And so it came to pass that while walking through the grain fields of Oreskos, the Champion of the Sun was surrounded by the full radiant glory of a god.
And she lifted a hand to shield her eyes, and said “Who is it that seeks to blind me?”
There came a voice from on high, shaking the heavens and earth and filling the world with warmth. “Has death scarred you so that you no longer recognize the work of he that made ye?”
The Champion frowned, and lowered her hand. “My parents have been dead and eaten I know not how long, and my former masters shall join them before I do. You are nothing but a supplicant, and a filcher of a supplicant at that.”
There was no thunderclap. Whatever else Heliod was, he was not a plagiarist. Instead, there was a sound like a thousand curtains being thrown open, and the sun was shining so bright that every head of wheat turned to face him.
“YOU DARE?” It was a voice that had been forged to instill fear, the boiling heat of embarrassment and rage flooding the body and forcing it down pathways that were nowhere near rational. “I allow you to return to life, I let you peddle your lies and blasphemy all across my lands, and this is how you repay me? With diminishments, with mockery, with insults?”
“If you have heard my blasphemy, then you should know that insults are not all that I have to offer.” Elspeth reached out to her side, letting the shadow of her hand stretch longer and longer until it threatened to take shape. “The insults are your reward for daring to believe that your failure to stop me has been a choice.”
Heliod smirked, an impressive sight on a face that was worlds away and the size of fifteen mountains. “Who are you to oppose me, Elspeth Tirel? I breathe light and life into this humble world, and shape the lawless impulses of my lands into order. I am a god, and you are nothing but a foolish mortal woman.”
Elspeth threw her head back and laughed, as hard as she could. “Is that how you see yourself? You, who have blinded Daxos Farseer to all truths save your own, speak of light? You who are so afraid of the rising and falling of gods that you seek to execute your fellow deities, you speak of life? You who have nothing for your followers but commandments and demands, trials and ordeals and tests and such cruel punishment, you speak of order? You are a god of blind devotion to lifeless orders.”
When she let her head fall forward, she was leaning on Shadowspear for support.
“You do not deserve worship, and Theros knows it. Why do you think they have fallen into step behind me?”
Khrusor was out now, the legendary Sun Spear tracing its way above the sky in a dance that felt strangely hypnotic for such a straightforward god. “Because you are a trickster. A foul usurper, too drunk on the slaying of the Reveler to realize that you are only mortal.”
“You keep coming back to that word, mortal.” Elspeth took a step forward, and took a secret delight in the way that clouds drew around Heliod as though shielding him. “As I recall, it was you who sent me to slay the World Eater.” Another step forward, and the sky grew darker. “It was you who entreated me to save Theros, to lead the armies of Akros against all the beasts of Mogis. It was you who cried out to me to slay Xenagos, and it was you who killed me for the crime of having to step foot into Nyx to do it.”
Heliod was looking away now. The God of the Sun was refusing to meet the gaze of a mortal. It was the kind of moment that would ring throughout history like a great brass bell.
Of course, compared to what was to come, it was barely the ping of a plate breaking against marble.
“You were dangerous to us.” His voice sounded so evasive it could have dodged an arrow. “I had assumed that the Reveler’s execution would bring you both back down to Theros. The Godsend could not remain in Nyx any longer.”
“And its wielder?” Elspeth let Shadowspear dip forward in her hand, until the tip bounced against the earth. “Why did you have to kill me, if the only offending presence was that of my blade?”
Heliod snorted. Somewhere on the horizon, every flake of snow was blown away from a mountaintop. “You had proven yourself capable of deicide. Even deprived of the Godsend, there was a chance you would attempt to kill me regardless.”
“Until I died, I had no reason to kill you.” Now she lifted her spear, jabbing it up at the sky as if she meant to pluck out Heliod’s eyes. “And until you stole my blade, I was willing to return it to you.”
There was a sound, one that would have been quite unfamiliar if Elspeth had not spent the past day locked in desperate combat with Calix. It was the sound of two strands of silk ringing against each other.
“I was wondering when you would turn up.”
