We were too far to discern any distinct features. Her face was in shadows. I didn’t know if that was a result of the poor lighting, her hood, or if she wore a mask.
The queen danced her fingers through the air, and four portals framed in red energy appeared at the base of the steps. People began exiting the gateways, stumbling up the stairs as if unsure how to work their limbs. They swayed and pitched about, doing their best impressions of drunk drivers trying to walk a straight line. Even from behind, I could tell their eyes gave off a yellow glow. It had a very body snatcher feel to it.
“Those aren’t zombies, are they?” Lorna said.
Before she could get an answer, the queen summoned four more rifts. These were farther back. Another wave of people emerged from those as well. All shambled toward the throne.
It seemed like their numbers were close to a hundred if not more, with each opening producing a steady stream of arrivals. I even saw a few children scale the steps, which was disturbing.
The queen swept her arms in wider arcs.
In response, four more portals opened along the very hill we hid behind. The line of gateways was very close to our hiding spot but still in front of us. Many of the groups that spilled out slipped and tumbled down the slope. They got up, thinking nothing of their rapid descent and not even brushing themselves off. A few limped, injured as a result of their plunge.
We risk exposure. You have seen enough.
“Wait, no. We don’t know what’s going on? Who are these people? Why is she bringing them here?” I rose to my knees.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the queen gesture once again.
A quartet of portals opened up slightly behind us. The two in the middle now put us in the path of what emerged.
People trudged through the new rifts and scaled the hill. Most slid backward, not adjusting to the climb at all. Several managed and soon two of them were upon us, an overweight man and a woman wearing just a cami and shorts. She had to be freezing. I shivered. Both stared through us, their eyes glowing a bright yellow, like the rest.
The pair ignored us, only staring forward, their mouths hanging slightly open. I watched the barely dressed woman crest the hill and tumble down the entire incline. She knocked her head twice against rocks. Even with the head trauma, she stood and walked toward the platform.
Zartua dropped back and summoned a portal hidden from the queen’s sight. She pointed her drawn sword at the rift as the crush of people waded through our spot. “Time to go. Consider our intel gathered.”
The dragon flew into the portal. Lorna weaved around the unsteady climbers and hopped through next.
Zartua looked at me impatiently.
I studied the mob amassing around the queen. It numbered in the hundreds. All of them stood still, facing her. Awaiting orders.
I shivered, and not from the desert cold.
I flung myself into the portal.
Chapter 15
Disgruntled Deities
Zartua brought us back to my god wheel. She came through last, collapsing the gate behind her. She wiped her sweaty brow, clearly drained from the task of portal summoning.
Lorna had her phone out and was searching desperately.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Thought I could find something on a news site about what’s going on, but there’s no signal.” She shoved her phone back in her pocket and stared at me, looking lost. “Those were people. She’s controlling them. How?”
I glared at the dragon. “How is she doing it?”
I do not have the answer. She is chaos incarnate. There are very few limits.
I lost it a little. “How do we have any chance against a crazy powerful villainess when neither of us can do any magic?”
Knowledge is power. You know more than you—
“Just stop. I don’t need your parsed-out foreshadowing.” I stared at my god wheel, infinitely frustrated. Goddess of knowledge? More like goddess of cryptic, incomplete details.
My god wheel no longer appeared damaged. In fact, all the names had returned and it looked as good as new. We’d spun what was required at each juncture, to borrow a fitting word from the dragon, if I ignored my manic spinning binge. I hadn’t really had a clear thought in my head or plan then, but now I did. Could I force the god I wanted to emerge on the next spin if I concentrated, focused my will on the device?
I reached down and grabbed the wheel.
Zartua said, “What are you doing? You need me for what is to come.”
“I think I need something more than battle tips.” I fixed my gaze on who I wanted the pointer to stop on. “Time to mix things up, shoot for something out of bounds.”
I spun, and the wheel went round and round. I kept my focus on the wedge I desired. Please work the way I think you work, strange cosmic wheel of alleged chance.
The wheel slowed but was still whirling at a good clip. I projected my will at it even harder. Abruptly, it ground to a halt. The indicator pointed at the exact slice I had stipulated.
Zartua disappeared, but not before she spotted what I had spun—the scratched-out god. Her eyes lit up in shock as she faded away.
Another god failed to manifest. I guess we couldn’t access that particular deity on our wheels. I was about to admit my failure when everything around us dissolved.
We reappeared atop a plateau overlooking hundreds of other rock formations. A man dressed in a jumpsuit, a silver futuristic onesie with a tablet-like device fixed to where a breast pocket should be, stared at us. He had short-cropped, wavy brown hair and a faint beard with no accompanying mustache. What was that style called? Standalone stubble?
The god hadn’t come to us; we’d been brought to him.
Shock briefly played across his dark skin, but he replaced it with a toothy, friendly smile. He registered the dragon and then looked back and forth between Lorna and me.
“So which one is my former host?”
I raised my hand.
He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed hard. “Pleasure to have you drop by.”
We separated, and he gave Lorna a much less exuberant embrace. She introduced herself.
“I’m Felix Martin.”
