Jackal Among Snakes

Zen clenched the red blade that Sataistador had gifted him tightly, then wiped some sweat off his brow. He kneeled in a place he had been only a few times before, despite his efforts to come as often as he could. He stood atop a glass cover, peering down at something that could be considered both a work of art and a feat of unimaginable intelligence: the Stormfield. This array, contained within glass, was the heart of the Palace of Heaven. It was the true last bastion for the rulers of the Great Chu... and now, once again, it was returned to its rightful owners.

Zen sighed, but the movement of black smoke before his vision made him turn his head about wildly. Was something here, something that he had missed? The gods that had come with him had totally destroyed the meager garrison Erlebnis had abandoned here, but perhaps there was some trick that they had missed. He caught the eye of Anneliese, who had been scrutinizing him relentlessly. Now, there was deep unease etched in her face.

“What’s the matter?” Zen called out.

Anneliese didn’t respond. She backed away, clenching that staff of hers tightly. Instead, she spoke to the other gods in this room; the triumphant Rook, Raccomen, and Almazora. “Something’s happening with him!”

Zen felt a great deal of alarm at her words, but when he opened his mouth to ask further questions, black smoke poured out from his lungs. He started to taste it, started to smell it. The smoke... it was as though the smoke itself was made of blood, bile, tears, gore. As he tasted it more and more, he started to feel it. It burned his insides like acid. His lungs, his stomach, his throat, his ears, his eyes, his nose; he felt its burn, but more than that, he felt it move.

Like a thousand slugs wriggling around inside his body, the smoke wormed and writhed. He raised his hands up, but his right hand... it refused to release the blade in his hand. With reason enough to recognize it might be the cause, he tried to pry it from his right hand with his left. It pulled away slightly, but in so doing revealed that tendrils on its surface had dug their way deep inside of his body. He held out a hand to Anneliese and the gods near her for help... and as he did, he saw a hand burst free of his neck. It reached for the blade in his hand, and as though taking an implement from a child, gently plucked the blade from Zen.

“Thank you for keeping this safe,” he heard a voice—though one, he might’ve sworn it sounded like many.

Then... darkness.

#####

Sataistador crawled out of Zen’s body, pulling himself free of his now-useless husk. He had witnesses to his sudden arrival—Argrave’s wife Anneliese, the victorious Rook, Raccomen, Almazora... but then, the fact they stood there without doing much of anything told him all he needed to know. They had no clue what he intended to do. They were totally ignorant of how or why he was here.

What was the goal of the god of war, chaos, and brutal destruction? That was one of those questions wherein thinking too hard on the matter might lead one to the wrong answer. Sataistador wanted war, chaos, and brutal destruction; it was right in the name, plain as day. It always surprised him how people searched for answers even when he blatantly told them his intent from the beginning. It was his domain, his sphere. He craved it instinctively as much as he did intellectually. It was in those three things that the lesser could become the greater, or the greater become the lesser.

The Great Chu, with its orderly cities, its robust network of canals, its rigid bureaucracy, its multiple millennia of existence... Sataistador hated it more than anything. He hated that he had failed in taking the Palace of Heaven before, and hated that it had resisted his robust attempts to completely and utterly wipe it off the map. So long as it existed, there was a living monument to the failure of his divinity. It, more than anything, was the antithesis to his being. The Great Chu was order, relentless resistance.

Because it stood in Sataistador’s path, he and Kirel Qircassia made obvious allies. They had collaborated in previous cycles, and intended to do so today. Kirel had his sky tower, and now Sataistador had the Stormfield; they complemented each other in a way soon to be revealed. Each had a rudimentary understanding of the others’ sphere of divinity, and through that had come this cooperation. Qircassia wanted open land and sky, while Sataistador wanted to level everything that had been built on the land. It was a match made in heaven; specifically, the Palace of Heaven.

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“Do you have any idea what the Stormfield is fully capable of?” Sataistador called out, looking down on the array in question. With Zen dead, no one was controlling it any longer. The light beneath the glass covering slowly faded, like embers losing their heat. “Few enough do. One of the ones who did recently perished.”

As he waited for an answer, Sataistador realized he was getting caught up in a trap that had claimed so many others: gloating. It was unbecoming of him. He should do what he must, then save the words for whatever remained afterward.

“Whatever it is you're doing, do you honestly think that you can hold your own against Law, all of us?” Almazora stepped forward. Magic for miles around heeded her call, ready to aid the deity in whatever she had planned.

“Don’t need to burn a man to ash to end his life. Just cut his throat… watch him bleed.”

Sataistador raised his dagger up to his throat, and plunged it in deep. He fell to his knees, grinning as his beard billowed smoke and his throat poured blood. Indeed—blood. As it poured, he pulled his knife out.

“They always speak of kingsblood in prophecies… but did they ever deign to mention godsblood?” Sataistador’s grin widened as his throat gurgled, and he licked the edge of his blade. “Let me show you what it can do, where it can be… most appreciated.”

“Can’t speak for all kings, but I know my blood is more valuable than yours,” shouted someone as they ran in.

Argrave leaned up against the wall, staring at Sataistador. His face was strangely… crooked.

“You’re an even bigger liar than I am, Sataistador.” The king of Vasquer strutted in proudly. “That’s right. I know your real name.”

Sataistador was confused what the king was talking about… but then, none of that really mattered. Once someone was caught in an ambush, that was the end of things.

#####

From the very first entry on the god of war’s wiki page, everything that Argrave thought he’d known about the god of war had been tossed out the window. Firstly, his name wasn’t Galamon—it was actually Sataistador.

The deity that Argrave knew as Galamon carefully cultivated an image. His image was that of a lone warrior wandering the world, playing the role of a chaotic mercenary. He fought only for himself, though sometimes deigned to help out the highest bidder with whatever conflict they had. Unpredictable, pragmatic, ruthless, utterly callous, and as much a master of deception and subterfuge as Rook himself. There were tales of his resilience, of his indestructability. No matter how many blows he took, he never seemed to fall. He bragged about walking the world alone, while disparaging those who made divine servants.

He had threatened Argrave, once, to travel around as one man, wantonly attacking places as he consigned Argrave’s kingdom to a slow death by attrition. He possessed some evidence to back that claim up—his ability to appear anywhere, at seemingly anytime, gave one the impression that he was capable of enacting the same sort of chaos throughout the kingdom. His information-gathering abilities were extremely good… and he claimed to do all of it himself.

It was all one huge lie. At least in this day and age, wars were only fought with armies. Sataistador wasn’t a one-man army. He was an army of one.

It might seem semantic, but for moments like this it explained the inexplainable. Every bit of Sataistador, from the smallest fragment of the nails on his hand, the countless hairs on his head, the weapons that he bore, or the blood that spilled from his neck right now… it was all constructed of countless individuals. Sataistador hadn’t given Governor Zen a weapon forged of his divinity—he’d lent the man an army, a Trojan Horse. Now that he was behind the fortress walls, the warriors hidden within were spilling atop the Stormfield. Their intent was beyond nefarious—it was apocalyptic.

“Anneliese, everyone,” Argrave said, using a blanket term in case he was misremembering their names. “I need all of you to heed my word absolutely. If you can do that, then we have a good chance. If not… I’m afraid we’re going to lose this battle. We’re outnumbered by a few billion, after all, and unless we kill them all… the hell won’t ever end.”