Ch7.44 Revelations

“Focus, Alma!” Sharia’s voice is harsh, acidic. Old.

Funny how one’s idea of someone affects perception so completely. How the same old bent goddess can seem so grandmotherly, almost worthy of that pitiful benevolence usually directed at those whose physical or mental capabilities are fleeing, or so twisted, so malevolently dry. How an amusing cackle turns to harsh gravel when emotion and knowledge turn a quaint family member into a shameless fraud. Alma listens to Sharia’s rambled instructions with only half a mind’s worth of attention. It all seems…ridiculous.

Maybe not ridiculous as such. What word better describes the absurdity of a whole school of knowledge built over and around a fallacy? Can anyone call beliefs ridiculous, even when being in possession of the truth? But then, what to do with all this supposed knowledge? Throw it away and start over? Try to save something of what has been a whole world’s truth for centuries?

It is frustrating. Alma has spent her life believing in a number of premises: 1) souls are neither created nor destroyed but continuously recycled; 2) souls have two states – embodied and disembodied; 3) disembodied souls are (with the exception of ‘ghosts’ and the like) drawn into the Wheel, where they stay until recycled; 4) it is a death god’s calling to release souls from their bodies and open the gateways which facilitate passage into the Wheel; 5) it is a Spinner’s task to spin the Wheel, accelerating their cleansing and transition into readiness for new life.

And all of this remains true. All of this is still compatible with the new things she has recently learned. But then, things stop adding up. Like the Spinning Wheel ceremony, that one moment in the year during which the Wheel can be spun, and only if a particular sun shines over the chamber in the Death Clan estate, at a particular time and on a specific angle. A single moment in time and place which mobilizes hundreds of gods all over the Insula to gather around a life goddess – always a life goddess, celibate and drained continuously by such incredible efforts – who stands as the fulcrum of the Wheel where it must spin.

It is just not true. It cannot be. Because Alma has spun the Wheel for a single soul and it wasn’t even all that difficult either. It did not leave her exhausted. She knows she will need to learn how to spin thousands of souls at once, but Sharia’s truth no longer fits with her own.

And so Alma stands listening with half an ear to Sharia’s gibberish while the memories of being in the Wheel, of speaking to the Shan’doir, of spinning the Wheel, minutely, for Nasheena run through her mind. Sharia does not mention the Shan’doir. She does not mention the inside of the Wheel. Every piece of the scarce knowledge she shares – only a part of the whole of the knowledge the old goddess holds, Alma has no doubt – is like a tale being told by someone who saw things happening from far away, not from the center of the action. And while in some cases this may be good for perspective, in this case, it is like being led by a blind guide over the edge of the abyss.

And the Shan’doir do not recognize Sharia as a Spinner or even as someone they have seen before in the Wheel. What has Sharia been doing for centuries? How has she been spinning the Wheel from the outside?

“Focus!” Sharia shrieks at her for the tenth time. “How did you manage to survive so long in your wretched Clan if you can’t even manage to get through a short lesson?”

“I’m sorry, Sharia,” Alma replies yet again. “The damage my soul sustained recently makes it difficult to concentrate. Did you ask me a question?”

“Yes. Have you tried to spin the Wheel since the ceremony?” Sharia asks, huffing slightly.

Alma considers before answering. Sharia should know the answer to that question. Being the Spinner, she should be able to sense its movements. She should know Alma has spun the Wheel recently, for Nasheena’s soul. So why ask? Is this a test? Or is Sharia’s dwindling power leaving those cloudy eyes truly blind to the Wheel?

She decides to risk it. “No. I’m not really sure how I did it in the first place.”

She does what she can to sound convincing but Sharia’s reply is silence. Long, staring silence, those greying eyes looking deep into the swirling vortex of Alma’s as if they were a window of the truth. But no one does deadpan like a death god. Alma holds her gaze steady, waiting for the moment of being confronted with her own lie.

And it never comes. Sharia harrumphs, nods and holds a finger to Alma’s face. “That’s right, you don’t. Never try to spin the Wheel alone, little girl. Not until I say you’re ready. Until then, I’ll guide your every incursion into it.”

Alma nods, putting serious effort into not letting her eyebrow rise in suspicion. She can feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise, that long-honed sense of ‘something is not right’ that has been so useful to her in the Guardia tingling against her nerves. She swallows, feeling suddenly sick to her stomach without knowing exactly why.

“What should I do in this lesson?” Alma asks.

“Lie down on that bed,” Sharia orders her.

Though Sharia’s living quarters are in a separate building located in the Life Clan temple estate, the lesson is taking place in Death’s house, apparently due to a demand made by Alma’s father himself, that the lessons happen where Alma can easily be assisted by the people who have seen her through the countless health crises of her youth, if need be. Sharia had not looked happy about this but she had eventually accepted it with a grumble. So Alma is now in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by the sights and scents of her youth, the doorless chamber making her feel only marginally secure for being in her father’s house. She lies down on her bed as ordered and watches as Sharia sits on the edge of the bed and places a gnarled hand on Alma’s forehead.

“I am going to show you how it’s done,” Sharia says. “Open up your essence to me. It’s the only way to teach you the paths.”

Alma hesitates before nodding. Opening her essence, the pathways of energy flow that connect the various layers of her soul to someone else is not just an incredibly intimate experience but something that no god has the right to demand of another god or mortal. It is a deep, deep level of nakedness before another and a special kind of vulnerability before someone Alma is beginning to feel is deeply, deeply…off. And she does not even know why.

Her gut demands her to stop. To rise from her bed and run, run at full speed, out of the house, into the public portal, back to Three Rats, to the station, among her children, to children’s arms. To real safety.

But what would that accomplish? Running would only get her a scolding, as if she were a child again. Running is the way of children, who are too weak to fight back. And she is not a child anymore. If only to find out why this feels so wrong, she must go ahead with the charade. So she opens herself to Sharia, letting her manipulate Alma’s energy, feeling her trigger strange pathways, convoluted and strenuous, unnatural almost. For a moment, it seems like it won’t happen, like the Wheel won’t open that way, no matter how much they try. Alma feels strained, pulled in a multitude of different directions, stretched nearly to the point of breaking. She endures it until she can endure it no more, until she feels as if she is going to die from the strain. It triggers her memories of that horrible pain, of being nearly bound to her own sword, and she cannot resist any longer. The path into the Wheel is so clear… at all times. She can run there instead, beyond Sharia’s painful touch, beyond the agony of this world.

She curses herself for her weakness. But she runs.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

“Little soul?” the voice is calm. Gentle.

Alma opens her eyes to find she doesn’t have them. Not in this form. Not in this place. The Wheel. She welcomes the timeless coolness, the peaceful absence of all physical sensation. Of pain.

“Shan’doir?” she calls out.

“We are here,” the voice replies. “We are always here. Have you come to visit?”

“I am…” What was she supposed to be doing? Her mind feels jumbled. She feels sleepy. How can she want to sleep with no body to rest? “I am…someone…is with me?”

“Little soul, why are you so weak now?” the voice asks.

“I…I don’t know.” Alma searches her memories. “I am being taught…how to spin the Wheel.”

“Taught? You have spun the Wheel,” the voice says. “You are Shan’doir. You know.”

“Can you feel anyone with me?” Alma asks, feeling dread creep into the fore of her mind.

There is silence for a moment. How long it lasts is anyone’s guess – There is no time here. But there is still agony in waiting.

“You need to go back, little soul,” the voice says suddenly, though without urgency.

“Back? Why?” Alma asks, confused. “Have you detected Sharia? She is our Spinner. She has been spinning the Wheel for centuries.”

“The Wheel spins of its own will, little soul. Of its own heart,” the voice explains, patiently. “The Spinner is the heart of the Wheel. Without the Spinner, it can only be forced to spin through sacrifice.”

Alma’s confusion only grows. “Sacrifice of what?”

“Go back, little soul,” the voice says. “Before you find out.”

Returning to her body is like being pushed back – or pulled back maybe – by a strong elastic, or sucked by an enormous vortex. She feels the pull, for a moment seeming like it is her body calling her soul back but the pulling sensation doesn’t end, even after she returns to the boundaries of her body. The pulling feels stronger now that she is in her body, actually, draining her, as if something or someone is stealing away her life-force, sucking it as one would suck the contents of an egg through a hole in its shell.

Dread creeps up Alma’s spine, a cold dawning realization that chills her blood, now that she can feel it.

Sharia. Sharia is sacrificing her!

She can still feel the old goddess’ hand on her forehead. She can feel her life-force drain away through that touch, physical and spiritual and she acts immediately, cutting the connection with Sharia, curling herself into a little metaphysical ball, protecting her core. Too weak to move her body, it is all she can do to protect herself. But it is enough to make Sharia shriek in frustration.

“What are you doing, silly child?” the old goddess protests, trying to force the connection with her to reestablish. “The first session is nearly done. How do you expect anything if you won’t let me teach you?”

“Gg—gg—“ Alma tries to speak but she can’t force her throat to make the sounds.

“Shut up, child. Let me in again,” Sharia scolds her. “You are my worst student yet.”

“Nnn—nn—nnooOOOO!” The word is mostly a cry, primal and animalistic, pure sheer panic in a scream she can’t quite control.

And though it can do nothing against Sharia, it does the necessary. From every hallway and room nearby, people start pouring in, looking to see what is making Alma scream. Gods and mortals, all gather in the room, asking questions, looking at Sharia in suspicion. And suddenly, Alma is being lifted in protective arms against Sharia’s protests. There is a scent of sweat, of blood, of elemental fear in the air, but Alma feels safe now. The scent is welcome. The arms, familiar.

Melinor.

Alma looks up at her brother’s face, that duet of beauty and decay contorted in anger, glaring a threat at Sharia that gets the seasoned goddess to shut up, glaring back but not without a hint of concern. Alma struggles with her tongue, wanting to ask her brother to crush Sharia’s skull in his powerful hand, to destroy her for having tried to drain Alma. But the words don’t come and Melinor simply turns away from Sharia, and takes Alma away to her mother’s garden.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

“Here, have some more tea,” Lyria insists gently, pushing another steaming glass into Alma’s hands.

“I already had two glasses, Mother,” Alma protests. “There is only so much that tea can do. And you have already examined me five times.”

“Well, at least it does not hurt,” Lyria notes, glancing toward Death, who is currently seated on a garden bench across from Alma. “I would rather keep you here for observation but if you insist on going back today, at least have the tea.”

“You are sure she was draining you,” Death says with that subtle intonation that turns a statement into a question.

Alma nods, serious, holding his gaze. “At first I did not notice it. It just felt…painful. Like being pulled in a thousand different directions. It was somewhat similar to the first time I spun the Wheel but the whole thing felt off from the start. It felt like too much effort. It was nothing like when I spun it for Nasheena. Nothing like when I entered it. But I guess…I thought she used alternate routes. And then I realized it. I felt her draining me.” She carefully avoids mentioning the Shan’doir. For some reason she cannot quite understand, the idea of sharing that knowledge with her parents seems inconceivable. “I guess she thought I wouldn’t know what she was doing. And she became greedy.”

“She must have been desperate to try something like that on you,” Lyria says.

“She may not have planned on taking such risks at first,” Death says. “But perhaps the energy of a young goddess with a Spinner’s gift was too seductive to just ease into draining through multiple sessions. And I gave her no option when I refused to let her lessons take place in her own sanctum. I wonder now how many young deities with even a hint of talent have been sacrificed in this fashion.”

“I do not know how many,” Alma says, measuring her words. “But I suspect she has been doing it for centuries. She may have used her own energy at first but once it became too much of an effort… Would anyone really suspect it?”

“If they have, they made sure to cover the tracks,” Lyria says, shaking her head. “So many life gods… It is just as difficult to keep track of them as it is to track death gods. With the exception that life gods are less organized. And Sharia is nearly untouchable in the Life Clan. None can deny her. But to just do something like this after the last Year’s End ceremony…such a great risk.”

“She trusted her experience would make her irreplaceable and unquestionable,” Death says. “Presumption and worthiness, to each their chosen measure.” He stands, his right hand adjusting his left cuff. “Is she irreplaceable, Alma?”

“No, Father,” Alma replies, holding her glass tighter in her hands to help steel her nerves. “And please, do not ask me to take any more lessons from her. I won’t. I will learn, one way or another, but not from her. I want her as far away from me as I can possibly have her.”

Death pierces her with his gaze. He knows. She knows he knows she is withholding information. And he knows she knows she is not fooling him. Still, Death does not need to press to get what he wants. He just needs to be patient. Eventually, all things are brought his way. And both of them know it. So none of them mentions it.

“At this point, I suspect the place would be your elected ward of exile,” Death says. “Melinor will see you there. I look forward to your progress.”

Ch6.99 Trust

“Okay y’all, cookies are ready!”

The plate is heavy in Cherry’s hands, but the cookies – chocolate chip, almond, and peanut butter – smell heavenly. Serving baked goods out to everyone lends Cherry some slight distraction from the worries that plague her mind.

There has been no news. Not since hours ago when Grandmamma Lyria left them in the care of the Twins, Uncle Imset and Uncle Lum. All they know is that their mother, Alma, along with Dion, is out on a mission to rescue Sky. And that their enemies can send squads of demons. And that those demons were supposed to kill or capture the Bunnies, and they would’ve done it, too, if Grandmamma hadn’t shown up. They would’ve killed us all, she thinks. They would’ve done worse than that…

She stops where she is and shuts her eyes tight. Stop it! You’re gonna break down and scare the younger ones! Just…stop thinking about it.

She takes a breath and opens her eyes and, to her dismay, Chime is looking right at her. It doesn’t look like anyone else saw her freeze up, but sweet little Chime, with those long dirty-blonde bangs hanging half over his eyes, is staring at her. It can be hard to tell what Chime is feeling when he’s not playing music. He wakes up when playing with Kori, too – his big brother is a hero to him, even though Kori wins pretty much every race, every wrestling match, every whatever. But a lot of the time, Chime is sort of dreaming, “seeing music everywhere” he told her once. She’d been reading a novel on the bed in her and Merri’s room, and he’d just come in and lay down next to her. She’d put an arm around him, not even really thinking about it, and asked him what was on his mind. When he told her, she’d asked, “Don’t you mean hearin’ music everywhere, sweetie?” He’d shaken his head on her shoulder. “Seeing.” Then he’d fallen asleep.

But Cherry knows him well enough to know that he’s pretty scared too, and the sight of her just freezing like that is not helping, no way. So she puts a fragile smile on her face and makes sure everyone gets cookies. All the Bunnies, except of course May who is away, take at least one – Kori takes three, though rejecting the peanut butter as “gross,” and Merri insists on calling them “biscuits,” which is just silly – and Geryon, who loves chocolate chip, and the Twins, instant uncles, just add Bunnies. Aliyah has gone back to the station next door for a little while, even though she’s not technically on duty. They just got hit by demons, after all. Must be some form for reporting that.

Just as Imset is taking his cookie, he and his brother both look past everyone else. Cherry feels the fur on the back of her neck stand on end, and she turns, almost sagging in relief to see it’s Lyria, next to the huge, foreboding figure of Melinor. Melinor might be kind of scary, but he’s scary to other people, not to the Bunnies. He might not think of them as family, but they are Alma’s, and that’s good enough for him. At least that’s how it seems.

But in Melinor’s arms is a shrouded form, a human form, wrapped tight in a white sheet that covers it completely. The world seems to contract, going dark at the edges of her vision, and sound becomes muffled. There’s a part of her mind that just observes this, surprised that she hasn’t dropped the plate with the remaining cookies, but somehow she automatically sets it down on the table beside her. She watches as Sage and Merri approach Melinor, looking at that white-shrouded shape, and they turn to look at her as they catch the scent and realize who it is. Cherry is too far away for the smell to hit her yet, but they turn and look at her, right at Cherry, and she knows, from that.

It’s not Sky, of course. He’s about the same size as Melinor, which would make carrying the body a lot more awkward. And it’s not Mama. If it were, Lyria and Mel would both be shattered, and Merri and Sage too. Dion is bigger, more muscular than that shape, and Somrak, well, they wouldn’t be singling out Cherry to look at with concern and sorrow, now would they?

So she knows. She shakes her head, trying to refuse it, but she knows. She takes a step forward, then another. Then she passes into the scent as it wafts outward. Even though the body has been cleaned up, the smell of death is there along with some foul poison, but there it is. Saira. That’s definitely Saira.

Scent triggers memory so easily, and bam, it hits Cherry hard: massaging Saira’s back, the muscles twitching after an attack. In the bath together, Saira looking at her, smiling, all comfortable and happy, saying “I like you, Fluffy Ears.”

Cherry starts to tremble, and as Merri wraps her arms around her, Cherry sags and moans into her embrace. She just lets Merri take over. That little part of her mind that’s observing all this says, Yeah, that’s heartbreak, all right.

The following few minutes are just a blur to her. Sage asking after Mama, and the others. “They are safe,” Lyria says immediately. “Alive. But little ones, I need you to listen and understand. They cannot return tonight.”

“What happened to Mom? And Dion and Sky? Uncle Som? Why’s Saira…?” Tulip’s voice trails off, shaken by tears. “What’s going on? Where’s our Mom?” Kori demands. Imset talking with Melinor in a strange language, their voices low but heavy. Merri’s loving voice whispering to her, telling her it’ll be all right.

But it won’t.

Yeah, but what are you gonna do, huh? There’s that voice again, Cherry’s own. Gonna just be a sack of potatoes in Merri’s arms? There’s Tulip cryin’. They’re scared. Pull it together!

Cherry grips Merri’s shoulder and literally pulls herself upright, standing up on her own two feet. She takes a long glance into Merri’s eyes, marveling at that deep, amazing green, then lets her go and turns to see to the kids. She still feels as if the floor has disappeared, as if she’s falling through the air, but she can’t ignore the younger ones. Tulip is already in Lyria’s arms, but Kori is standing, fists clenched, looking frightened and furious at once. She puts her arms around him, gently, and though he’s stiff and resistant at first, he can tell how much she’s hurting, and he lets go of his anger and holds her, affected as much by her pain as by his own need for comfort.

Past Kori’s shoulder, she sees Chime still sitting on the sofa, all alone. Cherry holds out and arm to him, and he comes, pale and scared, and just grabs onto both her and Kori, holding them tightly.

All she can offer for the moment is physical contact. The words just won’t come.

But Merri is telling them, “She’ll be home soon.” Then to Lyria, she asks, “Won’t she?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Lyria says after a moment. “She asked me to tell you she will be back by tomorrow and not to leave your side until then.”

“How bad is it?” Geryon asks. Cherry lifts her head from her embrace of the two younger boys and sees that he is near Melinor, who is laying Saira’s body on the bar with Merri’s help, the only place other than the floor or the sofa that is long enough to lay her out.

Lyria exhales deeply. “Not as bad as it could be but…” She looks back at the Bunnies, “Children, your mother and her friends went against a necromancer and a dangerous demon summoner to rescue Tuma-Sukai. They have defeated the criminals and found Sky but they have all been injured. Deeply.” She raises a hand at their alarmed expressions. “None of them is at risk and their bodies have been healed. But there are deeper wounds. And those will take a long time to heal. They will require your patience and understanding.”

“We’ll be strong for them,” Merri says. “But…can we not go see them? Or…” She trails off.

“They need peace, little ones. Time to regain some of their strength,” Lyria explains. She touches Merri’s head. “And you must know… Tuma-Sukai cannot return tomorrow. His wounds require the most care and he will need to stay confined to his healer’s home for a long while. Most likely without visitors.” Her voice is gentle but pained.

