Chapter 31, Part 2: The Will of the God is a Heck of a Thing

feroshgirl

3 years ago

I just want to take a moment and shout out all the incredible cc creators. I list credits at the end of each chapter but holy hell, it would be impossible to pull off all the supernatural elements of this story without a ton of help.

Also, the Sims Team promised to fix skin tones, so that’s dope.

And I’m working a on thing for future chapter. If you missed this week’s bonus post, it’s here.

Britechester University, Near the Pleasant House

VLAD

In his mortal life, Vladislaus Straud had been plenty drunk. Not so much in his immortal one. Gnome’s brew was about the only thing that could do the job for vampires, that or the plasma of the intoxicated. But Alice was a god so whatever enchantment she had performed was up to the task.

He watched, helplessly, as she stumbled towards the Pleasant sisters shouting that she was the God of Death and could “totally help them out with a favor.” He reminded himself, again, that he did not have to listen to her or go along with her insanely flawed plan, which since his brain was disconnected from his mouth, he screamed at the top of his lungs.

She turned around and made a rude gesture. They had argued—about how he thought her desire to be mortal was misguided, about how little she felt he had changed, about why she ignored her family, about how badly she thought he needed a “hobby.”

He may have tried to call her bluff by listing his every murderous and illegal act since 1507.

She may have called him the “king of sitting in his fucking house complaining about television.”

In between it all, they had thrown back cups of juice like they were fortifying themselves for battle.

“Tough break, my man,” a comforting hand appeared on Vlad’s shoulder. “You gotta tell her your feelings. Use the L-word. But don’t crowd her. You’re like, super intense. She probably feels crowded.”

He wished being drunk made him happy or silly, like it did for Alice. Instead, he spent most of his time glaring at her doing keg stands and growing increasingly melancholy while pouring out his heart to some biology major named Jimmy. With his barriers down, he was all memories, lots of memories, almost none of which he wanted.

“She is a god, Jimmy. There is nowhere she would go that I would not follow and there is no word to adequately express the depths of what I feel for her,” Vlad spat.

“Uh yeah. That’s what I mean. Intense. Plus, you keep dissing her peeps man. Like, you make her feel less than when you talk down about her crew.”

He didn’t think she was less than! Even when he believed her to be a mortal she was always more to him. But what was he to her if she didn’t want any of this?

“You got a lot going for you,” Jimmy said. “I mean, you got that weird skin condition but I think it’s fine. Just like, be there for her.”

Vlad narrowed his eyes and drained the rest of his cup.

Out of the mouths of babes.

“You are a credit to your kind,” he declared suddenly. “I won’t kill you.”

With no effort to hide what he was, he sped after Alice. He caught up with her by the edge of the property. She was listening intently to the Pleasant twins explain their troubles with lovers and grades, even as she swayed on her feet.

They seemed…very steady. Too steady. He paused a moment to make sure he was talking inside his own head and not out loud.

Why weren’t they falling all over each other?

Unless…

He tried to pick Alice up and pull her back but she yelped and in his shock, he dropped her.

She stumbled out of his reach continuing to insist that she could help the twins and spilling her own fears and secrets all too easily.

He reached for her again. “Listen to me,” he said, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to look at him. It took every ounce of concentration not to squeeze too hard.

“You’re not squeezing me hard? What do you mean?” Alice slurred.

Why couldn’t he stop saying everything out loud? For the love of sages, he—they—someone needed to sober up—

“I’m not drink…drunk,” Alice shouted. “I’m fine you asshat! I’m just trying to give them the…the things!”

“You can give us anything we want?” Angela asked, a glint in her eye.

Vlad’s veins filled with ice.

Threat.

Britechester University, Pleasant House

Caleb

Caleb felt the reverberations of the bass before his brain registered that he was hearing music. He didn’t know what came after for creatures such as him, but the fact that it included “Hot in Herre” was somewhat depressing. He was not as unchanging as Vlad, but as far music went, he preferred the sixties.

He hadn’t thought dying from venom would be such a slow process. He hadn’t thought he would be dying at all. His only regret was Lilith. Once, he thought he’d found her, rumors of her keeping company with a group of mermaids found their way to his door. But it was never confirmed. If he lived he would…well…it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t li—

Someone reached under his arms and dragged him up. His eyes flashed open, adrenaline flooding his veins, telling him to struggle but his body would not obey. He heard Deacon’s voice.

“You need to throw up.”

Caleb managed a slight shake of his head. What was he talking about? How was he talking? His head was—

Deacon stood. “Oresha Hoh Var Pledge Week. We should definitely party with those dudes next weekend.”

