Tarous

by Jeremy W Eason

  Cupid was quiet for a moment. “The previous reaper wanted to die and he wanted you to become the new death. He only allowed Chaz’s spell to work because the rules require it. A god can’t kill themselves. They must allow someone else to kill them if they want to die. If a god dies without being killed, no one can ever become the god of that aspect again.”

  “Has something like that ever happened before?”

  “Of course. How do you think we learned it? Ironically, the God of Life committed suicide. Since he wasn’t killed by anyone, no one became the new God of Life ever again. Life still continues in the universe since gods are merely the representatives of each aspect, but no other gods can obtain the powers of the God of Life or use those powers to promote themselves to a God King or Elder God.”

  An entire god that would never exist again. I contemplated that for a few seconds.

  “I shudder to think what would happen if the God of Death killed himself and we were unable to usher the souls of the living straight to the other side. People would still die, but countless souls that didn’t pass to the other side on their own would be stuck on this side. They would be devoured by predators, forever ceasing to exist.”

  I now realized why so much attention was shown to me by Cronus and Cupid. It was more than being in the same faction. People would truly suffer if the powers of the God of Death were ever lost or fell into the hands of someone evil, or someone who just didn’t care.

  “Now, the ‘Love’s True Arrow’ technique. It is an arrow that never misses. A technique that I, as the God of Love, created to help me with my duties. I often shoot people with my love arrows, but after a few unfortunate misses I began working on this technique.”

  A bow and a quiver of arrows appeared at my feet. I reached down and picked them up. Two clouds detached themselves and created two round targets that hovered in the air.

  Cupid materialized a bow that made me think of white marble in a pliable form. It was large, but shared similar features of a compound bow. It was inlaid with little pink hearts and gave off a golden glow. It looked like a divine weapon of a god, which is exactly what it was.

  A beautiful quiver that appeared to be made of a white leather material appeared on Cupid’s back. Most impressive of all were his arrows. The arrow head was a deep red heart made of some kind of shiny red metal. The shaft was a thick golden metal and the feathers at the end of the arrow were golden as well.

  “This technique never misses. With it you will always be able to deeply penetrate the target.”

  He was being serious for once but I snickered at his description of the technique. He looked over at me trying to stifle my laughter and gave me a wide grin. Then Cupid pulled back his bow, which glowed a deep red around the arrow head, and let his arrow fly straight to the target’s heart shaped center. It did penetrate deep. Over half the arrow was imbedded in the target.

  “Impressive.”

  “The trick is simple. You must fill your arrow with your love. Focus on how beautiful the target is, how wonderful the target is. You must make the arrow love the target. There is nothing in this world that can make the arrow as happy as penetrating the target. Then no matter what stands in the arrow’s way, no matter the distance, the arrow will always find its way to the target.”

  His arrow sounded more like an arrow of lust than love, but I decided to try it his way. I drew back my bow and I filled my arrow with all the thoughts of love that I could towards the target. It was awkward, but it worked. My arrow wobbled a little and it barely went deeper than the tip, but still it penetrated the target.

  “Not bad for your first time.” He winked at me, causing my face to turn red. I glared at him and notched another arrow.

  We practiced for hours. I thought about the technique as I shot. Love for everyone is unique and no two loves are the same. I had to fill the arrow with my own love. I thought of Nyxra. She became the target in my mind and I was the arrow. I yearned to be with her, to spend all my time with her. I was incomplete without her.

  I filled my arrow with that yearning and then released it. It flew straight and true. We continued to practice until my love arrow was almost as good as Cupids.

  “How about we go into the human world and let you practice using the love arrow?”

  “Despite being the God of Death, I don’t feel comfortable with killing random humans.”

  “Your arrows will become true God of Love arrows if I gift you some of my power, like Cronus did. When you call upon my power your arrows won’t hurt people, it will only make them fall in love. Though the depth of that love and the number of times a day you can use it will be far shorter than what I can do.”

  “How does this gifting of power actually work? Cronus never went into great detail on how the process works.”

  “You simply will some of your powers into another person. Within our faction the rules state that a God can only gift powers to others in our faction or to loved ones. You will then be able to draw on those powers, though how much is limited by how much power is given. The process is simple. It is all about the strength of your will. You simply focus on giving your power over while touching the other person.”

  I nodded my head while reflecting on what Cupid had just told me.

  “The God of Time has always given the current God of Death at the time around 25%-30% of his actual powers. I’ll only be giving you around 10% of my power. That is why you have to be careful with the power Cronus has granted to you. You have some real power thanks to him.”

  I nodded at his words. I shouldn’t have used the power of time to play pranks. It was a truly great and powerful gift. That Cronus was willing to give up so much of his own power for the greater good was rather humbling.

  “Now give me your hand.”

  I held out my hand and Cupid grabbed it. He closed his eyes and I could feel a new power rushing into me. I felt the same way I did when I received my first kiss from a girl. I felt the way I had felt on my first date, butterflies and all. Pure happiness flooded into me and I felt like I was floating on a cloud. Well, actually, I currently was floating in a world of pink clouds.

