Twilight of the Gods

Retrieve Odi’s corpse.

That was the latest hint that the Board had given Haydn on the whereabouts of Evelyn. At first, the words made little sense to him. In the grand scheme of everything he had received before, he wasn’t sure where the newest slip of paper fit in.

He knew Evelyn was in Otherworld. He also knew that Ezra was somehow involved in her disappearance. But the hint afterward, the one that told him to take retribution on Sabine, confused him. Had Sabine also done something to Evelyn?

He remembered the vacant stares of her devotees and their open heads during the brain surgeries. He could only hope that Evelyn was spared such a fate.

It’s hardly anything unethical, especially compared to Ezra, Sabine had said. Haydn rolled his eyes at the memory. Just because Ezra was a monster, didn’t mean he should be the standard all Elysians held themselves to. Besides, what could be worse than robbing someone of their free will?

He thought back to Ezra’s servant girl pouring water for everyone in the dining room just moments before. His heart had stopped at the sight of her. It was the same woman he had found in Ezra’s bed struggling against the Elysian before he killed her. He had to pinch himself to make sure he hadn’t dreamt her up.

As she poured his water, he made sure that their fingers brushed. To his surprise, her skin was warm with life. He had expected the icy hands of a reanimated corpse or the vaporous ones of a ghost. But there she was, serving their water, seemingly alive and well.

She would know what Ezra did to his devotees. Out of everyone he knew, the innocent servant girl would know what was worse than losing one’s free will.

So why was the Board telling him to find a dead God’s corpse? He would much rather track down the girl and solve the mystery of her reincarnation.

He slipped on his glamour, taking the form of a crow. Cloaked in black feathers, he took to the skies, ignoring the Board’s hint. There was no stake in following what those little pieces of paper told him to do, especially since Daeva was guaranteed ownership of the Board. Everything was rigged in her favor, from the soul weighing to the little “games” that the Board had given her, courtesy of Nyx.

He thought it was unusual how the Lady of the Night favored Daeva, a God she had never spoken to prior to her arrival in Otherworld. Come to think of it, his entire mission of bringing Daeva to Otherworld was strange in itself. Nyx said she needed Daeva to prevent a war in the Mortal Realm, but given his dealings with Nyx in the past, he was starting to suspect that the Lady of the Night was lying.

Not that he cared much about her true motives. To him, Nyx was merely a means to an end. She was only making his search for Evelyn difficult to convince him to keep up the ruse of a fair game to Daeva. It was an unnecessary hurdle, one he thought of clearing with a well-placed dagger to Matthius’s throat. But he suspected that it would take more than a blade to kill the Keeper of the Dead or else the Elysians would have already tried it.

Before he could think of more ways of intimidating Nyx, he spots a young woman dressed in a loose white gown picking herbs at the side of the palace. Servant girl.

Gotcha, Haydn thought, swooping down from the sky. He lands on the patch of grass beside her, mindlessly pecking at the grass while he observes her.

She didn’t seem brainwashed. That was the first thought that came to Haydn as he watched her hum a nursery rhyme to accompany her work. He could tell that she was genuinely content as she smiled to herself, filling her woven basket easily.

He follows her back to the servants’ quarters, lifting himself into the sky once again. She delivers the herbs to a chef, braids swaying as she dances through the door. From the window, he sees the chef give her a loaf of bread as repayment for her work which she graciously accepts.

She returns outside, breaking off pieces of bread and stuffing them into her mouth. She decides to lounge on a nearby workbench, humming the same rhyme to herself again. This time, Haydn gets closer, landing on top of the table.

The servant girl smiles at his presence, delighted that a bird should get so close to her. She tosses a few crumbs in his direction, beckoning him to draw nearer. He pretends to take the bait, shaking off loose crumbs from his feathers as he waddles to her.

“Hello there, little friend,” she said softly, taking care not to frighten him. “You must be hungry.” She tosses more crumbs in his direction, peppering him with more yeasty projectiles.

For the love of the Gods, if she throws more bread at me, I will peck her eyes out, he thought. He bites back his frustration and eats the crumbs, playing the dumb bird.

