Godsforsaken

Chapter 59: Wilhelm

An entire army of some of the vilest creatures of the Black Goat turned to face me as one. Goblins nocked arrows, goat-orcs raised their harpoons and the weird goat trolls... Well, they seemed to be somewhat aware. Trolls weren't really known for their intelligence and the Black Goat's corruption didn't seem to have changed that much.

But before the entire army could descend upon me the cloaked figure bellowed:

“Halt!”

Every single one of the creatures stopped dead and I couldn't blame them. The voice had had that kind of authority behind it. It was clearly the same cultist we had encountered in the bowels of the Crystal Crown's dungeon but where it had sounded arrogant and faintly condescending back then now it sounded like the voice of a ruler. The voice of someone who knew they would be obeyed. Yes. If I'd had any doubts left that this was Prince Wilhelm, they were gone now.

“And here I thought guarding this portal would be boring,” he said as he rose from his crystal chair, pulling the cowl off his face and revealing the same blank mask he'd worn back in the dungeon. “I have no idea how you managed to defeat the Mother Of Them All but you should not have come here.”

“I still need to collect a pound of flesh from you for trying to kill Anna,” I said. “Wilhelm.”

He chuckled and reached up to pull off the mask. Sure enough, it was Wilhelm, the mousy prince with the long brown hair we'd seen at the gala dinner. “How long did it take you to figure it out?” he asked. “Be honest.”

“A day after we beat your pet monster,” Anna said as she stepped up beside me, causing Wilhelm to flinch ever-so-slightly. “We showed your sword to mother, except it wasn't red anymore in daylight.”

His expression soured a bit and I thanks to my superhuman hearing I could faintly hear him muttering to himself: “That sword was supposed to have vanished.” But then his expression brightened back up again and he addressed us again: “Shame. I had hoped you would suspect Richard for a while. Such a heated argument and then suddenly a ruby blade is launched at your back.”

“Except it wasn't ruby, was it?” I replied. “You wield alexandrite, a gemstone as two-faced as you.”

“Ouch,” he said, mock hurt in his voice.

“So, sounds like you don't have your own powers under control, huh?” I said. “Otherwise you could have made that sword vanish.”

He bared his teeth at me. Apparently that one had stung.

“Anna is twice the crystal summoner that you are,” I told him, then decided to start fishing. “By any chance, were you the one who arranged for her trainer's death, too?”

Anna looked up at that but Wilhelm just chuckled.

“No, that was Marcus,” he said airily, then turned to look at Anna. “My baby sister doesn't want to see it but Marcus is trying his damndest to keep everyone else down. An assassination attempt here, a poisoning there, maybe a missive goes missing and someone fails to fulfill an obligation or other. He's really not very subtle about it. There's a reason mother briefs people in private these days.”

The assassins in Calice had been sent by Prince Marcus? On the one hand I was cautious to believe anything a cultist of Shub-Niggurath told me but King Luke had mentioned something similar about Prince Marcus. But if Wilhelm was telling the truth, then...

“So you decided to take up with the Holy Maiden before Marcus could bump you off?”

“Something like that,” he said. “Once you meet her you will understand. She is radiance, she is beauty. She makes this world make sense. And she has led me beyond death, beyond the shackles of the mortal coil.” That boded poorly. What Wilhelm was saying was classic delusional cultist bullshit but at the same time with cultists of Shub-Niggurath there was every chance that what he was saying was meant literally. He didn't look like a Blessed of Shub-Niggurath but if there were other ways for worshipers of the Black Goat to transcend mortality then this Holy Maiden likely knew of them.

“And part of what she did to you messes with your crystal powers,” I said, not bothering to make it a question.

He gritted his teeth but then relaxed and let out a sigh. “If you must know, yes, my crystal powers have become less reliable after she blessed me. But believe me, it's a small price to pay for what I've gained.”

“Yeah,” I said, “being able to summon enough Darklight to blow clean through a dungeon boss.”

“You saw that, did you?” he asked with manic glee in his voice. “And yet, despite knowing what I'm capable of, here you are, intent on facing me.” He paused. “Although... why are you here? I doubt I rate highly enough on mother's list of problems for you to have come all the way here for me.” He looked past Anna and me at our group. “Ah, I see. You are freeing Olympus. How noble. But have you considered that the Olympians might be getting exactly what they deserve right now?”

I exchanged a look with Hermes. We'd had this exact conversation before. “Look, buddy,” I said, “you won't find anyone in the Trismegistian kingdom who agrees with you more that a portion of the Olympians do have some retribution coming for the way they've been treating the mortals but you have sided with Outsiders to do it. Would it suck to be ruled by the Olympians any more than we are? Absolutely. Would it suck any less to be ruled by the Black Goat? No.”

“You are only saying that because you've only encountered us as enemies so far,” he said. Was this lunatic seriously trying to talk us into switching sides right now?

“Just a few hours ago we met that little cult you had stationed in the Temple of Zeus,” I said. “If that's how your people act when they're being amicable then believe me, I want no part in it.”

He rolled his eyes. “If you encountered these cultists then you must have seen what kind of faith they followed before they converted to the Dark Mother. You must have seen the degeneracy, the statues capturing Zeus' perversions in lurid detail. It's not just that Zeus is the kind of degenerate who does that but his followers actively worship him for it.” Gods damn it, he was actually talking sense now. Kind of.

