Then I went and told Nyxra what was happening and spent my last night with her. We talked about our future and I left the majority of my financial resources at her disposal since I wasn’t sure how long I would be gone. We had an extravagant dinner together and stayed up way too late enjoying each other’s company.
The next day I met up with Cupid.
“Are you finally ready?” asked Cupid. He seemed rather impatient.
I nodded to him. The world swirled around me and a wall of rose petals clouded my view. When they faded away I was somewhere else. It was a rather interesting experience. I had never traveled by rose petals before.
I looked around and noticed beneath my feet what appeared to be pink clouds. I looked up and noticed pink clouds also floating above me. I looked left and right. More pink clouds. I felt like I was trapped in a world of cotton candy.
Little red hearts floated through the air. They dipped and dived like a swarm of birds. In front of me were several chairs and tables that appeared to be carved from white marble. They looked like they should sink through the clouds, but apparently the clouds were strong enough to handle the large marble chairs.
Where in the world was I?
“Welcome to my realm. An entire dimension created for the God of Love. Please refrain from any flash photography.”
Wow.
“Oh and clothes are optional here.”
Please no. For the love of gods, no. Just no.
“Since you’re a guest here I will leave mine on this one time.”
I released a breath that I hadn’t realized I had been holding. I decided there were worse things than death. Being here was on that list. Being here with a naked Cupid was definitely at the top of that list.
I looked down and noticed my clothes were no longer black, but instead were solid pink. A really bright pink. Cupid noticed me staring at my own clothes.
“It’s an effect of this realm. It turns all clothes pink. Don’t worry, real men wear pink,” he said with a wink.
I was rather upset about my clothes. I liked black, it reflected my soul. I also hated pink. I gave a mental sigh. I just stood there and took it all in. All the pink made me want to throw up.
“F#(&,” I said out loud without meaning too. Instead of what I meant to say my words came out muffled and three tiny red hearts floated from my mouth.
“I have to leave. Two young people are about to meet. It will be the rare event of love at first sight. It will be a love so strong it will last their entire lives. I want to be there to see it. Feel free to get comfortable and use this time to train.”
With that, he disappeared and hundreds of little hearts floated away from where he had been a second ago. The hearts were all different shades of pink. I gave another mental sigh. Since I didn’t want more hearts flying out of my mouth I kept a civil tongue.
I thought back to all the abilities of shadow that Cronus and Cupid had mentioned. I looked at my shadow and concentrated. Following my natural instinct as the new God of Shadow, it was easy to breathe life into my shadow. It detached itself from me and rose up into a three dimensional being. It was no longer an outline, but a darker version of myself. I could see the very moment it received intelligence. It immediately went to its knees.
“My lord.”
It reminded me of my soul guides. Having what was essentially myself bowing to me was disconcerting.
“Rise,” I commanded it, not wanting it to remain kneeling a second longer.
“My lord, do you wish me to assist you with your training?”
I paused for a second. “How can you help me with my training?”
“My lord, I am a shadow. I know all the secrets of the shadows and I can teach them all to you. My only desire is to serve you.”
“Where would you suggest we start then?”
“Most of your techniques cannot hurt you, but one can easily kill you, even as a god. Just sending a single body part like an arm is rather safe, but traveling through the shadows is extremely dangerous. You need to learn about this ability immediately before an accident happens.”
“Really?”
“If you tried to travel somewhere without a clear destination you could be lost forever in the shadows. In the realm of shadows there are unlimited exit shadows. A portal to your house could be right beside another shadow portal that leads to the core of a planet on the other side of the universe.”
I was considering not learning to travel in shadows as it seemed too dangerous. Though being able to stab a person to death through a shadow was the ultimate assassination technique. My shadow seemed to know what I was thinking.
“The point is you could end up almost anywhere. Even in a place that could kill you. With great risk comes great reward, but in life there is no free lunch.”
I considered what my shadow was telling me. I looked down and I no longer had a shadow because mine was currently walking around on its own. It was rather unnerving not to have a shadow.
“Or you could accidentally send yourself through multiple portals at once. Imagine if your head traveled to one side of the universe and your body to the other side.”
I wasn’t sure even I could survive that. Maybe I could, but I didn’t want to test it.
The shadow reached out his hand. “Take my hand and I will guide you.”
I did as he said and grabbed his hand.
“Follow me into the shadows, my lord.”
We took a step into the nearest shadow and appeared inside a world of gray. We seemed to be floating in the air and everywhere we looked were spots of different colors. My shadow lead me into the shadow in front of us and we stepped out into a field in the middle of nowhere.
“Now we are going to return but you are going to be the one to do it. In your mind picture Cupid’s home realm with all the pink clouds. Now step into the shadows and use your will to direct us back to the shadow realm, then to Cupid’s realm.”
