A God to Fear (Thorn Saga Book 5) (2 page)

Othundro looked up, and all he saw was red and gray. In spite of himself, he missed the old sky. He wanted to look up and see blue again.

He strained and clenched his fist, willing a new glacier into existence before him—an immense ice shelf stretching a mile in either direction. But the instant it appeared, crevasses ruptured in its side and snaked down its length, calving off mountain-sized chunks of ice that shattered against the ground. Othundro ducked as ice and debris shot past him, distracting him from the glaciers. And without his will focused on them, they flattened under the atmospheric pressure. Moments later, they completely vaporized in the heat.

Centuries passed. Othundro wandered aimlessly, occupying himself with toppling mountains and blasting deep craters into the Earth, sometimes out of boredom, but more often out of anguish. Days and nights seemed to whiz past like shooting stars, so he slowed Earth’s rotation until the length of a day felt more palatable. He even tried to reverse the flow of time, but he found that he could only travel backward a small fraction of a day, and the time travel left him drained and exhausted besides.

Sometimes he played games with the clouds. He twisted them into all manner of shapes: cars, dogs, people. He liked to part the cloud canopy, lie on the ground, and gaze upward at an unadulterated view of the sun, his companion through the annals of time. It had been there during the first rebellion against the Enemies, and it would be there for billions of years to come. A constant reminder of the past. Of what Othundro had done.

He let go of the clouds, and their canopy closed above him.

Othundro trekked across the lifeless landscape until he came to a volcano, steam billowing from fumaroles that dotted the ground all the way up to the lake of lava. He followed them upward, crested the rim, descended toward the magma, and then entered physical space, making sure to form a barrier around himself that would protect him from the heat and pressure… at least for a minute. He disrobed and flung his clothes into the fire.

He nearly threw his sword in, too, but he couldn’t bring himself to part with such a relic. Instead he thrust it into the smoldering embers at the edge of the lake, and though it throbbed a dull red, it did not melt. Perhaps it would stay here, a nameless headstone marking Othundro’s final resting place.

Then he stepped up to the lip of the lava lake. Bright yellow bubbles popped, splattering against black stone. The far side of the lake lay obscured behind a thick veil of amorphous heat. Othundro found himself unable to face the magma, so he turned, knelt, and slowly leaned backward into it.

He allowed his protective barrier to fall.

The bottom tips of his wings ignited instantly. No pain registered at first. Othundro lowered his torso farther backward, and fire enveloped his wings. Then agony bit through his back as his nerve endings flared and his wings blazed with the Earth’s fire, with Othundro’s own fierce hatred for himself. He shuddered in unbearable pain, bellowed a mighty scream that echoed off the mountainside…

… Then he reestablished the protective barrier around him. He collapsed onto the ground and used his power to soothe his pain. He reached around and felt his wings—or rather, he felt where they should have been. They’d been burned down to the nubs.

Othundro could have remade them in an instant, but he lacked the will to do so. He lacked even the will to kill himself. Naked on the shore of a volcanic lake, Othundro had nothing. Nothing but the useless sword in front of him, burning red. Nothing but an entire planet, gone to ash.

His fear of his empty future felt as crushing as the dense atmosphere around him. He couldn’t bear to live through that future, yet he feared his own death even more. He’d even come to fear himself. Trapped among his great fears, broken, Othundro stared up at his smoldering sword.
Fear.
It was a fitting name for a sword, and particularly for the
last
sword. Perhaps Othundro deserved to live with his fear for a while.

Wingless, he stood. He willed new clothes over himself, and they appeared. He plucked Fear out of the burning earth, cooled it, and sheathed it.

With no one else present to observe this dead world, Othundro realized that
he
might have to resign himself to the task. He’d brought this ugly planet into existence, stillborn, and thus his fate was to watch over it as its unwilling parent, for all time.

Othundro stepped forward and wept.

Ages passed. Empty time. Wasted time. Othundro tried speeding time up, to reach its end faster. But after billions of objective years, it became clear that time had no end, that the enduring rhythms of this tortured desert were all Othundro would ever know.

