by Diana Tyler
With a deafening roar, Zeus extended his right arm at the councilman. But instead of releasing a lightning bolt, he received one square in the chest. The jagged spear of electricity hurled him across the cave, illuminating the farthest corners with the white-hot flash of his trajectory. Chloe’s chest vibrated with the startling boom of his body crashing against the wall.
The rebel spirits stared up at Hector, smoke spiraling from his palm where the bolt had exited.
“Attack!” cried one of the rebels. Ares ran forward, his blood-colored cloak spreading like a sail behind him, his bronze-tipped spear balanced at his shoulder.
All the spirits, save Athena, brandished their swords, spears and shields, and sprang out of their stupor, their dissonant war cries a paean to themselves, a haunting hymn hailing their own blasphemy.
“Now, Ashers, now,” shouted the councilman.
Her memories still suppressed, Chloe had no idea what her family could do. She ducked behind a boulder and watched them transform instantly from common civilians to highly trained soldiers. It took just one glance for her to realize why none of them had asked to be spared from this mission; they were all ready for it. They’d mastered their domas like the weapons they were.
The businesswoman’s briefcase was sprawled open against the wall. It hadn’t contained documents at all, but steel throwing knives, which she now aimed at Ares and Menoetius. The two spirits stopped and stared at her, amused smiles plastered to their faces. She bent down and tore off her red-soled pump. “Come any closer and I’ll make you regret it,” she said, wagging the shoe at them.
Menoetius took a single step and was met by the sharp heel of the woman’s shoe in his windpipe. He clutched his throat and turned away, heaving soundlessly.
Ares wielded his sword and stormed forward. Two knives flew simultaneously into the exposed hollow of his throat. The wound trickled gold rivulets onto his breastplate. He fought to stay upright, but soon found himself swaying on his knees, choking on his own cold ichor.
“Well done!” The shout had come from the man whom Nicholas had healed. His hands were busy suspending three spirits in midair. He kicked his foot toward each of their swords, coaxing them out of their scabbards. With a nod of his head, the blades lifted and rotated themselves slowly until their gleaming tips pointed directly at the spirit’s wide-open fear-filled eyes. They shut their eyes, their stammering lips pleading for mercy.
“Stop this madness,” cried Athena. She ripped off her helmet and threw it, sending it rolling like a child’s ball into Cronus’s gigantic side. “Can’t you see we’ve been bested?” She turned, spreading her arms toward her less courageous peers, who had been hanging back, waiting to see how their comrades fared. They hadn’t fared well.
“It’s true, what the mortal said.” The low voice belonged to Nereus. He emerged from the shadows as if he’d been hiding within them, watching and listening, all along. He hadn’t needed to be a shapeshifter to become a fly on the wall. “Our powers have been taken. We’re foolish to try and fight when we’re so grievously outmatched.”
“Listen to him,” came Andrina’s voice.
Chloe lifted her head to see Andrina stuck to the ceiling. Andrina reached for a puddle of water below and, twirling her finger, changed it back into its former solid state.
Another Asher, a white-haired woman wearing a mauve cardigan and thick black glasses, manipulated the ice from where it stood, dividing and shaping it into a gaseous, unidentifiable substance. “Are you lovely rebels familiar with Asherous gas?” The spirits stared up at the strange cloud drifting like a phantom over their heads. “Of course not, because Talia is the only one who produces it.”
“I assure you,” Talia told the spirits, “that you do not want to breathe it in. It will melt your flesh from the inside out, very, very slowly.”
The cloud lengthened and lowered, parts of it pulling away to form threatening, finger-like strands. Every spirit, save Nereus and Athena, ducked and held their breath as the fumes came near.
“Oh, stop your whimpering.” Athena eyed the cloud defiantly. “How quickly you have all forgotten that it’s they who are mortal, not us.” She gestured to Ares and Cronus on either side of her. “Cronus will rise again. And the humans’ powers will run dry.” She grinned at Talia, and then lifted her chin to the toxic fumes. “Let us die with honor, brothers and sisters. These humans will reap what they have sown soon enough.”