“And yet,” I said, “your Holy Maiden looked at precisely those degenerates and decided that they should be part of her congregation.”

“They were a necessary evil,” he said. “We needed a guard dog to protect this entrance to Olympus. It doesn't matter how ugly a guard dog is, so long as it bites when it's supposed to.”

I didn't say anything. The worst part about his speech was that he was talking sense, in a twisted way.

“I just wish I could make you see how wonderful the Holy Maiden is,” he continued. “Her gifts to us are so much purer than what she gave those degenerates.” He gestured down at his body. It was still clad in a brown cloak but there were no obvious lumps, no obvious signs of physical corruption. “Look at me. I did not turn into a freakshow the way these degenerates did.”

“What did she do to you, anyway?” I asked. “Are you some kind of Dark Lord?”

“In a way,” he said. “I have access to powerful miracles and these beasts,” he gestured at the goat-orcs, goblins and trolls around him, “listen to me. But I'm not shackled to any kind of castle. And those gifts are only the smallest part of what she granted me.”

“Immortality,” I said, “but you don't much look like a Blessed of Shub-Niggurath to me so I have to assume she had some other kind of trick in store for you.”

He chuckled. “You're just fishing now. But to answer your question, I never claimed to be immortal. In fact, after everything we did here I must say I pity the gods for their immortality. They can be chained up and tortured indefinitely. Catch them at the seat of their power and you can kill them over and over and over again and they'll just show up in the exact same place. For a while a group of orcs made a sport out of seeing how many of Hera's heads they could collect. That was a lot of fun to watch. But I don't have to worry about any of that.”

“So what happened to you, then?”

“I transcended mortality,” he said. “And that's all I'll say on the matter. Now, while this chat has been fun, I wouldn't make for a very good sentry if I didn't stop you here, would I?”

“Don't you want to know what we're here in Hades' tholos to do?” I asked.

“It doesn't really matter,” he said. “Either you're here to open an escape route for the Olympians or you have reinforcements waiting behind that portal. Either way, I need to stop you here or the Holy Maiden will be disappointed.”

Well, wasn't that an idea? If things went truly south we could just run through that portal. I mean, I had no interest in leaving things unfinished here but if the worst did occur then this portal would give us an option.

“In that case I have a suggestion, Will.”

He bristled at the nickname but then said: “Go on.”

“You have this huge army and we have six gods along. Sounds like that could get pretty messy. So how about instead of a huge fight you and I duel?”

He seemed to be considering it so I decided to give him a push: “You said you don't have to worry about dying so it's not as if you have anything to lose here.”

He considered a moment longer, then said: “You know what? I have been bored to tears lately, so fine.” He turned to his menagerie of monsters and said: “Make a circle. And whoever interferes I will flay them myself.” A few of the more ambitious goblins still had their bows raised but they dropped them at the threat.

Obviously I had no intention of fighting a proper duel and I could tell that if he lost he would simply sic his army after us anyway but this wasn't about having an honorable duel. It was about buying Melinoe as much time as she needed. Of course, part of me was already growing suspicious that she hadn't opened the portal yet but I decided to put my doubts aside and walked towards the circle Wilhelm had cleared.

My way forward was free except for a single goat-orc, either too stupid or too malevolent to let me pass, so I summoned Qi to my fist and slammed it into his sternum. A normal punch like that would have merely made my opponent crumble but reinforced with Qi the strike instead sent the creature flying to land at Wilhelm's feet.

Wilhelm, for his part, looked at the goat-orc like something he'd just scraped off his boot and I was curious to see what the little prince had in store for him. He had given explicit instructions not to interfere and that creature had violated them. If he didn't make an example of the beast he would look weak to the rest of his army. And his reaction didn't disappoint.

He summoned a crystal blade, blood-red in the artificial light of the crystals illuminating the tholos, and carved a shallow line across the goat-orc's body, then leaned down to whisper something into his floppy goat ear. As he whispered he summoned up a ball of Darklight and then pressed it against the goat-orc's ear. The energy sank into it and a moment later the beast's skin exploded. A barrier snapped into existence around the beast, not to protect it but to keep the mess contained, and when the grotesque spectacle was over Wilhelm dismissed the barrier with a flick of his wrist, then kicked the body off to the side, letting it careen into one of the goblin barricades. The goblins descended on the skinless but still alive goat-orc, ripping the flesh off of the fucker with their teeth and claws.

“So you're not all talk,” I said.

“You need to be literal with these pests,” he said. “If you threaten them with flaying you actually have to follow through with it or they just don't take you seriously.”

“Are they also a necessary evil?” I asked, referring to his earlier claim about the cultists.

“They are.”

“Lot of that going around,” I said. “At what point do the necessary evils of your side start to outweigh what the other side is doing?”

That seemed to actually give him pause but then he shook his head. “You won't make me stray from my path. I will achieve the Holy Maiden's dream.”

“And what is that dream?” I asked, feeling like I was cutting to the heart of the matter.

“Unity,” he said. “Equality. Peace. Happiness for everyone. No discrimination, no starvation, no suffering, no loneliness. A world where everyone can be content.”

Sure, I thought. Once everyone's a fucked-up goat monster, there won't be any more conflicts. Great. But instead of saying that I asked: “And how many corpses is that dream worth?”

“A mountain tall enough to crest the skies,” he said and that was when I knew there would be no more talking to this guy. I took a ready stance and saw him do the same.

Hurry up, Melinoe, I thought.