He waved at me dismissively, his smile still evident. “It’s been a while, and this place does a real number on your brain.” From his expression, it was clear he dug around in his head, attempting to unearth buried memories. “Of course I remember you.” He turned away, stretched while pressing on his lower back, and then flung his arms out wide. “Welcome to my quaint tract of real estate. You like what I’ve done with the place?”
“Why are we here? Does it have to do with you being stripped from my god wheel?” I asked.
“So quick on the uptake. It absolutely does. Welcome to the land of the exiled, the realm of the forsaken.”
This is not wise.
Judging from how the god twirled about and stared at the dragon, it was obvious Herena had broadcast to all three of us.
“Exiles?” I said.
The god strolled over to me and lowered an outstretched open hand, palm down and flat. “Last I saw you in the flesh, you were, what? Yay high?” He moved it up and down until deciding he had the height he desired.
You left when he was eight. The dragon flew between us, looking back and forth several times before settling her gaze on me. He and the others here transgressed. They led an uprising that the powers that be squashed.
“What do you expect, Herena? It’s inescapable with me to want to exact change.” He nodded at the dragon rather casually. “She still all stingy about ‘imparting the knowledge’ to you?”
Lorna pointed to a plateau close by. “Hey, there’s someone standing on that one, waving at us.”
It surprised me to see she was right. A woman in gold armor and with a white Mohawk worked hard to get our attention, even jumping up and down once she saw I was looking. She was shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything, even though she wasn’t that far away.
“That’s Agrava.” He waved at her and then lost interest. He squared himself off in front of me. “I’m Mitch, your god of progress.”
Of upheaval is more like it. The dragon flew away, but not before snorting, sending only a candleworthy flare of blue fire into the air.
I surveyed the other plateaus. A figure stood atop every single one. Those nearby like Agrava paid us close attention.
Mitch noticed me getting the lay of the land. “Got the natives restless. First guests ever.”
“They’re other gods who’ve been taken off their wheels?”
“Bingo.” He fired finger pistols at me. “They sent us here because we advocated change.”
“What kind of change?” I said.
“To not keep ourselves hidden away, manning god wheels that, at best, only eke out slight influence and inspiration.”
You did more than advocate. Herena landed next to Lorna, who was scoping out a god far off that appeared to have an elephant head and four arms.
“So we left our posts, charged into the fray.”
“I don’t understand. You fought on Earth?” I said.
“No, we moved there, tried to live amid the mortals. We thought mixing and mingling made more sense for both the celestials and mortals. The magicals have always done it that way, so why not us?”
I really wanted to argue that point. Magical creatures didn’t pop up in the world at all.
“Yeah, sure, they keep to themselves and dole out amnesia spells like they’re penny candy, but still they don’t get relegated to a pocket dimension at the whim of a silly wheel. Some of us felt we could make much more significant change if we worked alongside mankind.”
The powers that be erased all memories of your uprising. History has been scoured of that blemish. Humanity runs it own course.
“Only we don’t, really.” Lorna entered the conversation. “We all have god wheels spinning in our heads. Seems more controlling than just living alongside each other.”
Mitch clapped. “Always pleased to witness such openness and enlightenment. You are going places, Lorna. How does dear Felix feel about this? Seeing how the two of you have managed to force your way in here, I’d say you have the means to bust us out as well.”
“I don’t think so.” Even as I said it, I was uncertain. Was that our next move? Bring all these deities over to fight the queen?
“You came here for a reason? Might I hazard a guess that something is amiss in the real world?” Mitch crossed his arms, and then slid his left hand up to thoughtfully rub at his chin hair. “What say you?”
“The Entropy Queen is loose, making some sort of army out of people, and Lorna and me are the only ones with access to our pantheons. That evidently qualifies us to fight her, according to the powers that be and Herena.” I hoped the dragon didn’t take offense. I wasn’t trying to sound sour, but I could see where she might take it that way. I added, “They believe we will come up with the answer.”
“And is that us?” Mitch waved about, nodding acknowledgement at several of his fellow exiles.
“Not sure,” I said.
Mitch walked over to the edge and sat, allowing his legs to dangle. “Well, you folks head back. When you think things have gotten so upside down that us exiles are the answer, we’ll be here. I can’t speak for the others because—and I’ve bet you’ve noticed this—we can’t hear one another. But I’m certain they’d love to get back in the game in whatever capacity you two see fit.” He glanced over his shoulder and winked at me. “And I think it has to be you who determines what’s next for us and not the powers that be. Elitist lot, all of them. Maintaining the status quo since Year Zero. don’t you know.”
Sensing we were done, I triggered my portal ring and we fled.
Chapter 16
A Spin and a Miss
I spun my wheel without any clear purpose in mind. I was altogether rather numb. A land of exiled deities was just yet one more layer of madness dropped on us.
The one god I hadn’t met manifested.
He wore a red and white robe with elaborate patterns running up and down its sleeves. His alert, brown eyes took us in quickly. He looked up and patted around on his thinning head of hair and scowled.
“So insulting,” he said. “It never fails.”
“What never fails?” Lorna asked.
