The Truth about Heroes: Complete Trilogy (Heroes Trilogy)

by Krista Gossett

  Ashe was at a loss for words so he took out Nettle and slashed his hand, his body frozen in paralysis, but more like a statue rather than falling into a limp heap. Zephyra appeared in her usual graceful yet strange tornado that suspended her sometimes like a thing underwater rather than a creature of air. He wondered why wind and water weren’t stronger in affinity for that reason, but it was probably because they were so similar that they didn’t really boost each other so much.

  Zephyra smiled enigmatically and flipped her hair girlishly, an echoing laugh escaping her lips.

  “I was wondering when you would deign to use my services,” Zephyra accused unhappily. He didn’t bother to point out it sounded like something a cheap whore might say.

  “You must admit, Zephyra, that the paralysis that comes with it is a tad bit inconvenient,” Ashe countered boldly but carefully. Amazingly enough, his lips had no such difficulty moving.

  Zephyra waved it off arrogantly then locked her turbulent eyes on his.

  “I haven’t been here in ages…” Zephyra mused. “This place gives me the creeps. Did you know we stood against the old gods here? It was where they fled from the earth to sleep, to… devise a way to rid the earth of their tiresome elementals.”

  Zephyra’s voice was so thick with disgust that Ashe did not speak right away. His head was muddy still from the journey here and he didn’t trust his humor to translate well.

  “What is this place? I have never heard of it in books,” Ashe asked carefully.

  “And humans were never supposed to know about it. It sure didn’t stop that snake guy from finding it. Those machines he builds, Sea Star thinks that he has found a leak between the dimensions and peers into the old gods’ minds himself, but she lost all her confidence when Lumina took her down a peg, so she says she only shared that theory with me.”

  Ashe waited, wondering if she was going to answer his question.

  “Elcarim, the realm that the old gods created to closely watch this world. It was meant to be a place where they could keep an eye on… well, you’ve seen one of them; those pockets between worlds like Calderon.”

  Ashe started to feel the weak tingling coming back into his limbs.

  “How long does the paralysis last?” Ashe asked.

  “As long as I want it to!” Zephyra snapped, and spun about once, so quickly it would have been easy to miss.

  “I summoned you to see if there was anything I needed to know. I’d rather not be food for some freaky plant like the ones on Stoneweld.”

  Zephyra rolled her eyes.

  “Everything here sleeps, I can assure you. The old gods didn’t want their precious Elcarim to fade without them and they did not want to rely on elementals to maintain it. No trust but who can blame them? We weren’t unreasonable. We just wanted them to send out their powers and fade away, make room for the next rulers. But give up their powers? Never!”

  “Would you give up yours?” Ashe countered, instantly wishing he had been less impulsive when her eyes flashed with anger and lightning.

  “We only have possession of one power and you see how dangerous that can be in the hands of one, smart ass. Even now, the very idea of them waking up is certain doom. For so long, the world was content to just let them sleep and the snake guy just HAD to ruin that for everyone.”

  Ashe could swear her voice rumbled with thunder and had been glad that she had not punished him for insolence or whatever offense it was to question someone more powerful. He certainly envied her ability to say whatever she wanted.

  Zephyra gave him access to his movements in that instant and hovered closer. Ashe had wanted to move but did not dare just yet.

  “This place is still more than you have bargained for. This place is rife with the old gods’ dormant powers; illusion, persuasion and a host of other powers that can sink you into madness or make you forget the way. You must know yourself, my wind walker, and name the illusion to banish it.”

  “Name the illusion…” Ashe repeatedly.

  Zephyra sighed with exasperation.

  “I’m not speaking cryptically here; I mean if you feel something is persuading you against your common sense, you call it out. ‘You cannot persuade me; I know my mind’ or ‘These illusions are false because I know the truth.’ Like that, do you understand now?”

  Ashe frowned but he nodded. It seemed like a silly way to dispel an illusion, like something a child might make up. He did not relish what kind of traps the old gods would set. He wondered if the elementals knew how little humans really knew of their own minds or if she was overestimating him.

