by Jamie Magee
“Reveca doesn’t know everything,” Bastion said. When both Shade and Thrash’s glare landed on him, Bastion shrugged. “Just sayin’. She forgot a lot of things on purpose and twice as much by accident. She’s always getting me to tell her the stories Mom told me.”
Thrash waved his hand telling Bastion to get on with it.
“Neptune rules illusion and was said to be the God of the Voyagers. So, obviously, the greatest warrior of all Voyagers saw it fitting to name the paradise he built the same.”
“You’re calling this paradise,” Thrash rebuked.
“If it had a door you could walk out of at anytime you would too. It has everything you could ever want, including the basic reminders of the world you grew up in.”
Thrash took a slow drink of his whiskey— it was as close as he was coming to agreeing with his son.
“Anyway,” Bastion said. “The palace was said to be a fortress, impenetrable by any force, invisible to all Gods.”
“And vacant.”
Bastion kept on ignoring his father. “The time of Neptune is said to be a shift in power. One of the more official first lines of battle.”
“What do you mean official,” Shade asked, keeping his defensive stance before Dagen, who was nowhere near this conversation; he was still counting souls and tracking Zosime through the palace as Gwinn took her further away.
“Rising Sovereigns and Dark Gods have been at war for the better part of eternity, just not on an epic scale. Usually, they give the risers hell. They end up dying, and then the gods wait for them to surface again. Sometimes the risers get a good lick or two in, mostly they are just setting their allies up. When they do have a solid victory, the last to acknowledge it is the dark gods, and most times the risers do not understand what they achieved, they were fighting for other reasons, like saving their mate.”
Bastion grinned. “An official line is open combat, a display of power that will shake legions of armies, not my words. I’m paraphrasing. Before all that jive happens, Neptune throws his weight around. Illusions can be fucked up, like a few shots of whiskey fucked up, but it loosens the crowd up a bit. Stretches the imagination so believing that you have the power to stop an evil God and shit seems legit.”
“It could also mean none of this is real,” Dagen said having trouble tasting the lie on his tongue. He’d been here before, long ago. It was his first night leaving Revelin. He and King were sure at any moment Revelin would send one thought their way and they would be no more. No matter how ready you may think you are to die, you never are. The ‘wait a fucking minute’ thought comes, and if you hold on to it long enough panic sets in. If you manage it right, you’ve got a shot at coming up with a hail Mary and getting death in your rear view.
An old man came wandering up to King and Dagen as they perched in a moss drenched tree staring out at the swamps that King adored. “You two wanna help me get my boat dislodged?”
They didn’t, not for the sake of laziness, but because the man was so frail and old they were sure if he watched Revelin strike, the shock would cause him to meet his maker too.
“Why don’t you stay here, rest up, and we’ll bring it back to you,” Dagen had said.
When an apprehensive look filled the man’s expression, King handed him the only thing either of them had of value on them at the time. It was a coin King had held onto through his entire imprisonment. What it was worth or where it came from was something Dagen never knew. Dagen did know King giving it to the man was one of the hardest things he had ever watched King do. “You hold this, when I bring your boat back, you give it back, eh? Fair.”
The man clasped his fist around the rare coin, then gave them directions. King and Dagen found the tattered houseboat stuck on a bank. They heaved it out to the open water easily enough, but when they stepped on board to take it back to the old man they were not in a swamp anymore. They found themselves standing outside of this palace next to the mote that surrounded it.
One step back and they were on the shore of the swamp, a step forward they were looking at a palace. After a moment of indecision, they met each other’s stare, took a step away from the mote, and then inside the palace. Dagen was a pretty horrible judge of time, but he recalled staying there until the sense of doom faded and hope started to blossom. Maybe it wasn’t hope, but a simple call to battle.
Dagen never thought he’d see this place again. At the same time, he could still remember glancing back as he had left it and wishing for the day he would return to come as swiftly as a storming wind. It was an odd feeling, one he had chalked up to being cowardly at the time. Now...he wasn’t so sure of anything, especially the tiny voice in his head that had been mute for eons now. Fucking thing was a chatterbox now.
