Theros: Godsend, Part I Page 7

  “Heliod claims the world is crumbling,” Thassa said. “He both dreams and is blind. Things are happening that should not be.”

  “He blames my sword?” Purphoros asked. “He blames you,” she said.

  Purphoros became a tiny flame in Thassa’s hand. His voice was nearly lost among the clang and clatter of the work. “I cannot remember.”

  His shame touched her, and she wanted to grab Kruphix by his bony shoulders and thrash him until all that Purphoros lost came flooding back. But she would never be able to touch the God of Time. So for a fleeting moment, the two of them fled the mountain as mist and flame. To Thassa, the currents of the air moved like the waves of the sea, and she showed Purphoros how to rejoice in it. The skies over Akros became red as blood, and the air rippled like the surface of the ocean, and comets of ice and fire rained from the sky.

  Thassa and Purphoros didn’t reveal themselves in a recognizable god-form, so the people of Akros only saw the heavens become like fire. The mighty Deyda River surged and boiled in the gorge below the city. Great billows of steam rose from the rushing waters and engulfed the temples and rolled over the houses in great waves. Only the head of the Stone Colossus stood above the hissing blast. And far away in the mountains, the leonins in their remote camps stood on the cliffs and wondered—even trembled—at the fearful sky. In Akros the oracles shouted words of chaos louder than they shouted visions of peace. But they were confused because when two gods merge, their language becomes something new entirely.

  Thassa and Purphoros finally rested in the mouth of the forge. Their breathing was labored, both nearly overcome with great grace and the passion of speed. They appeared as man and woman again, even though Thassa knew that Purphoros would never love her. But then and there, he made her a chimera-gift. With feathered wings, a long black beak, and bones as delicate as glass, the chimera contained aspects of both an ibis and a stag. He crafted it of stars and divine bronze with his own hands. It began as a handful of dust, and he shaped it into a glorious creation befitting the divine. When he presented it to Thassa, she clapped her hands with childish delight. But it had no eyes, just bare sockets, empty as the void beyond the edges of the world.

  “It can run faster than an arrow shot from Nylea’s bow,” Purphoros promised. “It won’t rest until it discovers the sword that I have lost. If it was lost forever, we will know. If it has risen again, we will find it.”

  “But your chimera is blind,” Thassa said. She hesitated to speak because she knew that sight was fickle at best, and she didn’t want to question his creation.

  Purphoros smiled, and Thassa’s heart leaped. He was not one for mirth.

  “Great Eye, fill it with your own,” and he laughed, and the ground roiled and trembled, and all the birds of Theros took wing at once because they were so startled to hear the Fire Bull laugh. And Thassa became a ribbon of water that flowed into the chimera. She gave it perfect eyes that could see through the skins, and makeshift shells, and deceits of those she hated. And the chimera stamped its hooves and pranced, ready to be unleashed.

  “Your favor has destroyed me,” Thassa said humbly, and she rejoiced in another rare smile from Purphoros. “I shall call her Galaia, for never has there been such a gift of splendor.”

  Purphoros turned and trudged to the forge. His weary footfalls made the earth quake from the walls of Akros to the Cypress Gates at the edge of the Nessian Forest. Already the fleeting moments of joy were forgotten.

  “And what if Galaia finds the thief who stole your sword?” Thassa called to him.

  “Then I will crush the one who wields it, and scour the land around him,” Purphoros said. “I will lay waste to his family and all he holds dear.”

  Thassa nodded but said nothing. Phenax had whispered to her, so she knew the person he sought. It was a woman, not a man. But it didn’t matter. Galaia would find the sword, and Purphoros’s creation would be returned to him. He would lose his shame and return to Nyx. Heliod would be humbled and his arrogant tyranny finally stopped. The pantheon would be restored to the natural order—no god laid low, no god pretending to be king.

  Galaia departed, running so fast that a mortal would see nothing. They might only feel the wind flowing behind her. Thassa was no wiser than before, but she returned to the quiet darkness of the restless seas, keeping Phenax’s other secret to herself: Wherever the mortal carries the stolen sword, the fallen hydra would follow.

