Killers, Traitors, & Runaways: Outcasts of the Worlds, Book II

by Lucas Paynter

  “Our sister, Amlia, was born first, though we have all reigned equally,” she replied. Einré looked intently at Chari when she added, “I see you are well aware of our showboating middle sister, Hapané.”

  “Private fuckin’ island runnin’ over with vines, and she’s the showboater?” Jean asked under her breath.

  Poe took his place between his companions and Einré and knelt before her. He trembled in this submission; it was not so easy to supplicate to a goddess as it once had been for him.

  “Milady … I am Poe, former Guardian to Heaven’s gates. Airia Rousow herself has chosen me, and so I have come to claim her mantle as my own. To succeed her, in godhood.”

  Einré declined any immediate comment, and looked down on him as he looked up at her. Flynn felt a calm inside, and knew before she spoke that despite what reservations she had, Einré had no intention of rejecting Poe.

  “I see you … and I find you wanting,” she said.

  Poe couldn’t help but rise in offense. “Wanting?”

  “Airia chose him!” Zaja protested. “We went through a lot to get Poe here—”

  “I did not claim to decline him,” Einré snapped. “Though I have the means…” She examined Poe thoroughly in a moment’s glance. “I haven’t the right.” Einré shook her head, looking ready to weep. “His soul is a killing field … that such desperate times would drive us to this…”

  She was unable to finish her thought.

  “Then you shall not deny me?” Poe asked.

  “You may enter,” she nodded. “You are all welcome, except…” That piercing gaze returned to Flynn, and Einré’s hostility with it. “…you.”

  “Wait, why?” Zaja asked.

  “Lookin’ to pick a fight, lady?” Jean followed.

  “What purpose is served in denying Flynn but no other among us?” Chari added.

  Flynn stepped to the fore. He wanted to look Einré in the eyes and understand why she held such contempt for him. “Tell me.”

  She looked down in a haughty manner. “I will not have a lowly beast defiling my sacred space.”

  “Beast, you call us?” Shea snapped, offended. “Not the only one looks this way, have you know.”

  Einré shook her head in refusal. “I said nothing of his appearance.” Her disgust for Flynn was unmistakable. “What vile deeds had you performed to succumb to such savagery?”

  Her condemnation injured Flynn, but through it he found a glimmer of hope: though he had never expected to return to normal, a piece of him craved it all the same. Understanding how he had been remade might evidence a means of return, and with uncertain motive, he lifted his head and asked, “How?”

  “I have seen your Earth,” she said. “Astounding, for how little grows there. But I have seen it, just the same. It is mired in aimlessness, unending days of doubt, and apathy. And I have seen the cruelty this gives way to, the things men must do to survive.” She shook her head, nonetheless, in disappointment. “I would not even imagine the atrocities you partook in.”

  There were so many. Was there some specific sin of his that incited this change? Something that even a murderer like Poe was innocent in comparison to? Flynn felt like he was only being shown the edges of the puzzle.

  “What sort of crime could change a person to something less than human?” he asked.

  “I have one question first: answer it, and I shall satisfy yours in return,” she said. Flynn nodded his acceptance. “How did you meet your change? What was the catalyst? Was it a place of intense ethereal energy or some forgotten artifact of cosmic import? Or was it—”

  “Neither,” Flynn interrupted. He knew what she was getting at, and he remembered it all. The crooked deal, another wayward soul set to lose freedom and hope in a single stroke. Flynn had followed an impulse, led by little more than curiosity. He could not see the way between worlds when he touched it, but it reached inside him and rearranged him in maddening agony.

  Einré nodded in satisfaction. “And so you formed a connection,” she concluded.

  “A connection?”

  She studied Flynn with invasive confidence. “What went through your mind when you betrayed another’s confidence? When you shared their greatest secrets with their bitterest enemies? When you committed an act that cost them everything they held dear?”

  Flynn didn’t like being read. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing,” she asked with faux disbelief. “You held people’s lives in your hands and it was nothing to you?”

  He shook his head. “It was just another day.”

