The rocky mountain planes of Nahiń glimmered an obsidian black, beautiful yet unnerving. Underfoot, jagged rocks jutted out of the earth like daggers, making it misery for Yahhan, my father’s beast of burden, to navigate the treacherous path leading to our destination, the mountain’s summit.
I sat atop the beast’s bulk, feeling sorry for her, yet annoyed that my father had chosen a summot, a creature not far from a regular pig, only ten times larger, with dangerously long tusks shooting from both sides of her snout. Her great size was proof that a summot was not the perfect beast for a journey through the treacherous uneven paths of Nahiń. A seçkan, which was a giant scorpion, was a far more suitable travel beast for such a journey, not just for its lithe gait but also for the protection it provided. Up these mountains, unnervingly black and simmering with heat, who could tell what foulness lurked behind giant boulders and caves. There was a reason no one ever dared come here, yet we, the elven folk of Bhún, were going through its path for one purpose only; to kill me.
There were twelve of us, seven elven warriors – including my father, who is also the leader, and four dwarves, all of whom were armed to the teeth and were on high alert for possible threats or danger. As we journeyed in irritant silence, the sun’s glare, blazing and menacing, bounced off the glimmering black rocks, magnifying the already unpleasant humidity. I wiped the beads of sweat that had congregated across my forehead, squinting against the sun as I stared up ahead to see how much further we still had to go. I could barely make out anything besides glimmering rocks and an uneven mountain path. I was thirsty — we rationed water, and I’d already drank two bottles, no way was I going to get another until my father said so. Apparently being a sacrifice to a high goddess was not enough to qualify me for preferential treatment. My muscles ached from exhaustion, and my skull throbbed. I was restless and bored. I tried to fall asleep, but with the sun’s unrelenting glare on my face, it was impossible.
At the beginning of this journey, after Bhún had disappeared behind us, the warriors had chattered, laughed, sang lewd songs that made me giggle with my hands over my mouth so my father would not hear – it was not proper for a priestess to be amused by profanity. But now, hours later, exhausted to the bones, at the mercy of the sun, and uneasy from the obscenity of the mountain, they were all silent, their heads cast down, occasionally grunting in irritation.
I did not blame them; I could only imagine the heat that ate at them from within those ironclad armours they adorned. I did not blame my father either, he was only doing what had been instructed of him by Gaaliee, our almighty goddess of doom, to ensure she found me, the sacrifice, worthy and acceptable. Her instructions regarding the sacrifice had been explicit, down to the very last detail; the chosen must be bestridden on a great beast of burden whose soles shall bleed along the mountain path, its agony shall pave the way, for blood is required to appease the mountain pass. Should the beast not bleed, the mountain will take its share of blood by force. The chosen shall be adorned in white to mark purity, and all who escort her shall labour on foot. They shall sweat and ache from discomfort, for the path to the peak will have its share of misery.
So yes, their walking on foot was not a result of my father’s cruelty or ignorance of their pain, it was Gaaliee, she had instructed this and we had no choice but to do as told or face her wrath.
Bored, tired, and uncomfortable, I thought of Gaaliee, my impending death, my mother’s reaction after the goddess had pointed those obscenely long taloned fingers at me, my name sounds like a song in a storm as she pronounced it. Of my parents’ six children, Gaaliee had chosen me as the one whose blood she wanted to flow, in order for the truce of peace to remain intact.
I had not trembled or felt any fear even as gasps filtered within the hall where we’d all congregated for the choosing ceremony, instead an aloofness had settled in my gut, backed up by the sigh of relief I had caught my mother releasing, confirming my suspicion over the last fifty years I had lived; my mother did not want me. Gaaliee choosing me as the sacrifice was the perfect excuse she needed to finally rid her perfect little world of an imperfect impure child. My anger and resentment had consumed whatever terror should have gripped my bones at the prospect of death, and over the next couple of days that led to this journey, the resentment had festered and grown into a foul thing that longed to be unleashed.
Even now, I still wasn’t afraid of dying. Of what use was the fear of the inevitable? Besides, from the moment my siblings and I could understand the Bhún tongue, our father had told us a day like this would come when the goddess would demand one of us as a sacrifice. We had been groomed with the knowledge that one of us would one day serve a greater purpose of being offered to Gaaliee. ‘It is the greatest honour one can imagine,’ our father had said.
