The years passed quickly, a monotonous procession of sacrifices, tedious court meetings, and lonely walks down winding palace halls.

  I found myself longing for companionship, yet the other boys were too afraid of me—me, the God-Prince who stood above all but my father.

  Vicious and unforgiving, the God-King sowed fear in those beneath him: every living creature of Draan. As such, the common folk gave me a wide berth.

  Yet, as I would find in life, there was always a troublemaker amongst the masses—one whose impulses overpowered their sense of self-preservation.

  My first encounter with such a person was Lucan, a boy my own age—a tempest of youthful energy with perpetually chaotic sandy hair, eyes alight with impishness, and a constant roguish grin.

  Despite his mother’s constant warnings and admonishments, Lucan would not heed her words. He would often find me with a sheepish grin that would inevitably lead to games.

  We ran through the halls of the palace, causing havoc in our bliss. The corners of Lucan’s eyes crinkled as he laughed with joy.

  He taught me to play games like "Hawk and Field Mouse," where one of us was a proud hawk who sought out the other, a cowering mouse.

  “I got you!” Lucan roared, tearing open the doors of the cupboard in which I hid.

  “You did!” I cheered, elated. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you have to stay the field mouse, while I am the mighty hawk.” He spread his arms wide and ran in tight circles.

  “I see. So, the field mouse cowers and hides, rising to become a hawk only through victory,” I mused, echoing my father’s stern lectures.

  Lucan paused, shooting me a puzzled look. “Um…no? It’s just a fun game!”

  “Oh…” His words didn’t make much sense next to the philosophical lifeview instilled in me by my father. Yet, at the ripe age of ten, I could hardly deny the opportunity for mindless fun; scarce as it was. “Okay!” I said, leaping up in search of my next hiding spot.

  “One… two… three,” Lucan counted, his hand obscuring his eyes.

  “No peeking!” I called.

  And it was fun—until the God-King discovered us.

  Marching through the courtyard, flanked by a flock of attendants, his heterochromatic eyes spied us mid-chase. It wasn’t long before we were brought before him in the grand throne room.

  The God-King was already seated upon his throne as we entered: a monstrous slab of obsidium that towered like a great beast.

  On either side of the path leading to the throne were embedded glass tubes. Within each ran crimson liquid—a ruby river leading towards the heart of Draan’s power.

  The walls were carved with murals depicting Tyrannichus’ feats of power, domination, subjugation, and glory. There was enough gold and rubies adorning the walls to feed every family in the Sun Ward for years. Marble steps led to a raised dais that allowed the God-King to look down upon his followers from on high. Large rubies encircled the backrest of the throne, forming a halo of blood drops around the God-King’s head. Orbs of silver and gold were set into the armrests; crimson claws tapped impatiently upon the gold.

  Vexus, his snake-tongued advisor, whispered into his ear. With a flick of the God-King’s red-clawed hand, Vexus grew silent and stepped backwards, eyes downcast.

  “Fraternising with mortals is beneath us,” he berated me. Lucan shrank further behind me, wilting under the God-King’s divine fury. “Would you play with the insects crushed beneath our feet with every step?”

  "No, Father," I murmured obediently, acutely aware of Lucan trembling behind me. His fear radiated palpably, bitter enough to taste.

  “Then I shall not see you behaving in such a way again,” he said. It was phrased like a question, but spoken as a command.

  “Yes, father,” I replied, choking back tears. It would not do to show weakness before His Divinity.

  For many days, I did not seek out Lucan. Yet, as a brantok emerges from its long slumber as the sun crests, so too did my loneliness rear its ugly head. Despite my fear, I risked discovery: Lucan was my friend. I endeavoured to catch him in moments of solitude; to keep our friendship secret. Yet, when I cornered him in the halls, he refused to meet my eyes and would no longer play games of hawks and mice. Eyes downcast, he would not share a word with me. He waited impassively until I finally took my leave.

  And in that, I learned the lesson: by my very birthright, I was a hawk. Lucan was destined to remain a mouse, cowering and fearful of those above him. Unlike our game, life would not allow him to become anything more than what he was.

  I still saw Lucan as he worked in the palace, though he avoided me, and would not return my greetings. After some time, I stopped trying.

  In the months that followed, there was little happiness in my life. I wandered the halls of the palace, accompanied by guards, but still very much alone.

  This was remedied by a gift from my father upon the celebration of my twelfth name day: a void stallion. Physically, the void stallion was perfect: the stallion had pristine, leathery flesh like that of a reptile, as black as the night sky. Gleaming, sharp canines peeked from its maw, and the triangular point on its tail was perfectly straight.

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  I named him Onyx, for it sounded like the noble steed of a powerful warrior from the stories Father told.

  While physically exceptional, the void stallion had a vicious and obstinate nature. Onyx unsaddled me dozens of times in the weeks that followed.

  The way he whinnied each time I hit the ground, it would seem Onyx took delight in my suffering. I rubbed the crimson blood from my hands gingerly on torn clothes as I made my way back to the palace, defeated.

  My failure was followed by a berating lecture from the God-King. "We are gods, Ominus. Divine guardians sent from the heavens to rule this land and all who live upon it," he ranted, as he walked circles through my ornate chambers. I was genuinely surprised he had not worn footprints into the stone floor.

  "You must learn to enforce your will. Dominate those beneath you."

  I nodded. "Yes, Father," I'd say, not quite knowing what I was saying yes to.

  For all my efforts, I was thrown once again the next day. The void stallion bared its fangs in mischievous delight.

