Thief of Souls (2 page)

Hephaestus quaked in his sandals, and spoke in a voice far too weak for such a large man. “They . . . They are for the King's amusement.”

The Bringer nodded. “After today the King will no longer need to be amused.”

He strode forward, and Hephaestus quickly ran to the other side of the stone table. “We grew afraid of you,” he tried to explain. “They
made
me build those shackles. They
made
me hammer you to the mountain. I couldn't go against their wishes . . . .”

“You had nothing to fear then,” the Bringer told Hephaestus. “But you do now.” He held Hephaestus in his gaze as he moved around the table. “In these years I have come to realize that your species is not only corrupt, but pathetic. Unworthy of the slightest charity or sympathy.”

“Let me live!” pleaded the homely blacksmith. “I'll do better! Kill the others if need be, but let me live!”

The Bringer thrust his hand forward, and grabbed the blacksmith by his tunic, pulling him closer. “Your selfishness disgusts me,” he said. “But enough chatter. I'm hungry.” And with that, the Bringer smiled, and, for the first time in many, many years, prepared to dine.

As he held Hephaestus, he forced an ounce of his true self up from the depths of the human body he wore. He opened his mouth, letting red tendrils of light stretch through the air, probing forward like roots seeking water.

Hephaestus gasped, but could not squirm out of his grip. The hungry tendrils latched on to the struggling blacksmith's face, and the fight drained out of him as the Bringer began his feast.

“No!” the blacksmith screamed, but it was already too late. The Bringer cast him aside. Weakened, but still alive, Hephaestus felt his arms and chest. His body was unharmed, but something was different. Something was wrong.

“What have you done to me?” he demanded.

“I've taken from you what you never deserved,” said the Bringer. “I've devoured your soul.”

As he said it, the Bringer could see the weight of the loss beginning to take effect in the blacksmith. A living, thinking brain suddenly robbed of being. A body going through the motions of life, with nothing living inside. Unbearable emptiness.

The soulless blacksmith fell to his knees, covered his eyes, and wept the dry, anguished tears of the living dead.

S
EEKING OUT THE OTHERS
was a simple matter. He found most of them in their temples, still playing the parts of gods to the servants who had gathered there, seeking salvation from the erupting mountain. The “gods” must have sensed he was coming, for there was no surprise in their eyes—only fear. They knew of his hunger for souls. In fact, they had helped him gorge on the boatloads of virgins and eunuchs their loyal followers were so fond of sending from the mainland. They helped, that is, until they grew disgusted of the endeavor, and fixed him upon the mountainside. Now it was their souls that would be devoured, and they knew it. Some ran when they saw him coming, but he caught them as they fled. It was their fear of his hunger that gave him the upper hand. Even in his weakened state, the Bringer could latch on to their powerful souls and tear them loose as easily as a human might skin a rabbit. Others held their ground and fought him. Hera, Apollo . . . Yet with each soul he drank in, the stronger he became for the next confrontation. The self-proclaimed Goddess of Love did not resist him. Instead she wrapped herself around him, giving herself to him in one final moment of dark sensual ecstasy. Ares, on the other hand, proud and warlike as always, raised a sword and tried to cut him down, but in the end spat forth his soul into the Bringer's devouring tendrils just as Hephaestus had, and the Bringer set his empty shell free to wander the crumbling halls of the doomed palace. Only Athena, seeing there was no hope, had the wisdom to take her own life before he arrived.

Finally, only one remained.

The King sat alone in his grand throne room, like a captain going down with his vessel. He must have heard the screams of the others, but did not lift a finger to help them. Even now they could be heard wailing in the crumbling chambers below, their soulless bodies still mimicking life.

The Bringer had dined on the others and was now bloated with power. He had never before dined on such great souls, and felt as if he would burst out of the human host-body that held him. Still he kept all of that energy contained within as he approached the King. He knew that this was his true adversary. The King was the strongest of them all, and would not be as easily defeated.

The King's hair was white. Although he was no older than the others, he looked more weathered. Still his eyes were the same as they had been when he was fifteen. They held depth, and a hint of true greatness.

The King's manner was calm, but the Bringer could feel his fear.

“Get off my island,” proclaimed the King.

The Bringer let loose a cold and bitter laugh. “It was not your island until I gave it to you, Zeus. You had nothing until I came to teach you of your powers.”

Then the King stood, stepping down from his heavy throne. “We would have defeated our titans, and learned of our powers without you. We would have achieved greatness all alone.”

The Bringer felt his lips curl from his own rage. “I see no greatness here. Only decadence and waste.”

“And you intend to end it?”

The Bringer smiled cruelly. “With great pleasure.”

Suddenly the King's form began to change. His particular talent was the shifting of form. It was a formidable skill—something the Bringer himself could not do . . . But the Bringer had a defense
against it. He had had thirty years to plan for this confrontation—and for once he would fit the name they had given him, for the murder of the King was indeed a premeditated act. He only hoped the King had become so arrogant that he could be caught off guard.

In an instant, Zeus had transformed into a white tiger that pounced in a single bound across the great throne room. The Bringer felt the animal's hot breath, and then pain as its yellow teeth dug into his shoulder. He tried to reach out and devour the King's soul, but, as he suspected, Zeus was far too powerful and strong-willed to ever be devoured. So instead, he forced an image into the King's mind.

A peacock.

A vain, ridiculous bird. A useless creature whose colorful plumes hid its stupidity.

The thought entered the King's mind through an unguarded path, and instantly the magnificent tiger-king unwillingly transformed into the scrawny bird. It opened its mouth to roar, but could only squawk.

