The Hammer: Chapter 3
Previous Chapter 2
First Chapter 1
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Dusk.
The harbinger of night.
The herald that drapes a shroud of darkness upon mortal worlds.
For mortals, it is a time of fear. A time to cluster around fires and candles and share stories behind deadbolted doors until the first rays of dawn illuminate the horizon...
For darkness stirs an ancient fear in gods and mortals alike, a reminder of oblivion's inexorable advance: One day, the last star will die, the last god will fall, and darkness will reign over creation once more.
And so they hide. They cower in the glow of artificial light and stave off the terrors of the night.
And yet... Some few mortals understand the darkness for what it is. To them, darkness is not a shroud of death but a veil that, once lifted, reveals infinite possibility. Subversives and saboteurs flit among the shadows extending the eternal battle of the gods onto the mortal plane, while deviants and cynics plunge into the unknown in search of secret knowledge and forbidden truths.
Some embrace the shroud and commit acts of unspeakable evil so that the dawn reveals a world darker than before, while others resist with acts of unseen kindness.
Dusk.
The harbinger of night…
The shroud of darkness is very different from the celestial thrones of the gods. Unlike mortals who look out upon worlds teeming with life, the gods are cursed to understand both the vastness of creation and its emptiness. They look upon the endless expanses of the void between stars and find a mirror of their own insignificance.
So they build.
They make their power manifest and create celestial cities and heavenly palaces for spirits and pantheons. They create afterlives for their worshipers so that, when they sit upon their thrones, they can pretend that they have brought light to the heavens and the yawning void to heel.
When the illusion begins to crack, the gods throw themselves into the affairs of their mortal creations and beat the drums of war so that they might forget the darkness encroaching at the borders of their islands of light.
A rare few gods understand the power found in being overlooked. They toil in silence, heads bowed, always marching in lockstep with their betters until opportunity beckoned.
Aurus had been once such god…
For aeons, he suffered indignities and injustices at the hands of those who claimed to be his betters. He waited as wars took their toll, sacrificing his people and his pride until the titans of Andromeda were left battered and bruised. Then, in their moment of victory and weakness, he cut them down.
Aurus cast off the guise of a meek and submissive god and donned the bloodstained vestments of war. His people transformed from sacrificial chattel to avatars of vengeance.
How swift their retribution, how brutal their revenge, how meteoric their rise...
But oh… oh how grievous his miscalculation.
He had looked upon the elder gods and, drunk on power and conquest, thought that the power of a spiral arm would be enough to make him worthy of their consideration. Like an ember in the void, his light was all but snuffed out.
As Aurus looked out upon into the darkness between galaxies, he shivered… In the back of his mind, he couldn't help but wonder: What if it was never enough?
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The Twinned Silver Gods. Gods of poetry and dance, love and lust, art and beauty. Gods who had built both worlds and heavenly palaces of such opulence and splendour that not even the gods of war or vengeance had the heart to render them into ruin.
To the Twinned silver gods, misdirection and deception were a dance to be mastered. Their greatest weapons: cutting words that could do the work of spirits or mortal armies and incite pantheons to war and clusters to burn. Their strongest shield: impassioned speeches that could inflame or cool the tempers of the gods.
A cutting word, a rousing speech… so thoroughly had the silver gods mastered the dance of deception and manipulation that each step stripped them of their will to fight. Before their foes could understand the movements of the dance, the Silver Gods had already spun away to find another partner in their neverending masquerade. They were safe at the edge of the galaxy, protected by the void through which no god dared tread.
It had been so long since anyone threatened them that the Silver Gods had forgotten that there was no substitute for swift and brutal violence.
A steely blade in a silken sheath… a blade long since withered to rust and dust. When Aurus descended from Andromeda, they found themselves at the mercy of a merciless god.
The Twinned Silver Gods, the eternal masters of the dance of deception.
The Twinned Silver Gods, builders of opulence and luxury that few gods could fathom.
The Twinned Silver Gods… many things but not cowards. Actors and dancers until the end: if their performance was to end, they would make the final curtain call and die with their pride intact.
