One (The Godslayer Cycle Book 1) (43 page)

Avery found himself moving as he had never moved before, lashing out against Nathaniel and Bracken, forcing the two back with the ferocity of his attacks.  Amazingly enough, both men's weapons held up against
One
's assaults, neither giving or yielding. 
First
Avery could understand – it was the Godslayer's weapon, and
One
's twin.  But what power could possibly be in the dwarf's weapon that could give it the power to stand against
One
's power?  In a dim, half conscious way, Avery began to distance himself from the actual battle as his mind wrested with the mystery surrounding the two men and their true origins.  Were they actually Gods themselves, only posing as men?  If the taller was the Godslayer, was the dwarf something else?

Avery's inner thoughts were suddenly shattered by a blinding pain in his back.  His body turned quickly to determine the cause, and saw Lady Brea muttering more arcane words.  It seemed the priestess had now entered the battle, and he was now assaulted from both front and rear!  Remarkably though, instead of being weakened by the attack, Avery found himself empowered, the fatigue he had felt lifting.

In a remarkable move that Avery could not have hoped to mimic in all his years, the former heretic found himself launched into the air, flipping in mid-air and landing soundly to the rear of the two men.  The move had effectively put Nathaniel and Bracken between him and the priestess and also afforded him a clear attack on the unguarded flanks of his assailants.  With a sweeping combination blow, Avery found himself slicing upward at the dwarf's legs, receiving a satisfying feel of contact before moving onwards to bring
One
downwards towards Nathaniel's unguarded back.  However, by this time, Nathaniel had had time to react and once again brought
First
into line to block
One
's swing.  The force of the recoil sent Avery staggering backwards, yet this time he had remained standing.  Apparently,
One
could prepare itself for his opponent if it knew to.

A quick glance towards Bracken verified that
One
had scored a serious wound against the dwarf.  Though the leg had not severed as Avery had felt sure it must be, the gouge in the dwarf's leg was severe enough that he would now be out of the fight.  Which left Avery facing off solely against Nathaniel and
First
, so long as he could keep them between himself and the priestess.

Nathaniel found himself taking on a new level of anger himself now.  Having seen his lifelong friend downed, and unable to see for himself how badly without taking his eyes off of Avery, he found himself enraged.  If this man had maimed his friend...

Up until now, Nathaniel had found himself crippled with self-doubt.  He had been able to defend himself, yet he had lost his self-confidence in the skills gifted to him by Malik.  He could not surrender himself to his instincts for fear that they would be insufficient to the task at hand.  Yet now, the doubt was gone.  All that remained was a single-minded determination to make the little man in front of him pay for the harm he had caused.  There was no longer any room for mercy – Avery had demonstrated that he would offer no quarter, and Nathaniel no longer intended to give any of his own.

As Avery charged, Nathaniel met him with equal fierceness.  The two began to pummel at each other, their blades striking sparks as they clashed again and again.  The world seemed to disappear for Nathaniel as he focused only on the man in front of him.  Avery himself could see the rage in the other man's eyes, and would have withdrawn or surrendered if he could have.  Yet
One
was intent upon fighting to the death, and there was nothing Avery could do about it.

Despite his renewed passion, however, Nathaniel found himself losing ground.  He felt his arms tiring and his body ached every time the blades clashed.  Avery seemed empowered by a force greater than any he could dredge up from within.  In a fit of senseless humor, Nathaniel found himself wondering why one of the gifts of the Avatar had not been superhuman strength.

Suddenly a growl distracted Nathaniel away from his attacker, permitting the other man to slide a strike under his guard and into the side of his rib.  The growl had also drawn Avery's attention, though
One
had seemed unfazed by the distraction, permitting it to score a sizable wound.  Yet
One
was not completely oblivious to Avery's eyesight as the heretic saw the grounded dwarf hurling his axe in a mighty heave along the ground.  Avery found himself turning to leap over the offending weapon when a sharp pain in his right hand informed him that Nathaniel had taken advantage of his own defensive move. 

Avery was not completely aware of what had happened, only that he found himself once again fully in control of his body.  He found himself sprawled upon the ground, clutching at his wrist, looking wildly around for his sword.  He may not have been in control of the fight, but even Avery knew he was helpless without a weapon to defend himself.

