RUMPELSTILTSKIN RETELLING.
"I challenge you to find my name, princess. Three tries." Light flickers beneath the recesses of his mask, the wooden fangs and shadowed eyes. "Think you can beat me?"
***
A witch doctor, user of dark magic, terrorizes a...
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"This gold," Cato bites deep into the metal until it snaps in two, blood dripping down his teeth from where he makes the puncture wounds, "is tainted."
"Yes," Sol begins patiently, as though speaking to a child, and not the god of war. "Princess Arnina took gold that was meant for someone called Rangda. She gave it to you in the hopes you could help us catch a witch doctor."
Cato snorts, going back for his liquor, the sacrificial goblet overflowing with ram's blood and wine mixed together. It smells intoxicating, salted, and otherwise disgusting, like actual war. His eyes whir and click, advanced Lune technology from when he lost his own eyes at the end of the First Divine war. They'd never quite fit right after Kane had stolen Cato's eyes in revenge.
Gods, they squabble like children. And it's all fun and games until someone loses both their eyes.
"The Jiwanese people have their own gods. What's it to me?" He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, leaping off the altar and taking some smoked meat haunches with him.
"Well, father," Sol starts, and Cato's eye twitches at the honest informality. "If the witch doctor keeps killing at the rate he does, you won't have any villagers left in Raja to worship you. Bring you pretty baubles, fine offerings."
"You want me to kill someone." He starts, bluntly. Scratching an old scab, ripping the wound open and healing almost instantly again.
"To help us kill someone." I awkwardly butt into Sol and Cato's tense family bonding time. Talk of war and hunting and bloodshed makes me antsy. Makes me want to do something instead of plotting all day. "I plan on making this witch doctor my first capture."
Prove I'm more than what the gods made me, more than just a regular princess, sitting on a royal cushion all day.
"Well, well, well, Princess Arnina. Your father, Elio, used to be my Champion, you know. A fine fighter. Ripped a golem's heart out with his bare hands. Didn't appreciate my gifts much though. Something about my causing eternal pain and suffering just to give him near-invincible strength. Too weak, a pity." Cato shrugs, and I flinch at his casually mentioning Baba Elio's cursed tattoos, the ones that caused him to bleed every morning like a thousand cuts were all over his body, burning his skin for hours on end. Not a gift, a curse. "Do you like my gifts better than the others'?"
I shrug, hefting Baqir as my non-response.
"She's quite the fighter." Sol speaks for me.
"Good," Cato reaches down and pulls out a net, twined every few hand-lengths with flesh-cutting wire, bits of gold and painted with sigils no larger than my fingernails. "Take this. Divine netting to catch a magical nuisance. You'll have to get close though, close enough to see the fear in the sorcerer's eyes."
Close enough to get mauled with his masked fangs, witching talons.
I bow, leaving the temple.
"Are you up to the challenge, princess?" Cato's voice barks out, eyes blazing. "What am I saying, you're alwaysup to the challenge."
I bristle, hearing Cato's slightly drunken, lethal laughter follow me out the temple. The spiraling arches. The geometric patterns and endless heaps of rusted and newly forged weapons strewn about. Some bloodied, some too new to have been used. Lots of slaughtered animals, roasting on spits. Occasionally, bits of perfumed women's veils, love letters to satiate Cato's other desires. I want to profane his name. I want to reject all Rahasian gods, wondering why they always cause trouble at the humans' expense. Wondering why even gods of Jiwa cause trouble here, when we can't even manage the Rahasian ones.
"Arni..." Sol warns, following me, "he might be a jackass, but he's not just my father. He's a god. It'd be suicidal to take him on."
I grit my teeth, clenching the Divine netting so hard that it cuts through the soft pad of my fingers. My blood drips down the wires. Focusing on the red-hot pain, I make my way out the temple, the god of war's laughter following me.
