Chapter 69: 69. Capitulation

Naturally, neither deity volunteered. She imagined that she could hear the terrified beating of their hearts. Then she laughed at her own joke. They didn’t have hearts.

Her eyes scanned their faces, as she pulled her list from memory. First Tivelo, now dead. Then Garo, also dead. Third Achi. She would save him for last. After Achi…

But the list wouldn’t come to her.

First Tivelo. Then Garo. Then Achi. Then…

She discarded the list. The order didn’t matter. She took a step toward Alogun, tensed to attack, and froze. She fought her feet, tried to get them to keep going, but every fiber of her being insisted that she was walking in the wrong direction. Achi was next.

Alogun understood the problem first and smiled. “You ranked your enemies, huh? You won’t break the compulsion. It’s as much you as your fires are.”

She turned away to avoid the smug smile and found herself facing Achi and his disheartened expression. They locked gazes for a long time. She counted her own heartbeats, waiting for her resolve to break. It did not.

“If there’s an afterlife for gods,” she said, “and we meet there, I’ll consider us even.”

Achi shook his head. He gave no words to explain his meaning, but she did not think that she needed them.

“Tell me how to kill you,” she said. “There was another way for your father. There is one for you as well.”

Achi shook his head again. “Think, Aria. This is not what you want. Something else is driving you. But it’s not too late to break free from it.”

Words would not work on him. They could stand here and argue forever and he would not budge unless she made him.

“Don’t make this difficult,” she said. “You know I won’t give up.”

“Listen to yourself, Aria.” Achi sounded frustrated. “Just listen. Does this sound like you? You know your friends from your enemies. I rescued you. I hid you. I protected you. I gave you power. I gave you an entire realm. I love you! Fight this!”

Aria tapped her foot in impatience.

“Just think,” he said. “Recall every one of our meetings. Every one. When have I ever been anything other than your friend? Think back. All you have to do is want it, and you can break free.”

“This is your last warning,” Aria said. “You can pay for your crime quickly and painlessly or you can resist and hurt us both.”

Achi bit his lip in frustration. He threw his head up as if searching the sky for a solution. When he looked back at Aria, his eyes were filled with tears again.

“I begged my father,” he said. “I told him to give up. If he had let me die, and given the others a way to save the realm, as long as you continued to live, that would have been enough for me. It was he who held on to hope. In my mind, I’d already traded my life for yours. I would do it again. Even now. If resisting you is what it would take to save you, I’ll resist until you give up. I may not have powers, but I can do anything for you.”

Spoken like a fool who knows little about suffering. This will take five minutes.

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With a thought, she summoned a ring of fire around him.

Achi stared at her in disbelief.

Heavens, he’s slow.

“You don’t want to do this, Aria”, he said. “You are better than this.”

He was wrong.

“I’ll count to ten,” she said. “Everything that happens afterward is your choice.”

She watched him as she counted, her mind filled with memories of another time, another countdown in the gilded hall where she had first seen Ovi’s image.

I suppose I’m not her after all.

She saw the moment he grasped his situation, when the last number left her lips, saw him brace himself and close his eyes.

All the better, I suppose, if we’re both prepared.

He screamed in the flames, begged her to stop, told her that she was better than this. Perhaps, deep down she felt regret, but it was buried under centuries of ice. How long had she suffered? She still did not know. But he would only last five minutes. How could he sound so wrong, look so devastated, when he wouldn’t know a fraction of her pain? Perhaps she should teach him all of it, so he could ask himself again if he should have abandoned her to his father.

She doused the flames and waited for him to stop screaming.

“Continue this,” she said, “and you won’t have to die. “If you hold on for as long as I had to sit in that statue, I’ll consider us even. But I really hope you won’t. I told you. I’m being merciful.”

He glared at her, hope replaced by anger, and she almost smiled. She had felt angry too, she recalled. It came and went, buffetted by pain and terror.

“Well?” She said, “should I go on?”

He continued to stare at her, face set.

“Well? Can’t you speak?”

“Stop,” He commanded. “Now.”

He said it with some conviction, she had to move her arms to verify that the words possessed no magical force.

“Stop it, Aria,” he said. “This isn’t funny anymore.”

She saw red. The fire flared up again, immediately joined by his screams. Funny. He thought this was a joke, that she was playing a game. That this was only the effect of her transformation, warped sense. That he could talk her back to reason. He, who had never known suffering, born to a god who even gods served. He thought that her pain could be washed away by words.

She did not know how long she held onto the flames. She only woke from the fog of her anger to find that time had passed and Achi’s screams no longer held their former power. She let them die down, still maintaining the circle around him, and waited for him to regain his voice.

“You owe me a life and years of suffering,” she said. “For that, I am only taking your life and these few minutes of pain. But if you insult me again, I’ll take everything I’m owed. Now tell me. How do I kill you? What are you afraid of? After you die, won’t your Ovi appear one day and wake you? You are losing nothing but the chance to waste my time.”

He knelt on all fours, panting, with his gaze on the ground. When he lifted his face this time, there was no defiance left in it, just terror.

“Please, Aria,” his voice was hoarse. “I’m begging you. Don’t do this to yourself.”

She summoned the flames again.

“Stop!” he screamed. “Stop! I’ll tell you.”

She allowed the flames to subside.

He tried to rise but failed. Instead, he turned onto his back and stared at her. She had tried to keep the flames from harming him, but his hair was still singed.

“I love you,” he said. Her expression tightened and he added, “I’m not stalling. I’m saying it because I want you to know it. I don’t care whether I have powers or what you look like or what the rules say I should feel. I love you. And, ideally, I would hold on forever, but I’m barely a deity. I don’t have that strength and, I just realized, it wouldn’t matter if I did. The longer I hold on, the less likely it is that you will change your mind. People tend to dig in to keep from believing that they were wrong.”

He took a deep breath. “I just wanted to say that I’m doing this for you. Whether I hold on and you change your mind, or I give in and you die in the end, it’s all a kind of victory is it not? At least, either way, you won’t keep living like this. It would be worse if you never succeed and you live as long as they have, growing worse with every day.”

Aria did not interrupt him. However he justified his capitulation, what mattered was its reality.