When he realized that standing left Caleb’s limp and partially paralyzed body sliding back towards the ground, he knelt back down and lifted again.

“Sorry dude! My bad, but you really do gotta puke it up. Boot and rally!”

If Caleb could have managed full sentences, he would have pointed out that “Oresha Hoh Var Pledge Week” did not account for how Deacon had regained his head, that “boot and rally” was a nonsense phrase, and that he’d prefer, all things being equal, to be left to die in peace.

Deacon made an apologetic sound and then without warning, stuck two fingers down Caleb’s throat. He held fast even as Caleb flailed in panic, caught somewhere between suffocating and gagging.

Stupid zombie strength.

With no recourse, Caleb braced his forearm on the ground and retched. Body cleansed of a little venom, he struggled to his feet.

Deacon tried to help keep him steady, but Caleb waved him off.

With a happy shrug, the zombie continued talking. “Once, I ate some fire leaf on a dare and the whole team thought I was gonna die until Bastien forced me to puke it up. And now here I am! Good as new!” he paused, “I mean kind of. I’m a zombie, but not because of the fire leaf.”

Caleb groaned.

“You wanna try and catch up with Alice and Vlad? See if they’re okay?”

Caleb dropped to the ground, heaving again as his body emptied out more venom. He rolled over on his back.

“Dead,” he rasped. “They better be dead.”

Britechester University, Near the Pleasant House

Alice

Alice struggled to stay upright. She didn’t know why Vlad kept trying to stop her. The sisters wanted regular things like a date and not to fail out of school. Her radar was…er…well, it was hard to tell what her radar was saying since she was drunk. But she was sure it was saying whatever she already thought.

“I think a good blind study and a good blind study could give you what you want,” Alice said confidently.

Shit. Was she slurring her words?

“You promise it would be successful?” Angela asked, her tone…something in it Alice couldn’t figure out.

“No,” Vlad answered, just as Alice said yes.

“We want to negotiate,” Lilith added with a smile.

Alarms bells were ringing somewhere in Alice’s head but she couldn’t figure out why or for what.

“We know lots about you,” she continued, “God of Death in a mortal body. So many creatures gunning for you. Desperate to know your real identity. They’ll torture you until you promise to hand over The Owl.”

“W-what?” Alice stumbled back, trying to calm her racing heart. She hit the ground hard and had to scramble back up again.

“But not us, you can just keep giving us the things we want. We like the idea of having a god on call.”

Those little assholes! Alice was offering them a way out. She was trying to have this not end in violence. And this was how they were acting? The anger sliced through her so unexpectedly, she felt almost dizzy.

The earth began rumbling beneath her; she looked up to see snakes slithering around both twins. Their eyes glowed an almost neon yellow.

“On your knees, God of Death, beg us to be kind to you in our requests,” Angela urged, her lips pulled down in a mocking frown.

“Yes, beg. That way we’ll be moved to be more lenient,” Lilith agreed, a white snake winding its way over her shoulder.

Alice doubled over. She felt something hot and sharp shoot down her spine. Beg? Were they fucking serious?

“I don’t think so,” Vlad said, cracking his neck. He was…something was—

“Fuck off, Vladislaus,” the twins intoned. The snakes wrapped around them began to hiss. “Your little flesh container might have the power of a god, but she doesn’t have the wisdom. You two are trashed on her enchanted keg. You couldn’t grab her arm, let alone have a hope of fighting both of us. Caleb is dead, your zombie is headless. We’re done negotiating. We’ll kill you and keep the god for ourselves.”

Alice clenched her fists. The feeling shooting down her spine wasn’t just hot and sharp, she felt like she was on fire.

Vlad smiled but it wasn’t really a smile. More like a curved bearing of teeth. He transformed but it felt different…

It was different.

Wings and horns and claws and teeth. Less vampire. More…Phobos.

The twins took an unsure step back. Angela leapt up preparing to change her form but Vlad lifted his arm and froze her in mid-air.

Lilith let out a choked cry. “You can’t—”

“The God of Death does not negotiate,” he tilted his head curiously, as if hearing a distant command. “And I can do anything that my god wills.”

Alice looked down at her hand where her will unfurled in whispers and bright light. She hungered for retribution in a way that made her stomach curl in on itself.

Screams started.

She silenced them with a thought in her head.

She wished for him to have a sword and so he had one.

She wished for him to cut them down. And so he did.

It was not just their lives that spilled out, but their very existence—thoughts and memories, hopes and dreams, wiped away in an instant as they fell to ash.

He knelt when he was finished, paused, as if waiting for another command.

