The close of the letter shifted back to my dad’s handwriting:
I have made this trap door as a hiding place. The reason why you have found it is that we are both gone and that circumstances are now dire enough that you have asked Jon’s daughter for help. There are far too few allies out there for us, kid.
Bulwer-Lytton said the pen is mightier than the sword. He was wrong—it has always been the words themselves. The words are the power and mightiest of swords. I love you, Grey.
The letter closed with two signatures that both read Dad.
Joy wiped a steady stream of tears from her face. “They never meant for us not to know.”
“And if I had not moved us out of this house, we would have found it almost immediately.” I slumped my shoulders, but Joy resituated so she could hug me. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed.
We stayed like that until our knees were numb and our curiosity regarding the book overpowered our melancholy.
Epilogue: The Present
His guest entered the study whistling. Progress thought he recognized it—Beatles, Maye? “It happened much like you said it would.” Progress was seated at his favorite armchair. Its position in the room allowed for guests to be within line of site at all times. He kept typing on his laptop. “Your abilities are precognitive, surely?”
The elder god was dressed in a tailored suit that fit crisply on his body. He leaned on his new umbrella like a cane and winced at Progress’ suggestion. He removed the watch stuffed in the pocket of his waistcoat and began to rub it with the cuff of his sleeve. “No.” His voice was haughty, dismissive. “It was only logic. Have you prepared to give the arithmancer to The Triginta?”
“He is under key. So, we are not saving him for a rainy day, then?” Progress inquired as he wasn’t entirely sure what the young man could not yield useful information for his organization, especially now the bird escaped.
“I have made arrangements. Surely you see the necessity in this?” asked the visitor, his dulcet voice absorbed by the books in the study.
“To a limited degree, I do, though I cannot help but think he is a liability wherever he is.” Progress set down his laptop. “Your machinations have created the desired effect,” Progress sank into the Queen Anne where he currently sat. “We have eliminated so many gods. What more could you want?” He had been asking himself that same question since his own inception.
It was the best kind of question. The god with the faux-English accent and the gold-gray hair seemed to catch Progress in his reverie. He spoke: “I don’t believe you’ve ever told me about your upbringing?” He continued to pace slowly around the study, stopping to examine titles with each step.
Upbringing was a strange word for the youth of a god, but it sufficed. Progress was very young for a god, and his most prolific memory was… “My first memories are of overseeing American and Chinese and sundry other laborers laying tracks for those steam-powered behemoths…”
“Ah, the locomotive. Really? Fascinating,” the god quipped.
Progress continued, “…on the way to Utah. Every one of the laborers who died along the way to Promontory Point strengthened my body, my mind. With each sacrifice laid at my alter, my thoughts gained clarity. A while later, I found myself coasting from factories on the East Coast of America and then to the stygian-black fog that covered the factories of Manchester, England.”
“Were you as cruel and ignorant as some of us were upon your inception?” he asked.
Progress turned, craning his neck slightly to keep pace with god’s scrutiny of his library. “At first, yes, very much so. So many children. I was terrible in that Classical sense you might appreciate.”
“How very Old Testament of you, Progress.”
“Back then, I demanded sacrifices of blood. In due course, however,” Progress paused, taking a moment to admire the first edition his guest held in his hands. “Pride and Prejudice, though I admit I do not understand much of it,” Progress confided, then spoke once more as the guest reshelved the novel. “I confess—my feelings of superiority over the past,” he contemplated saying gods, but decided against it, lest he offend the elder god. “…led to my immersion into education and the wisdom of the ages.”
“Mortal wisdom? Is that an oxymoron?” he asked.
“Ha! Hardly!” Progress resounded.
“Yes. I agree,” another book closed and reshelved behind him.
Progress no longer tracked his visitor, but continued his story. “I grew dispassionate by the blood sacrifices—not only did I find myself drawing less strength from them, they simply no longer moved me. To answer the question I just asked you, what I want, simply is to progress with them.
“For each technological advancement their species has made, I have found my power and even my determination growing,” from behind him, Progress heard a noise from the god behind him that sounded like assent.
“Though when the human beings went to the moon, they recognized other gods there. The program itself was named for Apollo,” he reminded.
Progress allowed himself to gloat, albeit for only the briefest of moments—Apollo had been the first to fall. Apollo was only the beginning. The gods were all hurdles to be overcome; even his present ally when it came to it. What Progress most wanted was to clear those hurdles. If the humans were to progress, the old gods would need to be extirpated. “Yes, the past is commemorated in such a way.” Progress noticed his ally was whistling again. What were those words?
He began to sing, “There's nothing you can make that can't be made. No one you can save that can't be saved. Nothing you can do but you can learn to be you in time…”
The very last thing Progress reckoned in his life was Cupid’s arm reaching around him with that obsidian-spike—and burying it in his abdomen.
“It’s easy…All you need is love!”
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal… Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
I Corinthians 13
Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1) Page 29