The dunes were so still they could have been carved from stone. Enveloped in silence, the priest shed his cloak, the cold air biting into his skin and marking his flesh with goosebumps, then raised his hands, palms beseeching the stars. He was the last man standing tonight; the others lay in their floorless shelters, shoulders pressed against the sand that had supported them their whole lives but had lately become too soft, too tempting.
Battle awaited them at dawn. For now, the priest would try to raise their strongest defender. He turned deliberately from the faint glow of the campfire that warmed his tribe and became a black figure swallowed by a blacker night.
‘My Lord Desine,’ he whispered, keeping his voice low to avoid waking the others. They would have asked to join him, to draw comfort from the ritual. But tonight Head Priest Zron was worried that he would find no comfort for himself, much less any to share with the warriors who would risk their blood when the sun rose.
‘My Lord Desine,’ he tried again, desperately seeking the desert god. Of all the sub-level gods that existed beneath the Creator God, the Desine was only one that he served. ‘I have not heard your Call. I have not felt your Smile. I do not know if we should fight. You…you have not told me…who is just, who is right, who will triumph, and who will turn in flight.’
More silence. It felt like insects were marching down his spine, eager to join the terror pooling low in his gut.
‘Desine…you guide us,’ he said, as much a plea as it was a reminder. ‘Please. Should we fight or should we forgive the Kcazza tribe for insulting us? The Magic in me — it is weak, you know this. I…I am afraid their priests will destroy me.’
His fear did not wake the desert god, nor did the uncertain probe he sent with his powers. The Magic was a special gift that only men and women in the deserts were given. Jealous City Dwellers had put chips in their temples to seek another god; their powers were unnatural and weak. They surely did not have the love of their god.
The Desine loved his people. He was always there to guide them.
Zron fell to the ground and begged. But his god did not answer him.
***
Screams pierced his temples like nails. Sandsa batted the sounds away before his hand lazily moved to his mouth where it captured a yawn. A tendril of his shaggy blond hair curled onto his forehead. He ignored it. His hand fell to his side.
Standing atop the dune, he watched the destruction unfolding before him, blue eyes bright and framed by his tanned features. Down in the gully, nestled between the rock-studded dunes, warriors fired their lasguns and priests wielded their Magic, more devastating than any man-made weapon.
‘But what does the Desine say?’ the warriors shouted as the battle continued, wearing down their bodies and their hope.
No priest on either side heard an answer from their god, but still they said, ‘Our cause is just! The Desine smiles! We win this day!’
The sun warmed Sandsa’s back as he trudged away, wondering how to begin his task. He had searched his sprawling sands for anyone with her name and had failed…perhaps he would turn his eyes to the cities and the domains belonging to his brothers and sisters.
The taste of salt on his tongue gave him several seconds of warning before the Watine, the god of water, oozed into being.
‘Pathetic mortals,’ the Watine said in his low, sibilant voice. ‘How they fall to pieces without us there to guide them through their wretched lives.’
Sandsa regarded his brother coolly and made no move to greet him. The Watine opened his tattered cloak and made a sarcastic gesture that could have been a wave or a threat. His hair, dripping with water and mucus, hung over his face; instead of hiding his permanently dour expression, the greasy strands enhanced it.
Sandsa held out his open hand. A whirling sphere of sand appeared on command, dancing above his palm; a not so subtle reminder for his brother not to test him. He allowed it to hover there for a moment, then extinguished it.
‘Fayay,’ he finally said, ‘I have very little patience for your antics today.’
‘You seem to have even less for the mortals,’ Fayay noted. His cracked lips parted into a smile that revealed the fungus painting his chipped teeth. ‘Are you punishing them? There are more delightful ways to do that. I can show you.’
Sandsa kept his face blank despite the disgust and anger he felt. That Fayay thought Sandsa was falling into his sadistic ways was bad enough; Fayay offering to show him how best to torture mortals was beyond insulting.
‘I am no longer their god,’ Sandsa said and continued to amble away, allowing his beige cloak to fly up into the wind, exposing the simple threadbare clothes he wore beneath it.
A column of briny water exploded out of the dune in front of Sandsa, halting his path.
‘What are you saying, Desine?’ Fayay called.
Sandsa smiled grimly and turned back around to face his brother. ‘You know what I mean. Oh, how could I forget. You don’t.’
Fayay cursed. He lacked the mind-reading abilities that many of their brothers and sisters possessed and Sandsa had always made a point of reminding him of this inadequacy.