Even when Avery saw
One
lying to the side, he did not fully grasp the significance of what had happened.  The pommel's size had increased, doubling in width, it seemed.  It still rocked slightly where it had fallen, half suspended in the air by some stone in the road.  It took him a moment to focus on the hilt to realize why it seemed larger, and only then, when he saw the hand clasping the hilt, did the pain truly pierce his confusion.

In horror, Avery looked to the stump of his hand to see the blood flowing freely, even though his other hand was clamped tightly to instinctively stem the flow.  And he screamed.  Not out of pain or even fear.  Avery just screamed.  He was not even sure why he did, only that he could not seem to stop once he had started. 

Scrambling to his feet, the once-would-be-God backed away from the man who now looked on with his own degree of shock at what he had done.  Somehow, the idea that Nathaniel was just as stunned as he gave Avery the willpower to silence his screams.  For a moment, he stood staring at Nathaniel with only the sound of their heaving breaths between them, with Nathaniel returning the stare with equal confusion.  Then, without so much as another sound, Avery took to heel and fled into the surrounding woods.

Avery ran.  It was all he could do.  Nothing else could process through his mind.  In fact, there was nothing in his mind – a complete absence of thought or reason. The loss of his hand, the loss of
One
, the loss of his Godhood.  None of it processed save the desperate need to keep moving.

As he ran, Avery clutched his severed hand to his chest, oblivious to the copious amounts of blood gushing out of it, drenching his tunic.  Though his left hand clutched the wrist, still the bleeding would not stop.  Though Avery was not truly aware of the bleeding, he was equally unaware that his mad flight was adding to his blood loss.  His heart raced and pounded, and the more he ran, the greater the beat within his chest resounded.  And with each thump in his breast, more and more blood pumped along his veins and out his wrist.

Avery was equally unaware when he had stopped running.  He did not remember stopping, did not recall falling nor how long he had been lying upon the ground when he finally regained a dim measure of awareness.  He could feel his head pounding, the weakness of his breath, the difficulty it took him to form thought.  Yet he could not fully grasp the reason.

He had lost
One
.  The Godslayer had cut it away.  This much Avery was keenly aware of, yet the remembrance that it had been done through the severing of his hand escaped his enfeebled mind.  He had lost control of the sword, and that had panicked him. 
One
had been a monster all along, and it alone had had the real power.  Avery knew this now, and the shame alone was enough to make him want to curl up here on the ground and die.  But then he had lost control again and fled through the woods in a blind panic, only coming to his senses when his body could go no further.  The shame had been doubled by that.

Thank the Gods no one saw that
, he thought numbly.  He needed to rest, he knew.  The sheer weight of his exhaustion was overtaking him.  All he wanted was to lie here and rest.  Maybe he would get back up after he had rested.  Perhaps he could even find a way to...

“
Avery,” came a voice into his darkness.  It truly had grown dark, he realized.  It had been close to dusk, yet now was clearly full night...

“
My Lord,” came the voice again.

“
So tired...”  Avery heard himself mumble.  “Cold...  Could you get me a blanket?”

Avery found himself lifted bodily into a seated position, instead of tucked into his warm bed as he had expected.  “How dare you...”  Avery tried to sound forceful, yet his words came out as a lazy slur.  “I am a God...”

“Yes, you are, My Lord,” came the voice.  “Yet you may soon be an extinct God if you do not act.”

Avery scrunched his brow.  “I am alive...” he managed.

“True, though not by much.  You need to restore yourself, before you slip too far gone.”

The voice made no sense, and it was truly beginning to vex Avery.  Why couldn't the voice just let him sleep?  He could deal with the voice later, if only he could sleep awhile.

“My Lord, I cannot sustain you,” said the voice.  “You must do this on your own.  You have taken in too much divine energy.  I can not manipulate the healing energies you need.  You must do it on your own...”

“
Divine...?”

An audible sigh reached Avery's ears before the voice resumed.  “You absorbed a portion of Galentine's power when you struck down his priest.  And I suspect the touch of Imery added to the mix would be from when her priestess struck at you during your fight.  You must have absorbed a portion of her power, as well.  Regardless, I cannot heal you directly if you are possessed of another God's power.  You need to heal yourself.”

