Page 8 of The Endless One

Because he was. Elric was simply weaker than this god, and he knew that once he regained his true form, Ajax could crush him into dust.

“Elric, I need you to understand this isn’t personal. I need to come back. Your witches made it difficult for me, but they aren’t capable of preventing the inevitable. It’s admirable that you tried to stop me. I even respect that a little, and I’ve never respected you or your sniveling life. You should be proud of that.”

A knife plunged into his belly and then sliced.

Elric gasped at the zinging ache, his hands already scrabbling to hold his intestines in where they should be. This body was still new, still fragile. He refused to lose it already, not when Jessamine had gone through so much trouble to get it for him.

Healing magic. That’s all he needed. He knew how to heal bodies, how to hold them together with shadows. He could do that. All he had to do was focus.

The knife twisted in his guts, and he let out a grunt of pain. Ajax held him a little tighter around the throat, cutting off all oxygen, and Elric could do nothing to stop him.

Ajax ripped the blade out of his stomach, making sure to cut a much larger line that sprayed blood all throughout the ceremony site. “The blood of another god. Did you know that’s the last bit they need to turn you into what we are? A shame you weren’t aware of that. But I don’t think you remember. You were already so weak when those first witches dragged you into that cave.”

“I remember little of that night,” he wheezed, staggering over to a stone pedestal with a potted plant on top of it. He used that for balance as he held his guts in.

“I know. Because if you did remember anything at all, you would have remembered that I was there.” Ajax lifted the blade up to the sun, staring at the light reflected on it. “I was the one who gave you my blood, and it seems so fitting that you should give me yours. Full circle and all that.”

Then he sank the blade underneath his breastbone, right into Leon’s heart.

Time seemed to stand still. It all came rushing back to Elric. The white-hot heat. How he had been just a simple farmer. A handsome man who many of the women had wanted to marry in his town, but he’d also been a raging drunk, and that had thrown a lot of wrinkles into their plans. The witches had found him outside of a tavern one night. He’d been piss drunk, literally, with soaking-wet pants.

He’d followed them because they were pretty. Not a care in the world about his own safety, he’d staggered with them into the cave and then lay down on the altar with a comment about how the beautiful women were always the ones who liked it weird.

And then the blade. The shimmering blade with blood that hadn’t been his, pressed against his flesh a hundred times.

He staggered forward, catching Leon as the man fell to his knees. Just as Ajax had done to him.

He remembered waking up and staring into a face similar to Leon’s. Blond with a strong jaw and eyes the color of coins. He’d looked up into Ajax’s gaze and known something was different, just as Leon was realizing now. And that was the last thing Elric thought he had remembered as himself. The person he was now wasn’t the drunk who had fallen apart at the hands of witches. Someone else had stepped in and taken his place.

Leon’s eyes went from blue to gold, shifting continuously as the young man wheezed. “What is happening to me?” Leon asked.

“You’re turning into a god. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

There was still time. He could still end this. Elric wrapped his hands around Leon’s neck and went to break it, but found that the god inside of him prevented any injury during the change. The wheels of time had already turned, shifting and rearranging themselves so that a god could awaken again.

They had failed. And he wasn’t sure what Ajax would do the moment he finally had all of his magic back.

His brother’s gold eyes looked up at him, and suddenly every muscle in his body seized. Elric tried to breathe, but couldn’t. It took so little effort for his brother to roll them so that their positions were swapped. Elric was suddenly on the ground. Ajax loomed over him, his blood dripping onto his younger brother’s stomach.

“Ah, Deathless One. You always were the weakest of us,” Ajax murmured before patting his cheek.

An unseen force pressed down upon him. Ajax’s gifts were in manipulation of the human body, along with a few elemental gifts, such as fire. But right now, he used only his physical gift as he made Elric’s head feel like it was going to explode.

Vaguely, he could hear all the other witches screaming as well. Their pain would only fuel the God King’s power. As Ajax walked away, Elric crawled after him. First, he would get Jessamine. Then he would find his coven. They needed him. He was their god. He was meant to take care of them when they were in pain, and that was what he was going to do.

But his hands only found cold ground where Jessamine had once been. As darkness pressed down upon him, he lifted his head just in time to see Ajax walking away with Jessamine’s limp body dangling in his arms.

Her head felt groggy. Her mind felt a little fractured, and there was the strangest sensation that someone had taken a fork to her brain and swirled it around a bit. But she was alive, and that was all Jessamine could count on as she finally woke.

It was like one second she was in the sunken amphitheater, and the next, she had been transported somewhere else. As she blinked her eyes open, she was unnerved to realize that a good amount of time had passed.

The sun was low on the horizon. She wasn’t certain how long it had been that low, or if it was the next day already, but she knew she needed to get out of this place. Wherever Leon had brought her, it wasn’t going to be safe. Not for her, at least.

She sat up slowly and took in her surroundings.

She was in a bed. A familiar bed. The pale yellow linens had surprised her the first time she’d been brought here. Her mother had walked into the room and commented on the splendor of it. The floor had been hand tiled by master artists to depict a scene from the sea. Lapis lazuli mixed with abalone to make the entire room seem as though it was set upon waves. The white wood of the furniture blended into the pale colors, along with the white fabric that framed the four-poster bed and waved in the wind from the open window.

This room was designed to feel like she was out to sea. But Jessamine just felt like she was drowning.