22-3

  Out on the rocky plain, Syffox strode confidently to the approaching mass, despite his limp. The clanking of armour and weapons grew audible in the still air. Distant trumpets blared out and the whole throng came to a halt before him.

  Tension and confusion spread among the invaders as they watched their entire procession brought to a stop by a single person. An officer called out for archers and several scores of arrows lifted up into the stifling, hot air. They rose up on the stillness of anticipation as the army watched the arrows sail towards the solitary target.

  Syffox raised his bow and let fly a single arrow. With a splitting crack, it streaked out toward the cloud of missiles. It darted through the hail and pulled each of the enemy’s arrows around behind it. The cloud spun away from Syffox and shot back towards the army. Each of the archers that fired fell to their own arrow, with Syffox’s arrow piercing through the chest of the officer who had given the order to fire.

  There was a rumbling commotion among the horde. The air filled with clarion calls of more trumpets. A loud roar rose up among the legion, and as a giant unified beast, the soldiers surged forward, yelling and charging to the forest.

  For Syffox, mages filled the air with fireballs that blasted over the heads of the storming troops. The balls of flame came down on Syffox with a booming flash of fire and smoke. The invaders cheered as they continued their onslaught. But when the smoke cleared and they reached the scorched area where Syffox stood, they found it empty.

  In the middle of the massive army, a thunderous explosion boomed, sending men and a war machine hurtling into the air. Charred and smouldering, Syffox emerged from the crater, his bright teeth showing a twisted grin on his blackened face. He fired an arrow that sprayed out whip-like vines, entangling a hundred men. As the remainder pressed in on him, Syffox fired arrows that pierced through their armoured bodies, dropping dozens at a time.

  When the dark invaders encircled Syffox, he fired a single arrow straight up in the air, then plunged beneath the ground. The men were left to crush in together on Syffox’s vacant space. A hiss from above drew their attention skywards as a rain of exploding arrows fell upon them. On their distant flank, another thunderous explosion sent timbers and bodies to the heavens, announcing a new assault by Syffox.

  Before the forest, the rushing army was pelted by slinged stones and arrows of Vantaiga’s faithful. The army’s own archers returned fire on the poorly armoured forest dwellers. Vantaiga drew in a deep breath and blew the arrows away from her people. The wind washed the attackers with a barrage of leaves, twigs, and dirt. When it finally passed over them, they found the tree line empty of defenders.

  With a taunting grin to her enemy, Vantaiga lifted her hand. The ground around the charging soldiers trembled in a spray of earth and rocks as a great wall of tangled ziziphus trees erupted from the field before the forest. Men caught in the bursting growth yelled out as some were hurtled through the air. Those that weren’t thrown were snarled by the dark thorns of the twisting branches.

  The army pressed into the thicket, hacking and cursing their way through the piercing needles. Behind them, the towering war machines were brought to bear. With great arms and levered springs, they flung giant balls of flaming tar spewing black smoke, clusters of heavy stones, and arrows the size of branches.

  With the stroke of the back of her hand, Vantaiga batted the ballistics away, sending them hurtling to the ranks of devils and demons at the back of the army. The fiends growled in rage as they were pummelled by the army’s own artillery.

  With more trumpeting, clerics and mages of Coronus stepped forward. With harsh words of magic and angry gestures, they cast rays of heat and bolts of flame at the Goddess. The trees armouring Vantaiga’s body burst into flame. She drew back from the attacks, sucking in a breath of pain while snuffing out the flames.

  Before she left, she summoned a plague of insects to swarm the casters. They were the bloodsucking and biting pests that Festor had gifted the forest. The wizards and priests stopped their spells in shrieks as the buzzing grey haze engulfed them.

  The invaders finally broke through the thorny bushes and descended upon the defenders. The forest people, along with Vantaiga’s children, darted among the trees with their bows and axes to keep the soldiers at bay. However, once the demons of the desert joined the fight, they shredded apart any defender they managed to grasp with their claws.

  Aghast by the carnage, Vantaiga called out to the trees themselves. “Beholders of the forest, you have stood silent too long. Attack now and defend your right to be.” At her command, the trees of the forest awakened to answer their Goddess’s call. Through the wails and clash of battle, a ponderous groan of twisting wood filled the forest as the trees reached down to crush the demonic intruders.

  Vantaiga bristled with pride as she demonstrated the true might of her forest. She thrust a defiant fist to the gods watching from on high. They might manipulate and torment the world as they saw fit, but in her forest, she was supreme.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  From the World Table, Hydar was appalled by Vantaiga’s and the forest’s defiance. He descended to Earth and beset upon them a wild storm of snow and ice, the likes of which had never been seen before in the desert world. The shrieking blast of stinging ice pellets coated the branches of the trees and weighed them down. With heart-wrenching cracks, the frozen limbs of the trees snapped and fell, crushing any defender or invader caught beneath them.

  Seeing Hydar assault her trees with the blinding flurry of ice and snow gave Vantaiga a wicked idea. She changed the fur of her wolves and bears to white and commanded them to pounce on the defiling rain god. Unseen through the blizzard, the beasts eagerly jumped on Hydar from all sides.

  With snarls and growls, jaws of sabre fangs and paws of sickle claws lashed at the startled god. Hydar squealed as he was pushed down by the furious predators. In a panic, he scampered away as the animals swiped and bit into him. The gods were not accustomed to fighting their own battles, let alone being attacked in them.

  Aridus and Vortess came to Hydar’s aid with a monstrous sandstorm from the desert. The blinding, hot sand stung at the defenders’ faces and stripped the trees of their leaves. Vantaiga braced herself against the biting wind and called for her clerics to aid her in a spell to control the weather.