Avery attempted to scowl, his comprehension slipping.  “You want me to heal you?  I am the God of Vengeance, not healing...”

Avery felt a sharp slap across his face.  For a moment, he could see clearly and he finally recognized the voice's owner.  “Hamil!  How dare you!”  Avery blustered.

“My Lord, I beg your forgiveness, but you need to awaken.”  Despite the scribe's words, however, Avery began to slip away again.  After a moment's pause, Hamil was seized by inspiration.  “Viola has need of you, My Lord.  You must focus your energy so that you may rise to meet her needs!”

This thought stirred something in Avery, as the thought of losing his sweet Viola gave his mind something new to focus on.  “Viola...?”  he stammered.

“Yes, yes,” Hamil smiled.  “Your Lady needs you to focus, to stay with me.  I will guide you, but you must be aware enough to follow.”

Avery opened one squinted eye, though he found it incredibly difficult to hold his head steady.  “What do ya want me to do?”

Avery was seized with a sharp pain in his left wrist as the scribe roughly broke it from the grip of his right hand.  “Focus, My Lord,” said Hamil.  “I need you to focus on your wrist, to seal off the wound.  Or else you will bleed out...”

Avery tried to answer, but coughed instead.

   “My Lord, no more words.  Just look at me.  Look in my eyes.”

Avery once again tried to focus on his young scribe, and this time he found himself amazed at how vibrant and fascinating Hamil's eyes were.  Once his one eye became focused, it became easier to focus the second.  In moments, Avery felt himself calmly aware, if not completely conscious of what he was actually aware of.

“Good, good,” came Hamil's voice from somewhere beyond his eyes.  “Now, feel this.”  Pain erupted anew in Avery's wrist as Hamil thrust his own hand over it.

“
Stop!” cried Avery, trying to pull free.

“
Stop me, My Lord,” came Hamil's voice.

Avery struggled weakly to do just that, yet Hamil's hand only pressed down harder.  “Let me go!  Please, let me go!”  Avery wailed.

“Not that way, My Lord,” Hamil implored.  “Reach deep and push me away from within.  Push me away through your wrist.  Do it now!”  Hamil slapped Avery again.  “Now!” he commanded, again slapping Avery fully across the face.  “Do it!” he nearly yelled as he balled his fist and slugged his Lord and Master.

“
Stop!” screamed Avery.  And then, without warning, Hamil found himself thrown bodily away from Avery as a bright flash of energy erupted from the end of Avery's wrist where his hand had been.  Avery sat bolt upright, screaming in terror as the energy burst from his flesh, once again clutching his right wrist.  Yet in spite of the sheer shock of it, the energy did not burn nor scald. After a minute's time, Avery found himself more in awe than fear, and his screams silenced.  After a few minutes more, the energy faded and eventually receded back within his arm.

For a moment, all was calm.  Avery felt renewed somehow, if not completely whole.  He found himself staring at the stump of a wrist, a newly deformed limb where his hand had once been.  Yet the wound was healed, the residual scar a healthy pink.  Avery looked down upon himself and saw the copious amounts of blood in which he had been drenched and looked again in amazement at his newly healed wrist.

“
I should be dead,” Avery marveled.

“
Truly,” said Hamil from where he sat sprawled a few feet away.  “Yet My Lord is blessed and proven his Godhood...”

Avery looked up and blinked.  “Yes, I suppose I have...” he muttered.  He was not entirely certain how, but he had found a way to heal himself, and the power had
not
come from
One
.  If  the sword had actually been the source of his power, then how was it that now, stripped of it, he could perform such Godly magic as this?

“
I will admit though,” Avery cautiously put forward.  “I am not entirely sure how I survived.  The Godslayer had me, dead to rights...”

Hamil quirked his head in curiosity.  “Godslayer?” he asked.

Avery looked over at his scribe, only now beginning to wonder about how Hamil could have known exactly where he had been.  “Yes, a bane of the Gods,” Avery managed.  “He slew the Old Gods.  He would have slain me if he had had his way.  And he nearly had.  Except...”  Avery stopped and cocked his own head.  “Except that you found me and told me how to heal myself...”

Hamil shook his head, dismissively.  “No, not I, My Lord,” the scribe insisted.  “While I sought to bind your wound, you were speaking to another.  I feared you were mad, yet now you seem fully sane.”

