Interlude VI – A Seed is Planted

Lia remembered a time when the world was small. When the only people you had to worry about were the occasional territorial hunter, and tribes would simply move around each other rather than fight. When she could name every person in her village and joke around with even her chief like old friends.

That world no longer existed.

What were once small tribes had grown, dozens of foreigners dragged into the cities by force or by greed. They abandoned their old fur tents for sturdy wooden huts, burrowing new roots along the river. From cities, small nations grew. They conquered other villages one by one, dragging their influence kicking and screaming down the river.

In what felt like an instant, the whole world had changed.

And Lia hated it.

In the old world, she had had her brother. In the old world, she didn’t tense when she saw another person, wondering if today would be the day she died. In the old world, life was peaceful and happy.

But there was nothing Lia could do about it. Forces greater than her were at play, ones she could scarce imagine.

At least, that’s what she once thought.

She’d defeated the Queen, Juliette. For months, she’d stood hidden in the shadow of her vassal, whispering, goading, and then finally, at the worst possible moment, killing. Meiling died by her hand, and in doing so swept the rug out from under Juliette’s entire kingdom.

Lia wondered if the Queen was dead. She hoped she was, but she knew better. She knew all too well how hard it was to kill her.

But it showed her something, something important. These ‘God-Kings,’ they could be defeated by mortals. Through trickery, and manipulation, and indirectly, sure, but they could be defeated.

And if that was the case then maybe, just maybe, they could be killed by mortals.

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It was after the fall of Sam’s Village to the Red King that Lia found herself on a boat sailing away from the city.

A dozen refugees had fled Sam’s Village following its sack by the Red King. They scattered to wherever they could get too. Some to King’s End, believing their current Queen was a safer bet than this unknown King. Others, like Lia, fled towards the King, throwing their lot in with him in the hopes he would be merciful. And others still fled into the woods, to return to their old lives as nomads.

Some left because they feared the King, wanting to distance themselves from him. Some fled because the village had been sacked twice within a year, and didn’t fancy their chances for the third time. Others had fled simply because staying in the village would be more dangerous than leaving.

Lia was one of those people. She knew that someday, somehow, the Queen would get word of what she’d done. And if she stayed there, she’d be the first to die.

It left a bitter taste in her mouth, to leave behind the home she’d been born into, and all the people she’d known her whole life. But she shoved that feeling aside.

That place hadn’t been home in a long time.

She should be looking towards the future either way. She had plans, after all. Plans to build an army; plans to topple an empire; plans to kill a god.

No, plans to kill a thousand gods.

There were more God-Kings in the world after all. She didn’t know how many—she didn’t even know how many people were in the world, or how big it could be. For all she knew, this task she set up was one that could last for eternity.

But that was fine. She was patient.

“We’re almost there, Lia,” Qiu, the woman sitting behind her whispered, the black diamond standing out starkly on her forehead. One of her daughters sat sleeping on her lap, while the other despondently stared out over the water. “I can smell it.”

“Smell it?”

“Hm,” she nodded. “It smells of fish. Nothing in nature smells so strongly of fish—it has to be the city. Tens of fishermen, perhaps, all plying their trade along the docks.”

“You sound like you’ve seen it before,” Lia turned to her, curious.

“…no,” she shook her head. “I’ve seen something like it, though. Back when Meiling made the fishermen scout out Midharbor, I saw it there. Many men and women reeling and cutting and prepping fish. It smelled awful.”

“I can only imagine,” Lia hummed, turning back to look forward.

She wondered what such a spectacle would be like. She’d seen enough people in her village prepping fish to know what it looked (and smelled) like. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think up what such a city would look like. Instead, she imagined a dozen Qius out on the river, working away. Occasionally one would mess up, prompting the others to turn and complain about ‘kids these days and their inability to descale their fish!’

The thought made her smile, before it quickly turned into a frown.

She could smell the fish now. And Qiu was right, it reeked.

It made her nervous, somewhat. Not the smell, though that didn’t help. She was nervous about the future. About the city she was arriving in.

She’d never left her tribe before. She’d gone out hunting, sure, but she’d never visited another tribe. She’d rarely spoken to strangers—in fact, Sam was the only time she could remember, and that had been more or less forced upon her.

She’d uprooted her life. Somewhat against her will, sure, but the great unknown in front of her was… terrifying. It made her want to turn around and flee back to her warm bed in her old house by the walls.

But she didn’t. The certainty of what would happen to her if she returned was more terrifying than an unknown future could ever be.

And so she sailed on, towards that increasingly atrocious smell of fish. Towards the future. Towards her future.

Towards a future without any more God-Kings.