Twilight of the Gods

“Where is it?”

Hubert’s voice echoed through the interior of the dome. He was in the Glade, an area of Otherworld he hadn’t touched in ages, at least not since the war. In his left hand, he was clutching a note that had been placed at his bedside. A prominent vein was bulging out of his neck. The Elysian wasn’t too happy about leaving Sabine’s body alone, even if it was under the protection of his glass coffin.

Daeva steps out of the shadows, holding Sabine’s glowing soul. “Looking for this?”

Hubert lunges at her, swinging his tree trunk arms to grab the soul out of her hands. She yanks the soul away just in time, catching him off balance.

“I will need something in return,” she said. Seeing the disagreement in Hubert’s face, she added, “or I will shatter her soul.”

“What do you want?” He asks this begrudgingly, keeping an eye on the glowing orb in her hands.

“Break your link in the Binding Chains,” she said, pointing to the invisible restraints in her neck. “I will give her soul back to you unharmed once you do your part.”

“You’re asking me to betray my brethren,” he sneered. “I’ll have you know that unlike the Gods, I’m loyal to my kind.” He puffs out his chest, seemingly full of honor.

“It wasn’t a problem for Sabine,” she said, watching his expression crumble. She wonders if he knew about her plans to overthrow Ezra.

“Are you really putting the Council over her soul? I didn’t know she meant so little to you,” Daeva pressed.

He slams his fist into a nearby wall, shaking the dome. “Don’t talk about her like that. You don’t know what she is to me. A murderer like you can’t even fathom the concept of love.”

“Just break the Binding Chain,” she said, brushing off his remark. “If you love her so much, this shouldn’t be so hard.”

“No,” he said, continuing to refuse. “How about you give her soul to me as repayment for a favor?”

Daeva’s brows crinkle in confusion. She didn’t remember owing any of the Elysians anything beyond the endless lives she had taken.

“I fixed you,” he said. “Don’t tell me you forgot that. You had two souls before I placed you in the river.”

Ah. That. Her grip over Sabine’s soul tightens. She was tempted to shatter the soul, to force Hubert to feel even a fraction of the loss she experienced. But she refused to be heartless like them.

“You ruined me,” she said, deciding to put her anger into words. “You took away my past and my purpose. Let me make it clear that you didn’t fix me. The only thing I have to thank you for is shaping me into the monster that I am today.”

“I gave you a gift,” he insisted. “If I didn’t interfere, you wouldn’t have gotten your Right of Existence. You lived in the Mortal Realm because I allowed you the grace to do so! If we left you alone, your body would have combusted. You would be dead by now if it weren’t for my mercy.”

Despite all that he did to her, Hubert remained stubbornly self-righteous. He would never admit to hurting her or entertain an insincere apology like Sabine did. Yet Daeva still tried to guilt him and appeal to his so-called sense of honor.

“It’s not mercy to keep me imprisoned here,” she said.

“It’s mercy for the Mortal Realm,” he countered. “We’re protecting them from you.”

“Then I will keep Sabine’s soul,” she said, tired of arguing with him. “You can leave the Glade.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Did she really break her link in the Binding Chains?”

“She had no problem doing so,” Daeva said. Just as you should have no problem choosing her over the Council again.

“Very well then,” he said. “I’ll do it, but only because the others will never free you. Ezra will never break your chains.”

He reaches into her neck, closing his meaty fist around the link. It shatters easily, unlocking more of Anhel’s power. A weight lifts off her chest, making it easier for her to breathe.

She gives him Sabine’s soul, which he cradles gently.

“You monster,” he said, weeping over his soulmate’s life force. “How could you ever take this from her?”

How could you Elysians rob me of my humanity? Because you deluded yourself into believing that you were doing the right thing, she thought.

“I’m only doing what I was brought here to do,” she said instead. She didn’t want to get into another argument about morals with him.

He shakes his head, putting Sabine’s soul into a protective pouch. At the same time, someone else comes out of the shadows, jumping to restrain Hubert. The light shining through the windows revealed it to be Uriel, who was struggling to keep him down.

“Get your angel off of me,” he said, glaring at Daeva. “I already gave you what you wanted.”

