Tezca threw himself on top of the goddess as she tried to stand. One of her talons raked the length of his calf. He snared her two human arms—locking his fingers around both thin wrists—as he dug his way under her wing. With his free hand, Tezca ripped out fistfuls of feathers and burrowed his way in. He pinned the human limbs beneath his mass and barred his arm across Jade’s neck.

  The gathering storm clouds opened in a downpour. An ear-splitting crack of thunder rang out, but the rumblings that followed were feeble and choppy. Face to face with the goddess, Tezca grinned wide. Even as Jade gnashed her beak, fear filled her unnatural eyes.

  As they struggled, Tezca’s magical strength filled his body like fire. Jade smothered him with her wing and something brutally frigid seeped into Tezca’s lower back, piercing the glorious warmth of his power and shooting numbness into his spine. It was like an icicle had been driven into his flesh.

  Tezca growled through chattering teeth. His limbs stiff and seizing, he forced himself up on one knee to get an angle and buried his fist in one of the wounds on the beast’s chest. He twisted his fist, digging deep into the black-red pit. The shrillness of Jade’s screech caused blood to dribble out of Tezca’s ears.

  A choir of voices, screaming in his head.

  Adrenaline—and satisfaction at the way the goddess writhed—enabled Tezca to keep dredging the wound, but… He howled as that terrible, gelid pain devoured his fist and exploded throughout his body.

  An infestation of infinitesimal spikes, scouring his innards as if to his very soul. The sheer, merciless coldness scraped against his bones, turned his blood into something like freezing slush. Red-black splotches marred his vision, and a discordant whine accompanied the mad choir. They chanted: Rejoice! Rejoice!

  This was an unfathomable agony. Tezca screamed so deeply that blood dribbled down his throat as it tore. His arm lashed like a whip, ripping out of its socket.

  That hand no longer belonged to him. It had been stolen by the wicked coldness.

  Fingers wriggling to the point they blurred, the hand shot toward Tezca’s face, lunging like a rabid animal. He caught the demented limb by its wrist. From the fingertips to the elbow, the flesh was blackened and liquified.

  As he held its crazed desperation at bay—the fingers clutching and jabbing, seeking to rip his face apart—Tezca felt all his inner fire focus in his shoulder, staving off the flood.

  He barely noticed how Jade had broken free of his hold and was gouging his face with her beak. She’d torn his ear off and minced an eyeball. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the frigid knives flaying him to the core.

  Tezca threw himself backward to get away, landing with a splash. The torrential rainfall was already flooding the grove. As it splattered against his face, washing away his mask of blood, he heard Jade’s earlier refrain in his head—I am dying. I am dying.

  His arm’s foreign fury weakened, and the writhing sludge deteriorated. The limb began to melt, bone and all, dripping in slug-like globs.

  Jade’s voice cut above the wailing cacophony in Tezca’s head—their screams were making him dizzy. “You took one sip from the fouled ocean. Look what it did to you. Know that the Yalda’blood fills my veins and consider the depth of your sin.”

  “I’m… sorry,” Tezca croaked. That she was holding this back… He didn’t know. Alas, it was too late.

  All the corrupted flesh had fallen away. A gnarled stump of raw pink tissue grew out of Tezca’s elbow joint. The fire flowed throughout his body again, burning away the cold; swelling in the places where he was injured.

  Spreading her wings, the goddess drew herself upright. She was a monolith. Her talons tore up the grass as she trampled toward him. Green bolts of lightning slashed through the sky.

  Tezca tried to crawl away, but his limbs were weak and jiggly. His vision swirled and bits of his splattered eye were falling out as the new one grew.

  This sudden nausea was more crippling than anything else, though. Tezca was not accustomed to nausea—he had an iron stomach. But his innards gurgled and growled. He wondered if that merlot blood had poisoned him, and he thought it might have been wiser to accept Jade’s offer.

  The sound of beating wings came, and Jade jumped onto Tezca’s back. He collapsed under her weight. Her talons sliced into his flank as she flipped him over onto his back.

  She pounced on him, ripping out chunks of his belly with her feet as he raised his arms against the downward slams of her beak.

  Something thrashed within his guts—this was no stomachache. Not even when he’d eaten an entire cow in one sitting had he felt something like this.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Gods, this is a poetic way for me to die, though. Attempting to kill and eat a goddess. Beautiful, Tezca thought as Jade continued carving him up.

  He reached out, feeling with his hand, and his fingers closed around a stick. Tezca rammed it into Jade’s wound, dropping it as soon as she jumped back. He did not want to risk contact with the poison again.

  Jade had fallen to the ground, screeching as her body twisted, her spine bending in impossible ways.

  Tezca might have taken the chance to attack, but… something was very wrong inside his stomach. He shuddered as he clutched his belly with his hands. The way this pain seemed to move, and even physically jab at his guts…

  The realization made him clench his teeth in terror. Whatever was in his stomach, it was alive. The poison blood must have put a parasite in him. He’d be devoured from within. That was poetic too, in a way, Tezca supposed, but so ghastly.

  “Wuagghahh!” It was coming out. Now. Fingerlike things pressed on Tezca’s esophagus and his gag reflex spasmed. Jade had recovered and was bearing down on him. He spewed a stream of fruit chunks and stomach acid into the face of the goddess.