  So much raw emotion flooded into me, but then came more. My first breakup. Every bittersweet moment of my life all flooded into me. I was lost in the flood of overwhelming emotion that bombarded me. I was addicted to it. Addicted to the feeling of living.

  As quickly as it started, it stopped. I felt like I was falling from Heaven and crashing back down into my own body. That wonderful feeling from a moment ago was lost. On the inside of my left wrist I now had a tattoo of three tiny black hearts, each smaller than the last. With the tattoo, knowledge flooded into me.

  ‘Cupid’s Bow’. A bow appeared in my hands, but it was different from Cupid’s. Mine was a long bow. Long and slender and solid black. It looked like death incarnate. On my back appeared a quiver of arrows. Instead of the red arrow heads that Cupid had, mine were sleek, thin, and extra pointy heart shaped arrow heads. They were a deep blood red color. The feathers were also black just like the shaft of the bow.

  My bow gave off an aura of death and failed love. It was terrifying even to me. I wasn’t sure these arrows were safe to shoot.

  “Amazing,” commented Cupid. “It looks like your death qi is so strong that it corrupted the little bit of love power that I gave you. I’m guessing you can still shoot arrows to make others fall in love, but if you wanted you could also shoot arrows of death that would instantly kill any human.”

  I couldn’t see how my arrows would be able to do anything besides kill, but I decided that when I shot one I would focus really hard on happy thoughts and, most importantly, love.

  Without any warning and with a swirl of pink hearts, Cupid teleported us to the human realm. One second I was on a pink cloud and the next second I was standing in a street with a car zooming at me.

  Chapter 34

  I yelled and braced myself. Just because a car couldn’t kill me didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.
Luckily for me the car passed right through me.

  I was like a ghost currently. One of Cupid’s abilities, I assumed. No one could see me and every so often I found myself floating above the ground. I floated over to the nearest sidewalk, where several humans walked through me without pausing.

  “You see those two down there?” Cupid pointed, drawing my attention to a man and a drop dead gorgeous bombshell of a woman.

  “Those two are meant to fall in love,” said Cupid as he notched his arrow and shot the man as soon as he looked at the woman.

  “One down,” whispered Cupid. He pulled another arrow from his quiver and notched it to the bow. He pulled the arrow back and let it fly straight to the woman’s heart.

  “Success!” whispered Cupid with a smile.

  The two humans began to walk towards each other. Both with hearts in their eyes. It appeared that the only thing that existed in the world besides them was their beloved. As they got closer their walking turned into running.

  Right before they reached each other, the woman dodged right, avoiding the man, and continued to run. She stopped in front of the window of a shoe store, staring at a pair of high-heeled shoes and practically drooling.

  “I love you,” she said to the shoes.

  The man turned, completely confused and looking a little lost. Things hadn’t turned out the way he had pictured them going.

  “One out of two isn’t bad,” I commented.

  “True,” replied Cupid.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now we move on to the next two targets. We only get one chance at this, it’s dangerous to shoot mortals with love arrows more than once.”

  “Wait, won’t that man always chase after that one woman only to be constantly rejected? He’ll never find true happiness with anyone, because the one person he loves doesn’t love him back.”

  “Yep. Time to go, we have more people to help,” said Cupid as he teleported us away in a cloud of hearts.

  I was starting to wonder if Cupid was actually evil. I had one of my soul guides leave a note in the man’s pocket to buy the woman lots of shoes to win her heart and signed it Cupid. I thought signing it as the God of Death, with love, might freak him out a little.

  After three love triangles, two more forever unrequited loves, and a suicide, we returned to Cupid’s realm. Now I was positive Cupid was evil. Out of all the people we saw, only two actually fell in love, and I was the one that shot the arrows in that instance. Love was a truly terrifying power, and one I vowed to use only when necessary.

  Chapter 35

  I decided to spend less time traveling with Cupid after our little field trip. It wasn’t long before Cupid went off on his own again and left me alone. I had gotten pretty comfortable being in his realm at this point so I found a cozy spot to settle in and do some studying.

  I removed the old book that my soul guides had retrieved for me and read it. The Heavenly Emperor World Technique was fascinating and far more complex that I would have expected. Only one complete copy had been found by my soul guides, so I treated it like the treasure it was.

  Following the directions in the book, I pulled life energy from the air to balance all the death qi in my body. I had already learned how to draw in qi and to purify my body from the pieces of the book that I had acquired years ago, but having the entire book I was able to see that I had only been using the basics of the technique. The book went into further detail around perfecting the technique to make it much more effective and to perform it much more efficiently.

  This time the life qi rushed into my body even faster than last time. Since I had become the God of Death, the amount of death qi inside me had reached staggering amounts. The balance between life and death qi would take time to restore. The imbalance of my qi caused the life qi in my body to grow rapidly. Even with my new understanding of the technique, it took a week of meditating before I felt a change in my body and black goo began to ooze from my skin as impurities left my body.

  I knew making the body of a god more powerful couldn’t be an easy thing. I could feel that my bones were now harder, muscles were now stronger, and that even my organs had become more resilient. A technique so strong it could strengthen a god was truly an amazing technique.

