Deep within the walls of the prince’s keep, Sam and David sat on the cold stone floor of the darkest part of David’s personal prison. In one corner of the room Ryan the Slayer, with his freshly cut hair, was curled into a ball sleeping.

  “It still smells rancid in here.” David commented on the wonderful aroma that hundreds of unwashed bodies create in confined spaces.

  “Do you feel bad for them?” Sam refused to let David skirt around the subject.

  “Yes. How could I not?” David took a shaly breath as he looked down at his hands, around one of his fingers was Cecil the Thief’s ring. “They were all criminals, but very few of them truly deserve to die. I don’t think anyone deserves to die. But it was necessary. Let’s make their sacrifice mean something.”

  Sam touched the prince’s face gingerly, then they closed their eyes. With a great strain evident upon their face, a deep silver glow filled the chamber and all at once a creature and a man appeared.

  Ian’s face was pale as a ghost as he strained to keep his sword from biting deeper into his neck. Sam quickly ran over to Ian and helped pull his arm away from his throat. With another person’s help he seemed able to resist the pull of Death.

  They had all talked about this and known that it could be possible. Every account of someone reaching godhood involved the person dying or killing themselves. There was some force that could not allow a person to exist within the conceptual realm of the gods and in true reality at the same time. So, the Ian that was part of Blood was trying to kill him, while the Ian who was still loyal to the prince refused that call.

  The refusal of the call was what was necessary. It forced the god to stay on the mortal realm. Blood could not leave without Ian undergoing his apotheosis.

  Blood had appeared in a form resembling a bleeding severed hand before, but soon it started forming an ocean.

  Sam rushed to protect Ryan the Slayer. They needed him for the plan, and they absolutely could not let him die. The prince and Ian stared at the oncoming waves of blood and knew that the god was planning on drowning them inside of its domain.

  The prince refused to budge as the first wave of blood hit him. Ian was washed away in the torrent of red, but prince David Hearth refused to move. There was no physical reason why the waves of blood shouldn’t have knocked the prince down to his knees and pulled him down into the depths of the god. But it didn’t.

  David strode step by step towards the flailing god. They tried everything in their power. The souls of those who died violently reached out of from the deep pools of blood and grasped at David’s clothes. Their hands left red prints on his shirt, yet they always slid off. He was somehow untouched by this god.

  David took step after step through the deluge of blood until he stood before the core of the god.

  A god is the manifestation of a concept. They are sporadic and impossible to define, they shift between visualizations and forms faster than a person can blink. And yet somewhere deep inside every god, there is one nugget of truth that forms the god.

  Deep within the writhing ocean of blood. There was a cry and weakness. The sound was of a deer crying out, and within that sound carried the weight that the deer was losing pieces of its life every second. The kernel of truth was laid bare before prince David.

  He steeled himself. Everything could go wrong at this one moment, but he refused that notion. This was not allowed to end in failure, his story was not allowed to end here.

  The prince twisted the ring of Cecil the Thief and stole Ryan the Slayer’s gift. The prince felt something inside of himself. He felt something occupy his soul space. He knew he was just borrowing this power, yet it filled him with some hope.

  Prince David grabbed the kernel of truth that was the god Blood and ate it.

  With a shriek, the ocean of blood that had been coursing through the lower levels of the prince’s prison evaporated. Ian looked around blearily as he was finally able to stand. Sam had somehow shielded both Ryan and Ian from the onslaught of blood. And they all looked upon the prince with trepidation.

  This was the most dangerous part of the plan. Everything they had done up until now had a historical backing. These things were possible, yet now everything hung in the balance. Prince David had to consume a god.

  An emptiness within David had been filled by the presence of a god. It burned him.

  David’s blood started to boil and tried to escape him. The god was worried about the situation, but it was a concept, it could not fathom a world where David could consume it.

  Yet the god was unable to escape the bindings of David’s body. Within him and his soul, Blood was confined. The cry of the deer grew weaker and weaker, the god screamed in outrage yet was unheard since it could not escape the prison that was David’s being.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The god battered at the edges of its prison. Bringing rot, pain, and death to David’s body.

  He crumpled to the floor, where his life blood slowly oozed out of him. His blood on the floor started to rot in front of his eyes.

  Yet he would not be defeated by something so pitiful as a concept. David was greater than all men, than even the gods, no matter what his karma was.

  He dipped his fingers into the pool of fetid blood and swallowed down the droplets that dripped off his fingertips. That was not enough, he needed more blood. He cupped his hands within the pool of his own blood and drank deeply from the rotting substance.

  The taste coated his mouth as he grabbed for more and more and more. He would not break, there was no line he wasn’t willing to cross to see his vision completed.

  He was a human. And humanity can do one thing better than any other creature, and that is take.