I did as he had suggested and we stepped into the nearest shadow and back into the shadow realm. Once again we were in a world of grey, floating in the air, with spots of all colors and shapes surrounding us. One shadow in particular seemed to be calling to me. It almost glowed.
“Can you sense which shadow you need to choose?”
“Yes.”
“Then guide me through it.”
I stepped into the shadow and we reappeared in the realm of Cupid. Once again I was exposed to the uniqueness of his realm.
“Follow those simple steps and you will be ok.”
“Then how do I just send a single body part through a shadow?”
He looked around and noticed one of the chairs was casting a decent shadow. Looking at the shadow we had just appeared from he stuck his hand into it.
“It is similar, but easier since your body remains here, essentially anchoring you in place. You picture the shadow you want to appear from and simply put your arm into the shadow and it reappears out of the other shadow.”
Which was exactly what he did as his arm reappeared out of the other shadow and waved at us.
“It is easier if you can see the shadow. With time you will naturally get better at this and you will not only be able to sense different shadows in other locations, but you will even be able to sense which shadows different people are near. The only downside is that you can’t travel through moving shadows. So if someone is jogging you are unable to appear in their shadow. If they stop even for a second, then you can use that shadow as a portal.”
I reflected on that. It seemed the ability to spy on someone through the shadows depended on the ability to sense where they were.
“How can I increase my ability to sense?”
“Years and years of meditation and practice. In time you will develop a natural feel for the shadows. Eventually you will just know, like a sixth sense.”
So that’s what we did. We spent over a year, nonstop, either traveling through the shadows or meditating. I even meditated within the shadow realm. I did n
ot need to sleep so we spent every second training. My shadow assured me that I was progressing with amazing speed. I think he was just trying to suck up to me. He knew me so well.
We didn’t stop there. After the first two years, we started practicing all my other powers. There weren’t very many other shadow powers. The whole ‘create a bubble of impenetrable darkness’ thing was easy. It was basically separating myself in a bubble of space that was all my own. Spying became easier as I got a better feel for the shadows. It helped me to keep an eye on everyone.
I often used it to check on Nyxra. I really missed her. I had asked Cupid about bringing her to see me, but humans couldn’t survive in his world, only gods. Occasionally when Cupid was away I would sneak through the shadows and visit her. My trips were secret and short as it would be dangerous for both of us if anyone found out that I was on earth rather than safely tucked away in Cupid’s realm.
Bob and Nyxra were doing well although they both missed me. The alliance with the monster realm improved over time. Bob had been heavily involved in negotiations on the witch side and strongly pushed for peace. He monitored the portal activity and occasionally hunted down rogue monsters, as long as they were not the dead kind.
Edward took an active role in hunting down any monsters that managed to sneak out into the realm and spent a lot of time at the school making connections with the witches. When I heard about his time at the school, I wondered how much of that was just to avoid his future wife-to-be. All Incubus were strictly prevented from using the portal, although their female counterpart Succubus were still allowed under heavy surveillance. Edward’s actions showed the council that he was serious about peace between the realms and went a long way towards mending the rift between witches and monsters.
Nyxra eventually became the head of the witch’s counsel. Working closely with Edward and Bob, she was shifting the school into a hub of inter-realm activity. Classes were moved to the other side of the school away from the portals, and areas near the portals became sectioned off for trade, travel, and communication between the realms.
At this point only the monsters travelled through the portals, but as witches and monsters became more accustomed to being around each other there were talks of witches venturing into the monster realm. With protection, of course. There were also discussions around starting a monster-witch exchange student program.
Chapter 32
After three years I had fully mastered the powers of shadow. I still had a long way to go with the powers of death. Cupid and Cronus still refused to allow me to return to earth. I felt three years was long enough, but according to them three years was a blink of an eye for a god.
I did learn one trick that Cupid and Cronus had not been aware of previously. My shadow armor that I had created when I first received the power of the God of Shadow allowed me to instantly travel without going through another shadow. I could be in the middle of a sun and still be able to travel by shadows.
Unlike Cupid, who was constantly gone for months at a time, my shadow always stayed by my side. Unfortunately, my shadow knew as much about the powers of death as I did. We would ask questions of Cupid whenever he stopped by, which was rare. He was occasionally helpful, but the real help came from Cronus.
Although we were not in Cronus’s realm, he constantly visited us. I felt like he was trying to keep an eye on me. He was a lot of help with learning the powers of death, even though he sighed a lot. He had worked with the past three gods of death and had seen all of my powers used at least once, even if he didn’t understand how to use them.
Even more importantly, he taught me the powers of time that he had gifted me. The first allowed all my minion reapers to take the time that they needed to be there for any person’s death. If there were more deaths than they could handle, time near them would pass slower, allowing them to complete what they were doing and arrive at the next death within seconds of it happening.
