“I should have done this ages ago,” Morgen said to Nacht. “The horror of Unbrauchbar never would have happened.”
You had to see that to get here, said Nacht and Morgen waved the words away.
“I am their centre. Their everything.” He felt bigger, more powerful than ever before. The perfect faith of fifteen thousand true worshippers weighed more than the flawed belief of all Selbsthass. It was intoxicating. “I had no idea,” he said. “They must have harboured so many doubts. Now…” Now that he’d taken their misgivings—now that he’d cleansed them of scepticism—they worshipped him as a perfect god. Their faith was flawless, unsullied. And faith defined reality.
“This is what it feels like to be a god. A real god.” This was what it always should have felt like. He could do anything and could do no wrong.
Fifteen thousand tall and beautiful men and women stood before him, each and every one smiling contentedly.
“My perfect army.”
And when we return to Selbsthass? Nacht asked.
A shiver of pleasure ran through the Geborene god. “Every single man, woman, and child will worship me as their perfect god.” They would be his, the entire city-state. He showed Nacht his own smug grin. “And you said I wouldn’t reach the capital. Gottlos will fall to me. Nothing can stand in my way, no Geisteskranken or Ascended can match me. I shall make all the population of Gottlos mine before I return to Selbsthass. You have failed.”
His Reflection didn’t look worried. It’s time, he repeated.
“For what?”
I’ve stalled us long enough. Erdbehüter, Ungeist, and Drache are dead. It’s time to go to the farmhouse. Nacht pointed south. Just over that hill.
Morgen examined his Reflection. The bastard looked too smug. Have I missed something? Had Nacht somehow won? He stood surrounded by his perfect army, worshipped as a perfect god. How could Nacht think he won? “What’s at the farmhouse?”
Bedeckt, answered his Reflection.
“Stay here,” Morgen told his army and walked south. No one followed. No one moved or shuffled. Fifteen thousand men and women, and Morgen heard no sound from them beyond whispers of breath. Fifteen thousand men and women breathed in perfect unison.
Morgen crossed fields of dead, corpses uncountable. Thousands of Gottlos soldiers had been flattened by Erdbehüter’s rocks or torn open as Ungeist freed their inner demons. Among these were hundreds of dead not dressed in the Gottlos livery. Where they came from Morgen had no idea. Nothing moved and no wounded moaned or screamed their agonies. All was silent.
The scene of horror and destruction broke his heart. None of this needed to happen. No one had to die. He could have taken the Gottlos army with a few words. They’d have followed him, become his. What a waste.
The land was devastated by delusions and he made it perfect as he passed. Before him, mud and ruin. Perfection, healthy verdant hills, followed in his footsteps. The dead he buried under flawless fields of grass. Boulders spoiling the smooth flow of the land, he shoved back under the earth. Soon all Gottlos would be like Selbsthass. Mud and rock served no purpose, did no one any good. How the city-state managed to feed itself with such poor farmlands, he couldn’t imagine. He’d remake the land, shape it as he had Selbsthass. With a thought, he cleared the clouds from the sky and the sun shone warm. Someday soon, when enough believed in him, he would fix the world on a much larger scale. The days would be comfortably warm, always. No snow or cold would spoil an eternal growing season. He’d time the rains so they fell at night when everyone was in bed.
Cresting a hill, he saw a run-down farmhouse in the valley below. Much of the roof looked to have fallen in. There was an odd clearing around the building. No rocks or dead lay within a score of strides of the farmhouse. Morgen was about to repair the farmhouse when, on a whim, he decided to leave it as it was. He didn’t know why. It looked somehow sad.
Morgen entered the homestead through the door even though most of one wall was now a gaping wound. Blood dripped from every surface and long ropes of innards hung from the rafters. Bedeckt lay at his feet, dirty and scarred and stinking of infection, still as only the dead can be. The old man’s face hung slack, not quite peaceful, but also not the way the dead usually looked.
“Where are you?” Morgen asked the corpse. “Who killed you?”
No bonds of service bound Morgen.
The moment Bedeckt left the Afterdeath the Warrior’s Credo ceased to bind you, said Nacht from a shard of glass in a shattered window. The Reflection glanced around, examining the interior of the farmhouse. He returned his attention to Morgen. He was just an old man, never a real threat.
“Then why am I here?” asked the Geborene god, confused.