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TW: Violence, injury, attempted suicide, self harm [this can get kind of dark, sorry]
The Godkiller.
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[Inspired by Brutus - The Buttress]
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He wasn't that great. He wasn't all that. He was a figurehead. And Nari hated him. She hated the air he breathed, the ground he walked on, his words full of false promises of sunny days when only storms were ahead. His sickening optimism. How was he so happy in a world of pain? It made her want to see him suffer.
They were happy. He had succeeded. That's what James thought. Nari knew otherwise. She knew it would only be a matter of time until tragedy struck. But it never did. Life went on, remarkably easy for James. This wasn't fair. He just showed up and everything went right, he never had to struggle. He never had to fight, to suffer, to cry. She spent her days locked in her room in the renovated palace, tormented by the voices whispering in her ears, infecting her mind. The people had not seen her. Nor did they care. No, no, they never cared. They were too focused on James Elegy, their savior, the God's Chosen, the hero. Always the hero. Never the villain. Nari was always the villain in the story. She wouldn't live like that any longer. It should have been her. She deserved the spotlight for once. She too wished to be great. To be known.
One morning, there it was. On her dresser. An ornately decorated gold box, inlaid with jewels and engravings. It hadn't been there before. The shadows whispered, the voices urging her to open it. So Nari listened, carefully prying the lid open. Inside, resting on a red plush cushion, was a dagger. Its hilt was gold, carved elaborately and set with jewels similar to that on the box. Right in the center of the hilt, was a small mirror. It was simple, but there was an eerie air to it. It felt... evil. And then the blade. It was light, certainly not metal, and a clear color. Glass. The whole thing seemed ornamental, but something told her to look closer, so she did. And right there, carved in the glass of the ornamental blade, was an inscription. Nari ran her finger along it, and suddenly, her blood went cold. Everything was dark, and she was paralyzed, dizzy, freezing. She couldn't see anything. And then in an instant it was gone. Leaving her with the voices, and the knowledge that this blade was a gift from chaos itself.
Nari knew what she had to do.
Each step forward out of her room thudded in her mind. Beats to an invisible song. The hallway was long and her strides were quick. She didn't bother knocking as she reached his study that was also his bedroom. Instead, she silently slipped inside, dagger hidden behind her plain white clothes, light and loose like that of an angel. James, ever alert, noticed her. He was standing by the window, looking out at what had been known as the Empire, the land he had liberated. Hearing Nari enter, he turned around with a smile. "Hey, you're up! You haven't been out of your room in a while- we were a bit worried. How are you?" Nari didn't answer, silently walking forward. She didn't meet his eyes. James seemed confused. "Everything alright? Did something happen-" he was interrupted by his own choking as Nari plunged the dagger into his chest, finally staring at his dying eyes with her already dead ones. The boy slowly fell, staring at the sky with empty eyes. But with a flicker of recognition, he regarded Nari, and something flashed across his face. Not betrayal, or anger, or even sadness. It was affection. It made her sick. Even in death, James couldn't bring himself to be hateful. He was always too perfect for the world. That was why he had to die. The hem of her dress was red now, blood staining the pure white cloth.
Nari regarded James's body with emptiness, looking out the window. Why wasn't he angry? Why would he be so sympathetic, so kind, so weak, even in death? Why couldn't he have given her a reason to hate him? It wasn't fair. She gripped the windowsill as a bout of dizziness hit her and her head spun. The voices whispered louder, mixed with shadows and screams as everything went dark and her emotions went numb. The voices wouldn't stop, she had to get them to stop. And to do that, she had to go to the source.
The forest was dark and foreboding, but Nari hardly noticed. Her mind was more suffocating anyway. The trees closed behind her once she stepped through, the curse of the god that inhabited the territory. She didn't plan on exiting, so it didn't matter. For what felt like an eternity, she walked through the labyrinth of shadows, guided by the pull of the voices, and her own bloodlust, simmering under the surface of her usually indifferent exterior. At last, they made an appearance, an amused spark in their eyes as they regarded her. Erebos. "To what might I owe this visit, butterfly?" They raised an eyebrow. Nari hated that nickname, the one the people had given to her following the Empire's defeat. Every time she saw a butterfly, she killed it and pinned it to a wall now, because of that name. She stared at the god, gaze hollow. "Make them stop." "Make what stop?" They laughed, knowing what she meant. "The voices. Make them shut up. Make them stop." She took a step forward with every word, and Erebos started stepping backwards in tandem. They realized she was serious, saw something in her expression, and an emotion akin to fear flickered across their face. Nari relished in it. "I am afraid I cannot do that," they shook their head. "I do not control the 'voices,' as you call them." "Wrong answer," Nari almost growled, pinning them to a tree with the dagger to their throat. "Make. Them. Stop." "This will not bring you relief." They interrupted, they looked solemn. "You cannot find peace in ceaseless violence. You must look within yourself for that. This will not save you, Nari." For a moment, she was silent, staring at them with quiet fury, before all *** broke loose in her mind and she stabbed the dagger into their heart. Erebos choked, trying to say something, but Nari couldn't hear them over the voices as she stabbed them, over and over again. They were falling now, lying on their back, almost certainly dead, but Nari didn't stop once. The whispers had grown to screams, her tears were falling, hot and painful, but the stabbing didn't cease. She screamed, screamed into a shadowy silence that swallowed her pain almost immediately, as she ripped the dagger from the god's flesh, only to plunge it right back into their chest. “Wrong answer.”
It was silent, when she stopped. The only noise was her heaving breaths, and the 'plop' as blood dripped from the tainted blade. Nari's skirt was stained red now, it was climbing for her blouse, reaching for her heart. She was on her knees, staring at the unkillable god she had just murdered. They seemed so human now that they were dead. Tears fell onto the bloodstained ground, watering the grass. Except when she felt her cheek, wiping the tears, her hand came back red. Red, like the eyes of the man who murdered her family, red, like the hair of the first casualty of the war, red like the blood of a god and their chosen hero, staining Nari's blade and her skirt and worst of all, her soul. She was nearly corrupted by the red now. Almost. It was silent. Finally. Then the voices started screaming again, louder than ever, splitting her skull and making her double over in pain. Nari staggered to her feet, leaning against a tree for support. Her bloodstained dress was weary with the weight of bodies upon bodies, of lives taken for her own selfish desires, of souls. The screaming was ceaseless, hammering at her already shattered mind without mercy. She stared at the dagger in her hand, the once crystal blade dripping with the blood of few and the blood of many. There was only one way to go from here. Carefully, slowly, as the voices drew back in anticipation, murmuring as they wondered what she was doing, Nari lifted the dagger, aimed it carefully at her chest, and drove the blade straight into her heart. The voices screamed, as did she, but she was already gone, falling down into an abyss, staring at the starless shadowy sky that was in fact not sky but a canopy of trees black as the shadows that had infected her mind like parasites. But death never came. Instead, an unknown force brought Nari to her feet, and a flash of light surrounded her, concentrated in the cavity left by the dagger that now hung idly by her hand. In an instant, she felt a strange warmth thrumming be
neath her skin, calling her, surrounding her with a different kind of emptiness. Her clothes were red now, fully and wholly red, stained like her former purity, soaked and heavy with blood. The voices were back, but now they whispered something new, something that welcomed her. They murmured that she was chaos reborn, a new kind of god, but those musings stopped soon. Now, they said something else, repeating it like a mantra. A title.
Ishtar,
they whispered over and over again, crowning Nari, celebrating her.
Godkiller.
