Banned Books Flood

[takestime]

Kahl being a creeper
"Are you afraid?" asked a voice behind me.

I started and began to turn. "No," the speaker snapped, and such was the force of his command - commanding reality, commanding my flesh - that I froze. Now I was afraid.

"Who are you?" I asked. I didn't recognize his voice, but that meant nothing. I had dozens of brothers and they could take any shape they chose, especially in this realm.

"Why does that matter?"

"Because I want to know, duh."

"Why?"

I frowned. "What kind of question is that? We're family; I want to know which one of my brothers is trying to scare the hells out of me." And succeeding, though I would never admit such a thing.

"I'm not one of your brothers."

At this, I frowned in confusion. Only gods could enter the gods' realm. Was he lying? Or was I simply too mortal to understand what he really meant?

"Should I kill you?" the stranger asked. He was young, I decided, though such judgements meant little in the grand scale of things. He was oddly soft-spoken, too, his voice mild even as he delivered this peculiar not-quite-threats. Was he angry? I thought so, but couldn't be sure. His tone was all flat emotionlessness edged in cold.

"I don't know. Should you?" I retorted.

"I've been contemplating the matter for most of my life."

"Ah." I said, "I suppose you and I must have got off on the wrong foot from the beginning, then." That happened, sometimes. I'd tried to be a good elder brother for a long time, visiting each of my younger siblings as they were born and helping them through those first, difficult centuries. Some of them I was still friends with. Some of them I'd loathing the instant I'd laid eyes on them, and vice versa.

"From the very beginning, yes."


Kahl struggles with intention and forgiveness

I sighed, slipping my hands into my pockets. "Must be a difficult decision, then, or you'd have don't it already. Whatever I did to make you angry, either it can't have been all that bad, or it's unforgivable."

"Oh?"

I shrugged. "If it was really bad, you wouldn't be waffling about whether to kill me. If it was unforgivable, you'd be too angry for revenge to make any difference. There'd be no point in killing me. So which is it?"

"There's a third option," he said. "It was unforgivable, but there is a point in killing you.

"Interesting." In spite of my unease, I grinned at the conundrum. "And that point is?"

"I don't simply want vengeance. I require and embody and evolve through it."

I blinked, sobering, because if vengeance was his nature, then that was another matter entirely. But I did not remember a sibling who was a god of vengeance.

"What have I done to earn your wrath?" I asked, troubled now. "And why are you even asking the question? You have to serve your nature."

"Are you offering to die for me?"

"No, demons take you. If you try to kill me, I'll try to kill you back. Suicide isn't my nature. But I want to understand this."

He sighed and shifted, the movement drawing the my eye toward the mirror below our feet. It didn't help much. The angle of the reflection was such that I could see little beyond feet and leg and a hint of elbow. His hands were in pockets, too.

"What you have done is unforgivable," he said. "And yet I must forgive it, because you did not know."

I frowned, confused. "What does my knowledge have to do with anything? Harm committed unknowingly is still harm."

"True. But if you had known, Sieh, I'm not certain you would have done it."

At his use of my name, I grew more confused, because his tone had changed. For an instant, the coldness had broken, and I heard stranger things beneath. Sorrow. Wistfulness? Perhaps a hint of affection. But I did not know this god; I was certain of it.

"Irrelevant," I said finally, turning my head as much as I could. Beyond a certain point, my neck simply would not bend; it was like trying to turn with two pillows braced on either side of my head. Pillows formed of nothing but solid, unyielding will. I tried to relax. "You can't base decisions on hypotheticals. It doesn't matter what I would have done. You know only what I did."


Kahl struggles with fate and free will; Kahl receives advice and takes it to heart; Kahl is strangely tender with someone he's plotting to kill.

"You can't base decisions on hypotheticals. It doesn't matter what I would have done. You know only what I did." I paused meaningfully. "Perhaps you could tell me." For once, I wasn't in the mood for games.

Unfortunately, my companion was. "You chose to serve your nature," he said, ignoring my hint. "Why?"

I wished I could look at him. Sometimes a look is more eloquent than any words. "Why? What the hells - are you kidding?"

"You are the oldest of us and must pretend to be the youngest."

"I don't pretend anything. I am whay I must be, and I'm damn good at it, thanks."

"So we are weaker than the mortals, then." His voice grew soft, almost sad. "Slaves to fate, never to be freed."

"Shut the hells up," I snapped. "You don't know slavery if you think this is the same thing."

"Isn't it? Having no choice -"

"You have a choice." I lifted my gaze to the shifting firmament above. The gradient - night to day, day to night - did not change at a constant rate. Only mortals thought of the sky as a reliable, predictable thing. We gods had to live with Nahadoth and Itempas; we knew better. "You can accept yourself, take control of your nature, make it what you want it to be. Just because you're a god of vengeance doesn't mean you have to be a brooding cliché, forever cackling to yourself and totting up what you owe to whom. Choose how your nature shapes you. Embrace it. Find the strength in it. Or fight yourself and remain forever incomplete."

