Best Served Cold

Not A God

Note: Fine, take the wheel then guys, but you’d BETTER FIX THIS. The characters belong to MysteryBen and Artsy. And they do WHATEVER THEY WANT TO DO.

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            It’s worse than the day I was bound. I remember it, nearly all my power compressed, like taking the sun and stuffing it into an ale mug and corking the top with lead. The confinement of myself nearly drove me mad in those first days, all I could do was run in circles without stopping, wailing and shrieking like a newly-made spirit because I did not know how I would survive as such a weak creature. Surely every spirit on the continent would know I was helpless and come devour me.

            Merlin watched me run for days before I finally collapsed, unable to move anymore. He picked me up, and somehow returned us to the King’s domain. I knew it was all a farce, binding me to this lineage. The King had sent many good knights against us and lost them all. We had even turned his bride against him in return, laughing at the heartbrokenness her treachery caused, the division in the kingdom. He would slay me and be done with it.

            But to my shock, Merlin placed me in the King’s lap and said only that he had found Arthur a guardian, one that would protect him at all costs. That I should not be underestimated, but cared for as a dear friend. That I would guard his line from danger. He then spoke to me, so that only I could hear, that when the time came, and one of Arthur’s line risked their own life to save mine, that I would be freed.

            And it all comes roaring back, as the sun blasts out of the ale mug and rises into the sky, blazing with power. And I howl with anguish, for Arthur is not moving and there is too much blood.

            That filth spreads his wings and flies at me now, recognizing true threat, but this time he is the one tossed off like a fly. This time when I rear over him and sink my teeth into his shoulder, I taste blood and my teeth hit bone. He tries to claw at me, but I whip him around, the sun in my belly and raging with a fire I didn’t know existed. I throw him down and lift him up and throw him down again, clawing the scales from his foul hide and bashing his head against his precious stone.

            From the corner of my eye, I see a flash of purple and another of blue. I have no time to wonder why they have returned, but continue my assault. I feel my wounds closing up as the strength fills me. I take a wing in my jaws and rip it from his body. He attempts to gash my throat, but I snap my jaws around his paw, cleaving it from his leg.

            He turns, then, making now to flee, but this must end. I cannot have him alive, to come back and harm Arthur again. I catch him by the tails, flinging him back against the bluff with a crack. But I have never ended a spirit as powerful as he before, and I do not even know how it can be done. We both preyed on lesser spirits, consuming them was a simple way to end them. But consuming a spirit as dark as him could return me to the days of old, and I will never return to those days.

             “Mystery!” My ears perk at the sound of Vivi’s voice. “Get him over here, hurry!” I turn my head. Vivi is holding an aged book in her hands, and Lewis is blazing a pattern in the sands, dancing a six-inch deep line that goes back and forth and over and across and around.

            Oh clever Vivi, I will never underestimate humans again. Lewis I owe you an apology…

            I whirl around, snatching him up by the scruff of his neck as he tries to slink off. I sweep his severed wing and forepaw into the center of the pattern with my tails, no part must be left behind.

            He sees the pattern, and understands, and writhes with a new desperation, slashing at me. I take the raking to my hide, hardly feeling it as I beat him against the stones again, crushing his bones as I hurl myself on top of him. If he built a body from my leg, he will suffer the full pain and injury of having one.

            I drag his barely stirring form to the pattern, being very careful not to touch the lines myself, and hurl him to the center. The circle stretches yards across, and Lewis has just finished blazing the last of the intricate pattern in the sand. I leap back, stumbling away as far as I can while Vivi stands at the edge and screams words from the book. As he struggles to his feet, the lines burst into blue flames that rise to wind around his limbs and body, sinking past the flesh he constructed to the spirit itself. He screams, writhing and thrashing, but the flames spread, binding the spirit even as they consume the body he constructed to leave the cave.

            I turn away. I do not want to see this, and Arthur…

            I bolt for Arthur, skidding to a stop. I can see his soul is no longer in his body, his functions have ceased. Something inside me is breaking and crumbling apart.

            Arthur.

            Now that I am my full self, I can see the newly dead spirits, what I could not see for Lewis. Arthur looks so frightened, and fractured. His spirit flickers in and out of sight, like a glitch in one of his video games. He’s staring down at his body like he’s not sure what’s happening.

            Oh Arthur. I was not in time again.

            No.

            I refuse this ending. I refuse. I was a god in my day, and I chose destruction, but I must have some capacity for healing in me. It has to exist somewhere, and his spirit has not fled yet.

            I curl myself around his tiny body, drawing him to my chest with a forepaw--How often has he curled himself around me, holding me close?—and leak my power into him. I do so with great care, for mortal flesh is so frail, but a drop at a time will not disintegrate him.

            I see his wounds closing though his heart still fails to beat, the tissue in his lungs knitting back together and filling with air, just waiting to exhale and inhale again. I wait until his flesh is whole again before looking to his soul.

            The soul stands there still, as if unsure. It flickers between images still, between a fearful Arthur and an Arthur falling to his death. He stares up at me, confusion and bewilderment across his features. I can see it all over his face, he cannot reconcile what he has heard with the Mystery he has known since childhood. And that is because they cannot be reconciled. They are not the same, but they are the same being.

            I lower my head, cradling his body between my foreleg and my neck, and stare back at him. I say words no god would ever say, and even as I do I realize I was never a god. Merely a spirit drunk on its own power.

            “Don’t go Arthur.” I whisper. “I need you here.”

            And in that moment, he vanishes. And I feel the body beneath me release its breath, and draw it again. The heart begins to beat, and the blood to flow properly.

            And for the first time in my existence, I find a kitsune can shed tears.