▹ 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑜𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓃 𝒢𝑜𝒹

PART ONE     He Too Was Golden

part two

The Forgotten God

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There was a time when I felt invincible, when I felt absolutely and unquestioningly indestructible. My heart was made of gold, then, and my mind was steeled confidence. The role of my existence was clear to me and I was okay with it. I was okay with who I was and how I existed, as well as why and when . Once, I was golden.

My breath billowed out before my black jackal’s nose. I gripped my blackened crook a little tighter. The frozen stone beneath my feet bit at my bare black skin, dulling the shine of the golden wrinkles across my body. I listened to the sound of dripping liquid echo through the ice all around and above me, falling from an unnatural loop where stalactites of ice fed a silver pool in the center of the large carved-out room. Next to me stood black stone figures in my shape, all facing inward with arms crossed over their chests and chains rigged from their bases into the pool of silver. The pool rippled dully, almost begrudgingly, with every drop that fell from above. I watched each of those drops for some time, and I had been for hours now.

Here, in this carved-out room of ice, time felt odd to me. Watching the silver liquid fall, time seemed to stretch out forever, a moment becoming a thousand. But when the drop finally hit the pool’s surface, time trembled and caught back up with reality, muddying my head. The drips fell, and my mind fell silent. The water rippled, and so did my mind, disrupting my silent mind in a way that was mildly infuriating, but mostly maddening. My inability to focus, to think, to hold on to any thought I might be able to form… I wondered if this was how he suffered. I gazed down into that pool and wondered just that: was he suffering? Was he drowning, again and again? Was he thinking sorrowful thoughts, angry thoughts, each time the drip fell, only to be swallowed by madness when the ripples came, again and again? My heart, though it is no longer made of gold, I am certain, trembled at the pondering my mind brought to surface.

“Brother,” I murmured, and my gravelly voice rolled harshly across the ice.

I opened my mouth again to continue, but then shut my maw swiftly and softly. No words of mine would bring him solace. There was nothing I could say that would hold any weight with him. Not anymore.

Perhaps not even the word “brother,” either.

Somehow, in my heart, whatever was left of it, I felt certain that I had lost him. He was gone from my life, never to return again. Murder. I had murdered him. Killed his soul and destroyed his character. Only a husk remained of his once beautiful body. My breath billowed before my nose again as I breathed softly, still staring down into that silver pool with its seven chains reaching somewhere into its center.

Flashes of his old beauty came with each slow blink I managed over my golden irises. I saw his pure, untainted white fur coat; I felt the softness of that fur as I grasped his thin, young shoulder, felt the warmth of his body from beneath his coat; I smelled the metallic stain on his dull golden tongue, smelled the same metallic twinge from his equally dull golden nose. We were sitting next to one another once more, smiling. Oh, how beautiful it was when he smiled. His golden teeth shone in the sun like bars of metal, his eyes sparkled with the golden light of a thousand suns. The sound of his gleeful chuckles echoed in my ears and I couldn’t keep them from falling back against my skull. I knew I looked like an unwilling pup trying to be brave, now, but that was alright. No one could see me here. No one could hear me. No one knew.

I looked down at that rippling pool of silver as the memory skipped and continued to echo in my skull as chuckles turned to panicked, confused pleas. The look on his face as soft sadness widened to panic and disbelief was almost more than I could bear. I ed perfectly how it felt when my heart was ripped from my chest that day. My free hand found my wrinkled, unscarred chest while my other gripped my crook a little harder. Laying my ears flat did nothing to block out the voice that turned desperate.

“W-what?” it said. “What do you mean? What is this? What-Anubis! What are you doing!”

The voice echoed off the ice all around me and my chest ached with each syllable that found my ears.

“Anubis, please. Don’t do this. You can’t do this. You can’t!”

“No, I couldn’t,” I muttered back into the silence, my voice barely audible even to my own canine ears. “You were right, little godling. I couldn’t do it.”

