Straightening up, Enyo started to rifle through her pack. She brought out a small bundle of kindling, flint, and a bottle of harsh spirits. Yanking the cork out with her teeth, Enyo strode towards the tower. She’d just burn the thing down, and the artifact, being imbued with God-essence, would stay intact. A simple, eloquent solution, if she did say so herself.
⚀
“Wait!” Va'al said, real irritation seeping into his voice. “It will take days to burn the tower if it’ll even catch. The blasted thing is made of stone!”
Not to mention how much work it would be to sift through the rubble and find the damnable artifact.
The misfit God shared a look with Maoz, rolling his eyes expressively. Fucking women.
Once he was certain that Enyo was not immediately about to start a fire, Va'al bent down to consider the plate she had uncovered, reading the inscription a couple times through. He had always liked riddles. Not enough to bear Aryus’s company for any length of time, but he had exchanged puzzles with the Death God.
At first, the answer seemed obvious. It was a dragon, of course. They were lizards, ‘as cold alive as in death,’ and their scales could be a mail of some sort. But then, dragons were not quiet creatures. They rustled and creaked as they moved. They breathed.
He should know. His mortal shell still bore the marks of dragon breath.
Perhaps, then, the ‘mail’ in the riddle referred to the bark of a tree? They certainly didn’t clink, nor he supposed, did they breathe.
But then again, he had never seen a tree drink anything.
Va'al scratched his scruffy chin, drawing his brows together. If not a tree, what then? What lived but did not breathe?
His eyes drifted upwards to the ring of pictures around the base of the tower. There was a bird, a wolf, a snake, a human…
And a fish.
The God’s eyes lit up in delight. That was it! It had to be! A fish lived but did not breathe, was as cold living as it was in death. Drank but did not thirst. It had scales.
Va'al straightened, dusting off his worn travel clothing as though they were the garments of a king. “Not to worry, Enyo, Maoz,” he said, clearly pleased with himself. “I know the answer.”
With a decided strut, Va'al flounced over to the tower, leaned down, and pushed hard on the stone carved with a crude likeness of a fish.
A blade popped out of the stone and punched into the meat of Va'al’s palm, deep enough to make him bleed but no mortal injury.
❂
With the addition of blood, the tower groaned. The stone blocks that formed the tower walls slid inwards, turning and writhing, setting themselves back together. When the dust cleared, a path lay open before them, twisting upwards into darkness. Enyo plucked up Va'al’s hand and licked the injury as Maoz started up the stairs.
“Let the beast trigger anymore ‘jokes,’ yes?” she murmured, peering into the gloom of the temple stairway. Aryus wasn’t the malicious type, not like her, but they did have a crude and immature sense of humor.
They might think a step that broke beneath the walker’s foot or a trap door might be as amusing as their stupid little riddle and their hidden entrance. “Are we certain we want to bring Aryus back? They seem like more trouble than they are worth.” Of course, she had been arguing to keep Aryus and forgo Esha only days ago, but the Death God had gotten themselves onto her ‘hate’ list with all these ridiculous tasks.
“I don’t see why this should be so challenging. It’s death after all. Everyone dies—humans do it all the time. It’s not like it’s complicated. Anything can kill them. Spear to the belly, head cut off, heart torn out, not enough food, not enough water, fire, water, landslide—” Enyo continued to list the numerous ways humans could be killed as she and Va'al climbed the endless steps up into the tower of Aryus. “Snake bite, suffocation, broken neck. I mean, you can literally scare a human to death.“ She grinned. “Do you remember that man back in— Where was it? You disguised yourself as his dead mother and came in on him with that whore and started shouting, and he jumped off the boy and was flailing around—”
They came to the last step and Maoz glanced over his shoulder at Enyo and Va'al. “We’re here.” Of course, the beast wouldn’t think it was funny. He had a terrible sense of humor.
⚀
Va'al was still chuckling as he stepped around Maoz and into the chamber. It had been an excellent trick, for sure, but shorter-lived than he had hoped. As much fun as it was to say he had scared a human to death, it really just meant that the joke had been cut off—rather abruptly too.
Like the rest of the tower, Aryus’s main chamber was unadorned. Just stone floors in a circular room with evenly spaced pillars disappearing into shadows far above their heads. He supposed it did have a sense of grandeur, in a way. And once, he would have had a fete in such thick dark as cloaked the room’s corners.
Soon he would again.
In the center of the room stood a circular altar carved with the same crude runes as they found on the tower’s wall. Seated atop it, amid a pile of desiccated petals, was a simple, ivory horn.
To call mortals to their deaths, Va'al supposed. Though he had always thought a blade would be more fitting.
“That was easy, eh?” Va'al said, picking the horn up and holding it out to Enyo. “I suppose they thought the puzzle at the door deterrent enough.”
Hefting the horn in her hand, Enyo only shrugged. “Why would they have bothered to hide or protect their artifact? The entire point was for someone to touch it and bring them back, should anything ever happen.
