Pilgrim exchanged a glance with Seeker. “We both came to pray,” he said. “Our prayers are different…”
“They always are.” The Mad God gave a weary shake of his head and wandered away from them, hands clasped behind his back as he moved to stand over Book’s corpse. “This one, in his insane arrogance, imagined all he had to do in order to banish me from this world was to spout some doggerel from his church’s scripture. As if I had never heard it before, as if it hadn’t been the spell that woke me from my own delusions.
“Centuries ago their missionaries came to my kingdom to spread their vapid attempts at wisdom, and it actually took hold. Those who had been my worshippers, had enjoyed lives of plenty and peace under my benevolence, chose instead to worship the words of those who pretended to have risen from the dead. It…angered me, enraged me in fact. So I made unto their missionaries a gift of their own scripture, searing it into their bones so that they could never escape it. A necessarily fatal process, but when it was done, when I had scourged all traces of their heresy from my dominion, I found that my rage had cured me. The centuries I had spent here were a lie, the work of a maddened demon who imagined himself a god, now made sane. Didn’t you find that to be the case?” he asked, turning back to Pilgrim. “Didn’t your rage cure you of the delusion of love, Ravager?”
He smiled, moving away from Book’s body as he approached Pilgrim, his steps slow and carefully paced. “Yes, I know you. The legend of King Guyime, Ravager of the Northlands, has even made its way here. Decades ago, a few pilgrims came begging for your death. I denied them, finding you far too entertaining. Now, here you stand, come to implore me to get that sword off your back, despite the unnatural span of years it has given you and all the wonderful things you did with it.”
His smile broadened when Pilgrim said nothing. “Didn’t you know you travelled with a monster?” the Mad God asked, turning to Seeker. “Did he entertain you along the way with tales of his massacres? The innocents slaughtered whenever his host took a stronghold or captured a city. And the purges, of course. All those Risen priests flayed, scourged and burnt at his order. By the time it was over, when thousands lay dead, he had made himself the greatest king the northlands had ever known, whereupon he promptly disappeared. Have you been trying to rid yourself of the sword all this time, Your Highness? I can’t say I blame you. Lakorath was always very trying company.”