“I brought us here,” he told her. “Every mistake I’ve made since we left Terrias … I’ve alienated people, lost others entirely, and led us through more than one kind of hell.”
“A considerable burden to place on yourself,” she reproved. “As if we had no part in these actions, no capacity to speak up or suggest different means? You wish to take credit, then, for surveying the maps and identifying Thoris in the first place?”
He agreed only reluctantly. However he blamed himself, Flynn couldn’t take full credit. “I think Poe blames me.”
“His tantrums are tantamount to a child not getting his way,” she muttered. “Poe’s vaingloriousness is a bitter feint to hide the fact that the boy in the woods never truly grew up.”
“Jean,” Poe barked. “My grip weakens! Switch with me.”
“Fuckin’ ‘please’ wouldn’t kill ya,” she grumbled irritably.
Poe said nothing, but held the chains on his side firm until she could swap places, then returned to the center of the platform, massaging his hands. Chari glanced over, wondering if he’d heard anything, but Flynn had been watching him the whole time. Poe’s body language was as benign as before she’d spoken.
“For all the trials and tribulations we’ve suffered—and I concur, there were many,” Chari began again. “Was there a better path before us? Most times, I think not. So I query now, Flynn, even knowing there may be nothing for us above but the possibility of hope, could you have taken any other way than to bring us here?”
Flynn thought about it for a time. On Breth, he had declined several prospective routes for being too risky or harrowing. Here on Keltia, he hadn’t investigated a single one, hindered by means of travel and local hazard. As he looked at Shea, grunting with every pull of the chain, he knew his answer was coming from the wrong place.
“I don’t think I could have.”
He stood quietly in the center of the platform for the remainder of the ascent. Flynn somehow felt more effective having others do the work for him, ignorant all the while that they were just being used. He was the first to step out onto the dais and behold the four statues that filled each corner of the spire’s upper chamber.
Three of them were of little note. All of the statues lacked color and so were devoid of a number of finer details that would have told of their likeness’ origins, but one was clearly a Keltian woman, dressed in the garb of an older era.
“’Least one of us held office on our own bloody world,” Shea commented.
The other two were male. One wore a bomber jacket, and Flynn surmised him to be in his thirties, though the lines etched into the statue’s face nearly fooled Flynn into thinking him older. Such blemishes suggested these gods—or that one in particular, at least—allowed no flattering creative license in their portrayal. The other man was clearly older when he was tapped, looking to be in his sixties or seventies.
It was the fourth statue that drew Flynn in. A woman, whose features suggested she might be from Earth. She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that he could swear bore an old soft drink logo. She stood tall with a self-confident smile carved into her face. He had never seen her before—there was no memory of what she looked like, how she sounded—but she seemed familiar nonetheless.
“You’ve been staring at her for a while,” Zaja said, voicing some concern.
“I know her … I’ve met her. We’ve met her,” Flynn mumbled. “Something about her … no, not her face … her body.”
“Wait, whose body?” Shea asked.
It was starting to come back. A fleeting encounter, many months ago now. A face he had never seen, a form illuminated through silk curtains. It felt like a leap of logic; she had never shown herself and all his memory of her was in silhouette. The Goddess in Heaven. The Mystik of Love.
“Roxanne,” he said softly.
As he voiced his discovery, something in Flynn’s awareness was jarred. He turned sharply around and saw a man sitting at the base of one of the statues, the real life counterpart of the one with the bomber jacket. His sandy brown hair hung half over his face, and his eyes peered through with contempt.
“Get out of my house,” he ordered.
“The door was open,” Zaja pointed out.
“You listenin’, short bus?” he demanded as he stood up. “This is the one place in the worlds I don’t need assholes like you fucking about. You’re gonna bring a hell down the likes this place hasn’t seen in a century.”
“Pardon, but who are you?” Chari asked.
“Do not do that,” he snapped. “Do not come all the way here, see me next to my own damn statue, and ask who the fuck I am.”
“Can’t read the writing, twat,” Shea pointed out irritably.