Nonsense. I was half a century old and still saw no honour in being food for a selfish conceited immortal who relished in the pain of her ignorant worshippers. Perhaps that was why the goddess had chosen me, she must have seen my loathing for her, or maybe it was because she knew my mother had always longed to rid herself of me and was simply doing her a favour, or perhaps she saw that I was one who had not a care in the world; no friends or lovers in Bhún who’d mourn or miss me and my family was not an exception either. My death meant nothing but a sigh of relief for my mother, and the continued favour of Gaaliee upon the elven village of Bhún.
Being born with dark skin, my mother and the rest of Bhún had been both shocked and disgusted by me. In this world, pure elves were meant to be pale skinned, with smooth long silky hair trailing down their backs, sometimes touching the ground. Angular faces held in a perpetual condescending snarl, almond-shaped eyes of an array of colours, and lithe bodies built for stealth.
I had all the above features except my skin was the grotesque blue-black of dark elves. The impure, as my mother liked to call the likes of me. I was a strange occurrence, a repulsive sight to behold. The only explanation why my mother, a pure elven woman who had produced more than fifty children in her lifetime, would bear a blue-black offspring like me was that perhaps, during the Great War of the gods that nearly tore the world of Urgoro apart millennials ago, one of her ancestors or my father’s, must have bred with an impure elf, and the gene had remained dormant in their blood until it finally manifested in me.
They said my mother had screamed in horror when I’d slipped out of her, the fifth child out of a litter of six. She had almost had me thrown away to the Tibicena; those hellish shadow wolves from the underworld, with bodies made of dark writhing mist, were sometimes seen loitering around the lush forests surrounding Bhún, at night. But the midwives had managed to stop her. She had been so horrified; she’d barely had enough strength to push out the last baby. My mother blamed me for that and for every other misfortune that befell us ever since. I was a sign of something foul, and I knew she had prayed for Gaaliee to pick me, rid her of her curse and shame. Well, she got her wish, I was about to be god food.
“How far’d we have terr go,” one of the dwarves grumbled. His name was Zachoth – I knew all their names – and like most dwarves, his patience was as short as he was tall.
I glanced far ahead, seeing only glimmering black rocks jutting out of the mountain and no sign of the mountain’s peak. In truth, Nahiń was rumoured to be a behemoth of a mountain, spanning the height of whole cities. I was to be gutted apart at the top of the mountain where Gaaliee awaited our arrival.
“We been walking fer hours!” Zachoth kept whining.
The other dwarves; Uril, Meneni – the only female amongst them – and Sulzo, grunted their agreement but said nothing otherwise. My father did not so much as glance in their direction. He held on to that distant look he’d had since we began this journey; stoic and seemingly lost in his thoughts. He was not grieved that I, one of his daughters, was to be sacrificed, he had groomed me for this very purpose, and bonus, me being chosen would rid him of the shame of being a ruler who’d fathered an impure.
He looked wary though, his face gaunt, his eyes heavy with exhaustion, shoulders slouched, thin lips cracked and dry. At first, I’d thought he was meditating, staying in tune with Gaaliee, but now that I really looked at him, I suspected something else bothered him, something that drained his very core. I did not care, I was going to die soon, whatever bothered him meant nothing to me.
The other warriors soon began to complain, and it grew the farther we went. My father said nothing. The elven warriors snapped at each other, the dwarves bellowed threats to clubber one another to death. Their voices carried across the mountain, and I entertained myself listening, waiting for someone to get angry enough to land the first blow or better still, draw their weapon. Beneath me the summot also became restless, her strides more laboured, her breathing coming in loud huffs, accompanied by occasional growling as her distress grew. I would have felt bad for riding atop her back, but there was no use feeling such, the mountain was getting what it wanted. Gaaliee had said it would have its share of misery, this was it, they were paying their own sacrifice, which was why my father did not bother with interference. Curse Gaaliee, her foul mountain, and her twisted ways!
Whether out of exhaustion, or perhaps realizing their arguing was of no use, the warriors finally went quiet once again, occasionally darting angry looks at one another, especially at my father. I ignored this, more concerned about the stench of blood that now filled the air. The summot’s hooves were bleeding, leaving a thick trail of blood behind, and she was walking slower from both agony and exhaustion. Either my father did not notice, or he simply did not care. I cast my gaze up ahead, and still, the mountain top was nowhere in sight. There was no way this beast would make it, not with the amount of blood she left on the path.