  David took back all the lifeblood that had escaped him then stepped into his own soul where he faced the god of Blood. He looked down on them and bared his teeth.

  He was the wolf, and Blood was the wounded deer separated from the pack.

  Sam walked over and lightly touched David on the shoulder. With that one moment, it was over. David’s teeth went into the soft flesh of the concept of Blood. Then he tore it to shreds

  The inside of David’s soul was caked with blood. The bones of a god were strewn throughout the inner part of his soul space like trash.

  David looked down at them and began to fashion an object. This was not part of the plan, this was something new, something that no one could have expected during this process.

  David created a piece of art from the bones of the dead god. A great mouth of bloody bones stood as a testament to his horrible act of violence against a god. It was a gaping maw dripping with fresh blood and stood alone in his soul space.

  The prince David opened his eyes and spoke to Ian and Sam, “we begin.”

  ___

  Within the king’s personal castle Dahlia paced back and forth. She was in her personal and opulent room. The entire space was filled to the brim with Dahlia’s paintings. Every wall had a theme, everything from ocean scenes to battles.

  Her best friend and closest confidante, Julia, sat on the princess’ bed and waited for this moment of stress to pass.

  Finally, Dahlia spoke, “what is he doing? He has spent an immense amount of time building up good will with the common folk and then he ruins it all with a bloody and needless public execution. It makes no sense.” She had nearly worn a line in her favorite carpet from all her pacing.

  “You know as well as I do that whatever your brother was doing involved the god coming down from the sky. Everything else was meaningless. It was all for that moment.”

  “But none of us know what happened once they disappeared.”

  Dahlia had been in the castle all day and had her best personal spies informing her of the day’s events as they happened. But nothing had prepared her for this. She knew her brother was conniving and resourceful, but this was insanity. Calling a god down, what would that accomplish?

  Dahlia let loose a small scream. There was just no avoiding it, she had tried to divert this path that Fate had shown her, but it was far too late for that.

  “Bring me the Scepter of Calamity.” Dahlia’s eyes were hard as she commanded her best friend to bring her the instrument of her brother’s death.

  Julia had tried to convince Dahlia that this was not something that they needed to do when they had first got the scepter, but now the paradigm of the entire succession war would change is they didn’t do something and quickly.

  Julia left to get the scepter while Julia pulled her grimoire out of her soul space.

  Dahlia’s gift was from Magic and came in the form of a magical grimoire which created new spells for her at random times. Each spell was unique and had interesting components necessary for using each one as well as special incantations and rituals to enact them.

  This spell had appeared in her grimoire nearly a year ago and had caused her to start preparing for her voyage to the Shattered Continent. The page read:

  Spell: The Hounds of Hate and Love

  Description: This spell will take all the hatred for a person as well as all of the adoration and use these emotions to form hounds. The more total love and hate a person has the more hounds will be created as well as more powerful hounds.

  Ingredients:

  -Something that has caused tens of thousands of deaths

  -The caster’s most cherished memory of the target

  -The finger bones of five different thieves

  -An eye that has seen more than its fair share of pain and suffering

  Casting:

  Take the object that has caused death and break the finger bones of thieves on it. Continue breaking them until they are dust that coat the object. Finally squeeze the juice of the eyes over the dust. Bring the object to the caster’s head and think of the caster’s most cherished memory of the target. The spell will be complete, and the hounds will rise.

  Dahlia had hoped not to use this power. She knew that it was specially tailored to destroy her father and her brother. Their notoriety led to people having strong opinions about them. All those strong opinions would force more and more hounds to appear. The hounds would be nearly unstoppable from a kingdom’s worth of love and hate.

  Julia arrived with the scepter and Dahlia began to crush fingers bones on it. She was dedicated to her task and moved with slow efficiency. The bones became dust and then she squeezed out the juices of the eye.

  Dahlia brought the disgusting and gaudy scepter to her forehead and thought back to when she and David were children. Before they understood that they would have to kill each other to further their goals.

  In her memory they were both so young and full of life. They laughed as they ran through the corridors of their father’s empty castle. It wasn’t a profound memory, but the most cherished things are rarely profound. They simply are.

  A weight left Dahlia, and she felt the love and hate in her start to slowly ebb away. She was left nothing but apathy for her brother, but she knew that the hounds would soon be upon him.

  A single tear ran down Dahlia’s face as she turned to meet her friend.

  “Ready the men. We will storm his castle and make sure we have demolished his remaining forces.”

  Julia and Dahlia left the room, preparing for war.

  A while after they left, the door slowly opened, and someone walked into the room. They picked up the scepter and left the room just as quickly as they had entered.

  A deep emptiness and foreboding filled the air as the final battle of the succession war began.