Gods of Myth and Midnight: A LitRPG Novel (Seeds of Chaos Book 3)

by Azalea Ellis

  She stuck her fingers into her mouth and pressed at her gums. They weren’t blackened or bleeding, and her teeth held firm. “I’m hungry,” she said. “But I’m not starving.” She laughed aloud again, gleeful and full of life.

  We were all laughing and grinning till we gasped for breath and our faces hurt. I felt joy rise up in me as my eyes welled with emotion. Even though I had been so determined to find the cure, somehow I was still amazed this moment was actually happening.

  Torliam reached out and clasped his hands around my hand that held the hairpin, tears running unashamed down his face. "I thank the gods that I was able to meet you, Eve-Redding. Everything—NIX, my mother—everything was worth it."

  Jacky had Gregor and Kris wrapped into a hug tight enough to lift them off the ground, beaming wide and snorting through her laughter.

  Gregor pretended to try and get away, but he was laughing, too. "Kris can go next," he said. "Heal her, and then I'll go."

  Sam stepped forward and touched the hairpin almost reverently. "With this, we can save everyone." He’d let go of Black Sun completely, his eyes sparkling bright blue through his own tears.

  Birch pounced on Chanelle and licked her tears away, his tongue turning her cheek bright red as it abraded her skin.

  I felt the crushing weight of everything lift off my shoulders. It had been so long since I felt so light… I knew we had accomplished something unequivocally good, and I turned to the god. I didn't know if I meant to try and share the wonder of the moment with him, or thank him, or promise him we wouldn't let him down, but he was looking to the sky in the distance.

  I followed his gaze, eyesight sharpening as I let Spirit of the Huntress sharpen my claws and enhance my senses. A sour note spread up from the pit inside me, spoiling the first portion of my pure elation. “Is something wrong?”

  He turned to me, and his expression held so many different things that I couldn’t decipher what it meant. He looked to Chanelle, and the words carved into the ground changed once again.

  I grabbed Torliam’s arm and gestured to the symbols urgently. “Hurry, I think something’s up.”

  He looked away from Chanelle, his expression sobering when he caught the worry on my own. “Pestilence has ridden with you, he of the secret steed. Now, the wonderful me continues to battle against the abhorrent. My realm is the place-shield of protection.”

  A tremor ripped through the world, and I whipped around. Where the god looked, clouds gathered in the distance, unnaturally thick and flat, as if pressing against the edge of the sky.

  The tremor rippled through us all again, and the sky seemed to shatter. Literally, chunks of mottled heaven fell down, leaving something else behind. I had averted my eyes from it before the decision to do so even registered, like jerking back from a burn before you even feel the heat. I knew that I couldn't look back if I didn't want to be hurt.

  The God of Shaping and Molding stood before us, smaller than me and lacking the intimidation factor of some of the other gods I’d met. But his face was grim, and his eyes held no hesitation. He lifted his hands, and the remaining sky darkened unnaturally as the winds rose in a shrieking howl of speed.

  He turned away, and I thought I caught a glimpse of resignation, maybe a hint of fear.

  Then, with a horrible wrenching, we had moved, and the vibration of teleportation ground through my bones, wave after wave of it as galaxies burst apart in front of my eyes, and then I was plunged, tumbling, into darkness and a cold so intense it burned, shocking the air from my lungs as I convulsed against it.

  The blue mist of Torliam's power bloomed, illuminating the bubbles floating away in front of my face, the rest of the team, and the familiar underwater cave around us. We’d shot out of the anomaly at speed, each in different directions.

  The distortion marking the portal that had led us to the god's realm, and had just spit us out again, wavered, and then disappeared like a popped soap bubble.

  Chapter 31

  Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.

  — John Milton

  I looked down in fright, but the hairpin was still in my fist. I couldn't tighten my fingers, because they were already unresponsive with cold.

  I knew we were in the Other Place again because it was sucking up my panic, along with any warmth that wouldn't have been torn away by the freezing seawater. It may have been the only thing that kept me alive, because without the panic and the focus on the horrible burning of the cold, I was able to think. Time seemed to slow as my mental augmentations kicked into overdrive.

