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When I rose to the highest point of the wheel, the priest standing on the scaffold dug his bloodied hand back into the gaping cleft on my abdomen. He rummaged through my organs with one hand, giving his nods and frowns, then let the quill in his other hand note all the peculiarities of an undying god.
“What a curious creature you are,” he murmured, his robes drenched in sweat from the sweltering heat that radiated back from the ceiling. “A stab to the heart will do as little to you as the removal of your guts, aside from weakening you temporarily. Another turn, please.”
A swell of blood oozed from the hole in my body, veining across the welts and pustules that covered my skin. How long I’d been here, I couldn’t say—I’d stopped counting the days when they’d cleaned powdered bone and spikes from the furrows in the rock.
The high priests had gone through great trouble indeed, amassing enough knowledge to keep me here; reducing a god to a drooling creature with his guts dangling from a crater in his abdomen, while somewhere between hisses and pops, his penis shriveled away once more.
When the fire engulfed me, again and again, I couldn’t think past the dense fog of misery. One turn blurred into the next, and the only thing keeping my mind from descending into hysteria was the memory of Ada’s vow. I needed my little one; I needed to return to my wife. I was growing more and more willing to scream for it, beg for it, to throw myself at the goodness of mortals I knew did not exist.
I emerged from the flames to the creak of hinges. An armed mortal entered my dungeon, his trembling hand wrapped around the pommel of his sword. Sweat glistened on his forehead and his shoulders bobbed with each studded step of his metal-plated boots.
“What is this about?” the man by the wheel said. “High Priest Dekalon ordered that nobody—”
His words died on the sword as it sunk into his ribcage, only for the blade to sever his spine and let him collapse to the ground at an odd angle.
A spark of hope.
Until the wheel shifted, slowly at first, only for my weight to rip me down into the fire once more. Coals seared into my chest to the sound of metallic clanks. The stench of burnt blood ripped a scream from my throat until my voice died at the scorching, scalding heat that flayed my lungs from the inside.
Die.
I wanted to die.
Wanted to die…
Wanted to—
“Ew.” Yarin’s familiar voice wafted through the thick smoke of charred hair as I lifted toward the ceiling once more. “Let me tell you, breathing through the stench alone calls for at least fifty corpses, sixty if you need me to stuff your guts… Oh my, is this truly my brother? Hard to tell with half your face carved down to the skull—” A hiss. “Bastards cut your pecker off. Oh, I do commiserate with you on that particularity.”
I blinked him into sharpness as he climbed over me and lifted the heavy chains to thread them through the spokes. “I… called… for you.”
“Yes, about that.” He brushed a rust stain from his tailored green jacket before he set to work on another chain. “See, I wanted to come to your aid sooner, you have to believe me. In fact, I was at a brothel when thoughts about your torture reached me. I wanted to come immediately. Right after I finished. But then Eilam showed up. Oh, what a mess it was. Uh… do help me with breaking this chain.”
Against the weakness in my limbs, I braced my heel against a spoke and fought the constraints of iron. “Pull harder…”
“That’s what she said, but then Eilam came. And as it so goes with our brother, everyone dropped dead. There I was, my hands on this woman’s hips, about to pull her onto my length…” He ripped through the chain with a spark, then let it clank down along the wheel. “So confusing. What does one do in such a moment? Should I stop? Should I finish? What are the divine rules here? After all…”
His voice faded away.
My mind spiraled on its wobbly axis as I sat up and stared down at my gnarled legs. Their bones had healed into the weave of the spokes, leaving me no choice but to break them once more. Nine pounds of my fist shattered them into a hundred pieces, allowing me to pull first one, then the other, from the constraints of the wheel.
“I dare say I had an onslaught of… morality of some sort,” the God of Whispers continued as he climbed back onto the scaffold. “Such a lovely woman. Anyway, Eilam threatened to follow me to every whorehouse across the realms should I aid you. What a waste of fine women that would be. Oh, you vexed him so, Enosh. The drowning didn’t help our thoroughly dysfunctional family. Oh, you do look rather beaten. Good thing I convinced that archer to kill most of the guards.”
Saliva pooled beneath my tongue as I pushed my liver back where it ought to be for faster healing, only one thing on my mind. “I have… have to go home.”
Back to my wife.
Nothing else mattered.
Not yet.
“Home. Yes, of course. You ought to rest.” Yarin made his descent, his voice like fangs digging into my brain. “In the end, I mentioned balance. There has to be balance, but how, if our brother is being carved up like a pig?”
I inched toward the scaffold. My legs refused to obey; still broken enough, I had to lift and drag them by hand. No matter. Out. Just out. I let myself roll over the edge. My arms paddled the thick air, and I sucked in a sharp breath before—
Crack.
My skull shattered on the rock, and all air burst from my lungs. Blood seasoned my teeth as the dungeon spun around me, and Yarin’s chatter faded into blissful silence. A ringing followed, then the pop of flames, and finally…
