shrink as well. The space between his hands narrowed. A little more. A little more. His hands came together, gently. The white flames vanished in the same moment.

It was only a gesture to extinguish the flames. It looked like prayer. She could not have said why she thought so.

Where the flames had been, nothing remained. No remnant of the body, no ash. Only the snow-covered ground, now bare. Not a single scorch mark anywhere on it. Power that could consume a body without a trace, and had not touched anything else at all.

A blizzard swept in. No—the sound of a blizzard. Mariaeks looked around. The voice of a god with no body to be seen.

At the same moment, the dark of night was lit. Not by Garthe's flames this time—by infinitely fine particles of light, drifting through the air.

She reached out a hand without thinking, but the light-dust neither gathered in her palm nor touched it. Only a cold and familiar presence, sensed.

Mariaeks understood then that this light was the young god's power. The young soul resonating with its parent's voice, releasing its final light.

Not only the place where the body had been—the entire space filled with light. Like a silent snowstorm, the light-dust drifted and scattered slowly, carried on no wind.

After a long moment, the light that had brightened the night began to dim. But it was not extinction—it was the process of seeping into the cold air and the moonlight.

In the gods' embrace. Only now did Mariaeks understand why the god had asked for the child to be cremated.

The god had sent its voice on a wind blowing from far away. Not the pain of permanent loss—only the brief glimmer of a meeting, dissolved into the sound.

Something reached deep into her chest, but Mariaeks found it difficult to fully understand. Death was only a wretched parting, in the end.

The young soul flickered—one small light at a time, then another—each returning to the gods' embrace. The cluster of light drifted before her eyes. Mariaeks closed her stinging eyes for a moment and opened them.

Beyond it, only the man remained, dark against the darkness.