  Another day, another lesson in failure: Onyx managed to work his way up to the fence line, somehow entangling my stirrups in the wire. My foot was caught, and the stirrups tore away. With one last buck, I was hurled over the fence and left to hang, dangling impotently as Onyx happily trotted around his enclosure, victorious.

  Next lecture, my father brought one of the servants before me. The man had bleached skin and hair, sun-kissed by the Dead God’s Eye. Clearly one of the fieldworkers.

  "If you don't dominate your subjects, you lose control," my father said over the quiet sobs of the servant. "If we lose control... chaos. And if chaos is allowed to rule..." he tsks, shaking his head and letting the sentence hang.

  "We were born to rule. It is our destiny as gods of this realm. If chaos reigns, our divinity is questioned. If our divinity is questioned, we are no longer worshipped. And what are gods without worshippers?" he seemed to ask the air, high on his own philosophical superiority.

  "To control their mind, there must be the understanding that you control their very lives." The God-King growls, plunging his hand into the man’s chest. There was a large crack as his fist shattered the slave's sternum, followed by a wet squelch of meat against meat as his heart was ripped free.

  The slave looked up at the beating organ before dropping to the ground in a puddle of his own blood.

  The God-King took a second to admire the heart before allowing it to hit the grey stone with a horrific slap.

  I felt sorry for the scared—and ultimately innocent—victim on the ground before me. Though I struggled to feel the full weight of it: how could I? I'd spent my life being taught to think of mortals as nothing more than insects.

  Yet, despite this indoctrination, I did care. This was a man, not an insect. A man with a family and friends. And here he lay, all of that erased, because I could not tame a horse...

  The third day, the final failure: Onyx was enraged that day, bashing against the inside of his stable with a blood-curdling screech. I'd been so terrified by the display I hadn't even dared to step foot into the pen.

  I may have been a god, yet I felt like any scared twelve-year-old boy out of his depth.

  I ran.

  I hid.

  The servants found me, and brought me to His Divinity. This time there was no rant or lecture. A knife was placed in my shaking hands by a silent servant. I held it with two trembling fists.

  My unasked question was answered as a figure was dropped at my feet: a simple gesture from the God-King had been indication enough of what was expected.

  I looked down at my victim. My punishment. He was my age. Clearly not a field worker, as his skin had not been bled of colour and his hair, instead of white, was the colour of sand...

  I looked down at my first friend, Lucan, blade in hand. For the first time in two years, his sea-green eyes met mine, full of fear.

  I could barely move, my upbringing at odds with my feelings: learned divinity versus innate humanity. Against overwhelming odds, humanity won, and I dropped the knife.

  It clattered on the stone floor, the clang of steel a resounding declaration of my mortality and unworthiness. To me, it was the heralding bells of defiance in the face of what I knew in my soul to be wrong.

  My victory was short-lived in the face of the God-King’s wrath: an oncoming storm I was powerless in the wake of.

  Yet his look of fury soured into something more concerning: I had seen it before when asked to observe sessions in the War Room, when some cunning stratagem or horrid perversion was suggested that would cost the lives of many.

  It felt like a small needle at first, easy enough to ignore. The needle quickly grew, a nail driven through the centre of my cranium with the precise strike of a hammer.

  Painfully, the nail receded, leaving a space in my mind. Voices poured through the hole, silencing my thoughts.

  You are a god!

  "I am a god," I repeated, much to the dismay of the boy before me.

  They are beneath you!

  The knife was in my hands again. I didn't recall stooping to retrieve it, yet I looked down and there it was, free of the tremble that had wracked it before.

  His life is yours.

  My arms bore the strength of a child, so my knife strokes were weak. Sloppy. However, given enough time, I held a beating heart in my hand: I could feel the pulse of life within my fingertips, vibrating down my arm.

  I looked down upon the corpse at my feet. I didn't hear his screams, yet the look of pure agony upon his young features suggested otherwise.

  With one last impotent struggle, the heart beat its last.

  I let it drop with a sickening thump.

  His Divinity—my father—left me there. I stood for hours, staring blankly at the body of my friend.

  Before long, servants arrived, dragging the corpse from the room, a trail of scarlet left in its wake.

  It was many days before I shook the lethargy that bound me to my room. My first—and only—friend dead by my hand. I could blame the God-King, though it felt akin to blaming a blazing inferno for my own careless drop of a candle.

  Though I soon came to realise my actions weren’t the only ones complicit in Lucan’s death.

  Heeding my father’s advice, I shook off the blanket of apathy and rose the next day, a plan in mind.

  I left for the stables. Soon, Onyx was bridled and saddled, more compliant than usual: I could only guess that he was bored, and missed tormenting me. I led him as far as the stable exit, adjacent to the stall of a night mare that made her home there: a simple specimen by the name of Midnight.

  I glanced over at Midnight, who eyed me warily. She wasn’t as perfect as my gift; white spots decorated her black hide, a few shades lighter than Onyx. The point of her tail had a slight angle, and there was a chip in the side.

  Onyx tossed his head, as if to brag about the beating he was about to inflict.

  Before Onyx could react, I drew my dagger swiftly across his throat. Midnight watched silently as Onyx screamed, black ichor staining my pristine boots.

  I held tightly to his reins as he flailed, feeling only numbness. The creature struggled weakly, dropping to his side as blood fountained from the open wound. When the last of Onyx’s twitches ebbed and his eyes glazed over, I saddled Midnight and led her over Onyx towards the paddock.

  I urged the night mare into a trot, and soon felt comfortable enough to lead her from the confines of the stable to gallop across the palace courtyard. Midnight followed my every command. She never fought me, never struggled, and never threw me from the saddle.