Cherry clenches her jaw shut, shuts her eyes tight, and holds onto Kori, grateful for his strong arms. She just knows if she were to start asking the questions she wants to ask, What do you mean, we can’t see him? He needs us! What the Hell is goin’ on?! she will end up screaming. So she just stays silent.

“Can they heal, Lady?” Geryon asks quietly.

Lyria nods. “I believe so. Though… I have no way of knowing how long that will take. Their bodies are healed. The rest…”

“And how much trouble are they in?” the gryphon insists. Trouble? Cherry thinks. Oh no…no no no, not again…

Lyria sighs. “That remains to be seen. But I will see to it that not too much comes to pass.”

Imset moves closer to Lyria, whispering to her in that other language. They exchange a swift but somewhat heated argument, then Lyria nods in defeat. Imset kneels by Cherry. “She is alive, all right? I can sense her soul. We’ll drop by and see her before we return home. Don’t worry about anything.” He smiles reassuringly.

Cherry lets go of Kori and puts her hands on Imset’s shoulders. They’ve just met these new uncles, one silent, one talkative. She looks him in his strange, shadowy face and feels an almost overwhelming gratitude at his acceptance of her, of all of Alma’s children “Thank you…” she whispers. “Tell her…tell her we all love her, and, and all of ‘em, and…”

Then words fail her, and she puts her arms around Imset’s neck and holds on tight. All of it, blows coming one after another – almost losing their mother, and Dion, and Sky, and now Saira’s death, which she just cannot bear to think about – combined with all of these Death Clan gods here, most of them showing so much kindness when they’re in the middle of their own crisis, and even Melinor taking this time to be here, this is really something, no matter how much he might seem not to care, all of this is just clashing in pain and healing that she can’t speak.

Imset holds her and strokes her hair. Merri soon comes and gently pulls her away, kissing Imset’s cheek and murmuring her thanks, telling the Twins to go with grace and to return soon. Imset replies quietly, then rises and, with a look at Luminus, both gods vanish.

As Cherry walks to the bar, she hears Melinor ask, “Do you require me to stay?”

“No, little one,” Lyria says. “All the enemies are defeated. I don’t expect any counterattacks tonight. Go. Tell your father I will be busy awhile.”

Cherry feels Melinor vanish. There’s no need for special senses for that. The god of violent death radiates an aura of dread that is hard to ignore sometimes. But though that aura is gone, dread remains, brought in other ways. Cherry touches the sheet where it covers Saira’s face, and carefully pulls it back.

So pale. So still. All life gone. That life that Mama nurtured and healed, that Cherry helped in her own way, lesser but more constant, fled forever. Cherry touches the cool cheek. Saira was so beautiful, so deadly. Frightening, really, but full of life at the same time.

And now there is nothing but a corpse.

“Oh baby,” Cherry whispers, running her finger along the soft, short hair of Saira’s eyebrow.

Behind her, Cherry hears Lyria whispering to the younger Bunnies, “It will be all right. I am here to take care of you.” The door of the bar opens, and footsteps approach. A gasp. Aliyah is on one side of Cherry, staring at Saira’s face, and Cala is on the other, silent and somber. Aliyah puts her hands to her face and sobs.

Cherry steps back. She knows a little of the history there. Aliyah and Cala were childhood friends with Saira, a friendship ruptured and only repaired recently and partially. Cala reaches a hand out to rub Aliyah’s back.

In stepping back, Cherry nearly steps on Sage, who holds her hand, looking at her, his beautiful dark features so empathetic. But at the sound of Tulip’s plaintive voice, they turn.

“Mom can come home!” Tulip insists. “We’ll let her sleep. We’ll just hug her and let her sleep. You can go get her.”

“You can hug her tomorrow, little Tulip,” Lyria insists. “She will need all of your hugs tomorrow. But she is probably already asleep and I cannot go disturb her now.”

“Let us hope she is asleep,” Sage says, stroking Tulip’s white hair. “We will welcome her home soon enough.”

Cherry asks, her voice low, “Grandmama, what about… Is Saira…her…soul? Is it okay?”

“She is at peace,” Lyria explains, her eyes on Cherry’s, compassionate. “Her soul has been released by Varah, the goddess you met earlier. It will return to the Wheel.”

“So she’ll be reborn.” Cherry nods to herself. “What…what now?” Cherry asks. “Do we…bury her?”

“Is that her custom? I am not sure about burial rites…” Lyria seems genuinely unsure what to do. “I could join her body with the Insula, of course. Return it to the great cycle of things so it can feed new life.”

The tall Guardia cop Aliyah, her face wet but recovered, approaches and puts her hands on Sage’s shoulders. She clears her throat. “Saira didn’t have religious feelings one way or the other. Just always said her body would be worm food soon enough. I guess…makin’ that comes true, in a nice way, that’d be somethin’ she could get behind.” Cala, coming to stand beside her friend and colleague, nods.

“Well, maybe we can consider a little patch of garden? A tree to remember her by?” Lyria suggests.

Cherry considers this. “Out back? There’s that tree in the corner, sickly little thing. Maybe she can give it some strength if she was under that.” She smiles, just a little. “I know it ain’t her no more but it’d be like havin’ her nearby.”

Lyria nods. “I will let you say your goodbyes tonight, and tomorrow morning, as early as possible, we will take care of that. All right? The little ones should get to bed for now.”

It takes some time, but soon everyone has gone away. Lyria and the others are in Alma’s sanctum, preparing for bed, all planning to sleep together in safety and warmth. Aliyah and Cala have both said quiet prayers over the body to their faraway god, and after a little while Cala returns to work while Aliyah, off-shift, returns to her family.

In the quiet of the bar, most of the lights extinguished, Cherry once more goes to Saira’s body. She smooths the hair back from the corpse’s forehead, and stares at that settled expression. Is that the slightest hint of a smile on Saira’s face? Did she finally achieve what she wanted?

“You never knew peace in your life, baby,” Cherry whispers to her. “Wish you coulda found it with us. I will never, ever forget you.” She leans over and presses her lips to the cool skin of Saira’s forehead.

Then straightening, she carefully rearranges the sheet to cover Saira’s face, and turns to descend the stairs, toward her family, and life, and love.

Ch6.97 Trust

In a shadowy chamber, water running down one wall, phosphorescent lichen and albino geckos on the rough stone, Somrak sits, his back to a table. Table – well, formerly a thick stalagmite that had broken off and was then cut and smoothed to a useful surface. The bench on which Somrak sits is a natural ridge of stone as well, shaped dexterously into a comfortable seat. Somrak does not make use of its legroom between the table and itself, instead stretching his legs away from the table, resting his back against the edge of it, his arms crossed over his bare chest, staring at nothing. Thinking, over and over, of what he could have done differently.

The mission had been a success. Technically. They got Sky out alive. None of the gods had died. But Saira… Saira died. For a moment he rages at her, in his mind. You weren’t even on our mission, were you? You were on your personal vendetta. I told you! Alma told you! Fates, I knocked you unconscious to keep you from meeting your death! Still you came…

None of this shows on his face. It remains impassive, as calm as the drops of water, as the slow breathing of a huge, dangerous beast in the deeper shadows further into the chamber.

But you kept your target immobilized, Somrak tells the dead woman he holds in his mind. He had to devote every trick he had to trying to survive, and still he failed at that. You did it, girl. You got him. You killed him. You laid your ghosts to rest, and yourself as well.

And in response, he hears her voice – no ghost, unless a desire to speak again just one more time can be called a ghost. Still as dumb as ever, Ponytail. Thinkin’ you have me figured out. Gods, but you gods are stupid.

He twists and brings his legs around, facing the table. On it, laid out like the main guest at a wake, is a body. The filthy cloth he had wrapped her in has been replaced by a clean white winding-cloth of soft cotton, the same material as these white trousers he is wearing, a magical gift from the Oracle. Much of the damage to the body has been repaired, as well. At least, with the face visible, Somrak can see no sign of trauma on Saira’s calm, cool mien.

He brushes a lock of her brown hair with his fingertips. “You got him,” he whispers.

Beyond him, where no lichen illuminates, a pair of eyes, glowing blue-green, open. They look at Somrak and Saira, then the head bearing them turns, ponderous, to the doorway. The illumination behind Somrak increases, throwing a shadow across Saira’s face. He turns to see Lyria at the doorway, a soft verdant light surrounding her, the aura of her Life sphere highlighting her maternal beauty. Behind her is a dark, hulking shape – Melinor, Alma’s brother. And passing her to enter the chamber is Alma herself, followed closely by Gwydion, bare-chested and white-breeched like Somrak.

Alma goes directly to Somrak, her eyes on his face. He can see the pain and anguish from the ordeal she has been through. Forcibly possessed by a twisted, evil soul. Trapped in a desperate fight for control of her own body. Made to witness Gwydion’s torture at the hands that same body. And Somrak’s own torture as well, let’s not forget that. And what else? What else did Nua put Alma through in there? He is certain it was far worse that the scourging Somrak himself suffered.

But before she speaks to him, her eyes – those strangely beautiful pearlescent eyes – move to Saira. She puts a hand on the corpse’s forehead for a moment, a stoic sorrow passing across Alma’s face. It lasts but a moment. Alma is a goddess of the House of Death. Cold lifeless bodies are not the focus of her sorrow. Or so Somrak assumes.

Then she lays that same hand on his cheek, turning his face up to hers. “Somrak?” Her voice is a plea for reassurance that he has come out of that little slice of Hell, not left himself behind somehow.

He looks into her eyes. Her touch is not as cool as it normally is. He suspects it is because his own fire is nothing but ashes, his body no warmer than a mortal’s. He opens his mouth, and out of it comes a voice barely above a whisper, but on the verge of becoming a wail. “I am sorry… Alma, I am so sorry…”

She puts her arms around his neck, pulling his head to her shoulder as she sits on the bench next to him. “Shh,” she whispers in his ear. “We all knew. And we’re safe now.”

After a brief hesitation, he holds her tightly, his hands on her lower back and shoulder blade. “I thought we were all lost. I almost–” He cuts himself off. He can’t. He just can’t tell her that at the moment before they were rescued, he was on the verge of killing her unconscious body in the hope that at least her soul might escape being pulled into Hell. Instead he asks, “Saira? Her soul?”

“Varah saw to it,” Melinor replies from the doorway, his voice low. “Personally.”

Over Alma’s shoulder, Somrak looks at him through locks of the goddess’ snowy white hair. He nods at Melinor. “Thank you.”

From the shadows comes a rumble of agreement, a sound like misshapen lava stones grinding in the stygian trenches of the ocean. “You pulled us from Hell, Melinor,” Sky says, pitching his voice as close to human as he can. “You saved us.” The glowing blue-green eyes blink.

“It was necessary,” Melinor says simply. He seems unused to being regarded with such gratitude.

Alma looks at Melinor, the edges of her mouth twitching into a tentative smile. She speaks as if just for Somrak, “Melinor has always been my protector. I learned much of my strength from him.” Then she rises, swaying as she tries to stand, hand reaching for the edge of the table.

Somrak puts a hand on her elbow and shifts to catch her, but Gwydion is at her side, his hand on her waist and the other clasping hers. “You should sit,” he says. His voice is gentle, but also strained from pain.

Somrak surprises himself with the flare of jealousy he feels. And in his memory he hears Saira’s derisive laughter. Still? he castigates himself. After you and Dion have saved each other’s lives, after all both he and she have been through with you, you’re still envious? You all nearly died, you were tortured together, you saw the face of a Prince of Hell, and still the teenage boy in you cannot resist crashing into the middle of everything. He lets go of Alma’s arm and sinks back onto the bench.

Seeming not to have noticed Somrak’s assistance, Alma looks at Gwydion with empathy and sadness and reaches to stroke his cheek, as she did Somrak’s but with, perhaps, more tenderness. Or maybe that is Somrak’s imagination. “I just wanted to see Sky before I do so.” She looks toward the darkness.

The glowing eyes dip, and the darkness intensifies, becoming palpable. “Stop trying to hide,” Somrak mutters in Sky’s direction. “She’s already seen your ugly mug. Fates know it’s looking better now that it was then.”

Sky narrows his eyes as Somrak. Then, slowly, the darkness fades to become merely the natural dim light of the cavern chamber. Sky’s true form, hulking and winged, becomes more and more visible, though its red-black coloration still fades into the shadows where he huddles. The diabolic aura of fear suppressed, he is merely ugly, dangerous in appearance, but not radiating a terror-inducing cloak of gloom.

He raises his vulpine head slightly as Alma approaches, the heavy horns that sweep back from his skull looking as if he is straining to against them to meet her gaze. His blinded eye is healed, scars removed from his face.

For a long moment, the two simply look at each other. Dion stands less than an arm’s length behind Alma, looking ready to snatch her away if Sky makes any sudden moves. Somrak aches for them. He has an inkling of how attached Sky is to the goddess, and how much she has come to trust and rely upon Sky.

Then Alma hesitantly reaches to touch Sky’s muzzle, stopping a few inches from it. Waiting. Hoping.

But Sky does not move toward her, instead pulling back slightly, cringing away. “I was going…to tell you,” he croaks softly. His voice is deeper, rumbling, but it is recognizably Sky’s. Somrak, who has heard the devil’s voice before when Sky was in this form, realizes that it lacks the disturbing abyssal, grinding quality that it normally carries. “You fell asleep. I was ready. And then you had to leave and I…I decided to wait. Alma…” He closes his eyes and turns his head away, ashamed. “If I had only told you then…”

In a whisper that Somrak barely catches, Alma says, “I know what she did to you. She showed me.”

He looks back at her, eyes wide. He does not speak, but pulls into himself, moving his wings to cover his head.

And after a moment, she sighs and drops her hand, her head hanging. “I am too tired,” she says, her voice louder but softened by sorrow and exhaustion, “in too much pain to be angry, Sky. I have risked too much to turn my back now. We will…find a way somehow.” There is no coldness or resentment in her words. She turns.

Somrak cannot stop himself from shouting at Sky, “Stop being such an idiot! She knows what you are! Dion knows!” He stomps to Sky’s side, not sure if he is going to strike the devil or not. “We have been through all that, together! Saira died! And now we’re all here! We’re alive! You are alive! And you are not hiding away anymore! I won’t have it!”

“Somrak…” Alma’s voice is quiet and soft but it cuts through the echoes of his shouts like a knife. “Please, be kind.”

Somrak falls silent, feeling embarrassed and sick to his stomach. Dion speaks up in the moment of silence. “Sky? Can you…change back?”

A leathery rustle of wings precedes Sky’s bestial face once again revealing itself. He shakes his ponderous head. “I cannot.” His voice is a whisper, and tracks of moisture lend the skin below his eyes, trailing down the sides of his muzzle, glisten in the dim light.

Somrak feels even more ill at this news. He turns away from Sky, clenching his teeth, then leans against the wall. Long tasked with the job of being Sky’s keeper and, potentially, executioner, he knows what orders may come from up high if Sky can no longer assume a divine form. Somrak takes a moment to find his voice without shouting. “You’ll have to,” he says. “It’s good that we all know, but you can’t go out of here until you can change.”

Then he hears a soft, wondering comment from Dion. “I thought…devils could not weep. That’s what all the accounts say.”

Somrak and Alma both turn back to see Sky looking shocked. He raises a taloned hand to touch the tears on his face. “I…cannot,” he whispers. “There are those who can, but…in this form, I cannot.”

“Well you’re doing it now,” Somrak says. “Maybe you just never had reason to?”

Sky shakes his head. “I would have given much to have been able to weep in that torture chamber. How…how can I be doing it now?”

Alma steps toward him, both hands out, and cups his face. Her pale hands are so small where the palms curve against the massive jaw muscles. Her thumbs slide gently across the tracks of tears. Her lips curved in a wavering smile, she says, “Perhaps you can change forms after all. When I look at you, my friend, it’s not a devil’s soul I see. And though I am not sure what it is, I know it is no hellish thing. Have you pretended to be a god so long that you have become one? Or are you something in between?”

Though he would tower over her at his full height, he must look up at her from his crouched position. “I didn’t want to…to do what she made me…”

“Shh.” Alma strokes his muzzle. “I know. I know you never would. Now rest. You must heal.”

“Luckily, we are in no hurry to cast him out,” Nevieve says from the door, standing next to Lyria. “You can stay here, Tuma-Sukai, for as long as you take to recover.”

“And you should all stay here tonight,” Lyria says, beside her. Her voice is subdued, but she sounds confident in her opinion. “Your physical wounds are healed. But you all have deeper wounds. Tonight, at least, you need peace. And each other.”

“No…Mother,” Alma argues, who has released Sky and moved again closer to Dion. “The Bunnies will already be worried sick. They’ll be frightened after being attacked by demons like you said. And they’ll have to know about Saira and mourn her. And we’ll have to tell them…something about Sky and…” As she speaks, she sounds more and more overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

Lyria looks sad, but her green eyes carry a hint of amusement. “You make my case for me, little one. It is all too much for now. Was this Saira important to them?”

“She was,” Alma says. “To Cherry, particularly, but to all of them in some way. They nursed her back to health once…” She glances at the body. “They will be crushed to see her dead.”

“Then let me take Saira’s body to them so that they may mourn her,” Lyria says, walking closer and laying a hand on the corpse, “and I shall tell them as much as they need to know for now. They can get past the initial shock with me and begin their mourning. When you return, they will be ready to give and take comfort without burdening you with excessive emotion. Please, my dear one, let me do this for you.”

Alma looks uncertain, and she touches Dion’s hand for comfort. He takes it, and Somrak, watching them, rests a hand on one of Sky’s horns.

Dion looks from Alma to Lyria and back again. “If we are welcome to stay…” He looks at Sky, still partially huddled, and at Somrak. Their eyes lock for a moment, and Somrak nods to Dion, lending his vote to the ‘stay’ camp. “It might be well for those of us who understand what we have been through to stay here for a little longer.”

Nevieve favors them with her detached, ancient smile. “Doria is preparing your rooms as we speak. All close by. Sky will need some time for private rest soon enough, I imagine. And so will you three.”

Alma looks at her, at Dion, at Lyria, then looks down and nods in defeat. “Very well. Thank you, Oracle. Thank you, Mother.”

Lyria puts both her hands on Alma’s upper arms. “I will do what I can to comfort them.” She looks at her daughter with sad contrition, then slowly, giving Alma the chance to push her away, embraces her in relief. Lyria looks around at the others. “Do not despair. But do not imagine that your healing will be swift. Lean on each other. As Gwydion says, only you understand what you have been through.”

She releases Alma, then goes to Sky. “Oh, little soul.” Lyria caresses his face. “You have yet a great part to play in the lives of those you love. Do not think for a moment that this is the end of all that. Have I ever shrunk from you?” She strokes the wetness on his face in wonder. “A crying devil. To think I should have seen this.” Then she looks at Somrak and pats his chest affectionately. She turns to leave, signaling a request for Melinor to pick up Saira’s body.

“Tell my children…” Alma says, “that we’ll be back tomorrow. Please.”

Lyria pauses to say, “I will. And I will not leave them until your return. They will be safe under my watch.” She leaves, Melinor following her.

Alma embraces Dion, holding him tightly, hiding her face against his shoulder. She shivers with silent sobs. He holds her, whispering, “We are safe now. We are all safe.”

Somrak, his chest still tingling from Lyria’s touch, listens to Dion’s comforting words. He hopes Alma believes them. He hopes Dion does as well. But as he looks at Sky, trapped in a form that would get him killed the moment he shows himself in public, a form that could cause a scandal to bring down the Council itself, he knows they are anything but safe.

