SHORT STORY: Sun Shears

“If the gods let you choose, how would you die?” a woman asked, her voice drifting disembodied through the dark. Someone scoffed, and then a third voice said: “A light, Clemens? I can't find the damned door.”

A ball of flame suddenly flickered to life, illuminating a narrow hall and three figures: the first was an old priest who, with a wave of a bony finger, directed his flame to sit on a torch sconce; the second was a young fighter covered in blood, who leaned on the priest for support; and the third was a tired paladin, who stood apart from his companions and blinked owlishly in the new light. He nodded his thanks to the priest, then resumed his study of the walls. There, nestled so neatly into stone his gloved fingers couldn’t find its edges, stood a door.

“Don't be morbid,” Clemens told the fighter while the paladin gave the door a testing push. Firelight glinted off his armor; it was surprisingly barren, stripped of his god’s holy symbols. “I’ve already healed the worst of your wounds.”

“I’m not being morbid! I’m only curious,” the fighter said in reply. “Humor me.”

Clemens sighed. “Don't we all dream of dying peacefully in our beds?”

The fighter's bark of laughter echoed oddly on the stone and earned her a sharp look from the paladin. “Not me,” she said. “I want to die at the end of a chase, just like this. I’ll spite anyone who wants me dead by doing it myself, and then I'll die laughing, seeing their face when they realize I've beaten them again.”

When her companions shared a worried look, she sighed and blew her bangs back from her face. “Relax, after all the pains Clem took to heal me, I won’t do anything rash. But if it comes to it, I won’t let them catch me, either,” she said, her teeth bared and her face spattered with blood.

“You'll answer differently when you're older, Tam,” Clemens said.

For a moment, the only sounds in the hall were his heavy breathing, a faint drip, drip, drip coming from somewhere above, and the scrape of steel on stone as the paladin shouldered the door open. None of them mentioned their precarious position, that when was more realistically if, but the paladin certainly thought it.

“What about you?” Tam asked him.

He gave her a tired look and brushed debris from his shoulder. His beard and long hair were streaked with gray, and the restless fire’s flickering deepened the shadows under his eyes. Despite that, and despite his empty armor, he stood tall and proud. He gave the question some thought, then sniffed disdainfully. “I have no preference.”

“Bullshit,” Tam said, limping after him through the darkened doorway and dragging Clemens along with. Her injured arm was slung over the priest’s shoulder, and his hand rested at her back. With the other, he grabbed the torch and held it up to reveal a hall so large even the grasping firelight couldn’t reach the other end. They both froze in the doorway, and Tam muttered, “A deserter, an apostate, and an oathbreaker walk into an abandoned temple. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.”

“Would they follow us inside, do you think? Abandoned or not, this is still holy ground,” Clemens whispered, hesitant to disturb the silence.

The paladin, who had betrayed a god before and lacked the same reverence, shrugged and said at full volume, “If they’ve followed us this far, yes. We should barricade the door.”

Beneath them, a fraction of a mosaic spiraled across the floor. It was set in dirty, dusty oranges, but through the years, green had risen to cover it. It tore through the tiles and crept up columns, vines and grass overtaking the splendor that once was. As he stepped further inside, the paladin was struck by the smell: it was the green of rot and forgotten places.

Above them, patches of stars winked down where the ceiling had collapsed. On their own, the stars provided little light, so Clemens held the torch while the paladin piled what he could in front of the door: a rotting wood bench, an iron brazier, boulders from the collapsed ceiling and columns. When he was satisfied, he wiped his forehead and stepped back so Clemens could cast a seal over it. As the holy magic passed from the priest's fingers to the stone, he sagged; in concert, Tam and the paladin steadied him, the latter taking the torch before it could fall.

“Come on, old man,” Tam grumbled as she half-led, half-carried Clemens to an unbroken bench. She tested its integrity with her boot, making sure it wouldn't give before dropping onto it and dragging Clemens with. She winced as the motion jostled the barely patched wound on her leg.

“We shouldn’t stay long,” the paladin warned. “They might catch up.”

“Give us a minute, at least,” Tam said. “Clem’s cast too many spells, and I need a breather.”

Clemens rubbed his temples. “I hope you had a nice night with this girl, Tam, for all the trouble it’s brought us.”

“Oh, I did,” Tam said with a toothy grin. “Even if I die here, it will have been worth it.”

“And what if I die here?” Clemens hissed.

“A sacrifice to a worthy cause,” Tam said, shrugging. While they bickered, the paladin slipped away, his torn cape sweeping behind him. With him went the torchlight, leaving the bench in darkness but revealing more of the strange hall.