“Not quite,” she said, taking her pistol out. Blue inscriptions glow on Miekka’s handle. She shoots both of Hubert’s legs in rapid succession, quickly bringing him to his knees.

“You think bullets can hurt me? I’m no ordinary mortal,” Hubert said, laughing through the pain. Uriel holds his arms down, waiting for her command.

“These aren’t ordinary bullets,” she said. “They dampen magic, sucking out a person’s life force. The longer they remain in you, the greater the chance of your death.”

Already his skin was taking on a deathly pallor. She advances toward him, pulling out a dagger. She grabs his wrist, keeping an eye on his star-shaped soulmate mark.

“What are you doing?” Hubert repeats this question a few more times as she traces the blade around his mark, yelling louder with every iteration. It’s not until she peels the mark off and dumps his flesh on the ground that she answers him. By then, he was bloodied and weeping, his voice hoarse from crying out in pain.

“I took your mark,” she said. “I took it because you no longer deserve it and because the Board told me to. You call yourself Elysian, but you were made by the Gods. You are nothing more than a disgrace and I am punishing you for it.”

“You’re lying,” he said. “The Board never told you to do any of this. You’re hurting me because you want to. You like seeing others in pain. I will warn the rest of the Council about your rampage.”

Her eyes narrowed, unable to believe the words coming out of his mouth. She wasn’t like them, no matter how many people she killed. She had always felt that the lives she took were out of necessity, at least every life except those of the seven children. Petty, sadistic killing was beneath her.

She hands him the slip that the Board gave her. His eyes travel across the paper, widening as he reads the words Remove the Soulmaker’s mark.

“Nyx wouldn’t allow this,” he said. “She wouldn’t let you do this to us.”

Daeva shrugged, unsure of what to say. She leaves him in the dome and walks out of the Glade. She waits for the sound of the bell to signal the end of her task, but she doesn’t hear it. As she walked back to the Elysian palace, she heard no news of Nyx’s arrival. Things went about as normal, with devotees rushing around to serve their Elysians.

Had she completed her task wrong?

No, she told herself. I did exactly what the Board told me to do. Maybe the Lady of the Night was delayed in her arrival.

She returns to her room, plopping down on the cushions before the fire. She noticed that Haydn was absent from the room and deduced that Nyx was absent because he hadn’t completed his task. Uriel had disappeared, off for personal reasons he wouldn’t explain. Daeva was completely and absolutely alone.

She didn’t like that. It was a strange, foreign feeling to be left absolutely alone with her thoughts. There had always been someone there, a voice to talk to.

A voice like me, Anhel said.

Exactly, she thought. Of course I’d imagine his voice.

Daeva, I’ve returned. You aren’t imagining anything, he said.

My delusions have finally gained sentience, she thought. It was about time she had lost her mind. After all she had been through, she shouldn’t have had a scrap of sanity left.

You idiot, he seethed. I’m real. You’re not hearing random voices in your head.

That’s exactly what a random voice in my head would say, she thought. But let’s say you’re real. What is something only Anhel would know?

The old God growls in frustration. Do you remember when we snuck a bear into the Myranian king’s palace? We were able to do so by pretending that he was the king’s hairy, unshaved cousin.

She shakes with laughter at the memory of the event. It is you! I’ve missed you, she thought. Where did you go off to?

Blame the Binding Chains, he said. I was locked out of your body. Good thing you were brilliant enough to break most of the links.

We’re still trapped here. Until the remaining three Elysians break the rest of the chain, we can’t leave.

She knew Anhel wanted to be in Otherworld. This was his home when he ruled over the Mortal Realm with Odi. This was where he shaped the grand events of the universe. But this was also where the Gods took their last stance against the Elysians. It was where he lost his body and his lover.

Otherworld was a place of great suffering for the both of them. Every inch of it was cursed with untold grief and failure. She didn’t understand his desire to return.

It wasn’t a matter of choice, he reminded her. Fate compelled us to return.

She snorted. Fate? More like an army of ghost nuns.

But I don’t think this is Otherworld, he said. The Elysians may think it is, but something is off about this place.

