[6/30/17]
[Warning: this book is rated PG-13 for gore, violence, sexual situations, and language. I hope you enjoy!]
***
IN THE BEGINNING
Pytha kneels, hands trembling. She stares up, watches the bowl of fire burn, burn. She looks down, the baby goat struggling, all four legs wrapped together with rope, its mouth wrapped shut. It stares at her with its black eyes, and she stares down with her dark ones.
The others chant behind her: the twelve, in a half-circle, Zee and Her in the center. They speak in Ancient Greek, and Pytha watches, numb.
She feels the gods in her mind—they're pushing their way through, all twelve; they're too much, too heavy—the pressure's building. Her vision's blurring, chanting melting into the voices in her head, the gods speaking and yelling and fighting for control, for comfort.
They're screaming.
Screaming for her to control them, push them through her—become more. Become godly. Become them.
She shakes and waits, because she cannot become them, become a god.
Not yet.
She raises the obsidian knife in her hands, watching the goat's black eyes, her own flashing a thousand different colors, face twisting a thousand different ways, voices doubling a thousand more.
Too much
TOOMUCH
DAMMITITISTOOMUCHGETMEOUTTAHERE
GETMEOUTTAHERE
OUTTAHERE
HEREHEREHEREHEREHEREHERE
She holds the knife, and—in one moment, one blissful moment of silence, she sighs. They're quiet.
They're good.
...here, here, HERE—
Pytha hears the rush once more, and she screams, releasing the voices, releasing the tension—she slams the knife into the goat's side, hearing bone and muscle crack and split—
And she collapses, as she has done many times before, and will do again.
The chanting swells. The ground shakes.
The gods are pleased, this time.
This is the story of Pytha: a young woman, a channeler, an oracle, alone. She will be the cause of the end of the world, bringing the gods back to reign and rule and ravage their great, terrible Earth—
And she will also be the one to save us all.
This is her story.
YOU ARE READING
The Godless
FantasyIn which a cult tries to bring back the gods--and succeeds. In which a channeler, an oracle, is caught in the middle of it all. In which the world ends. *** This is only the beginning.
