by Eve, Jaymin
Sweeping out with my power, I trapped all of them one by one, holding them in stasis. Each came before me, and each of their powers became mine.
As I stripped a godhood, I then returned it to a new being, one that my power deemed worthy.
When I was done, only two remained, two who glowed with the same molten gold that filled the bones that was all that remained of the being I used to be. Two beings born from the original Mother of All.
Their names were already forgotten. Purpose insignificant.
My power wrapped around them and I dragged them forward. The first was a woman.
“You cannot do this,” she spluttered and I cut her off before she could speak another word. They were all corrupt. They all had to be remade.
This one didn’t really have any significant role in the balance. As long as the Mother of All existed—and she certainly existed inside of me—there was no need for an understudy.
Crushing her in my grip, I destroyed her in the next beat of time. Her power settled inside of me and I decided to hold on to it. For now. There was no need to rush and fill her position, and I had more than enough strength to control her meagre energy.
The Hellbringers didn’t respond.
We moved on to the next being, and a flicker of recognition touched deep within my energy.
“Maddison,” he said, face streaked with blood, eyes wide and gold as they pleaded with me. “Maddison. Baby. Please come back to me.”
Pulling the male closer to me, I examined his energy. Similar to my own, and to the energy residing inside me now, he was another born of the original Mother, the being that controlled the Hellbringers before me.
We are not called that. That’s the name given to us from the mortals. We are Setra, the source of life. We make the Mother of All.
I understood it all now. Every aspect from before and still to come. The Mother of All was not a god in the way supernatural beings knew them. She was a vessel for the Setra. That was the true power behind her creation.
Do we need this creature? I asked, for some reason hesitating to destroy him as I had all the others.
The original energy was quiet. Together, we searched through the past and the future to find the importance of this one.
Keep him. He has merit.
I released my hold on the golden god. He caught himself before he plunged into the lava below. In a flash, I disappeared from the world below, emerging on the land above.
There was a lot of work to be done here. I needed to start now.
Asher
Despite the futility of my actions, I couldn’t stop reaching for Maddison through our bond. I knew she was gone. Nothing left of her but a glowing, murderous skeletal figure, filled with darkness and fueled by the Hellbringers.
She was scary as fuck. Yet somehow still beautiful. Her power wrapped around her, gold as my own, but it was not the same. Only a fool would think we were even in the same league…
Was I fool to keep hoping that my Maddison existed within her still?
Her soul was blocked from me, but I had to believe it was still there. That belief was the one fucking thing keeping me functioning.
She spared me.
I was the only god she spared. That had to mean there was still some of my Maddison left, trapped by the power of those dark souls pushing against her. Turning away from the lava, I was maneuvering myself up behind her when she snapped out of existence, disappearing in the blink of an eye.
“Fuck!” I shouted, frustration slapping against my face. Maddison might be nothing more than a set of murderous gold and black-speckled bones, flames dancing in the orbs of the eyes and a tongue of fire, but at least when she was close I could keep an eye on her, know where she was and what she was doing. Now she was out in the world, controlled by fucking darkness, and lacking her kindness and compassion.
The Hellbringers … I’d had a terrible feeling about them. How the fuck were we going to fix this?
Gliding across the now-empty cavern, I entered the stone tunnel that led to the exit, to Atlantis. Scorch marks and gouges littered the walls, evidence of where the gods had been smashing against their prison. All of those gods were gone now. Maddison’s parents. Mine. The others who had teamed up with them.
The entire supernatural pantheon had just been remade, and there was nothing anyone could do to change what Maddison had created. She was the only being with the power to remake the world. And right now she wasn’t exactly taking suggestions.
We’d all better fucking hope she didn’t decide the entire world was a complete lost cause and raze it back to two single cells bumping together.
Asher!
Voices slammed into my head when I powered out of the prison, all of them loud and demanding, except the one I needed to hear more than anything.
My brothers raced toward me.
“What happened?” Axl demanded, his voice a snap of elemental power that not very long ago wouldn’t have been possible for him.
“Where is Maddison?” Jesse demanded.
I paused, my gaze taking in the glowing quality to his skin now, the surge of energy crashing inside his chest. “What the fuck happened to you?” I asked him.
His expression was shuttered. “I’m a god now. What sort of god, I have no fucking idea, but all of us were hit with a burst of power. None of us are Atlanteans now.”
Maddison.
“She killed the gods,” I breathed. “She sent their fucking power out into the universe and she somehow selected you all to be worthy of it.”
I touched my brother’s arm, our powers crashing together.
“You’re a god of shifters,” I told him, immediately recognizing the earthy and elemental power that all shifters were blessed with.
Jesse’s eyes, more forest green than ever, widened. “The fuck you say?”
He didn’t know how to react, and I couldn’t blame him. “You’re the god of the shifters. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Where is Maddison?” Rone interrupted, his eyes burning red hot for a beat.
