When the gods go to war, it's their people who suffer.
The moon was the most benevolent of them until they took everything from her. Vengeance turned her into the instrument of destruction, now those who destroyed her have to give her back what the...
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It had to be the most stunning vista he had ever seen.
The valley before him held a luscious profusion of greenery, clear streams ran down the mountain to form breathtaking waterfalls on their way to crystals lakes. Fruit trees interspaced the predominant evergreens in a way that suggested planning and yet seemed so natural.
He stood in a perfect ring of roughly squared stone blocks, quite like Stonehenge, right at the top of the mountain. Ancient stones that had been set and carved before civilization had been founded. The flattop gave way to a gentle slop that held a profusion of wildflowers in their glory. Riotous, their colours seemed to be out of the world, but then this mountaintop was said to be beyond the mundane world. After that was the steep climb he had laboured over for the last two days, maybe more. Time had long since lost its reality for him.
Turning to walk amongst the rocks, he noticed the crude and yet compelling stonework. Pictographs depicting pain and slavery of the most degrading form. Mythkind laboured, chained as dark-cloaked beings holding torture instruments oversaw them.
One of the blocks seemed to be a guide to torture, showing people in screwed muzzles, people impaled in ways designed to cause pain and yet not death. Others were held over flames while others were being vivisected as if they were nothing more than animals to be studied. Mythkind, poised in unimaginable pain, their features distorted with it, held stage on another.
A sense of eerie reverence saturated the ring, a heaviness that declared him unwelcome. He didn't care. What more could be done to him that hadn't already been done? Only those at the end of their rope, those with nothing to lose came here. Though he was loath to admit it, he was both.
And all because of a gaunt-faced pack loner who'd never tried to be anything else. What was so special about her that the goddess would choose her as a daughter when there were more worthy candidates? And really, was he supposed to take the word of her sister on that? Yet it was his only bargaining chip with the dark god, the master whose domain he'd invaded. The only thing between him and a horrifying death.
Rage boiled through him as he remembered all she'd cost him and what his parents had taken from him. He'd been better looking than most, even amongst the mythkind who were invariably good-looking, and his father had ruined him.
The god stepped out from behind the central rock where Jake was sure no one had been. Supple leather encased his long muscular legs, a silk t-shirt showing off a barrel chest, with a leather duster and biker boots to complete his dark ensemble. To call him sinister would be an understatement. He was... the living entirety of darkness. A sense of it blotted out the sunlight while Jake felt its intensity on his skin. The presence of this dangerous being leaching all warmth.