Dagen took a step forward finding his way in a palace that hadn’t changed at all across the eras of time. Once out of the great room he was in, he looked to the right down a wide stone laid hall, and then to the left. His last night there came flooding back.
They’d felt the power surge in the air as another arrived. Both King and Dagen appeared not far from where Dagen was standing, ready for anything.
To the right in the shadows, they watched as a warrior started to disarm himself like he was home from a long day’s work. To the left, King heard one of his trusted friends call out to him, like a lost child. Two choices: face off with the stranger who ruled the palace they had taken refuge in, or answer the call of one of their own.
To this day, Dagen would swear their decision was simply a tactile one, they chose to answer the call. It was a win-win situation. Show them their way, and have added forces to faces off with a being powerful enough to create the abode they were in. One step outside and they found themselves in a tavern. No one was yelling their name, but they did sense and find hundreds upon hundreds who had left to follow King. The rest, as they say, is history.
King and Dagen mentioned the odd place from time to time over the years. Dagen would say something like it was just an odd Zen, the others swear they left when we did. “No one recalls us vanishing for as long as we did.”
For the first few times Dagen threw his conclusion out, King would retort, “Then where is my coin?” But then he stopped mentioning the coin for his own reasons, and Dagen stopped debating what the palace was. The known story of them leaving without a fear in the universe and all the courage any warrior could ask for became the truth they remembered.
“I’m not bothering to follow you until you get that fucked up stunned expression off our face.” Thrash said. “I know you’re not hung up on that female, and if you are, let me give you some advice. Don’t mention you are besties with Vec. If she doesn’t know, you are better off keeping it that way.”
Dagen slowly came back into the room fighting to clear his head. “What has Zosime told you?”
“She hates men,” Shade said bitterly. “She hasn’t named Vec but it’s not like our crew has gone around defending any other witch across time.”
“How long has she been here?”
“Whoa, hold the fucking phone,” Thrash said pointing the liquor bottle in his hand at Dagen. “You want answers, you put your cards on the table. We want out, you stay and try and hit the snake chick all you want.”
“I told you,” Dagen said as cool calm laced with rage morphed into his angelic visage. “The obvious, the seventh son, or Akan’s death.”
“I can’t do shit about the last two, and I don’t understand the first. Of all the prisons Akan could’ve picked,” Thrash swayed his head. “I knew I didn’t trust this place.”
“He didn’t pick it,” Bastion said. “I told you this already. This is the good guy’s turf.”
“Then why the fuck can I not leave?”
“Because we were taken off the board, we can not be played unless we chose to be,” Bastion said.
“I swear to God when your mother gets outta that book or where ever she is stuck, she and I are going to have words ‘bout you, son. She has fucked you up
good.”
Bastion, unbothered stared him down. “You are a seventh Son, of a seventh Son, are you not?”
Thrash went to argue that he was the first, runnin’ his VP position of the mother chapter like a boss and always would. But something about the room he was in, the stonework, the sword in place of honor, the smells of nature—the fucking peace and quiet jerked him back to a life long dead and gone.
He was the seventh son of a seventh son. Same grandmother, same mother. Not a single stillborn, miscarriage or sister between any of the sons. True enough. It was something easily forgotten. Thrash was also the last son. His oldest brother was sixteen years his senior, and died weeks after Thrash was born in battle. His uncles and brothers all followed over the years, then finally his father when he was only ten. Each in battle, each with honor.
In the end, Thrash felt like an only child fighting to grow up as fast as he could so he too could die and live forevermore in the glory of the stories told around the fire. It was the fear of not living up to his family’s honor that chased him onto every battlefield, and gave him every second wind he’d had.
Who would have ever imagined the eras of time he was to see. A short life, the bloody corpse he swore he would be had long since faded into Thrash’s dark memories.
