The Broken God

Long ago, the priests say, the people of Lyrix were wicked and sinful. They were greedy and gluttonous, lustful and wrathful. They lied and cheated, blasphemed and murdered. The gods grew angry, and they took the sins of the people, and from those sins were born the dragons – creatures made to be divine scourges, to turn sin into redemptive suffering. But instead, the dragons went to the worst of the worst, the criminals and pirates of the Ghierdana islands, and said, “Are we not alike? We are both hateful in the eyes of others. Let us be one, and show those bastards.”
And in their way, the dragons did scourge the people of Lyrix, and reminded them of their sins, and drove them into the loving arms of the gods. But they made a profit while doing so.

She’ll get to Khebesh, she tells herself. Get rid of the fucking book, trade it for the sage counsel from the master sorcerers of the forbidden city. She doesn’t even know what she’s going to say to them when she gets there. My grandfather made me to be the centrepiece of a ritual to bring back the Black Iron Gods, and I sort of accidentally dumped all their power into the corpse of my dead friend. And then he turned into a city. And I could hear him in my head, and together we beat the shit out of the Ghierdana, and fought off an invasion, but now he’s fading. Is there a lotion you’d prescribe?