Empress of the Gods

Atarah

The library of Zehava, in the golden city, was four times larger than the one from Ekkirah. She got lost as soon as she walked through those lines of bookshelves. No wonder why Jack Grayson fell in love with that place, and established there. After all, knowledge was power. It was something Rhiannon faithfully believed, and she agreed with her.

When she asked about Grayson in that library, she got a couple of I don’t know him or who again? until she found someone who guided her to a room near there. At first, she thought she had entered a private library when she saw the towers of books everywhere in the room. Some of them were open on a small table that was next to an armchair near a chimney. She ran a finger over those opened books that were on the couch, seeing drawings of herbs. Then she saw the incomplete lettering of the title of another book and assumed it was about history.

“Hello?” she asked, trying to see if she was lucky to find him, but no one seemed to be in that place, or at least she didn’t believe it, thanks to the number of books in there. It seemed to be more of a cellar than a room. “Sir Grayson?” she asked while she was maneuvering with the piles of books that were in her path, trying to find Wylan’s friend, but no one answered. “Sir Grayson,” she tried one more time with a higher tone as she searched through that maze of books. She almost tossed a pile of books that luckily, she held before it fell.

“I told you I wasn’t interested in attending, and they’re not going to force me to attend,” he annoyedly shouted from the back of a wall of books near a desk in front of her. “The High Lord must understand I am very busy,” he added in a grumpy tone.

“Sir Grayson?” she asked, seeing a window behind him that was almost covered by a pile of books.

“I told you, girl. Don’t force me to repeat it again,” Sir Grayson said, trying to make her leave while she found him with several books open on the table while he made notes in a notebook. He wrote so fast that she could see the stain of ink on his rich dark-brown hand that rested on the cream page to prevent it from moving as he wrote. He lifted his gaze to a book as he kept writing, letting a few drops of ink stain the pages. He had short gray hair and seemed to be almost in his sixties.

There was a giant sphere built with rings near him. She stared at it when she recognized the strange doodles that caught her attention, reminding her of those on the back of her necklace.

“Sir Grayson, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I need to talk to you for a moment, and it can’t wait, because I can’t stay too much time in this place so I would appreciate if you only granted me a brief moment of your time,” she kindly requested. He sighed, irritated, letting her see some of his wrinkles on his face that revealed to her the years it had taken to understand the history that was part of the life of all creatures.

She had a strange feeling of seeing him somewhere else before, but it was the first time she met him. When he looked at her, he seemed as if he had seen a ghost. “I just need to talk to you,” she said, instantly raising her hands.

Before he could yell at her to leave, she took the book out of her bag and opened it on the page where the painting was, placing it on his table in front of him. He took his glasses that hung from a strip of leather from his neck to get a better look at the painting. It didn’t take him long before he stared at her.

“You don’t remember anything?” he asked and repeated it again, before saying, “you don’t remember anything.”

Atarah began to feel uncomfortable because she didn’t know what he meant despite hearing it before from Sabine’s mouth, who expressed the exact feeling she had with those mental gaps. It was starting to irritate her that everyone seemed to know something about her while she seemed to know nothing. A part of her seemed to be frightened of the words she could possibly hear afterwards. Although it was no longer so difficult to believe, and she thought that what she was looking for from the man in front of her was just a confirmation of what she had heard and felt before.

“What do I have to remember?” she fearfully asked, looking at that painting again as if a part of her was waking up from a long sleep and didn’t want to listen to the words he was about to say.

“You are the night flame,” he said, as if those words would bring her memories back. She recalled Sabine calling her like that when she transformed into Will.

The night flame. What the hell did he mean by that?

Atarah looked at him, confused, not wanting to understand any of the words he just said. She knew that she was the daughter of Arethusa—known by her human name as Gianna— who was one of the nymphs of Goddess Dryderia, and one of the best warriors who had the Asteria castle. This helped her understand her origins, but being the night flame was something else. Every time she looked for information about the Dimneas’ dagger, she ended up knowing more about her than about the same dagger she carried with her. It seemed to be a search with a dead end.

She was starting to feel desperate about it because she didn’t know what she had to do with the dagger or the information she was given. “Listen. I don’t want to be rude, but it’s not the time to be cryptic. I need answers,” she said, placing both hands tightly on the table. She could feel her power tingling at her fingertips and the veins in her eyes that indicate she was going to use her gifts. She expected him to get up frightened, but for a strange reason, he didn’t. Jack Grayson wasn’t afraid of her and hadn’t moved from where he sat.

She didn’t like where everything was heading. The gods chose her to carry the dagger without telling her anything else about it. She didn’t like fishing for pieces of information. She preferred to be told things directly.

“You need to calm down, old friend,” said the man in such a calm way that his last two words immediately caught her attention. That man in front of her knew her, but she didn’t even recognize him because it was the first time she had ever seen him in her life. She moved her hands away from the table and looked at him as if she was trying to remember the man in front of her eyes. “I have one of the witches’ spells that extends my lifespan.” He tried to explain, but she didn’t understand what he was saying. “You want answers, and I can give them to you, but you need to understand there are things I can’t tell you.”

“You speak as if you had known me in another life, Sir Grayson,” she replied as she stepped back.

“Please, call me Jack. There is no need for formalities.” Jack removed his books from one of the chairs to invite her to sit down. She hesitated at first, but in the end, she sat without taking her eyes off him, feeling scared and curious about what he was about to say.