He remained as resentful of himself as always, yet he could think of no way to escape his misery. He would have done anything, even become
good
and
kind
, if it meant bringing back humanity and spiritfolk.
If only I could start over, do everything differently. I wouldn’t try to manipulate or destroy. I would work together with other spirits instead of seeking to prove myself greater than them.

Thus were his thoughts as he floated toward an area that had once contained Earth’s greatest forest. Now, of course, it was a wasteland. The same old dark rocks and grey clouds greeted Othundro as he climbed a hill to gaze out over the godforsaken plains. Othundro had despised this place when it had been fertile forestland—brimming with life, with human settlements, with possibilities. But now he remembered those things fondly. A small town had rested at the foot of the hill to Othundro’s right, with a roaring river passing through it. Deer and foxes and bears, rabbits and moose and wildcats and wolves had all lived under the shade of leaves above. In the fall, great clusters of butterflies hung from the trees, the air beneath so thick with the brightly colored insects that visibility waned.

Othundro tenderly watched a small orange butterfly descend and come to rest on his arm. Its wings wavered as it tried to balance itself in the wind. After a few moments, Othundro glanced back up at the lifeless expanse before him, then swiftly back down at the butterfly.

The butterfly was real.

Othundro summoned all the power at his disposal to protect the fragile creature, sequestering it in a safe bubble on his arm. He could scarcely believe his eyes. How had the butterfly survived the atmospheric pressure, the heat, the elements? And for so long?
A whole swarm of them must be thriving somewhere nearby.

But when he looked around, all he saw was the same flat, dead landscape he’d seen for thousands of years. Where had the butterfly come from? Othundro scrutinized its body structure, its internal organs and the molecules that composed them.

And an idea came to him.

Othundro focused his power, and a new butterfly sprang into being next to the first. Othundro’s breath quivered as he exhaled, his mouth agape. He created a third butterfly, out of nothing more than his own imagination. Then a fourth. Then ten more.

Joy, an emotion he’d never felt before, struck him like a lightning bolt from the acidic clouds above.
Why have I never considered this before?
He swept a hand out over the landscape, and grass sprang up from the earth. Fully formed trees jutted upward. Dense forest spread outward from him, toward the horizon.

But Othundro began to feel a great strain on his mind. The more life he created, the more the burden increased. He was soon forced to relax his protective grip on the new organisms he’d spawned.

And when he did, they died instantly. The forest exploded in a violent wave of fire, parting the clouds as its heat billowed upward. In moments, the woodlands had been reduced to cinders. Ultra-dense air crushed the butterflies into tiny pinpoints, and they fell to the ground.

The life had died, but it had been life! And Othundro had created it! His stolen power was limited, but it could still breathe life! Never on this Earth, for certain—the planet was too far gone.
But what if I can create a new Earth? It would take considerable time, but could I actually
recreate
humans? Spirits?

He had to try. He rocketed upward into space.

Othundro had told so many lies, caused so much destruction. But things would be different this time. No longer would he force other beings to believe untruths so that they’d hurt each other. No, Othundro would create humans who would crave to discover truth. Who would value reason, who would seek answers to all of their questions. Humans who would base those answers on evidence and who would regard each other with empathy and understanding. Othundro would create a
good
world, better than the hellish place that the Enemies had made. He would create morally immaculate friends, both spirit and human, to join him in the heavens.

But how can I ensure that my world won’t devolve into the chaos that befell the old Earth?
After all, anyone with a free will could turn against Othundro. He would need to make the spirits purely, mindlessly loyal to him on this new Earth, so that they’d never tempt the humans to vice or ignorance, even inadvertently. In doing so, he’d be unable to give them free will, but this sacrifice was necessary. And as for the humans… perhaps he wouldn’t give them free will either. He’d have to experiment first and see what worked best.

Perhaps he should make a place of punishment, too, where Othundro could send defective humans.
Yes, that will weed out unreasonable and evil folk, and anyone who challenges me. That will allow me to create the kind of universe we all will want to live in. My new Earth will not suffer the same fate as the old.

