Dark God’s Gift: Desires of Gods and Mortals

By Ronald T. Jones

     Power. So delectable. Delectable as the spherical food product I hold in my grasping appendage…hand. The product’s outer coating is roughly textured, yet soft to the bite. Sweet juices fill my mouth. My teeth grind the portion I’ve bitten to pulp and I swallow.  Digestive processes unfold and I repeat this pleasurable, yet life-sustaining act until the product is no more. Nutrients from the food product will perpetuate the survival of this biological form I’ve adopted.

     I emerge from a tangle of forest into a grass-covered valley. Since appearing on this world, all I have done is walk. The body I inhabit is quadruped, capable of bipedal motion, exceptionally suited for long distance mobility. Highly intelligent, as would be expected of a dominant life form, it is resilient and adaptive, an elegant construction.

     Construction. I mull over that descriptive. Who constructed this creature and its kin? Was it the same creator who summoned me into existence? Who hammered life into my being, molded me with suffering and cast me into the unknown like a chunk of debris?

     I stop and look up. Blackness layers the sky, peppered by luminescent pinpricks of countless, distant suns. Somewhere out there he resides, the one who created me. Is he watchful or indifferent? Concerned with my well-being or apathetic? Ultimately, it matters not to me. My only interest at the moment is the power to corrupt souls and twist minds. The more I feed on illicit desires the greater my strength. The greater my strength, the more potent my rage.

     That, however, is my main point of contention. My creator has hobbled me. This power I possess can only be fueled by the weak. This assemblage of skin, bone and sinew I’ve donned is a throbbing, restless reservoir of weakness. I should hold these strong wants and desires I’m experiencing in the highest contempt. Yet, oddly, I find myself savoring them.  How easily they circulate inside me, providing me with insight on what motivates creatures of flesh.

****

     A period of time I’ve not bothered to measure passes. I approach a place of cone-shaped structures fashioned from mud and dead plants. A village. Torchlight speckles the village, providing a much needed visual aid. This form has not one iota of a nocturnal attribute. As I enter this quiet setting, small, long bodied, snout nosed quadrupeds scamper out of my path. They are lower life forms, either domesticated or feral. Most likely the latter.

     The village appears deserted, but it is not. The inhabitants are inside these structures in a state of repose called sleep. I never understood the condition until I experienced this form. Ah, the limitations of flesh....

     A low, mournful keen reaches my audio nubs. I halt and pivot toward the source. Laying on the ground a few strides hence is a native. Severely undernourished, its body is little more than a bruised skin sack. Its legs are bound, its face a medley of swells and cuts. Curious, I approach the native: ‘Who did this to you?’

     I don’t use vocal processes. Non-verbal communication is far more efficient. I project the question into the native’s mind. It stirs, shifting its battered frame to settle a lacerated, half lidded gaze upon me. The native’s mouth is too damaged to speak. I don’t encourage it to. I probe into its mind, extracting images of abuse, degradation, and humiliation. The native is an outcast in this village, accused of a transgression worthy of death in the value system of its tormentors. Now, it awaits its execution at first light.

‘What do you want me to do?’ I ask.

     The creature squirms as if straining to snap its restraints. Every molecule of its being cries for blood.

     I feel a tingle of euphoria. For the first time since adopting this form, treading a solid surface, purpose binds me…and the power…the intoxicating power of this one’s desire infuses me with abilities far transcending what this form is capable of.

‘You will have your blood!’

****

     A double sunrise ushers away darkness, drenching this drab array of huts in a glaring splash of light. Several natives drift into view to find the two of us upright on our hind legs, armed with blades I forged from the same core elements comprising my true form. The outcast stands strong and defiant, the beneficiary of the health and vitality I’ve restored to it. I’ve filled out its formerly emaciated body and further stoked the blazing fire of its hatred until it can no longer contain itself. 

     The outcast howls a battle cry and bounds forth to strike, its elemental blade slicing through flesh and bone. Bisected bodies collapse. A stunned witness escapes to spread the alarm.

     We wait. Minutes later, additional villagers tramp our way, some loping on all fours, others on two limbs; all the better to wield an assortment of thrusting, slashing and bludgeoning instruments.