The sun finally began to lower across the horizon, and in its growing absence, a cool breeze wafted through the mountain, kissing our faces, a blissful respite from the heat that had plagued us all day. And with the absence of heat, came enough strength for the warriors to resume talking again, this time without arguing. They laughed and made jokes, told tales of adventures that I knew were most definitely peppered with lies, and even began to sing one of their many crude songs about elven women and parts of the body that would have made me flush pink had I been light-skinned like them. The setting sun did nothing to ease the summot’s pain, however. The tiny black rocks jutting underfoot bore into her flesh unrelentingly, and I could feel her wobble with each step she took. I thought of telling my father, but I doubt he’d listen. He still carried that lost distant look in his eye—
The shriek split the air like thunder, and the world around me spun as the summot bucked, staggered, and rocked violently. The warriors swung into action, branding their weapons with eyes on me as I struggled to stay atop the shrieking beast. But she was falling sideways, and if I held on any longer, there was a likely chance I’d land hard on those dagger-like rocks jutting from the ground, or she’d roll on top of me and crush me to a mash of meat.
“Jump!” I heard someone yell, and I did. I leapt off her back, anticipating the pain of landing on jagged rocks, it never came. Strong hands snatched me midair.
The summot let out another strangled shriek and only when I turned around, did I see what was really happening.
Her stomach had been torn open from under her, spilling her guts out in heaps of smoking stinking gore. The black hard soil beneath her was moving, churning, and I saw what looked like a thin black rock shooting from the ground, but as more of it tore through the summot, ripping her in half, its full body broke through, spilling shards of obsidian rocks and sand. It stood taller than all of us, black and glimmering, a giant black blade in its hand. Its eyes shimmered a deathly purple, staring at us in fury. Its legs were still buried in the ground and its stomach churned with purple flares of light as though made of glass we could see through. It opened its mouth, revealing jagged black teeth, and unleased a howl that seemed to shake the entire mountain. A wathonga, a small breed of giants, known for their short temper, only, this one seemed to have been bred by whatever foul magic dwelled in this mountain. We had to get away from here.
It unleashed a snort through its large nostrils, purple smoke oozing, and then charged. The warriors scattered in every direction as it swung its giant axe, slicing rocks, sending shards flying. I screamed as the warrior elf who’d caught me took off. The mountain seemed to rumble as the wathonga thundered after the warriors, swinging its axe, roaring in fury. I heard the sickening sound of flesh ripping apart, accompanied by howls of agony, and winced, my bones going cold. I tried to look over the shoulder of the fleeing elf to see what was going on, but he had me in such a grip that prevented me from moving. I needed to find my father; I did not remember seeing him flee. Where was he? Another sound of ripped flesh and a deafening howl tore the sky. Still, the elf ran. It would have been easier to drop me and let me run on foot, but Gaaliee’s instruction had been clear, my feet were not to touch the mountain plains.
Slowly the sound of chaos began to fade behind us. I squirmed in his grip, and he seemed to sense what I wanted to do. He loosened his hold on me and I peered behind him. The wathonga was a raging menace, though we had put some distance between us and it, the rumble of its feet on the mountain reverberated through my bones. It was locked in a chase with two dwarves, swinging his axe in hope to slice them apart.
I watched as the sharp glimmering black axe lodged itself into one of the dwarves’ head, and he lifted it, dwarf’s body dangling like a ragged doll, as its skull stuck to the axe’s blade. The wathonga whisked it away and charged at the other dwarf. Lying around were bodies, battered and chopped to pieces.
“Look away, Henya!”
I jolted and whirled. I had not noticed my father and a dwarf running beside the warrior elf.
“Your eyes must remain pure for Gaaliee,” my father said.
I did not obey, I stared back at the carnage still unfolding farther down the mountain.
‘Gaaliee,’ I thought, my chest twisting with hate. I glanced at my father once more, and he still bore that distant look in his eyes, unperturbed by the carnage we had just witnessed.
We hurried along, echoes of the foul black thing below rumbling through the mountain. Every now and again, I tossed horrified glances behind us, half expecting to see the giant thunder towards us. It never came, its roar grew distant until we were plunged once more into the howling silence of the wind pouring down the mountain.
I did not realize I was trembling until we ceased running and resumed a silent melancholic trudge up the mountain. Just like that, the warriors were gone, claimed by Nahiń like Gaaliee had said it would. Overhead thunder rumbled and the darkening sky blinked with lightning. The wind picked up, pouring down the mountain in soft howls that grew, raising black dust that assaulted our faces. There were just four of us left now; my father, the dwarf, the elf, and me. The others were lost forever. Not once did my father’s face betray any concern for his warriors, not once did he acknowledge the constant glower the dwarf shot his way.