The Silver Gods' mortal charges and spirits were subject to atrocities that would have soured the blood of even the most depraved God of Wrath. Their worlds burned, their people sacrificed in the ruins of their once gleaming cities, while the lucky few who were spared death converted in horrific rituals.
The gods themselves fell to the Black God of Silence and the God of Red Waters. Their power, essence, and everything they had ever built was devoured and subsumed by the gods of Andromeda. All that remained after the macabre feast were the burning worlds of the mortal plane populated by broken people and brutalized spirits.
As the orgy of violence and brutality came to its end, a brief silence spread over the fallen worlds. In that silence, the Andromedan gods swore they could hear the sound of hammers and tolling iron from within the petals of a flower-shaped nebula…
But now, as Aurus and his commanders feasted on the remains of the Silver Gods' domain, there were much more pressing concerns. The lesser powers of Andromeda rushed to claim territory of their own. The Silver Gods had kept their neighbours isolated, paranoid, and distrustful of the rest of the galaxy… easy prey for the Andromedan horde.
And so… they fell.
Their screams blunted by the silence of the void.
Their ships crashed, still burning onto the broken worlds below where the people were twisted and broken until they too would serve their new alien masters.
Ithra, the fourth god to claim the name over his predecessors' corpse, found the challenge Aurus longed for. A paradisiacal world, host to an incredible diversity and density of life existing in perfect harmony. It was a perfect harmony, the likes of which he had never seen before.
And it burned.
Ithra, fourth of his name, burned the world to ash and siphoned both its spirit and the lifeblood of its dead people to bolster his own power.
Power.
Ithra wasn't a weak god; he had climbed to the middle of Aurus' hierarchy on the back of his ruthlessness and cunning. He had carved himself an empire and, those gods who fell to him were drained of their essence, which Ithra, in turn, offered to his betters that they too might sample the taste of the fallen.
Power.
Ithra's position was one of power, yes, but the potential for more had led him to volunteer his people to Aurus' vanguard. Ithra was a named god, but barely. It was a tenuous position for any god: too powerful to return to the veil of anonymity but too weak to resist the demands of the truly mighty.
Power.
Power was something that could only be understood with perspective. Ithra's understanding of power changed when the Golden God deigned to appear before the creature mad enough or brave enough to burn one of his gardens. The Andromedan had but a moment to consider the gulf between them before the First Muse and Poet of the Lost, the only spirits the Golden Gad had ever needed, impaled him on pikes of divine fury.
Power… all for nothing… In death, Ithra returned to the veil of anonymity, the Golden God never having cared to learn his name.
The Golden God was so old that some of the younger gods whispered that he had existed before life had taken form in the universe. Some said that he was the confluence of oblivion's streams, leftover from when the Starsmith had created the universe. Yet others claimed that he had been formed when the first rains fell on the first world, born from that primordial melody.
But in every whispered story, the truth remained: The Golden God was beauty and perfection incarnate. He had no name, for he needed none, and his creations could only ever be imitated: poorly.
The Golden God looked down at Ithra, divine essence guided to the burned garden as the Andromedan fleet shattered beneath the Golden God's armada. He watched it all unfold from behind the rictus of his mask, its fixed expression the only constancy in his existence.
"I don't recognize this one." The Poet of the lost said, tearing her spear from Ithra's fading corpse.
"No…" The Golden God looked up, his voice a flood of emotions and impressions
"Beloved." He turned to face the First Muse, a shimmering hand caressing her face. "Summon the others."
The First Muse smiled and faded into the distant heavens to the Palaces of the Golden God's oldest allies.
The truth of the Golden God was far more vicious than the gods would have believed. He was the most powerful of the gods of art, music, and love, but he was not born of delicate melodies and harmonies...
Meteor impacts and shattered worlds.
Planet spanning storms whose bolts of lightning scoured life from primitive seas.
The horrific destruction wrought by dying stars as they swallowed systems whole.
The sounds of creation and destruction. Of life and of death.
These forces created not only the Golden God but also his brother: The First God of War. In their infancy, they had watched the Starsmith create worlds and galaxies and lived through those moments again and again until they became bound to them. Together they had seen the rise and fall of so many galactic councils and hegemonies that it defied counting, and, though the ages had softened him, the sight of a burned garden brought the force that had formed him to the fore once more.