  “He was a douchebag,” Jean groaned impatiently. “Yer point?”

  Einré was momentarily bewildered. “Dou…?” She shook it off. “Instances of cruelty demean us, but they do not erode us. But perpetual cruelty breeds callousness with it, and the more that spreads, the worse the world is for all. How cruel and callous must we become until there is nothing of our spirit left but shadow?”

  “Shadow?” Poe asked, haunted.

  “A dark shadow, the very antithesis of being,” she replied. She returned to Flynn, and seemed to enjoy looking down on him. “You were empty, nothing decent or humane in you. You had hollowed yourself out, and whatever was left of you was memories. Then you touched the rift and became connected … to everything.”

  A pain spread through Flynn. It was difficult to look Einré—or anyone—in the eye.

  “Only those who have eroded themselves completely suffer such a fate,” she said. Then, to Flynn’s surprise, she turned inquisitive. “Yet … those who fall so deep come out more monstrous, more … deranged. What is different with you? What changed?”

  There had been hope for Flynn as a child, before he’d been drawn into his father’s petty schemes and witnessed his mother’s manipulative guile. His ability to understand people came with great empathy, for what better way to manipulate them?

  “At the pivotal moment, I felt … sorry,” he replied. “For my victims.”

  Zella could not resist suggesting the alternative. “For yourself.”

  And Flynn could not deny her. “I felt sorry.”

  Poe stepped forward, looking at Flynn for a moment, then back to Einré. “I was a monster in my own right. Why have I not been similarly twisted?”

  Flynn already knew the answer. “You were not completely gone. We were able to save you. … No earthly force would have helped me. I had to save myself.”

  “And so you have it,” Einré followed. “Let us enter, Guardian. The rest of you may stay or follow, but the tainted one remains outside.”

  When Einré moved to enter, Poe faltered, torn between loyalties.

  “Fuck you, lady!” Jean said with a laugh. “Think we came this far just to break up the band now?”

  “It honestly makes no difference to me,” she replied. “I’ve a long-awaited duty to perform. I would finally see it done.”

  “Excuse me?” Einré looked with some surprise at Zaja, who stepped to the front almost sheepishly. “Just one question, Miss … Einré? Goddess? Ma’am?” Her nervousness increased with every address. “Since Flynn’s already been changed, what more harm can he do?”

  Einré studied Flynn for a moment, and shook her head uncomfortably. “That I do not know is what truly scares me.”

  Flynn wanted to tell Einré that her fears were groundless, that he was a changed man. Yet he already knew what would come next.

  “I shall take my leave of you all for a time,” Poe said to his allies. “At my return, I shall be more than any mere man.”

  “You’re so comfortable, abandoning us so quickly?” Flynn asked. He felt guilty, for exploiting Poe’s self-doubt.

  “We’ll go with you as far as we can,” Zaja offered. “Do we have to part here, even if it’s just for a while?”

  Poe looked at Einré, who had clearly run out of patience.

  “They have endured much at my side,” he said plainly.

  “Guardian—” she began to protest.

  �
�Even if I didn’t need them, I would not wish to be without them.”

  She stepped away from him, and looked at Flynn one more time. With resignation, she warned him, “If I so much as suspect one step out of line, I will end you.”

  Flynn nodded. She feared what he might do in her inner sanctum. It was not a baseless fear.

  *

  Einré’s castle was like a fractured garden, its stone walls webbed with vines that ran in and out through the brickwork. At first glance, it seemed they were steadily destroying this age-old structure, but on closer inspection, Jean realized that pieces of the castle were no longer connected to the core structure, and were held in place entirely by the vines encaging them.

  “I’ve seen this place before,” Flynn told her quietly.

  “How the fuck did ya manage that?”

  “A historical painting, back in Cordom. It didn’t look the way it does now,” he clarified, crossing the roots of an ancient tree. “But something profound happened here, and it likely involved one of the Maraius sisters.”

  Dead leaves crunched against the throne room floor. There was no trace of the grand courts the castle had once hosted—just a small desk to the side, where a young man in his teens was writing studiously. He watched them curiously before meeting Einré’s disciplined stare, then urgently returned to his work and doubled his pace.