  “No, no, stop, no,” Tezca wailed, his voice garbled as something punched through his neck from the inside. His jaw snapped as the parasite crawled up his throat.

  Mercifully, Jade relented when Tezca curled up in the fetal position. His eyes bulged as he crossed them to look down. Something small and flesh-like crested from his mouth. The parasite used his lips as handholds and pulled itself fully out. The abomination crawled onto the grass before collapsing.

  Tezca wept. At first, he thought he’d had a baby. Hell, is this what it’s like to give birth? But no, the proportions were way off. The torso was not a fat bulb with stumpy limbs and a too-big head attached. It was not a baby.

  It looked like an adult human but was only as tall as an ear of corn. The parasite rolled over and sat up. It was…

  “It’s a miniature version of me!” Tezca squealed with delight. It looked exactly like him, except skinny and small. “Look, Jade, look! A beautiful miracle!”

  The goddess tilted her head and raised her clawed foot.

  “Don’t!” The wind howled as Tezca dove forward.

  Too late. Jade’s scaly, four-toed foot with its razor-sharp hooks closed around the tiny body. As Tezca pounded his fists against her foot, Jade squeezed. There was a pop and a crunch and a tiny squirt of blood, like the juice from a squished olive.

  “Arghhh! You horrible, disgusting monster!” Tezca threw himself at Jade’s broken wing. He wrapped his arms and legs around it and then fell, using his weight to drag her down with him. At her shriek, something burst inside Tezca’s ear. A bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree, setting it ablaze.

  The strange voices filled his head—not hers, the other ones—as fiery strength surged through Tezca’s body. He’d brought Jade down on top of him, and she reached for his neck with her human arms.

  Snarling, Tezca caught both her hands, locking his fingers with hers. He crossed Jade’s arms and slammed one wrist down on top of the other, again and again, until the bones in both were splintered.

  She cried out and Tezca lunged forward, shoving his hand into her agape mouth and grabbing hold of her tongue. Her beak sliced into his wrist, but he held tight, yanking the wormy tongue. Blood leaked out—

  Tezca ripped his hand away—leaving a couple fingers behind—at a pinprick sensation of the poisonous cold.

  Instead, he threw an arm around Jade’s neck and rolled himself forward in a somersault, flipping the goddess with him and wrenching her neck until it snapped.

  Jade seized on top of him as Tezca added his other arm to the chokehold, feeling her thin bird bones crunching and crumbling as he squeezed tighter. Though her neck had gone as limp as a noodle, she still struggled.

  The rain had diminished to a misting spritz. Green lightning crackled overhead, but it hung languid and impotent, failing to come to fruition.

  “You killed my brother,” Tezca growled through clenched teeth.

  Jade went still. “You all deserve everything,” she said in Tezca’s head.

  The storm unraveled and golden sunlight blotted through. Tezca shoved her heavy corpse off himself and lay there gasping, his fists clinging to the grass as his head spun.

  “Are you…” He drew strength into his voice and roared, “Are you still in my head?”

  Jade did not answer. Tezca knew she was dead from the relief he felt at her absence. There’d been something grating about her presence. Discomfiting, like the fabric of the World was warped around her.

  But those other voices… They’d quieted, but he could still hear them whispering. Countless, each distinct, yet they all reflected each other. By the way they harmonized, Tezca knew they were bound together; they all shared in the same agonizing fate.

  Tezca did not care for that. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of people bitching and moaning in his head. He had a lot of important shit to think about.

  He tried to ignore their murmuring and recover himself. His heart and mind both raced. He fiddled with his misshapen, half-grown ear. Did I just give birth and then see my child murdered? He kept his eyes averted from the miniature corpse.

  Something wriggled beneath him. Tezca rolled over, going up on his knees. Death swept across the once-lush grass, turning it brown and crinkly. Maggots and other vermin emerged from the mud beneath.

  “No!” Tezca shouted, seeing that the taint was filling the crystal-clear pool. Silt swirled within and the brackish stench assaulted his nostrils.

  Desperate, Tezca scrambled to the pool’s edge and scooped handfuls into his mouth. It was already warm and slimy. Algae speckled across the surface. He gave up when his hand came away with a leech suckling on his palm.

  “Spiteful bitch!” he spat at the goddess’s corpse. “I’m glad I killed you. If you were worth a damn, you’d leave the water behind for the good of the World.”

  He stood and hobbled over to her. “Now, how best to eat you? I don’t know if I’ve ever butchered something so big.” He hissed through his teeth. “And how will I cleanse that nasty blood—”

  A crystalline path glassed the ground. Tezca jumped out of the way as it reached the corpse. A web of translucent flakes oozed out of Jade’s flesh, crinkling as it spread across her body, smothering the feathers like paste. As it grew thicker, it appeared crystalline, growing like frost covering over glass.

  “Bahaha! Nice try, Jade.” He bowed low over the corpse. “You’re crazy if you think that’ll stop me. A sledgehammer will take care of this shell, no problem. You killed my child when he was fresh out of the womb. I swear I will feast upon your corpse if it’s the last thing I do.”

  A shrill, poorly sung song came to his ears. A branch cracked in the woods. Tezca whipped around.