“Do it, Talia,” the councilman said. “It’ll buy us some time.”
Talia nodded, and with a swift drop of her hands, dragged the cloud down and wrapped it around the spirits, veiling them in a see-through sheet of toxic miasma.
Chloe turned away. Her stomach could handle a lot of things, but liquefied flesh wasn’t one of them.
“Chloe.”
She nearly screamed at the sound of Damian’s whisper in her ear. He appeared next to her, grimacing as he watched the spirits succumb to Talia’s doma. Chloe pressed her palms against her ears, unable even to bear the sound of them wheezing, collapsing, and thrashing on the ground. It didn’t matter how evil a person was; no decent person could ever enjoy watching another suffer.
As she waited for the noise to fade, Hermes’ voice whispered in her head: It was we who created war. It was we who ushered death into this planet. The world suffers the repercussions of our perfidy. Could defeating the rebels really remove suffering and war from Petros? She could scarcely imagine such a world.
After a few minutes, Damian tapped her shoulder. “It’s over.”
Chloe uncovered her ears and glanced up. No evidence of the Asherous gas remained, and already one of the Ashers had obscured the carnage with opaque swaths of darkness that domed the scene like a sarcophagus.
“Athena’s right,” said Damian. “The rebels will regenerate faster than our domas.”
He stopped himself from saying another word, but Chloe could read his thoughts like a book. They’d hit a dead end. What other option was there but to retreat, return to their own time or another time from the past, and regroup.
Chloe let out a long sigh, feeling her chest and shoulders sag under the weight of another failure. What had she done wrong? What had Carya expected her to do differently? It didn’t matter that Hector had sapped the spirits’ strength. It didn’t matter that the Ashers could stab, freeze, fight and asphyxiate them. They were still invincible.
They would recover, harboring more hatred for the Asher race than ever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
JASPER
Chloe shook her head, replaying Carya’s directive to “change the course of treason.” Carya had never said to kill them, or defeat them, which is exactly what they’d been trying, and failing, to do.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said, her tongue heavy and slow. In her periphery, she saw the Ashers coming toward her. They’d just put their lives on the line, and for what?
“How long until they come back to life?” one of them asked the councilman.
“It took Ares about two days,” he replied.
Chloe was listening from where she crouched behind a boulder, still unwilling to face the Ashers. Damian took her arm and helped her up.
The Asher who’d levitated the rebels wiped the sweat from his forehead. “So we wait for them to wake up and then do this all again?” he said to the councilman. “Sounds like a pretty exhausting game, if you ask me.”
“And a futile one,” the councilman agreed. “They have no vulnerabilities, and we…” He looked at Nicholas. “Well, Nicholas’s healing ability has its limits as well.”
“So what?” Andrina asked, snapping a piece of bubblegum she’d acquired from who knew where. “We go back to our world? I can get back to the beach?”
“It won’t be long before Zeus turns that beach into a disaster zone,” said Talia. She looked at Chloe, her crows’ feet deepening as she smiled warmly. “I’m your grandmother, little monkey.”
Chloe’s mind flashed to her chi
ldhood days spent climbing into the treehouse and swinging from the monkey bars. The nickname was certainly fitting. Chloe nodded and smiled back. In the old timeline, her grandmother had had her coronation when Chloe was too young to remember her.
“I don’t remember you yet,” she said sadly. “Not yet, at least.” Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be reuniting with her family under different, much more lighthearted circumstances. She looked around at all of them, forcing herself to make eye contact and accept any blame and ridicule they might throw at her. “I’m sorry. I really thought that bringing you all here was the answer. I didn’t want your domas to be taken away before I—”
“Taken?” the businesswoman asked. “Taken how?”
The councilman’s whistling exhalation sounded almost painful. His face looked as though this nerve-racking ordeal had aged it twenty years. He fished around in his coat pocket for a nectar-filled syringe.