___
Aurus felt Ithra die and the galaxy come to life. His laughter echoed through the ruins of the Silver God's palace, the mangled forms of tortured spirits not enough to dampen the wicked sound. Aurus strode from the palace, tearing whatever essence remained from the collapsing structure. The heavens seemed to shake as the Andromedan forces reformed to their masters' will.
The Second Inquisitor led the vanguard. Powerful enough to crush anyone below him in Aurus's hierarchy and, if all went well, strong enough to overthrow the Black God himself.
If... And perhaps, had the Chiming Galaxy been home to nothing more than drunk poets and dancers, the Second Inquisitor would have been assured his victory over his superior.
The Golden God and the First God of War were flanked by Karkoa and Vanatu, Goddesses of Wrath and Wisdom. They were the smallest Pantheon in the galaxy, but the four gods shared the rarest and greatest of luxuries: Trust.
Power. The ultimate commodity among the gods. Power flowed from the mortal plane, and though the reserves of the greatest gods were vast, they were finite. Thus for a god to use their power was to weaken themselves, and so did the shadow of suspicion cover every call to arms or cry for aid. Every scrap of divinity was begrudged and accounted for. Among the Pantheon of Four, no such paranoid reigned. The full force of their power was brought to bear.
The battle began on the mortal plane. Divine power, channelled through mortal artillery, forced the gods to choose: protect their ships or let them be destroyed and siphon the power of their mortal adherents. To the thralls of the Second Inquisitor's vanguard, there was no choice: too weak to resist the force of four ancient gods, they tore the lifeblood from their mortals and charged.
Chaff. Chattel. Utterly Expendable.
They were the weakest gods from a galaxy that devoured the weak.
The Golden God stepped forward, removed his mask, and roared.
He had watched the Starsmith create worlds and, once, in a moment of frustration, saw him destroy one. He had heard the purest note of destruction, and now it echoed once again over the heavens. The lesser gods of Andromeda fell, clutching at their forms, gasping as they struggled to withstand the corruption that spread through them.
As the note washed over Second Inquisitor's forces, he was forced to recognize both the power that had been brought to bear and the touch of oblivion it carried. He had known the first wave would die. They had been brought from Andromeda to serve no other purpose but that they should fall before even drawing divine blood disturbed him. The Golden God laughed, his mask once again covering his features as the divine corpses slowly faded. Their poisoned essence dripped as solar storms to the mortal plane below. The Golden God bowed, not to the Andromedans but to the Elder Three, a small gesture of respect and gratitude to the darker realm above.
"Kill"
Cold.
Impassive.
Emotionless.
The Golden God's command echoed over the heavens. The Andromedans, unprepared and unaccustomed to the Golden God's voice, succumbed: charging as a disorderly mob. Only the Second Inquisitor and his retainers entered the fray with any sort of order.
The First God of War finally released his hold on Karkoa, and her spirits crashed into the Andromedans as a bloodthirsty tide. She was at their heart possessed by a rage so intense that the fading corpses and pools of tainted ichor were set ablaze in a mirror of her fury. The Goddess of Wrath clashed with the Inquisitor's forces tearing into their forms and setting their essence alight. Driven mad by the Golden Gods' command, they responded in kind, but Karkoa was singular in purpose and left nothing in her wake but the trails of death. The Second Inquisitor could only watch transfixed at the swirling mass of unrestrained brutality. At its heart was the Golden God who had not even deigned to wield a weapon but simply lashed out, crushing any god that dared engage him.
Wrath burned bright but was quickly extinguished. At the peak of the melee, the First God of War and Vanatu, kept sane by the First Muse and the Poet of the Lost, stepped forward to relieve Vanatu and the flagging spirits of Wrath. Even then, surrounded by the dead and rejuvenated by the slaughter, Karkoa thought to disobey, but the notion passed as the God of War drew up beside her. Of all the Gods, the First God of War was the only one she feared and the sole power to which she would yield. Her way was of bloody carnage while his was a slow, methodical execution of his foes. With each step, he cleaved through the maddened gods and spirits coming ever closer to the Second Inquisitor and his retainers. Trails of power flowed from the First God of War as he tore spirits in half: a display of strength enough to finally break the Golden Gods' command sending the surviving Andromedans fleeing to their master.