  “’Nother god?” Shea asked.

  “My boy-servant, Ellis,” she corrected. “He will tend to any needs you might have during your stay. Guardian?”

  Poe approached her, and she led him to a nearby archway, completely suffused with vines.

  “The power Airia Rousow once wielded is at the pinnacle of this tower,” she said. “It has been concealed for centuries using means both natural and otherwise.”

  “And that’s why I can’t sense anything?” Flynn asked.

  “I have taken great pains to ensure Rousow’s legacy is preserved,” Einré replied. “She and I go back a long way. Airia mentored me—and all my sisters—when I when I first became Mystik of Growth.”

  “How long have you held such rank?” Chari asked.

  “Nearly thirty-one hundred years, Priestess.” Einré thought on this for a moment, adding, “Over seventeen hundred then, by your measure,” for Flynn and Jean.

  Jean scrunched her face. “No—no, that ain’t right. Rousow said she held for a thousand years and she’s been outta the game for another four hundred—right?” She looked to Flynn for confirmation, and he nodded. “I don’t math good as I’d like, but even I know there’s a few hundred missin’ there.”

  The goddess smiled condescendingly. “Nothing she spoke was a lie,” she said, and left it uncomfortably at that.

  “Rousow’s past is her own concern,” Poe said as he stepped forward. “My only concern is the future—am I to carve my own path, Einré?”

  She shook her head. “You needn’t worry yourself. Allow me some time to prepare and I shall open the way.” She started out of the room but Jean couldn’t imagine what for—the tower entrance was right in front of them.

  “Yer the Mystik of Growth, ain’t ya?” Jean called after her. “You gonna will all these plants to … un-grow?”

  Einré didn’t answer, and merely laughed before vanishing down a dark passage.

  “I guess that’s not part of her skill set,” Zaja suggested.

  “Still … what a bitch.”

  “I would ask you to be forgiving of her Holiness’s eccentricities.” Ellis had approached from behind, his hands clasped together. His flowing hair had a greenish tinge, and his slender figure was wrapped loosely in Saryu-style robes. “She is long lived,” he went on, “and is burdened by woes that manifested long before any of us were born.”

  Jean shook her head and sighed. “Seems like every god I meet lately makes me wanna punch ’em in the nose.”

  “The fact that you can say that means none of us are having normal conversations anymore,” Zaja pointed out.

  “Well, it’s true!” Jean complained. “Half the shit these guys pull, I’d have decked ’em back on Earth. Or do I have to remind ya of Yetinau and his creepy rape vibe?”

  “It’s not like he would have actually—never mind, I still can’t defend that,” Zaja conceded.

  “They may have been like us once, but they are nonetheless gods,” Ellis argued. “Their choices are informed by centuries of experience. It is not for us to question.”

  “Has she raised you to believe this?” Chari asked. “You are yet young, but surely you know that these women parading as goddesses were mortal once?”

  Ellis seemed offended. “I am older than I look, Saryu. Her Holiness, Einré, took me in when I was not yet a grown man, true—but I have been blessed with lasting youth.”

  Zella had been looking around, but this captured her attention. “Lasting youth?”

  “My body shall never appear to age, even if age itself kills me,” he explained. “Were I not so blessed, I might appear old enough to be your grandfather.”

  Chari visibly winced at the notion. The effete young man took no offense, but his attention swiveled to Poe, who asked, “How did you come to Lady Einré’s employ? Did you possess some special skill or merit that warranted such interest?”

  Ellis shrugged. “She just … picked me.”

  “Picked you?” Shea asked.

  “Off the streets. On my way to church.” He spoke as though it were nothing unusual.

  “Talked to your mum and dad, ’least? Got their consent?”

  Ellis grew uncomfortable. “Not so much ‘consent’ as, well, ‘never really found out.’”

  “So, wait, you’re a runaway?” Zaja asked.

  “Sort of,” he replied with a shrug. “I mean, I left a note.”