  Zephyra placed a kiss upon his lips and he closed his eyes until he felt her disperse in the wind. She was gone when he opened his eyes and he turned his sights now to the ridge.

  As he walked in that direction, Ashe recalled how he had found Viper, cradling the woman he could only guess was Chevalle, the traitor that had controlled his brother and led him on this mad journey. Chevalle had been looking at Viper with eyes both confused and betrayed as the gaping hole in her torso dribbled her life’s blood. His eyes had held mock sadness and amusement as he had crooned to her, something about bringing it all on herself. A madman never took the blame; if there was one thing he knew it was that. He had not been able to tell Rienna that he had remembered reading Malek’s diary before burying him with it. It had not shed any light then; it was the ramblings of madness, but one thing that had made sense is that in all the things he had done wrong, he did not take blame for any of it. It had been clear that he should’ve blamed himself for his own actions and it became clearer to him after he had regained his memories that Malek probably had not blamed himself for his massacre of the children he had trained and swore to protect. He could recall the look he had seen in Viper’s eyes were akin to what he had seen in Malek’s, a kind of detached hysteria and righteousness.

  When Viper’s eyes met his, a childish excitement had skittered across his features and he had run to the machine that had sat in the place of a throne and Ashe had not thought twice as he grabbed for the launching machine moments before it sailed out of reach. So quickly it had risen that there was no way he could let go, even over the ocean, which could have been too shallow, speckled with razor-like underwater crags or some hungry life form waiting to make a meal of him. Whether he wanted to back out from that point was moot and he hung on, knowing he was in it for the long haul, even if the irony meant it would be a short time until his death.

  From what he could tell, he had landed in a small valley. Zephyra had not told him how big or small this place was and he couldn’t guess from this place. He knew that either this place was suspended in the sky completely or it was one hell of a huge overhang; he was willing to bet if Viper knew about it (and it was a place the old gods had wanted to keep out of reach), it was probably a damned floating continent. Ashe wondered, not for the first time, how Viper learned about things that had managed to elude them even in the most exclusive libraries. Was Sea Star right; that Viper used machines to tap into the old gods’ thoughts? He wondered if Pierait knew, as much as that guy had read in Morgaze, but then it seemed that the libraries there were centered on elemental magic and the Soulless. Ashe was heading over the ridge, unsure of what actually awaited him, hoping he wasn’t just going to mount the crest of the hill and be nose to nose with that lunatic.

  Fortunately, Ashe was luckier than that. Unfortunately, not by much. What lay before him was a massive spread of land, untouched, uninhabited by humans and not a single sign of Viper anywhere. Ashe shook his head and headed down into the strange new world. He wasn’t sure what kind of luck it would take to track down Viper but he was hoping, good or bad, he did so before this place ate him alive.

  The End of Book 2

  THE TRUTH ABOUT HEROES:

  MENAGE A TROIS

  BOOK 3

  Chapter 1: Ignorance is Blisters

  Something about the strange floating island that poked out from the white clouds was causing unease in Me
lchior. That would be aside from the fact it was a floating island. He saw Rienna on the unicorn in front of him, Dinsch on another, and he gripped the mane of the one he rode and turned to look for the others, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  The unicorns had even insisted that Finn ride one, although, like most Folk, he found it distasteful to ride another creature especially since he had wings of his own. To him it was like riding a man piggyback for no good reason. However, they made it clear that Elcarim would not reveal itself to Finn and he would need to ride one or be left behind. In the end he had acquiesced, but not gracefully. It was something about the topic that turned Folk childishly pouty and sulky.

  Still, it had bothered Melchior that he could not see anyone else, no matter how long he peered behind him and he turned back suddenly, relieved he could still see Rienna and Dinsch. He yelled ahead, but the wind swallowed his shouts and panic started to hit him as even Rienna and Dinsch were fading from his view.