My companion fell silent, perhaps digesting my advice. That was good, because it was clear that I'd done him a disservice, besides whatever wrong he felt I'd committed. I did not remember him; that meant I hadn't bothered to find him, guide him, after his birth. And he'd needed such guidance, because it was clear he did not like the hand fate, or the Maelstrom, had dealt him. I didn't blame him for that; I wouldn't have wanted to be god of vengeance either. But he was, and he was going to have to find a way to live with that.

In the mirror, I saw the man behind me step closer, raising a hand. I braced myself to fight - purely on principle, since I already knew there was nothing I could do. It was clear his power superseded what little god-magic I had left, or I would have been able to break his compulsion and turn around.

But his hand touched my hair, to my utter shock. Lingered there a moment, as if memorizing the texture. Then fingers traced the knots of my spine along the back of my neck, stopping only when my clothing interfered. Then - reluctantly, I thought - his hand pulled away.

"Thank you," he said at last. "That was something I needed to hear."

"Sorry I didn't say it sooner." I paused. "So are you going to kill me now?"

"Soon."

"Ah. Good vengeance takes time?"

"Yes." The coldness had returned to his voice, and this time I recognized it for what it was. Not anger. Resolve.

I sighed. "Sorry, too, to hear that. I think I might've liked you."

"Yes. And I you."


Kahl villain monologues just a bit
"This mask - or so Kahl tells me - has a special power," she said, glancing at me. Then she narrowed her eyes at Kahl, who nodded in return, though he was looking decidedly uncomfortable, too. Hard to tell anything, looking at that stoic face of his. "When it's complete, it will confer godhood upon its wearer."

I stiffened. Looked at Kahl, who merely smiled at me. "That's not possible."

"Of course it is," he said. "Yeine is the proof of that."

I shook my head. "She was special. Unique. Her soul -"

"Yes, I know." His gaze was glacially cold, and I remembered the moment he'd committed himself to being my enemy. Had the same expression been on his face then? If so, I would have tried harder to earn his forgiveness. "The conjunction of many elements, all in just the right proportion and strength, all at just the right time. Of such a recipe is divinity made." He gestured toward the mask; his hand shook and grew blurry before he lowered it. "Godsblood and mortal life, magic and art and the vagaries of chance. And more, all bound into that mask, all to impress upon those who view it, an idea."

Usein set the thing down on the carved wooden face that served as its stand. "Yes. And the first mortal who put it on burned to death from the inside out. It took three days; she screamed the whole time. The fire was so hot that we couldn't get near enough to end her misery." She turned a hard look on Kahl. "That thing is evil."

"Merely incomplete. The raw energy of creation is neither good nor evil. But when that mask is ready, it will churn forth something new...and wondrous." He paused, his expression turning inward for a moment; he spoke softer, as if to himself, but I realized that his words were actually aimed at me. "I will not be a slave to fate. I will embrace it, control it. I will be what I wish to be."


Kahl rips a god's heart out

A moment after I'd settled down with Itempas, I felt a presence behind me and did not turn. Let Glee think what she would of me with her father. I was tired of hating him. "Make him decorate his hair," I said, more to make conversation than anything else. "If he's going to wear his hair in a Teman style, he ought to do it right."

"So," Kahl said, and I went rigid with shock. His voice was soft, regretful. "You have forgive him."

What -

Before the thought could form, he was in front of m, on Itempas's other side, with one hand poised in a way that made no sense to me - until he plunged it down, and too late I remembered that Glee had been protecting him from this very thing.

By that point, Kahl's hand was up to the wrist in Itempas's chest.

Itempas jerked awake, rigid, his face a rictus of agony. I did not wast time screaming denial. Denial was for mortals. Instead I grabbed Kahl's arm with all my strength, trying to keep him from doing what I knew he was about to do. But I was just a mortal, and he was a godling, and not only did he rip Itempas's heart out in a blur of splattering red, but he also threw me across the platform in the process.


(Kahl's plan to become) A Fourth god would destroy the universe.

No. Oh, no. I had been so wrong.

A mask that conferred the power of gods. But Kahl had never meant for a mortal to wear it.

"You can't." I could not even imagine it. Once upon a time, there were three gods who had created all the realms. Less than three and it would all end. More than three and - "You can't! If the power doesn't rip you apart -"

"Are you concerned?" Kahl lowered the heart, his smile fading. There was anger in him now. All his earlier reticence and sadness had vanished. He had accepted his nature at last, waxing powerful in the moment of his triumph. Even if I had been my old self, I would have felt fear. One did not challenge the elontid at such times. "Do you care about me, Sieh?"

"I care about living, you demonshitting fool! What you're planning..." It was a nightmare that no godling would admit dreaming. The Maelstrom had given birth to three gods down the course of eternity. Who knew if - or when - it might suddenly belch forth another? What we thought of as the universe, the collection of realities and embodiments that had been born from the Three's warring and loving and infinitely careful craft, was too delicate to survive the onslaught of a Fourth. The Three themselves would endure, and adapt, and build a new universe that would would incorporate the new one's power. But everything of the old existence - including godlings and the entire mortal realm - would be gone.