“Well? Which god did we piss off this time?” Tam called after him.

“If we beg their forgiveness—,” Clemens began.

Tam cut the priest off before he could say any more. “I’m not begging a god for anything, Clem. Neither, I think, is he,” she said, jutting a thumb back at the oathbreaker.

“It depends on the god,” the paladin said, his voice soft but echoing in the quiet. Having finished a circuit around the perimeter, he moved now toward the center of the temple, lighting braziers as he came upon them. When he saw enough to realize what the mosaic depicted, he stopped: the swirling streaks were golden rays of a sun, spiraling toward something at the center that had yet to be uncovered. Cold dread settled inside him. He didn’t want to uncover it, but his companions were watching him, curious.

Reluctance making his steps heavy, he collected himself and pressed on, keeping his gaze downcast as he approached the sun’s core. The toe of his boot eventually hit the wall of a fountain; he saw his own haggard face reflected in its black water, but there was another, as well. He looked up at its owner. Though he’d known—suspected—what would greet him, the sight of the goddess still made him step back. Etched in marble, she stood at the center of a still fountain, her hands outstretched in invitation. Her gown hugged soft curves, and hair spilled over her shoulders, down to her knees.

The oathbreaker turned his face away so his companions wouldn’t see his expression.

Tam sighed when the torchlight fell on the goddess's face. “Just another forgotten beauty,” she said, eyeing the statue's full-lipped smile with open appreciation. “There can’t be much left of her, if she let her temple get like this. I wonder who she was.”

Beside her, Clemens went rigid. He hit Tam’s uninjured shoulder. “Watch what you say! And don't look at her like that! This temple might be abandoned, but this is no Isdon or Aais, appearing one day and forgotten the next. That’s the goddess Delidah.”

Tam, eyebrows raised and expression blank, only shrugged. “I've never heard of her.”

Clemens sputtered, but the paladin wasn’t surprised. After all their years traveling together, after all Clemens’s lectures, the paladin knew that when it came to the gods, Tam remained willfully, obstinately ignorant. “Delidah is the goddess of the sun,” he explained, the name heavy on his tongue.

Clemens wagged his finger at Tam. “One of these days, Tam, you’ll find faith.”

“Gods, I hope not.”

Clemens continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “It’s Delidah who wakes the sun each morning, coaxing it to rise above her mountain in the east and firing it with her bow toward the western horizon. Without her, we’d live in eternal night,” he explained. When Tam's face still showed no signs of recognition, he continued, a little desperately, “Twelve years ago, it was Delidah who saved our world from darkness. Surely, you must know that much? She descended from her mountains with only her sword and her closest disciple. The two defeated the entire shade army while the king’s men merely looked on.”

Tam snorted. “What, the King didn't want to help?”

Though he tried to keep his expression severe, the corners of Clemens’ mouth twitched into a smile. “Well, that's hardly surprising. I still served under him, then. I was there. I saw it all,” he said. His eyes had taken on a faraway look. “Delidah and her paladin were the loveliest things I’d ever seen…lovely, but terrible, too. They fought together like light dancing off broken glass: quick, sharp, brilliant. I’ve witnessed the gods’ power many times in my long life, but never again like that. You don’t realize how small you are, how insignificant. As easily as she defeated the shades, Delidah could have destroyed our entire army and the king along with it. Whether you die in your bed or in a chase matters little. To the gods, you’re nothing, and they will not mourn you.”

“Now who’s being morbid?” Tam asked. “Have you been sneaking drinks again, old man?”

“Be serious,” Clemens snapped.

“I am serious! I’m always serious! Let this Delidah strike me down here if I’m not.”

Clemens hastily lowered himself to his knees. “Oh, Delidah, forgive our trespass!” he cried, not noticing the paladin flinch. The old priest shot Tam an annoyed look and added, "And this one’s blasphemy.”

“I doubt she’ll hear you. That would require her to pay attention to this place,” Tam said, gesturing grandly at the overgrowth and broken stone. “If she’s so powerful, how’d her temple get like this?”

Clemens looked around, as if seeking an answer himself. “I imagine she's busy elsewhere,” he said, then adding defensively, “I don’t know; why ask me?”

“Because you’re a priest!”

“And I serve a different god,” Clemens sniffed. His gaze fell on the paladin, who stood as still as the statue he stared at. “Sampson! What do you know of Delidah?”

Sampson’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. He inclined his head so his long hair fell to hide it. “Delidah has limited time in our world, as she returns to her mountain each morning to greet the sun. She spends that time searching, not presiding over forgotten temples,” he said, finally answering Tam’s question.

“Searching? Searching for what?” Tam asked.