In his time outside of her body, Anhel had made a few strange discoveries. He was unable to leave Otherworld despite being a disembodied spirit. There was a strong barrier that surrounded the place, denying him access to the Mortal Realm. What was strange about the barrier were the runes that enabled it. Ordinarily, barriers were created with runes of protection. The runes he saw were made to protect the outside world from them, rather than the other way around.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Daeva interjected. “Devotees are still coming into Otherworld.” She remembers the carriage full of new worshippers ready to serve Sabine.

They are, Anhel agreed. But wherever they’re from, it’s certainly not the Mortal Realm.

“But Ezra was able to retrieve us,” she said. “Don’t the Elysians technically still have access to the realm?”

That was where the story got stranger. According to Anhel, the runes were carved shortly after their arrival. If the God had to hazard a guess, someone was trying to keep them trapped. He reminded Daeva that the Elysians still couldn’t go directly to the Mortal Realm, that they were bound to Otherworld as long as they were in charge of ruling the universe. But the Otherworld they were currently in was not the Otherworld he had lived in before. It wasn’t just that the Elysians had decorated the place to suit their opulent desires. It was as if someone had built this version of Otherworld from memory, a hazy copy of the former glory the home of the Gods once was.

The most damning sign that Otherworld was not the place Anhel had left was the absence of his physical body. His former vessel, a giant with thick skin, was missing from the Glade. The enormous mass of rotting flesh was nowhere to be found.

“Maybe the body is fully decomposed,” she said.

Then where are the bones? A body like that is not easy to get rid of, much less hide. There are always traces of the remains, he said.

The old God was right. “If we’re not in Otherworld, then where are we?”

Anhel fell silent. Daeva stared into the fire, watching the flames dance on the logs. She had been so focused on completing the Board’s tasks and eventually getting all her memories back that it never occurred to her that there was a greater deception at hand. She was distracted by not only the “game” Nyx had put before her, but also by the sheer trauma of having to confront all of the Elysians.

Reliving all of her suffering under Julia, Iris, Sabine, and Hubert had been unpleasant to say the least. Every task had forced her to take some form of retribution against one of the seven and remember the terrible things every individual Elysian had inflicted upon her. If that pattern still held by the next round of the game, then she would be seeing either Vivian, Tristan, or Ezra the next day.

She shivered at the unpleasantness of it all. By the time she fell into the hands of the remaining three, her torture had become purely psychological.

Maybe this was what she deserved. This was her karma, punishment for killing those seven nameless children and all of those nuns. She didn’t need a trial before the Elysians to know what she was guilty of.

Karma doesn’t exist, Anhel said. And you don’t deserve any of your suffering. The past is a difficult thing to heal from. I’ve suffered through it with you before and I promise, I will suffer through it with you again.

What if you leave again? The thought comes to her reflexively.

I won’t, he said. Not if I can help it. Once we leave, we won’t return.

For some reason, that put her at ease. She wasn’t going to stay in Otherworld forever. Once she got control of the Board, she wouldn’t need to kill people to get the Elysians off her back. With that level of control in the Mortal Realm, she would be safe for the rest of her immortal life.

That is, if she wins the game.

She didn’t care about it before, not until Nyx offered to return her memories. The only thing she had wanted before all of this was to understand why she came back to life, to fulfill the wishes of her past self. But after facing four of the Elysians, she realized that winning control of the Board would allow her to undo the influence of the Elysians. They would never hurt someone like they hurt her ever again. She would be able to wreak havoc in their lives like never before.

At that moment, Haydn burst through the doors of their room, carrying a corpse in his arms. Perhaps it was the light playing tricks on her vision, but Daeva could’ve sworn that the dead body winked at her.

“Were you staying up late for me? You shouldn’t have,” Haydn said, placing the body on the cushions near her. Daeva moved away, unsettled by the cadaver.

“Why did you bring a dead body back to this room? You should’ve placed it outside,” she said.

That’s not just any dead body, Anhel said.

Before he could reveal who it was to Daeva, a bell tolls in the distance.

Nyx had arrived at last, no doubt with a new task from the Board.