The moment the transformation was complete, the Bringer grabbed the bird-king by its long slender neck, and looked into its eyes. The eyes of the King, in the body of the peacock, no longer appeared wise. Just frightened.

“A fitting form for you, boy,” the Bringer told the King, for he still thought of him as the boy he once knew. Then the Bringer smiled broadly, and with a flick of his wrist, snapped the King's neck.

He hurled the dying bird onto the throne, and the King reverted in midair, back into his white-haired self, before smashing down on the throne, neck broken. The light of his great soul left him as he released his last breath. Nothing remained of him but his broken body, slumping limply in the chair, his royal-blue robe now a shroud around him.

With the King dead, the Bringer focused his energy on the final deed to be done. He turned his thoughts to the center of the island, and spat forth all the energy he had collected from the devoured souls of the others, sending a shattering force to a single point beneath the island.

And something tore.

Although it could not yet be seen, the Bringer knew what he had done—he could see it in his mind's eye. He had created a tear in the fabric of the world beneath the island—a rip he stretched wider and wider with every last ounce of his strength, until the entire erupting island was poised above the hole like a stone about to fall through a sheet of cracking ice. The entire island rumbled with greater urgency, as it began to sink into the great abyss.

As the island dropped, the ocean began to spill back into the bay. The lush green lowlands were flooded first, swallowing man and beast. The many servants of The Twelve drowned as the sea washed over them.

There must be nothing left of them,
thought the Bringer. No evidence. There must never be an artifact found, or a site unearthed. This place had to be cut out of the Universe forever.

With the palace collapsing around him, the Bringer dragged himself up the King's private stairs, to the high stable. He was bloody and crushed from his battle with the King, but he knew the rift he had created beneath the island left him little time.

He found the King's mount in the high stable; a white, winged horse, kicking and neighing in terror. The flying horse was another one of Hephaestus's creations to amuse the King. With no other way off the island, the Bringer climbed onto the back of the Pegasus, kicked it with his shackled feet, and the horse leapt off the ledge of the high stable, frothing at the mouth as it struggled toward the sky.

Down below, the size of the rift was clearer, and much more
impressive. The center of the island was collapsing in upon itself and sinking faster than the ocean could rush in to fill the void. It was as if a great sinkhole had opened in the ocean floor, and, as the entire island plunged through the hole, the Bringer caught a glimpse of the place he was sending it. Through the hole, he could see distant red sands far, far below. The hole had opened above a strange alien sky. A place of nothingness. An “unworld” that existed between the walls of worlds. This is where he had consigned The Twelve, their servants, and their miscreations. He watched from high above, as the island plummeted out of this world.

Now all that remained of the island was a crescent of stone in the sea and a circular waterfall, miles wide, pouring down, through the hole in the world, into the strange sky of another. The hole quickly healed itself until the waters met, becoming a whirlpool, and then the simple crashing of waves as the tear sealed itself closed. The ocean would rage for days from the cataclysm, and people on far shores would say that Poseidon was angry. But the truth was, Poseidon was gone, along with the King and the Queen, the Blacksmith and the Beauty, the God of War, the Goddess of Peace, and the rest of their accomplices. In spite of their vain pretensions, and their powers, they were not the gods they claimed to be. In spite of their luminous souls, they were hopelessly human after all.

It was now that the Bringer realized his own folly—for the Pegasus, however beautiful, was a useless beast, like so many of Hephaestus's creations. Although it had wings, its stallion's body was too heavy to stay aloft for more than a few minutes at a time. Time enough to amuse the King, and to generate a host of overblown tales among humans, perhaps, but not enough to reach the mainland. The Pegasus flapped futilely above the raging sea, already exhausted. A few moments more and it lost the battle. The beast and the Bringer plunged from the sky into the churning ocean.

The Bringer might have found the strength to swim, had he not used everything he had left to tear the heart of Thira from the world. He might have floated on ocean currents if he didn't still have shackles on his ankles and wrists—heavy shackles that weighed him down like anchors.

The roar of the ocean became the muted churning of water as he sank beneath the waves, dropping toward the ocean floor.

The winged horse lost its battle as well, and drowned, its heavy mass sinking into the depths with him.

No survivors,
thought the Bringer.
Nothing left.

Perhaps there would be stories of this place, but nothing more. Travelers would find the barren, crescent-shaped remains of the great island, and not know what to make of its cataclysmic demise. The legends would become twisted and confused, the tales divided and reformed age to age until not a single truth remained. The short reign of The Twelve would be remembered as curious invention from an ignorant time—excised from history and dropped into the boggy depths of myth.

He had finally destroyed them, and his satisfaction was so immense, that it almost didn't matter that he was sinking into colder, darker waters. The Bringer held his last breath of air until it was crushed from his lungs by the building pressure around him as he sank, and he felt the human body he wore begin to die. So he shed it.

Tearing free from the human host-body he had used, he struggled to create a rift in space through which he could escape back to the universe he came from . . . but such a feat would take more strength than he had left. As the body drifted away from him down into darkness, he fought a battle to hold on to life. He needed a new host—some sea creature large enough to hold his being—for he had no flesh of his own—not in an earthly sense—but survival in this world required a body to live in. It was inconvenient and impractical, just like everything else in this universe of matter.

He reached his mind out, but found no large sea creatures he could inhabit, and he knew he would die in this awful, awful world.

It was the fault of The Twelve. It was their fault and the fault of every human infesting this place. His sole consolation was that the twelve star-shards—the only ones ever born to the undeserving human race—had been squelched. And soon, he imagined, this entire race would no doubt destroy itself with its petty and selfish ways.