     The outcast and I take the measure of this mob and find it wanting. We don’t wait for it to close the distance. We charge…

     I lop off a villager’s head, leap over its blood-spurting carcass and plunge my sword into another’s gut. A villager attempts to cave my skull in with a metal bar. I duck, then withdraw my blade from a quivering body and bring it around in an arc of fire. The villager jumps back, smugness written on its visage. It thinks I’ve missed. Only when its entrails spill out of the slit I drew across its belly, does its smugness become horror. I administer a smaller slit to its inviting throat and it falls backward in a shower of arterial blood.

     The outcast’s blade work is every bit as lethal as my own. Its opponents succumb to the fury of its sword as if they were destined to die this day. It shears off limbs, disembowels and slashes, while skillfully fending off attacks from all directions. The outcast spins about, cracking a foe’s chest with a flying hind leg. A villager slips a long spear past the outcast’s guard, driving it into the latter’s back, centimeters left of the spine.

     I jump to the outcast’s aid, stabbing the spear wielder through the ribs. The outcast releases a roar mingled with pain and rage before finishing off the spear wielder with a stroke that splits the other from crown to sternum.

     At some point in the battle, as bodies pile precipitously around us, the villagers begin to retreat. We don’t allow them that mercy. We run them down, killing them like vermin, ruthlessly disregarding their pleas for mercy. We kill and kill and kill until our faces and bodies drip with their blood.

     This is a new and exhilarating experience for me. Billions have already perished elsewhere as a consequence of my existence. Until now, I have never dealt death up close, so directly, so personally. My lust for carnage remains unabated in the aftermath. But the outcast is suddenly stricken with remorse. It paces restlessly, moaning in sorrow and distress as I look on, profoundly puzzled by its reaction. After a while, it grows silent and stares at me. I can see that I have become the object of the hatred it once harbored for its abusers.

     Condemnation radiates hotly from its eyes.

“Demon! Look what you have made me do!”  Sobs convulse it. “This…this is not what I wanted!”

     The outcast rears back to strike me down with the very blade I bestowed upon it.

     I halt the outcast in mid motion, using but a flicker of my power. ‘Ungrateful fool. I am Trynaught. I gave you not what you wanted, but what you desired.’

     In that instant, I revert to my true form. My transformation washes away the village in a cataclysmic firestorm that consumes untold kilometers of surrounding terrain. An iridescent crater marks my exit from this squalid little patch of the universe. On to new realms, new experiences, greater power. My laughter shakes the void.

****

     Trynaught floated in a realm between space at a juncture tucked just beyond the confines of time. Aspects of himself permeated many places, but he paid no heed to their deeds or misdeeds. Ambition dominated his thoughts…as did vengeance and hatred toward his creator.

‘You brought me into being for no other purpose than to feed your vanity. Now, watch your creation become your vanquisher. In the last fleeting moment of your existence, you will beg me for the mercy that I will gladly deny you!’

     It was upon the heels of that thought Trynaught came to realize just like so many lesser beings, he had his own desires that he wanted fulfilled. Killing his creator and commanding the vast powers he possessed became Trynaught’s obsession.

     Frustratingly, there were rules to this game that even one such as he had to abide by. He could not simply bring his desires to fruition at the beckoning of a thought. These things required a bit of time, work, and a healthy dose of patience. And then there was the matter of forming alliances with others of equally burning ambitions.

     They were gods…at least to the inhabitants of an obscure world nestled within the spiral arm of a galaxy Trynaught could barely recall in passing. Although, he was certain one of his aspects had operated in that region at one time in the past, present or future.

     Time was as fluid to him as the waves of a churning sea. These gods, for whatever reason, bore the forms of the creatures who worshipped them. Or would it have been more appropriate to assume that the creatures bore the forms of their celestial masters?

     Even in their singular appearance, the gods gathered before Trynaught reflected the diversity of their subjects. Black-skinned, massively muscled Ogun stood beside  white- skinned, red-haired Thor, who loomed just as imposing.