  Our supplies had been shoved through from the god’s realm along with us, so we had thermal wetsuits and a little bit of oxygen left, but by the time we would be able to get them out of the supply pallets and struggle into them, we would be dead. Even if we could get out of the Other Place, the normal world’s water was only slightly less freezing. It might buy us a couple seconds at most, but it would take us longer than a couple seconds to have Zed open a rip and then swim through it. There were no pockets of air or warmth in these underwater caves, and obviously, a multi-hour swim to get back to shore was impossible.

  Gregor might survive if he could stay in his Shadow form, and Torliam, maybe, since his Skill might be able to filter oxygen from the water, but I doubted it. The rest of us needed air and warmth immediately.

  I looked upward to the roof of the cave, a desperate idea forming. I refused to die, not after we’d come so far and were so close to fixing everything.

  Torliam was ripping at one of the supply pallets. As I swam clumsily upward, he managed to get one of the remaining oxygen tanks and a mask free, and followed me.

  When I reached the top of the cavern, I let out a coarse drill of Chaos, straight upward. Rocks fell out, sinking down through the water. I sent a Window to the rest of the team.

  —Get up here. Top of the cavern.—

  -Eve-

  Torliam batted a few of the falling rocks away from me, then reached around and fit the oxygen mask to my face, a quick swipe of his Skill pushing the water out of the inside of the mask so that it could fill with air.

  I took a deep, gasping breath, then turned and gestured to the others.

  He shook his head, pressing the mask more firmly to my face.

  I scowled at him, even as I took another breath, then ripped the mask away from my face and shoved at him.

  He turned away reluctantly, and I lashed out at the roof of the cave with Chaos again, this time with more finesse, creating a wider hollow beyond the initial opening in the rock, so that there would be only a small hole in the floor of the secondary cave I was creating.

  Below me, Jacky convulsed against Sam’s arm, making it difficult for him to drag her through the water.

  Gregor wasn’t in his Shadow form. He and Pinocchio were both tugging at Kris, who was flailing upward but didn’t seem to know how to swim.

  Zed used one arm to hold Birch, who had managed to use his wings to swim to the boy before his small body succumbed to the cold.

  Chanelle, unable to resist the depressive cold, had already passed out, and was floating serenely.

  Torliam’s power brightened the cave even further as swaths of it reached for the others, pushing slowly through the liquid and wrapping around them. He pulled them toward us.

  When they got close enough, he gave them each a little bit of oxygen from the mask he’d freed. It wouldn't be enough, I knew. Not when shared between ten people. If we didn't get out of the Other Place water soon it wouldn't matter, though, because we would all pass out. And then we would die.

  I sent black tendrils of Chaos out, urging them to turn into devouring flame, and re-make the water within the mini cave into air. I knew the composition of nitrogen and oxygen that made breathable gas. I knew what the molecules looked like in the chemistry book. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet managed to properly transmute one substance into another in real life, not since the fight with the God of Knowledge. I didn’t want to t
ake a chance with our lives by trying to forcefully create nitrogen and oxygen. However, I’d also read about something called electrolysis, which used electricity to separate the hydrogen and oxygen particles that made up water. Why couldn’t I do something similar? I focused Wraith on the water above me, forcing myself into a meditative calm despite the burning in my lungs, and pushed until I could vaguely feel the molecules. I imagined the water separating into the two different types of gas, pushing my burning desperation through Chaos as fuel.

  Huge bubbles blossomed out of the water, much larger than the amount of liquid Chaos had devoured. The air rose, pushing suddenly warm water back down. I felt a moment of trepidation when I remembered the last time I’d used Chaos to create warmth in the Other Place, but nothing happened. I kept going till the little cave was filled, then grabbed Zed and forced him through, more of a pummeling motion than a grabbing one, because my arms were barely responding to my commands anymore.

  —Open the Veil.—

  -Eve-

  Torliam pushed me through next, fairly tossing me through the hole and out of the water.