Kahl Commits a Massacre
Rolling fire blossomed at the World Tree's roots. The shock wave came later, like thunder, echoing. (Echo, Echo.) The great, shuddering groan of the Tree rose slowly, so gradually that We could deny it. We could pretend that it was not too late right up until the World Tree's trunk split, sending splinters like missiles in every direction. Buildings collapsed, streets erupted. The screams of dying mortals mingled with the Tree's mournful cry, then were drowned out as the Tree listed slowly, gracefully, monstrously. It fell away from Shadow, which We thought was a blessing - until the Tree's crown, massive as mountains, struck the earth.

The concussion rippled outward in a wave that destroyed the land in every direction as far as mortal eyes could see.

We saw Sky shatter into a hundred thousand pieces.

And high above Us, his face a mask of savage triumph to contrast the mask in his hands: Kahl. He raised the mask over his head, closing his eyes. It shone now, glittering and shivering and changing - replete, at last, with the million or more mortal lives he had just fed it. Its ornamentation and shape flared to form a new archetype - one suggesting implacability and fathomless knowledge and magnificence and quintessential power. Like Nahadoth and Itempas and Yeine, if one could somehow strip away their personalities and superficialities to leave only the distilled meaning of them. That meaning was God: the mask's ultimate form and name.


Kahl is tricked and murdered by his father

They had dissipated their forms, corralling Kahl in a thickening sphere of power so savage hat I urged Deka to stop well away, which he did. At the center of this sphere was Kahl, raging, blurring, but contained. The God Mask had made him one of them temporarily, but no false god could challenge two of the Three for long. To win, Kahl would have to make his transformation permanent. To do that, he would need strength he didn't have.

Which was why I, his father, offered that to him now. I closed my eyes and, with everything I was, sent my presence through the ethers of this world and every other.

The swirling, searing forms of Yeine and Nanadoth stopped, startled. Kahl spun within the shell that held him, and I thought that his eyes marked me from within the mask.

Come, I said, though I had no idea whether he could hear my voice. I prayed it, shaping my thoughts around fury, to make sure. My poor Hymn, whom I'd never been able to bless. All the dead of Sky-in-Shadow. Glee and Ahad. And he wanted Itempas, my father? No. It was not difficult to summon up a craving for vengeance in my own heart. Then, carefully, I masked this with sorrow. That wasn't hard to dredge up either.

Come, I said again. You need power, don't you? I told you to accept your nature. Enefa threw you in a hole somewhere, left you forgotten and forsaken, for me. You cannot forgive me for that. Come, then, and kill me. That should give you the strength you need.

Within his glimmering prison, Kahl stared at me - but I knew I'd baited the trap well. He was Vengeance, and I was the source of his oldest and deepest pain. He could no more resist me than I could resist a ball of string.

He hissed and flexed what remained of his power, a miniature Maelstrom straining to break free. Then I felt the unstable surge of his elontid nature, amplifying the God Mask and waxing powerful enough that the shell Naha and Yeine had woven around him cracked into smoking fragments. Then he came for me.

This was my gift to him, father to son. The least I could offer, and far less than I should have done.

My Deka; he never wavered, not even when the outermost edges of Kahl's blurring rage struck and began to shread his skin. We both screamed as our bones snapped, but Deka did not drop me. Not even when Kahl wrapped his arms around both of us, tearing us apart by sheer proximity, in an embrace that he'd probably intended as a parody of love. Perhaps there was even a bit of real love in it. Vengeance was nothing if not predictable.

Which was why, with the last of my strength, I reached into Itempas's coat, pulled out the dagger coated with Glee Shoth's blood, and shoved it into Kahl's heart.


Godlings can grow into gods.

"I lied," she said, "about us staying wholly out of the mortal realm. There will be times in the future when we'll have no choice but to return. It will be our task to assist the godlings, you see, when the time of metamorphosis comes upon them. When they become gods in their own right."

I jerked in surprise. "Become...what? Like Kahl?"

"No. Kahl sought to force nature. He wasn't ready for it. Sieh was." She let out a long sigh. "I didn't being to understand until Tempa said that whatever Sieh had become, he was meant to become. His bond with you, losing his magic - perhaps these are signs we'll know to look for next time. Or perhaps those were unique to Sieh. He was the oldest of our children, after all, and the first to reach this stage." She looked at me and shrugged. "I would have liked to see the god he became. Though I still would have lost him then, even if he'd lived."

I digested this in wonder and felt a little fear at the implications. Godlings could grow into gods? Did that mean gods, then, could grow into things like the Maelstrom? If they could somehow live long enough, would mortals become godlings?

Too many things to think about. "What do you mean, you would have lost him if he'd lived?

"This realm can abide only three gods. If Sieh had survived and become whatever he was meant to be, his fathers and I would have had to send him away."

Death or exile.