Mark of the Goddess

In the aftermath, Leo did not immediately move. He gasped great, heaving breaths as the battle high wore off and a fresh new exhaustion set in, accompanied by the bitterness of the cold.

He stumbled to a knee and groaned.

“Spirit, are you still there?”

“I am,” she said, appearing beside him. “You did well, Leo.”

She placed a hand under his chin and guided him to look upon her.

The woman was beautiful in the pale moonlight, moreso than any woman that Leo had ever seen. Her touch was gentle and delicate, her eyes were as star-filled as the night sky above her.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She leaned forward and gently pressed her forehead against his, her eyes filling his vision. “I am called many things. I am the knife that cuts the thread of fate. I am laughter in the face of death. I am the call to rise when the world commands thee kneel.

“I am Fia: Goddess of the Unconquered. And you, Leodragus of Carthedel, are now my champion. My Invictus.”

She reached up and touched a hand to Leo’s neck, and Leo felt a strange new warmth radiate around his slave brand.

“What are you doing?”

“You have been claimed by the mark of another god. I am rectifying that.” She pulled gently away from him and produced a handglass in her palm. “See for yourself, Leo.”

In the mirror, Leo saw himself for the first time in years. Gods, but he looked like hell. In two years, he looked like he’d aged ten, with gaunt, leathery skin and faraway azure eyes. His hair was shaggy and long, and his beard—still not quite able to grow fully in—was matted with salt against his face.

But true to Fia’s word, there was a new mark on Leo’s neck, just to the left of his throat. It covered the calligraphic symbol for slave with a new, unfamiliar symbol. It reminded Leo of a horseshoe, with a sword drawn across the center, its guard resting on the branches of the shoe. A series of lines, circles, and glyphs encompassed the the strange symbol, but the sword-crossed horseshoe was the centermost piece of the sigil.

Did I just trade one slave brand for another?

The thought must have appeared on his face, for Fia asked, “You disapprove?”

“What does this mark even mean?”

“It is proof that you have accepted my oath. Where the slave brand before was burned into your flesh against your will, the mark of Invictus was seared onto your very soul when you became my champion. It is proof to the other gods that you have been claimed.

“Additionally, there is a matching mark made into my own flesh, as proof I have accepted a champion and cannot claim any other.”

Leo blinked in surprise and rose to examine Fia’s neck. Sure enough, there was a matching sigil inscribed as if with black ink, glimmering in the moonlight. It was, in fact, the only mark on her flawless skin.

He leaned in close, inspecting the intricate lines that surrounded the core glyph. Now that he saw it up close, Leo thought that maybe he’d seen it before, though he couldn’t remember where.

“Um, Leo?” said the goddess, suddenly sounding… timid? “You’re awfully close to me.”

Leo straightened up and backed off. “Sorry. I imagine I don’t smell too good at the moment.”

“No, that’s not it.” Fia shook her head. Then she took a moment to collect herself, regaining her previous air of regality. “Now that I have chosen you, I shall be your companion for the duration of the Game of Gods, or until one of us dies.”

That revelation startled Leo. “Gods can die?”

“Normally, no. But during the Game of Gods, yes. In fact, it is common.”

“So what happens to a god when you die?”

“I…” Fia hesitated, and the air of regality she’d been putting on began to crumble once more. “I actually don’t know.”

Leo pursed his lips and considered pursuing the subject, but a fresh gale of freezing wind swept across the deck, making him shiver. Then, to his surprise, Fia shivered as well.

“Gods, it is freezing,” he said. “Why didn’t I feel cold during the fight? And why are you suddenly cold?”

Fia rubbed her hands across her bare arms. She was not dressed for winter. “To answer the first question, it is because you were in the heat of battle. My blessing grants you an indomitable spirit. As long as you are fighting with passion, you will be an unstoppable force. But the moment that passion ends, well…”

She gestured to him, and he got the idea.

“As for why I’m cold, it’s because I’m now tied to the mortal realm with you. I retain some of my power as deity, but even that will wax and wane with your battle passion. The longer you go without fighting someone, the more human I become.”

By this point, she had all but abandoned any pretensions at divinity, and was now furiously rubbing her arms to keep warm. “Stars, but I was not prepared for how miserable this cold was.”

Leo glanced down at himself. He was practically naked but for the loincloth that Uric had seen fit to grant him and the other slaves, but he was far more used to the frigid air than Fia seemed to be.

“We should get to shore,” he said, “and find shelter for the night.”

“Agreed,” Fia nodded. “Do you have any plans to get there?”

Leo balked. “What do you mean? You didn’t have a plan when you did this?”

She touched her finger tips together awkwardly. “Not really… I wasn’t even sure if I would make it this far. I was so focused on seeing if you would qualify as my champion that I… forgot to come up with a real exit strategy.”

Leo actually chuckled at the absurdity of his situation. “All right. Let me see what I can figure out. Sharkins probably had to row here on a boat of his own.”

“Oh! That makes sense.”

Sure enough, they found a little row boat moored to the shoreside rail of the slave ship.

“That’ll do,” he said.

“That’s an awfully small boat for a king,” said Fia.

“Sharkins wasn’t actually a king. He was just a bandit with delusions of grandeur.”

“The ice god Mjolric appeared to share that delusion, then.”

That made another question come to Leo’s mind, but he decided he could wait. The goddess was about a foot shorter than him, and she looked like she might actually freeze to death.

“Can you wait for a few minutes?” he asked. “I want to go below deck and search for something.”

She nodded and folded her arms around herself.

Leo descended the stairs to the crew deck once more, finding the water stopped three-quarters of the way up the cabin. Apparently, the floating iceberg spearing through the hull of the ship kept it from sinking.

He descended into the dark, frigid water, just able to touch the bottom with his toes. It was miserably cold, with mist coiling about the surface. Leo half-swam, half-hopped through the open door of the boatmaster’s cabin, guiding himself largely by memory. The lantern that had illuminated the cabin before was long-snuffed, leaving the room as dark as the ocean itself, with only a handful of shafts of moonlight filtering in.

Once Leo was inside the cabin, he took a deep breath and plunged under the water.

It took him several minutes and a dozen tries, but his hands eventually found Uric’s key ring, lying forgotten on the deck of the ship.

He didn’t even bother going up for breath first. Leo simply found the right key and shoved it into his ankle shackle. He grinned when he heard the tell-tale click of the lock opening.