‘We have lived for millennia, you and I,’ Sandsa said then patted four fingers to his mouth, as though smothering another yawn. ‘And yet you do not understand. You never will.’
‘You think you know more than me?’ Fayay hissed. ‘Do you perhaps presume to think you know more than Father?’
The laugh curdled in Sandsa’s gut before it reached his lips. ‘Father. Some father. The Ine is unfeeling. Uncaring. Their Creator God. He created this mess long ago. And now we must eternally clean up after him.’
Fayay’s pale blue eyes narrowed. ‘You are leaving the deserts to rot. What for? To live like some irresponsible mortal?’
‘Ah, so you do not need to read minds to know my plans.’ Sandsa clapped his palms together. ‘You should congratulate yourself, Fayay.’
Fayay frowned in the direction of the two warring tribes as they shouted and killed each other, all in the name of their god. ‘Do you envy these maggots?’
Sandsa laughed darkly. ‘Envy the mortals? Of course I do! Do you know what it is they have? We can guide them but it is up to them whether or not they listen. Free will, that’s what the Ine gave them. Free will. They get to do whatever they want.’
‘Listen to yourself. Mortals are foolish, pitiful creatures and — ’
‘Then why do you keep looking after them?’ Sandsa demanded. ‘The mortals — they’re his creation. It’s not our fault the humans poisoned their planet then spread so far throughout the galaxy that he lost control of them. He made us, his children, just so we’d take care of the ones he couldn’t! And instead of one god meddling with their lives, there are now more than fifty!’ Sandsa drew a breath. ‘Now there will be one less. It is time I left my people to fend for themselves.’
Fayay’s tongue danced over his bottom lip, like some sort of slimy creature sneaking out of a cave. ‘I care as little for the mortals as you do, Sandsa. But it is our duty to maintain Father’s grand design.’
‘I…’ Sandsa hesitated. ‘I have my reasons.’
‘Does your favourite, Kuja, know your reasons?’
Kuja, their youngest brother and god of the rainforests, was the only sibling Sandsa could stand, the only other god who had felt the loss when their mother had left their father to live as a mortal. But no, this wasn’t something Sandsa could share with Kuja.
Kuja wouldn’t understand. None of them would.
Sandsa spread his arms, deliberately providing a tempting target to his brother. ‘Admit it, Fayay. You despise being second best. If I leave, there will be no one to challenge you.’
The Watine’s lips twisted. ‘I will tell Father what you are doing. And he will punish you accordingly.’
‘Hoping to impress him, are you?’ Sandsa asked scornfully. ‘Hoping he’ll kill me because you never managed it? Do not bother, Fayay. He already knows. Don’t you, Ine?’
Their father’s presence bled into the landscape. Sandsa had the satisfaction of watching Fayay’s already pallid face bleach even further. The Watine immediately exploded into wisps of water that evaporated in the arid climate as he teleported away.
Sandsa formed another sphere of sand in his palm and waited.
His father appeared in front of him. He was two heads taller than Sandsa and his body was so thin it was almost skeletal. His hair was a white crown, matched by a neatly trimmed beard, and his blue eyes were the twins of Sandsa’s own. This was the Ine, the Creator God, the first deity that the humans had worshipped so many aeons ago, when they had been contained on one lonely planet, unaware that so many alien species shared the same god.
‘We must talk, but not here,’ the Ine said, his lips stretched into a genial smile.
His father touched his shoulder and the icy tendrils of a forced teleportation threatened to invade Sandsa’s veins. He jerked away and threw the ball of sand he’d prepared; it shattered against his father’s face. The Ine’s apparent good will vanished. He clapped his hands and the rolling sand dunes around them disintegrated into blinding white walls and floors; with his love of the sun, Sandsa found this environment harsher and more cruel than any of his baked deserts. This realm, beyond the sight of mortals, was a boring cage, a palace of pain, not the home that the other gods seemed to think it was.
Standing there, on a walkway lined with pillars and his curious brothers and sisters, Sandsa howled a challenge then ran full tilt at the Ine. The columns of stone on both sides exploded into gritty tornadoes and twisted, spurred on by his fury. Balls of sand chased Sandsa, then overtook him. He threw everything he had at his father.
The Ine held up a hand. Sandsa froze in place and his control over the sands abruptly withered; his missiles dropped to the floor and the pillars became still and cold once more.
‘Sandsa, my son,’ his father began, ‘you gave your people their own powers. You made them special compared to those that do not live in the deserts. That was no uncaring gesture.’
