The Panagea Tales Box Set

by McKenzie Austin

  Every vertebra in Rennington’s spine felt dipped in an ice bath. Mimir had uttered ceaseless nonsense since he appeared at Panagea’s center. The soldier grew accustomed to his pointless chatter. But this time ... something in his tone ... something in his words ... it caused an uninvited chill to creep into Rennington’s otherwise unshakable bones. He had no idea what the demon meant, but he was certain he did not want to find out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Darjal had boasted a grandiose space during his reign over the Southern division. The splendor was lost on Bartholomew. It seemed impractical, given the limited space his division already suffered from. Large buildings required more energy to heat. More hired hands to keep clean. More of everything, in a world that had little to give as it recovered from its previous devastation.

  The scholar sat in near darkness. Two tall candles flanked his sides. Cheap, efficient light sources were his preferred option. Until Southern recovered from the substantial damage it had endured throughout Panagea’s suffocation, he’d bear the unnecessary trimmings of this place. This architectural reconstruction of Darjal’s ego.

  Only after much of his division was rebuilt, would he employ skilled laborers to deconstruct some of the more pointless components of this place. Until then, he bathed in candlelight and tried to keep the place as tidy as possible.

  Bartholomew grew accustomed to the occasional draft. The spacious room in which he sat had many. But as a cold, unnatural wind blew up against his back, a frown crossed his face. His fingers tightened around the quill in his hand as he carefully looped the ‘y’ in his last name, finishing his signature on the ordinance before him.

  “I knew one of you would come,” he said without turning. “But I must admit, I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

  Naphine tilted her head from behind him. She folded her wings neatly. The soft, golden feathers matched her faultless, buttery hair. “Then you’re an intelligent man,” she said, her voice emerging from the shadows like a false beacon of light.

  “More observant than intelligent, at least in this case. I suspect Kazuaki and the others have already figured it out for themselves that the gods are after division leaders.” Bartholomew dipped his quill into the ink well, sliding his current ordinance aside and reaching for another that needed his approval. “It’s nothing more than common sense. As soon as Mimir announced your kind had taken over Northwestern, it became a matter of putting a very small puzzle together. Especially with Vadim’s absence.” Bartholomew shrugged, multi-tasking as his eyes scanned the contents of the document before him. “All signs pointed to division leaders as your primary targets. And why wouldn’t we be? You’re smart enough to dissect the hierarchy of people. You know who can best control those you can’t.”

  A smirk found its way to Naphine’s lips. “I see why they made you a division leader,” she complimented, crossing her arms. “I suspect your intellect means you’ll make it difficult for me to corrupt you.”

  “Difficult?” Bartholomew arched a brow, though he had yet to turn toward her. “My dear, it will make it impossible.”

  Finding his refusal to meet her eyes a small slight, Naphine sauntered toward him, peering over his shoulder to view the document he analyzed so closely. “You seem awfully sure of yourself,” she said as her eyes darted from left to right, soaking in the text.

  “Very sure. With only a small margin left to account for human error.” He slid the document aside without signing it, reaching over to grab the one he validated previously. With precision, he folded the paper over itself, ensuring it would fit in an envelope. “How many of my people have you corrupted already?” he asked, nonchalant.

  “Oh, darling, mankind was corrupt long before I got here,” Naphine answered, finding boredom in his political duties. As she straightened herself to an upright position, she added, “but to answer your question, not as many as I’d have liked. These people still revere Darjal. It makes it difficult to manipulate their thoughts in my favor.”

  “I see.” Bartholomew reached over and grabbed an envelope, and carefully slid the document inside. He knew why she shared her plans so freely. It was meant to be an insult. To not only stir fear into him, but to let him know that to her, he was, and never would be, a threat to her success. He did not buy into it. “I suppose Darjal is doing enough damage. There’s probably not much slack left for you to pick up.”