  “There’s no ‘sort of’ about it. I’m a runaway. Either you are or you aren’t.”

  “I think you’re blowing this out of proportion,” he said nervously. “A goddess appeared before me. I couldn’t say no, but it’s not like I was planning—”

  “So she kidnapped you?” Flynn asked.

  “It’s not kidnapping when a goddess does it!”

  “I’ve doubts as to a divine exception to the term,” Chari countered.

  Ellis visibly squirmed. “I’ve work to attend to.” He excused himself and returned to his desk, where he shielded his hand over his brow to avoid further eye-contact.

  “He seems happy,” Zaja offered weakly.

  “I ever get happy stuck under someone’s thumb, shoot me,” Jean retorted.

  The conversation was interrupted by the sound of something hissing. A flame was dancing down the corridor Einré had earlier vanished through, and Jean’s eyes widened when she realized the Goddess of Growth was emerging bearing an old flamethrower.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” she assured them, the equipment clattering as she walked by.

  There was dumbfounded silence for a moment, before Jean found the words to break it. “Okay. That’s a solution.”

  Einré set to work, and a blazing light filled the room until she breached the entrance and began climbing the tower stairs. As the brightness diminished steadily, Jean found herself studying Poe, who watched with intense, seemingly unblinking devotion. The fires danced in his eyes and stayed even after Einré was out of sight.

  This worried Jean. She’d never cared for Poe, but a camaraderie had developed between them for all they’d endured together. Once he climbed that tower and claimed his prize, he might find no reason to stay, let alone see her to Breth to learn what became of Mack.

  For all his failings, as a mortal man, Poe had at least become reliable. Could she hope the same from him once he became a god?

  *

  The spire’s inner walls were scorched black, but for the marks left by the growths that had webbed them, now spread across like veins. What remained was withered and brittle and ready to snap from the smallest brush. As Poe’s gloved hand grazed the walls, there was a tremble of anticipatio
n. Yet his steps were heavy for the burden strung across his back, and he felt as if the Dark Sword were weighing him down, as though it knew something of what awaited and that its days were somehow numbered.

  Strength before you are strong.

  That was what the Dark Madam of the wretched keep had promised Poe, and he had taken it without hesitation. Fainshild Moira had paid the price, and as a boy, he had abandoned her without a second glance. As Poe climbed the steps, he no longer held any illusion that deification would set his soul free, or absolve him of what sins he’d committed.

  Without this blade, you shall be the same weak boy who entered…

  When Poe breached the tower’s peak, he did not know what to expect. At first glance, it seemed he’d come into an insignificant room, and his heart raced—had Einré chosen to deny him his reward? If an icon of godhood was kept here, it did not call attention to itself. But then—

  “What is this?”

  It rested on a cradle at the far side of the room—an egg, large enough to fill two hands and shelled in a strange, brittle stone. Though he knew not what it was, the solution seemed apparent.

  Poe drew the Searing Truth, his father’s sword, and held it in his left hand. It was a fine blade, forever sharp, with a weight to it that his Dark Sword lacked. Poe turned the blade over in his hand, then struck the butt of it against the shell, cracking it.

  As it split, a thick black ooze seeped out, pooling on the floor. Poe studied it suspiciously—he had seen the substance before. He drew the Dark Sword halfway and glanced at the blade; the oily pattern on it seemed to be moving toward the ooze, as though it wished to meld. On the altar, the ooze had nearly drained, revealing a second, smaller egg within the first. He took care to examine it before acting, but it seemed no more unusual than the larger one it had been contained within.

  “Is this Einré’s idea of a joke?” he spat in frustration. Nonetheless, Poe repeated his previous action and struck the shell with the butt of the Searing Truth. A light erupted from within, its fractured beams desperately reaching out. It had been contained too long and yearned to be free, craved to connect with Guardian Poe himself.

  The fingers in his left hand felt weak. The golden hilt of the Searing Truth held no value to him, and he let it fall without another thought, released from familial duties. He reached out and grasped the light before him, and felt its essence sliding inside him as though he were a glove, filling every part of him and changing Poe to his very core.