Rain began roaring down the mountain, warm against our skin, making the already jagged path even more slippery. My added weight did not make the climb any easier for the elven warrior. He grunted with each laboured step he took and almost slipped a number of times. Flashes of lightning flared across the sky, and this high up the mountain, it felt too close for comfort.
“We are here,” my father yelled over the roaring rain, and I snapped my head up.
Not too far ahead, three large pillars of rocks loomed, glimmering black in the rain. There were gaps in-between the rocks, and I figured it was behind one of those rocks that I was to be slain for my people. The wind howled with ferocity, thunder rumbled, lightning struck, landing once or twice on a rock, lighting it up in smoking orange, hissing as the rain pattered on it.
In silence we trudged on, the closer we got to the pillars of rocks, the more resilient the wind. When we got close enough, I could see a clear path in the soil leading to a large gap between the rocks. We walked down the path, hastening our feet. Lightning flared across the sky, white and blinding, accompanied by deathly rumbles of thunder, and in its wake, a figure materialized between the gap in the rock, obstructing our way.
She was as she’d been the last time I saw her, tall, slender, naked, her skin, white as the moon, her hair black, made of obsidian glass, flowing down her back and around her in waves, and her eyes were ablaze with purple flames. Gaaliee.
She watched us approach, her eyes fixed on me for a few seconds before turning away to stare at my father. Without a word, she stepped aside to let us pass, and reluctantly the elf warrior carried me through.
There was an altar, made of the same black rocks. There were three more pillars of rocks surrounding the clearing, creating a sort of enclave. There were smaller pillars around the altar, four of them, and with Gaaliee’s instruction, the elf placed me on the altar. Only when I was settled did I realize rain did not fall in here, though the sky above still rumbled with lightning and thunder, spitting rain.
“These are sacred grounds,” Gaaliee said softly as though reading my thoughts. I turned to stare at her, and she smirked, perfect white lips quirking to the side.
Gaaliee, though a manifestation of foul magic, was beautiful. Her slender shape was delicate and lithe, her naked breasts, full and smooth.
“It is sad the others could not make it,” she said, turning to face my father, “Nahiń can sometimes be a tad cruel.”
My father remained silent. Then she turned to face me.
Gaaliee stood over me, reality splintering and cracking around the sheer force of her godly presence. Across the sky lightning flared, bathing the space in white for brief seconds before plunging it into darkness once again. This close, Gaaliee’s deathly beauty was almost intoxicating in a way that made me want to get up from the alar and flee. But I could not bring myself to move, her presence brimmed with such power, it pressed down on me. Her eyes, aglow with fire, raging like a purple storm, were fixed on me, unblinking.
Her hair, made of black shards of glass, clinked as they sway in the roaring wind around us. She smirked at me again, and the look was death itself. Prior to this moment, I’d been indifferent to my own death, now, however, staring at this being who’d existed long before Urgoro was formed, fear rocked my bones.
As much as I did not want to, I felt the plea rise to my throat, and the grin on her face widened. Gaaliee was the goddess of pain and misery, she gloried in my terror, she liked that I did not want to beg, yet survival instinct warred against me to do just that.
I did not know how the procedure for the sacrifice went, but I had heard my father whisper about the gruesome way Gaaliee took those sacrificed to her. Images filled my mind and I almost wanted to scream at the goddess to get along with it already.
She ran one of her six long hands over my bare stomach, then raised the top of her fingers to her lips and licked. She smiled, almost dreamlike. It took me a few seconds to realize her seemingly harmless touch had torn my flesh, and she was licking my blood.
“So dark, so deliciously filthy, so impure, so… stained. I knew there was something about you,” she said to me as thunder rumbled overhead. “I knew I’d smelt something foul in your blood. You are not very different from me you know.” she said, then turned sideways, “is that why you did not want to bring her to me, Rufflon?”
I froze. What was she talking about? My father stepped forward, his eyes still holding that look of smug indifference.
“Is that why you had plotted against me in your heart?” She added.
My father bristled slightly, almost unnoticeable, but I saw it in his eyes, in his posture. And Gaaliee’s ever-watchful eyes saw it too. She chuckled.
Have you ever heard a goddess chuckle? It is not a sound you’d wish to hear. “I know not of what you speak, great goddess of Nahiń, I have nothing but love and reverence for the one who has watched over my people ab—”
“Your people?” Gaaliee said, striding towards him now, the air around her splitting as reality tried to flee from her, “not only did you connive within your heart against me, now you call yourself an owner of people, perhaps a god, like… me?”
She said it as though it were a joke, but I could hear the death threat in her tone.
