To Kill A God / Reiner Braun

chapter one

       ACE AUSTEN IS VENGEANCE.

   And hell hath no fury like vengeance scorned.

   She is hot blade and dripping venom, thunderstorm and bruised knuckles. She is the knife against your throat, the gun to your head, the bullet in your heart. She is the blood on hands that are not her own. Who are you when the Gods aren't watching? they ask the girl who was made weapon before they could teach her to be human. Are you menace. Fury. Wrath. Vengeance. I am danger, she was taught to say. And when she speaks, her voice echoes like a thunder strike. It is true, after all. Because there's something dangerous in Ace's head. A profound conflict and an incessant disruption that rack against the cages of her being. A seed waiting to be unleashed into the world and eat it raw. A permanent state of war. A brain composed of wires that twist and turn like a machine, in constant calculation. And if a wire were to go astray in the web of her existence, it would slice the world to pieces. No prayer or hopeful whisper could ever put the broken parts back together. This is the only way Ace is fragile. Like a bomb, threatening to consume the world inside out. To burn it to embers and ashes, to dust and memory.

   There is a statue made of steel and stone standing among the lines of foolish kids that have come to die. Come to serve. Come to fulfill a destiny they will never amount to. They can't all be warriors, they can't all have glory imprinted in their fate. The weak will be eliminated, only the fit survive. It is in the nature of things, after all.

   There's something dangerous in the air, all the cadets can feel it. And they know that as long as she is here, there will always be some kind of danger in the air they breathe. It burns cold with her presence, it demands you to feel the freeze of her composure. You'd be fooled to think that she expects nothing short of praise and honor. But Ace Austen is not here for worship. And she will not settle for less than what she came for: glory and legacy. She became the monster the system sought her out to be. But what do you do when the beast you created turns to face you and presses its teeth to your neck? Would you eliminate the monster that created your monster, if it meant destroying yourself. Or would you rather watch as you are ripped apart and eaten raw, until there is nothing left of you but the stain of your blood on her hands. How do you dig your own grave and ask someone else to lie in it? (You do not—to live, you must bury them in it).

   Under the setting sun, she is the only thing they can see. Some recognize her, others can only guess the glory of her lineage from the way she holds herself, and all of them whisper. All of them hold their breaths. Everyone knows they do not bleed the same. If she bleeds, then it must be holy, it must be ichor, it must be gold. And if she dies, then they do not die the same. Monster in human skin, human in monster skin—it doesn't matter what she is. Only what she can do, only what she is here to do. Only that they think they saw her with no heart, with no soul. But she is burning ichor and scorching ice, and you cannot dismiss the fight and the fury of her existence.

   Reiner feels the danger before he sees it, before he allows himself to look. It encloses on his being and wraps its hands around his neck, suffocating him. At first glance, you'd think she was a God. No mortal walks like that, no mortal stands like that. No mortal looks like that. And certainly, no mortal bleeds like that. Next to him, he can feel Bertholdt's nerves rising. Her presence is intimidating, so naturally demanding of respect. She commands it, and you are powerless before her, so you comply and give her what she is owed. He finds it difficult to breathe in the face of an oxygen-sucking presence that takes with no return. Fire needs air to subsist. So, Ace takes all the air from their lungs to fuel her inferno. And against all odds, they thank her for it. Wouldn't a starving dog still eat from the hand that beats it? We all gamble on losing Gods.