     Small, lithe Amateratsu sat on a stool of golden light, her dark eyes narrowed in scrutiny. Zeus, olive skinned and lean of physique presented an older image in contrast to the youthful appearing deities around him.

     Huitzilopochtli propped a shoulder against the barricade separating realms, his powerful arms folded, his bronze-hued features drawn in a fearsome scowl.

     Trynaught considered retaining his usual formlessness, being that he was in his home and these gods were his guests. Instead, he decided to indulge his guests by adopting a likeness roughly similar to theirs. For lesser beings, imitation was flattery. Trynaught thought no differently, except the flattery he projected was all show, nothing heartfelt. Gods were vain and irrefutably self-absorbent. Let them think that he was paying homage to their physiologies. Let his flattery be a means to an end.

“You are no god, yet presume you can help us,” said Zeus, his voice as commanding as the authority he once held over his subject Olympian deities.

‘The arrogance of gods.’

     Trynaught kept that sentiment to himself. “I have the ability to help you obtain what you desire,” he replied. “In return, I ask that you help me achieve my desire.” He looked into each of their eyes. “All of you want something. I can grant it.”

“Can you grant me the status I once had?” Huitzilopochtli growled. “Can you regain for me the masses of worshipers who held me in high esteem long ago?”

“Yes, that is what I would like to know as well,” Ogun commented, his brow rising with interest.

“You still have followers,” Thor said to Ogun with a scornful chuckle. “I would think the issue of you being worshipped would be the least of your concerns.”

“You think wrong.” Ogun gave the Norse god a look forged in the iron his adherents associated him with. “The numbers of my followers are paltry compared to the countless legions whose minds are ensnared by the charlatan who deems himself the ‘One True God’.”

“You refer to the one called Jehov,” said Trynaught.

“We refrain from speaking that name,” Amateratsu remarked with a playful grimace. “But yes, Jehov.”

“Billions worship him,” said Zeus, his tone sober and reflective. “Such daunting numbers. Even at my peak, I never commanded so large a following.”

“None of us has,” Huitzilopochtli added bitterly. “And Jehov’s numbers continue to grow. This is an intolerable state of affairs.”

“Well then, the solution to your Jehov problem is simple,” said Trynaught. “We kill him.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Ogun agreed. Enthusiasm shined a lurid light from his eyes. “With Jehov eliminated, we can rebuild our following…”

“Not before you help me achieve my objective,” Trynaught interrupted.

“Of course,” said Amateratsu. She threw up a gesture of dismissal. “I cannot speak for my fellow gods, but I can assure you that I do not give my word lightly.”

“Nor do I,” Thor declared, cocking a resentful eye at the sun goddess. “My word is my shackle.”

     Ogun, Huitzilopochtli, and Zeus voiced solemn vows to assist their host.

     Trynaught spread his arms. “Good. Now, if we are to assault Jehov’s abode, we must plan carefully.”

“Assault Heaven?” Thor’s face dropped. “Are you mad? We would do better luring him onto the earthly plain and then striking him down.”

     Ogun shook his head. “Jehov will never leave Heaven under any circumstances. How do you think he has lived this long? No, Trynaught is right. To eliminate him, we must travel to where he is.”

“That will require an army that we do not have,” said Zeus. “Our powers alone will not suffice in this undertaking.”

     Trynaught divided himself into twenty-five replicas. “I can clone millions of copies of myself.”

Amateratsu gazed at these creatures who bore an identical likeness to Trynaught and tilted her head approvingly. “Instant army. I like it.”

     The sword Ogun usually carried materialized in the iron god’s right hand. “To my worshipers, I am the god of iron and war. The iron part of my title is limiting.”

     The sword morphed into a chrome colored Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher. “ I am also the god of technology.”

     Thor hefted his mighty hammer.  “Keep your gadgets, Ogun. I need no more than Mjolnir. Its fury will turn a multitude of enemies to smoldering ash!”

     Ogun rolled his eyes. “You and that ridiculous mallet.”

     The gods began a round of boasting. Trynaught waited quietly, patiently for a few minutes before politely intervening. Afterward, they planned… 

****

To be continued....    Go to Part 2

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