“Jack, please.” She tried to calm herself as she took a deep breath. “You don’t know the journey I’ve had and what I’ve experienced lately. I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” she added, pointing to the painting in the book. Jack barely looked at the painting and looked meditative. She could see him debate what he was going to say to her, as if he were thinking about every word he would use. Jack’s gaze didn’t change. “At least I need to know about the remaining pages of the book,” she tried to convince him.

“I met you when I was a twenty-seven-year-old shapeshifter,” he said, smiling at that memory. “You and your brother Matheus were kind to me,” he continued, and she was curious about it because he mentioned her brother. “You helped me on my journey,” he added. “That book is about the history of your people.”

A part of her was relieved to be seated. She needed to know when that had happened because that painting would be at least a century old.

“So, I’m the woman in the painting?”

“Yes and no,” he replied hesitantly before continuing, “The missing pages tell a part of the story of the gods. At this point, you should know that before all creatures that were on this world only ruled chaos and destruction. The gods were beings with golden blood who were commanded by the sun God, Sonneus. The gods cleaned and shaped this world.”

“I tried to gather all the stories to be able to understand the origin of all creatures, but especially of driadaes. And over the years, when I visited each library of all kingdoms, I found different names and symbols in different languages that were related. There is much to learn and understand,” he said with wide eyes as he moved his hands before continuing. “The Goddess Dryderia, who could be considered the Goddess of all creation, began to sow seeds around this whole place, creating life, the corporeal, while the God of souls gave them his essence.” He paused for a moment, looking for a book around him before continuing, “The stories say that from the union of Sonneus and Dryderia were born the creatures that were considered as minor deities. The nymphs. The ones who had always accompanied the gods in the Asteria castle. They were meant to protect the life that Dryderia created.

“As soon as they finished creating everything that needed to be built in this world, some stories say the gods tended to get bored. That is why they were always plotting against each other and that never ended well. The gods fought to become Sonneus successor and even plotted against his father. One of them was Erebus, the God of darkness.”

“Some gods underestimated the daughters of Dryderia, but Erebus saw them and knew that in order to defeat his brothers he needed a powerful army, and who better than the nymphs for it. The stories say he managed to sweeten their ears, making some of them promise to follow him until their last breath.”

“There were gods who were suspicious of his plans. And the ones who didn’t underestimate the nymphs knew how lethal they could be, so they fought him and locked him in the underworld, condemning everyone who helped him as those nymphs who supported him. The gods were furious and wanted to see blood. They thought of erasing them from existence, but Dryderia implored Sonneus for her daughters. As a punishment the sun God forced them to protect their descendants’ lands wandering, wearing skin that wasn’t their own and turning them into lethal predators who couldn’t get out from those woods. Their sisters had the freedom to move wherever they wanted. They could visit them, but they were not allowed to stay with them. They had to return to their place with the gods in the castle.”

“Aren’t you talking about the forgotten nymphs?” she impatiently asked because she didn’t understand what that had to do with her.

“You have already crossed paths with them,” he assumed, and she nodded to confirm it. “Then you will know that no one who doesn’t descend from a nymph can cross those borders or at least do not come out alive from them,” he said, giving her a chill, remembering the border of Ekkirah.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Please be patient. I’m getting there,” he replied. “I don’t know how much you’ve heard of the evil that hides near the south.”

“The warning of the wind. The witches believe an ancient evil is going to rise again. I may have felt something awakening somewhere.”

“Well, they say that after the battle of Calithea a High Lord Fae sought more power, taking him to the gate of the prison where the gods keep Erebus locked. No one knows if he managed to open it or not, but it is known that he opened something from somewhere. That is why there have been random attacks in some places. Some stories tell a prophecy that had seen the eyes of the gods, the oracles, knew that something like this would happen.”

“The books I read say that the firepit of the God of destiny, Dimneas, appeared a flame known as the night flame, and it was placed in the womb of Dryderia’s daughter. No one is certain who was the nymph who gave birth to the night flame. And in the same firepit, Sonneus created a weapon that would put an end to the evil that is not from this world.”

“Those oracle creatures spread rumors that ran through the hallways of the gods’ castle that the night flame would be accompanied by a protector with an animal form that was granted by one of the gods. The night flame was called the empress of the gods because she had been created by them with the purpose of defeating the same darkness that did not come from this world. Although there is another prophecy which points out that she would ally herself with darkness.”

His last words made her freeze. Sabine said something similar when she said she couldn’t stop what was to come because it was written that it would happen. She didn’t know what to think about it and her head was spinning. She felt a certain attraction to darkness and more every time she used her gifts.

Something made her think the weapon he was referring to was the Dimneas dagger, and perhaps that was why she felt drawn to it.

“So, from what I understand, there might be a great possibility that I am the night flame,” she tried to explain herself out loud, but it sounded ridiculous.

“The only creature who could come back to life to fulfill what was assigned by the gods was the night flame.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s me.”

“Atarah,” he said as if he wanted to reason with her, but when he called her by her name, everything stopped around them. She never told him her name when she arrived. Jack wanted to say something else, but she got up from her chair and stepped back while she looked at that painting again. He couldn’t have known her name if he had never known her, which made everything he told her real.

Jack tried to take a step toward her, but he ended up hitting his leg with the edge of the table, and when the leg of the chair squeaked on the floor, she turned her back and walked out of there.