Something moved in the air. Something so thin it could hardly be seen, but so heavy that it felt like the first winds of a tornado sweeping over the land. Then the light shifted, and Elspeth could see the threads. They were longer than Calix’s, and much sturdier. This close, with the threads so clearly manifesting, they almost looked like tightly woven chains.
“We meet at last, Elspeth Tirel.” And then Klothys was there.
Had Elspeth not become quite recently acquainted with proper Titans, she might have used that word to describe the goddess who stood before her now. There was a physicality to Klothys that was absent from all other gods, as though she had been born and not simply woven from starlight. Where Heliod merely loomed over the horizon, Klothys stood in the same field as Elspeth.
Elspeth stared up at the blindfolded goddess, and frowned. “So, was Calix born blind or did you steal his sight to make him more like you?”
Klothys snarled, and swept her hand through the air as though clearing away cobwebs. “Your destiny is to serve the gods, not to disparage our every action. Have you no respect for the path you must walk?”
Elspeth shrugged. “I have never been one for obeying orders. I work better with an army at my back than at my front.”
The world was filled with the rattle of silken chains, the threads spilling across the field and encircling Elspeth. “Such arrogance from one so small. You are still within the designs of my tapestry, child. You will not escape me.”
Elspeth twirled her spear, slipping into dance while the threads moved closer. Finally, when her feet were brushing against silk and Shadowspear was dripping its darkness against Klothys’ blank canvas, she made her move. “Calix said the same thing.”
The world shook. Klothys had taken a step forward. “And what did you do to prove him wrong? What have you done to my precious creation, to destroy him so utterly that he has disappeared from my sight?”
Elspeth laughed, and thrust her spear towards one of the great silk strands. It jerked out of the way with a surprising amount of grace for something so massive. “I told him how to open his eyes. I did not take him from your sight, Klothys, although I doubt it would have been hard. He has left you, of his own accord.”
“YOU LIE!” The threads spun and drew in, and Elspeth prepared to defend herself.
And then there was the sound of silk ringing against silk once again, and Elspeth did not die.
Every one of Klothys’ titanic threads had been halted in their place by much smaller strands, just inches from Elspeth’s body. And standing among the tangle, appearing star by glitter star, was Calix.
“Not today. Not yet.”
Klothys growled down at the mortals, her teeth bared in rage.
“What is the meaning of this? Where did you disappear to? Why do you impede your goddess?”
“Because you are unjust.” Calix did not move his head, did not so much as raise his voice. Had Elspeth not fought him before, she might have mistaken it for cowardice. “You have failed this world. You spin your destinies in service of petty tyrants and brash fools. You are unworthy of the powers you wield.”
“And you are?” The great threads were circling Calix now, and Elspeth almost wondered if she had been forgotten. “Was your creation so flawed that you are capable of such arrogance?”
“Nobody should meddle so easily in the future.” Calix spread his arms wide, destiny dancing around him in ways that made Klothys draw back. “The history of Theros is littered with the corpses of good people, kind people who could have been legendary if not for the temper of the gods.” Calix was stepping backwards now, and the threads were parting for him. He was standing closer and closer to Elspeth. For a moment, Elspeth thought he was going to say something else to his former god.
Then he turned towards her and whispered. “This is going to hurt. A lot.”
Elspeth’s eyes flicked upwards, and she saw Heliod raising his spear. “Yeah, looks like it.”
“Don’t worry.” She felt something tighten around her. “We’re prepared for this.”
“Oh, it’s we now?” Elspeth took a step to Calix’s right, her eyes now fixed on the sun. Tears were starting to flow, just from the strain of the light.
“Fine, I prepared for this. You’ll just have to… improvise.”
Elspeth didn’t even have time to nod before Heliod lunged.
“You have opposed me for the last time, Elspeth Tirel. The path you so foolishly walked has led you at last to your demise.”
As Elspeth died, she found herself comparing the experience to the last time Heliod had killed her. Godsend had been a thing of beauty, crafted with singular purpose to cut a life from reality while leaving no opening to retrieve them. The blade was straight and true, forged to kill as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But Khrusor was a toy, the weapon of a lazy king with no occasion to rise from his throne. The gilded edges scraped against her, catching against chain mail and ribs so many times that it was a wonder it even managed to find her heart. And when it struck, the simple act of striking had dulled its edge so much that it pushed against instead of through.