He began to rebut, but caught himself before the first word slipped out. The man glanced back, checked the writing, then returned his attention to them. He eased up a little. “Orick Daimous—God of Conflict.”
“And how to know you’re really—?” Shea started.
“He is,” Flynn interrupted.
Orick gave Flynn a scrutinizing look, then surveyed the rest of them before settling on Poe as a new realization dawned. “Shit … shit, you’re Airia’s group ain’t ya? Which makes you—”
“Guardian Poe,” Poe confirmed. “You know of Airia Rousow?”
“Who do you think sent her your way, dumbass?” he snapped. “Geez … after the shit-storm that went down in Terrias, figured you a lost cause. Can’t believe Rousow wasted the last of her juice gettin’ you sorry fucks free.”
“Even so, this is fortuitous,” Chari said. “Ours is the same cause. You can aid us—”
Orick laughed. “If ya think I want to help, yer even stupider than ya look. Had I known the shit Rousow was about to pull? Would have said you were all dead—not like she’d be able to check. Now she’s just another pawn off a board that I’m done playin’.”
“Then our arrival means the chance to put another piece in her place,” Chari protested. “A queen from a pawn.”
“Am I the queen?” Poe asked, bewildered.
“I ain’t getting caught up in anyone’s shit,” Orick insisted. “The message to Rousow was a favor, that’s it. Thought to tilt things back in a good way. Do more and I’ll get noticed, and these days? That’s what gets gods killed.”
As Flynn’s companions exchanged pleas for Orick’s insults, he considered the man before them. Orick Daimous had the knowledge and means to help them, but his self-interest outweighed any desire or willingness to do so. His fear of being discovered evinced awareness of what had killed Yetinau Gruent, and his inferred age and connections promised far more in the way of information.
“We’re done wasting our time,” Flynn announced.
“Oh.” Orick seemed momentarily dumbfounded. “Well … good.”
“Look around us,” he said to his companions. “There are three other gods depicted here. If we’ve attracted the attentions of one, another may arrive soon.” Flynn glanced at Orick and drove home his next point. “They’re guaranteed to be more useful than him.”
Undaunted, Orick crossed his arms and smirked cockily. “Long wait ahead of you, hairball. The others are all dead. I’m the last man standing.”
“An’ yer fuckin’ proud of that?” Jean scolded. “Three of yer buds are dead and you’re just hidin’ here in the middle of nowhere?”
Rather than bow to her chastisement, Orick stammered, “They—they weren’t my friends. I barely knew ’em—any of ’em—when I came on board. I was the kid, the new meat, and they left, one by one. First Roxy. Then they axed Lorian, and finally Lacy…!” Orick had become increasingly tense, and had to calm himself down. “Lacy vanished long before I felt her go.”
“What dark fate befell them?” Poe asked in self-concern.
“They meddled,” was all Orick would say. “Old man was righ
t. Shouldn’t have meddled.”
“Old man…?” Chari asked, as she studied the surrounding statues.
With an agitated sigh, Orick stepped forward and pointed at the three statues, starting with the Keltian woman. “Desolation.” He moved on to the elderly man. “Renewal.” And finally, the one Flynn had identified as Roxanne. “Harmony.”
“And you’re Conflict,” Zella reiterated.
“I wonder sometimes, if it’s my fault,” he said. “They were fine, till I showed up. It was small talk, first, over tea an’ shit. Roxy argued that somethin’ had to be done about Renivar, that things were gonna get worse if we just sat around with our thumbs up our asses. Lorian swore the problem would solve itself, and Lacy … hell, she thought the old fuck would give up in despair.”
“You said Roxanne was the first to go?” Flynn asked.
“Rox…?” Orick hung on the name for a moment. “Yeah. Should have said somethin’ to her. Didn’t. Like I said, new meat. She died.” After his own experience in Heaven, Flynn questioned that. “Stupid bitch … didn’t even think about what it meant if she failed.”
“What did it mean?” Zaja asked.