Is that all?

Is your vengeance so small?

Alice examined herself. Her will—no—her hunger was not satiated.

She needn’t stop at these two, legions could fall.

A whole campus, sacrificed in her name.

In her honor.

To appease her.

She could hear a small, almost minuscule part of herself screaming to pull back the power. It brought back a memory that felt so distant…her, awash in power while Ben—

Ben.

Whatever fury gripped Alice released its hold. Turning, she watched as the entire party of students dropped to the ground. Clutching at their throats, coughing, and crying, they hugged each other and struggled to their feet, stumbling away from the house.

It hit her then. She wasn’t like them. She was apart from them. They had survived a horror and the horror was her.

What had she? How had she? Her heart raced like it was going to beat out of her chest. Terror made her feel light-headed. She wasn’t safe, she wasn’t—

“You are alright,” Vlad whispered, hugging her tightly.

Alice had never thought herself a vengeful god, but it turned out, she was wrong.

Magic HQ

L. Faba

“I knew we should not have let him leave,” Simeon droned as L. Faba paced. She gave a mirthless laugh at his insipid comment.

As if they could “let” Untamed Magic do anything. Of the three of them, Morgyn had the most magic. Simeon was just a witch with an immortality potion, puffed up but ultimately worthless in the face of pure magic. Meanwhile, L. Faba had been casting hers out, using it for excursions and activities like opening portals to restaurants and changing the color of her hair.

She had been so stupid! Morgyn had always encouraged her to solve a problem with magic. “Faba dear, soon we’ll be infinitely powerful and in a permanent form. Why delay?”

Now, she understood. Morgyn’s preference for staff and spas and mortal assistants was not so they could flirt or socialize, it was to conserve magic so that when they departed this place, they had more than enough to ensure Simeon and L.Faba could not come after them directly.

And if you couldn’t go after Morgyn directly, you might as well not go at all.

“We should elect another Sage in his absence, someone to fill the slot. I have some very powerful witches from the top covens—”

“Oh Simeon, do shut up!” L. Faba snapped.

She glanced down at her magical globe, it glowed and sparkled, signaling a power spike in Britechester. You haven’t gone far, have you, Morgyn?

They needed to elect another Sage like they needed a hole in the head. What would another Sage do, except force L. Faba to be surrounded by even more sniveling witches? They wouldn’t help with…

Yes!

“On second thought Simeon, talk to Bjorn,” L. Faba commanded, her tone distracted. “Get a list of the most powerful witch families and invite them here for a summons.”

Simeon nodded, a zealous glint in his eye. “This will be as I recommended, a strong witch to replace the wayward Sage.”

The lights flickered, threatening another round of darkness. L. Faba cast an anxious look towards the stairwell. Regardless of the tales they fed Simeon, Sages were never elected, they were born of magic and there were only ever three.

She mourned Morgyn’s betrayal but the thing that worried her wasn’t galavanting around Britechester, it was locked in the Magic HQ basement.

Britechester University

Vlad

At the table, William fixed them all with a disapproving look. “So, let me see if I can wrap my mind around this. Caleb and Deacon took a field trip to a basilisk den with nary a weapon between them,” he glared at Vlad and Alice, “You two spent a good portion of the evening engaged in a lovers’ quarrel and your plan, insomuch as I can understand it, was to throw your enemies a party and offer a favor that you were too knackered to negotiate—”

“In my defense, I was actually poisoned,” Caleb huffed.

“Yeah and by the time I got my head on, the keg was tapped,” Deacon added.

“Shut up!” William snapped. He pointed at Vlad and Alice. “Your plan went sideways and you thought that perhaps you’d maintain a low profile by unleashing the holy smite of a god?”

That wasn’t completely accurate. Vlad cleared his throat, prepared to explain.

“I am not finished!” William thundered. “You are Alice’s weapon. Literally. And if it were her will for you to rend the world in two, you would do it. Would be powerless to stop her?”

Vlad bristled. He didn’t like Alice being described as something that needed to be stopped.

“Well?” William demanded.

“Yes,” Vlad bit out. Though it was more complicated than that. In that moment, he had been more Phobos than anything else. Alice’s will was righteous and came with the promise of bloodshed. He couldn’t have stopped her. He didn’t want to.

“Bloody hell,” William sighed. He stared Alice down, “And your eyes are stuck like that forever?”

Vlad could see her attempting to swallow down her emotion. They didn’t notice the eyes until after. It wasn’t clear if it was permanent but it had been hours.

“Her eyes are not stuck like anything,” Vlad replied icily, “They are simply how she is.”