  Naphine scoffed, placing a hand on her hip as it jutted out to the side. “The only damage Darjal is doing is to himself. He’s too busy trying to corrupt Nicholai Addihein to pay any mind to his worshipers. Honestly, I have no idea why these people pray to him. He hasn’t answered a single prayer since becoming a god.” She reached over, picking up a brass paperweight from Bartholomew’s desk, scrutinizing it with unimpressed eyes. “His selfishness will be his undoing. When they realize he offers them nothing, they will give him nothing in return. Mankind is very good at that.” She set the trinket down. “Then I will ‘pick up his slack’.”

  Bartholomew reached over to melt wax onto the envelope’s back. His mind ticked rapidly at Naphine’s mention of Nicholai. He knew of the Southeastern Time Father’s plight. He wanted to resent his people for revering Darjal. It crippled his ability to assist Nicholai with his problem. But he could not. Not even for a moment. One second of weakness was all it would take for Naphine to capitalize on it. “You may be waiting a while,” he finally said, pressing the Southern seal down into the pliable wax. “These people have admired Darjal for generations. It very well might take generations of flouting on his part to force a new tradition.”

  Naphine laughed, all silk and self-assurance. “Oh, my dear ... I have all the time in the world.”

  Bartholomew only nodded an acknowledgment of her reply. He placed the letter in a pile to his right before reaching over to grab yet another document seeking his approval.

  Naphine watched him closely, the glow of the candles molding to the shape of his body. She slid her back against Bartholomew’s desk, fluid in her movements as she lifted herself and glided her buttocks onto the top of the table to sit. She found the man’s nonchalance impressive, and curious. “Are you not even a little afraid?”

  Another request for financial aid. Bartholomew crunched some numbers in his brain, trying to recall the exact amount the treasury held before his last issuance of funds. “Fear stems from an absence of knowledge,” he said, lacking ego. “Of which I have plenty to spare.”

  “Your knowledge of the gods is limited,” Naphine interjected, crossing one leg over the other as she leaned back on her palms.

  Bartholomew frowned. After deducing the importance of the project before him, he decided he would not be able to comply with their request for aid. He moved the paper over to a different pile. “I know as much about lesser gods as I do about every other of Panagea’s fairytales.”

  A well-shaped brow rose on Naphine’s flawless face. “How can you call me a fairytale when I stand before you?”

  “You’re a figment of men’s imagination,” Bartholomew said bluntly, grabbing a piece of parchment to write a formal letter of rejection. “You’re an idea. Nothing more.”

  Her chest heaved once as she emitted a tiny chuckle. “Ideas can be the most dangerous things of all.”

  “A very judicious observation.” Bartholomew scrawled his written reply, returning his pen to the well for more ink. “But sound logic and an open mind remain the best weapons against such things.”

  “You think so little of us, Bartholomew.” Naphine pointed her toes straight as she bounced her crossed leg over her other. “It hurts. To be thought so little of, by those who created you.”

  The Southern Time Father continued writing. “Lesser gods were created out of mankind’s desperation. Desperation is an emotional response. I’ve never been an emotional person.”

  A sly grin spread across Naphine’s lips. “Oh, darling, now I know that’s not true.”

  Bartholomew paid her little mind. His pen
danced across the paper, the fine tip sliding smoothly with each new letter formed.

  Naphine was not deterred. She touched his wrist and smiled. “You may be able to steel your thoughts from manipulation, Bartholomew Gray, but I can still see through your mind as though it were glass. And I spy, with my little eye, an emotional response by the name of Kal Rovanas.”

  The tip of his calligraphy pen snapped. Bartholomew stared at the parchment, unsure how he found himself gripping it so tightly, that it caved under the weight of his scrawling. He cleared his throat and opened a drawer, to retrieve an undamaged writing utensil. “Kal has no power over the people of Southern. He is of no use to you.”

  “Oh, my dear,” she leaned over, and slid her palm up his arm, “you’re smart enough to know that regarding this matter, you’re very, very wrong.”