“And you are my first. Want to draw a fucking family tree? Can you keep on track, boy?” Thrash said jerking the bottle to his lips taking another shot. Great. Now he was all nostalgic and shit.
Not a one of ‘em. As many times as he had been to that fucking Veil, do you think he had crossed any of his blood? Fuck no. Thrash had always stood alone at the end of his line. Which made Bastion all the more epic, it always caused shit to stir in Thrash that was better left forgotten.
“You asked,” Bastion said in a tone that reflected his later teen stage in life. “The seventh son will save to kill. That’s you. You don’t want outta here.”
“You want to make a bet,” Thrash said leaning forward like he was about to ground Bastion from his Xbox. An oddity for a host of reasons, the first being Thrash looked all of five years older than his son. The second, Bastion could care less about gaming. Thrash would serve a bigger threat grounding him from his spell books. Lastly, Thrash would never take any magical tools from his son, not only did they make him feel closer to Evanthe when he saw Bastion use them, Thrash was secretly hoping his son would get on with it and crack the code to this prison if Thrash goaded him just right.
So far, he wasn’t a fan of the code shit Bastion was spouting. Nothing was ever as invisible as the obvious when it came to a stressed mind. Thrash passed stressed about the time he figured out he did have an heir, a male heir. The legend of his blood would thrive on. For better or worse.
“Do you want Reveca to die?”
Thrash stood. “Do you know what treason is? ‘Cuz you are about to figure it out the hard way if you don’t.”
“Just sayin’. I really don’t think holdin’ two members of the Throng will stop it, Toril is the weakest, she’s getting all the power by default. But I can see you doing it anyway just so you know you used what control you have.”
“You hear this shit?” Thrash said to Shade, the only one Thrash knew spoke his language. “The little shit may look like me, but that is all his mother. Batshit craziness is what this is. This kid,” Thrash said gritting his teeth.
Shade wasn’t debating nothin’ and was all but screaming at Gwinn with his thoughts to come back and interrupt this shit.
“What the fuck, son? No one is stupid enough to take a shot at Vec, especially now,” Thrash said ticking his head toward Dagen.
“Yeah, he’s one of them,” Bastion said halfway thinking Thrash was pickin’ up what he was dropping and was trying to single out one of the Throng members, there was no reason to be all coded about it as far as Bastion was concerned. Dagen knew he was in a Throng by now, and if he did, he sure as hell had reason to want to kill Reveca.
“There is not enough liquor in the universe,” Thrash grumbled to himself.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Bastion said throwing his arms out to the side. He exploded to his feet finally resembling his father as he did. Aggression was in Thrash’s vocab, not fancy words and shit.
Bastion pointed at Dagen. “He’s in a Throng. They’re empaths. They feel shit. He’s in the last Throng. Meaning the horny one. They gotta plant their seeds and shit, so they do not go extinct and all.” Bastion pointed toward the hall. “Hottie chillin’ with the snake undue is Dagen slash Draxous’ mate. But they were about to be taken out by a dark god, my bet is Revelin, and not getting any kind of freak on in the dark. So, this one,” Bastion said ticking his head toward Shade. “In all his badassery time travel mojo showed up with some horny juice that tasted like sweet wine to beat both Reveca and Revelin to the punch.”
Bastion looked at Shade and gave him a thumbs up. “Mad props to you. I would’ve tried to take on the dark god or slap sense into Reveca’s grieving piss poor attitude, but then again. I’m not a time traveler, so I would not have seen today and known that it was the war to be won, not that shit back then.”
Bastion met his father’s bewildered stare. “Not long after, Reveca showed up too late, the dark god yanked Dagen into his realm. Reveca stabbed Zosime in the heart. Some say she did it because she didn’t want her to feel the same agony she was fighting. But those who saw her do it swore there was too much rage in Reveca’s eyes when she plunged into Zosime’s flesh to be mercy. But hey, they don’t know her like us. Then swoosh, the coven swarms in like always to clean up Reveca’s breakdown. They stop war by telling the people of Zosime’s fate and swear them to secrecy, etcetera. Fast forward. Zosime’s been in time out, Dagen had been between every set of willing legs he could find, she felt it all, because you know she’s an empath and feels shit. Does that clear up on why anyone with a cock is not on Zosime’s BFF list?”
