"Godslayer" (Patreon)

The fifth in a series of short works I wrote 1-2 years ago for the Destiny franchise. You don't need to be familiar with the games to enjoy. The only context needed is that Guardians are immortal warriors who can die and be resurrected by their Ghost companions ad infinitum. I hope you like ❤️

The first god I killed had stardust for flesh.

It left an insatiable hunger in the grooves of my blade. A desperate twitch with every pull of my trigger finger. A burning ache in the very core of me, where this gift takes form in a pistol of flame.

And so I kept killing gods.

One wore time on its finger like a trinket and conducted fate like a symphony. One had wings that spanned centuries and steel that sundered civilizations from existence. One saw the edge of the infinite universe and decided it wasn’t enough.

One devoured galaxies whole and spat out war free as oxygen. One wielded darkness as its creed and the screams of the dying its mantra. One severed its limbs from its body so that it could rebirth itself a perfect specimen.

One gorged itself on the collective pain of countless worlds and took tithe in the form of fear. One melded twisted forms and borne hideous life from maggoty flesh. One spoke in tongues not its own and manipulated the ignorant to beg for their end.

One brought death to the deathless and taught itself to assume deathlessness. One razed planets to dust and subjugated their puny gods into eternal servitude. One unsewed the seams of reality and grasped Light between ancient fingers.

Several were older than time itself, beings with their own orbit, concepts of existences bigger than galaxies. Several learned to sever soul from body, cheating life and death and the fabric of time and space. Several fought and died for millennia, unkillable as I am, dying simply for the sport of it, for the act of perfecting death, of overcoming it.

But now they are all dead. Like lambs for slaughter I felled them all.

When does a slayer of gods become a god themselves? When does a god that can be slain by something so small cease to be a god? Perhaps it’s a loop I’ve placed myself in. One assumes power, kills gods, becomes a god, is killed by newly assumed power who kills gods, becomes a god, is killed by newly assumed power who kills gods—

Perhaps this is what all infant gods start as—hungry, confident, foolish. Thinking themselves unstoppable. A force with which nothing can match. An overcomer of existence. A usurper of powers that be. King of kings. Queen of queens. God of gods. A god and a godslayer.

At what point am I no longer simply one who slays gods, but is one?

And when will another god-killer come to end me?