A Tale of Forgotten Gods

Chapter Nine: Flesh of Winter

Mo Fei stared at Kholkis, pouring his terror, defiance, and rage into that glare. ”What’s the point of being a coward when all I’m facing is a certainty all the way around?” He snarled at the beast, watching its attack. He bent down and scooped up a handful of snow, holding that in his hands. As the calamity surged toward him, he threw it directly in the Kholkis’ eyes.

Scrii-eek!!

It shrieked in pure outrage. The backlash hit him: the Kholkis stared into his soul. It flew into the sky, not changing its focus.

Then with another shriek that shook the valley, it announced Mo Fei as its long-lasting enemy. It had failed once; now it would use talons. It launched itself at him once again, a blur of frozen flesh and fury.

Before it moved, he was already moving, preparing to dodge. He saw it for a split-second before it committed... a slight shift in its wing, a tightening of its talons. He didn’t run. Couldn’t act, not really. But he lunged sideways, under its striking arc. As it passed and couldn’t maintain its immense speed. The Kholkis bumped into a rock.

It was stunned for a moment on the ground. Mo Fei quickly ran and threw his chain over its thrashing neck.

He pulled the chains up tightly, choking the beast.

The world became a violent spin of ice and black feathers, falling to cover the white field. He got yanked off his feet. The shackles bruised his wrists as the beast bucked and twisted, trying to dislodge the sudden, heavy weight on its neck.

Mo Fei held on. His arms threatened to tear, his body slamming against its frozen plumage. He tried everything he could, but he lacked the strength. He wasn’t a jacked warrior with those cool, hot muscles. He needed help; his eyes desperately swept over the field before landing on the other slaves.

”GATHER HERE!” He roared at the other five remaining slaves. He grunted as he pulled with all his strength, barely able to hold on. ”THE CHAINS! PULL IT!”

For a terrible moment nothing happened. The two other surviving slaves—a hulking man with a broken nose and a young woman with blue eyes wide in panic. They just stared, frozen by the beast’s thrashing and Mo Fei’s insane command. Han stayed silent, his eyes looking everywhere but at the beast. He was hesitating.

Mo Fei couldn’t blame him for fear; ’death is the only fear that we fear.’ Feng was a coward. He didn’t even bother to hesitate; he simply took steps back to run, his body trembling.

Then the Kholkis shrieked again, a sound of a pure, tormented beast. The chain around its neck wasn’t tight enough to kill, but it was a maddening weight. The calamity took it as an insult to its glacial grace. It bucked like an untamed horse. The Kholkis hissed, glaring at Mo Fei.

He shouted again.

”NOW! Or we all die like them!” He coughed, his voice shredding in the cold air. He gestured with his eyes at the bloody remains.

The command broke their paralysis. The big man, driven by a survival instinct, bellowed and threw his weight at the Kholkis’ back, digging his heels into the frozen mud. He wrapped the chains around its wing.

The woman put her hands on her mouth, wondering what to do. Then finally she decided to help and sprinted toward the beast, seizing the other end of the chain, wrapping it around her forearm, and leaning back with a sob of effort.

Han closed his eyes for a few seconds, but then he couldn’t watch this any further. He launched himself at the Kholkis, helping Mo Fei to hold its neck tighter.

Mo Fei’s eyes landed on Feng, still keeping himself away from the danger. His eyes twitched in disbelief, but he focused himself on the Kholkis.

The beast was put down forcefully; its wing was shut, talons caught in chains, and neck held by two people. They were the anchor. Mo Fei was still tangled in the middle, his body whipping through the air. The world was now a blur of sky and snow. His shoulder screamed as the shackles threatened to dislocate it.

The sight remained conscious. He could see the stress lines forming in the Kholkis’ flesh. Its neck had given up the efforts.

It hit the ground with a terrible crumpling slide. The beast’s wings splayed, sending up a plume of ice and dirt. It was stunned, not dead yet. Its intelligent, hate-filled eyes found Mo Fei’s. There was pure hatred; a predator got hunted by the prey.

It opened its beak for another sonic shrill, but it was the wrong situation. The bad angle of its neck pulled the chains. Its throat was taut, letting out a guttural, choked screech.

”THE WINGS!” Mo Fei choked out, his face pressed against its neck. ”TANGLE THE WINGS! DON’T LET IT FLY!”

The big man understood. He charged at its nearest thrashing wing. He jumped, bringing his own chain down like a flail, now wrapping both of its wings. The woman, seeing the tactic, scrambled to do the same, her movements frantic but effective.

