Loss still lingered, a quiet ache that never fully faded. My mother, my sisters—they had been gone for a long, long time, but I still missed them.
Some days, I saw their descendants, so very different from them. As much as I tried, I couldn't see family in them, even when one or another did something that reminded me of one of my sisters or my mother. A gesture, a word.
I wondered where they were now and if I would ever see them again.Gods don't die, Vaelora's words came back to me.They might wither, but they never die. She would know because she had withered. When the people had forsaken her, she had become barely a shadow of her former self. I resigned myself a long time ago to never seeing my family again, but that was alright with me, because I had gained so much more than I had lost.
"So are you saying having slaves is wrong?" Vaelora returned to our conversation.
I shrugged. "I'm not saying that." Still, there was a part of me that had been growing over time that wondered. Slaves were an unavoidable byproduct of war; what else would one do with conquered people? Putting them all to death would be barbaric. Allowing them to live would be a death sentence in its own right, since they didn't have any place to go. So, no, having slaves wasn't wrong.
"But maybe we should consider their rights a little bit more," I heard myself say out loud.
"Well, look at you, becoming as wise as a god," Vaelora mocked.
I pulled her into my arms and kissed her. "Well, at least one of us is learning from the other."
She boxed the wound she had just sewn, making me wince. The only person in the world other than myself who could hurt me was her, or another god.
"I beg your forgiveness, my lord and my lady," Asharat, my latest second in command, entered. He rarely did that unannounced or uninvited, but he was one of the few who had a right to.
"What is it, Asharat?" I pulled myself from Vaelora's arms. She didn't look alarmed or worried. Asharat's business was always with me as the lord of the army.
"My lord, we received news that a large army is marching our way."
"An army?" Anticipation heated my body. It had been a long time since we had fought a worthy foe. How long had it been? Three years? Four? Too long, and my hands itched to hold my sword, to be in the midst of a battle—my skin pebbled just thinking about it. My latest scar, the one Vaelora had just stitched, came from a city we had sacked a few days’ ride from here. It hadn't even been worth cutting myself over, but the soldiers expected it.
"How large?"
"The scouts estimate six thousand warriors strong," Asharat filled me in with the same glee in his eyes that thrummed through my body.
"Where are they coming from?" Vaelora injected herself into the conversation, something she never did when it came to matters of war.
"From the east, my lady," Asharat bowed.
"What lands?"
"The lands of the Annunaki, my lady."
Vaelora's face turned cold. Her next words froze my body, "Maezharr, he is back."
I had no idea how she knew, but she did, and I didn't doubt her for a moment. "Get the soldiers ready," I barked at Asharat, "and start recruiting. We're going to war."
It was the hardest war I had ever fought. Vaelora once told me:A god is only as strong as the people who believe in them. And she was right. Maezharr had had centuries to find new lands where he could rule and make strong enough for him to return to Orasis to claim his lost kingdom.
He fought dirty, too. Sneak attacks on outlying cities came first, weakening us because I couldn't split my main army to be everywhere at the same time. I had scouts scouring the lands, trying to find his armies, trying to guess where he would strike next. Some days we were successful, others not. Little by little, he carved out pieces of our land as if it were a cake he was about to devour.
Vaelora was withering right in front of me. I too felt the weakening of power as people turned from us to pray to Maezharr, praying for his protection instead of ours. Vaelora had warned me that people's minds could be fickle, but I had never believed it until then. I roared in anger and frustration with every missive that came in announcing the loss of yet another city. Maezharr didn't simply conquer the cities. He killed every single one of its inhabitants, razed and burned it to the ground, and salted the earth he left behind, turning it into a desert.
Finally, after months of frustrating chases, Asharat came to me and announced he had found Maezharr's main camp. It wasn't far from our army, and I readied us for battle.
"I need you to go to Ilanthope, where ships will be waiting for you to take you to safety," I told Vaelora.
"I won't leave you. I won't leave Orasis," she protested, predictably.
"You must." I took her beloved face into my hands. "Please. This battle will be hard, the hardest ever, and I need to know you are safe."
Stubbornly, she shook her head, "My place is here. You will be victorious. I know you will."
My army had dwindled to four thousand, while Maezharr's had grown to eight. I wished I could be as confident as Vaelora in my success, but the odds were stacked against us. "Maezharr will kill you if he gets ahold of you," I warned her.