Too late did they notice the Golden Gods' armies, held in reserve and now led by the resurgent Goddess of Wrath. Surrounded and surprised though they were, the High Inquisitors of Andromeda were not to be taken lightly. With the First God of War advancing and no sign of Aurus' Horde, the Second Inquisitor charged. Born of equal parts bravery, fanaticism, and desperation.
The Second Inquisitor's retainers fell to Vanatu, and the Golden God, their only bitter consolation that he had finally armed himself. Those who tried to flee were hunted down and extinguished. As for the Inquisitor Himself, he clashed with the First God of War in a spectacularly one-sided duel. Though fortified by the essence of the dead, it was not nearly enough to resist a god as old as creation itself. Blow by blow, the Second Inquisitor weakened until he finally fell: a blade protruding from his chest. He looked down to see the ichor flowing down its length and into the First God of War. His gaze rose to the First God of War, and he heard only silence.
To kill a mortal was a simple thing.
To kill a spirit required some small amount of effort.
To kill a god... their worlds had to be destroyed, their spirits slaughtered, and their people converted so that not a single prayer or scrap of power existed to sustain them.
But a galaxy away from his homeworld, the Second Inquisitor couldn't feel his people, his worlds... all he heard was the silence as the true death came to claim him. As he slipped into oblivion's open arms, he saw Aurus arrive too late to save him. It was only then that he understood: that had always been the intention. There was a galaxy to conquer, and the great gods of Andromeda had no intention of sharing the spoils of their victory.
One by one, the gods of Andromeda arrived and bore witness to the husks of their dead allies, their power drained into the universe below, burned by Karkoa's fury, or consumed by the gods of the Chiming Galaxy. In the face of the horde, the Milky Way gods and their fleets withdrew in silence, save for Karkoa, whose ships fired parting salvos while the goddess herself hurled invective before vanishing into the void.
To Aurus, the corpse of the Second Inquisitor, former right hand to the Black God, was proof of the capability of the Chiming Gods. Proof that even a galaxy as insignificant as theirs could produce beings of great power. The other gods however, those outside his inner circle, learned their lesson well: all those whose loyalty was circumspect would be utterly destroyed.
But for the chaff, the weakest of the gods, barely more than the spirits they commanded, it was a promise of power. They all knew that every dead god represented territory to be claimed, both in this galaxy and in Andromeda itself.
As Aurus watched the Chiming Gods withdraw, he couldn't entirely suppress his smile. The Second Inquisitor had succeeded in his mission. The Chiming gods had been measured, their capabilities understood, and the loyalty of the horde assured. Aurus cultivated the image of a cruel and merciless overlord, but more than that, he was meticulous. The vanguard had been composed of cannon fodder led by a disloyal god. The spies and scouts would be equally carefully chosen. The Chiming Gods would try and build a fleet, but Aurus had every intention of ensuring that what opposed him was not a united galaxy.
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The battle had been quick and decisive. Had any other gods fought, it wouldn't have been worthy of notice, but the presence of the Golden God and First God of War drew the galaxy's attention.
Old alliances and oaths were invoked as the pantheons mobilized.
The Gods of War marshalled their armies, sending scouts and spies into the galaxy.
Those of Wrath, Rage, Vengeance, Ruin, and Blood gathered their hordes in eager anticipation.
The Gods of Wisdom, Secrets, and Knowledge strategized and devised innumerable paths to victory and defeat.
The Golden God was not content with pantheons and loose alliances. He demanded more. He moved alone through the void and whispered into the darkness urging the gods to Shining City. A gleaming city; it housed every Pantheon, the council of seventy, and every god, no matter how minor, maintained a palace at the heart of the galaxy. It was the only place where even the gods felt that oblivion had been tamed. The streets were stained with centuries of conspiracy and assassination, and yet... no god could resist the allure of performing on the grandest stage in the galaxy. Here, more than anywhere else, the gods demonstrated their cunning, prowess, and mastery of the game that all things played from birth unto death.