Avery took pause at that.  “I was talking to someone else?  Not to you?”

Hamil shook his head.  “Truth be, I was afraid to speak, so fearful were your words,” the scribe muttered.

“But how is it you are here...?”

“
I came when you called to me,” Hamil answered, tapping the side of his head.  “In here.  You called to me in here, and I came.  I do not know how I knew where to come, yet I did.  And I found you here upon the ground, speaking to someone not here.  When I saw your wrist was bleeding, I came straight away to bind it.  But then you thrust me away...”  The scribe faded off.

“
Yet you say someone told you how to heal yourself...”  Hamil's features brightened.  “Truly you were in communion with your fellow Gods...?”  The sheer adulation in the scribe's face at the thought of his God communing with others of his kind was embarrassing for Avery, especially after so soon humiliating himself before the Godslayer.  Yet his words certainly gave Avery pause.

Avery had believed himself to be a God reborn, that
One
had gifted unto him divine power.  Could it have been more than the whimsical fantasy that
One
had clouded his mind with?  Could he actually have ascended to being a divine being, and now he had tapped into some incomprehensible method of communication with others of his kind?  The possibility seemed pure fancy, and yet, he had healed himself.  The idea had not been his own, for certain.  Someone else had instructed him.  If it was not Hamil, then who?

Avery considered the other possibility only briefly.  It was possible that Hamil was lying and his memory was true – that Hamil the Scribe had somehow known enough about a God to instruct him in how to heal himself.  Yet looking upon the scrawny frame of his servant, the possibility seemed even more impossible than the former.
             

“
It must be as you say,” Avery concluded at last.  “In my time of need, I was sheltered by others of my kind.  I fear I may have been too overwhelmed by the Godslayer, and so I am unaware of exactly who it was that gave aid.  But I am certain the one who did will make himself known to me soon enough.”

Hamil beamed.  “Well said, my Lord,” he said.  Hesitantly, Hamil rose and crossed the distance between them.  “Your hand though...”  the scribe was clearly pained to discuss it.  “You have lost your hand...”

Avery looked down at both of his appendages as Hamil took his wrists.  The left hand appeared a monstrous growth compared to the abrupt end that his right wrist now came to.  Amazingly enough, the Godslayer's blow had severed his hand cleanly, leaving his wrist fully intact. 

Avery smirked ironically.  Including, it seemed, the brand.  Like the Godslayer could not have stripped him of that cursed part of his flesh?  That could have been seen as almost a blessing if he had.

Hamil made an exaggerated effort to look at Avery's back.  “I see you lack your sword as well as holder.”  Avery half-heartedly reached over his shoulder to verify that even the sheath of
One
was gone as well, apparently.
  Returning his gaze to his God's frontside, Hamil drew Avery's severed arm into his hands.  “He did not deprive you of your holy symbol though,” Hamil said, caressing softly the scar on the backside of Avery's wrist.  “It is a good sign, I think.”

Taking a deep breath, Avery stood up himself.  “I believe it is, as well, Hamil,” he said.  “It shows that even the power of a Godslayer could not destroy me.  Still, I believe we should not press our luck overly much.  We should make haste and return to Viola and make away from these parts as soon as possible.”

Hamil nodded, bowing humbly.  “By all means, My Lord.  Lead, and I shall follow.”

With a renewed sense of optimism, and a new level of power to explore, Avery set out from his misadventure restored in his own personal self-importance, if not completely in body.  In his wake, his servant remained bowed for a moment before rising to follow.

However, Avery completely missed the smile that was now spread across the young man's face.  And it was not one of reverence, so much as... 
amusement.

Ah
, thought the man,
this game just becomes more and more fascinating the longer I keep it going!
  Barely containing his glee, and only giving the barest of hops for joy of the prank, Ankor, God of Mischief, set out to follow the would-be-God.

* * *

It had not taken a great deal to convince Derik to lay down to sleep.  The simplistic mind that now dominated the man's body took the merest suggestion as practical and complied.  He simply lacked the sophisticated mind to dispute what he was being told.  So when Alsen told the big man that it was time to sleep, Derik only moved to the bed roll that Alsen directed him to and went to sleep.