“But it would work?”

“It might. But, no, I cannot allow it.”

“I think you must.” Jorim’s form swelled into that of a dragon. He curled around the wolf and looked down upon him. “It is our only choice, brother.”

The wolf leaped from within the circle of Jorim’s tail. “Do not think to threaten me. This is not an action to be taken lightly. I will consider it, but it must be the only way.”

Jorim returned to his mortal form. “I do not threaten and I will seek an alternative. Understand this, however. The pain is of no consequence if all we know is to be saved. I suspect the discomfort will be as nothing compared to the loss of never having existed. Deliberate with haste, brother, lest we find out my fear is true.”

TheNewWorld

23rd day, Month of the Hawk, Year of the Rat

Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th Year since the Cataclysm

Wangaxan (The Ninth Hell)

He always wondered why Grija made a light when coming to torture him. Nessagafel saw no need for it. The Underworld existed, but its shape and form was an illusion agreed upon when Grija accepted the role as its sovereign. The Underworld was dark because it was dark, but no god needed light there.

Grija’s movement and hunger drew Nessagafel back from infinity. If Nessagafel had actually given it any significant amount of consideration at the time he had created everything, he would have made himself omniscient. But as he created things, especially his children, he found bits and pieces of his creation shut off to him. At first this was intriguing, since he found his children’s surprises a challenge. He could always discover and destroy their little plots, but he allowed them to plot because he found the challenges so entertaining.

Grija, being the first of his children, was conceived in haste and therefore lacking in imagination. Grija latched on to death as his aspect without thought, while the others choose more carefully. While all of his children hid things from him, Grija had the least amount to hide. Over the eons, Nessagafel had come to know him very well.

Almost completely.

Grija grew closer-though distance was again a concept without meaning in the Underworld-so Nessagafel gave himself form and substance. He had not yet escaped the heavy shackles and slender ring his children had fashioned for him. An eternity of imprisonment would soon end, however, as well-laid plans slowly coalesced.

Grija came to him as a wolf, so Nessagafel became a wolf’s carcass, rotted and bloated, flesh black where his fur had fallen out. One eye hung against a blood-caked cheek. His lips had been eaten away, giving him a perpetual snarl.

“Very nice, Father. A vision of my future?”

“Not one you would ever see, my child.”

Grija recoiled from the comment. “I shall never end up thus. Things progress as I have planned. Soon, very soon, I shall set you free. As my agent, you may again raise your Viruk to the heights they once enjoyed. You may rid the world of Men.”

Nessagafel allowed the flesh to slough from a forearm. “And you will then bring your Ansatl to full flower? Men defeated them when you sought to make them ascendant.”

“Wentoki followed in your footsteps and became a man. He gave Men magic. Without him leading them, my Ansatl would have crushed Men.”

And then would they have come to oppose my Viruk-what remained of them? He would have laughed had he not found Grija’s transparency so tedious. When Grija and the others conspired to create Men, Grija chose an aspect which Men would never respect or truly worship. They might pay Death attention and deference, but revere it? Impossible. And then Wentoki, the clever one, had created the Fennych and Tsiwen had created the Soth. Grija attempted to make his own creatures, the Ansatl, but the lizard-men were, like Grija, shallow and ill-suited to conquest. Their appetite for killing meant they always overgrazed their home and Men were forced to destroy them. Even now, the remaining populations remained on a scattered archipelago where they had split into factions and waged cannibalistic raids on each other.

Grija bared his fangs. “There need be no conflict between us, Father. The Ansatl and Viruk will rule the world between them. We shall destroy those who oppose us, then we shall balance each other. Twin powers, night and day, light and dark.”

“Creation and the absence thereof.”

“Reality and the void from which it was sprung.” Grija looked up toward the heavens-another unnecessary gesture. “You were correct when you decided to unmake things, but you wanted to go too far. You had to be stopped.”

“Of course. Much consideration of my errors has convinced me of this. But your brothers and sisters must be destroyed. They are too unpredictable and too difficult to control. If they did not fear you, Grija, they would have long since destroyed you.”

“Speak plainly.”

Nessagafel opened his jaw in a smile, then let the bone hang loose from one side of his head. “They think you weak. They have accepted that Wentoki is the key to keeping me locked away here in the Ninth Hell. They have no idea that when you agree to strip divinity from him, you will assume his power. Then, using it to control me, you will destroy them. They think you incapable of such subterfuge.”

Grija growled defiantly, yet both of them knew it would become a whimper if Chado, Quun, or Wentoki were to appear. “They have forever underestimated me. They assume I care only to harvest souls and keep them here to draw sustenance from them. The prayers of the dead are thin broth compared to the devotion of the living. They think I am weak because of it.”

“But you are weak, Grija.”

Grija’s dark eyes became molten hatred. He lashed out and the collar around Nessagafel’s throat tightened. Pure fury flowed through it, constricting it. Agony pulsed into the elder god. It turned Nessagafel inside out. It melted his bones into ivory plasma which Grija carved into an intricately decorated sphere, trapping the rest of his father’s essence.

Pain rose through Nessagafel as bubbles through boiling water. He could not speak and would not scream. He could barely twitch. Pain played over him as argent lightning arcs, then sank deep like fangs into flesh. It melted him from the inside out, churning him into a roiling lump of unrecognizable existence.

“Weak? Weak? Is that weak?” Grija assumed human form to more properly strut his outrage. “You are in my power. Do not forget that, Father. You will obey me. I do not need you to succeed. I wish to return to you the freedom you have long been denied because my brothers have wronged you. Their oppression wearies me.”

Nessagafel allowed himself to gasp weakly, feeding Grija’s ego. As quickly as he could, the elder god hardened the lines pain made in his essence. He clung to that lattice, pouring himself into it. Through it he could read every outrage Grija had known since the moment he burst into existence. As with every other instance of torture, Grija used his own pain as a model for that which he visited upon his father. Instance by instance, he gave Nessagafel what a lack of omniscience denied him.

One does not escape a prison, one escapes the warden.

Grija paced and prated. “You alone are capable of understanding what I put up with, for we are both trapped here. They think they tricked me into accepting the Underworld as my realm, but I knew what I was doing. I will have all the power eventually.”

“But you were not content to wait.”

“Impatience is only a vice to those who lack the intellect to see the inevitability of the future.” Grija closed a hand into a fist. “All is to be mine, so why wait?”

“Why, indeed?”

Grija narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that? What do you know?”