“Someone she lost,” Sampson said softly. “Someone who no longer exists. So you see, Clemens, the gods do mourn. They remember us, as small as we are.”

In the dark water, Delidah’s marble reflection changed. For a moment, Sampson saw another version of her: one with a teasing smile and twinkling eyes. Steeling himself, he stepped into the fountain and scattered the image, cold water rushing in to flood his worn boots. It bit at his ankles and numbed his toes, but he pressed onward, only stopping when he’d reached Delidah’s platform.

“I don’t know about that,” Clemens hemmed, his standard rebuttal when he had nothing he could say. “Sampson, what in the world are you doing?”

“I don't know about any of it,” Tam said. “She is pretty, though. If it weren’t for these injuries, I’d be climbing into that water, too.”

“Ha!” Clemens said. “If there was any god you'd take interest in, I should've figured it would be Delidah. She’s also the patron of young maidens, you know. Her daughters and disciples live with her on the mountain: only women, all exceptionally beautiful.”

Tam whistled. “Tempting, but in my experience, religious girls are nothing but trouble.”

“And governors’ daughters aren't?” Clemens snapped.

Ignoring him, Tam continued, “Besides, I don’t like the soft, motherly type.”

It was Sampson's turn to laugh. He tore his eyes from the goddess to look back at his friends. “Delidah is also goddess of the hunt. Her disciples are warriors, and so is she. This is a poor likeness,” he said, turning to the statue again. No sculptor could capture Delidah’s beauty, her clever smile, the intensity of her gaze when she looked at you—seeing you, seeing through you. Still, this approximation was near enough to make him ache.

Tam and Clemens both went silent, watching Sampson stand in the dark water and reach up for Delidah. He ran a gloved finger along the curve of her forearm, where a crack ran through the stone. While cold seeped through the leather, he remembered warm fingers running through his hair instead. He remembered soft lips on his forehead, his eyelids, his—

“Sampson?” Tam asked, hesitantly.

Sampson never spoke of his broken oath. In the ten years these mismatched vagabonds had traveled together, they’d spoken of everything and nothing. Each of them had pasts they preferred to forget; each understood the others’ needs for secrecy. So when their oathbreaker refused to draw his sword, fighting instead with shield and fists, the most Tam and Clemens had done was shoot him a sympathetic grimace and carry on.

They had both seen his scars, of course, the jagged ones that cut horizontally across his chest, left not from an injury but from a liberation. That part of him was no secret. Seeing him standing before Delidah now, a man with barren armor and a face full of longing, he was sure many of their questions were answered at once. Still, Tam asked, “Sampson, the god you were sworn to. Was it Delidah?”

Before he could answer, something heavy slammed into the barricaded door. Tam jumped up, her hand flying to her knife, and Clemens swore. Out in the hall, voices shouted. Hooves rattled on stone. Their pursuers had found them.

“We need to find an exit,” Clemens warned.

“There aren’t any,” Sampson said. “I checked.”

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?!” Tam asked. Ignoring them both, Clemens pushed to his feet with a creaking groan and circled the hall to check for himself.

“If we had turned back, we would’ve met them in the hall. This is a better place for a fight,” Sampson explained. While he spoke, he knelt in the dark water.

“Who’s fighting?! Sampson!” Tam cried. “Sampson, why are you praying to her? Didn’t she cast you out? Strip you of your armor and power?”

Sampson closed his eyes. “I chose this,” he admitted. He had asked Delidah to cut his hair. Though he’d refused to explain why, he’d cried as each lock fell. She’d leaned over his shoulder, then, her curls tickling his cheek, and tried to comfort him with compliments and soft kisses. She’d asked if she should stop, but it had never been about his hair. It was knowing what he was giving up, knowing that he couldn’t stay.

And worst of all was knowing that he would stay, if she asked. He would stay by her side and deny who he was forever. But he was a coward, at heart, so he’d placed the object of his own destruction—a simple pair of shears—into her hands.

When his mothers and sisters and friends figured out what he was and came for him in the night, he didn’t fight. They said he no longer belonged, and he didn’t argue. He let them throw him down the mountain, only grateful they’d done it when the goddess was away hunting, so he wouldn’t see her face when she realized how he’d used her.

As he tumbled down, he’d been grateful for every bruise and cut. He only regretted not saying goodbye to her—and having to say goodbye at all.

“This is how I’d choose to die,” Sampson said, gazing upon his goddess as he finally answered Tam’s question. From where he knelt, the statue of Delidah seemed to offer him a hand out of the water. “We’ll fight here, whatever may come.”

Another crash echoed through the hall; another weight slammed against the door.