The city was so thoroughly stained by intrigues and secret desires that the heavens had come to reflect them. Ripples flowed through the ether, signalling the arrival of a God or a new move in the game. Some barely disturbed the city, their presence far too insignificant for the heavens to care. The Four left waves in their wake as they made their way to the council chambers.
The younger gods had long since arrived, having taken their places in the highest echelons of the hall flanked by only a single or pair of spirits. Numerous but weak, each controlled a few isolated systems.
The independent gods occupied the next ring. They had never aligned themselves with a pantheon nor taken on a single. To their people, they were gods of all creation, and though they controlled a single species, their people were fanatical and absolutely devoted. Coupled with their unpredictability and fickle nature, they could easily tip the balance of power in the Gods' games.
At the base of the hall, the pantheons had taken their place. Their presence carried a weight so immense that it threatened to crush the lesser gods outright. Each Pantheon commanded by a single god, the undisputed masters of their domain.
In the corners of the hall, out of sight, sat the seven. Gods which the others never spoke of nor acknowledged. Gods who drew their powers from the eldritch forces the younger gods could never understand. They had been ancient when the first fist was raised in anger and the first blood oath sworn. Cycles beyond counting had passed them by such that every god, be they the patron of a single world or in command of hundreds of billion, was a child. Of the seven, only two of their number involved themselves in the dramas of the others, and they did so only as enforcers and supreme arbiters.
The Golden God looked upon his younger cousins; the distrust, the tension, the paranoia was as suffocating as the power contained within the vessels the gods had adopted. Most of the assembled gods had only ever heard the Golden God speak through the First Muse or the Poet of the Lost. Those that had heard him speak had never heard more than a whisper. He removed his mask, stunning the assembled gods as his essence flooded the chamber. More than just words passed over his lips; he spoke in sounds, sights, and emotions. Each word resonated within the Gods filling them with the Golden God's understanding...
They felt the fate that had befallen his wards.
They felt their brutalization and deaths.
They felt his anger burn among the ashes of a ruined garden.
They felt his contempt towards the ships and gods that promised death as mercy.
And as they heard the whispers of the void through the Golden God's mind, they understood that there was no salvation from the horde.
Then the Golden God put his mask back on, and, as quickly as it had flooded the hall, his essence retreated, leaving the gods to try and comprehend the implications.
To reforge the galaxy into a single force...
Mortals could pray for miracles, and the gods could grant their desires. There was no power the gods could invoke to intercede on their behalf, and so they were given the most terrifying freedom they had ever had: to choose where the wrong choice represented death. Most understood the threat from Andromeda and acquiesced to the unspoken demand, and placed themselves in the service of the First God of War. But some refused to put their schemes aside and instead chose to plot in different directions, while others simply hoped that the war would pass them by if they faded into the void. A naive hope given that the darkness had long since chosen a favoured son and would not conceal them in its shroud. The rest... they looked upon the Golden God, eyes alight with malice. They would send envoys to the invaders and settle scores from ages long since past.
In the end, forty-three gods pledged themselves and assembled themselves into the largest Pantheon the galaxy had ever seen. The heavens shook as the Gods of the Council marched to meet the Andromedan horde. The power that flowed from the collected gods to their fleets was visible against the empty backdrop of space.
Cathedrals, palaces, unbroken fortresses, killing fields... all have inherent virtue. Their mere existence is enough to grant them great significance. Other places are given import for but a moment in time. And so it was that an unnamed system in an unwanted cluster became the locus for two galaxies.
The Milky Way Fleet arrived first. The vanguard comprised fleets loyal to the Pantheons of Wrath, Vengeance, and Ruin. They were heavily armed and armoured; their ships would crash into the invading fleets and shatter them before the battle began. The gods of deception, lies, and secrecy held the flanks. Their sleek fleets barely visible against the darkness of space, well suited to their patron's temperament, they would wait in ambush until a killing blow could be struck. At the armada's heart were the ships of the Gods of War. The immense craft had been created with a singular purpose: victory, assured by divine cannons that wrought destruction with contemptuous indifference. Those gods of a less martial disposition were held in reserve should the lines waver or to give chase once the enemy began to rout.