  As I sat there absorbing qi I reflected on the book. Only someone with large amounts of death or life qi could fully utilize this book. For a person lacking in either qi, this technique was useless. The entire technique only focused on one thing, which was to balance life and death qi without reducing it. I wondered who had created this technique. Was it a god? Or something even more powerful than a god?

  When I stood my bones were stiff from sitting so long. My spine popped as I stood and it felt great. I bent my neck to the left and then the right causing it to pop both times. I took a hot shower to relax and get all of the black goo off.

  I didn’t think I would get much stronger anytime soon and I wanted to go home to visit Nyxra, Bob, and my parents. I informed Cupid of my plans to leave when he returned to his realm again.

  “If you really have to I guess that would be ok. Just keep your visit short. I’m coming with you though. Cronus would have my head if I let you go alone. I don’t even want to think about what he would do to me if you got hurt.”

  I wasn’t exactly happy about it, but I really didn’t have a choice. I borrowed some nice new clothes from Cupid. Sadly everything was pink. I wanted to look nice for Nyxra. It had been a few weeks since we had last seen each other. I hoped she had missed me half as much as I had missed her. It would also be nice to go see my parents and Bob as well.

  I used the shadows to wrap us up and transport us outside of Nyxra’s room. I didn’t really want to rely on Cupid for transportation since I wasn’t sure how I felt about appearing in a burst of pink hearts.

  I stepped forward and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I knocked again, this time even louder, but still no answer. I sighed as I turned to leave and almost tripped over Nyxra’s demon familiar of a cat.

  “Where’s Nyxra?” I asked it.

  “Meow meow yoww,” said the black cat.

  “Are you talking to a cat?” asked Cupid, but I ignored him.

  “Thanks,” I replied and headed towards the main dining hall.

  “Meow meow meo meo meow,” said the cat as I walked away.

  “What do you mean this outfit makes me look fat?” I glared at the cat that almost seemed to be snickering. Then I smiled to myself as I had an idea.

  “Oh Crowley! Here boy!” I yelled. My familiar came bounding out of the shadows. He had grown more powerful as I grew more powerful. As my familiar, we were connected on a deep level.

  The tiny dog ran up to the cat and started licking it. A look of pure shock ran across the cat’s face. It turned to run with my happy little dog close on its paws. No matter where the cat ran, the little dog would be able to follow and he would never run out of slobber. I loved that little dog.

  I motioned for Cupid to follow me. We eventually reached the main dining room and I spotted Nyxra. A sudden smile blossomed on her face as she saw me as well. We made our way to each other and I was about to pull her into a hug when Cupid stepped between us.

  Cupid obnoxiously checked Nyxra out from head to toe and then spoke to her. “You are a beauty the likes of which these poor eyes have never seen. I would worship the very ground you walk on for all eternity if I could merely get a single kiss,” said Cupid as he kneeled down before Nyxra.

  “I see your lips moving but all I hear is ‘blah blah blah turn me into a small brown newt’,” replied Nyxra as she removed a black wand from her pocket and gave it a wave.

  While still on the ground, Cupid scuttled backwards across the stone floor.

  “Geez, you could have just said no.”

  I grinned. I had missed her. We quickly kissed and I told her of my plans to go see my parents and Bob. Then I introduced Cupid, who had finally gotten to his feet and stood a few feet behind me.
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  “Nyxra, this is Cupid. The weakest of all the gods that I have ever met.”

  “Hey!”

  “Cupid, this is the lovely Nyxra, my girlfriend, and the world’s best turner of losers into newts.”

  Nyxra decided it was easier to just ignore Cupid.

  “Bob is currently out on a mission for the school. He has been studying golem making and it turns out he is rather good at it. He is also helping the school shore up their magical defenses, but he needed to take a trip to gather supplies. One of the smaller schools of magic happens to have a book he thinks will be rather beneficial to his studies, so he is stopping by to study it.”

  I was rather impressed by Bob and glad he found a field besides necromancy. I was sad that I missed him. I hadn’t seen him in so long, but we were close enough friends that no matter the time between visits, our friendship wouldn’t wane.

  I noticed someone else I hadn’t seen in a while.

  “Edward!” I yelled and waved him over. He was standing around drinking and talking with a group of monsters. A centaur, a banshee, and a few other monsters trailed behind him as he headed over to us. They had heard about me and decided to keep a safe distance behind Edward. I had racked up a rather impressive body count of monsters. I decided it was best to ignore them.

  “Cupid, this is Edward. Edward, this is the God of Love, Cupid.”

  They shook hands.

  “How do you two know each other?” asked Cupid.

  “He enslaved me,” I said in a nonchalant voice.

  “Don’t exaggerate, it wasn’t that bad,” replied Edward. He took a drink out of the wine glass he was holding.

  “Fine, he just tied me up a little,” I winked.

  Edward choked on the wine he was drinking and started to splutter as wine went down the wrong way.

  “STOP THAT! THEY ARE GOING TO GET THE WRONG IMPRESSION OF ME!” yelled Edward, extremely embarrassed.

  Cupid couldn’t help but smile.