Torrential rain fell upon the six most powerful lords of Trellana as they fled through the dead of night. Rising up with sentience at the call of three pursuing goddesses, the very mud beneath the lords formed clawed hands. Claws like daggers bit into the lords’ legs. A swing of the sword or mace or axe freed their feet, their golden blood boiling the earth wherever it fell.
Life, ironically, fell first. The hands of the earth seized his shining locks, trapping Life to the ground as the living mud covered him like a smothering blanket. A cry ripped from Life’s lungs as his ribs cracked beneath the pressure.
The goddesses would find him soon. As if the very thought of them summoned them to his side, a flash of auburn hair—which was literally aflame—drifted into his vision.
Irony—the cruelest goddess.
The rain stopped, and the clouds above him—only him; the torrents continued to fall everywhere else—opened to a glorious night sky.
A coiled silver whip was wrapped taut around one of her flexed biceps. Her ashen skin reflected within the flames of her hair as she advanced on the fallen lord, her golden teeth gleaming in the bright light of the full moon.
Life turned his eyes to the cloudless sky one final time before the mud circled up his neck and covered his face. Tendrils of it prodded at every orifice, desperate to bring an end to the lord who created all sentient beings but left the dirt itself lifeless. Uncountable millennia’s worth of anger and bitterness from an object Life never gave much thought to literally crushed in on him.
He could not die, but the earth could steal the soul from his temporary corporal form, distributing it within itself to trap the lord for eternity.
As Life’s heart pounded and his mouth gaped for air that he could not find, only one other soul in his entire world mattered.
A soul both cruel of heart and chivalrous beyond measure. A soul so dazzling to look upon, that mortals threw themselves at his altar in prayer to receive just a glimpse of him in their final moments.
No, Life couldn’t die without seeing him one last time. Besides, it would be better for a friend to take his soul than the abomination this accursed goddess had summoned.
Thrusting his arm straight up, he felt his hand break through the rapidly drying ground as he attempted what became a voiceless cry for the complement of his soul.
“Death!”