Othundro traveled far—so far that the old Earth appeared as just a speck against the stars—but remained close enough to the sun that his new life would thrive in its warmth. He felt a glimmer of his former glory return as he spread his arms to encompass the entire cosmos. To embrace it.

At last, he had a purpose again.

Othundro grinned, tapped deep into his well of power, and spoke.

Eons passed.

Clouds basked in the yellow of dawn. Grass rustled in the wind. Two demons faced each other on the surface of a withering Sanctuary.

Thorn eyed the gateway to the Corridors looming behind Wanderer. The edges of the circle shimmered with spiritual energy, slowly closing in, shrinking the opening and healing the wound Thorn had dealt to the Sanctuary’s boundary. Behind it, the sun was rising.

Thorn tried to focus on formulating an escape plan, but he couldn’t. Not after such an earth-shattering revelation. “You lied to us,” Thorn said. “God doesn’t value faith. He values reason, and compassion. He rewards
disbelief
in Him, doesn’t He? That’s the real test for humanity.”

The edges of Wanderer’s mouth snaked upward until he was grinning that toothy smile that Thorn found so disturbing.

“The Enemy hadn’t spoken to us in ages,” Thorn continued. “We didn’t know His plans. We were bored, aimless, with nothing to fight against. So you gave us something concrete to reinvigorate our hatred of the Enemy, and you gave the humans something concrete to believe in. You gave us the Bible.”

“Brilliant, wasn’t it?” Wanderer stretched his wings a bit in the morning sunlight. “It certainly pissed God off. Telling humans the truth about the creation story, but devoting the rest of the book to a tribalistic religion of my own design. Obedience, authority, loyalty, tradition, and other such frivolities… those are what’s important, dear humans. Such is my genius.”

“But there are some
good
things in the Bible. Things that any decent person would know are moral.”

“It takes a nice paint job to sell a lemon car, my friend. All the best lies contain a morsel of truth. I had to keep demons on the prowl! They would never have led people away from God’s plans if God’s supposed religion was as evil as they were. It needed to
seem
good.”

Thorn had left the demon life; he no longer allied himself with those working to increase human ignorance and vice. So he was surprised to find himself less angry at what Wanderer had done, and more angry at how he’d done it. “You could have just told us! Our fight against the Enemy gains nothing from your lie that God created a religion of His own. You have all demonkind fighting against your very own plan!” Thorn was dumbstruck that even he, the leader in Atlanta, once the right hand of Xeres, had been taken in by Wanderer’s ploy.

“Oh, Thorn,” Lucifer said. “God is my Enemy. You know as well as I that the best tactic against our oppressor is to corrupt all elements of His creation. You other demons just don’t go far enough. You see, demons, too, are a part of God’s creation. So it was my
duty
to corrupt all of you. If I’d revealed my scheme to any of you, you’d have started
thinking
—and we can’t have that, now, can we? You should know just enough to keep you from doing good, to quench any natural thirst for knowledge that you have, to keep you from questioning the purposelessness of your continued rebellion against God.”

Distraction
, Thorn realized.
The same technique we use with so many humans in the West. Distracting them with a meaningless activity goes so much further than fighting the truth directly.

“And God plays right into your lies,” Thorn said. “Why?”

Satan’s smirk seemed to grow impossibly large, inching up past his nose, toward his glib, beady eyes. “He has no choice. If He denounced Christianity in front of demonkind, it’d spoil His test. Demons would side with Him out of compulsion, not out of choice. He’d never know if they were able to think for themselves.”

“And Constantine…” Thorn thought back to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge: the greatest mystery of Thorn’s long life on Earth. While the human battle raged, another battle must have been underway up in the angelic realm, between angels and Wanderer’s cronies. Perhaps the very demons who’d attacked Thorn in this Sanctuary had been a part of Wanderer’s conspiracy from the beginning. Marcus certainly had, though Thorn doubted Marcus knew the full truth. How had Wanderer convinced him to give Constantine a vision of the Enemy? Had Wanderer promised that the vision would lead to Constantine hating Christians if he suffered greatly in the battle?