  Bartholomew finally met her eyes. From behind his glasses, he glared. He could tell his reaction satisfied Naphine to no end.

  “Don’t beat yourself up too much. You can’t hide these things from the Goddess of Love, darling.” She patted his arm and slid off the table with a sigh. “It might take some time, Bartholomew, but rest assured ... I always get what I want.”

  With that, she vanished, a gust of wind snuffing the candles out around Bartholomew’s body. She left him to the darkness, in body and mind.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Elowyn had inherited all of Eastern’s countless problems when she took over as its Time Mother. The most populated division, when compared to the others, came with a mass of challenges. The late leader, Avital, boasted of the numerous facilities he’d constructed in his limited space. The only thing that crippled the environment, more than the claustrophobic amount of people, was the constant supply of smog pouring from smokestacks across Eastern in droves.

  The oxygen quality was laughable. The ground cracked and crumbled, depleted of anything resembling nutrients for years. Her people wandered, driven by their jobs and necessity, with masks strapped to their faces and goggles glued over their eyes. It was an endeavor to get from point A to point B without rubbing elbows with the oppressive collection of inhabitants in every Eastern town.

  The natural disasters of Panagea’s past claimed many lives from her densely populated division. They still struggled to find proper plots in which to bury their countless dead. Many businesses went unbuilt, selling their property to the government, as Elowyn attempted to not only cut back on the environmental damages of mass-production but the issue of not having enough land for vital endeavors.

  There were issues with which she still struggled. But her greatest success filled her constituents with hope for the future. Her newly constructed medical facilities were unprecedented in their quality. Though many of her people were plagued by the aftermath of diseases caused by environmental decay, and the blasphemous gap between the wealthy and the poverty-stricken, superior medicines were never far from anyone’s reach.

  It was her greatest achievement.

  But for how remarkable the hospitals were, they filled at an unprecedented rate. The number of patients requiring mental assistance quadrupled. Victims of unexpected, violent attacks from friends, neighbors, and family members burned through many of the supplies. Doctors, nurses, and volunteers were afraid to go to work. People deteriorated into beasts, influenced by gods who bred viciousness in their brains.

  Elowyn paced the room of her chambers. She couldn’t let these supernatural creatures deter her. The woman already struggled to prove herself capable in a patriarchal society. She’d be damned if these beasts stripped her of the respect she worked so hard to earn.

  “Miss Saveign.” Huric, one of Elowyn’s most trusted footmen, leaned on his halberd for support. “You should sit. You can think just as clearly in a chair, you know.”

  The Time Mother frowned and shook her head. “It helps my blood flow,” she muttered, gripping her dark hair in her fingers. “I know there’s a solution, Huric. It’s on the edge of my brain. I can fix this.”

  Huric became well acquainted with Elowyn’s overconfidence throughout her many months as Time Mother. Though he did not share the majority of the other footmen’s opinions that she was ill-fit for the job, he often worried about her inability to show any shred of weakness. He understood why she kept her vulnerable state on lockdown. The first sign of inability on Elowyn’s part would surely ignite a rise in the already high levels of protestors she dealt with daily. Though Elowyn had gained much esteem, people still viewed women as fragile things. Elowyn fought hard to contest that stereotype, often at the cost of her health. Huric tried to smile, to ease her concern. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Miss Saveign.”

  “Thank you, Huric.” Elowyn crossed her arms. She forced herself to look at him. “I appreciate your unwavering support.”

  Huric nodded. His smiling face faded into one of caution when a strange sound met his ears. “Do you hear that, Miss Saveign?” he asked, looking to the window.

  Elowyn paused. The low reverberations of timed pounds rattled through her tower. Disgruntled voices sounded below. “More protestors, I imagine,” she murmured as she traipsed over to the window and stuck her head out.

  Below, a group of footmen stood. They rose their halberds, smashing the blunt ends into the concrete ground surrounding her residence. Her eyes narrowed. “Soldiers?” she said aloud, having never witnessed a rebellion amongst her men, despite the whispers that some favored following a division leader with a Y chromosome.