She was flying backwards now, her feet blindly scrabbling for purchase against earth that was quickly disappearing. Daylight flickered out as the jeweled darkness of Nyx swelled around her, and then even the stars grew distant.
Elspeth felt herself holding her breath on instinct, just before the splash of water. She wasn’t plunging in, she was being skidded across the surface of the River Odunos, and still he was driving the spear forward, still he was stabbing her.
He was still staring her down, even as he stood a world away in the land of the gods.
“You think my path has led me here? You think there was some destiny, carrying me through all the twists and turns of my life to make sure I made it to Theros? My way of life has been lost to me since my third birthday.”
Elspeth planted her feet, and skidded to a stop in the nothingness of Tizerus. The strings all around her went taut as the spear pushed harder against her heart, but she drew breath and kept talking anyway.
“My customs, my rituals, my very language was torn from me by beings you can’t even begin to fathom.” Somewhere on the other side of the spear, Heliod adjusted his grip. Elspeth felt him trying to put more pressure into his strike, but she did not budge.
“How?” His single word echoed across endless space, and all of Nyx shook at his disbelief. “How are you resisting this?”
Despite the pain, Elspeth grinned. “I spent my childhood in mourning, Heliod. Mourning the fate of an entire world, and taking the weight of every broken body in the street onto my back because I was the only sane one left. I am burdened with remembrance of every world that has fallen to the darkness, of every light that has been snuffed out. I carry the weight of all those lives on my back, and you think that a single pathetic sunbeam will be enough to pin me down?” That was when she lifted her face, and stared down the God of the Sun.
He was sweating. She was as cool as a mountain spring.
“The name of Elspeth Tirel has endured too much to die twice at the same hands.” She reached up and took hold of the sun. Her arms screamed with the weight of it, but she pulled all the same.
And for the first time in the history of Theros, something caused the Sun to start moving backwards.
“I don’t know what my name means, Heliod. That’s a very tragic thing for someone to never know.” Another fraction of an inch backwards, another fraction of eternity lifted from her heart. “There is not a single voice or scrap of paper that holds the key to my name. Only I survive.” The point was forced back enough that blood began to pump again. “But that means I get to decide what my name means. And that makes me more powerful than any god.”
The world around her was pulsing so bright that Elspeth could barely even feel her eyes, much less see with them. But none of the pain reached past her, and none of the fear that Heliod was so proud of commanding could make it into her mind.
“The word Tirel… this means ‘one who is above the gods’.”
“IT DOES NOT!” Mana, mana enough to forge an entire plane out of dust and reduce it all to rubble, surged through the spear and right into her heart.
Elspeth laughed, and let the mana fill her. She would have a use for this power, soon enough.
“And the word Elspeth… this means ‘one who is feared’.” As if to demonstrate, she grit her teeth and pushed the spear back. This time, it nearly came free of her ribs. Her heart was pumping hard now, life and mana flooding her very being until they had nowhere left to go but out.
“Now, Calix!” She pulled the Sun out of her chest, and strands of silk scythed through the sunlight. The great spear of Heliod came apart in her hands, and became nothing but gilded iron.
“Return to the earth from whence you were forged,” whispered a voice all around her. Threads encircled her, and Elspeth could see the endless starlight dancing across them. They were forming a bridge, back to Theros. Back to Heliod.
Back to destiny.
Elspeth took a step forward, and when next she spoke, her words echoed through every stone and blade of grass from Setessa to Meletis.
“I am Elspeth Tirel, the one feared by gods, men, and all who stand between and beyond!” Her next step brought her crashing from Nyx to the field, and she felt the heavens trembling as though they would shatter without her to stand among them.
“Impossible.” The words of a god had never sounded so quiet, so awestruck, in all the histories of all the worlds.
“For a god, maybe.” Elspeth rose to her feet, and heard the whispers and shouts of everyone who believed in her ringing in her ears. “But mortals have been escaping the Underworld since we realized we were dead.”