When Bastion saw Shade and Thrash both standing with their mouths agape and Dagen rippling with wrath he grinned and said, “Good, now that we have all reached the point and time of our current dilemma, I’ll go on. That nasty bitch who has been fucking with Talon is a Throng eater, like she ate her own to get their power. Some say Zale gave her the idea, but who knows. Anyway, Scorpio is in the same Throng as Dagen. Oh, so is Talon—let me explain,” he said holding a hand up as both Shade and Thrash tried to speak at once.
“Scorpio left to wake his chick up, like she’s the original sleeping beauty—and guess who the witch is? Ever seen Reveca ask who the fairest of them all is? Okay, okay, I’m kidding,” Bastion said as they all started to approach him at once.
“For real, though, Scorpio woke his chick, um, To–Toril, that’s it. If Dagen is standing here, I’m betting she gave the nod to the others in the Throng and they were all pulled in, and BOOM Talon is all good, but now Reveca is still wanting to kill Scorpio and Toril. And yeah, Dagen and Zosime have their own reasons. So, where are you with that? The text was hazy,” Bastion asked Dagen.
“Your mother told you this shit, didn’t she?” Thrash accused.
“There is truth there,” Dagen said deciding to take a seat next to Thrash’s bottle of Jack that was looking lonely. “Talon is well, Reveca is missing.”
“What do you mean missing?” Thrash demanded.
Dagen shrugged. “Can’t know for sure, I told King to block me.”
“Why in the fuck would you do that?” Thrash raged. He had been on one too many ‘find Reveca’ missions. They were long, miserable and lacking satisfaction in all ways.
Dagen’s stare flicked up to Thrash’s stating the obvious.
“Snake hair girl is yours? You fucking stepped out on that venom? Do you not like your balls?”
“Thought she was dead. That I was,” Dagen said before downing what was left of the Jack.
“So you see, Pops,” Bastion said. “Even though you’re not tracking, your soul is keeping score. There is always a trifecta escape plan to any great
magic. You are one, the seventh son. It is said he will save to kill.” Bastion winked. “You don’t want to leave because you do not want Dagen and his lover to join forces to kill Reveca. You’re trying to save her, hoping the others will kill Akan.”
“I don’t sit by and let others fight my battles, son.”
“Nah, but you wouldn’t stack the deck against your family either.”
“Like that is not obvious,” Thrash bit out.
“No, Shade is the obvious. This is his crib. He has to be cool with leaving. And before you give some speech about it, I will remind you that your soul and higher power is large and in charge especially if you can’t remember shit. You know what’s going on out there. You know the threat. And you know there is no safer place in the universe for Gwinn than here. It’s not selfish to stay with her here, it’s natural.”
“This is not my place,” Shade said, gritting out every word.
“So,” Dagen said staring into the fire. “We stay until the pair of you get your subconscious right. Hope this place is as big as I remember it to be.”
“What?” Thrash asked.
Dagen shook his head, promising he wasn’t going to elaborate.
“Awful comfortable in this prison. Sounds to me like you’re the obvious,” Shade accused. He was not going to digest any of this until he was behind closed doors with Gwinn and she explained how true it could be.
Dagen smirked. “You think you got problems? That your life sucks because you were sidelined for a battle?” He flicked his stare up at Shade. “Lusting to kill your best friend’s lover while knowing you fucked up the one good thing in your existence all because you were too much of coward to remember who you were when it really mattered. That’s where I’m at. Either of you let me out, my actions are on you. You’ve been warned.”
“Because of some story my kid told you?” Thrash said with disgust dripping from his every word.