Still, no point in mentioning that now.

Ch6.96 Trust

Warmth over the skin. Freshness below. The scent of grass on her nostrils, of earth still drying from the wetness of morning dew. And a distant sound of flowing, splashing water.

Alma opens her eyes to a bed of green grass stretching over a hill lined with trees that slopes down toward a bank of pebbles and a natural pool. A blue sky spreads above her, lit by the still not too warm sun of a lazy day of late Spring. She blinks and sits up, recognizing hill and pool in that detached, hazy way of a reality the mind is prepared to accept in spite of its inconsistencies. The grass is green, the trees are tall and rich with foliage, the water blue and crystalline. And she sees all this without effort, without the ever-competing fore-image of the sparkling souls of each and every being, of plants and animals big and small that has become her regular sight for the past few days. The waterfall which should feed into the pool is nowhere to be found; the ledge from which her children have taken turns jumping into the water is gone.

And in the water, four furry creatures swim. Otters, three brown and one white, frolic happily, swimming, grooming themselves and each other, diving and surfacing with crabs and small fish in their mouths. Two of them float gently, belly up, holding each other by the front paws so as to not float away. Alma watches the scene, feeling her heart warm to it, incapable of smiling but touched, deeply touched and holding onto the sweetness and peace that so starkly contrasts with what she knows is her reality in the Wakenworld. For she has visited this reality enough times to know that this is a dream and that it will collapse if she allows her conscious mind to refuse it.

Of all the things I miss about life on the Insula, a day like this is very near the top of the list, she hears the calm voice in her head.

She turns her head to find him sitting by her side, in his humanoid form, his legs bent at the knees and elbows resting on his thighs, hands hidden between his legs in a position that reminds her of a sitting foal. She is not in the least surprised to recall that he was not there just a few seconds ago. Arion…

The god of reality and keeper of dreams nods, his eyes still looking at the pool. You were drifting in slumber, mind wide open to anything that might take an interest in it. I had no difficulty finding you. And bringing you here.

It has been awhile since we met in dreams, she notes. Her mind feels vacant, numb. But at the edge of her awareness, she can sense it. The pain that bides in waiting for her to acknowledge it.

Oblivious to it, Arion smiles softly. I am not surprised. Your heart has turned its affections elsewhere and thus your mind followed. He looks at her with mild amusement, perhaps catching the change in her expression, the way she hesitates in discussing such issues now that her world is so full of other, more pressing worries. Oh, please… Why that guilt? My time in the Insula may very well have been and gone, Alma. To expect you to remain alone and, worse, lonely in an attempt to be faithful to our love would be rather selfish of me, don’t you think? In time, you might even grow to resent me for expecting such sacrifice of you while I spend my eternity anything but alone. He shakes his head in dismissal and looks at the happily swimming otters again. If I could somehow trade places with young Gwydion, enjoy his good fortune for holding you in his arms and spending his days in your company, you would not find me hesitating. But as it is, my love for you can live only in my wishes that you will find happiness. Even if it is not by my side.

Alma is quiet for a moment, feeling the sadness of her memories of years waiting for his return to the Insula, alone and with the Bunnies hidden away in their stasis bubbles, return to her mind. She had come to let go of it, lately, slowly finding relief in a present shared with a lover whose mind and her heart she feels closer to her own. But bitter as it may be, she knows Arion deserves the dignity and consideration of having this discussion with her, to her speak of what has happened, of what her heart dictates for her future. Even if it is merely to say goodbye.

 

This easiness with which you let go of something you want has always baffled me, she says, leaning against him, feeling tired even though she knows that at least a part of her is currently sleeping. Fate knows I am not capable of it. And how strange is it to hear you speaking of my choices in romantic partners.

Arion puts an arm around her, holding her close to him in that caring, protective way of his that has always felt so soothing to her. I know… But who else knows your heart this well, my dear? He leans and presses his lips to her head, stretching the kiss as he speaks with the easiness of one who does not require a mouth to converse. I assure you that there is nothing easy about it.

A touch of his hand to the line of her jaw and she looks up at him, into those black eyes and their silvery lines that seem to hold the whole of the infinite Void. I love you, he says. As I have always loved you. Today or in a thousand years, this will not change. And though there is pain in letting go now, I would rather let my love be generous and live on in whatever form we find for it. His lips curl in a smile. Besides, I like young Gwydion. He has a long and difficult path ahead of him but he will rise to it. As will you by his side – Alma?

She throws her arms around him, her tears rolling freely, released by his words, by the feeling of finality that is this ending of their romance, a love which had been dwindling, fading into time and distance but that nonetheless was there, like an umbilical cord attached to her past, to her growth. The sadness in saying goodbye to it, for as much as this is not a goodbye to Arion and the affection he holds for her, is enough to break the dams of the dream, to awake the slumbering pain of her conscience, of her knowledge of the Wakenworld, of her present, of Nua and her torture. Of Gwydion and the way his soul looked ripped to shreds as if attacked by the claws of some vicious spectral beast. Pain over pain over pain, wave over wave of it mounts and crashes against Alma’s mind, stealing her breath, threatening her sanity. She holds Arion as if he could save her from falling into madness with his touch alone.

Alma, what happened? he asks, concerned, his arms folding to wrap around her. None of this can be making you suffer so. We both felt it coming. Speak to me. Why is your mind in such poor condition?

We went after Sky, Alma replies before she remembers that Arion may not recall one dream in millions. After my friend that you found being tortured and told Gwydion about. And it–

She hides her face against him, the fact that he can read her mind the only thing making their conversation possible through her convulsive sobbing. They did terrible things. To all of us.

He holds her, quietly, letting her cry freely until the strong and reliable affection of his embrace wins over her momentary burst of anguish and grief. Eventually, he says. You are safe here. Do you need help in the Waken World?

Alma shakes her head against his chest. No… We made it out though I don’t know how. She feels her throat well up with the excess water that her eyes are draining into her nose. She…she gave them terrible dreams. Stole my body. Tried to bind my soul to my sword.

The dreams must have been the disturbance I sensed, Arion notes absentmindedly. But by the time I reached it, it was gone. He strokes her hair reassuringly when a whimper escapes her lips. Now, now… It is over. It is all over. And you are safe.

She straightens to look at him, feeling her eyes burning and swollen from the tears. Can you…can you sense them? Any of them?

The question makes Arion look up, at the sky, his ears twitching slightly as if he is listening to the sounds of every dream being dreamt. Gwydion sleeps. The others are beyond my reach.

Please, spare him from nightmares, she pleads.

The humble, heartfelt request has Arion looking down at her again, a small and sad smile on his face. He sleeps in a blissful void of thought. No dreams good or bad will disturb him. The Void Rider kisses Alma’s forehead, gently, lovingly. And no nightmares will disturb you. I will keep watch over your mind and theirs. And whenever they are open to my influence, you will dream of nothing but peaceful days like this. Though I cannot promise that this will be the case every night.

The goddess closes her eyes at his kiss. Thank you, nonetheless. That you would take care of them… It means the world to me. She shakes her head, breathing a sigh. I don’t know… how we will heal from this.

I knew when I met you, Arion tells her, his cheek grazing the ridge of her brow, that within the subdued young lady hid an untameable strength. I gave my heart to it. And still, my love, it amazes me how very nearly indestructible you are. She feels his cheek rise with the gentle curling of his sips. You will heal. There will be pain and anger and fear. But you will rise again. And you will be just as strong as they need you to be.

It hurts so badly, Arion. All of it, she confesses, too tired and overwhelmed to be ashamed at her weakness. In this place within their embrace, there has never been space for such fears.

Then stay here for now. He strokes her hair, holding her, and for the moment she is grateful that he is simply everything she needs him to be. Cry as much as you want. Rest as much as you like. And I will hold you until you are strong enough to return to them.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

Time goes by. She does not know how long. All she knows is that the dream with Arion slowly fades away into the darkness before wakening, the memory of tears still searing her throat (and screams…she remembers screams) as she feels the touch of an arm around her, a familiar, soothing scent teasing her nose. Voices speaking.

“…no good reason for her to continue this…this folly! She has nearly been killed multiple times, nearly lost her soul, nearly condemned to Hell! And all because her children were not accepted. Well they are accepted now! Or they will be – I will see to that. It is time for her to come home and take her rightful place within the Clan!”

Lyria’s voice. Her mother’s voice. Alma catches the concern, the distress in the older goddess’ tone and grimaces at it as she tries to remember how to command her eyes to open.

“She must leave Three Rats, yes,” Varah’s rough voice, this time. Anger with a strange hint of fear in her words, alien to the fearsome goddess Alma has come to know. “But not to go back to your lady-in-waiting little games. She was raised to be a warrior for the Clan and that is what she will keep being. And she will remain Guardia.”

Ah… Of course, eyelids fold up. She opens her eyes to see Gwydion, or better said, his soul. His beautiful, vibrant soul, damaged and ravaged by Nua’s efforts. She instinctively reaches to cup his cheek with her hand and cringes internally at the lazy way her arm responds to her command, muscles contracting at their own leisure, making her movements slow and clumsy. Still, she manages to touch Gwydion’s face without slapping him and he turns his head just enough to brush his lips against her wrist, breathing a little sigh against her skin.

“Why?” Lyria cries, her voice pitched higher this time. “You have led her down this path of danger and misery and bloodshed, when she is a mother, a healer. And now she is our Spinner. We need her safe or the Wheel will have no living soul to connect us to it!”

Gwydion is lying full length beside Alma, his arm draped over her side, holding her to him. He pulls away a little, his head turning downward, in the direction of his feet. In the direction of the voices, Alma realizes. She rolls slightly and looks toward them as well.

Fencer’s soul is as crimson as her hair, as her eyes, swirling and bubbling like blood flowing from an open wound or coating a slashed windpipe. Her growling tone, tainted as it is with nervousness, is still filled with the determination and steadfastness that is the hallmark of the warrior goddess. “Just because your Clan’s weaklings cannot handle more than that one task it does not mean all Spinners must act that way. It takes strength and certainty and we all know the cost of acquiring such things. She’s stronger now than ever before. We just have to dial it back, return her to safer environments.”

“That at least we can agree on,” Lyria concedes. “But I resent your insinuation regarding my clan. The last I checked, my Clan is the same as yours, dear sister!”

Bickering… Endless bickering while they discuss Alma’s future for her. As if she weren’t capable of making her own decisions. As if she weren’t even in the room. More of the same. More of the usual. Their plans drawn over her life, over her pain. Blind to her will. To her suffering. What is it to them, but an excuse to do as they please, an argument to throw over the table and justify their choices?

More of the same…

“Enough…” Alma croaks, cursing herself for how weak and inaudible her voice sounds to her.

“Were your clan the same as mine, your child would not have grown amidst fevers and illness,” Fencer goes on, mindless of her niece’s words. “Had she been a full death goddess, she never would have faced the Council’s wrath in the first place!”

Again…try again. With all you have now.

“ENOUGH!”

It is not by far the strong, confident bellow she would have liked it to be. Her cry comes out like a harsh, half-drawn out screech. But it does the job of capturing their attention. Alma struggles to rise to her feet but her legs are not yet fully responsive, and even her arms have difficulty bearing her weight. It takes the support of Gwydion’s strong arms to get her to a sort of uncomfortable sitting position. It will have to do.

“How dare you?” she hisses at the two older goddesses. “How dare you see our pain and act like it is yours? Do you have any idea what we have been through?! How can you entertain yourselves blaming each other and planning my future like that?!”

The goddesses stand still, looking – or Alma hopes they are looking, curse these changed eyes that make it so difficult for her to see into the material planes – at her.

Lyria is the first to speak, her voice still high-pitched with bewilderment. “Alma, I just want what’s best for you–”

“Because you wanted the best for me,” Alma interrupts her, feeling the lines of her face contort into a growl, “I was practically a prisoner in my own house for over a century! A century of being called weak and worthless.” She glares at Varah, remembering a long-gone fencing lesson and being accused of being on track to becoming a burden to her family. “How many of my brothers and cousins still bother to even acknowledge my existence? How many of them have placed bets over how long it would take me to die?”

But it is Lyria, not Fencer, who speaks. Stutters. “I never… You were…”

The words die in the throat of the goddess of life, sentence interrupted before it reaches its all-too-predictable finale.

“Weak?” Alma bitterly completes it for her. “Yes, I was. The only place I could hope to be strong in that house was in Varah’s practice room.” She gestures toward the Fencer’s red soul. “And still, I wasn’t. I was always too slow, too crude, too…everything! Nothing I did was ever enough, for any of you! Not you, not to my father, not to anyone!”

Her fist hits the mat beside her, not with any of the force she would have liked to infuse into the gesture but still with a certain level of assertiveness. She looks down and spreads her fingers, breathing in deeply, the texture of the woven material taking over her sense of touch as tears of frustration and a century of self-loathing well up in her eyes. “And I accepted it all because that was all I knew. I believed every word, every last cruel comment for the truth.” She raises her eyes to her mother and aunt. “But then Arion happened and it all went wrong for you, didn’t it? Even he sought to guide me in his one way. But at least he was kind!”

“Kindness is an invitation to slack off,” Fencer grunts.

“Kindness also validates a person’s path!” Alma nearly spits out. “It softens a hard life. I did not learn that until my children were released. That being kind can be more important than being right. I tried to treat them the way you treated me! But which of you even tried to guide me the day I went to you for advice with Rosemary and Cherry in my arms?”

“I did try to help you!” Lyria argues.

“You sent me straight to Nekh,” Alma hisses, cold and final, lip curled in a sneer.

Silence falls in the room. Only the soft hummings of breath vibrate the air, Alma’s breathing feeling too harsh and loud to her own ears. She lets it stretch, lets the awkwardness and guilt grow and spread their roots in this absence of arguments, of excuses. Allowing her elders’ imagination fill in the blanks and spin accusations in their minds far more damning than anything she could possibly find the heart to say.

And when she can no longer bear the weight of this pregnant pause, she speaks again. “You lost your claim to my future that day. You don’t get to decide whether I stay or return with you. I made my choices. Calling Somrak, staying quiet, going in, in spite of the danger, they were my choices. We all chose. Any of us could have refused to go in, refused to go against orders. We’ve been through Hell in there. There isn’t much more the Council could throw at us that would even make a dent now.”

“But Alma, this place, it’s a life of constant danger,” Lyria somehow finds the nerve to insist. “Your children were attacked by demons! We fought them off, but we’d never even have known if I hadn’t come by for a surprise visit. Please…come home.” Her voice breaks, fighting for control. “Bring them home.”

At Lyria’s words, Alma freezes, her eyes wide, spine frozen in a solid block with fear and fury. And even though Lyria immediately assures her that the Bunnies are alive and unharmed, Alma cannot make herself move or speak. Numbly she feels Gwydion’s arm wrap around her back, pull her unresisting to lean against him.

“They are safe,” he whispers in her ear. “We prepared for such an event, remember? Geryon was there.” He strokes her head, soothingly, holding her close to him. “I’m free to go as I please. I won’t leave your side if you want to go with your mother. I just want you to be safe.”

She takes solace in his touch, feeling her body relax into his embrace, her mind running at full speed even though she feels exhausted. Defeated. “I am so tired… I’ve been running for over twenty years with those Bunnies. I thought…I had made a home for them here. That this was home for them. For us.”

She feels him nod against her head. “It certainly feels that way, most of the time.”

“And besides, the Council wants me down here,” Alma adds.

“We can change that,” Lyria says pleadingly, barging in on their whispered conversation to push her point. “Surely we can.”

“Stop pushing. She’s made her choice,” Varah grunts almost immediately. “I have to go report this in. I’ll release the mortal’s soul before you kill yourself trying to do it in the condition you’re in.”

“The mortal?” Alma asks, confused. “Do you mean…?”

“Saira,” Gwydion explains. “The last I saw her, Margrave’s demons were attacking her viciously. It seems the wounds were too much for her to handle. We have her body. And her soul.”

Saira…

Alma closes her eyes, lowers her head. She knew. She knew that the chances of Saira making it out of that Hell alive were nearly non-existent. She accepted that, the moment the woman insisted on accompanying them. And yet, a part of her had hoped, a part of her blames herself for not being there to heal the woman – the young woman with a whole life ahead of her – and save her from the jaws of the death she had long sought.

From the call of the very Wheel that Alma serves.

A soft thud and a sudden feeling of contact and pressure against her legs snaps Alma out of her grim thoughts, making her reach for the vale formed by the adjoining of her legs, stretched full length in front of her. She grabs what feels like a small, round stone that she is surprised to see glowing faintly and fitfully against the background of her own soul.

“Your catch,” Varah says by way of explanation. “Good job, Sergeant.”

And then the goddess is gone, the echoes of her words, spoken as if they were nothing important, ringing in Alma’s ears. Her jaw drops in disbelief.

“Did she really say…?” she asks to no one in particular.

Good job… She had never heard Fencer say those words before. To anyone! And oh, how she had longed for those words, she realizes… From so many people. But from Fencer, her mentor and role model for so long in all things concerning strength and courage, more than most.

“She did,” Melinor says beside her, making her look to her left.

She is not surprised to find him there. A part of her knew he was here in the room, by her side the whole time. His soul flares before her eyes and, though she cannot see his expression, she can almost feel the radiance of his pride. Of his empathy. She wonders if this is how he has expressed himself all along, emotions confined to his soul, revealed now by her newfound ease at soulscrying. Though her lips refuse to curl in a smile, Alma nods and stretches an arm toward him, her hand closed tightly around what she now realizes is a soulstone, a prison for Nua’s demented soul as it awaits trial, her aunt’s present of a bargaining chip.

She feels Gwydion’s embrace loosen, allowing her to tilt toward her brother, who takes the initiative of embracing her, for once in so many years. “I will have to leave soon, but I am here until you no longer need me.”

“Thank you for all you did,” Gwydion says, voice filled with heartfelt sincerity.

“She is my sister,” Melinor replies to him. His embrace tightens a little around Alma, his deep voice sculpting the words into something of a justification, a blessing and a warning, all put together.

On any other occasion, Alma would chuckle at the rare demonstration of brotherly protectiveness. As it is, she simply leans back toward Gwydion when Melinor releases her and gently pushes his sister toward the arms of the god of magic, who holds her just as closely.

“I want to see the others,” she says after a moment.

“Of course,” Gwydion replies. “Let us just figure out how to get you on your feet.”

Ch6.95 Trust

It was excruciating. Excruciating to separate herself from the sword threatening to engulf her, to imprison her. To fight the pull, to move in the opposite direction. Away and away. Back into a body. A living body. Into herself.

But she welcomed the pain, embraced it, traveled on it. Anything, everything was less painful than the agony of being bound. And Nua’s momentary distraction was all that Alma needed to re-enter her body, to grab hold of flesh that is hers, of muscles, nerves, bones and organs that are hers by nature and origin. And though Nua fights viciously, Alma is winning.

“Death Clan bitch, do you really think you can throw me out?” Nua taunts her. “There’s no pain you can inflict on me that I haven’t felt a hundred-fold already! Even if you win over control of this body, I’ll stay here forever! I’ll be in you forever.”

“Necromancer filth,” Alma retorts, throwing her life force against Nua’s. “This is my body! Mine! You have no roots to spread here!”

Nua’s laughter is a vibration of energy against the goddess’ soul. “Really? It wasn’t that hard stealing this body from you in the first place. And learning to control it. I wear it so much better than you. Weakling.”