  With Hydar expelled from the forest and no longer in command of the hail, Vantaiga and her clerics were able to push the squall of ice into the storm of sand. The two mixed together and drained from the sky into a roaring river of mud. Vantaiga funnelled the mud out of her forest and over Aridus and Vortess. Infuriated, the gods of the wind and desert were stricken beneath a mound of heavy clay and silt.

  Still among the invading army, Syffox could see the tide turning for them. With stripped trees and splintered trunks red with blood, the destruction of the forest was turning ghastly, but the trees and forest dwellers still fought valiantly against the falling numbers of their enemy. Of the diabolical war machines hurtling fire and rocks into the forest, there were only a few left for Syffox to destroy. He found a swelling of love for his Goddess as she thwarted the attacks of the gods and hope for his people as they resisted their destruction.

  A disjointed cackle echoed across the battle. “” Syffox’s hope turned to fear as Festor emerged from the carnage in the forest and spread his decay. As his rot expanded out, he loomed over them all with a sick, satisfied look toward Vantaiga.

  Vantaiga watched in horror as her followers and children withered and decayed to corpses before her eyes. Their cries of anguish faded to moans as they crumpled to the ground. Enraged by the foul god, she ensnared him in a scented rose bush. The mad god’s fetid body was quickly consumed beneath a lush mound of pink and red and green. The rose’s fragrant blooms burned the decrepit god’s lungs, and its piercing thorns tore his skin.

  Festor had anticipated such an attack and with a thought, he wilted the exquisite plant black and it crumbled away from him. Hurt, Festor scowled at Vantaiga, his cacophony of voices thundered over the shrieks of the dying. “”

  Festor struck down on Vantaiga with a blow so hard it knocked her and half her forest to the ground with a reverberating boom that shook the world.

  Stunned, she writhed and gasped for breath. A pain beyond mortal reckoning welled up from her chest, blinding her eyes and clenching terror in her throat.

  The deranged god jumped on top of the stricken Goddess and tore away her protective armour of trees with his filthy nails.

  “”

  Horror-struck, Syffox witnessed Festor’s attack from his fray within the horde. He was running low on magic, but he still had enough power to blast the enemy away from him, sending the vile soldiers screaming into the air. From his clearing, he carefully summoned a black and twisted arrow painted with bones and dripping fangs. The head of the arrow glistened with all the vengeance the forest could muster.

  Syffox loaded the arrow into his bow and pulled back. “All right, Drael, let’s see what you’ve cooked up.” With a piercing , he launched the arrow over the forest to bury itself deeply in Festor’s side.

  At first, the mad god barely flinched at the missile. But then, in a few moments, he twisted and grimaced. He backed off Vantaiga and began clutching his side. Syffox launched several more arrows, each burrowing deeply into Festor’s rotting flesh. The deranged god howled with pain and thrashed around trying to pull out the arrows. In agony and desperation, the God of Death and Decay began ripping entire chunks of his flesh from his body.

  He cast the rotten meat into the forest. Where the pieces landed, they erupted into hundreds of ghouls and ghasts. Their white rotting carcasses, blotched with oozing and bloody sores, filled the air of the forest with the stench of death. They shrieked as they sprang up from Festor’s discarded flesh, then lunged after the first living creature they spied, be it a beast, demon, forest defender, or invading soldier. None would be spared from Festor’s corruption.

  From the holes Festor ripped out of himself, the god’s fetid blood poured onto the ground along with wraiths, wights, and spectres of all kinds. The gossamer phantoms were the cursed souls Festor had consumed. Now freed from bondage, they howled to take out their eternal torment on anything living they encountered.

  Both invaders of the gods and defenders of the forest fled for their lives as the noxious undead lashed out for them. Screaming and crying out for help, the mortals futilely fought back as the tormented souls tore the life out of their flailing bodies.

  Vantaiga got up and charged to strike at the anguishing god, but Festor grabbed her wrist. He glared at her with all the evil and hatred still contained within him. From the shrieks of horror and death about him, he drew in his full power and dominance. He grew to tower over Vantaiga, who suddenly felt very frail as she frantically tried to pull herself free of Festor’s grasp. She was in his domain now, and he was supreme.

  Festor growled at her with a concise, terrifying, single, menacing, voice, “There will be no more of this.” As chaotic and awful as his voice of multitudes was, his sole voice was even more fearsome and sinister. Any thought Vantaiga had that they shared a kinship was quickly dashed away.

  The evil god loomed over her, displaying himself as the ultimate force of nature he truly was. “With all life comes death, and with all pride comes humiliation.” As he spat at her, he reached up with his thumb to close Coronus’s eye. “There will be no witnesses for what I do to you.” The world fell into darkness as the cries and wails of the forest followers were joined by Vantaiga’s screams of protest.

  ?? Even gods need to be held sometimes

  What to Expect:

  - A very slow-burn, enemies to friends to lovers romance.

  - An epic, multi-book space opera with a large found family and multiple POVs.

  - A powerful but emotionally vulnerable protagonist with chaotic powers he struggles to control.

  - Strong, capable, and sometimes morally gray women.

  - High stakes, cosmic threats, and detailed world-building.

  What NOT to Expect:

  - Harem

  - LitRPG/System elements

  - Lone wolf power fantasy

  - A story that is only about romance

  This story contains mature themes, explicit sexual content, and graphic violence. It is not suitable for readers under the age of 18.

  90+ Chapters in the first month

  500,000+ words already written and backlogged