  Heliod’s Shrine was high above Akros at the end of a rock bridge that spanned the Deyda River Gorge. As Elspeth climbed up the mountainside to the shrine, the skies began to burn with a great fire. Below her, in the streets of Akros, steam flooded the streets and rolled over the buildings in great waves. The earth hissed and growled as if the mortal realm itself were unnerved by the spectacle playing out above.

  The people of Akros gaped in wonder at the sight. Some fell to their knees. Others scurried for the temples in hopes of pleasing or appeasing their patron gods. Despite the blazing vista, Elspeth continued up the rocky path toward the summit. The sky became like a ceiling of lava with wisps of flames reaching toward the earth as the blue-gray steam rose up to meet them. Most who witnessed the spectacle thought to themselves: What are the gods trying to say to me? But Elspeth knew how insignificant she was, and instead she thought: What does this say about you, God of the Sun?

  The steep path narrowed until she stood at the edge of the gorge. The only way forward was the unlikely rock bridge—just a narrow span of red rock no wider than her boots. A marble likeness of Heliod towered on the other side of the chasm. The statue was as tall as the pillars of Iroas’s mighty temple, and the sculptor had carved him to look much as he did in her memory—a tall man with long hair, a strong jawline, and powerful arms. But mere stones could not convey the awe she had felt in his presence. No one in Akros called him the head of the pantheon, but that’s how he seemed to her. After all, what could live without the sun?

  As she stepped lightly across the span of rock, her footfalls dislodged pebbles that vanished from sight long before they splashed into the raging waters below. The sword belted at her waist made her feel off-balance. Dizzy and dwarfed by the sweeping landscape, she carefully placed one foot in front of the other as she crossed to the Sun God’s Shrine. Above her, the skies cleared as Thassa and Purphoros, still unrevealed as gods, completed their parade across the sky. By the time Elspeth reached the far side of the gorge, the sky had returned to a deep, flawless blue that hid even the faintest trace of Nyx.

  Elspeth stared up at Heliod. From her angle at the base of the statue, she could no longer see his carved face or eyes, which gazed over her at the mountains beyond. Now that she was here, what should she ask for? What did she want from Heliod? And did it matter how she asked the question? She thought of Sarpedon and his story about the woman who became a butterfly. If she asked for the wrong thing, would she simply be battered on the wind, helpless to control her own fate? If Sarpedon had been truthful, then the God of Deception knew about her presence. Now he knows what you are. He knows what you carry. At the time, those words made no sense because she carried nothing but a knife and coins. But, in the presence of Heliod, his words felt urgent and sinister. She had to speak to Heliod before circumstances were swept out of her control. Step below the sun and seek your god there.

  What was expected of her? A confession, an offering, or a sacrifice? A memory of a ritual she’d witnessed back in Bant flooded her mind. It was when the war had been raging and other darker planes seeped into the verdant fields and forests of her home. She and her soldiers crossed paths with a ragged and hungry tribe from Jund just after they’d slaughtered a lost lion-mount and offered it up to their gods. Though starving, they wouldn’t touch the meat because it was intended for their gods. It had infuriated her—that these people would presume to take the life of a beautiful creature for their own selfish ends. She and her soldiers had scoffed at their ignorance, their self-delusion.

  Will I never learn? sh
e thought as she bowed her head. So often she had judged another person, only to find herself crushed beneath the same problem later down the road. Just like that tribe, she was hoping a sacrifice would help her find answers beyond her own understanding.

  Elspeth fell to her knees in the shadow of the statue. At the base there was a long, glossy altar stone where Elspeth imagined that priests and pilgrims laid their offerings.

  “I’ve come full circle,” she said. “I came to Theros after fleeing Phyrexia the first time. And I’ve come back after Phyrexia defeated me again.”

  Elspeth stopped. Her voice was carried away by the wind. She felt no godly presence. It just felt like she was whispering her words to the winds. So she imagined that she was talking to Ajani, the leonin planeswalker, who had returned her sword to her. Ajani always treated her as if she were greater than the sum of her mistakes.