Sandsa pulled his lips back into a snarl. ‘I only gave them power over the sand so they could protect themselves from the mortals who insist on inserting a chip into their flesh to talk to you!’
‘Your people have “the Magic” so long as you are there for them. You are the source of their powers. What will protect them if you leave?’
‘Nothing you say will keep me in your grasp,’ Sandsa warned.
‘If you abandon the deserts, my son, then you renounce your place among us.’
Sandsa felt the eyes of his siblings upon him and found himself unable to turn his head to regard them, to challenge them, to ask for their help. Kuja might try to intercede, but the young god would be too powerless to do anything. And Fayay…he would be loving this, anticipating the moment he became the most revered of all their siblings.
‘One woman is not reason enough to turn away from your people,’ the Ine told his eldest son.
Sandsa wet his lips. ‘Father…’
‘The woman in your dreams — do not let a reckless pursuit of her be your downfall.’
Sandsa’s cheeks felt hot with anger and shame. So even his dreams were laid bare to the Ine. His father had watched them, had seen the woman that haunted him, called him, and offered so much more than anyone else could.
‘I am a god, just as you are, Father,’ Sandsa said lowly. ‘But you forget. My mother was human, extended though her life was. You give the mortals the choice to obey or ignore us. Since part of me is human, I should be able to choose my fate. And I choose the woman in my dreams.’
‘There is no choice to be made, Sandsa,’ his father said. ‘Do you not see this?’
Sandsa merely glared at him.
The Ine’s expression remained infuriatingly calm. ‘Then you will ignore me, the deserts and your duty, and place your focus entirely on this woman.’ Not a question. An acceptance.
‘Sandsa, no!’ That was Kuja, the Rforine, tearing free from the line of silent gods to stand between Sandsa and the Ine. ‘I lost Mum. Don’t make me lose you too.’
The rainforest god was only seventy years old, practically a baby. And it showed. Green eyes growing moist, long copper fringe flying back over his head, face dotted with freckles, Kuja repeated his entreaty, anguished.
‘Do not pretend you understand what is going on here,’ the Ine told Kuja, his voice measured and unhurried despite the muttering that passed through those standing around them. ‘You cannot help him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kuja whispered, turning to show his tears to Sandsa.
Sandsa shook his head. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. I know you can’t escape him. Goodbye, Kuja.’
Stepping aside, hunched in defeat, the Rforine briefly squeezed his brother’s shoulder before rejoining the ranks of those who would never dare raise their voices against their father. Another hand replaced Kuja’s, one of iron and aeons, and the Ine pushed his eldest son backwards, saying, ‘Desine, god of the deserts, you are hereby outcast from this realm, an immortal wanderer with no home. May you find what you seek.’
And Sandsa fell. But not to the floor, where the impact might have shaken the fear from him.
He passed through a white shroud that ripped when he touched it, he sailed down past stars and planets dancing in their ancient patterns and, as he continued to fall, he saw her face, a smile tweaking her lips. But then she was gone, unreachable in the blackness of infinity.
He hit the ground on a planet he’d never bothered to learn the name of and gripped sand between his fingers, cursing, using words invented by the mortals, then stood to stare around at the predictable blandness of one of his deserts. Nothing changed here beneath the sun — or suns, depending on where you were.
He knew every minuscule detail about his people, the nomads who had left the cities behind to seek his protection. Every speck of sand spoke to him constantly, nagging, telling him everything unbidden.
‘I’m sick of it,’ Sandsa said and his body collapsed into a sandy pile. He became a formless entity, searching…searching…
Eventually he arose somewhere else, surrounded by looming buildings peppered with lights. He stared up at the windows, feeling instead of seeing, and then he began to stride through the streets, lured forward by the promise of her.
‘Callista,’ he murmured over and over.
Of course she wasn’t in the deserts; he would have found her sooner if that was the case. He could feel her somewhere here, just out of reach…
‘Callista, Callista,’ he chanted as he followed his dream.
***
Head Priest Zron wavered on his knees, unwilling to complete his fall to the killing grounds. He reached for the hazy horizon, begging for one last glimpse, one last touch, of the great Magic that the desert god had created for his people to tap into. He felt…nothing. He was not yet dead but the numbness in his limbs was spreading to his heart and would soon reach his eyes and his mind.
The Desine was gone.
‘Abandoned,’ Zron whispered in horror.
When at last he collapsed onto the sand, a darkness swallowed him, one that would soon swallow all the sands.