  I flopped onto the stone ground and took great, heaving gasps of the air, spewing out a little of the briny water that had somehow made its way into my mouth and down my throat. I was dizzy, but a few more breaths brought my spinning senses under control and soothed the burning in my lungs, so I knew I’d managed to create some oxygen. Hopefully, not too much, or it would burn our lungs and we would all die of oxygen poisoning.

  The kids were pale and shivering violently, but Jacky and Chanelle were still, their lips blue, their chests not rising and falling.

  “Open the Veil!” I shouted weakly at Zed, who was coughing loudly and twitching his arms, which didn’t seem to be working properly. “They’re d-dying.” My voice was strangely high-pitched, probably because of the hydrogen concentration in the air.

  I scrabbled for Jacky as Torliam helped Sam and Adam to the slightly-more-safe cave I’d created. My hands weren’t working, and my arms responded with less force than I pleaded with them for, but with her small size, it was enough to turn her over. I pressed on her back, forcing water out of her lungs. I flipped her back over again and began to breathe air into her mouth, pinching her nose shut so it couldn’t escape. Her heart was still beating on its own, though weakly.

  Birch spewed out water on his own, lying still except for the rapid heaving of his sides as he struggled for air.

  Zed let out a weak shout of frustration, and suddenly, a rip opened in the air in front of him, without his hands ever having made it to that spot.

  Torliam shouldered me out of the way and pressed his hands to Jacky’s chest. Blue mist seeped through her skin. It returned out through her nose and mouth, pushing the water she’d inhaled with it. Then, he shoved the oxygen mask to her face, using his Skill to push air from it into her.

  With his other hand, he forced the water out of Chanelle’s chest, and I moved to her instead, forcing a few lungfuls of air down her throat.

  Then, I shuffled toward the rip in the world. It had opened up onto a flat plane of rock, since this little cave only existed in the Other Place. I sent Chaos through and turned the normal world rock to chunks and pebbles at an upward angle, so that gravity forced them to slide downward through the opening, falling past us and down into the water of the cavern in the Other Place. They left a new cave-like room in the normal world.

  I used the pseudo-electrolysis trick again as that room sucked away the air in our current cave, flinching at the burst of warmth it created.

  Jacky was breathing, but her eyes hadn’t opened, and her lips were still an alarming shade of blue.

  “Help me g-get her through,” I said.

  Torliam and I lifted her, placing her on the other side, and then waving the others through. The team scrabbled back into the normal world with jerky movements and violent shivering, and Torliam and I followed.

  Once the whole team was through, Zed closed the rip to the Other Place, leaving us in a pocket of hydrogen-filled air, surrounded by rock on every side, deep below the surface of the earth.

  “The healing stick. D-do you have it?” Sam asked, his voice jerky with chattering teeth and shivers so strong they wracked his body.

  “I’ve g-got it,” I said. Now that we were out of the Other Place, I was still ridiculously cold, but I felt a surge of energy return along with the emotions and richness of the real world. I was trembling as much from exhaustion as from cold, but that didn’t stop me pushing Chaos out once more, asking it for the simple task of giving energy and movement to the molecules in the air. Not too much. I didn’t want to set it on fire, since hydrogen was extremely flammable and would explode, turning us all into charred meat. Warmth blossomed out from me, making my skin feel as if it was burning. Still, it was better than the hypothermia that was no doubt already setting in.

  “D-don’t use electricity or anything that c-could cause a spark,” I warned.

  Torliam’s Skill swept through the cramped space, stripping most of the water off us to pool on the floor. He adjusted the oxygen tank’s release valve so that it let out a steady hiss as its contents slowly mixed with the air. It would help ensure we didn’t succumb to oxygen deprivation, and hopefully give the little cave a more normal mix of gases. He let a little of his Skill mist linger, giving enough light for us to see in the otherwise pitch-black darkness.

  We were content to shiver miserably for a while, till the warmth in the air seeped back into our bodies and some of our strength was replenished. I warmed the rock beneath Jacky and Chanelle, and Sam checked them over.

