Order and Chaos

i dunno how you'd fight him, but ask him to just manifest physically because he can just do that and finish off the rest of the gods

"I've got a better idea," I said. "Why don't you just manifest physically and finish what you started? Kill off the rest of the gods?" My troops murmured in approval, agreement, assent.

Malcolm paused. "Did you remain at the home of the gods? Can you point me at a live god, right now? No!"

"That shouldn't matter if you can manifest anywhere you want all willy-nilly," I said. I could feel my troop's morale increasing ever-so-slightly; a verbal battleground was a much more natural fit for me than an actual battleground.

Malcolm paused again. It was hard to tell behind that facemask, but I was almost certain he was... actually thinking. "How," he finally said, "do you think I am currently manifesting? Only by the permission and power of the living, grateful gods, who I, dead Malcolm Vindictus, can no longer harm."

It was an argumentative dead-end, and made me look the fool despite not possibly having known about that fact. Or was it a fact? Something smelled fishy to me. Why was he not able to summon that ghosts-can't-kill-gods clause up in an instant? Still, though, if Malcolm COULD kill gods from beyond the grave, he probably would have already...

"The great orator Commun Marx," chuckled Malcolm, "struck silent! He is now forced to admit his cowardice. Perhaps she is right, perhaps it is better to be a traitor than a cowardly husk of a man, and you should hand over the reins to her. Come on, you chickenshit. Land one hit."

Inside I felt something primal surge within me — what was left of my minuscule pride, after weeks of getting beat down. In anger, I lunged forward at my ghost boyfriend and swung down my sword with all my might. I only dented his armor, and fell over backwards right after. Malcolm chuckled, but the crowd gasped at the sheer audacity of the attack. In seconds he had his own sword at my throat.

"Give up?" He was practically smirking through his mask. I rolled out from the underneath the sword and, without even turning over onto my face, kicked his legs out from under him so he fell back into the snow (bruising my shin on his armor.) We both tried to stand up. I slipped back down, deeper into the snow, twice, but he didn't even get up once in his heavy full platemail before I had my foot on his throat. He grabbed my leg, but at the same time I swung the flat of my sword at his head, like it were a golf club.

His head went flying and his arms fell back down to his side. I did not mean for that to happen. I even used the flat of the blade. This was not right.

Someone went out to fetch the helmet. "It's empty!" she hollered. The armor was empty too. It didn't make sense, but the army under my command seemed to think I had bested Malcolm in a brief, furious spat. It cut out any talk of mutiny, but... no obvious boon was forthcoming. Perhaps I had not truly won the war, but merely a battle? Perhaps I had just... killed him off, for good now. I couldn't bear the thought and pushed it far from my mind as I donned the armor and led my troops, now unquestioned, down out of the snowy peak and into the rockier territory winding down the mountain. The stones cut their feet like they had been whipped. We filled our canteens from the rivers and waterfalls of melted ice from above, which we would follow into the desert.

Water splashed on my face. I shot up like a bolt and swiveled my head around, trying to get a bearing on where it had come from, but quickly got very dizzy and fell back down onto the bed. Wait — bed? Bed. I woozily turned my head to face the rest of the humble wooden room.

Sir Nose in the corner sprayed me with his trunk again, grinning. "Good morning, kidd," he said, handing me the glass of water he had been drinking from. I swatted it out of his hand and onto the floor.

"Demon," I spat, hoarsely. I really, really did need that glass of water. "Wake me up. Now."

"I just did!" he said. "And I'm not a demon. I'm a celest."

"Wake me up," I said.

"Not a bad guess, since I am the subliminal seducer, but I had to get out of your mind to take your dead ass west. You shouldn't have taken that armor. It made you hot, made your temperature rise."

"...Liar," I said, eyeing the armor and sword (in a pile in the furthest corner. Damn.) "Wake me up."

"You're up! From the heat stroke!" he said. "You're dizzy, you got a headache, and talk about the agony of defeet!"

I was too tired to argue any more. "Let me be," I said, collapsing back into my pillow.

"That's the spirit!" he smiled. Ugh, what? "It ain't like you're crooning 'bout how you misjudged me, but I'll take what I can get. Now I gotta go 'cause you're running behind schedule, but like usual, I'll be watching you move your body." He made finger-guns with both his hands and also his trunk, then blinked out of existence.

Man, fuck that guy. I rolled over and lied down so I was facing the wall, then put my pillow over my head.

"Oh, you're up!" said a different voice from behind me. Ugh, I had to roll over AGAIN?

It was worth rolling over for this beauty, though. It was another bad case of the I'm gay, and it made me smile inside and out.

"I brought you a sandwich and a dress," she said. She had brought me a sandwich and a dress. One of her own, no doubt.

"Thank you," I croaked.

"You need more water. Other than what's all over your face," she giggled, and started looking through the room for the glass she must have left for me. She found a shard. "Oh," she said, confused. "I'll... get you another one. I'll be right back."

She left again, and I took the opportunity to slip into the (very modest and plain) clothes she left behind for me and start on the sandwich. It was hard to chew and swallow even one bite without all my saliva, so as soon as she returned, I grabbed for the water and washed it down.

"Can I ask," she said, "what happened to your hair?"

"Burned off," I said.

"Is that why it's white?" she said.

I put my hand to my head and grabbed a lock of hair. It was short, but I must have been out for a couple of days! "Uh," I said, "just born that way," I said, and smiled.

"I should let you get some rest," she said, and left.

For the next two weeks I lived with her. I recovered within the first, really, but... couldn't bring myself to leave. She was the only person around for miles, with only camels for companionship, and had to live off of what she could grow and harvest from her spot next to a river but in the middle of a desert. (Mostly, corn.) She was almost 21 and not even married. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she never met her mother. I didn't tell her anything about myself, for obvious reasons. Mostly, we just talked about books. Neither of us said or did anything about it or to acknowledge it, but we fell in love with each other. I was certain that this is why De had sent me west.

Which is why it fucked me up so much to find her corpse in the top of the hayloft after I had nipped up there to investigate a rotten smell. I got up close — though the body had been decomposing for quite some time in the hot desert, I could tell it was definitely the corpse of my host.

"Mary!" I heard her holler from the ranch, sweetly. My stomach churned. "Are you done feeding the camels? I made corn soup!"

What the fuck? What the fuck?!