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CROWMON STARTED SHIVERING uncontrollably after Lord Dallinar teleported him and his followers to his shrine. He’d gone into shock from having his olde-worlde magic stripped from him. He’d never felt so weak in all of his lengthy life. Not even being in hibernation for five hundred years compared to this. He’d still had a small amount of magic in him while he’d slept. Now he was just an empty shell.
Vella hurried over to Crowmon from the house they shared. Just as they’d planned, she’d stayed home so she wouldn’t have her magic drained. “Everything will be alright, my lord,” she crooned as she bent to pick up the badly depleted god.
“You promise?” Crowmon croaked. His already pale skin was sheet white. Even his white blond hair seemed even more leeched of color than usual. His jester suit had lost all traces of red. It had become black and green to match his priests’ and priestess’ robes.
“I promise,” his High Priestess vowed. The shifter was far stronger than a human and easily carried him to their house and placed him on their bed. She sent a magical letter to the worshippers telling to collect the drained priests and priestesses, then focused on her god. He was close to becoming mortal with his power gone, but she didn’t want him dead. She had other plans for him. She was going to infuse his shivering body with the new type of power she’d been preparing him for during the past couple of decades. Now that his olde-worlde magic was gone, he was ready to evolve into the creature she’d foreseen in her visions.
A dozen people approached the house and Vella pulled a blanket up to Crowmon’s chin. His eyes were shut and his teeth were chattering. The High Priestess hurried over to open the door and the worshippers filed inside. They all wore brown robes and crow masks. “Take them into the bedroom,” she ordered.
Brycen led the way, carrying the drained witch who had ordered him around when Xiara Evora had tried to invade their shrine. He winked at Vella on the way past. As they’d agreed, he was the only priest and she was the only priestess left now that the others had been drained of their magic. The others had served their purpose by sacrificing their power. There was only one way that they could serve their god now that they no longer possessed any magic.
The unconscious priests and priestesses were carried into the bedroom and were placed in a circle around the bed. Knives were drawn out of their robes as the High Priest and High Priestess stripped naked. Brycen’s skin looked pale against Vella’s dark skin as he bent her over the end of the bed. Their god had succumbed to unconsciousness and he had no idea his beloved was about to be pleasured by another man. The thought made Brycen hard and he slid into the shifter.
Vella moaned and spread her legs open wider so the elf could have full access to her. The spell she was about to perform required two opposite components. Life and death would need to intermingle in order for Crowmon to evolve. Brycen gripped her hips and thrust into her as she chanted in her native tongue. The worshippers were beneath her spell and chanted along with her.
Brycen had trouble concentrating on chanting as he slid in and out of Vella’s slickness. His desire to gain power was the only thing that kept him mumbling the words he’d memorized. When Vella was close to climaxing, her chant grew in volume. She lifted her hand and the dazed worshippers lifted their knives. When she reached her peak and her body began to buck beneath Brycen, her hand fell. The masked beings’ knives descended, stabbing the unconscious priests and priestesses through their hearts.
The black-haired elf orgasmed and gasped the final words of the chant as his seed was drawn inside Vella. The High Priestess threw her head back and chanted a final passage alone. Her spell caught the souls that were separating from the bodies of the dead and funneled them into Crowmon. The essence she’d harvested from the elf was added to the spell to give death a tiny spark of life so its host wouldn’t die.
The former trickster god’s pale green eyes flew open and he convulsed as death magic permeated him. His feet drummed on the mattress and he became twisted in the blanket. His face contorted, then his nose began to grow and darken. He let out a scream that ended in a caw as his head transformed. Black feathers had sprouted from him and brushed against his neck. “What have you done, Vella?” he asked.
Vella dropped to her knees and Brycen joined her. They stared at Crowmon in awe. “I brought my vision to life, my king,” the High Priestess said as tears of joy ran down her face. She’d prepared him for this for the past few months by giving him the ability to shift from her own personal stores of energy and magic.
Crowmon tilted his head to the side to contemplate the naked pair. His eyes were far sharper than normal. He clicked his beak together, then turned to see his reflection in a mirror on the wall. From the neck up, he looked like a crow. He was still weak, but he could feel a new type of magic spreading through him. “What am I?” he asked while he stared at his reflection in fascination. He wasn’t a werebird like she was, that much he could tell.
“You are a carrion deity now, my king,” Vella said.
“What happened to my priests and priestesses?” Crowmon asked when he saw the circle of corpses. Twelve members of his congregation knelt next to the bodies. None of them were moving and he felt a spell holding them in place.
“We sacrificed them to infuse you with new power, my king,” Brycen said. He almost flinched when the piercing light green eyes of his god came to rest on him.
“The spell will draw souls to you, my king,” Vella said. “With each soul you ingest, you will grow stronger. In time, you will become powerful enough to reap the souls of the Immortal Triumvirate and become a true God of Death.”
Crowmon realized his High Priestess had planned this all along. The haze that he’d been bemused with was gone and he could now see clearly. The spell she’d cast had tied both his High Priestess and High Priest to him. They’d formed their own triumvirate without her realizing it. Shaking his head, he pushed the death magic down deep inside himself and resumed his normal appearance. “You have done well,” he said to them both in his normal voice and they shared smiles of relief. A soul drifted through the wall and was drawn into him, increasing his strength by a fraction. “You have done very well,” he added with a sly grin. He was no longer a minor trickster god who lived to play pranks on the unwary. He’d transformed into a creature with far more ambition. Thanks to Vella and Brycen, he would become the most powerful being in not just Nox, but in the entire world.