“We’ll see who is weak. I will not let you use this body to hurt my family!” Alma promises.

“Can I use it to hurt you?”

Suddenly, sharp pain fills Alma’s senses. Physical pain. Nua has managed to gain control of one of her arms. Pain and wetness. Blood. It is the stabbing of a blade to her own flank that Alma feels.

Nua takes the chance to wrap tendrils of spectral energy around Alma’s soul, pushing the goddess deeper into herself. “You have no idea of what I can do. But let me show you what I’ve done already to your precious family.”

The images move so quickly across Alma, thrown as they are directly from one soul to another. A devil, summoned from Hell, bound by Nua herself. Sky… And a terrified mortal, begging for his life even as the devil kills him at Nua’s command. Even as the devil eats him and then takes his shape.

“That was his first body,” Nua purrs against Alma’s awareness. “The one I gave him.”

And the memories continue, of Sky, Alma’s Sky as she knows him, bound in chains and bleeding, lunging in anger, transforming back into a devil and roaring threats. Begging… Sobbing…Weeping. As he is forced to watch Gwydion’s horrible death, as Nua thrusts a dagger under Alma’s own skirt. Except…none of these images could be true. Are they lies? Predictions?

“I found some mortals willing to play along,” Nua explains. “I just had to give them a little makeover and he fell for it like a day-old chick.”

“MONSTER!” Alma bellows, discharging her powers in a wave around her core that makes Nua hiss and recoil in pain.

And still, the necromancer laughs. “I cut his tongue out, too! For saying ugly things to me when he saw you lying on that gurney.”

More images, memories of Sky – not the form, the face she knows as Sky’s but the very certain knowledge that it is him – on top of someone, a notion of being pinned down by him. Of feeling him move inside her, endlessly, with the mechanical rhythm of an automaton, his eyes tightly shut, grief and disgust on his face. And a voice pleading to him, begging him to stop. Trocia…

Alma tries to look away but she cannot. The memory fills her whole.

“Is that what you came to save?” Nua teases her. “He is mine!”

Nua launches herself at Alma, with the recklessness of the insane. Anger and power drive her but her soul has only a fraction of the energy of Alma’s. The goddess holds her ground and drives Nua back, striking immediately to counterattack.

And the memory hits her. Gwydion destroying a pair of demons that stand before him and his parents, his face a mask of anger and joy. And grief. And disappointment. His mother calling his name, crying, and screaming. Mad.

Somrak atop a stone fortification, alone, watching an army move toward him, with Alma – no… Nua in Alma’s body heading the attack in a chariot driven by Gwydion and pulled by Sky in devil form. Helplessness and hopelessness.

The images break her focus. Her attack loses strength.

“Do you like the nightmares I made for them?” Nua asks. “What about the real thing?”

Nua strikes again, stabbing again at Alma’s body. Making her scream with the pain.

And forcing her to relive Nua’s memories of holding Gwydion’s chained body, of kissing his lips. Of mocking him as he roars in anger, struggling against his bindings, demanding to know where Alma is. Of whipping him with a whip made of Nasheena’s vertebrae and infused with her very soul. Of whipping Somrak. And Sky.

Images of Alma’s cousin screaming and begging surface in the throng of demented memorabilia.

“I WILL ERASE YOU!” Alma roars in hatred. “HELL IS NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT I WILL DO TO YOU!”

She forgets all reason, wavers all sense. All of her, all of her power, of her essence, of her rage, of her love, life, death and everything in between. All that she is, she throws at Nua, tearing at the mortal’s soul mercilessly, exploding against its core, damaging it without the slightest hesitation.

She wants it gone.

Even as she sees Somrak falling from the top of the castle wall, his limp body a ball of fire. Even as she sees Gwydion kneeling in a circle of dead Bunnies half eaten by demons, holding her body and sobbing in grief. Even as she sees Stathos’ daughters held by Whisper thugs, crying and screaming as their throats are slit before their kneeling, bound father, their blood gushing to stain Luís’ tear-drenched face.

She attacks Nua, holding on to the necromancer, reveling at her screams of pain and confusion now at this sudden defeat. Yes… Nua is hurting. This is how it should be.

But then… something happens. Forces intervene, familiar but unexpected. Grabbing Alma, grabbing Nua. Pulling them apart. Alma resists. She isn’t done yet with Nua. She is nowhere near done.

But she is tired. And Nua is taken away.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

Darkness. Such quiet, unyielding darkness. A welcome change from the screaming, the bursting of energy, the pure rage coursing through his body. Gateways opening into horrible, unhallowed places. A million howling souls crashing against him and bellowing at him in terror and hatred. Him, the gatekeeper.

The enemy at the gate.

Light pours into his place of rest, cleansing, healing. A mildly welcomed light. But not the one he yearns for. He refuses to let it wake him, shuts his eyes tighter against it. His body feels more relaxed at its touch, less torn. But his spirit suffers still. He does not want to follow this greenish light that courses through him without regard for his privacy, without care for his boundaries. It violates his pain, healing with the force of a great tidal wave crashing over him. He turns away from it and dreams of the blue twilight that has once enveloped him in a nurturing haze.

But though the light eventually leaves him alone, another comes to disturb him. Liquid and wavering, softer and deeper. Almost the one he is waiting for but no…the scent is not right. Seaweed and low tides, not the lilac and willow of his desires. It speaks to him.

Wake up, Gwydion. You are needed.

He does not want to wake up. The last time he woke up, nothing good happened. He frowns at the memories that try to creep into his conscience.

She needs you, Gwydion. They all do. Wake up.

Within him, his essence rouses, looks up. It calls out.

Mate?

But the light is gone. He is alone again in the darkness. And though he wants nothing more than to hide in it for the rest of time, he feels his mind surface, his eyelids open.

And the world pours in.

Voices. Sobs. The watery light hurts his eyes at first, makes Dion groan. But soon the blurs resolve into images. The muscles of his arms and legs begin to respond. He rolls onto his side, looking around to recognize the familiar setting of the Oracle’s grotto. One of its myriad chambers, that he had never seen before. Chairs. He is lying on the floor. On the side he can see for now, he finds Somrak, sitting on the floor, looking up at the glowering, looming figure of Fencer.

Fencer…why is she even here? And how did they get here in the first place? The last he remembers, they were–

He shuts his eyes and shakes his head violently to dislodge the image before it forms. And when he is sure that he has succeeded in defeating his memories, he opens them again. By Somrak, a dirty sheet covers a lying body. Dion tenses, dread climbing over his spine at who this might be. He can only see a basic outline and the feet poking out. Narrow, feminine feet.

He struggles to sit up and the movement captures Somrak’s and Fencer’s attention. With a sorrowful look at Dion, the fire god glances down at the corpse by his side and lifts a corner of the sheet to reveal light brown hair, a young but hardened female face.

Saira.

Relief washes over Dion before regret finds its way in. He remembers her hanging off Margrave’s neck, being attacked by demons left and right, and feels sorry that she has paid for their escape with her life.

He notices Somrak jerking his head toward another corner of the room, urging Dion to look in that direction. And there he sees her, Alma, lying on the floor, in her family’s black clothing, gashes on her thigh and flank. Her brother, Dion recognizes him from before, and Nevieve are tending to her. Alma’s wounds are slowly disappearing as Nevieve works her magic on the goddess.

Mate!

And at the edge of his sight, he notices the elephant in the room for the first time. Or better said, the devil. Right there, by his side, but curled up and surrounded by that same light Dion experienced before, a light he now sees belongs to Lyria. So much of it that it had numbed Dion’s senses to the devil’s proximity. He instinctively tries to rise to his feet and leap against the devil only to feel a hand push him back down. “Status, Sergeant.”

Fencer’s hand. Fencer’s voice. Dion looks at her with all the hatred and violence he was about to discharge at the devil. He nearly attacks her instead of him, stopping only at the burst of pure, old and piercing power that she projects against him in a warning. Her eyes narrow, her one seeing, crimson eye glaring a challenge at him.

It forces Dion to stop and think, his mind to make sense of all he is seeing. His brain to remember that the devil he was about to attack is in fact Sky. Sky, his commanding officer. Sky, his friend.

Dion lowers his eyes, ashamed at what his instincts yell at him to feel and do. “We accomplished the mission, it seems,” he answers quietly, looking toward Alma. “Though I’m not quite clear on the details.”

“She’s going to be all right, Dion,” Somrak says from where he sits. “She’s fighting but she’s going to win.”

“At least we managed to get that…thing out of her.” Fencer’s disgust is palpable and there is no doubt of who she is referring to as a thing.

The necromancer. Nua. Dion breathes deeply in still not completely certain relief, hoping for it to be true. He looks back to the reclining goddess, her white-haired head on Nevieve’s lap. The last time he saw Alma, there was a war raging in her body for control of her flesh. She was trying to hurt herself…or someone in her was trying to hurt her, perhaps Nua, perhaps Alma herself. How could he tell? He had attacked her. Not her, Alma, but her, Nua. He just wanted the necromancer’s soul out of his beloved’s body, to rip it out with his bare hands as if that was even possible. He wasn’t thinking then. All there was was rage and hatred.

And fear.

“It is done,” Nevieve announces. “Now we wait.”

The wounds, the ripped and plastered black clothes made shiny by blood are gone. In a single, seemingly effortless twist of her magic, the Oracle has not only healed Alma’s body but cleaned it and replaced her fighting, Death Clan outfit with a simple, flowing turquoise-blue dress. No shoes. A worshipper’s humble vest.

Dion glances down to find his own clothes changed, his uniform trousers replaced by simple pure-white linen ones, tied at the waist with a cord. He is barefoot as well and, as far he can tell, clean and healed. For a moment he is surprised to find himself shirtless, armored jacket gone along with his sword. Then memory kicks in and he remembers again: Nua. She had removed his protective clothing, probably so that nothing would dull the bite of her whip. He shudders at the memory, feeling the pain of the wounds inflicted on his soul sharpen, defeating his natural defenses.

And it is not just his soul that is in pain. His body is healed but his mind, his emotions…he feels them raw, stripped of their fortifications like a tree stripped of its bark. The soft, vulnerable pulp exposed. Inside him, his core whimpers and begs for him to do something about the pain, about the helplessness and despair. About the missing half of him that currently lies on the floor of the grotto, motionless, flanked by the Oracle and by her brother. Melinor.

Dion rises to his feet, unsteady and stumbling, his body accusing a too-swift and draining healing, along with the exhaustion of the day’s harshness and probably the leftovers of having been poisoned just a couple of days ago. Or maybe just one day. Maybe a week. He cannot be certain of how long they were in the pocket universe or even how long he has been knocked senseless. Truly, he doesn’t care.

As Nevieve raises her head and looks at him with a beatific smile, he reaches Alma’s supine body. Carefully, the Oracle lays the goddess’ head back down on the floor and rises herself, her supporting hand reaching to touch Dion’s back as he kneels by Alma, on the side opposite to Melinor’s. He does not dispense any words to either of the gods. He cannot find anything to say. His eyes focus on the peaceful, pale-skinned face that looks to all the world to be sleeping in eternal slumber and his mind locks on the moment when the whip cut through his chest and his hope for the very first time.

A croaking voice, low and echoing fills his ears. “Thannnk you,” It says. “Thaaaaaank youuu…”

The tone of it is enough to raise the hairs on the back of Dion’s neck, to make him turn to look at its source with almost enough speed to snap his spine. Though it speaks with sorrow and misery in its voice, though the memory of its lupine maw dripping with demon blood to save Dion’s own life reminds the god of who this devil is, he cannot help but glare at the… devil in the room, the Hellish beast spreading its corruption around it, teasing Dion’s sphere awake. Anything is better to feel than the shattering pain ravaging through him at the moment. And rage will do just fine.

And suddenly, Sky isn’t there anymore. Somrak isn’t there. Saira’s cooling body is gone. The room itself has changed. The older gods, all gone. A different chamber, altogether, smaller than the other one, glowing softly with a liquid light that projects its dancing glow on the walls and ceiling and reminds him of soft moments of bliss spent in a lush, green sanctum. Dion finds himself alone, kneeling in a depression of the stoney floor of the grotto that the years of erosion have filled with fine sand and someone’s careful consideration has covered with a woven banana leaf mat to make for a soft, dry bed, Alma lying by him.

He looks down at her, forgetting anger, forgetting threat. He strokes Alma’s hair, imagination painting all of the familiar expressions he has seen on her face. Every different smile, every hint of sadness, passion, rage. The ghosts of Nua’s disgusting, terrifying smile creep into his memory but he tries to sweep them away. At least for now. At least for now he wants to believe Fencer’s words that Nua is gone from Alma’s body. She would know, wouldn’t she? Her own niece? How many times has Fencer seen Alma’s soul? She would know.

Unable to endure another instant of distance, he shifts, gently putting an arm under Alma’s shoulders and lifting her to his chest, her lower back propped against his thigh. He cradles her, his eyes closed, straining to hear her gentle breathing, to detect her weak pulse. Why isn’t she waking up? Why won’t she come back to him?

He nearly shouts in fright when he opens his eyes to the dark, sitting figure of Melinor, watching, just before him. He has only seen Melinor once, at the Curia. The god had refused to approach him, Alma or the Bunnies then. And though Alma speaks of her brother with a tenderness that has had Dion wistfully wondering how sweet it might be to have a beloved sibling fawning over him, the impressive, powerful figure of the god of death, with his aura of violence and lingering scent of slaughter, does not exactly conjure up the friendliest of first impressions. What must Melinor think of Dion, with his fame and manner, romantically involved with the god’s younger and only sister? With Melinor’s beloved sister. There is no mistaking the concern in those slanted rusty-ochre eyes.

Eyes that he raises to look at Dion, without the slightest hint of displeasure or condemnation, in spite of Melinor’s overall look of a constant, chronic, cold, simmering rage. Empathy. There is empathy in that look. A shared pain. Dion casts his worries about the grim god’s blessing away. For now, they are both merely suffering with uncertainty over Alma’s recovery.

“It is…” Dion trails off, feeling his throat dry and cracked. He swallows and tries again. “It is her. Just her. You are certain?”

Melinor nods. “I know my sister’s soul.” His voice is just as low-pitched as his looks lead one to anticipate, and rough besides. But not as aggressive as might be expected. “The invader is captured elsewhere.” He touches Alma’s head, releases a stray lock of hair from her earring. “She needs time to regain control.”

Dion nods, holding her a little closer, lowering his head to kiss her forehead, to rest his own forehead against hers. He waits, feeling her skin against his, the coolness of her, the scent that, yes, faintly smells of her after Nevieve’s cleansing spell. His senses focus on her and just her, pained and relieved and hopeful and dreading.

“Alma… Come on, darling. Where are you?” He hears himself whispering to her.

Can he even reach her with simple words, wherever she is? His eyes are shut tightly against the tears that threaten to spill. Inside him, his essence howls its longing at the ether, like a lone whale calling for its mate across the oceans. Begging, searching, despairing for a reply.

Answer us. Return to us.

“Come back to us, Alma. Come back to me…”

Come back to us, mate. We are calling.

“I promised I wouldn’t leave you. Don’t leave me…”

Come back. Ours…

Mine.

A small eternity seems to pass. Dion whispers her name, incessantly calling her to him. He is mildly aware of other, new presences in the room, of his body gently rocking back and forth in that self-soothing movement of people in shock. Is this the fate that awaits him? To lose all those he allows himself to love? To be alone. Always alone. The world is suffering. The world is grief. The whole of him holds the living treasure in his arms as if she were the hope for his cure, the rock to save him from the gale raging within his soul. But she won’t wake up. She won’t wake up…

And he is so frightened to face the world without her.

Please, wake up. Please…

And then he senses it. Just a weak spark at the edge of his senses, at first, then a stronger flare against him. His own essence roars with joyful relief.

Here!

Here…

He pulls away a little just in time to feel Alma’s chest rise with a deeper breath, her eyes open wide, flaring with color and light. Her mouth gapes open, her back arches as the air fills with her scream. A scream of pure rage, of hatred, of anguish and pain and fear. It rises to almost unbearable intensity, echoes off the walls and almost seems to burst through them. Her body contorts in almost tetanic convulsion, her eyes wide open and filled with terror.

“Alma!” Dion calls to her, squeezing her against him. “Alma, it’s all right!”

He holds her, rocks her until the screams die in her throat. Until her lips slacken and her muscles relax just past the point of painful contraction. “It’s all right,” he tells her, his gentle voice sounding almost like a whisper after all the screaming. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

“Gwydion?” Alma’s eyes dart this way and that, seemingly unable to focus. “Gwydion!”

“I’m here. I’m here, darling,” he assures her. Is she blind? And why isn’t she moving her arms and legs?

Her eyes finally lock on him. “I had her!” she cries with urgency before a strong exhalation seems to rob her of her strength. “I had her… she disappeared.”

“We have her,” he tells her, hoping that Melinor did not deceive him. Even if he has, Dion refuses to think about it now. “We captured her. Rest now.”

He is so relieved. He feels the knot that his heart had become untangle in one single, twanging movement that courses through him, stealing his breath, making his body contract, then relax, his core expand with sudden glee, almost about to explode. She is here. His love is here, in his arms. He needs to believe it. He needs to believe that her brother and her aunt cannot be fooled into accepting a stranger. That his nightmare is over.

“You look so hurt…” Alma says, her voice half choked. She is looking at him, straight at him, grief in her features. Light and color swirling lazily in her irises. Yes, her eyes. Her tear-filled eyes.

“I’m all healed now. I’m fine,” he lies, stroking her hair.

Her lower lip trembles, her chin drawing in a little. “No… you’re not.”

She knows. Of course, she knows. Because this is Alma and her eyes look straight at him, into his soul. And they can see the damage that Nua inflicted on it. And they are crying in sorrow at it. “I will be,” he insists, summoning a tremulous smile to his own lips. It is so painful to smile…but he cannot bear her tears. “You’re here now.”

His smile falters, he holds her tightly to him, kissing her forehead, swaying again, feeling his cheeks burn, his throat dry, sniffling excess water from his eyes that will soon bathe his face in tears. “You scared me, darling. You scared me so much…”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry…”

He whimpers, a thousand words pouring into his mouth and dying there. How afraid he was. How desperate. How broken and crushed. How glad he is now. How much all of it hurts, pleasure and pain. “It’s all right,” is all he manages to say. “It’s all right.”

Memory is tossed aside. Fear is tossed aside. Trauma. Suspicion. He wavers them all. Inside him, the whimpering, begging giant that immediately knew that Alma was possessed before Dion even managed to reason his way to that conclusion, howls for its mate. For his love. It grovels and cries for her, kept away for too long. Too hopelessly.

He cups her cheek in his palm and kisses her. Deeply, intermittently as their tears force them to break away to swallow and breathe. But he feels it, the blossoming of her spheres opening up to him, vividly, in that sharing of essence and mana that has been growing since their first kiss, barely more than physical pleasure at first, now nearly a full union of selves without even the need for the full physical contact of sex. She is so close…so close to him. Wrapped around his core.

A heavy hand lands on Dion’s shoulder, not a painful slap but just enough to startle him and make him look up.

Melinor looks at him with a grimace, shaking his head. “Not that,” the god warns him and for a moment Dion fears that Melinor will pose an obstacle to the relationship. “She has to stay in herself to rebuild the bond.”

The words are much more frightening than any condemnation of the love affair. With the sudden, icy touch of a bucket of cold water to the spine, realization dawns in Dion’s mind. Alma’s bond with her own body is still unstable and frail. And he was at the verge of breaking it with a simple, selfish kiss. Would he have assimilated her, he wonders with growing fear.

