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| (Ancient action - excerpt from DYNASTY ZERO on Amazon Kindle) |
I
turned to stone in the alley, along with the small girl beside me.
The
khepesh-wielding demigod, with the
body of old Pewero at his feet, fixed his eyes on me, at first human eyes like
coals, then changing to the slivered pupils of a ram’s eyes in an animal’s
head.
He
was a broad-shouldered man with a ram’s head and spiral horns, yet the head of
the ram kept burning and twisting into the visage of a man with a stubby beard.
Forever
in a state of flux, the demon demigods were Lords of Manifestation, half-man
and half-god. Born out of the licentiousness of the Neteru and the gods’
attraction to the beauty of the daughters of humankind, the Divine Misbegotten
were a distortion of everything that was god and man. Because they were man and
neter in equal measures, a civil war
raged in their blood and their beings were locked and twisted in a perpetual
struggle.
He
raised his sickle-sword to strike at us.
This jolted me into action
and I put an arrow to the bow. I saw fear invade the ram’s eyes as I bent the
bow, drew the fletching to the anchor point of my chin and took aim.
A
black, fleeing goat came bolting helter-skelter between the houses, its hooves
flying. I glimpsed its darting shape from the corner of my eye and he saw it
too. And then, before the command to release the arrow raced to my fingers on
the bowstring, I saw the demigod shift. He cascaded from his human form towards
the form of the running goat. This shift was said to be an action so fast that
it was invisible to men, yet I saw it happen in a series of fluttering images.
I
swung the bow and released the arrow, not at the demigod, but ahead of the
fluttering images, leading my target. My arrow struck the goat high in the
chest. Its forelegs crumpled without the creature giving a bleat, but now I saw
the goat quiver and the demigod shifted again, this time departing the fallen
goat and fluttering back towards his body. A cascade of images returned to the
wall to manifest in a startled soldier who fell with a cry. My arrow pierced
his body just above his armour padding.
The
little girl at my side shrank against me.
A
group of three attackers came upon us...