“You know,” the servant girl said. “I’m new to Otherworld. It’s everything I imagined it to be.”

He tilts his head to the side, confused. The last he remembered, it had seemed like she was kidnapped from the Mortal Realm.

“The Charitable One rescued me from the brothel,” she continued. “He’s allowed me to start a new life here as a devotee. He thinks that despite my background, I can still be pure and worthy of serving him. Isn’t he merciful?”

There were many words that Haydn would use to describe Ezra. Greedy, conniving, and evil were the first three that he thought of. If Ezra was merciful, then he was as virtuous as a newborn lamb.

Did she really forget everything he did to her?

“I’m not sure I belong here,” the servant girl said. “I feel like I’m losing a bit of myself every day. Not that it’s bad up here, but there are holes in my memory. The Charitable One tells me that it’s normal, to be like this. Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t remember.”

He nods his tiny crow head, agreeing with her. At least she was spared that pain. But the rest of what she said disturbed him.

It had never occurred to Haydn that Evelyn wouldn’t remember him. After seeing what Ezra did to the servant girl, he had thought Evelyn was being held in Otherworld against her will. But hearing how reverently the servant girl spoke of Ezra made him consider the possibility that maybe Evelyn didn’t want to leave. Because what truly threw Ezra off about the servant girl’s words was the way she said them. It was as if Ezra was worthy of her admiration and dictating her life. If only the girl knew, if only she remembered.

But then what? She wouldn’t have been able to escape even if she were to wake up to the truth.

He supposed that was what made Ezra worse than Sabine. While Sabine forced her devotees to obey through extreme means, Ezra merely altered the perceptions of his worshippers and gently guided them to feel utter adoration for him. They loved him of their own free will and it scared Haydn.

The servant girl finishes off the rest of her bread, staring into space. Maybe she was thinking about her lost memories or the other chores she had for the day.

Whatever thought she had in her head vanished as she brushed the crumbs from her lap and got up to get another basket. He flies after her, observing the rest of Ezra’s servants go about their work. Like the servant girl, they all seemed content albeit absentminded. He deduced that they were all slowly losing parts of their memory even as they happily worked.

He scans their faces, hoping that one of them was his Evelyn. He looks for her ink-black hair, a hue so rich that it had always made her stand out from a crowd. While he saw many dark-haired maidens, none were her. They didn’t have her inquisitive eyes or her easy grace, but he doesn’t lose hope. This was the closest he had gotten to her in years, even if he couldn’t find a trace of her beyond the ribbon in Ezra’s box.

The servant girl makes her way to a field, parting tall strands of grass. She plucks ears of corn from the stalks next to her, tiptoeing to reach the ones near the top. Haydn helps her, pecking at the stem and shaking the corn loose. They move further into the field, filling her basket until they reach a clearing. She stops before the empty area, basket at her hip.

“Little friend,” she said, tilting her head at the sky toward him. “I think we should head back. This is bad land. The other devotees say that there are evil spirits in the soil. Nothing can grow here.”

His eyes linger on the barren ground. Considering how heavy his soul was with sin, he could be considered an “evil spirit” himself. But there was some truth to the servant girl’s words. An ominous aura hung over the land. Not a single living thing crawled on the soil, not even an ant. Yet something about the empty space drew him in.

He flies back with the servant girl, making sure that she reached the servants’ quarters safely. By then, the twin suns were sinking into the horizon, lighting up the sky in a baleful shade of orange before cooling down into sleepy hues of purple and blue. When he could no longer see a single stream of light in the sky, he headed back to that empty spot.

He went as himself, without his glamour. There was something about the barren patch that compelled him to show who he truly was as if hiding was pointless. He sat on the ground, cross-legged, letting the uneasy feeling wash over him. He wasn’t afraid of what lurked in the area. If anything, he was curious to know what waited for him in the dark.

A skeletal hand reaches from the ground, startling him. Its bony fingers beckon him to the hole where it came from. Haydn doesn’t move from his spot. He stared at the hand twitch from where he sat, watching it spasm around the dirt.