“Shouldn’t she take to her own body naturally?” he asks, alarmed. “Why isn’t she moving?”

“Her soul took serious damage,” replies Fencer’s rough voice. Dion jolts, instinctively firming his grip around Alma and turning his head to look at the Guardia Dei Subcommander, who says, “I’m surprised she’s even able to speak.”

Only then does Dion notice the other gods in the room. Lyria and Nevieve have both joined them as well, standing silent for now, their eyes on Alma. How long have they been watching? How much have they witnessed of his misery? Lyria looks at him with such sorrowful empathy that he is suddenly very aware of the drying tracks of tears on his cheeks, of the burning in his eyes. So many years of keeping his emotions concealed, his thoughts and concerns hidden under a mask of nonchalance… He swallows and looks away from the older goddess, unsure of how to feel about this. For now, he feels nothing. He is numbed by exhaustion and grief and relief, the extremes of so many emotions that none cries louder than the others. He has been stripped and skinned alive and he is so small, now. So helpless. Like a child. He lacks the willpower to even beg them to leave. And what right does he have to ask that of people worrying about a loved one?

“Mel?” Alma is asking, her head turning to look at her brother. “And Fencer. What – what are you doing here?” Her eyes widen, her face contorts into panic, head rising from Dion’s cradling arm with effort, since she seems unable to move any voluntary muscles below her neck. “Where are the others? Where are we?”

“We are in the Oracle’s grotto and they are here at my call, Alma,” Lyria replies in quiet tones. “Later, we will explain.”

“Mother?” Alma calls, her voice pitched higher with fear. “Sky? Sky!”

“He’s here,” Fencer barks with annoyance at her niece’s loud cry for her friend. “Now rest or you’ll never have the full control of that body back.”

“Somrak… Saira…?” Alma asks, her head turning this way and that, straining to see.

With a soft touch that would seem impossible for such an fearsome, violence-attuned god, Melinor places his hand on Alma’s forehead and gently, but firmly, pushes her down against Dion’s arm. “Later,” he says simply.

Alma looks at her brother, only her eyes moving in their sockets, and quiets in defeat. Still, she turns her gaze to Dion, a questioning whimper escaping her lips. “Gwydion?”

He almost tells her the truth. About Saira’s death, Sky’s and Somrak’s injuries. He decides against it. It would be too cruel, he he thinks, to burden her with such loss and suffering when she is barely holding on to her own body. And yet, he does not want to lie. Not to her. He does not know how much she has seen before the failed binding and during the fight with Nua and even if she has seen nothing, he cannot stand to tell her anything less than the truth.

So he keeps his words short as he reaches to hold her hand and bring it to his sternum. “They’re here. Now rest…please.”

She looks at him for a long, silent moment, then blinks and tilts her head against his chest, snuggling against him in a movement that involves only her head and neck. To his surprise and great solace, her fingers react to his touch, weakly curling around and squeezing his own. He kisses her brow, the room so empty of sound that he can hear her minute sigh of contentment at the caress. She almost seems to be sleeping with her eyes half open before she breathes, her voice calmer now, “I am so very tired…”

“Then sleep,” he whispers against the bridge of her nose. “Just sleep. I’ll be right here. I’m not letting you go.”

A tiny dimming of light announces the drop of her eyelids. “I guess… your pocket didn’t make it again.”

The nonsensical comment makes him pause. His pocket? He pulls away, looking at her peaceful, slumbering face in befuddlement, wondering what she meant by her words. And then it hits him. His pocket! His jacket pocket. The one that keeps being torn off regardless of how much Dion tries to reinforce it. And yes, it has not survived this time either. The whole of his jacket has disappeared in fact. The sudden realization makes him chuckle, then laugh, laugh uncontrollably at the joke that only Alma, the real Alma would know to make. “Oh, I’m never letting you go.”

Movement at the edge of his vision makes him look up to see Lyria kneeling by Melinor’s side. She smiles at the death god, a little smile that seems to request as much comfort as it tries to give. Melinor simply nods and Lyria turns her head to look at Alma, one hand reaching to affectionately stroke her daughter’s hair.

“She is asleep already,” she says to Dion. “And you should rest too, little one.”

“I’m fine,” Dion assures her, laughter fading to a blank smile. “I don’t want to sleep.”

Lyria’s voice is soft, quiet, sounding almost distant as she replies, “No, but you should.” She reaches to stroke his cheek, a gentle touch that is strikingly similar to her daughter’s. “You are exhausted. How you are even awake is a mystery to me.”

Whether it is a mere observation or a veiled incantation, Dion cannot tell. All he knows is that at the sound of her words, sleepiness creeps in, exhaustion takes over. He blinks against sleep like a child trying to fight off an afternoon nap.

“I…” His mouth opens in a yawn before he can finish his sentence.

And though he has not noticed her moving, he feels Lyria’s hands land on his shoulders and carefully tilt him to the left, nudging him to lie down on the mat. He follows her touch, unresisting, legs unfolding so that he lies fully on the makeshift but surprisingly comfortable bed.

“That is it…” Lyria says in a whisper. “Just a little rest. You can hold her while you sleep.”

Dion nods, arms still wrapped around Alma’s sleeping form, holding her close to him as his eyes begin to shut.

Tender fingers run through his hair, a motherly touch that he has not felt in over a century. Alma’s mother breathing a soft scolding. “The things you children get yourselves into…”

Ch6.94 Trust

“Now give me a good reason to let you live–”

“…Alma?” At the sound of Lyria’s plaintive voice, the goddess known as the Fencer breaks off from glowering at Somrak to look toward her niece, cradled in Lyria’s arms. Fencer’s eyes widen after a moment, and she curses.

Sky, the newly broken wing from Melinor just one more in a long list of injuries, pulls himself with great effort back from the brink of attacking Alma’s brother. His instincts in this form are so much harder to control, and only moments before, Sky had been about to launch himself at a greater devil, selling his life to buy Somrak a moment longer to get Alma and Gwydion out of Margrave’s pocket universe. The rage of battle is not easily dismissed, nor is the comforting feeling of having given up on survival entirely.

The very presence of the powerful god of death-in-battle is a challenge to Sky’s Hell-shaped instincts, which see all gods as the enemy, screaming at him all the more strongly with his brain and entire body shaped as they are now. Melinor also stands between Sky and his friends. How sweet it would be to fight him, to die – as Sky knows he would – tearing the god apart. All this pain, this misery, finally ended. Just give in and be the devil they expect.

But it is the voices of the two goddesses, echoing in this dark, unfamiliar chamber, that bring him back. Lyria is frightened for Alma. And so, in her harsher fashion, is Fencer. Their fear carves out a space for Sky to have rational thought, to realize that all is not lost. If there is fear, there is hope. Alma’s soul is not going to Hell. Neither is Gwydion’s, nor Somrak’s, nor his own. Even Saira…

He looks at the fallen mortal, where she lies on the floor beside Somrak. Sky does not have the death gods’ ability to be certain, but her wounds are not survivable. Too much poison, too much trauma, too much blood lost. Too much time passed. They were unable to escape quickly enough.

Sky failed to act quickly enough.

He lowers his widespread arms, relaxes his flexed talons. The unbroken wing folds against his back, and Sky lowers his head in submission to Melinor. He cannot speak intelligibly with only the stump of a tongue in his mouth. But his body language is enough for Melinor’s battle aura to fade and for the god to turn his attention to his sister, Alma.

The God of Death in Battle joins Fencer and Lyria. The vibrant life goddess still holds her daughter, petting Alma’s head and whispering to her, while Fencer, thin and hard-muscled, examines her unconscious niece with a red-glowing eye.

Melinor does the same. “Something is wrong. I sense two souls in her body,” he says after a moment.

Fencer glares at Sky, clearly blaming him. But she turns the same look upon Somrak, who has found an old, filthy cloth in the basement they are in, dragging it out from under a collapsed corpse, some dessicated unfortunate that is, for whatever reason, here in this dark place. “What happened in there?” Fencer demands.

Somrak pauses in his preparation to cover Saira’s cooling body, looking at Alma, his expression helpless and hopeless. “If there are two souls in her… Then the necromancer is in there with Alma.”

Fencer stares at him as if she is planning just how to gut him, but instead of saying anything more, she just turns back to Melinor. “We need somewhere we can stuff a devil in.”

Lyria looks up. Her beautiful face is distraught, but her strength shows through. “I know where to go,” she insists. She reaches up toward Melinor, and the tall god kneels to allow her to touch the side of his head. A slight glow of green at the touch, and the death god nods.

“The others will need to be close,” Melinor says.

Fencer barks at Somrak, “Get over here, you and your devil friend both. Bring the prisoner, too.”

It is only then that Sky, who had been focusing so much on the gods in the room, notices a form trying to hide in the shadows. Just for a moment, his one good eye locks with hers.

Trocia. His relief at her survival is mixed with dread at that face, the face of Nua for the past days of his torture. And a deeper dread, a physical wretchedness even, at what Nua forced him to do to her. Her face is not animated with Nua’s sadistic humor. She is looking at him in terror.

He quickly looks away. He wants to tell her how good it is to see her alive and free of Nua, and to apologize. But even if he had a tongue, what apology would suffice? Every moment of his presence must be a continuation of her torture. He clenches his fists, digging his claws into his palms, piercing his skin. He shudders with memory of what he did, and what her body was forced to do to him while she watched, helpless. The door out of this basement is right there, open, at the top of the stairs. He could flee. He is foul. They would all be better off if he disappeared from their lives.

“Sky.” Somrak’s voice cuts through his panicking train of thought. He is holding Saira’s body, now wrapped in cloth. Trocia is behind him, still trying to hide, looking at nothing but definitely not at Sky. “Come on. You have to touch Melinor to be transported with him. Would you pick up Dion?”

Sky takes one last look at the open exit. It is night out there. The shadows beckon. But he turns and carefully lifts Gwydion, who remains unconscious. He moves closer to Melinor and apologetically touches the god’s leg with his tail.

Somrak touches Melinor with his arm, while all the others put a hand on him or use some other way of making contact. The death god looks down at Alma and simply transports them all as if were just a second thought.

They arrive in a chamber designed to welcome guests: It is spacious and comfortable, with chairs and a lounge to sit upon. There is a heavy door, however, sealing this windowless chamber off.

“Hmpf. A cell?” the Fencer snorts. “ And who is the jailor?”

Still holding Alma, Lyria replies, “The Oracle is careful of her privacy.” She looks down at her daughter. “Someone will be along in a moment.” It seems almost as if she is talking to Alma more than to the others.

Melinor kneels again, gently taking Alma into his own arms and lifting her from Lyria. The life goddess’ trust of him is evident in how she allows this, though she looks on the verge of protest. Fencer speaks up as she attends to Alma as well, in a voice not harsh but not especially soft either. “Go take care of the fools. Melinor and I have work to do and we all know you can’t help here.”

Lyria hesitates, then leaves Alma to them, going over to Sky. “Oh, little demon…” she begins.

“Such strange guests that do not announce themselves.” The door has opened without anyone noticing, and Nevieve, the Oracle, has entered the chamber. She stands tall, clad in a simple dress and sari, her dark skin iridescent where the light catches the very fine scales at the edges, her eyes white and strange.

Lyria turns from Sky, who has almost fallen into a trance at her approach, at the way she has, unlike Fencer, who looked on him with suspicion, or unlike Melinor, who saw him as an opponent in battle, come to him with only concern and pity, looking right past his outer form and seeing the same Sky she has always known. Sky does not know if he can ever express how much that means to him, here and now.

“Forgive us, Nevieve,” she says. “As you can see, our minds are in a tumult.”

Looking at Sky with her strange white eyes, the Oracle says, “So the inevitable has taken place. And the devil cradles his slayer in his arms.”

Sky looks down at Gwydion. Yes, his slayer. Hammer of Devils. Gwydion’s newfound power. Sky remembers the blow Gwydion gave him in Margrave’s lair. The pain is still there, among all the other pains.

Lyria turns back to him. She looks up into Sky’s face and strokes his muzzle. Or she tries. He cannot help but flinch away. He does not want to, but he is so convinced of his loathsomeness that he cannot bear to be touched by one so beautiful. “Oh, little one, what have they done to you?” she says softly. “So many wounds, some of them perhaps beyond my reach. Let me heal Gwydion first, and then I shall attend to you.”

She gets him to lay down Gwydion’s unconscious body onto the floor of the chamber, and then, surrounding the younger god’s body in a nimbus of verdant light, she heals Dion’s torn torso and all the other physical wounds he has sustained. After a moment, she sighs and looks up at Sky. “These whip-lashes cut so deeply, beyond the flesh and into the spirit. They will heal far more slowly.” She rises and once again touches Sky’s face. When he tries to pull away, she whispers, “Shhhh… When have I ever given you reason to fear my touch, little one? You are at a loss for words? Ah, I see.” He feels her probing magic, warm and energizing, within his mouth.

Meanwhile, Nevieve is crouching beside Gwydion. She touches his forehead, and her eyes flare white. “Hmm… How interesting.” Her hand glows white as she transfers mana and life force into Dion, at the same time wiping his body clean of all the blood and filth of that Hellish torture chamber, and replacing his ragged Guardia trousers with lightweight white-linen pants, leaving him bare-chested and barefoot, but looking now like one of her supplicants. “That should do.” Sky, with his one eye, glances to Somrak who, he sees now, has been given much the same treatment, healed, cleaned up, and given a change into simple white clothes. Sky can see that Somrak’s elaborate tattoo of tiger and phoenix is now ruined, however, for though the flesh is healed from the whip’s lash, the damage to the ink is not, leaving it mottled and blurred. He is sitting on the floor, back against the wall, looking at nothing. Beyond him, Trocia is stealing a frightened look at Sky, but she quickly looks away.

Nevieve looks toward Alma. “That seems like a much more dangerous fight.”

His voice low, Melinor urges, “Come on. Let go of her.”

“She’s trying to hold on,” Fencer growls, annoyed.

“Can you help them?” Lyria says to Nevieve. She is still performing an extensive preliminary examination of Sky – his injuries and physiology are complex, too complex, he imagines, for her to simply launch into healing him.

“I can only give her strength and heal her body,” Nevieve says. “Her soul is up to her to save. Still, it might be best to keep her body weak lest the soul who wins be the wrong one.”

Lyria insists with shaky conviction, “Alma will win. But any help we can give her–”

Suddenly Alma gasps. Sky strains to see. “I have her!” Fencer shouts to Melinor. “Don’t let the other escape.”

Sky feels a hand grip his. He looks down and sees that Lyria is holding his taloned hand tightly. Sky carefully closes his hand around hers, feeling a sharp pain lance through his heart at her action. To seek comfort from him!

The trusting touch takes him back to a grandchild of his, daughter of his adopted son, long, long ago and on another world, how small her hand in his as they walked together through the snow.

Events here and now shake him free from useless memories. In Fencer’s hand, a little blurry body of light appears, faint at first then materializing further and further until it looks like a small, sparkling pebble. Alma’s body glows faintly and Melinor puts a hand over her chest. “No,” he says. “Stay inside yourself.”

Nevieve smiles. “Ah, it seems that now it is my turn.” She walks over to Alma to start healing her body. At her glance, Melinor bows and steps away, standing guard. Fencer rises and walks away, toward Somrak.

Sky hears her begin to speak to Somrak in a low voice that might as well be shouting for its vehemence, but all thought of that fades as Lyria’s healing power begins to spread through his body, taking hold finally. The stump of his tongue, the gaping socket of his missing eye, and so many slashes from the whip, self-healed but not fully, for he had to conserve his mana, just enough to allow function. The broken wing, the deep stab in his hand from Alma’s dragon-tooth dagger. The crushing blow from Gwydion that broke ribs and bruised organs. All of it begins to heal, making him hiss and whimper, clamping his muzzle shut to keep from screaming and roaring. It hurts as much as taking all those wounds again at once, but at the same time it feels so good that he cannot keep his feet, falling to his knees.

If he were in his human form, he would be weeping. As it is, tears are not something he can summon in this shape.

Lyria has healed him before, but he was not a tenth as injured as now. He falls forward onto his hands, then curls in on himself, the formerly broken wing cupping itself around Lyria and pulling her even closer. He breathes harshly, but all thought flees as he nearly falls unconscious, blessed darkness rising in an attempt to claim him.

He is drowning. But when he became a god, he was a god of the sea. He cannot drown. No matter how far he is pulled down into the crushing depths, he will always swim to safety. He holds Lyria to him as his body shakes with tearless sobs.

Ch6.93 Trust

“No, no, no, come on, hold on, hold on!”

The blood is pumping from Saira. Somrak tries to heal one wound, but healing does not come naturally to him. He is a god of fire, and fire destroys. Unable to draw upon his sphere for healing, he makes do with the same sort of magic that mortal wizards learn. And the abyssal poison in Saira’s wounds defeats such pitiful effort. He cannot even slow the bleeding.

Multiple punctures, deep and ragged, make him want to scream just from looking at what Margrave’s bound demons have done to her. And there is nothing he can do. He sees her eyes barely open, unfocused, but flicking toward him. Instead of screaming, he whispers, “Saira, please, stay with me… Alma’s gonna wake up, she’s going to be all right, she’s going to heal you.”

Saira’s body convulses in what is probably intended to be a laugh. “Quit it, Ponytail… I said…I wouldn’t–” She coughs up a gout of blood that runs down her chin, blood that stinks of demonic venom. “Wouldn’t survive. Stupid gods… Look after them.”

Som holds her tighter and whispers to her, “You got him. You got him. The Devil’s Right Hand. You got him.”

Somrak sets her down, then leans over Dion, grabbing his forearm and pulling him closer. “Come on, Prettyboy! Wake up! We need magic. You can put her in stasis or something, right?” He smacks Dion’s cheeks, but the god, his mana spent, remains unconscious. Somrak raises a hand to give him a good slap.

A huge hoof plants itself near Somrak’s knee, spreading out slightly to bear Sky’s massive weight, and a big taloned hand grasps Somrak’s arm. The devil squats, balancing easily with his tail and outspread wings. He looks at Saira. His face seems sad, pained – really, there’s no telling. That hairless canine muzzle is ripped from the whipping he has received, one eye put out. And it’s not as if Somrak has seen this face of Sky’s more than a handful of times in forty years. Sky has no desire to show it.

The room groans. The walls begin to bleed some kind of sap. Sky releases Somrak, who takes hold of Saira’s limp body and, with effort, stands. He is wounded himself. The whiplashes are nothing to scoff at. The damage to flesh is survivable for a god – at the worst, the wounds across his chest are only bone-deep. But the pain to his soul goes on and on, weakening him. He looks at Margrave – dead, his head wrenched backwards, the black-bone whip wrapped around his neck, buried in his throat. At Alma – unconscious, whatever is happening there unknown to the outside world. At Dion – unconscious as well.

And the woman that Alma was put into for a time, the girl really, is gone. In all the confusion of unbound demons, she disappeared. Slipped out. Glancing at the pile of weapons, spilled from a cart, Somrak notes that Saira’s crossbow is missing. Clever girl. Grabbed the best weapon.

Though how she got out… The door is hanging open, but beyond it is puckered flesh, pulsating. It looks for all the world like a tight-shut sphincter.

“The sword,” Somrak says to Sky. “Might need it. If Nua managed to bind Alma’s soul to it even a little…” He hopes Sky can understand.