William exhaled tiredly, scrubbing a hand over his face. “If we cannot handle securing the bloody Owl of Undoing, we’ve no hope of keeping the gods from making war in this realm.”

A thread of alarm went through the room, but William cut them off before anyone could speak. “No,” he said in a weary tone that Vlad knew meant he was at the end of his rope. “You merry band of lunatics are in no condition to discuss the fate of the world.”

He flipped off the light and stalked from the room, leaving them sitting quietly in the darkness.

Alice

Upstairs, Vlad bustled her into a hot a shower. When that was done, he prepared to tend the cuts and bruises on her hands. “I suppose it’s not as bad as we thought,” he said softly, setting aside the vaseline. “Your eyes are back.”

Alice looked at her hand as if the ability to smite a being could erupt any minute. This amount of power scared her. That she liked how good it felt scared her even more.

“I’m sorry I said you’re a murderhobo—”

Vlad’s eyes snapped up, “You didn’t call me that.”

“Oh,” Alice made an awkward face. “Well, I thought it. It means—”

“I can surmise its meaning.”

“Right. Well, I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time. I was being an asshole. And please,” she added plopping herself down on the floor, “Remind me never to enchant a juice keg again.”

He laughed and sat down next to her. “Noted.”

“I…I avoid my family because I’m ashamed,” she confessed, pulling her knees up and covering her face.

“Of being a god?”

“Of being a fuck-up,” she quipped. “I don’t think they’d even believe the god part.”

She turned her head so Vlad’s hand could ease some of the tension in the back of her neck. “There was a moment when I considered smiting…everyone. I don’t know what made me stop, but it was not because I thought it was wrong. I have all this power and no idea how to use it. Ben tried to teach me and I made, at most, a half-assed effort to learn. You belong to a half-assed god.”

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around her. “You are a half-assed god and I am a murderhobo. Possibly a fuckboy. It’s lucky we belong to each other, I don’t think anyone else would have us.”

Alice snorted. “I think that tonight proves that I’m the murderhobo. I mean…the whole campus…I wanted the whole campus…” she wiped away tear.

“Come,” he urged, tugging her to her feet. “You can’t be comfortable on the floor. We’ll look out the window so you can see that the campus, to my great disappointment, is still very much intact.”

On the bed, she scooted between his legs. The view showed Britechester University largely unaffected—some students stumbling home while others greeted the pre-dawn with book bags and coffee, eyes towards the library.

“I have seen plagues and fires, wars and attacks, witch trials, starvation, economic collapse. I’ve stood in fields bathed in plasma that are now parking lots for shopping malls. Life goes on, Alice, and, sages help us, mortals always find a way.”

“You were right,” Alice said quietly. “I’m not a mortal and I have to actually learn how to be god because when I’m winging it, I’m dangerous. If some huge supernatural war is coming then…” she trailed off. Just thinking about William’s proclamation set in a kind of bone deep exhaustion that made her want to sob.

“It’s just a war,” he said softly, “War is always coming. And when it is over, it is already on its way back again. So it has been. So it shall always be.”

“That isn’t as comforting as you think it is,” Alice grumbled and then sighed, “Ben left out a few things about Phobos…the horns for one, that’s new.”

“You sound so worried,” Vlad laughed, “I rather like them.” When she didn’t join in he made a clucking sound. “I don’t imagine they are permanent. Like your eyes, they are tied to something we don’t yet understand.”

They sat in silence a little while longer before he made a confession of his own. “You were not the only one being difficult. This whole night reminded me of all the normalcy you desired that I fear I won’t ever really be able to give. But I made you feel inferior for wanting it. I may have eschewed it all, but your wanting is not wrong. And as we’ve established, I am, perhaps,”—he cleared his throat—”not the most well-adjusted.”

“That was an apology?” Alice grunted.

“Yes.”

He leaned down to kiss her but Alice turned her head. “You didn’t say the words ‘I’m sorry.’”

“Didn’t I?”

“No, and you were a massive dick about those students.”

He sighed dramatically, making her laugh. “You will be the death of me. I’m sorry, Alice Martin. Even before I knew you were a god, I never saw you as ‘less than.’ And I suppose not all mortals are blight on this world.”

“How magnanimous of you,” she teased, snuggling in closer and yawning, “I think I’m giving up on that word: normal. Clearly I’m not,” she tried and failed to keep her voice light, “I mean, look at what I did tonight. I’m a—”

“You are not a monster,” Vlad said firmly, refusing to let her finish the sentence.

Then he added something that surprised her. “None of us are. We’re just how we are.”