  “Calm yourself, Melchior. They cannot hear and you must prepare to land,” came the voice of his mount into his head.

  “What the hell? I’m not a female,” Melchior abruptly pointed out. Rienna had been clear that, for some odd reason, only females could hear the voices of unicorns. It hadn’t bothered him in the least, but hearing them now was a wound to his manhood.

  The unicorn laughed at his outburst.

  “We near Elcarim and in this place, the rules are bent and broken. You can hear me as we near it and I have little time to tell you, but unicorns cannot land here. We will fade back into Calderon soon and you will be on your own,” the unicorn told him. “Getting you to Myceum expended our magic greatly.”

  “Now you tell me,” Melchior grumbled. “Where are the others?”

  “You think a place the old gods created would not separate you? Worry not, though; our kind has some foresight and you will meet with your friends again.”

  Melchior knew all about the foresight of magical creatures and he rolled his eyes, trusting those words not one bit. Although if it weren’t true, he might be mad enough to track down some flying horses and get a taste of unicorn meat. He hoped they would be as delicious as they were annoying, but they were probably tough and tasteless, just to spite his taste buds.

  Elcarim came into view and Melchior at least hoped the damned unicorn would at least have the grace to drop him off over the land. It would be incredibly pointless otherwise. Despite the fact that the image of it in his head almost put him over the edge with hilarity, the reality would not be funny in the least. On that note, he hoped Nuriel would bail him out if he needed it. He started to think that he wished he hadn’t used Nuriel for so many mundane tasks that he might chose to not show up. Nuriel had threatened worse but, true to his name, the salamander/fire elemental often blew a lot of hot air.

  Luckily for Melchior, the unicorn flew closer towards the land and literally disappeared the minute its hooves touched Elcarim soil, depositing Melchior unceremoniously on his ass. He stood up and looked around, noticing he was completely alone. Nothing for it, standing there wouldn’t change that.

  “Shit,” he muttered, but he did not hesitate and ran off to search for his friends.

  Even with his own wings, the sudden disappearance of the unicorn Finn was riding gave him no time to use them and avoid the graceless inevitability of landing ass first on Elcarim. Finn was also alone but his ride, sharing the distaste for the company of his rider, had not been so courteous as to share that the ride was to end abruptly with its disappearance. The unicorn told him nothing in fact and once Finn got over his displeasure, he realized with some panic that he had lost track of Verity. He had lost track of all of them, for that matter, but Verity was the first to come to mind. Finn did not know if the Mother could reach him here; he had already noticed that the bottom of this giant floating continent ended in thousands of feet of air and an ocean. He knew her roots were far reaching but this would be stretching it. She was more akin to an elemental than one of the gods after all.

  Figuring he had nothing to lose by trying, he drew one of the white wooden arrows from his quiver and shot it into the nearest tree. He watched with trepidation as the tree lost its rich redbrown hue and dulled into a sickly grey before bleaching into a bone white. All the while it began twisting about like a slow mass of tentacles and he noticed the shape was becoming feminine and a face formed at the last, the eyes opening were the same odd purplish-orange as the leaves of Yggdrassl, the Mother and Tree of Life. When the dryad spoke, its mouth moved and it had the Mother’s voice coming directly from it rather than hearing it in his head.

  “My child,” the Mother addressed him fondly. “I was not sure you could reach me here,” Finn admitted with relief, hoping his honesty did not offend her.

  However, the Mother smiled kindly and drew Finn into her embrace comfortingly.

  “I would not have known it possible either; I have never been to Elcarim before,” the Mother admitted, looking around shrewdly, sizing the place up and then relaxing to look at Finn. “Your friends are not with you, so this must be why you called for me.”

  Finn nodded, still not quite sure what to ask of her.

  “Elcarim. I have never heard of this place,” Finn added, his eyes unceasing in the search to catch a glimpse of Verity.

  “The old gods intended this place to be hidden. You never would have found it without the unicorns’ assistance. The old gods did not bother to hide this place from them since they were never meant to leave Calderon,” she told him now.