“God of the Underworld,” I muttered. Fucking hell, Maddison. Way to keep it in the family.
My brother’s eyes were filled with a shade of red that was similar to the lava fields below. He opened his mouth, probably to rage at me, but I got in first.
“Maddison found the Hellbringers,” I said, shortly. I’d done my share of losing my shit when she’d first plunged into the lava, thinking that I’d lost her to the burning depths. Now I was in survival mode. Getting Maddison back was the only way I could continue in this life. She was still there, buried deep inside.
Calen slammed his fist into a nearby tree, but instead of it smashing to pieces, new plants blossomed out of the side, hard and thorny, like a weapon made by nature.
“God of fucking nature,” he cursed. “I hate fucking plants.”
It would be humorous if we weren’t in the worst situation that I’d ever known.
Louis pushed forward, face lined with fatigue and desperation. His eyes implored me to have some good news, but I was afraid he was going to be greatly disappointed.
“How do we bring her back?” Axl asked, his hands itching like he wanted his magical pen and paper to take notes. “Maddison … if she has remade all of the gods like that, she must have the Hellbringers. What did they do to her?”
“Is there a way to neutralize her?” a dickhead from the crowd shouted. “Before she destroys us all.”
My power slammed into him, knocking him halfway across the island.
Louis let out a harsh breath before his power burst free and he silenced all of the supernaturals. “It would be a good idea to remember that Asher has the power to destroy you all with little more than a thought. Now is not the time to try him—he’s barely holding on. Let’s not antagonize the angry god further.”
Barely holding on…? I was running on autopilot, my sole objective to save my mate. The rest was white fucking noise.
“Asher,
talk to us,” Jesse said. His anger had died down, even though his new powers were still burning through him.
“What happened down there, Ash?” Rone rasped, his eyes red-rimmed.
“What happened?” I said with a dry, fucked-off laugh. “What happened is we fucked up and now Maddison is controlled by the Hellbringers. Or whatever the hell they are. They stripped away her humanity, her softness, and now she’s just power and vengeance. She remade all the gods in a blink of a fucking eye.” I threw my hands up. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I ran a hand through my hair, the urge to smash Atlantis to the ground slapping against me. “This was not the fucking way I thought this would play out. I’d thought we would fight, that we might get hurt, that we might lose people we cared about. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want it to end like that—I hated that might be the worst case—but I was trying to prepare for it. This, though? No one could have prepared for this possibility, because no one knew it was a fucking possibility.”
My roar of words slammed into the wall of silence that filled the land.
Louis, the only one brave—or stupid—enough, stepped forward. “There must be a way to save Maddison. Do you have any thoughts about how to pull her back to us? She’s stuck in a powerful void right now, but she still exists. The essence of who she was born to be is there. Someone … or something, needs to remind her.”
“Don’t you think I tried?” A growl ripped from my chest, and those in close vicinity were wearing a nice coat of golden energy. I was fucking shedding magic like a fairy. “She didn’t even know who I was.”
Louis shook his head, and I was wondering why I hadn’t ripped it off yet. “She didn’t kill you. She killed everyone else, right? That’s all you need to know.”
Reaching through the bond, I got nothing but white noise and static, like Maddison was no longer operating on the same plane of existence as the rest of us.
What do you need from me, Maddison James? How do I bring you back to me?
There was no existing in this world without my mate. The only positive was that she was pretty much indestructible at the moment. Nothing could hurt her.
More than she’d already been hurt anyway.
When I closed my eyes, all I could see was her skeletal figure, all I could hear were her screams as she plunged into the lava.
“The scales,” I muttered. “The fucking scales saw this coming.”
They’d tried to trap her, but there was no circumventing her future. Maddison was the one controlling the Hellbringers. The one remaking the world.
There had to be something that meant more to her. What did she need…?
“The Atlanteans…”
“The Atlanteans?” Axl asked, his eyes greener than ever as power rode him.
“They’re in the underworld,” I said, starting to pace. “Trapped there. We need to free them. Returning that much power to the surface might be enough to draw her attention.”
A sense of grim purpose and determination gave me something to focus on. I was already striding toward the Amphitheatre, ready to return to the underworld. This was the right step. I needed to bring them back to the surface.
“I need to free them now!” I snapped, my brothers rushing to keep up with me.
Louis tried to follow as well, but I shook my head. This was a family matter, and as much as I liked the sorcerer, he was not family. Not yet.
Maybe if we got Maddison back, it’d be a different story.
“Keep everyone safe here,” I told him. “Prepare for anything. Maddison is not herself, and everyone in the world is at risk.”
Louis looked like he wanted to argue but refrained. He stared me down for a few minutes, before he nodded and returned to the group of powerful supes that had been preparing to defend the world from the gods. “Find Jessa, Braxton, Mischa, and Max,” he called after us as we entered the path to the underworld. “Find them and bring them back too.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I told him.
