Aelia was sirened into silence by the Stone God. He strode from out of the open church, confident and graceful. Nothing could be so perfect as this almighty being looked. His body was whisper-white and what stone he had been carved from -- if it was stone from the ground at all -- Aelia could not say. He wore tan cloth around his waist but no other clothes. A god who taught modesty to his people. His stomach was sculpted as if by streams that had met in a river running down his center. The male body perfected.

Aelia felt a hot love for him burning her chest. Not like the love she felt for family, or for any man. But something far deeper. Greater.

The Forgotten Monks followed reverently behind the Stone God. Aelia saw that they were at most only a quarter of His height. So small and pathetic in comparison to Him. So plain and ordinary.

Aelia glanced at Henry, but he didn't notice her. His eyes were too focussed on the God that walked amongst the living. No wonder the crowd was silent.

She waited for Him to stop walking, to turn and to address the crowd, but he sauntered forward until he reached the prisoners.

"What's he going to do to them?" Aelia whispered.

Henry shook his head, but for once he had nothing to say.

The Stone God bent down and put three fingers on one of the men's heads. "I grant you peace."

"Please!" she heard.

Crack.

She gasped as He released the man's head and it rolled across the paved ground, dripping a trail of crimson behind it.

This hadn't been like the stories her father had told her. Of how God had presented the people of Rhodes with a boon of food -- a hundred cows that were herded out from somewhere deep inside his church, and slaughtered and roasted there and then, and all the people there fed at no charge.

No, she thought. It was a little like that. Only the prisoners were like the cows.

"Repent." The voice was a ripple of thunder but it was also silk. It pleased the ears but it shivered the back. "Repent," said the Stone God a second time. "And the rest of you may live."

The prisoners remained silent, as far as Aelia could tell.

"As you wish," He said. "Then I have no choice other than to force purity upon you."

Aelia could hear the cracks as he ripped off the extra limbs, first from the two remaining men and then the wings of the women. Their screams flooded the air as their blood spattered both the pavement the Stone God himself, the bright red a stark contrast to his quiet body. It trickled down him, into the rivulets of his abdominals.

Aelia's stomach rocked. This wasn't what she'd come to see. Did the prisoners deserve this?

Yes, she supposed. They had likely been part of the raiding force that had burned villagers alive. And that could have been her mother and sister. And yet it didn't feel right. What would happen to their own army? What if Samuel and Margo's elder son was captured? Mercy surely had to run two ways.

The bodies quivered against the stakes, until they didn't.

The Stone God turned to the gathered crowd. Blood still crawled and dripped from him.

"War is upon us," He said.

A few cheers arose from the crowd behind Aelia. But only a few.

"We did not ask for it, but it has arrived." His arms went wide, His palms up, face carved into a sympathetic expression. "I know this is not what my Kingdom desires. Too pained and fresh are your wounds, my children. But I know too, that more attacks will come. That many more of my people will perish if we do not act." He paused for a moment, as if to let the resonance of his words sink in. "I know that your children will not sleep at night if they fear that death might come cowarding to them through the dark. Do your children not deserve to sleep safely?"

The cheers were louder, this time. "They do! They do! We all do!"

The Stone God observed His people. "War is upon us," He repeated. "But we shall persevere. We shall be victorious. For I shall march with our army, and we shall crush all who stand in our path."

Now the cheering was a deafening roar. She heard the person behind her say, "God's marching with them? God? Is this real? How can we lose if He is with them?"

God had never left His kingdom, as far as Aelia knew. Few Gods did. Only the Dark Elf ever had, at least that she could think of.

"We prepare our army now. In two days time we march."

Then, God turned, and walked back inside the church, into the darkness within, as the crowd still cheered fervently. The monks followed. Then, the mechanism that had opened the front of the church, splitting it like an axe in the stomach, reversed.

Henry wasn't yelling, but he did have a huge grin on his face. He caught Aelia's eyes and said, "Well, that was a spectacle, wasn't it?"

Yes, Aelia thought. But not a pleasant one. Not what she'd been hoping for. Dreaming of. God was gone again, and in his place he had left five bloodied corpses. The ground beneath them was scattered by body parts and covered in blood. And what had the Stone God achieved? He had committed his people to war.

"Aelia?" Henry shouted over the noise of the crowd.

She forced a smile. "Yes, it was indeed a spectacle."

Henry's face melted into a frown. "Then why do you seem like the prisoners were your parents? Look around you! Everyone is excited. Elated, even. Never has He gone to war before."

"Why does He now, then?"

"To end it quickly! What can the godless kingdom do against His power? It's not like the last war. They have no necromancer. Just a council of fattened up decision-makers."

Hadn't Henry said a few moments ago that he believed the augmented could win? That they wouldn't choose to go to war unless they believed they could be victorious?

And she had thought he had a point.

But like everyone else here, Henry had seemed to have been hypnotised by the God's words.

Or... was it her? She was the only person near that wasn't celebrating like the war was already won.

The crowd was deafening. Henry was talking to her again, she could see his lips moving but his voice was too quiet. Silent, even.

She was hot. Why was she so hot?

The crowd was like a fever boiling her skin.

The nausea was welling inside of her. She could hear the popping echoing in her head, of the augmented prisoners as their limbs were taken from their sockets. The snapping.

Henry's face was twisting now, as he approached her. His nose long and pointed like a bird's beak. And his skin was bubbling.

Was he mouthing her name?

No. It was a different voice rattling inside her skull.

Can you hear me?

She stepped back. Didn't want to be touched by that... thing that Henry had warped into.

Then Aelia collapsed as blackness arrived in her eyes.