A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off

A ward wasn’t enough to stem the damage. Not all of it.

Daniel coughed.

Damn Otto. Damn the world to hell.

He clutched his side—the one caught in the blast. Blood soaked through his fingers. Not fatal, but enough to make breathing a task his lungs struggled to keep pace with.

He staggered upright.

Looked around.

No entourage. No backup. Just the dead.

Otto had kept a war memento, apparently.

He wasn’t even a thought in his mother’s womb when the war ended.

As far as Daniel knew, grenades were a demonkin invention—later stolen and reverse-engineered by the Concordant.

Too expensive. Too devastating. Quickly regulated.

The demonkin publicly condemned them. Called it a disgrace. Said it spoiled the “purity of battle.” The Concordant limped off quietly.

So the fact that Otto had one—had kept one—

He hissed through his teeth and gripped the necklace around his neck.

Jujilbarka.

The name pulsed like fire behind his eyes.

A gust of wind slammed into him—he stumbled, looked up.

What in the Steps is this—?

Two shadows descended—Kael and Elisa. Swooping in, fast. Too fast.

Since when could Elisa fly?!

Panic scraped up his throat. He hissed words into the air, felt the green magick of the forest gods rush into his veins.

They never promised him anything. Not really. Only said they could stir the bones of Highcliff.

Only said they’d try.

“Jujilbarka! Hear me!! Apo’kinni’wasrah!”

Kael slammed into him before the words were done, knocking him to the ground—

—but then suddenly froze.

Every muscle locked.

Kael’s eyes wide.

His shadow trembled.

Daniel looked past him.

And there—rising behind the Basin, old stones splitting, light bleeding up from the deep—

Turns out the gods weren’t full of shit after all.

One of Highcliff’s own had come to play again.

\\

Elisa felt it too.

Whatever ancient thing was waking—it clawed through the bones of the land, thrummed through her veins.

She was a demon, after all.

But… apparently not really.

She wasn’t frozen like the others. Just slowed.

Her muscles ached to move, but her voice—her voice was still hers.

And Daniel was right there.

“Gods’ sake, Daniel.” Her voice cracked like flint. “Look at what you’ve done!”

He didn’t answer. Just stood, shoulders trembling, eyes on the light rising from the Basin like it would save him.

“Look around you,” she said, stepping forward. “The many lives you’ve ruined. The bridge had human workers. Human families are in the lake—your lake—caught in the crossfire.”

Her breath hitched.

“To think… we founded the same organisation together.”

Daniel didn’t flinch. “I wanted you dead.”

“So is that it?” she snapped. “Everyone in your way deserves to die?” Her voice rose. “Are you never wrong, Daniel? Is your ego shaped so small that you’ve never questioned the mirror you preach to?”

That hit something.

But he didn’t turn around.

Not yet, because he was soon about to be proven right. About everything.

The light dimmed—not because it faded, but because something stood in its way.

Stone shifted.

Cracked.

Breathed.

Jujilbarka.

He walked across the lake like it was solid ground.

His feet made no splash, no ripple. The surface stilled beneath him, flat and gleaming like obsidian glass.

He wasn't monstrous. Just taller than Kael, just off in the way statues sometimes were—too perfect in proportion, too exact in symmetry. Skin like dark stone etched with quiet veins of green, and behind him, his cloak—or were they wings?—trailed like smoke on the wind. His feathers weren’t feathers. They shimmered behind him like smoke caught in a wind.

He looked like death.

He looked like justice.

Daniel was already kneeling, trembling. “You came… you came, you came, you came…”

Kael said nothing. His fangs were still bared, a soft growl in his throat.

Jujilbarka stopped at the edge of the shore.

He turned his skull slowly toward Elisa.

The lake behind him was still.

Then he turned.

Not fast. Not abrupt.

Jujilbarka faced Daniel.

A god. Answering him. Standing still for him.

Elisa felt it like a weight in her chest. Kael tensed beside her.

This… felt final.

Daniel’s voice was barely a whisper. “I brought you back…”

Jujilbarka spoke, and the world seemed to tilt under the sound. “The Dark remains absent from the shores of Montil’kree.”

“Great Flights Upon Us Your Grace. We’ve been accosted by the very thing you were forged to destroy. The demons—”

“Do not matter nearly as much as you think they do. I know the Dark, and what stands before us is a pittance compared to the havoc they wreak.” The god’s head tilted slightly, birdlike. “Understand, child, that I am no god.”