The devil looks, spots the fine weapon, and hands it over to Somrak, who hooks two fingers around the guard to hold it while still carrying Saira. Then Sky looks at the blocked door. He flexes his claws, as if intending to rip his way through, but then he looks down at Margrave. The summoner is a corpse, or nearly so, and Sky brings one leg back and kicks him at the doorway, sliding his body across the floor.

The sphincter opens. To Somrak’s relief, nothing comes out. It simply reveals a passageway that looks distinctly intestinal.

There is a dull boom in the distance, behind the wall opposite the passage. Then another, closer. Somrak feels chilled. It sounds like the steps of a giant, walking. Another boom, closer.

We are come, to claim our soul…

It is a moan of doom, triumphant and dolorous, issuing from the world itself, this tiny pocket universe. Sky grunts at Somrak. He seizes Margrave’s body and tosses it onto his back, pinning it there by folding his wings up tight. Then he lifts Alma and Dion with great care.

“Come on!” Somrak urges him. “Let’s go!” Sky grunts at Somrak again, jerking his horned head at the corridor. Somrak looks to make sure the two unconscious gods are being held securely, then he rushes into the pulsating passage.

It is not open very far ahead, only a few strides, but as Sky follows from behind, bearing Margrave’s corpse, the passage keeps opening before them. And those world-shaking footsteps keep following from behind.

Sky is a devil, Somrak knows. And what is coming is, in all likelihood, a devil as well. It certainly feels more powerful than any demon, of another category entirely, as of a god compared to a mortal. And more powerful than Sky. Vastly so. A rot emanates from that direction, racing along the corridor, putrefying as fast as they can run. Faster. Somrak pushes harder. Saira… For a moment Somrak allows the thought to exist, that she is already dead, that it’s too late. He thrusts that away. Too late or not, she’s not remaining behind here. Hell itself is devouring this miniature world. Hell is claiming it as territory. Alive or dead, her soul may still be attached to her body. He’s not sure how that works, but he knows that no death goddess has sent it on its way. He will not let her be stuck here in any form.

And there it is: the portal. Well, the blank wall that held the portal. At the moment, it holds nothing. Somrak nearly crashes into it. He shifts Saira and slaps a hand against it, giving the wall a jolt of mana and sending the mental command for it to open.

Nothing.

Somrak realizes how terrified he is. He is never frightened in battle. Never! It is only in repose, after or before, or captured or otherwise unable to fight, that he feels fear. Battle? He’s too busy fighting to be afraid. And usually too busy laughing.

But not now. Now he is afraid that Sky and Dion and Saira and…Alma, afraid that they will all end up in Hell. That he’s led them to this. And he must admit that he is nearly paralyzed with fear at the thought of himself in Hell. Eternity of endless torture, ever-renewed, never numbed to it, always and ever screaming for mercy, in utter abjection. No dignity, no hope, no love. With every thought he feels more beaten down. Is this the approaching devil infecting his mind with despair? Or is he simply falling prey to his own cowardice at last?

With a thud, Margrave’s body falls to the floor. Sky has laid down Alma and Dion, carefully, and roughly dumped Margrave. He jerks his head at the corpse, then holds out a hand toward the door. It takes Somrak a moment of wondering why Sky isn’t speaking to catch his meaning. Somrak lays down Saira, grabs Margrave’s hand, and places it against the portal wall. He channels mana through it.

And nothing happens. The portal makes not the slightest hint of appearing.

Somrak feels his guts clench. He does what he has been avoiding: he turns to look behind them. He nearly vomits at the sight. The entire pocket universe, Margrave’s little sanctum, has been flayed open. It looks like exploded strips of flesh, gangrenous and full of tumors, undulating in some cosmic wind. The only spot of stability is where they stand now. The rest is claimed by Hell.

And beyond it? Only a vague shape in the darkness, something squatting, waiting to spring, something larger than any living creature Somrak has ever seen. That he cannot see it clearly is a mercy, the final mercy. For he knows that when it does show itself, all is over. All happiness, that is, all joy.

Once again, kneeling, he tries to wake Dion, shaking him in desperation. Still nothing, the Sergeant knocked cold by his earlier efforts. Not even a flicker of an eyelid.

Somrak stands and readies Alma’s sword. He will strike at it. He tells himself this, though he is not sure he believes it. But he cannot look at it. Instead he looks down, at Alma’s face. He will take that with him, into Hell. He will cling to that memory for as long as he can.

Beside him, Sky roars defiance. He spreads arms and wings wide. In one hand he holds the vertebral whip, the soul-shredding godbound weapon that was used to torture him and Somrak and Dion. He recognizes the feel of it, that of a god’s soul torn from its body and forced to commit evils. Unending pain, a miniature of Hell, driving the soul insane quickly.

In the other hand, Sky holds Margrave’s limp, broken, ragdoll body by one leg. He draws his arm back and hurls it at the devil, sending it spinning, cartwheeling at its master. Sky’s roar this time is of rage, hate, and unending refusal to submit. Somrak takes heart. At least he and Sky, partners for so long, are together at the end. But the guilt at having brought the others to this nearly consumes the fire god.

This is worse than death. All of them will find their souls in Hell. All of them will suffer, forever. But perhaps their souls can escape to the Wheel if their bodies die now. Somrak holds the sword, pointed toward Alma’s breast. Freed of her flesh, can Alma lead Dion’s and Saira’s souls to safety? Can he kill her, then Dion, in time?

And then two large, hard hands grab him from behind by the shoulders and pull him through the portal. Somrak flies through the air and lands on the floor of the basement in Little Falls, the sword clanging away into darkness, the world blessedly normal, the Insula, home, a place where gods belong. The air is knocked out of him, but tears of relief spring to his eyes.

As he pushes himself up onto his elbows, he sees other figures in the dark room. “Give her to me!” cries a voice more suited to songs of life and love than to fear, and yes, he did recognize it, for there is Lyria, Alma’s mother, cradling her daughter. Then the hulking shape that must have pulled Somrak through is now tossing Gwydion toward Fencer, who quickly sets him down.

And now the big one – ah, it must be Melinor, a god Somrak has heard about and has even seen striding a battlefield more than once, harvesting those slain in combat – Melinor is struggling, pulling a shape too big to fit easily through the human-sized portal. And yet, with a crack of bone, the god manages, hurling Sky behind him with a twist of his hips, forcing Somrak to roll out of the way to avoid being crushed. Sky falls heavily against a wall, one wing limp, and the devil starts to his feet, snarling at Alma’s brother.

“You two can solve your differences later!” Fencer snaps. “All right, girl, seal that portal!”

Somrak sees Trocia then, the formerly unconscious vessel for Alma’s soul, doing her best to stay unnoticed as long as possible. Pale, traumatized, she moves to obey.

“Wait!” Somrak cries. He springs to his feet and dashes for the portal, pushing past the girl. Fencer’s objection is cut off as he pushes his head and one arm through. His hand grasps Saira’s ankle, and he looks –

Oh, he shouldn’t have looked.

That face. That… He has seen Sky in his devil form. He has fought numerous demons. Undead. Other horrors, too many to count. He has seen the worst that anyone with sufficient lust for power and too little empathy can do to fellow creatures, things he feels ashamed even to know about.

All that is nothing compared to this, the face of a true Prince of Hell.

It is the end of all hope. It is the death of the heart.

And then he is pulled back through. And with him, hand locked on her ankle, comes Saira.

“NOW!” cries Fencer. Somrak could swear she has fear in her voice.

She should.

Trocia places her palms on the portal. It bulges. Something is pushing from the other side. But then it is gone. It disappears. But could it be reactivated from the other side?

Sky snarls again, leaning forward, muscles bunching. Is he preparing to launch himself at Melinor, or at the surface through which the more powerful devil can come? Somrak slaps Sky’s shoulder, trying to bring him to his senses.

Melinor ignores Sky. He brushes the girl aside and places his fingertips on the wall. It turns to dust in a great circle, dust that slides to the floor in a soft avalanche. With the destruction of the surface it was created on, the portal is forever gone.

Somrak pulls Saira to him. He tries to drive away memory of that face, and indeed it fades like a nightmare. Though it will return, he knows, in the dark, in sleep. He will not escape it so easily.

But for now he touches Saira’s slack face. Her skin is cold. He knows death.

A boot beside his face. He looks up. Fencer, glaring down at him.

“Now give me a good reason to let you live,” she growls.

Ch6.90 Trust

The stench of them is getting closer. Demons, a group of them. Four at least. Lyria can feel them treading on the bare soil of the breezeway, corrupting it with their poisonous touch and with the slithering of their bodies, rotting seeds, killing roots. Defiling nature.

She curses under her breath. What kind of irresponsible fools would leave their home so vulnerable to an attack? And then again, this was never meant to be a home, was it? This was always just a prison, a quarantine unit. A grave to dangerous mistakes expected to die out in a few decades.

She shakes her head, throwing such thoughts back into the dark and grim abyss from whence they came. No time to entertain them now. A quiet thought, barely a conscious decision, and the floor by her foot sprouts a green stem, leaves, a large purple flower. A couple of tiny pixies stand in its eye and stretch their limbs, yawning lazily before taking to the air.

“Go,” Lyria tells them as she provides them with specific orders in a telepathic message. “Tell them to hurry.”

The little messengers nod and fly swiftly away, at full speed against the wall and past it. Her message will reach its intended targets very quickly, Lyria knows. It is all a matter of how long it will take them to come to her aid. She takes a couple of steps toward the kitchen, just to check that the gryphon has already sealed the portal into Gwydion’s room behind him. They should be safe in there, he and the Bunnies and that tall mortal girl.

Lyria takes a step back, turns to the door that leads into the breezeway. It would not do to give the enemy an indication of where her grandchildren are hiding. Her eyes flare with their vibrant, leafy green, her flaxen hair glimmers with the gold of ripe wheat in the summer sun. She glows with divinity just as the lights begin to dim around her, as the door is ripped off its hinges and crushed by a tentacled, saw-toothed mouth. A crawling shape enters and climbs the wall all the way to the ceiling, a mass of writhing arms, each of which is covered in blistering, festering wounds and gaping mouths from which issue a chorus of screams. Another demon, just a shapeless, writhing mass, slides over the floor, its stench so foul that Lyria has to activate a cleansing spell to keep herself from asphyxiating while she feels the floorboards rot under her feet.

The fourth is almost humanoid, tall, very tall, muscular, horned and winged. Tattered wings, stark black like the rest of its skin. No eyes, no mouth. Around him, darkness spreads, black chains hover with links as sharp as blades.

Lyria sighs for a moment at how simple and uncreative the fears of mortals can be. “Poor little demons. Born to suffer, to hate and slavery. You deserve the pity of the world.”

“Slaves deserve DEATH!” one of the demons roars in one of the lower tongues of Hell as all of them jump to attack with teeth, tentacles, talons and pseudopods. All of them as one, a rabid mass of Hellish nightmares pouncing on the life goddess.

She stands her ground, her powers unleashed to their full glory, their full horrifying magnificence. The air vibrates with the energy of Life, the room filling with the pulsating light of existence, with the rustling of leaves, the drumming of heartbeats, the whooshing sound of sap flowing in green stems. At a gesture of her hand, the boards and tables and chairs sprout thorn-laden vines that intercept and entangle the demons, tearing and constricting, deadly.

The demons roar, bound and stung. And she tilts her head in command. Venoms that harm even demons ooze from the tips of the thorns, into demon flesh.

“This is our world, little demon,” she whispers as the floorboards rise and twist into spiked mouths that bite and swallow two of the demons. “Long ago, we defeated you and locked you away in your Hell. Do you really think you can challenge us here?”

There are others, though, just arriving. She will need help soon enough. The demons wail and roar in pain as even the newcomers fall into her traps but pain is a constant to the lowly dwellers of Hell. They fight to move through the vines even as their flesh is ripped apart by them, chuckling when their corrosive blood eats through the plants, when their rotting miasma withers the verdant chains.

A demon breaks free before the rest and jumps at Lyria, dreadful maw open, teeth whirring around its jaws like a chainsaw, tentacles shooting to wrap around the goddess’ body.

“Diiiiieeeeeeee!” it bellows with poisonous breath, a sickly yellowish tongue whipping out, trying to grab hold of her neck.

Lyria raises an arm to catch the mucus-covered strip, which wraps around her limb instead of her neck, tightening its hold with bone-breaking strength. With a flash of divine power, her skin rises and thickens, her slender muscles bulge. Scales and spikes, tough and sharp, cover her arm, piercing through the surprised demon’s tongue, capturing it in place while the goddess’ free hand grows long, razor-edged claws that she uses to rip through the tentacles. Teeth manage to bite her, penetrating all the way down to her bones, but soon the demon is reduced to nothing but an angry mouth.

Other demons close in, tearing themselves out of the thorny vines, leaving assorted limbs behind inside her carnivorous plants’ mouths in sacrifice for their ultimate goal. Where are they?

Where are they?

A blur of movement to her right and a demon falls face first at Lyria’s feet, its armored skull bashed in from behind. A second demon is already being pulled back, flailing and wailing in confusion and fear. By her left, a blade pushes through the throat of the horned and winged shadow creature. The blade disappears and the demon staggers back, its wings, shredded and broken from the vines folding around its face in protection only to have the metal sword tip thrust through its chest with sudden force. An eerie light erupts in the blade, courses through the contorting, shrieking form of the mouthless creature as it seems to burn from the inside out. A bright flash and it crumbles in ashes, revealing the grimacing, disapproving features of Varah behind it.

“I was starting to wonder if you had heard my call,” Lyria says in casual welcome as she destroys the last portions of demon still clinging to her arm.

“I would have heard faster if you had mentioned demons,” Varah replies, a dagger flying off her left hand to pin the many-armed demon to the ceiling like a skewer through a kebab. It screeches in agony but almost immediately begins to pull at the blade, trying to free itself. “What is this? Where are the Dei?”

Left with no demons directly attacking her, Lyria once again stretches her powers through the ground and the walls, strengthening her vines, brewing new poisons in their stems, in their thorns. “They are apparently off on some hare-brained scheme–” she catches herself, just as a demon is bashed against the wall, making the building shake with ominous force. “Oh I should not say that. They have gone to rescue one of them.”

Varah frowns as she cuts a smaller demon in half. “Demons…Which one?”

“Tuma-Sukai,” Lyria replies darkly. “And obviously Hell has something to do with this.”

“The necromancer…” Varah nearly spits the word. “This has to be connected to it. I will kill your insubordinate child for not calling me!” She cuts a fiery demon’s head off in a clean blow so great is her rage.

“So you did not know then,” Lyria breathes, clenching her hand in a command that makes her vines tighten around two moribund creatures until their bodies collapse with a wet, sucking noise, crushed by the constricting stems. “And yet your Commander’s pet Somrak is with them…”

“I ordered that idiot specifically to stay away from this ward!” Varah bellows, stabbing a fallen demon through the eye, her sword glowing its spectral green as the poor creature’s soul is violently ripped from its dying body. “Your daughter keeps ruining all our good agents.” She pauses, her frown becoming a definitely not very flattering grimace. “He must have told them. Damn the fool… Too smart for his own good.”

A blood-curdling laugh from the ceiling catches their attention as the demon previously pinned there finishes gnawing a hole around Varah’s dagger and frees itself, dropping with its many arms stretched and bleeding over the goddesses. The vile thing disappears suddenly in midair, its shape a blur of moving color knocked off the path to Lyria’s head with a thundering blow. Lyria lowers her armored arm, injured from her previous attacker’s teeth but quickly healing, to see Melinor standing to the left of Varah, his hand almost casually gripping and crushing the demon’s core as if it were just a piece of rotten fruit before letting it fall on the floor. She breathes out in relief and gladness to see the tall, powerful god there.

“We need to find them,” Melinor says simply.

“Yes, little one,” Lyria says, scanning the area to make sure there are no more demons surprising them. “We must. That seems to be the last of them. Fortunately they were too preoccupied with us to attack the Popula.”

She ignores her divine senses for a moment and looks around the bar with the simpler, so sadly plain and incomplete senses of mortals. “Oh look at this mess! We can’t let the Bunnies return to this horror.” She sighs, shaking her head at the chaos. “Oh well… I was planning to do something like this anyway, as a gift.”

With a simple wave of her once again humanoid-looking hand, the vines begin to recede back to the ground, dragging away the demon corpses into the hotter, cleansing layers of the Insula’s core. With an echo of birdsong and a murmur of deer calls, the corrupted air is cleansed and filled with a flowery scent. The walls, floor, and furniture reform into a lovely, dark-wood paneled interior, matching and alive. Softly glowing petals of nocturnal flowers stretch from the walls, revealing colorful stamens that illuminate the room with a gentle light much more pleasant than any lamp or torch. Firefly-blossoms bloom in the ceiling. Foliage grows in the corners of the room, coated with softly insect-repelling substances.

“Huh…Pretty,” Varah harrumphs in that way of hers that makes such a positive word sound like honest criticism. She sheathes her sword, blade enchanted to be self-cleaning. “So, who can we shake for answers? Do the furry little hoppers know anything useful?”

Lyria dispenses her a displeased glance at the blunt description of the goddess’ grandchildren before answering. “No, but I know who does.” She moves toward the kitchen, to the pantry door through which she saw Bunnies and gryphon disappear and knocks on the doorframe. “Geryon, dear? It is safe now.”

The portal activates and Geryon hesitantly peeks out, looking at Lyria for reassurance. After a smile and a nod, he looks back into the portal, calling in “Yes, they’re gone,” before coming out himself.

The rambunctious curly redhead Rosemary is the first one of the Bunnies to leave the sanctum, carrying a metal stand for a censer as if it were a weapon, and soon sweet, loving Cherry follows her, armed with a little mother-of-pearl inlaid stool. They walk carefully through the kitchen and into the bar area, makeshift weapons raised as if expecting attackers to spring up from the floorboards. They stop suddenly, arms lowering and nearly dropping their cargo, eyes wide in awe. Mumbled whispers of “What the…” and “Oh my…” escape from their parted lips.

Their eyes drift toward Varah and Melinor and the mumbling stops. Their frames tense at the sight of the gods.

The human woman rushes out of the sanctum next, sword drawn and hissing at the girls, “Hey, I told you two to wait a second!”

As the other Bunnies emerge, some fearfully others rushing out, Lyria returns to the bar’s seating area, where Geryon is looking like a goose staring down a pair of foxes. “Dear, brave Geryon,” she says. “Thank you for protecting my family.”

Geryon tilts his head, in a raptorine show of suspicion. “You will forgive me, lady, if I don’t roll over and show my belly.”

“Finally, someone with a hint of intelligence in him,” Varah mutters with an amused snort.

Sigh. This is why giving mortals such leeway to think for themselves can be so dangerous… They just don’t understand divine urgency.

Lyria smiles slightly. “My apologies for before. But there were demons closing in and I truly needed to know. And Geryon, I need to know more. Where has my daughter gone?”

“I don’t know,” Geryon replies dryly, head swinging haughtily to the side. “They did not care to name addresses.”

“What did they care to name?” Varah growls.

Geryon hesitates, a bold move with such an imposing goddess as Varah. But whatever boldness is in him disappears as Melinor moves closer to him, radiating his aura of violence recently fueled by the fight, the left side of his face turned closer to the gryphon. “Speak.”

The single word, spoken in Melinor’s low-pitched and rough voice that would be so fetching if it weren’t being made to sound like a world of terrible threats, makes Geryon flinch back and cower. Still, the gryphon manages to keep his own voice from trembling too noticeably as he blurts out as quickly as his rigid beak will let him, “They are going after the necromancer. I told them they were insane, to go just the three of them and only a day after Dion was poisoned too. That alone was a close call. But they wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t listen too poor, wise Geryon telling them not to go after her. Nua. The necromancer’s name is Nua. I’m just here to protect the Bunnies because someone has to, right?”