  With his face in her mind, the words spilled out of her: “We were on Mirrodin in one of the main fortresses of Phyrexians, and we’d made it to the chamber beneath the throne room. We had the incendiary device. It was Venser’s design from before he died. We found it in that notebook of his along with his plans for Phyrexian ships. The resistance was over. We had lost. There were just a handful of souls who escaped the surgeon’s blades. By the time we made it into the fortress, it was just Koth and me. Whatever would happen that night—it would be our final stand.”

  When she spoke Koth’s name, it seemed to ring from the mountaintops. She didn’t know if Koth had lived or died. But she knew that his plane had fallen to the greatest evil. Phyrexia felt no mercy, no regret, no desire except to convert everything to their own horrid vision, their bastardization of life. All the memories Elspeth had held at bay since her arrival on Theros crashed down on her: the butchery, the surgery rooms, the horrific transformation of the contagion. There hadn’t been anything left to fight for. Every single living thing on that plane had been lost. Grief consumed Elspeth, and she felt sick from remembering it.

  Elspeth continued, “The Phyrexians targeted us. We barred the door. The clanging of the weapons against the metal was a cadence, counting the seconds until they were in, until they were upon us. I’ll tell you the truth—I just wanted it over. I wanted it done. We talked of killing ourselves before they could rip us apart limb from limb while we were still alive. And this is what I thought was coming next. Just giving in to the rising tide. Koth was ready, but he turned to me. ‘You’re leaving,’ he said.”

  Elspeth fell silent. It felt foolish to continue. What would Heliod care about her doomed friend Koth? So she started over:

  “I’ve come full circle,” she said, quieter this time. The wind whipped her hair around her face. “The first time I came to Theros, there was a boy. He wore an amulet of a glass flower. He looked so young, but he bowed before you, unafraid. I was terrified. No, that’s not right. I was overwhelmed. Since then I’ve seen towering beasts that block out the sun, murderous creations designed solely for killing, and horrors I can barely describe.”

  A shadow passed over the shrine, but she didn’t notice. She reached out and touched the stone altar in front of her. The glassy surface felt cool to the touch, not like a stone that had been sitting in the sun.

  “My memory of you has stayed with me through it all,” Elspeth told Heliod. “At the worst moments, I would think of you. I’ve had dreams of you protecting me so nothing could harm me. After everything I’ve seen, I need there to be something greater than myself. I need to understand what it means to be a god. And if divinity can truly protect this world.”

  Elspeth unsheathed her sword and held it flat against the palms of her hands. “This is from your world. It has saved me again and again. I found it on the mountainside near the boy …”

  An avian creature alighted near the statue, and Elspeth gasped in surprise. It had the body of a deer with large feathered wings and the long black beak of an ibis. Shimmering masses of stars and astral clouds shone in the shadows of its body, and she knew instinctively that this was a divine creature of Nyx, somehow born of the gods. The sword warmed in her hand, and the orbs changed before her eyes. Instead of glowing with faint blue light, they glittered with stars.

  Elspeth felt a surge of joy at the sight of the creature. She believed that Heliod was watching her, heeding her words, and considering her plea. Elspeth nearly cried with relief. The grief in her heart, as painful as a real wound, eased a little. But this was Galaia, the chimera-gift of Purphoros, who had been sent to find her creator’s sword.

  “Thank you,” Elspeth whispered to Heliod.

  She laid her beloved sword on the altar before Heliod. But when metal touched stone, the world exploded. The statue shattered into a multitude of fragments and dust. Elspeth reeled back, falling to the ground, shielding her face against the impact. Pain never came. Instead, time stopped and the landscape shifted to an empty expanse of stellar clouds and diffuse amber light. She could still feel the grit of Akros beneath her hands. But she could no longer perceive the landscape. She could only see what Heliod wanted her to see.

  Shards of stone and the dust of ages dotted the air around her, frozen in the moment like suspended flakes of snow. Her sword hovered above her, just out of reach.

  “Where did you get this sword?” Heliod’s words drove like percussive strikes directly into her mind.

  “On the mountainside,” she told him truthfully.

  “It was never claimed by the ocean nor reached the ruins of Arixmethes,” he finished for her.