Another memory flashed and this time I saw its reflection in the silver pool at my feet: a small god, he was like a young teenager if viewed from human perspective. His arms and legs were long and lanky, waiting for him to grow into them, and his gold-tipped hands were just a little too thick to be proportionally correct. The small god’s eyes were bigger than ever, shining like two yellow stars all on their own, constantly. Childish laughter echoed from the young god’s mouth and my stomach turned upside down. Briefly, I thought I was going to vomit into that pool as it rippled and the image disintegrated.

“So, this was Father’s decree?”

The breath caught in my throat, and I couldn’t breathe.

“And Mother’s. As well as all the others, too…”

I could feel his beautiful eyes fall cold on me.

“And you, too? This is how you feel? How you cast your vote? Participated?”

Grief stabbed at my chest and I gripped it more tightly, the pain piercing and fresh as the day the wound was dealt.

“Then… if it is to be you who carries out this task… I… I think I’m okay with that.”

I bared my teeth at the silver pool before me, though whether it was in pain or in disgust I could not tell. Pain that the memories would never grow old in my chest, pain that the feeling would never die, or disgust of who I now was and what I’d done, of the many gods that had decided this one young god’s fate without so much as saying to him “hello.”

“I shan’t resist, if you’ll do me the mercy of making it swift.”

The sadness that had doused his whole body that day was an invisible black ink that had swallowed him whole, it seemed. His fur had dulled quickly, his smile had died for good, and all the gold that used to shine so brightly dulled into a nasty shade of yellow. It was sickening to see him like that. To have felt Mother’s and Father’s gazes at my back, seeing him like that, and to have heard no objection from them… there had never been a greater silence.

I stood there at the edge of the pool gazing down into the reflecting silver with the same expression I had worn that day, hoping still, that he had seen my body, read my face, looked into my soul and found my truth. The despair written all over him said that he had not, but still I had to hope. I had to. I couldn’t not.

“My sweet little godling.” My whisper was swallowed by the silver pool this time.

If only he had known. If only he had seen. If only…

I felt something warm drip down my palm. Looking down, I discovered I had clenched my fist so hard at my chest that I had drawn my own blood, the physical pain having been drowned out by the emotional excruciation in my chest. I opened my palm and gazed at the liquid gold pooling there briefly before it cooled and began to harden. Closing my eyes I clenched my fist and took a deep breath. Then, I opened my eyes and turned my palm down, dropping the piece of gold to the hard ground. I watched it bounce once before it shattered against the stone, pieces scattering forth into the silver pool. They disappeared instantly, sending more ripples across the surface.

With that, I composed myself and turned from the pool. I glanced at one of the statues surrounding the pool in the darkness of this cave of ice, that which bore my face upon its cold, unmoving flesh. There was no way for me to tell him that this was all for him. I could not leave him a message, could not speak with him once more, could not reach his soul if ever I wanted to. He would never know that this tomb was carved by hand out of a great glacier deep, deep into the ice of the southern Surface and specially adorned with mercury just for him. To keep him alive. To keep him safe from the other gods.

I was weak. I was a coward. By all s, standing here, I still am. Because the fact was that I couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t kill Zibiqi. I couldn’t kill my own brother. And now, who knows what sort of hell my choice will unleash upon us all when one day my fragile rig will fall apart. Fate was a cruel thing like that. I could try my hardest, and I would, until the end of time, to keep things this way. To keep him hidden from the savagery of the gods. But I, as the God of the Afterlife, knew more than anyone else that fate, destiny, karma—whatever it was to be called—would have her way, no matter how long it took. And she rarely ever kept things the same.

I left the frozen room behind, for it was time for me to leave. Only a few hours were manageable before I too froze in that place, the unnatural cold that I had cast onto the location too much for even myself to survive. I looked down to see my fingertips frosted over, my nose no doubt the same. Upon my leave I looked back, as I always had, and silently said goodbye. I would be back again some other time, of that I was certain. My heart couldn’t stand to leave him alone in this place for eternity, forgotten by the world—and, hopefully, the gods.

character link

Zibiqi, The Forgotten

PART THREE     Silver Malevolence

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