Varah’s eyes widen and burn with rage, her one crimson eye looking like a beacon shining from the furnaces of Hell. “Nua…” she hisses. “If your friends are still alive, I will skin them for their folly!“

Lyria looks askance at the repeated threat against her child but she is not too far from admitting that Varah is justified in her anger. “I know my daughter. They would not have gone in without some form contingency plan. A message perhaps?”

She looks to Geryon for an answer, who in turn glances meaningfully at Fencer, the feathers on his head and neck rising subtly in nervousness. “The contingency plan involves the Sikari.”

The colors run out of Lyria’s face at the sound of that awful word, as bloodcurdling as “devil.” She looks at Varah in shock.

“They made it a law,” Varah mutters, exhaling deeply. “Remember, I was against the whole bloody plan from the beginning.”

“We are not following any cursed law that brings the Sikari in while Alma is still in there!” Lyria cries out.

She looks at the gryphon, her thoughts effortlessly flowing into his mind like a fresh stream flowing through the bed of an ancient, dried river. The other gods will be able to hear her, she knows, but it is only the Bunnies’ innocent dispositions that she cares to protect at this point. These demons that attacked us are proof that their plan was not fully well-informed. It may already have gone awry. Please, we need to go help them now. Before someone else notices what is going on and sends the Sikari whether we like it or not.

Geryon looks at her for a long silent moment and she can easily sense the speed of his thoughts, the moment of his decision. He sighs and nods, raising a taloned paw in which a small roll of paper materializes at a command word. “They trusted me with this. I did not read it but I assume it says all you need to know.”

Melinor takes the message, not brusquely or unkindly even if Geryon does flinch reflexively at the movements of the god, and reads its contents. “Little Falls. Neighboring ward.”

“When did they leave?” Varah asks.

“They left early this morning, I think, not long after dawn,” Sage volunteers. “Mother and Gwydion were in their office, and soon after, they were gone. Somrak’s scent was in the air.”

Varah grimaces. “We may be too late already.”

“We would sense it if she were dead,” Melinor notes, much to Lyria’s dismay. If there is one thing she would like to avoid is any talk of deceased parents around the children.

“Nua is the type that likes to play with her food,” Varah grumbles, apparently committed to making matters worse.

“What are y’all talkin’ about, dead?” Cherry nearly shrieks, eyes wide and lip trembling in fright.

Lyria strokes Cherry’s ears, a gesture she has noticed is somehow reassuring to Bunnies. “My dear, fear not. We will make sure no harm comes to your mother and her friends. But we must go now. Geryon will continue to be your guardian, and you must do as he says. All right?”

Cherry looks up at the goddess and nods, impulsively hugging Lyria in her anxiety. Lyria holds her for a short instant and strokes her hair, whispering soothing words before pulling away and putting her hands on Cherry’s cheeks to share a little meaningful look that wanders to all the other Bunnies and says, You must keep them all together and calm.

But more demons could already be on their way, for all she knows…

“We cannot just leave them here with no divine protection,” Lyria says to Varah. “I am half tempted to transport them all to my chambers…and go fetch Mayumi as well.”

That earns her a snort from Varah. “I would love to see my brother’s face when he walks in and finds them hopping around. Anyway, the one at the Academy is safer than all of these. And if we start moving these ones around, we will soon be answering uncomfortable questions before the Council.”

“I will stay behind and stand guard,” Melinor offers, standing as he often does at the side of such discussions only to intervene when things seem to start to derail.

The offer touches Lyria’s heart, knowing as she does that Melinor is often uncomfortable around children and would be even more so if he were to stay here, with people who require so much physical interaction and emotion, instead of doing whatever he can to save his beloved and only sister. “I will feel better with your strong arm beside us, little one. I think it is time these sweet creatures met more of their family.” Again she summons the messenger petal pixies, sending them on their way with a telepathic command and smiling softly at the fascinated look on her grandchildren’s faces at the sight of this simple magic. To all of them she announces, “Two gods will soon arrive. They will help keep all of you safe.”

“How will we recognize them?” Geryon asks.

“You will know,” Melinor states simply.

Geryon looks at the god, wings hanging a little low as if slumping in resignation. “Lovely…” he mutters before turning pleading eyes to Lyria, “Lady… I know they are all insane and in more trouble than I care to imagine but… Please be kind. Their choice was an impossible one.”

Lyria touches his cheek feathers affectionately. “Your loyalty is touching, dear child. First we will make sure they are safe and home and then…we will see what must be done.” She looks over the Bunnies one last time and smiles with a confidence she is far from feeling. She then moves closer to Melinor, saying, “Let us be on our way.”

Varah nods grimly, touching the young god’s shoulder. “Take us there.”

Ch6.55 Trust

Night has fallen over this side of the Insula. The streets will be swelling with all the people who regard this final day of the Year’s End as the true day of celebration, and who plan to party all the way until midnight to close the ending year, and then past it to welcome the new one.

Alma breathes deeply. She has never worked through this particular night due to her family’s special dispensations, but what retellings she has heard of it make the Inner Rings sound like Three Rats for one night each year. Pavia will certainly be dealing with some of that silliness. The death goddess makes a mental note to write and explain to her old partner the reasons of her delay, since Death will most certainly have dismissed Pavia as escort without much in the way of explanation.

“You should stay,” Melinor says, looming by her side, at the main entrance of the house. “Father would have you stay and spend the night.”

Alma cannot help but smile at that. On any other day, the thought of spending the night would not even have flared in her mind. Too many of her dark memories are housed in Death’s estate and her rushed departure after Cherry and Rosemary’s creation, twenty-four years prior, had generated enough malaise to make staying here a nearly unthinkable choice. This has not felt like home for too long and her presence here has often done more harm than good.

But tonight, she hesitates. She can barely remember the ceremony and even less anything that might have happened after it. Her thoughts feel hazy, as if a heavy veil of mist has fallen upon them, covering and blurring their shapes, distorting memories of sound or touch. One moment, she was hovering in the air, in indescribable ecstasy at the touch of thousands of souls moving through her; the next she was waking up in her bed, in the room that had been her own for over three quarters of a lifetime, kept clean but otherwise untouched since her departure. That had been an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. She had thought the room would have been given to someone else or reused for some other purpose. That it had been kept for her, even the plants in Starfax’s old enclosure still flowering and healthy, was like an unspoken wish for reconciliation.

And even though she feels weak and stiff, as if she has just taken a beating to her very core, she also feels strangely lighthearted and at peace, as if something in her has shifted toward balance and happiness. As if something very, very good has happened without her having any memory of it. It almost erases all the unpleasant moments spent here. And, for some reason, it makes her nurture an impulsive craving to run through the maze-like corridors in search of Death and tackle her Father in a long, tight embrace.

That might not go so well. Though the whim remains. For now, however, the darkened sky has Alma concerned for Mayumi, who will be worrying, no doubt, at her mother’s delay.

“I promised Mayumi I would pick her up before sunset, to take her home,” the goddess explains, marveling at the sharp, glittering contours of Melinor’s soul. For some reason, she cannot stop soul-scrying, even if she wills it so, but feels none of the familiar signs of exhaustion that keeping it up too long usually brings about. “And sunset has been and gone, already.”

“You are too weak to be traveling,” Melinor notes in that brusque, matter-of-fact way of his. “Is she not safe where she is?”

“She is,” Alma concedes, with a little nod that sends her head in a twirl. “But tomorrow she will be leaving for the Guardia Academy. My delay has already robbed her of precious time with her siblings.”

Melinor must notice her momentary disorientation, because he wraps an arm around her chest and pulls her to lean into the sturdy, reassuring cradle of his chest. “Very well,” he says, exhaling deeply in tamped-down exasperation. “I will take you to her and then transport the two of you to your assigned ward. I doubt you will make it there awake, anyway.”

Alma smiles, snuggling against him, reveling in that acrid, metallic scent of blood and pounded flesh that is, to her, the soothing scent of a loved one. “I love you too, brother.”

“Always the emotional one,” Melinor mutters, shaking his head. “Where is this place?”

Pulling away enough free her right hand, Alma produces her record book and gives him her annotations to read. She has drawn a simple map to Sueyoshi’s house, taking care in writing down the correct address and location of the ward in the vast Third Ring. Melinor’s teleporting does not work quite like the portals but, after a few questions, he seems satisfied with the information. He allows her to put the record book away, then holds her tightly as his powers activate, with a scent of sweat and charred bone, and sounds of battle and alarm. The world shifts around them.

The world goes black.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

“When did you start these?” Mayumi is seated cross-legged on the floor, looking at sheet after sheet of various kinds of paper – wood-pulp or cotton-rag, smooth or highly textured, pure white to shades of cream or grey – on which are drawn dozens of images of her. Charcoal, pencil, ink-brush, even watercolor, she sees her face in different expressions, her form in different poses, often among scenes in the garden, or here in the house, sometimes in other locales. She recognizes the environs of the temple up on the hill that houses the local portal, where she and Alma arrived this morning.

“Maybe two or three years after the dreams began,” Sueyoshi replies. “I was trying to…to make sense of it? No, that’s not right.” He considers as he sits down again, setting a cup of tea for her nearby but away from the pictures. “I think I was trying to bring you here. To make you real.”

She looks up from the drawings. The older ones, near the bottom, are cruder, stiffer, more self-conscious, and the materials and techniques more experimental. The more recent ones more consistently use the same paper, heavy and handmade, slightly off-white, painted in ink with free-flowing minimalistic strokes that capture emotion more than realism, and which all seem to convey a sorrowful longing.

“I have always been real,” she tells him. “But I understand. I feared, for a time, that you did not exist in this waking world.”

“Even those of us who cannot use magic try to find ways to exert our will over the things we cannot control,” he says. “And yet, here you are. If I were superstitious, I would think it worked.”

Mayumi grins, then feels the smile disappear. She looks at him gravely. “Of course it did. You raised me with love, and these are an expression of love. That love, in dreams and in waking, ensured that I would find my way to you here.” She keeps her eyes locked on his for a long moment, then breaks it off, looking down at the pictures. “I feel strange to call images of myself ‘beautiful,’ but they are beautiful. I can’t…I can’t describe how much this, not just this, everything today, how much it has moved–”

She breaks off. Something has changed. Although the temperature is no different, she feels a chill, accompanied by an indefinable feeling in the air itself. Being near gods nearly every minute of her time in Three Rats, she has grown used to a subtle sense of their presence. Gwydion is the most difficult to notice in this way, his aura only causing the soft hairs on her neck and forearms to rise when he is actually performing magic. Sky’s presence is also subtle, nothing more than a hint of the ocean that straddles the line between his smell and something less tangible, and sometimes he suppresses it completely. Alma’s presence is both the easiest and most difficult to notice, perhaps because she conceals it the least, perhaps because she is Mayumi’s mother. It has been an almost constant presence for her, not only since she awoke to this world, but even before, always a background note in her dream life, and as such it is difficult to describe except in its rare absence. But all the Bunnies can tell if she is nearby, if they think about it, whether she is within sight or scent, or not.

And others, like Kyri or Breowan, announce their presence more strongly and physically. There is always a hint of music in the air when Kyri is nearby, while Breowan seems surrounded by an echo of beer, the slightest feeling of tipsiness that one might get from taking a deep sniff off the head of a glass of beer.

This is stronger, more like their grandmother, Lyria, or Gwydion’s uncle, the Archon Math, or the murderous criminal, the now-deceased Nekh – a feeling of power that just fills the air. But it resonates somewhat like Alma’s, when she is channelling the powers of death, something that Mayumi has born witness to more than once when her mother fought in defense of her children. However, it is more unsettling, though she cannot understand why just yet. She just knows it is different from Alma’s, and yet there is a connection. In Alma’s normal presence, there is that feeling of melancholy, of the longing for what has been lost or is to be lost, but with it is love, and…how did Merri put it? Continuation. Renewal. No, perhaps Sage had said that first, after Tulip, barely starting to speak and separated from Alma cruelly, had first articulated that loss of Alma’s divine presence.

Within this aura is not melancholy but dread, shot through with violence and blood, fire and screams.

A heavy tread on the garden veranda, and three hard raps on the back door. Sueyoshi stands, looking at the door, then at Mayumi. From his expression, she can see that he too senses the aura of death. He goes to the next room and returns holding a jutte, a metal baton with a fork-like tine along the side, near that grip, that had once existed to catch swords but was now simply traditional, the local version of the Guardia truncheon. By the time he returns, Mayumi is already up and holding her hands to stop him.

“Father, please, let me.”

“Are you sure?” He looks deeply concerned.

“Whoever it is, is here for me. And must be connected to Mother.” At his nod of assent, she turns and, taking a breath, opens the door.

Standing before her is an imposing figure, his face turned slightly so that only the right side is easily visible. It is a face she recognizes instantly, handsome, cold, disapproving, even though this side of it is half hidden by his long, unkempt midnight-black hair. And she knows, though she can barely see it, that the left side of that face, which he keeps turned away by habit, is a blasted, torn wound. Melinor, God of Violent Death.

But her gaze is pulled from his face almost immediately, as she sees what he is holding. Or rather who, for in his arms is Alma, asleep or unconscious, her body gently supported under her shoulders and knees by her brother’s powerful arms. Mayumi is surprised at how small she looks, for the Bunny is used to looking up at her mother, who is somewhat taller than the average human. All but her pale face and snowdrift of hair disappear against him, as she is wrapped in a black blanket, no, a cloak, most likely Melinor’s, and despite his fearsome aura, his face, the way his ochre eye barely glances at her, Mayumi sees the tender way he holds his sister, and she steps aside to let him enter.

Eschewing greetings, she asks, “What happened?” She feels a slight tremor in her voice, and decides it is from worry about her mother. Any fear induced by Melinor’s aura has disappeared, at least for her, for the moment.

“She is fine.” The god’s voice is flat and harsh, but bears no animosity despite that. “Are you Mayumi?”

“I am.” She pauses. “We have seen each other before. At the Curia. What has happened to my mother?”

It seems for a moment as if Melinor will not answer, but then he speaks. “She…evolved. I have come to take you back to the Fourth Ring at her request.”

“Evolved?” She shakes her head, her ears laid back. “But why is she unconscious? Is there anything we can do?”

“No.” If he was hesitating to speak to her before, he seems to have given in. “She is adapting to a new sphere. It is her battle to fight.”

Mayumi looks to Sueyoshi, still standing a few paces away. He looks as if he is fighting the urge to fall down in worship. She remembers that very few here in Sawara Ward would have had anywhere near as much contact with gods as she has experienced. She looks back at Melinor. “Should we let her rest here? Or take her back to her home?”

His locks of hair barely shake as he moves his head in negation, his eyes on Alma. “She would not stay in her home.” This confuses Mayumi for a moment before she realizes he must be referring to the Death Clan estate. “She will recover faster in her sanctum. Are you ready to leave?”

Mayumi looks again at Sueyoshi, then back to Melinor. “Yes.” Realizing that she has failed in all norms of propriety, she quickly introduces them, continuing to use Urbia, the common language of the Insula. “Sir, this is my father, Sueyoshi Ishijima. Father, this is…” She almost calls him her uncle, but stops herself. She does not believe he would welcome that. “…my mother’s brother, the god Melinor. I am sorry, Father…I must go.”

In the face of proper greetings, Sueyoshi gathers himself and bows very formally to Melinor, who nods stiffly in reply. “You are most welcome in my home, Divine One.” He straightens, then turns to Mayumi. “I understand. Already I have been blessed with your presence more than I ever thought possible. I…”

Mayumi steps into his moment of hesitation and embraces him tightly. She can tell he is shocked. Her time in Three Rats Ward has made her impatient with many of the rules of interaction in Sawara Ward. She feels his body, ravaged by age yet still strong, relax in her arms, and he holds her in return, surely feeling embarrassed to be doing so in front of such a forbidding, foreboding god, but Mayumi can sense that Melinor is paying them as little attention as possible. “You will see me again,” she insists in Japanese, her cheek pressed against his. “I promise. Many, many times. And you will see my siblings. You’ll love them. They’ll drive you crazy, but you’ll love them.”

He whispers to her, “This is your home, always, whatever other home you may have. Do not knock on entering.”

Mayumi squeezes him almost painfully, then steps back, and looks to Melinor. “I am ready, sir. I appreciate your patience.”

His eyes still on Alma, his face still turned so that only the unwounded side is visible, he replies, “You will need to touch me to be transported. You will be safe.”

She nods, stepping off the edge of the floor to slip her feet into her shoes where they wait in the genkan, the tile floor of the entryway one step down, and turns to stand beside him. She puts a hand through Melinor’s arm, fingers on the inside of his elbow, and she looks at her father, seeing his struggle to maintain his composure in the face of so much: meeting two gods of death in a single day, meeting the child he raised alone for ten years, for the first time. Feeling her heart so open to him, she knows she will keep her promise. She begins to say so, “I–”

But “–promise” is spoken somewhere else entirely, somewhere very familiar, Alma’s room in Three Rats Station.

Mayumi experiences vertigo at the sudden change, and clings tightly to Melinor’s arm until it passes a few seconds later. The familiar room is so different from her father’s home, the colors, the temperature, the humidity, the feel of it in every way, but it has become her home as well, even if she sleeps in another room upstairs now. These two homes she has, and yet tomorrow she is leaving them both for another, a narrow bed in a tiny, shared dormitory room at the Academy.

Reoriented, she moves directly to the bed, whipping aside the blanket to reveal that a large lump under it was merely a pillow, not the curled-up form of Tulip or Chime. She pulls that out of the way just as Melinor lays his sister down, crisply, efficiently, yet with a gentleness that sparks within Mayumi an affection for the dark, dour god.

Silently, she removes Alma’s boots, setting them in their usual place on the floor of the closet, and considers whether to choose a nightgown for the goddess, but on seeing that Melinor has spread the blanket over her, Mayumi decides that can wait. She catches him tucking the blanket in just a little around Alma’s shoulders, and carefully brushing a lock of white hair away from her face.

Not looking toward Mayumi, he speaks. “There is another god nearby.”

“That should be Inspector Tsuma-Sukai,” Mayumi says. “Or Sergeant Gwydion. Shall I get one of them?”

“Yes. A god will know to handle this better than mortals.”

Mayumi nods. “I shall return shortly.”

She throws open the door and rushes up the stairs into the Burrow, the bar run by Rosemary and Cherry, both of whom are seated at a table, Cherry looking upset.

“May!” Merri calls out. “Goodness, where have ye been? Tis nearly midnight!”

“Alma is in her room,” Mayumi says by way of explanation. “But don’t go in there yet! She needs quiet. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait a minute!” Cherry’s voice is rough, as if she’s been shouting. “Is somethin’ wrong with her?”

“She’ll be fine!” Mayumi wants to stay and find out what’s wrong with Cherry, but first she must find Sky. Before she leaves, she asks one question, however. “Is Dion in?”

Cherry casts her eyes down at this, and leaves Merri to say, “He’s not answerin’. I think he’s gone out, but I’ll knock again an’ tell him Alma’s back.”

Puzzled at this reply, but with no time to discuss it for the moment, Mayumi gives a little nod and dashes out of the bar, across the narrow breezeway and into the station, to Sky’s office door. She pauses, taking note of who is present in the constables’ office area, returning a friendly nod from Patel, then knocks just before opening Sky’s door without waiting for a reply.