“Conflict’s natural complement was gone,” Zella explained before returning to Orick. “Without Harmony, your aura has no impediment, and Keltia … this world is the heart of your sphere of influence, isn’t it?”
“What’s that mean?” Shea asked.
“As I’ve come to understand it, these so-called gods hold sway throughout different branches of the universe,” Chari replied. “Their power is strongest in the place tied to their origins, but it spreads beyond, rippling out.”
“Ripple starts here?” Shea confirmed. She looked appalled as she tried to grasp the implications of it all. She turned on Orick, frustrated with the incomplete puzzle. “You’re to blame? You and some dead bint? All the death, the dead … my family, my home?”
Orick was unmoved by her accusations. Instead, he chided her. “Off my back, you fuckin’ crybaby. Yer watchin’ all this through a window. Some of us only get the big picture.” Shea gritted her teeth, ready to pull her gun on him. “Go ahead,” he baited her. “Do it. It’ll sting for half a minute tops before we’re right back where we started.”
Flynn placed a hand on Shea’s, gently consoling her. “What good are you?” she snapped at Orick. “Self-centered, pissant god of war’s all I see.”
“That’s all you think I am?”
“Isn’t it?” Jean asked. “From what I see, you’re doin’ more harm than good, Orick. Why the fuck don’t you step down?”
“Ya know what the fuck would happen to you people if I did?” Orick demanded. “Conflict ain’t just about war, and that’s not what I’m the god of! Take away conflict, and we’d all just sit and rot, drowning in apathy and indifference without those urges to fuck and fight and kill to keep us runnin’.”
Zella cringed at the implication. “We are so much more than that—”
“We are,” Orick agreed. “But the impulse of conflict drives us to challenge every moment we live in, to take the things we want and need. And yeah, at its worst, it drives us to war. At its best?” he looked at Flynn and Jean. “Lets us decide that where we are just ain’t good enough.”
“Well … what if you just gave up being a god for a little while?” Zaja asked. “Let things cool down on Keltia for a bit without your influence?”
“There’s another reason,” he said, looking at Zella. “You’re Renivar’s brat, ain’t ya?” She nodded affirmation, but Orick just shook his head. “Oughta break yer fuckin’ neck. If I hadn’t swore to stay out of this shit. Even then…”
Flynn fought the urge to act, and saw his friends similarly tensing up. It may have been the threat to Zella’s well-being, or the insidious nature of Orick Daimous’s aura driving this impulse. Flynn clenched his hands and drove his nails into his palms to stave off the tension.
“You have to have seen it,” he said. “Taryl and Airia … me an’ Roxy. We all came from the same sources. We’re grouped together because we’re tied together.”
“I recall now! It was as Airia told us.” Chari turned to Flynn and Jean with a bright expression. “The power she shared with Taryl Renivar and Kayra Kwarla stems from a single source: a goddess she identified as Ukriasa.”
“All these orders, these messes of gods,” Orick explained. “They were one, once. Dunno why, but the fucks got it in their heads to divide what they had an’ pass it down in pieces. Ya get where I’m goin’ with this?”
Flynn was beginning to put the clues together in his head, but it was Zella, raised nearest these matters, who understood first.
“Your divinity is tied to theirs. Even in their absence, some remnant of your fellow god and goddesses stays with you.”
Orick gave Shea a condescending told-you-so look as he followed up. “And that scrap is the one thing keepin’ all yer tin soldiers from goin’ completely ape shit on each other. I step down, and their influence is first to go, meanin’ half the planet is dead before just givin’ up.”
“Then it’s been the same with Taryl Renivar,” Flynn realized. “Airia and Kayra bound him to Terrias when they thought they’d have the chance to pass their responsibilities on. But the goddesses of Eternity and Fate have been out of play for centuries, meaning Renivar’s power has become a load-bearing pillar for existence.”
“A burden that will fall on me once I strike him down,” Poe realized.