My father remained calm, I could see his hands tremble, his fingers twisting as fear gripped him. Gaaliee loomed over him now, imposing, all her godly presence pressing against his withered form.
“No one is like unto you Gaaliee, no one can and will ever be,”
She barked a bitter laugh. It was like the sound of a thousand children flung about by crashing waves.
“Lies!” She hissed and the space within the rocks crackled with the weight of her power. My skin crawled as seething purple electric essence flared around me.
“You really did think you could outsmart me? Play me? I, who have stepped on the fabric of reality and tore it to shreds many times and over, I, the goddess who has lived so long the first to settle at Buhń had trembled at the sheer mention of my name, and a pesky little thing that you are, with no significance of any sort, had planned to—,”
“Now!” My father screamed.
The dwarf lunged at her with such speed, he was but a blur. She whirled at the very last second and plucked him from the air in her powerful hand.
He flailed as she gripped his head. She squeezed. Skrich. Like a piece of fabric, his head crumpled in her grip, spewing sputters of blood and brain. The dagger burst from her chest, sputters of purple essence leaking out in gushes. Gaaliee jerked, her flaming eyes going wide. She let out a deafening screech that seemed to tear the very air itself. Reality splintered and tore around her, but the sound got cut off as purple essence burst from her gaping mouth, along with the black shard my father had buried in the back of her neck. She dropped the dwarf, eyes flared with rage, thunder exploding across the sky, the mountain seeming to shriek in fury at the attack on its goddess.
I gaped in horror as the goddess crumble to the mountain floor, sputters of purple blood oozing. A deafening screech tore through the roaring storm and the entire mountain shook.
“Henya!”
I blinked. My father ran towards me, his silver eyes wide with terror. I had never seen such fear in his eyes before, nor the concern for my safety hidden behind that fear.
“We need to get off the moun—,”
Another shriek and the altar upon which I laid cracked beneath me.
I lunged to my feet. The last remaining elven warrior darted past us, fleeing for the gap in the rocks. My father dragged me down the same path, not caring that the jagged floor tore at my bare feet. I cast a quick glance at the fallen goddess one last time to be sure she really was dead. She was there, mangled and still oozing purple blood; dead.
We fled down the mountain as it shrieked, quaked, and spat shards of black rocks into the air like arrows. I still could not believe what had happened, my father had killed a goddess, a being known to be immortal. But how? I wanted to ask him, I had so many questions, so many confused thoughts jumbled in my head. How had he known a shard from her own mountain would kill her. And why? Why had he done it? Was Gaaliee truly dead? Would she suddenly burst from the quaking ground screaming vengeance?
There was no time to ask, the mountain was wailing, howling, screeching, all sorts of horrid sounds that reverberated around us. The roaring rain did not help either. It blinded us, made the path down slippery. And with jagged rocks flying in every direction, we were at death’s door with each step we took.
The mountain levelled in explosive rumbles that seemed to shake the whole of Urgoro. I screamed and tumbled against the quaking mountain, shards of rocks shooting in every direction. Like the world itself was bent on swallowing the mountain as it sank lower into the ground, becoming level with the forest below.
Shards of rocks sliced into my skin and I screamed. But almost abruptly, the chaos ceased, plunging the world into receding silence. Films of dust hung in the air, whisked away by the wind and roaring rain. Silently my father and I, wounded, bleeding, trembling with fear and exhaustion, made our way towards Bhún. The elven warrior was nowhere in sight, but I did not care much for him, my thoughts still raced. I desperately wanted to ask my father tons of questions, but was too shaken and exhausted to speak. What did the death of Gaaliee mean for us now? Were we free from her vicious demands for a yearly sacrifice of anyone she chose? Would she resurface and bleed into reality seeking vengeance? Would other gods learn of her death and come for us?
“Stop thinking about what lies ahead Henya,” my father suddenly said, startling me out of my thoughts.
I took my chance.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, staring sideways at him as we walked.
He scoffed.
“Stop thinking about what lies ahead Henya, sufficient enough is today’s worry,” he said, his stoicism returning.
I frowned, wanting to say more, but reconsidered. There would be enough time to force answers out of him, until then, I resigned to my thoughts.
What did this really mean for us? Were we free, or did greater horrors lie ahead? There was no way to know. No way to determine the future, and I guess even my father had no idea what was to come. Sufficient was today’s worry indeed.
In silence and exhaustion, we headed home. I wondered what awaited us there and relished the thought of my mother’s shock when she’d see me, her stained impure elven daughter, alive, howbeit, in a bad shape.
