Suddenly the stone started to shatter without warning, and he leapt backward. All of Ahaesarus’s lessons abandoned him, and he cowered by the moss at the river’s edge, looking on in wide-eyed terror as the boulder changed shape. Arms burst from within it, legs lifting its bulk off the ground. A head smashed through the top, rising on a regal neck. Stone eyelids opened, revealing soft, glowing eyes.
Then Ashhur stood before him, a majestic being of granite. The star etching shone on his chest like a sigil. When the god ran his fingers through his beard, shards of rock rained down like dandruff. Geris scuttled back to avoid the falling debris, then rose on a single knee and bowed before his deity. Ashhur knelt down, extending one monstrous, rocky hand to him, a gesture of acceptance and love. Geris smiled and stared back at the stone god, feeling safe once more, secure in the presence of Ashhur’s everlasting grace.
I love you, child, the god said, though his stone lips did not move. The old demons cannot hurt you here.
Geris touched Ashhur’s fingers, which were just as cold and smooth as the boulder had been before the change. The stone god’s head tilted to the side, gazing at him with an emotionless countenance, and Geris felt the adoration that had infused his heart begin to waver. This was not the Ashhur he knew, a deity of love and forgiveness whose gaze always conveyed warmth. The expressionless face was a lie; the sturdy stone body a false idol. He withdrew his hand and retreated a step, his foot slipping on the moss-covered riverbank.
From behind the false god came a squishing sound, like worms in wet soil. Black feelers slid out of the darkness, wrapping themselves around the legs of the stone Ashhur. More feelers worked their way across the giant’s chest, then its neck, twining down both its arms with tightly flexed, serpentine movements. The stone Ashhur screamed, a noise like a fistful of pebbles ground together, before being forced to its knees.
Geris crouched, frozen in place, as the slithering appendages pulled and pulled, gradually cracking the stone god down the middle, splitting the star ensign in two. The god’s head lolled back, uttered another scream, and then for a maddening span of time, all went silent.
From the darkness emerged a face. It rose over the stone god’s shoulder, the most hideous thing Geris had ever seen, oily flesh covered with thick boils and with a hole for a nose. Then the face started shifting. First it became a hideous fanged beast with oversized tusks, then a single-eyed blob with snaking ropes of tissue for skin, then Celestia’s glowing visage, then Ashhur’s, and then Karak’s. The image of the eastern god lingered for a moment before it too shifted, the ears rising upward, the snout elongating, whiskers growing from around the nose. The stone Ashhur was pulled lower to the ground despite its protests, and when the change was complete, the dream demon leapt on the false god’s chest, a fully formed black lion of rippling muscle and sharp teeth. One of its claws raked against stone Ashhur’s breast, creating a smattering of rocks as it grooved the edge of the star ensign.
“The god has forgotten his place,” the shadow-lion said in a hissing voice. “The Lord of Justice has fallen in love with another. He cares not about you-only her.”
“That’s not true,” Geris whispered, his heart thrashing wildly in his chest.
“Is it not? Then why send his most trusted servant away? Why allow your friend’s death to go unavenged? He spends each evening wrapped in the embrace of the goddess. Look, her sign is upon him now, plain as the day is long.”
“That’s not Ashhur,” said Geris defiantly.
“No? Let us see.”
The shadow-lion sank its fangs into the side of Ashhur’s neck, yanking and pulling with all its might, loosening the stones and sending them tumbling down the god’s boulder of a chest. As the granite chipped away, Geris saw true flesh emerge, pink and smooth as the satin sheets on his bed in the Sanctuary. Geris began to scream as Ashhur’s true image emerged, his eyes wide with terror as the shadow-lion mauled him. The stone became a prison around him, leaving him vulnerable. Geris tried to run toward his god, desperate to somehow protect him, but more feelers shot out of the darkness, binding him in place. He struggled against them, his joints stretched to the breaking point.
Ashhur released a final cry of pain before the shadow-lion ripped out his throat. Blood-like stars trickled from its gaping maw, floating vertically through the air, a progressing stream of iridescence. The prison of stone crumbled, and the god’s body pitched over, falling face down in the moss. Geris stared at it, wide-eyed, while the shadow-lion sauntered slowly over the unmoving carcass.
“Faith is like a mountain,” the beast said. “The foundation is wide and strong, but should that foundation weaken, hollowed out from within, the mountain crumbles, and all who stand upon it will perish.”
The shadow-lion leapt at him, claws outstretched, the shimmering blood of Ashhur dripping upward from its snarling lips. Geris tried to move but couldn’t, couldn’t…until he awoke with a start, covered in sweat and panting, his head pounding as if struck by a twelve-pound hammer. He heard a series of wretched sobs leak from his own throat. His body shivered uncontrollably, still locked in the physical sensation of the nightmare. He closed his eyes and tried counting his breaths, another trick Ahaesarus had taught him, and eventually he felt his heart begin to slow. His fear, however, remained unabated. He didn’t want to open his eyes. The demon could be out there, the impersonator who had destroyed his Lord and creator in the recesses of his sleeping mind.
Very slowly he pried open one eye, then the other. He saw a lantern burning softly in the corner of the single-room hut that he and his family called home. His two brothers were asleep beside him, his four sisters in their bed a foot away. Baby Roman, not even a year old, snored quietly in his wicker basinet. Geris rose up on his elbow, taking care not to rouse his siblings, and gazed at his parents’ bed beneath the eastern window across from his. They too were sleeping, their bodies twined together. He watched their chests rise and fall, rise and fall. Then, tentatively, he leaned over the side of his straw-filled mattress, gazing from one end of the cabin to the other, seeking out any movement in the darkness. There was none. He lay back down and crossed his arms over his chest, hoping he could get some rest despite his shivering body. The words of the shadow-lion lingered in his mind as sleep finally took him.
He cares not about you-only her.
“Geris, sit down,” said Ahaesarus. “We have something to discuss.”
Geris bowed his head and stepped into his mentor’s large tent. The tent’s fabric walls were white and nearly sheer, and the top stood at least thirteen feet high. The Warden himself sat at a rectangular table in the center of the living area, where a simple carpet had been situated atop the grass. Ahaesarus’s minimal clothing was stacked atop a wide, flat stone, teetering like a collapsing tree. Geris stopped in front the pile and straightened it; delaying the inevitable with simple chores was a nervous tick he’d developed since joining the lordship.
“Kingling, stop fiddling with the laundry and come to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He approached the desk and sat in the chair opposite his mentor. Ahaesarus cut an intimidating figure even while seated, his height accentuated by his broad chest and shoulders. The Warden had a head of long hair that was as gold as the sunrise, smooth tresses that hung straight over his shoulders and came to rest just above his midsection. His eyes were a brilliant green that seemed to shine even come nightfall. With daylight pouring in through the gossamer walls of the tent, they were almost haunting in their brightness.