Chapter 601: Bloodied History

The god looked weak. Centuries in the dark beneath the temple, bound by the ice of the northern mages, had weared him down to the bone, turning his massive bulk into something pitiful.

But he was still large enough to fill the circular room, his spine scraping the lower edge of the dome as he was dragged forward.

His scales were the color of an old forge fire, a black, angry hue that had gone dull at the edges for want of wood.

His great golden eyes rolled In his skull, taking in the torches, the chanting men, and then the white-haired girl on the stone.

The moment the god looked at Eris, he stopped pulling against the chain. For the space of one breath, the great beast went entirely rigid, his nostrils flaring as he looked at the tiny thing pinned to the altar.

There was no fury in his face, no roar of hatred. It was simply the ancient looking at the fresh, an old terror recognizing the trap that had been built for him.

Then the fury came back.

The god lunged away from the slab, his tail whipping sideways. The sudden jerk tore the chain from the hands of two mages; one was thrown twenty feet across the room, his skull cracking against a pillar with a sound like a dry branch snapping.

He didn’t get up. Screams echoed from the dark mouth of the passage as the handlers below were dragged across the rocks.

The circle around the altar didn’t break. The mages kept their eyes on the child, their hands rising in unison as the chant turned into a screech.

Eris saw the god now. She began to twist against the iron bands, her small legs kicking at the stone, the skin of her wrists turning red and raw as she tried to pull her hands through the cuffs.

She had stopped calling for her father. She had run out of words. She was simply making a high, thin noise in the back of her throat, the sound of a small animal that knew the axe was coming.

Aureth watched the great black beast get dragged inch by inch toward his daughter’s side, his mouth pulled into a narrow line that looked like nothing so much as a merchant checking the weight of a wool bale.

The lead mage stepped inside the smallest circle, his fingers twisting through the air in short, jerky movements that looked like he was knotting string.

He was speaking the words of the bridge spell, the one that opens the skin and turns the blood into an invitation.

Eris’s back arched off the stone, her spine curving so hard her ribs looked like they would burst through her skin. Her chest stayed up, held there by some invisible weight, while her small mouth opened so wide the corners of her lips split. Something inside her was being torn open to make a space that hadn’t existed before.

The transfer began.

The great bulk of Pyronox reached the edge of the stone. As the lead mage brought his hands down, the god’s physical form began to blur at the edges, the thick scales turning into a heavy, liquid grease that ran toward the child’s open chest.

The fire of him didn’t smoke; it poured forward in a solid stream, drawn straight into the space behind her ribs by the force of the mages’ words.

The god let out one last roar before his jaws dissolved into the stream. The sound shook the dust from the dome and blew out six of the iron torches near the door, leaving the back of the room in greasy shadow.

Soren felt the noise hit his own ribs like a physical blow. Something old and frozen in his own chest stirred at the sound, an ancient hatred waking up to answer an ancient fire.

Then the room went dead silent.

For three seconds, nothing moved. The mages held their breath, their hands frozen in mid-air, their faces white under the grease. Eris lay flat on the stone, her hair damp with sweat, her eyes closed.

Then she screamed.

It wasn’t the cry of a child anymore. It was every bit of air in her lungs being driven out by a pressure that had no right to be inside a human body.

It was a sound that Soren knew he would never be able to tell anyone about... the sound of a small throat tearing itself to pieces under the weight of a god’s breath.

He stood there, his own hands useless at his sides, watching a horror that had settled into the dirt twenty years ago.

When the scream died, she went limp. The room didn’t breathe.

Slowly, the veins under her skin began to light up. From her neck down to her small fingers, every narrow pipe in her body turned a bright, liquid amber, glowing through her pale skin like a lantern through paper.

Her skin began to check and crack along the thickest lines of fire, the narrow splits turning a brilliant orange-white at the edges. The white of her hair was shot through with thin red streaks that looked like heated iron wire.

When her eyes opened, the amber was gone. They were two flat pools of burning gold that didn’t see the room or the mages or her father. They only saw the fire.

Aureth stepped forward, his boots clicking on the blood-stained floor. He stood over his daughter, his hand reaching out to touch the white hair that was already singeing the wool of his sleeve.

A small, tight smile appeared on his thin lips.

"The Igniva bloodline will never be threatened again," he said, turning his back on the child to face the remaining mages. "No kingdom, no challenger, no army will dare move against us now."

The lead mage wiped the sweat from his eyes, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. "Your Majesty," he said, his voice shaking. "The child... she will need constant care. The seal requires constant watch at her side every hour. The capacity of what is inside her... it could destabilize her blood within months if—"

Aureth turned his head. He looked at the old man with the same empty eyes he had used on his daughter.

"You have served Solmire with great distinction," the king said. "History will remember what was accomplished here today."