She is greeted with the smell of a salty sea breeze, and peers around the edge of the door to see Sky sitting on the sofa with his jacket laid across his legs, hands over it, whispering some mantra. There is a hint of blood-scent in the air, rapidly dissipating, and the god’s eyes, blue-green as he calls upon his mana to cast some spell, quickly return to their familiar brown.

He blinks. “Mayumi!” His voice is soft, but the worry in it is obvious. He begins to stand but she whips around the door and, not bothering to shut it behind her, throws her arms around him, squeezing him hard, sliding onto his lap and drawing her legs up. She just holds him, eyes shut tight, for a long moment, feeling the tension draining out of her the moment his big hands touch her back, pulling her to him.

After a dozen heartbeats, he asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Alma,” she says. “Something about a new sphere. Her brother brought us back. She’s asleep – unconscious, really, in her room. He says she’ll be all right, but she needs you.”

She releases him and stands, taking one of his hands in both of hers. He stands without the need of assistance, and she lets him go once he is towering over her. The thought of holding his hand as they walk through the station is tempting, but she chucks the thought aside as silly and leads the way as they move rapidly back to the bar, him taking a single long stride to every two of her quick steps.

“Are you all right?” he asks as they go.

“Oh Sky…” She would not normally address him so informally where Guardia under his command would hear, but it just slips out. “I have had one of the best days of my life. But now I’m just worried for Alma. For Mother.” As she is speaking, they retrace her steps of minutes before, through two doors and into the bar. Merri and Cherry are standing now, looking as if they have been caught in the midst of a debate which Mayumi guesses involves whether to disobey her request that they stay out of Alma’s sanctum.

Cherry, looking at Sky, half-raises a hand and says, “Um…” but then bites her lips and drops her hand. “Let him take care o’ Alma, dearest,” Merri tells her, her voice drifting after them as Mayumi quickly leads Sky down the stairs.

As she opens the door, Mayumi has to adjust again to the resonance of violence filling this normally peaceful, comforting sanctum. She feels Sky’s hand on her shoulder as, in unthinking reaction, he almost pulls her back out of the room. She looks over her shoulder at him. “It’s all right,” she says. He relaxes, though not completely, and follows her into the room.

His hand still on her shoulder, she feels him tense again at the sight of Melinor, like a huge gore-crow, looming over Alma. The death god again turns his face so that the wounded side does not show. “Sir,” Mayumi says to him, “this is Tsuma-Sukai. Inspector, this is Alma’s brother, Melinor.”

Melinor jerks his head in Alma’s direction. “How many sphere awakenings have you seen?”

“One or two,” Sky replies, looking Alma over. “In young gods. Is that what this is? A third sphere?”

“The Wheel has awakened in her during our Year’s End ceremony.” Melinor’s voice is harsh, sepulchral. “The worst is past her but she is weak, still. We would have kept her for the night.” He glances at Mayumi without resentment, but she still feels accused and indicted. Her ears go back, but she says nothing.

Sky glances between them but only asks, “What do I need to do?”

Melinor places a hand on Alma’s head and gently opens one of her eyelids, revealing a soft glow. Mayumi’s eyes widen in surprise at the shifting colors, like mother-of-pearl. “Her powers are unstable for now. Try to keep her from using them. She may be irritable or distracted. She will be weakened for awhile. Unfit for duty.” He lets her eyelid flutter back closed, but she stirs slightly.

Sky looks grim. “I understand. We will keep her safe here.”

Alma moans softly and mumbles, “Hmm…Mel? Where…May?”

Mayumi takes Alma’s hand and feels the goddess’ cool fingers wrap around hers. “I’m here, Mother. You are home. Melinor and Sky are here too.”

“I’m…sorry… So late. Mel?”

Her brother strokes her hair. “Sleep, Almy. You are tired. You need to sleep.” There is no warmth in his voice, but at the pet name Mayumi glances up at Melinor’s face, and though, in his moment of incaution, she catches a clear look at the horrifically ravaged left side of his face, she cannot help but smile. She knows, buried deep, there is a good heart that Alma somehow has been able to reach. Mayumi doubts she ever could reach him like that, but she yearns to tell him how much his love for her mother means to her. Certain that this would make him uncomfortable, she holds back, however.

With a soft exhalation, Alma falls back into full slumber. Melinor straightens, or as much as he ever does, with his head always tilted away. He would be nearly Sky’s height if he stood fully erect. “I must go,” he says to Sky. “You will keep her safe here.” It is no request, simply a statement of fact.

Sky replies, “I will. Thank you for bringing her back to us.”

“It was not my choice. Starfax will help in recovery. You should keep the room uncrowded and free of noise.”

Sky glances at Mayumi, who nods and says, “I will do so, and let you know if any emergencies arise.”

“Thank you,” Sky says to her, and then to Melinor, “If my duties pull me away, Mayumi will stay with her. She will not be left alone, and will not be disturbed.”

To this, Melinor simply says, “I will see you again.” He fades away in a moment, and along with him, his aura of death disappears, to be replaced with Alma’s far more comforting one.

Ch6.51 Trust

Alma arrives at her family’s estate and says her farewells to Pavia. She is already late for the ceremony, she knows, but her presence there is only essential to one person: herself. So, after scheduling her escort back to the portal for three hours later, Alma rushes through seldom-used but well-known halls to reach an apparent dead end.

The hallway here leads into the shadows. Inside them, framed in black metal, small pieces of black glass meticulously arranged in intricate patterns would reveal the most delicate glyphs stretching in a spiral, drawing a portal that would fill the world with awe, if ever a light were to shine through them.

Alma reaches into that darkness and touches the glass, allowing the magic in the symbols to sense her essence, to recognize death in her. In the blink of an eye, the darkness engulfs her. She appears inside the sacred hall, a massive underground cavern lit only by the narrow skylight that pierces through the ceiling to allow the light of the sun in. The hall is still part of Death’s estate but the ground, up there, is part of the Life Clan’s property in the First Ring. All the life gods in the Urbis will be standing under the sun, around that opening in their ground, just as all the death gods in the Insula are standing down here, in the darkness cast around that single pillar of light shining on the circular platform in the center of the room. With all of them gathered here, not a creature will die, not a being will be born today.

But something is wrong. The ceremony should have started already. The sun needs to be aligned perfectly with the platform, shining directly on it to activate the Wheel. The Wheel Spinner, only goddess of the Wheel in the whole of the Insula, should be standing at the center, serving as its body, filtering the souls collected by the death gods throughout the year and resetting, renewing them so that the life gods can send them on their next incarnation.

The sun is shining. But the Spinner is nowhere to be found. The death gods are mostly just standing around, waiting for something to happen. Alma takes advantage of this and moves into the throng of brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts and other family members, looking for the place where her father will be standing. He will not be standing on any platforms or sitting on any thrones. In this most sacred of rituals, all death gods stand as equals.

A wheezing voice by her left rings familiar with spite just as she spots Death’s second wife, Macana and her son, Molochai. “Oh look… brothers. The… prodigal daughter… returns.”

Alma stops and turns to look at Clochol, the Death by Asphyxia, stretching his many, powerful arms. His large hands, fit for holding a mortal neck as its owner kicks and flails in suffocation, are open in mock surprise. Even if his blueish-purple face with bulging, bloodshot eyes smiles at Alma, she knows that he is not in the very least pleased with seeing her.

By his side, Sudic, the Weaver, Death by Hanging, taps his eight, spidery legs, with which he is said to hold the ropes that encircle the necks of his victims. The countless eyes that cover his torso blink at the goddess, one by one, while his voice scratches against his silk-filled windpipes. “If you are going to infiltrate a ceremony, at least be polite enough to be on time.”

And just behind Sudic, Narec, Drinker of Souls, scratches his sickly bluish-grey skin with yellowed, sharp talons and runs his tongue over his pointed fangs while he whistles derisively, “Or else take the door.”

Without a lower jaw, for this is how his worshippers envision him, he is forced to speak through slits on both sides of his neck. Seeing these three of her brothers always reminds Alma of how lucky she is to not have her sphere allocated to a specific type of death.

“Ready… to pick… sides,… this time?” Clochol wheezes, one finger mockingly twiddling with the earring nailed directly into his skull since he was created without a left ear.

The joke sends both his monstrous brothers into maniacal laughter, making Clochol laugh too at his own poor excuse for a witty sense of humor. Soon, however, his wheezing frame is shaking with breathless cough and he walks away, closely followed by Sudic and Narec, who prop him up so that he doesn’t fall. Alma sighs at all this, wondering if it is her taint or their divine nature that keeps the brothers despising her so even in spite of the obvious bonds connecting them all.

“Don’t pay attention to them,” Molochai says, gently hugging her hips.

Alma puts a hand on his head and strokes his hair. “I won’t, little brother. Not this time.”

Not far away, the gentle Macana nods and smiles reassuringly at her through soft, wrinkled features and waves a delicate hand in greeting. Alma smiles and nods back at her, in gratitude for her constant support. Macana has always been there to help her deal with unfriendly, bullying brothers like Clochol and his siblings. Her family is riddled with such characters.

“They do, however, have a point,” someone says from the vicinity of Alma’s right thigh. “You are late, sister.”

Alma looks down at Supa, the short, bulky, heavily armored death god with long frizzy hair that barely allows for the clan mark dangling from his left ear to be visible and a fiery beard that the dwarven people living in caves and tunnels all over – actually, under the Isle, have created for themselves. Rough-mannered and ill-tempered, he has never been affectionate toward his only sister. But he has never stood against her either.

So it is without animosity that Alma replies, “I was detained elsewhere. Why is the Wheel not turning yet?”

A carrion bird, black as night, lands on Supa’s helmed head. The creature’s exposed skull and spine sway as it crows, its mother’s silver chrysanthemum poking through the feathers of his left wing, while the fine chain of the supposed earring rattles softly against its vertebrae, “The Spinner failed the first attempts. She stepped out to regain her strength.”

Alma stares into the hollow orbits of Panai, Harbinger of Death and Cleaner of Corpses, as she processes the words he has just spoken. The Spinner is old and grows weaker every year but she has never failed to activate the Wheel.

“Yes, at this rate, we won’t have a ceremony next year,” Lwal echoes her fears as he enters the conversation.

Guardian god of cemeteries that lurks among the graves of mortals, Lwal is another of those unfortunate gods shaped too strongly by the feeble, fearful minds of Man. Created with a knack to tolerate few people and like no one but gravediggers, his otherwise noble spirit is trapped inside a hideous, chimeric body. Pale and sickly, his muscular human torso covered in short dirty hair that always smells of death and decay, he walks on strong, lupine legs balanced by a long, scrawny tail. His weaselly, elongated face crowned with bat-like ears, the left of which pierced as law demands, always seems to leer at everyone.

“Where are your pets?” he growls in question. “I thought you didn’t go anywhere without them.”

“They have no business being here,” Alma states, ice building in her voice at hearing the Bunnies being called pets.

“And you do?” Panai inquires, casually scratching his polished skull with a skeletal foot. The sound it makes would be blood curdling if Alma weren’t so used to it.

Alma’s eyes shoot back to Panai. If her gaze were a blade, it would pierce through steel right now. “Last I checked, we still shared a father, Panai. Unless you know something I don’t about that.”

“Oh, my little sister is developing a sharp tongue, I see!” the good humored tones of Imset’s voice ring suddenly as he drapes a cloaked arm over her shoulders. “Long time no see, Almy.”

Alma chuckles at the rarely used pet name. Imset, the Darkness at the End of Life, is the twin of her oldest brother. Always draped in the cloak that shapes his body entirely made of shadows, he is also one of the most good-natured of all of Death’s sons.

“The First Ring is too rich a prowling territory for the likes of me, Immy,” Alma greets him with a hug. “But it is always a pleasure to see you. Where is Lum? You two are never apart.”

Imset jerks his head to the left. “Look behind me.”

Closeby, Luminus, the Light at the End that guides souls into the afterlife salutes Alma by touching two fingers to his forehead. His body made of light where Imset’s is made of darkness, Luminus is the oldest of Death’s sons, born from Becech’s chest, three days before his twin. Though he keeps very much to himself, he is the gentlest of them all. He seems to be busy entertaining their easily bored cousins, Namka, Orcal and Ghedibo, three tiny, colorful and cheerful fairy-like goddesses in charge of collecting the souls of little babies. So Alma just smiles and nods back at him, not wanting to impose.

A fearsome bark puts an end to the conversation.

“Back to your positions, the lot of you! Sharia is returning. Alma, get out of the way!”

Alma looks into the distance to see Varah, the Fencer, glaring at her through a crimson eye. It is obvious that Alma is performing badly by not obeying her aunt’s shouted orders immediately. But there is also wild pleasure there, hidden deep in that glare. After all, is Alma not doing what her aunt had told her to do, in her very own special way? Does the Death by Blade see the spine that she has always urged her niece to grow finally stretching into existence?

Just as Alma is about to move, the tip of a cane taps her shin.

“Excuse me, young lady,” a withered, slightly cackling voice speaks from somewhere behind the goddess.

Alma twirls on her heels to face Sharia, Spinner of the Wheel. Old and wrinkled, her spine bent and shrunken by the weight of the centuries, Sharia is the only known goddess of the Wheel alive, charged with guarding the ever turning spiral of death and rebirth and summoning it into the material realms, where the living dwell, once a year so that the souls of the dead may be wiped clean of their memories and readied for a new life.

But the Wheel is a demanding master and Sharia bears its mark. Life flees swiftly from her grey hair and cloudy eyes. Every year she looks thinner, weaker, more worn. And without a successor in sight, the day may soon come when the Wheel no longer turns for the souls of the Urbis.

Alma tries to keep these worries away from her mind as she smiles pleasantly at the ancient goddess. “Do you not recognize me, Spinner?”

Sharia squints at her for a long moment. Eventually, her face brightens in recognition.

“Little Alma! How you have grown!” she cackles. “Why, you were just a little girl last year.”

Alma chuckles. “I am afraid it has been decades since I was a little girl.”

Much to her surprise, Sharia’s eyes narrow in irritation at her reply. “I am old, not daft, little girl!” the Spinner scolds her. “And I know what I say. Help me, please. I could swear this place gets bigger each year.”

“With pleasure, Sharia.”

Alma takes the arm that the old goddess proffers and does her best to steady the Spinner’s steps as they walk toward the platform in the center of the room. The sun will not be shining over it for much longer. At their passing, the assembled death gods move aside to let them through. Alma catches a glimpse of Melinor standing by her father, both looking at her with badly hidden curiosity.

“Is this the year you finally join us, dear?” Sharia’s voice interrupts her thoughts.

Alma sighs. “I would love to but where would I stand? Every year, I fail to answer that question.”

“And yet, every year you return,” Sharia notes, glancing up at Alma with a strange expression on her parchment-skinned face. “Even when you are invited not to.”

“This is still my clan,” Alma states firmly, bitterly. “Unless they cast me out, I have every right to be here. I have seen some uglier faces than these, lately. I will not be bullied out.”

She hardens her heart against the criticism and accusations she fears, but expects, from the Spinner. For all her sins, her taint, her weakness, Alma now knows that she does not deserve the treatment she has many times received from her family. For maybe the first time in her life, she allows herself to feel what she has been denied all these years: anger. At being discriminated againt, mocked, used, rejected by those who should be her safe harbor in a storm. Now, with the loving support of the new family she has been trying to build for herself, Alma is beginning to let go of the fear of rejection from her clan to embrace the reassuring knowledge that her friends and children await her return back home. Home… Where they are.

“Yes… You have grown,” Sharia whispers softly. “And not a moment too soon.”

Surprised by the Spinner’s words, Alma grins like a child receiving an unexpected compliment.

Still, she holds on to the simmering revolt that tempers her tone. “My father’s daughter may be weak, wise one, but my children’s mother cannot afford such luxury. Nor can my friends’ friend.”

Sharia nods thoughtfully and stops walking. They have arrived at the center of the platform.

“And where will she stand this year?” the Spinner asks, sweeping the room with her cane.

Alma snorts and looks up at the disk of sunlight coming through the ceiling and that falls so deliciously warm on her face. The answer to that question eludes her still.

“Is there some place halfway up?” she jests.

Sharia tilts her head to one side. “Funny you should mention that.”

She beckons for Alma to lean forward, as if she were about to reveal the secret of a hidden platform or room. Alma complies, entranced by the beautiful, vibrant, nacred blues and greens that suddenly surge through the Spinner’s eyes like rays of pure energy. Sharia stares into Alma’s deep blue eyes for a moment and slowly raises a hand to the young goddess’ forehead.

“Brace yourself,” she says. “This won’t be entirely pleasant.”

By the time her words register, it is already too late. At a touch of Sharia’s fingers, Alma’s soul seems to explode. The young goddess stumbles, taken by surprise as new energy, a new calling awakens in her. Her soul breaks from its bindings, rejecting its previous shape.

Alma throws her head back as a scream dies in her throat. The sensation is breathtaking, thrilling and painful. She feels her essence being stretched to impossible lengths, spreading as if it had the whole world to fill, her soul being pulled in opposite directions by her opposing spheres until it is but a thin strand of spectral mana. No longer the same shape as her soul, her body refuses to obey her command. And then, it refuses to hold her at all. She sees more than hears or feels it thumping onto the floor, lifeless, empty as the shell any body ever is to its precious cargo. She rises in the air, levitating until floor and ceiling are both halfway away. So strange… She can still feel herself, still find a shape to her essence. She can see and hear and feel the world around her but everything is so distant…so alien to her. The room feels flimsy, wavering as if it were just one of many possible rooms that could ever exist in this very same place of space and time and probability. Her family feels solid, though, shimmering like stars against a dull sky, all of them as certain and real as only death can stand at the edge of life. Family…but they are not like her. Not like her at all. How could they ever understand? If they can’t feel this…this… paaaaiinnn! Her back arched in pain, her spectral eyes open in an agony that is somehow mixed with pleasure, Alma watches powerless as the Wheel awakens and pillars of light shoot up from the ground all around her, twisting and converging to join the guiding light of her soul.

Below her, the room is silent with the astonishment of hundreds of death gods.

“What are you lot waiting for?” Sharia yells at them. “The Wheel is turning!”

Awakened by her words, Death gives the order and the ceremony begins. With a deep breath, each death god and goddess in the room calls forth every soul collected throughout the year to leave the realm of the dead, acting as a channel through which the souls by them released are brought back from their restful, biding sleep in the spectral realms and guided into the Wheel. One by one, the souls converge to the center of the room in a beautiful, eerie aerial dance, attracted by the alluring call of the Wheel, swarming to its heart, Alma.

“Don’t fight them, child!” Sharia advises her. “Let them through. First time is always the worst.””

It feels like the Soul Bomb all over again. The young goddess is like a beacon to these souls and they race to tackle her, enter her, move through her. But this time…

They race to leave her as well, to shoot in all directions through the gaping skylight above. None of them tries to hold on to her, none tries to steal her core. Instead, they each leave something behind and take something away, melting into Alma and then out of her, slightly different, slightly changed, clean and renewed.

It is all Alma can do to keep hold of herself in the swift, chaotic trade that threatens to completely rearrange her soul.

What – What is–? she manages to think. Speaking is completely out of the question. Throat and lungs are needed for that and she left hers on the floor, down there. Will she get them back?

She is confused, scared and yet, something in her core tells her that she is safe, that nothing of what she is will be lost. It is a knowing, wizened piece of her that was not there before.

“What’s happening?” Sharia guesses her question as if she could hear her thoughts. “You found your place in the Wheel. Now… let it turn!”