  Finn was not content with the explanation. “Are you saying that Viper isn’t human?” Finn asked quickly.

  The Mother shook her head slowly, the branches from her head rustling its leaves lightly.

  “He may be more machine than human, but he also finds ways to defy magic. It is his arrogance that makes him move you and your friends as pawns to his cause, but he could easily wake the old gods on his own if you did not play into his game,” the Mother admitted sadly.

  This shocked Finn. Would the world end no matter what they did? Did anything they fight for matter?

  “So no matter what we do, the old gods will wake soon?” Finn asked, trying not to despair. He couldn’t internalize the thought and it came out as purely as it had crossed his mind.

  “I’m afraid so, but every moment you keep him thinking you will play the game is a chance for hope that the world will not end. It is a small chance, but still it exists. As long as he does not tire of you, he will stall to keep the game going,” the Mother told him plainly.

  “I need to find Verity,” Finn admitted in an inelegant rush. If the world was doomed, he could not bear wasting moments without her by his side.

  The Mother nodded her understanding.

  “Grip one of your arrows tightly and it will become a staff. It will glow when you are facing in the right direction to find her. She is a part of me so it will only work to find her, not your friends, I’m sorry to say. She is far from here but she is looking for you too…”

  Before Yggdrassl could finish, Finn was already following her instructions and made to start off, but the Mother caught his wrist and made him listen.

  “Do not be hasty now, my child. This place may be sleeping but it is not free of dangers still. It may deceive you with illusions and maybe even illusions that you have found her. Do not believe in anything you see until you touch it with the staff or this place may be your final resting place. Do not forget.”

  This did not comfort Finn in the least.

  “Please go to Verity and let her know, Mother,” Finn begged.

  Before he had even finished, the dryad she had turned into was rapidly becoming the tree it was before and he hoped that meant she was doing what he asked. He let himself think that as he found that it glowed as he pointed the staff southward and ran off to find her.

  Dinsch had unhappily been deposited on his ass but Rienna had taken the warning to heart and summoned her bubble of protection just before the
unicorn had disappeared and floated lightly to her feet. Dinsch stood and rubbed at his sore ass, shaking his little rabbit tail out as well. The cloth covering his eye fell away and he didn’t bother to catch it as it fell. Rienna gasped at the wound and hurried over to him, pulling him into a sitting position so she wouldn’t have to tiptoe and crane her neck to get a better look.

  The wound was nasty but it didn’t mar his handsome face. The skin around the wicked cut was starting to shrivel and would leave a horrid scar if untreated, but Rienna intended to fix that as best as she could. He had been right that the cut had not gotten his eye, but his eye was still hard to see amongst the swelling and pus of the wound. She smiled at Dinsch and touched the wounded cheek gingerly, bending closer to place a chaste kiss on his lips. The unwounded eye shot open with surprise as her lips parted and her healing magic glowed around them.

  The pus-encrusted wound began to flake away and the skin knitted slowly. The swelling began to subside and the bruising faded from a nasty purple to blue to green to yellow then the healthy tan of his normal tone. He began to test the healing wound, opening and shutting the eye, and once he realized he could see properly again, his excitement made him grab her about the waist and pull her closer and he thoughtlessly deepened the kiss to something far from chaste.

  This time, Rienna’s eyes shot open and the magic faded as she pushed at Dinsch’s shoulders. It took a few hard shoves for him to get the hint and he broke off the kiss, looking both stunned and apologetic.

  “Sorry, Rienna, I got carried away. Something in that magic made me really… carefree,” Dinsch admitted shyly, toeing the ground like a kid in trouble. Rienna was not angry; something about Dinsch had instinctively told her long ago he really didn’t have ulterior motives towards her. She shook her head to brush it off and gestured for him to lean down so she could look at the wound. Once she could see that the pinkish scar was well healed and his eye was fine, she smiled proudly and began looking around, frowning as she inspected the strange beautiful place they ended up in.