Zombies were the last thing he expected in Otherworld. When the Gods lost the war, necromancy fell out of practice. Mages no longer had the ability to raise the dead. But it seems like Ezra had revived the lost art judging by both the way he brought back the servant girl and the hand sticking out of the ground.

What if that’s Evelyn?

He stares at the reanimated hand, his stolen heart thumping rapidly in his chest. It would explain why he couldn’t find her among Ezra’s devotees. In a blink of an eye, he slips on a new glamour, taking the form of a black hound. Then, he starts digging.

Slowly, he uncovers an arm and a head, eventually excavating the entire body. Halfway through his digging, he was sure that the body in the ground was not Evelyn. Even though there wasn’t a single star in the sky to illuminate the ground, he could sense that it wasn’t her. Their soulmate bond wasn’t present in this reanimated corpse, which was slowly regaining strands of muscle and tendon. But still, he told himself to keep going. The body was covered in dirt. No one with eyes could tell who or what it was.

After he finishes digging, he yanks off his glamour and inspects the body. Seeing the large, gaping hole in the middle of the corpse’s chest made his blood run cold.

I know who this is, he thought. But that’s impossible. He shouldn’t be here.

Yet Haydn couldn’t deny what his eyes told him. Lying on the ground, half-formed and smiling, was the corpse of the old God Odi. Somehow, Haydn ended up fulfilling the Board’s task without even trying.

Cursing Nyx beneath his breath, he pushes dirt over the God’s corpse. He should’ve just listened to the servant girl and avoided the barren land, but his curiosity got the best of him.

“Haydn,” the corpse wheezed. “Are you really going to try to kill me again?”

“It’s not like I succeeded the first time,” he replied, shoveling dirt faster over the body. Why did he think he actually killed the God? Because Odi had seemed very dead when he stole his heart. If only he had stayed that way.

“Are you still looking for her? She doesn’t want you,” Odi said. “Not after what you did to her.”

Haydn stops shoving dirt over the God’s body. “I’m not that man anymore. The voices have stopped bothering me. I would never do that to her again.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Odi said. “She doesn’t forgive you. How can you expect her to love you as she did before?”

The thing was, he hadn’t expected her to love him at all. That Evelyn, the one who was innocent to his darker side, was not the Evelyn he deserved. But seeing all of Ezra’s servants lose their memories of their lives before Otherworld had given him hope. Maybe he could get a second chance with her. Of course, it would be a chance he didn’t deserve.

He resumes burying the God’s body, leaving the corpse in silence. But Odi wouldn’t let the matter rest.

“You still can’t find her,” he said. “That’s why you dug me up. You thought I was her!” He lets out a laugh that shakes his bones.

Fed up, Haydn shoves a chunk of dirt into Odi’s mouth. Unfazed, the God coughs it back out, continuing to laugh at him.

“If I had known you were this sentimental, I would have never made you my Mage,” Odi sneered. “You were undeserving of the power I gave you. But since you were my disciple and you did serve me well, I can help you.”

Haydn shook his head. “Just like you helped me hurt her?”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

When he sees that Haydn is about to shove more dirt into his mouth, he takes back his statement.

“I can help you find her. Since you’re her soulmate, I can use your bond to create a path to her. Or at least her soul,” he explained.

A direct path to Evelyn, Haydn thought. It was a better offer than the deal he had with Nyx, which meant it would have a hefty price.

“What do you want in exchange? I can’t imagine you’d be doing this out of the goodness of your heart,” he said.

“I’m glad you asked. All I want for you to do is to restore the glory of the Gods,” Odi said.

“That’s impossible,” he protested. He was the wrong man for the job. An image of Daeva taking out Sabine’s soul surfaces in his mind. Maybe if he had her help …

“Nothing is impossible if it’s for her,” Odi said. “Bring my body to the home of those usurpers. I will tell you what to do.”

As much as Haydn hated to admit it, the old God was right. So, he carried the body of his old master to the palace of the Elysians, ignorant of the chaos that would follow.

The only thing he could think of was finally being able to see Evelyn after all these years.