“This is twice now that you have rejected your destiny,” Klothys intoned with all the rhythm of a pendulum. “Why do you refuse to accept Illysia? You have suffered; be rewarded.”
Elspeth knelt to the ground, running her hand across the soft earth of the field. Then her hand drifted into the shadow of a stalk of wheat, and she drew out her weapon.
“I will not be bought so easily. I will die when my work is done, when all my torturers lie dead and there is someone else to remember in my stead. There is no greater suffering you can inflict on a living being than to make them die alone.”
Klothys cocked her head to the side. “No two threads are cut at exactly the same time. Everyone dies alone.”
Elspeth scoffed and swung her spear, splitting every wheat-stalk in reach. “You’ll understand what I mean once I kill you.”
The goddess smiled, and flicked her fingers. The air hummed with silksong. “Are you truly so foolish to believe you are doing anything other than delaying the inevitable?”
“You’re the one with the threads, I’m just the one with the knife.” Elspeth tossed her spear from hand to hand. “Well, spear, but you get my point.”
She turned her gaze to Heliod. Small Heliod, weak Heliod, fearful and impotent. Heliod, holding the empty shaft of his spear and staring at her.
“Ever since I came back, I’ve heard all you gods boasting about how your time will come. You think it’s this great promise, or maybe a threat, about how you’re inevitably going to be the one to come out on top. But right now, Heliod, I think you’re finally remembering the other meaning of that phrase.” She held Shadowspear aloft, and stared along its shaft into the eyes of her enemy. “Because your time has come, Heliod, but you won’t be the one on the throne when the dust settles.”
She took a step forward, and the world moved. Klothys was swinging her threads, barreling them towards Elspeth. Elspeth planted her feet, and breathed in. Then she breathed out, and swung.
There was the sound of cold steel slicing through silk, and then the sound of a star collapsing.
And Klothys, halfway through shaping another attack.
“What did you do?”
The thread had been torn, collapsed into a swirling forest of fraying silk, already trying to disappear and melt into nothing. And standing there in the center of the chaos was Calix, holding a single sliver of thread aloft.
In that moment, it was shining the rich gold of a sunset. In the next moment, it was the same dull white of any other thread of the weavers.
Calix was turning to her, his blank silver eyes beading with tears. He held out the cut thread, and Elspeth recognized the telltale drops of shadow on both edges.
“Impeccable aim, Champion.” His voice shook with awe, and a little pride in his own work, whatever that had been.
Elspeth took the thread from him and stared at it, as though it would somehow yield its secrets to her. “What did you just make me do?”
“The better question is what did I make Klothys do?” Calix was grinning now, and turned his face up to the furious goddess. “I made you use Heliod’s thread to defend him. A simple act of impulse, more of a reflex than anything. Very easy to manipulate.”
“You loathsome creature!” Klothys roared. “You dare to defile my great work?”
Calix’s grin narrowed into a thin smile. “You made me with the power to change the tapestry from myself. You cannot begrudge me the use of that power.” He turned back down to Elspeth, the rage of the gods apparently forgotten. “As for what you did, I simply made sure you were aiming at the right part of his lifetime to cut away.”
“And what part was that?”
The threads had finally stopped dancing, and Elspeth could see there was someone standing behind Calix. He was wearing a long and flowing robe of gold, with matching laurels and a walking stick that stood nearly as tall as him. But there were no stars, no burning lights in his eyes, and all the wisdom and power that she had always seen in his frame had been sapped.
“The moment that he ascended to godhood.”
Whatever else Elspeth Tirel was, she was not the sort of woman to gloat. And perhaps the songs and tales that followed in her wake would transform this moment into a monologue ten hours long, in which every one of Heliod’s sins was recounted in lurid detail and he would be slowly reduced to a blubbering mess begging for his life.
But Elspeth knew what it felt like to stare into the eyes of your executioner. She knew what it felt like to suddenly realize you were going to die, and have no idea what that was going to feel like. And most importantly, she knew that Heliod wasn’t going to get out of it as easily as she had.
So as she crossed the field and readied her spear for the plunge, she had only one thing to say to the man who had caused her so much pain and misery.
“Die in fear, Heliod of Theros.”
And then Elspeth Tirel killed her second god.
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