So without further ado, here is a segment from Fetish's story, the full prologue.
He was going to die.
His breath rattled
in his lungs as he desperately sucked at the heavy jungle air, his
feet pounding the damp earth.
He was going to
die.
The thought chanted
in his head like a twisted psalm, in a voice that hissed from the
black smoke curling from the temple behind him. He was going to die.
He dared not look back and see his pursuers, see how close they were
to seizing him, to taking him through the heart with a spear, or
sending a bolas cracking across his knees. The low-hanging branches
tore red lines across his cheeks, slapped at his bare chest, and
every crooked root rose determined to bring him to the ground.
He was going to
die.
The
temple smoke followed him still—he could smell the old wooden
statues of the goddess burning, acrid and crying out to the holy
morning. Tzra devoured her. His heart wept and beat its sorrow
against his ribs. He stumbled down the curve of a hill, a small herd
of slender red deer leaping away from him, snorting and flashing
their tails. Monkeys howled above him, watching his flight. He was
sure they were calling to his followers, pointing the way to the
doomed man.
He
was going to die.
Cold
water splashed across his bare, bleeding feet as he stumbled through
a creek, climbing the steep muddy bank on the other side. His head
seemed to turn of its own accord at last, casting a trembling glance
over his shoulder. The jungle behind him wavered, but the only life
was the lazy flight of a bright
blue butterfly, and the thick smoke rising still above the canopy.
“Goddess,”
he whimpered, his heart still crashing in his chest, singing a song
of certain demise.
“She
is dead.”
His
breath gurgled in his throat. Slowly, he looked up. In front of him
he could see little more than the long red robe that covered the
petite woman, and the snake that wound sinuously around her slim
shoulders. The serpent rose up and flicked its tongue, staring down
at him with scaled mouth turned in a long smile. He could not see
Ktaan's mouth, the hood shadowing her face, but her voice was the
same soothing lilt as always.
“Please,”
he gasped, still on his hands and knees in the mud. “Don't take me.
I will leave this place—I will never speak of you, of anything! I
will live life a mute, in some distant mountain or island across the
sea. Please, spare me, priestess!”
Ktaan
slowly crouched in front of him, and delicate fingers cupped his
chin. The shadow fell away from her sculpted face. She smiled. She
pressed her thumb to his lips, quieting his pleas. “Tzra does not
demand you live in silence, or in solitude,” she assured, her
golden eyes catching the early rays. “He just asks for your
worship.”
“No,”
he said, stumbling back away from her. His body shook with such
tremors he thought an earthquake had started in his spine. The chill
water splashed at him again, falling onto his rear in the midst of
the stream. Death, death, death,
his heart pounded, faster now, singing behind his ribs. “I will not
serve a God that will destroy the earth.”
Ktaan's
smile never faltered, folding her hands into the large sleeves of her
robe. “That is your choice,” she soothed, slowly turning her back
to him and disappearing into the jungle.
For
a long moment, he sat in the water, staring into the thick foliage.
He took in a deep breath, a strange numbness overtaking his body. His
heartbeat crescendoed. Some thick liquid seeped from his nose, and
when he touched it, his fingers came away red.
“Goddess
save me,” he whispered, watching the crimson beads slide over his
knuckles. Death,
shouted his heart, before it burst.
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