The man traced invisible symbols in the air and muttered a string of consonants under his breath. A gold crown, accented with a green gem at its center and featuring three upward tines like a trident, appeared and dropped into the god’s open hands. He shined the headgear with a sleeve before situating it on his head. “My crown, it never appears with my person. I cry foul. A most definite conspiracy is at work.”
“So you’re my god of paranoia?” I asked with a hint of sarcasm.
He huffed and stomped his feet. I spied elaborate sandals, the kind with an impossible number of strings that crept up to the calf.
“I am Lorfu, god of grandness.”
“That doesn’t seem like me at all. You sure you’re in the right place?” I asked.
He fumed, his face turning beat red. “Such insolence. I will not be treated this way. I wish to lodge a complaint. This is why we should not directly interact with them, Herena!”
I wanted to spin again, but Lorna pulled me aside. She looked at Lorfu and said, “Give us a minute, your majesty.”
The god gave her an initial squint of suspicion but slowly nodded his approval. “Thank you, good woman. That’s all I require. Is it too much to ask for an appropriate level of respect and decorum?”
We moved to the opposite end of the chamber. Herena was stuck listening all by her lonesome to the lecture on honor and gratitude spewing from her associate.
Lorna said, “I think we should’ve brought over Mitch and his fellow exiles to help us out.” She pointed at the deities. Lorfu was now blathering on about divine etiquette and lamenting how smiting had fallen out of fashion. “All we can seem to do is generate one at a time like this, and something tells me that if we go to the powers that be and petition they allow us to access more, like even ones not on our wheel, they’ll drag their feet or even give us an outright no.”
I reflected on our track record with the higher ups. We’d only met the one, but that hadn’t gone well at all. “I think you might be right.”
“Do what you did last time to get us back there. You dictated that you wanted the wheel to land on that particular wedge, didn’t you?”
“I did. It wasn’t that hard. I bet you could do it.”
“I bet I could, too,” she said. “But right now, I think it’s wise to send Lorfu ‘the chatty’ packing and assemble our army.”
I returned to the god wheel and reached down to spin it. Mitch’s name was still scratched out, but his wedge didn’t look as abused. I could make out the M, whereas before only the C and H had been discernible. That was a good sign.
Lorfu said, “I don’t think so, young man. I deserve my day in the sun.”
I looked around the dark cave. Um, are you paying attention to where we are at all? I kept the snide remark to myself, knowing it would only trigger the uppity deity even more.
“Take us to Earth and let’s see what fine strides I can spark.” He rubbed his hands together. “And hamburgers. It’s been forever since I’ve partaken of that finery.” He spoke next out of the corner of his mouth, drawing his hand up to his cheek to further make his comment casually conspiratorial. “I know. Not what you’d suspect of me. I truly do have impeccable tastes and usually reserve only the best for my discerning taste buds, but burgers are my guilty pleasure.”
I rolled my eyes and spun the wheel. Never going to summon you again, buddy.
Lorfu grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. Tiny centimeter-long lightning bolts shot from his eyes, fizzling out quickly and landing on his red cheeks. “You ungrateful upstart! You have no appreciation for . . .”
I tuned him out and concentrated on the pointer
landing on Mitch.
The wheel stopped. I opened my eyes.
Lorfu said, “You are a fool! If only I could receive special dispensation to smite you, I—”
He vanished. In his place Yolla appeared. The goddess smiled.
I spun the wheel again, sending out the mental command that I wanted it to wind up on Mitch with much more imperative.
The goddess of good fortune departed. Her sister popped into existence.
Slif glared at me. “Going through us rather quickly. I was just with Yolla. She winked out, and I thought there you go. I left the shop we’d been patronizing, thinking I had a decent stretch of time to enjoy more of what the Dominion had to offer. Didn’t even have time to activate my feed, and you spun again.”
I didn’t respond. I spun again, frantically urging the wheel to bring forth Mitch.
No such luck. Ed appeared.
I spun again.
Xexxer came next.
Another spin. This time I shouted at the wheel to deliver Mitch or else. I hated the hollow threat.
Zartua appeared.
I spun.
Dark Cloud. He gave me a grim look.
I hesitated, thinking he might actually talk. He didn’t. He just stared at me.
Lorna said, “Try again.”
I worked the wheel five more times, my panic intensifying with each failed result.
Lorfu. Yolla. Ed. Dark Cloud. Yolla.
I leaned against the side of the god wheel, gulping in several breaths. Flinging the wheel so many times hadn’t taken the wind from my sails, but my mounting anxiety had caused me to hyperventilate, something I hadn’t done in a long time.
Yolla said, “Stop it. What are you trying to do? I know from my feed that you went to see Mitch. You shouldn’t have been able to do that. Something must be wrong with your wheel. Might have something to do with Lorna touching it. When it fixed itself, maybe that freed you to access Mitch.”
“But it’s not letting me now.” I had a sinking feeling that the malfunction had been a one-time opportunity.
Lorna entered the conversation. “Maybe yours can’t do it anymore, but mine can. Let’s go wreck my wheel and see if it’ll allow us to fetch Mitch.” She summoned a portal.
The God Wheel Page 12