  The sword began to transform. Cosmic dust clung to it and the starlight was like mortar. It extended to double its size. Heliod reforged the sword into a spear in the image of his own sun-spear. At the sight of it, Galaia clattered her bill in distress. Shrieking, she took flight and vanished into the mist. She found the sword, now she must tell Purphoros of this transgression.

  “It is no longer Purphoros’s Sword,” Heliod said. “It is my weapon. It’s a Godsend fit for a mortal’s hand. A mortal who will be my champion.”

  Since she first took the sword that day with the boy on the summit, it had been more than a weapon. She used it to focus her mind so she could use her magic more efficiently in battle. It had been her salvation many times. Elspeth reached for it without thinking. But just before her fingers could grasp the glittering hilt, a great pain enveloped her.

  “You presume that you are my champion?” the voice demanded. “Why did you steal this weapon? And how have you kept it hidden from me?”

  Heliod touched her with heat from the sun, and Elspeth felt she was being burned from the inside out. She tried to speak but could only cry out in pain.

  “I am the Sun,” the voice said, now heavy and angry. “Hide from me now, if you can.”

  “Hide where?” Elspeth pleaded, desperate for relief from the pain.

  “There is a vastness of the Underworld ruled by my brother. Would you like to join him?” Heliod asked.

  The scorching heat was relentless. Elspeth stopped trying to fight the pain and found a quiet corner of her mind. She imagined a field of golden wheat, the stalks bowed by a strong wind. Nearby, there was also a quaint farmhouse with a thatch roof that she remembered from her dreams. Like a child building a wall of blocks, Elspeth assembled a mystical blockade and made herself immune to the light. Her skin became impenetrable to the damage wrought by the god she had offended. Presently, she walked out of the corner of her mind and found that the pain was gone.

  “I am Heliod, the greatest of these,” said the voice carried by the winds. “Who are you? How have you done such a thing?”

  “I am Elspeth, nothing at all,” she replied.

  “Why did you come to me?” he asked. “What do you want? And will you ask for an ordeal to receive it?”

  “I want a world that is safe from destruction,” she said. “And I want to have a place it in.”

  “A place as what? A ruler? A queen?”

  “No,” Elspeth said, suddenly filled with despair. Th
is god didn’t understand her at all.

  There was a sound behind her. Elspeth turned expecting to see a man—perhaps a father, wise but not perfect. Instead she saw a flock of star-specked white doves, and they flew directly at her. She didn’t flinch, and at the last second, they arched into the sky.

  “Your fate is bound together with the Godsend,” Heliod said, his voice inside her head. “Bring the blade to my temple in Meletis, and you will find what you’re looking for. If you try to hide the weapon from me again you will be branded a pariah, an outcast, a traitor to the gods.”

  “You don’t know what I’m looking for!” Elspeth cried.

  “If you reach Meletis with this blade, you will become my living vessel, a champion against darkness,” he said. “You will be a divine protector of Theros.”

  The voice retreated from her mind. The horizon spun on its axis, and Elspeth found herself on her knees before the unbroken statue on the mountaintop. The wind whispered to her, Come to Meletis, come now.

  Below, the bells of Akros pealed in warning, and the sun crawled toward its zenith, and Elspeth retrieved the Godsend from the altar and made her way back down the mountainside.

  Daxos slammed the training dummy to the ground. If it had been a person, its skull would have cracked open. He yanked the dummy upright and set it back on its wooden stand. Then he surveyed the damage he’d done to the courtyard. Practice swords and shields lay scattered in the dirt where he’d discarded them. He’d somehow broken the bars that they used for strengthening their arms—but he didn’t remember how. The throwing discuses were haphazardly strewn around and a few were lodged into the dirt.

  The small courtyard was tucked behind the stoa, or covered walkway, at the very back of Heliod’s sprawling temple grounds. Officially, the courtyard was known as the Sunburst Garden because of the elaborate sun mosaic at the exact center of the rectangular yard. But among the priests, it was called Daxos’s Yard because he trained there every night, alone. Only in the quietest hour before the dawn would he stop. He would sit motionless on the edge of the fountain, staring into the bubbling water and listening to the rustle of lemon trees that marked the western perimeter of the courtyard.