There was no more glorious sight to the makers of war and forgers of empires than armies and fleets readying themselves for battle.
The ships of the Milky Way, the Chiming Galaxy, had been made with care. Each a piece of art, a reflection of the nature of the god in whose name it was built.
The Andromedan fleet was nothing like the council gods had ever seen. The first ships that entered the system were a disorganized mass of ships in varying states of disrepair. It was only when Aurus' inner circle arrived that the council gods understood: it was a maelstrom. A swirling mass of fear and hate held together by the immense flagships of Andromeda's tyrant. The flagships of Aurus' inner circle had been so thoroughly stained by the destruction and cruelty they had wrought in service of their merciless masters that they oozed malice into the void. Smaller ships, built by hands that had only known cruelty of madness, emerged from the aura of malevolence. They belonged to gods whose fanaticism had propelled them into positions of power, and ever eager to expand their influence, they were ready to do battle on their master's command.
Of all of Aurus's deprivations, reducing Gods to servile minions was perhaps his greatest one.
The rest of his fleet was a disparate mass of ships. Some were ancient craft belonging to gods who had fallen from glory, their ships still stubbornly clinging to a shred of their past opulence and power.
Others belonged to lesser gods who had climbed over the corpses of their betters and stood in the battle line knowing that the only way to climb higher was to ensure that, once the dust settled, everyone else was dead. Their ships, simple and effective craft, were shabby next to the ancient elegance of the fallen gods.
The bulk of the fleet reeked of desperation. Fallen gods who had but a few scraps of power brought their last ships and soldiers from Andromeda, hoping for salvation on the field of battle. Gods accused of conspiracy against the established order had assembled massive fleets of ramshackle ships desperate to prove their loyalty and willingness to sacrifice on their master's behalf. Others were little more than thralls; weak gods who had pledged themselves to others now found themselves and their meagre handful of ships thrust into the frontlines of a war they would not survive.
The heavens were much the same as the mortal plane below. The gods had assembled, the glow of their power suffusing the empty expanse, casting it in pale light.
Silence reigned among the gods.
On the mortal plane, ships dedicated to the gods of Wrath and Vengeance were joined by the fleets of Ruin and Blood in their charge.
Their ships struck the outer edge of the maelstrom where the fleets of Wrath and Vengeance engaging the outer edges of the Andromedan maelstrom as the ships of Ruin and Blood turned their ships into battering rams carrying them deep into the heart of the Andromedan horde. They tore through the outer bands before either succumbing to the mass of fire or embedding themselves in Andromedan capital ships, where they discharged their bloodthirsty crew. Every corpse, both their own and those they made dedications to their who, in turn, granted them power. Each kill fed them until it grew too much to bear, and they were torn apart in explosions of celestial fire, reducing both ships to slag.
The violent display was enough to give the Andromedans a moment's pause while the gods of Ruin and Blood looked down in pride. Their people had known they would not return and in their slaughter showed not a moment's hesitation. The last ship was still venting atmosphere when the gods of deception struck. On wings of darkness, they harried the weak, the wounded, or the unwary as the Pantheons of Wrath and Vengeance withdrew. Thousands of souls streamed into the heavens fortifying those gods whose followers had died.
Aurus laughed. His laughter finally broke the silence that had stretched across the heavenly realm.
Millions of years.
Millions of years had passed since his first fall from grace. Since he was first cast from oblivion down to the mortal plane.
Millions of years had passed since he was left weaker than the spirit of a dying world.
Millions of years dedicated to capturing power enough to take his place in oblivion, and now, here, in a small chiming galaxy, he had found it.
They had broken his ships with battering rams, savaged the flanks of his mortal fleets with ships that all but faded into the void.
For the first time in millions of years felt the call of oblivion and knew that one day he would be its equal.
He would destroy these Chiming Gods. He would savour the taste of the essence and the destruction of their worlds.
He would devour their galaxy and be forever grateful to them.
To Aurus, it was the dawn of a new age.
And what better way to celebrate the dawn of a new age than by executing old foes.
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Merry Christmas Everyone and best of luck in the coming year