The Kholkis became a knot of chains, humans surrounding it. That was a horrific, grinding stalemate. They couldn’t kill it. On the other hand, it couldn’t shake them either to emerge with its true strength. They didn’t win but didn’t lose; as long as they kept it here, they’d survive.

As Mo Fei tried to adjust his body. Its razor-edged feathers slice through his forearm, leaving shallow, freezing nicks along his arm. Every time the beast bucked. The iron chain hissed against its rough skin, a sound like a hot iron on wet leather.

They were no longer people; they were weights, anchors of desperate flesh, trying to drown a calamity in the snow.

They lay there panting, a heap of terrified humanity piled onto a seething mound of ancient winter. The Kholkis’ cold radiated through them, a deep ache that promised suffering and death. The glow in its eyes burned with undiminished hatred, but it couldn’t do anything.

Then, something snapped in his head. His vision swam, and a thin, hot trickle of blood leaked from his nose. The blood slowly froze on his cold lips.

The world had taken its payment.

Mo Fei’s gaze met the two unlikely comrades and Han. The panic in their eyes had been replaced by a shaky, shell-shocked calculation. They were still breathing, but heavier from the adrenaline rush.

The big man met Mo Fei’s gaze, his own eyes wide with pain, dawning, and a terrible understanding. ”It’s...still alive,” he panted, stating the obvious but terrifying truth.

”And the guards are gone,” the woman whispered, her voice hollow. ”They left us. We’re chained to a monster in the middle of a blizzard.”

”What are we going to do now?”

Mo Fei darted his eyes between them and the pinned Kholkis. Into the white void, the arithmetic of this world was clear. They were an asset to no one. They were either meat for the beast or corpses for the ice.

A certain death either way.

Unless...

The Kholkis let out a final, rattling wheeze. The ice quills on its neck scraped against the iron of Mo Fei’s chain. They were huddled up against it, three shivering souls hanging onto a fallen star.

The creature’s cold glare was absolute; it didn’t just chill their skins, it felt as though it were reaching inside them to extinguish hope.

Mo Fei into its eye, a vast, frozen ocean of sapphire malice. He thought about the situation that occurred a while ago.

Minutes ago, he had seen the threads. He saw the trembling thread that connected the bird’s throat to the very heart of the world. They were the same as the world two–more precisely, it happened after that ribbon went into his vein...

But now, as the adrenaline receded, the world was shuddering. The silver threads dimmed, then vanished. He blinked again and again, desperate to find that line of ”flaw” again. All that he saw was the grime of the frozen yard and the reality of a beast that could swallow them in two bites–even one.

The ”sight” was gone, leaving his mind feeling like a house that had been violently burgled.

”What was that?” His thoughts went sluggish, wading through a swamp of grey static. That wasn’t just vision. He had looked into the ”spirit threads.”

The tithe took the memory as payback. Did that mean when he’d ”see” the truth, he’d have a piece of the lie that made him human? He was becoming a hollow vessel, traded away for the eyes of a god without his will.

The big man’s hand tightened on the chain, his knuckles turning white, bleeding. ”...it’s moving. It’s trying to stand.”

The blue glow in the Kholkis’s chest was stabilizing. The spirit was returning. The chains were beginning to frost over; if it froze, then it could break, the iron turning brittle under the beast’s localized winter.

”Hold tight,” Mo Fei whispered, his voice jagged like a sharp knife. His eyes remained locked on the bird’s pupil, watching the killing intent fuel back to life. ”It’s chained to us, after all.”

The woman let out a sob, her spirit finally snapping. ”What does that even mean? It’s going to kill us. The moment the wind drops!”

Han spoke, his voice serious with a hint of panic. ”For how long can we hold it down? We have to find a way to escape.”

Han was right; they didn’t have any energy to keep it here longer. Ten, twenty, or even thirty minutes, but not forever. It was a desperate situation; a blizzard would kill them, if not Kholkis.

Mo Fei looked at the bloody stump of the man it had eaten, then back at the bird. He couldn’t see the threads anymore. He was weak and freezing.

One thing was certain: The Master of this world expected them to be a sacrifice. If he died here, then he’d be just a line in his ledger. If he survived, he would still be a slave.

”That means,” he said, wrapping the chains around his bloodied palm, ”that we won’t let it go yet. We’re going to use it.”

The Kholkis gave a low, thrumming growl that shook the very earth beneath them. Far off in the white void, a horn sounded... a deep, brassy note of the Empire.

The guards would return to check the remains.

”Keep it pulled.” He commanded coldly. ”It might be useful.”

He knew it was risky, but it was the last option. Kholkis might go after them first.