  “They’re okay, I think,” he said. “Being cold isn’t exactly an injury, except for some of their cells that have died due to it.”

  Jacky woke up not long after, coughed a little, and leaned back woozily against the rock. “Did you save me?” she said, looking to me.

  “It was Torliam,” I said. “You’d inhaled a lot of water.”

  She nodded, blinking sleepily. “I didn’t mean to. When the cold hit me, my body just…reacted. I’d breathed in the water before I even realized what was happening, yeah?”

  Zed rested his head on his knees. “It’s an automatic response to super-cold water. It’s called the cold-shock response. We’re just lucky more of us didn’t start hyperventilating uncontrollably, or we might not have made it out.”

  “How do you know that?” Sam said.

  “He wanted to be a medic for the Peace-Corps, before all of this,” I waved my hand around vaguely, “happened.”

  “Now I’m struggling to save the world in a whole different way,” Zed said, something bitter seeping through in his tone.

  “But we’ve got the cure now,” Jacky said. “Everything is gonna be okay. We can fix everything.”

  Adam coughed wetly. “Except we’re trapped hundreds of meters underground and surrounded by an ocean of literally freezing water. We have to survive before the cure does anyone any good.”

  Torliam increased the glow of his power. “We must find a way back to the surface of the island above.”

  I trembled as a residual shiver slid through me. “I don’t have the strength left to tunnel all the way up through the ground. Not after the Trial, healing Chanelle, and making this.” I gestured to the small cave around us.

  “We can’t swim out,” Adam said, his voice a tired murmur. “All our gear is still in the water, in the Other Place.”

  “I could send Pinnochio back for it,” Kris said. “He’s not very strong in the water, since he doesn’t have any fins or flippers, but he could probably bring things to us out of the supply pallets, one at a time.”

  Adam nodded, the motion slow. “I don’t have much energy left either, but it wouldn’t take too much to make a couple flippers in his size to help him swim.”

  Chanelle leaned forward. “You’re out of ink, right? Use my blood, instead.” Adam frowned and was obviously about to deny her, so she continued quickly. “I’m the leas
t useful out of any of us. I don’t have any Skills anymore, but all the Seeds you guys gave me are in Resilience and Life, so I’ll be fine, and Sam can heal me. I want to help.”

  Soon, we’d gathered a small amount of Chanelle’s blood in one of Adam’s empty ink cartridges and re-opened the crack below us. Pinocchio slipped out into the mini cave in the Other Place. He dropped into the water with a little plop, crimson-flippered feet wriggling behind him. He had to make quite a few trips, but under Kris’ guidance, he retrieved our thermal wetsuits, the remaining oxygen tanks, and a few other useful supplies that we weren’t already carrying in our packs, like glow-sticks.

  We left the rest of the supplies in the water, since we didn’t need them anymore, and our limited oxygen meant we needed to return to the surface as quickly as possible and couldn’t waste any time or energy dragging pallets through the water. We suited up awkwardly in the increasingly crowded space.

  Gregor’s fingers were stiff and more swollen than normal, and Jacky had to help him maneuver into his suit. He kept clenching his jaw, and I knew the movement caused him pain, even if he was impressively stoic for a child.

  Once we were all kitted out with the thermal wetsuits and oxygen supplies, with Birch once again in a sealed plastine bubble, Zed closed the rip to the Other Place, and the rest of the team pressed against the wall, out of my way.

  I drilled downward with Chaos, the sound of breaking rock almost deafening in the small space. I kept going till we hit water, and then we waited for the rock to fall and float down. Then we jumped down, too, one by one, into the familiar cavern. With the wetsuits, and without the Other Place to suck at our strength, we were fine.

  We swam out, moving as quickly as we could manage. Adam used a little more of his almost-expended power to give us all flippers, which helped a lot, though the drag of our packs in the water still slowed us down. Without the extra supplies and the caution we’d shown when coming the other direction, we made much faster time. We broke the surface of the ocean with barely any oxygen remaining, then swam toward shore.