Hector, now shortened by a foot or more, bent down and pounded his fist on the boulder. A pool of water appeared on its surface and cascaded down its sides, transforming the rock into a veritable fountain. The councilman cupped his bony hands and held them under the water. It was no life-giving nectar, but it would have to do for now.
“There are relics,” he said, when he’d had his fill of water. “Seven of them, each one symbolizing a band of the Moonbow, the story of which we all know well.”
Chloe could see Hector’s enlarged fingers picking at his nails, just like she did. He’d been the one to steal the jars for Zeus; she could almost feel his guilt twisting her stomach into a knot.
“They’ve been kept, protected, in a secret location,” the councilman continued. “But the rebels managed to steal them anyway. If and when they destroy them, our powers will be destroyed along with them.”
No one moved or said a word. There was nothing to say. They were trapped. To stay meant death, sooner or later. To travel back to the present meant defeat and unthinkable retribution at the vengeful hands of Zeus. Chloe couldn’t help but wonder how many other leaders in history had been in this nightmarish predicament, faced with nothing but hopelessness and yet obliged to project confidence and calm.
Leaning over the fountain to splash her face, she stopped abruptly and stared at her reflection. The jasper stone twinkled at her like the red planet named, ironically, for Ares. There were seven bands, she realized. And the first was red. “Jasper,” she whispered, the word rumbling from her lips like a bashful roll of thunder.
Hearing her, understanding registered on the councilman’s face. The others looked at her like she’d lost her mind.
“Six of the relics were stolen,” she told them, tapping the stone. “But not this one.”
“What does that mean?” Hector asked. He was standing beside her, nearly back to his normal height.
The brilliance of the stone’s reflection assured her there was an answer, but what that answer was she couldn’t begin to guess. All she knew was that it couldn’t be a coincidence that the jasper had been given to her two thousand years ago.
“We all know the song of Iris,” said the councilman. “We learned it as a song in nursery school.” He moved his hands like a conductor’s and began to sing: “Red, the highest band, color of blood and vice; I have learned to see within you redemption, sacrifice.”
Half of the Ashers joined in, smiling with nostalgia at the light, sweet-sounding tune. “Orange, like the healing flower, and the burning desert sun; both have power, both hold brilliance, but none compares to the Promised One.”
Chloe fast-forwarded the song in her mind. After orange, there was yellow amber, which symbolized salvation. Then came green emerald for forgiveness. Next was blue for Carya’s sword, which had been bequeathed to the Centaur. Then came indigo, for the sacred veil in the temple, representing man’s separation from Duna. And last was violet, named for the waters of the bathing pool in which Iris had been cleansed of her bloody past.
As the councilman had explained, a fragment of each one of those objects had been extracted for posterity, and safekeeping. But what if they were more than museum artifacts? What if they could do more than neutralize the Ashers’ domas? Every gift from the All-Powerful could be used for evil if its Vessel chose. But evil was never their purpose. The purpose of a gift was to impact the world for good, never evil.
Chloe’s mind was spinning with questions and half-baked hypotheses. “Do you know anything else about the relics?” she asked the councilman.
“I wish I did.” He buttoned his sport coat and puffed into his hands to warm them.
Chloe knew that if Iris were here, she could’ve created a fire for all of them. And afterward she probably would have offered them ironwort tea to calm their nerves before imparting her insight, insight they so desperately needed now. She could see Iris’s face, as clear as day, smiling at her from the sunny window of her memory.
Iris’s youth had been one of anger, obstinacy and vengeance; the latter bestowed on her by the jasper stone as she succumbed to bloodlust birthed by grief. Chloe didn’t know her entire story, but she’d seen firsthand how it had ended. Iris’s restlessness was replaced by peace. Her vengeance was erased by love. And the jasper stone was given new meaning.
“Redemption.” Chloe said the word aloud, and Iris’s voice repeated it in her head, rising like a quiet shout from the bottom of a well.
“What did you say, Chloe?” Damian said.