  Huric strode over to her side, a look of bewilderment on his face as he stared down at the roaring men. They threw their bodies and weapons into the door of Elowyn’s home, clear in their efforts to destroy the barrier that barred them from entering. “I don’t understand,” Huric said, his brows furrowing. “They look—”

  “—possessed,” Elowyn finished. Her eyes widened as she backed away from the window in time to avoid an unexpected round of gunfire. The plague that claimed her people had infected her soldiers. Those sworn to protect her. “Shit.”

  Elowyn Saveign did not take lightly to running from a fight. It went against every piece of what made her the woman she was. But pride could kill a person if they weren’t careful enough. Elowyn had no qualms sacrificing her life fighting for what was right. But sometimes, it was wiser, more noble, to live to fight another day.

  The Eastern Time Mother darted around the room, stuffing loose medical supplies into a bag. She tried to concentrate against the rising voices and the pounding thuds. Her fingernail scraped down her face, exasperated, as she threw the pack over her shoulder. “We need to get to the first floor, Huric. It’s our only chance.”

  The footman did not ask questions. It did not seem wise to put themselves closer to the threat, but he trusted Elowyn. He believed in her. “If that’s what we gotta do,” he said, throwing open the door, “then I’ll lead the way.”

  “Good man.” She followed him as they abandoned the place she called home. Quick feet trampled down the seemingly endless staircase. One flight. Two flights. Three flights down. Adrenaline powered both Time Mother and footman through.

  The men raged outside. They threw their bodies into the door with the beat of war drums. Just as Huric’s boot touched the marbled material of the first floor, the door gave way under the pressure of the mob.

  Dozens of footmen burst inside, halberds raised, hatred living on their faces. Saliva dripped from their open mouths as they shouted, filling the room with their bodies.

  Huric instinctually shoved Elowyn into the nearest room before prying eyes spotted them. The wooden shaft of his halberd pressed into her stomach as he flattened her against the wall. “Miss Saveign,” he whispered, without taking his eyes off the threat, “which room do we need?”

  “The library.” Her words were hushed. Strained. A sea of men awaited them in the entrance hall. To make it across the room to the library without being detected bordered on suicidal.

  Huric winced. A dangerous mission, indeed. A small handful of foo
tmen fled up the stairs, hungry to find the object of their hunt. Elowyn’s heart raced. Almost a year of tedious diplomacy made the feeling unfamiliar. But she knew the organ could withstand the pressure. After years of living with Kazuaki Hidataka, there wasn’t much her heart couldn’t handle.

  “They’re fanning out,” Huric observed with caution, his head hovering just a sliver around the corner of the door. “Checking other rooms. I count nine standing in the entrance hall.”

  Elowyn bit the inside of her cheek and closed her eyes. “Then I will issue nine letters of condolence to their families.” She slipped twin daggers out of her boots. One for each hand. She knew their actions were not bred of their own minds. At least, not mostly. But there was no way to spare them. Not with the time she had to work with before they came for her head. “On the count of three.”

  “Three.” Huric rolled around the corner, bringing the blade of his halberd down onto the shoulders of an unsuspecting soldier. The metal ate through the nerves and laid into the bone. The man crumbled, shrieking under the force.

  Before his comrades turned around, Elowyn lunged around the corner. She ran, launching herself off the fallen body for leverage, and drove both daggers into opposite sides of her opponent’s neck. Blood painted the wall when she removed them. She had little time to react before she needed to dodge an advance.

  Huric swept the floor with his weapon. It drove into the exposed shins of two footmen, severing a foot from one and tearing the tendons of another.

  Elowyn was lucky to avoid an aggressive swing before she drove steel into an artery. The sound of the halberd clattering to the floor echoed off the walls.

  She thought they’d have time to eliminate all nine. They did not. The fiendish cries from the dead and the dying summoned those who spread out earlier. It drew them back to the entrance hall like a wounded siren.