The Blood of Gods

Air filled her lungs, freedom filling her chest as much as the air did. 

Too-tight chains fell from her wrists, leaving bloodied skin behind. She stepped out into a world graced by twilight, heedless of the tears of blood that fell upon the ground.

The sky spread out in front of her. The blue was fading as it fell into night; shades of red spread through the sky, rising from behind the mountains like streaks of blood. A remnant left behind by the sun as a promise to the world that it would return.

That promise, however, was not meant for her.

When the dawn came rising from the other side of the world, she would have already left it.

Her heart twisted, her breath catching in her throat. It was simpler, easier, to look at the sky and ponder it than to think of her inevitable fate. The sight—red streaked across mountain ranges, reaching out desperately for the heavens—reminded her of the legends. 

They’d been told to her all her life, those stories of heroes that had risen from the world to slay the gods, bathing the world for an eternity more in celestial blood.

Thinking of those stories now, she considered how easily the stories brushed over the fact that those heroes had taken their god-blessed weapons to do the act.

What had the gods thought, she wondered, when their gifts were turned against them.

Did they feel then, as she did now?

She had done nothing more than place her hands on a killing wound, had done nothing more than pray the death away, even as it had come creeping closer.

The death had only just retreated before the chains had been cut into her wrists, and she was thrown into the darkest depths meant for the most heinous of crimes.

And what was her crime? That she had given a child the gift of life a little longer?

Even the depths of the prison could not match the depths of despair that she fell into. There had been no sun for her, no warmth, no kindness, no hope.

Only tonight was she allowed the freedom to bid her final day goodbye and welcome her final night into the sky.

It did not feel like that could ever be enough.

All her life she had wondered what would happen if the truth was known, wondered what would happen if it was ever discovered that for centuries her line had carried the last of the blood of gods.

She was a child of gods, though human.

She had hoped that her humanity would save her. It hadn’t.

Tears burned in her eyes. She should never have been fool enough to believe it would.

The red was fading from the sky now, the last sign of gods long dead. She wondered if her blood would streak through the sky, as the blood of those long-gone ancestors still did.

An ocean of darkness began to spread like rolling thunder over the sky, leaving the world bathed in night.

The stars began to pierce through the new darkness of the sky, and as though in answer to the celestial glory, she found her own strength piercing through her despair.

The despair that had clung to her in those days and nights within the depth of those cells was fading. Peace settled over her, digging deep enough it filled her bones.

Night had fallen fully; in moments, her guards were at her side—placing icy chains around her wrists once again, her blood smearing across the metal—to lead her to the amphitheater where she would receive her fate.

The wind blew against her skin, the warm caress of ancestors long gone.

Her steps were steady, the fear she had expected to feel gone. It was not resignation with which she walked to her death, but peace.

She was a child of gods. 

She was human. 

She was guilty of nothing. 

She would die for her crimes.

There was no sense, no justice, in this. It was unfair cruelty, like the scars left behind by too tight chains.

But cruel or not, unjust or not. It was.

First, her blood had dropped like tears on the ground. In the end, her blood would streak across the sky in a quiet bid to the world.

There were murmurs in the stands as she stepped onto the platform of the dead. 

Her executioner stood in front of her, malice and victory in his eyes as he stared at her. Behind him stood a woman, her accuser, holding the hand of a child who looked at her with eyes wide and non-comprehending. It had started—it had ended—with this child, the one who death had come for. The one for whom she’d betrayed her secret. This innocent child… 

A life for a life, in this unjust world. And she could not find it in her to regret.

The executioner’s voice called out, echoing like an avalanche through the room. “You are guilty of the blood of gods; how do you plead?”

She let her gaze drift over the crowd; those she’d called friends now refused to meet her gaze.

She turned back to the man who stood, a god-blessed sword in hand, ready to kill her.

“I am who I have always been,” she answered. “Who I have always chosen to be. If that means my death, then by all means—“ she raised her hands—chains clinking between them—and spread them in a gesture of innocence, “—send me into the sky.”

The amphitheater seemed to fall into silence. Then like thunder, the amphitheater burst into sound. It shook her very bones, but she did not allow it to shake her.

Her judgment had been demanded; her judgment had been given.

She was guided to her knees, her neck pressed against cold stone.

God-blessed metal touched her skin, there, gone, and then…

…her soul was the sun, her bones the stars; her heart was pulsing in beat with the rhythm of a world she was no longer a part of.

She had become the world’s horizon, her blood spilling over the mountains with the dawn. 

And now, as she rose into the sky, she saw the horizon of the gods.