“Who’s we?” Tam asked, a little wildly. “Clem doesn't have any spellcasting left in him, and I lost my axe in the chase. What will you do, oathbreaker? Threaten them with a sheathed sword?”

Oathbreaker. It was a title others had ascribed to him, but had he broken his oaths? He felt as devoted to his Lady as he’d ever been. He knew he’d lose her if he embraced himself, but he was never the one who’d turned away. He’d always kept her in his coward’s heart.

Tam grimaced, regretting her words when he stayed silent for too long. She stomped her foot. “I’m sorry, Samps. I didn’t mean it. It’s just—I was only joking, before. I don't actually want to die here. Come on.”

Sampson closed his eyes. “My Lady Delidah,” he prayed aloud.

No one answered.

Clemens rejoined them, then, his wide mouth pulled into a frown. When he saw Sampson kneeling before the statue, a furrow appeared between his brows, too. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked. “On the field that day, beside Delidah?”

Not having the words, Sampson only nodded.

“Ah, my boy…” The priest trailed off, words failing him as well.

“Clem? An exit?” Tam prompted.

Clemens shook his head. “Sampson is right. There’s no way out; all we can do is hope that She answers.”

“I’m not leaving my fate in her hands,” Tam said, slashing her hand through the air. She looked around, her gaze landing on the vine-covered columns. “We’ll climb through the holes in the ceiling.”

Clemens laughed. “Using what, vines? With my arm and your injured leg? Maybe Sampson can carry us both on his back, hmm?”

The door was rattling, screeching across the floor as it inched open. Only Clemens’ seal saved them, the silver runes shivering through the air with each blow of the battering ram, their edges slowly wearing away under their foes’ persistence. Their enemy must have had a mage with them, too; after a conspicuous silence, the next crash was an explosion, shaking the earth and sending dust raining down.

Clemens’ seal fell. Tam drew her knife with a shaking hand, her expression grim.

“Delidah!” Sampson shouted, voice breaking on her name. Perhaps his goddess really had abandoned him, like they all said she would.

Tam shook her head and opened her mouth, but before she could say a word, a woman’s laugh echoed through the temple. Tam and Clemens whirled toward the door, but for now, it remained shut. The sound had not come from there.

“There you are,” came a voice, from everywhere and nowhere. Sampson drew a shaky breath at the sound, his heart beating at a wild pace. It was just as he remembered it—just as warm, just as fond. A warm breeze rustled through the ferns and the foliage, carrying with it the smell of summer and warmth and sunlight.

“My Lady,” he murmured, an old prayer rising like a memory to his lips: “I ask that you lend me your aid, so I may protect those in need.”

The wind blew again, circling Tam and Clemens, ruffling Tam’s hair and Clemens’ robe before returning to Sampson. Sampson held his breath, fearing what answer may come. “Very well,” Delidah said, this time only for Sampson to hear. A peace overtook him, then, one he hadn’t felt since he last rode with his Lady into battle, the two of them against the world.

He stood in time for the door to blast open.

Stones and shrapnel hurtled through the air, straight toward where Tam and Clemens stood. The two only had time to close their eyes, not even to shout or pray or brace themselves. They felt a rush of air, heard a great clash and scrape, and when they opened their eyes again, Sampson stood between them and the soldiers that flooded in, his shield proudly raised. Boulders and scraps lay to either side of them, bifurcated by the light radiating off the paladin like wings.

Two dozen soldiers rushed in, guards of the city whose favorite daughter Tam had coaxed into bed. They bore an array of weapons, some with trinkets of various gods under and on their city uniforms. Among them, Sampson glimpsed Delidah’s crest. He glimpsed faces of women who thought Delidah would abandon him purely for who he was.

They thought they knew the Goddess of the Sun, but so had Sampson. He could weep, knowing now he’d been wrong.

“Sampson,” Delidah called, testing the weight of his new name.

As he stepped forward, he loosened his blade from its sheath for the first time in years. He let only a sliver show at first, but light burst from it in brilliant streaks, bright enough to blind anyone who looked at it directly. The blade shrieked as it inched out of its scabbard, loud enough that their foes covered their ears.

“My Lady,” Sampson breathed, “Forgive me my lack of faith.”

“Sampson,” Delidah called again, laughingly, the warmth from before returned tenfold.

Sampson tightened his grip on the sword, feeling the warmth of his goddess’s hand covering his. He looked back at his companions and said, “Close your eyes.”

The soldiers charged. When Sampson finally drew his sword, it was with all the force of the sun.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please consider dropping a comment to let me know! This one means a lot to me, so I'd love to hear if it touched anyone.

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