“…What?”

“Forged by the gods, yes. But things get lost in translation over countless millenia. It is a wonder how I was not summoned the previous two Invasions…”

“It was a lie. You are a lie.”

“You superimposed your will onto mind. You felt that all this destruction and death was worth the cost. The demonkin have invaded, ‘tis true. But your actions have caused undue damage to the very message you are trying to convey. A message worthy of consideration, now warped beyond recognition. And all the lives lost in achieving this ill-gotten goal, what of them?”

A pause, as he seemed to reach deeper into his mind. Or more accurately, Daniel’s. “Yes… I sense your mother’s pain. The flames that kissed her skin. The injustice that shaped you. But I also see what grew from that fire. What was rebuilt. You were handed a cruel fate. But you are not the only one. And vengeance does not qualify as purpose.”

Daniel’s throat tightened. “Then… why return at all?”

“I did not return of my own will. I was summoned. For a purpose. A weapon activated. Now a weapon cooled.”

The lake behind him seemed to still further—quiet as the grave.

“You must sink to the bottom of the lake.”

Silence.

“What… what do you mean?” Daniel’s eyes widened. He stepped back. “Wait—please, stop—”

“As you commanded others to fall for your cause… So too must you fall.”

“I don’t care if I die! You say yourself the demonkin possessed the Dark in them! So deal with them! Please!!”

He stood on his knees now. He begged, the wretched thing.

“Then what was all of this for? What are our gods for if not to protect us?”

“To awaken me without cause is a blasphemy. And this war is not worthy.”

The god’s voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.

“The very thought of looking yourself in the mirror made you physically ill. You kept going, kept doubling down, sprinting past others who laid dead at your feet—even when you didn’t like it—because it was all you had. This was all you had, wasn’t it? The illusion of sacrifice. All you wanted was for others to notice. So you can say in the end—you meant something.”

Daniel’s lips parted, searching for a reply—but none came.

“I… I don’t deserve this.”

“It isn’t about ‘deserve’ anymore, child.”

A sword appeared in Jujilbarka’s hand—seamless, like it had always been there.

And with one smooth motion—

His head was gone.

No scream. No sound.

Just a body crumpling to its knees, then the earth.

At least it was painless.

A mercy.

One of the only ones left.

"Children..."

His voice barely rose, but it filled the air. Still. Final.

Kael and Elisa stood side by side, their breath held.

"...when the Dark comes again... Wake me."

He turned his gaze toward the lake, the water now glassy and green.

"Only your kind can do it."

Elisa assumed he was talking about her. She stepped forward. "What makes us different from any other human?"

Jujilbarka’s head tilted. Slowly. Thoughtfully.

"See the green over the lake?" They did. It pulsed faintly beneath the surface, like veins through earth. "You saw the missile fall from earlier. Long ago, before your histories began..." His voice dipped lower, almost fond. "You will find that those descended from the original inhabitants of this land still possess a blood code that carries with it martial salvation. Diluted over centuries. Faint. But still there."

A pause.

"It will respond again when the time is right." He looked to them again. "And so will I."

He crossed the lake under the green glow, its shimmer wrapping around him like mist.

And when he reached the center—

He stopped.

His limbs stiffened.

That strange, living stone that made up his body began to lose its light.

Veins of green dulled. His wings—if they could be called that—recoiled, folding neatly against his back. And slowly, like a man easing into sleep, Jujilbarka locked into place.

As soon as it happened, Kael dropped to his knees, knocked forward by the sudden loss of his bindings. Elisa rushed to his side, crouching down, hands brushing over muscles still buzzing with pain.

“What…” She struggled for the words. “What did it do to you, Kael?”

“I was h-hoping you’d be the one to tell me.”

“I certainly didn’t expect him to turn out more paladin than warbeast. Entire pantheons are going to need revision.”

Kael gave a breathless laugh, wincing as he shifted. “Culture tends to get lost in a few Bi-Millennial Invasions. People die, knowledge disappears. Only lately have our defences caught up.”

He looked to the sky, squinting at where the missile had disappeared. “The old Highcliffians gave it a solid crack, though. Unnerving how close our blood runs to the Dark…”

Elisa’s smile was soft, but sure. “Don’t forget—I’m the same cloth as you now.”

“Oh… right.” Kael winced as he stood, legs unsteady. “But we’ll talk about your… new needs later.”

His gaze swept over the quiet wreckage around them. “Our people need us.”