“Don’t you remember? Iris said the jasper represents redemption and…” She rubbed the leather cord of the necklace and closed her eyes, envisioning that day in the woods of Ourania when Iris had given the stone to her. “And recovering that which was lost.”
Damian stared at the stone, his head tilted in contemplation. “I remember now. She said its purpose for her was recovering her faith—”
“But that it remained to be seen what its purpose is for us,” said Chloe, finishing his sentence.
She removed the necklace and held it by the knot, letting it dangle in the light for the Ashers to see. The center of the jasper began to glow, gently at first, like a firefly caught in a jar. Then, as if it were a fan being flamed, it grew to fill the entire stone, blooming like a flaming rose that could not be devoured.
“It’s never done this before.” Chloe knelt down to observe it more closely.
The inside of the stone looked like a spiral galaxy. Four distinct spiral arms spun slowly around a flat, disc-shaped cluster of shimmering dust, its brilliance dull compared to the radiance of bright blue dots gleaming like stars within the swirling bands of light.
“I’ve picked up several jasper stones during my beach vacations,” said Andrina, “but none of them can do that.”
“It looks just like a galaxy,” said Chloe softly, fearing the beauty might dissolve if she spoke above a whisper.
Nicholas leaned in to inspect it as well, both eyes nearly closed as he squinted to see. “But not our galaxy. The Ápeiro Galaxy is an ordinary spiral galaxy, but this one’s barred.” This statement was met with unmoved silence and blank stares.
Chloe reached into her pocket and pulled out the dýnami, once again feeling its heat pulsating in the center of her palm. “Eyesight,” she said, focusing on the hazy white nucleus of the galaxy. In seconds, the miniature universe was magnified, allowing her to see with the precision of a telescope. “He’s right. I see a blurry white line running through it.”
“The bars,” said Nicholas. “I can see pretty well for an old guy, huh?”
Chloe gasped. “But I bet you didn’t see this.”
“What?” Nicholas asked. “What do you see?”
The doma vanished. She’d only been given a glimpse, but it wasn’t what she saw, but what she felt, that stopped her heart. “A planet,” she said. “It had several continents separated by water. Lots and lots of water.”
“Definitely not Petros, then,” said Damian.
“It was made for the rebels,” said Chloe. “I know it. I don’t know how, but
I know it.”
CHAPTER FORTY
HELLAS
Chloe looked up from the stone, expecting to see the faces of her family reflecting nothing but incredulity, skepticism, and concern for her mental state. But to her surprise they were regarding her with the respectful esteem of an opera audience.
“You actually believe me?” She doubted she would believe herself if she was in their shoes.
“You and Damian are the Vessel, Chloe,” said the councilman, “and not just in the timeline, you know.”
Damian’s eyes glanced up and down, and then up again as he slid one hand into his pocket and scratched his ear with the other one.
“What is it?” Chloe knew his body language as well as she knew her own.
Damian sighed. “I’ve had a few dreams about that planet. I saw it and five or six others rotating around a sun.” He laughed. “Crazy, right?”
The councilman clapped Damian’s shoulder. “Not crazy. Prophetic.”
“You didn’t get any sort of feeling when you dreamed it?” Chloe asked Damian.
“I felt like I probably ate too much before going to bed.”
The Ashers all laughed, and the sound tinkled in the air like music.
“Like the oracles teach us,” said the councilman. “‘Laughter is medicine, healing to the bones.’” His peaked face was made more boyish just by reciting the sacred verse. He smiled at Chloe, then at Damian.
Chloe could see nothing of his mother in the muddy pools of the councilman’s eyes. No, there was not one iota of Mania’s fury in him, only Hermes’ cleverness and the smallest dash of his gumption. She could see the latter now as the councilman drew back his shoulder blades, assuming the posture of a spry and dauntless dignitary.
“I believe we know what the relic’s purpose is for you two now.” The councilman’s eyes regained their youthful copper tint as they gazed into the jasper stone.