The next power would cause time around me to speed up if a death required my special attention. To an outside observer it would appear I had developed super speed. I could deal with issues and get deaths moving again quickly.
I had been granted one additional time ability. I was sworn never to use it except for dire emergencies. I could freeze time, everywhere. The whole universe would come to a grinding stop. Everything everywhere would instantly freeze. The very gears that turned the universe would come to a screeching stop. Only I would be free of the constraints of time. Even Cronus was unsure of the repercussions of stopping time for all of existence. That kind of power left me light headed.
It was only to be used in an absolute emergency. It was an ability that was a little too powerful, even I was a little afraid to use it. After Cronus left I turned to my shadow.
“So Cronus basically forbid us to use the special technique except for emergencies. So are we going to abuse it?” asked my shadow.
With an evil grin I replied, “Maliciously.”
Chapter 33
We had to pick up a few items in the human world. I managed to fill my entire space ring up with items. Then we travelled through the shadows to the world of monsters.
Once there, I froze time. A creature that looked like a cross between a pterodactyl and a slug froze in mid-flight, high up in the sky. Everything in the entire universe froze, not a single being was able to move.
I removed the items we had bought in the human world from my space ring. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I was truly going to enjoy this. My shadow and I took the items we needed and began to move through the city. It was time to enact our evil plan.
During the time that the entire universe was frozen, we took the opportunity to track down every vampire in the monster world. Once found, we proceeded to rub glue on every single vampire. Then we took various bottles of glitter and sprinkled it onto them. Most of them we covered with gold or silver glitter.
My shadow and I stared at an entire group of vampires we had just decorated that now sparkled and just lost it. The rest of our pranks paled in comparison to this.
We placed dog collars on all the werewolves with name tags inscribed with Fluffy or Snookums and even gave a few of them poodle haircuts with the fluffy round tail and everything. I dyed somewhere between one to one thousand werewolves pink. The number was probably closer to one thousand though. Legends of pink werewolves would one day flood the universe. A few did enjoy their new look and decided to continue wearing pink fur. They looked fabulous.
Even with time frozen we left the Rask’s Butler alone. We weren’t that crazy. Even my shadow was scared of him.
After having our fun we returned to Cupid’s realm. Despite time being frozen, Cronus was waiting for us. We knew we were in trouble.
My shadow gave me a look. “My lord, seeing as you won’t be needing me, I’ll be turning back into your shadow.”
“Wait! Don’t…” It was too late, he had already turned back into my shadow. He was flat, two dimensional, and supposedly unable to feel pain. I planned to shine a flashlight on him later just to test that. I shook my head. He was my shadow after all.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
“I made vampires sparkle.” I swear I could see his struggle to keep from laughing. He tried to keep an angry look on his face, but he seemed to be failing.
“Do you realize how much of a drain it is on me when you use that power?”
“No.”
“Using it once or twice for a short time isn’t so bad, but if you use it several times within a few days I will be knocked unconscious from the drain on my powers. That means my powers will stop working. That means your soul guides won’t be able to send souls to the other side. That means the souls of not only your people, but of everyone in all the worlds within the entire universe won’t be able to pass over. Countless souls will become prey to all manner of creatures. Do you want to be responsible for that?”
Truthfully that did sound rather bad. I could feel that t
ime had resumed as normal.
“CUPID!” yelled Cronus. His voice echoed across Cupid’s domain.
Cupid suddenly appeared. “What?”
“You have been neglecting your duties. I know that most of the time you are just teleporting to see one of your many girlfriends or boyfriends. For once I need you to actually stay here and keep an eye on Tarous. Don’t make me turn all of your lovers into senior citizens.”
“I’m not scared of you. I like them a little seasoned sometimes and the humans have invented Viagra. Do your worst.”
Cronus glared at Cupid.
I was a little grossed out. I did not need the details of Cupid’s love life in my head.
Cronus glared even harder at Cupid, and Cupid began to crack under his glare. I could see Cupid growing uneasy, and I could tell he felt guiltier by the second.
“I apologize,” said Cupid as he looked down at the floor while rubbing his right elbow.
“Good. Stay here with the boy. You can do something useful like teaching him ‘Love’s True Arrow’.”
“‘Love’s True Arrow’?”
“Yes, it’s an arrow that never misses,” said Cronus before disappearing.
I felt rather guilty about all the work these two gods were putting in to keep me safe.
I turned to Cupid. “Why do the two of you work so hard to keep me safe?”
“We are part of a faction of gods. Time, space, death, love, and a few other gods. We are one faction of the gods. We protect each other to keep any other factions from killing our group to promote themselves to God Kings or Elder Gods. Basically all factions do the same thing. We agree not to hunt each other and we agree to protect each other if any rival factions try to hunt us.”
“Why didn’t you stop Chaz when he killed the previous God of Death?”
Tarous Page 17