My priority was Maddison. The rest would have to wait.
Chapter 34
The world was a mess. I hadn’t noticed until this moment, but now, with my ability to search through and beyond the current timescape, I saw it all. Using my abilities, I followed the path of destruction, through wars and murder. Mistake after mistake. I had a vague recollection of learning about war in class. The teacher had asked us what we learned from war. What it showed us.
It showed me that maybe my work here was greater than just remaking the gods. My work would require me to remake the very fabric of this world, because the inhabitants were beyond corrupt. They never learned. They sacrificed … everything … for their own gain.
This is your role. We were there at the beginning. We will be there at the end.
The longer I spent time with the spirits of the Mother of All, the more I learned about them. They had been in control of the original creation, and they were in control now. They had been lost for many years, sleeping in the original lava of power.
Yes. The lava that had stripped my humanity, was the very material that scorched the earth and formed the mountains and oceans, the trees and plants. From that original energy, everything grew.
You can reform your skin. You can reform yourself.
I knew I could, but I didn’t want to. For me to do the job I needed to do, there could be no softness about me, no humanity. Already some of my life before was coming back. Memories. And with those memories were feelings. They were diluted, faded so I barely even recalled the life I lived before.
But they were there.
I almost remembered their names.
“Enough!” I said out loud.
We were above the water, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Close to Australia. There was a fishing vessel out there; it had drawn my attention because it was linked to a sister line that was razing our oceans to the floor. They overfished, taking everything: whales and dolphins, sharks and dozens of others that were mine to protect.
One thing that hadn’t been stripped was my love for the water. The lava formed the landscape, but it was from the water that we all came. The water and the lava were the original magics, and when someone hurt my oceans, they would pay.
Hovering above them, I sent a wave across the ship, knocking most of the crew into the water, fishing nets tangled around them, trapping them, as they had done to so many creatures. I let the ocean do the rest, ready to welcome them into the watery depths. A part of me wanted to draw out their suffering, make them really pay for what they’d done, but there was too much work to do. The last action was to splinter their ships—not just this one, but every single ship they had or was connected to them, most of which were out in the water.
More of them would face the wrath of the oceans … and the animals within it.
“Why am I bothering with this?” I wondered out loud. The spirits twirled against my energy, sinking deeper. “Should I just clear the lot and start anew? Maybe the next world will be one with less greed and corruption?”
Less evil.
“Are there any worth saving?”
The spirits were fairly neutral in regard to making these decisions. They provided the power and I was the hand that wielded it. I would strike the final match and blow this place up.
So they gave me no answer.
Using their omniscience, I followed my path to the next disaster … and the next. I cleared up diamond smuggling. Rainforest razing. Overmining conglomerates who were more interested in a piece of paper than in the actual damage done to the Earth.
My head spun. It was too much. It was way too much. I felt like I was cutting off one evil head only to have five more spring up. When I discovered a pedophilia ring in the process of selling tiny innocent children … that was when I lost my mind and released all of my power.
The world froze. Every part of it. It remained in stasis as I tried to make up my mind.
You cannot hold this for long, the spirit warned m
e. Everything works together for a reason. If you throw the balance off, it’s very hard to get it back.
Apparently not even I had the power to do that.
“I don’t know what to do.”
It was a chink in my armor, and I wish it wasn’t there.
“There are people I cared about in this world. Every now and then their faces flashed across my mind, taking me by surprise. But I also don’t think there is a reason to save this world. I’ve had the smallest glimpse and it’s horrific.”
Maddison James!
The blast of my name did not come from the original energy. It came from another source, one that sent a blossom of heat to my chest. Glancing down, I blinked at the skeletal frame that was all that remained of me. There was no heart or visible organs. I didn’t need them to survive, so how was there heat?
Baby, I need you to listen to me. This is not you … these are not your decisions to make. You don’t have to be alone.
How was he communicating with me? I did not allow anyone to enter my energy…
Not to mention, everyone was frozen, every single living being, including the beautiful world they were destroying.
For the first time since setting out on my task, I was curious about something other than the state of the universe. This male, he was somehow immune to my power, because while the entire world was frozen, held in the grasp of my limitless power, he was not.
Maddison James, I know you better than any fucking person, living or dead. You’re the other half of my soul and I need you to know … I will love you no matter what. I support whatever decision you make. If you remake our world, I will find you in the next one.
A brief pause.
You and me, water baby, we’re end fucking game. End game, baby! Repeat it after me.
No! No, I couldn't let this voice … let this energy entice me from my task.
Do you want to see him?
This time it was the spirits, and I couldn’t tell if they wanted me to look or not. They didn't hold opinions about things. Not really. They just existed and had their part to play in it all. They just needed a vessel to play that part. That was where I came into it.