“Which is why you’d better be fuckin’ ready when you do,” Orick pointed out. “There’s a strain that comes with tryin’ to work a power that was never yours. Like tryin’ to play a piano when you can barely touch the keys.”
“Does your present counsel bely intent to aid us?” Chari asked.
Orick faltered. His attitude had improved from his initial hostilities, but he still seemed unwilling to commit.
“We know where we need to go,” Flynn said as he stepped up. “We just need help getting there. The Essence of Eternity is in the care of a woman named Einré Maraius, the—”
“Growth,” Orick interrupted. His tone quickly turned bitter. “Rousow, you bitch. Tellin’ these sorry mortals what you couldn’t tell—”
“Oi!” Shea snapped. “Sod the pity party. You to help us or not?”
Orick shook his head, looking strained. “Can’t. I open a way for you sorry fucks, and they’ll know. How they got here the first time, I still can’t…”
“First time?”
“They never broke the wall,” Orick said, haunted by the memory. “Prigs didn’t fly in either. They just … showed up. Pinned Lorian down in a crowd and the fucks who bowed to us just watched like slack-jawed morons as they killed him right there.”
“That’s why Thoris is abandoned now, isn’t it?” Zella asked. “The people, they … they lost faith. They gave up hope.”
Flynn had what he needed. Orick’s fears were laid bare, and his admission of the consequences of helping them meant he had the means.
“From what you’ve told us, Orick, there’s no reason not to help us.”
“You been listenin’ to a word I’ve said, dumbass?” Orick snarled back. “If I go down—”
“You won’t,” Flynn assured him. “It’s like you said: you’re the last man standing.” Orick pursed his lips, waiting impatiently for Flynn’s reasoning. “Taryl Renivar doesn’t want everyone dead—he’s too intent on saving those he deems worthy to let so many of them get slaughtered in a bloodbath.”
“If I let them notice me—”
“They can’t do anything,” Flynn promised. “They’ve probably been keeping tabs on you the whole time. The God of Neutrality was hiding in a cave over a hundred miles south of here, and they had spies on him for months. And you, Orick—you strike me as a man who has his old haunts, places you think are safe. If they wanted you out of the
picture, you would be already.”
Orick Daimous clenched his fists in frustration as he looked away. Nothing Flynn had said were things he could know for sure; he knew enlisting the man’s aid was exposing him to risk, but they were too close now to permit the only one who could help to turn away. As the gears in Orick’s head turned, his resolve softened.
“We need your help,” Zella implored, and this was the final straw.
At first he gave only one quick nod, but several rapid ones quickly followed. “Fine. Fine, ya … gods, I hate you bastards already.”
* * *
All around him, Orick Daimous saw scars. They were etched into the walls; they rippled in the air. They blanketed the seven stragglers who now obediently followed, some more than others. Nothing they wore could hide these scars, from the gouge on the back of the priestess’s leg to the holes in the Guardian’s shoulder. Every scar had a story, and it was as true for the ones on them as for those in the air itself.
They had begun a gradual descent to ground level. Orick lent no hand with the chains; to do as much would be beneath him, but what was curious was that their self-appointed leader was standing alongside Orick, as if he held similar importance.
“What can you tell me about her?” Flynn asked. The tilt of his head made it clear he was referring to the statue of the Goddess of Harmony.
“Roxy?” Orick replied. There was so little to remember; he’d known her for only a couple of years, and that was over a century back now. “Had a lot of heart. Didn’t like seein’ people fight, so, you know, natural choice for Harmony, I guess. Still had the guts to take a stand when things seemed wrong.”
“And that’s what got her killed,” Flynn concluded.
“Supported me when I first took Conflict’s post,” he said. “Lady who handed me this kind of insane power promised Roxanne Santiaga would be there for me. Didn’t warn me about the shit that was brewin’ on Terrias. Likely didn’t think it important.” It angered Orick oftentimes to recall his lot in life, how little he had to work with, and the question of whether his predecessor knew what she was getting him into when she handed him the duties of a god. “Shortsighted bitch.”
Killers, Traitors, & Runaways Page 34