Twilight of the Gods

Burn Odi’s corpse.

The gold cursive glints malevolently on the paper. Haydn wanted to ignore the task. Odi was potentially useful to him. If he were to burn him, then the God would be free to possess whoever he wished, taking his powers away with him.

What does Nyx want? It didn’t matter before, but the latest hint made the Lady of the Night more of an enemy than an ally. Or was she the one speaking the truth and Odi was the one deceiving him?

In Haydn’s hands were two conflicting pieces of information. On one side there was Odi, back from the dead with a promise to lead him directly to Evelyn. On the other hand, there was Nyx, a dark deity who never broke her promises telling him that the path to Evelyn was through destroying Odi’s old body. Both things could be true, but both things could also be false. Either way, he knew to Nyx and Odi that he was just another chess piece for them to use.

“What are you thinking about?” Odi’s corpse shifted toward him, bones creaking as he moved.

“Finding Evelyn,” he said, opting to tell half the truth. “You said you would give me a direct path to her.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” He lets out a rough, staccato laugh.

“Yes,” Haydn said, letting a bit of irritation seep into his voice. “In exchange for me bringing you to the palace.”

“You did do that,” Odi agreed. “Very well. Come here.” His skeletal hand motions for Haydn to sit in front of him.

He dips his hands into Haydn’s chest, pulling out a blackened soul. Odi shook his head in mock disapproval. “You are as irredeemable as I remembered. Do you really want to see Evelyn with your soul like this?”

Hayn frowned at his remark. His soul had gotten this corrupted because of his search for Evelyn. Besides, Odi was hardly in a position to judge him, not when he could send the old God back to his unmarked grave.

The corpse runs his bones over the inscriptions, creating a hollow scratching sound. Suddenly, the soul glows and a red line appears. It stems from the center of the soul and leads out the door of the room. Haydn’s breath catches in his throat. It seemed too good to be true.

Odi places his soul back into his chest, with the red line still visible. “The red line is the bond you share with your soulmate,” he explained. “It should lead you to Evelyn or whoever is holding her soul.”

Haydn’s head whipped back toward him, turning away from the door. “What do you mean whoever is holding her soul?”

The old God smiled wickedly. “If Evelyn were to fall out of favor with a God, they could’ve removed her soul as punishment. It would imprison her in Limbo for all of eternity.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing that there are barely any Gods left,” Haydn said. This made Odi frown in response.

“Watch your words,” he warned. “I can take away my blessings just as easily as I grant them.”

Haydn clamped his mouth shut. It was a credible threat. He gets up from the cushions, ready to follow the red line out the door.

“Where do you think you’re going? We have other things to do,” Odi said. He was standing, with flesh hanging precariously off his bones.

“I’m off to find Evelyn.” Haydn didn’t know how he could’ve made that more obvious.

“I wasn’t joking when I said that I intended to bring back the glory of the Gods. Just do this one thing for me,” Odi said.

Haydn was starting to think that Nyx had the right idea when it came to burning Odi’s corpse. The old God was such a nuisance that it would make his search for Evelyn easier.

“It has come to my attention that there is another God around here,” he said. “A traitor to the pantheon.”

“That’s just Anhel,” Haydn said, dismissing Odi’s worries. “He’s no traitor.”

“I’m not talking about him,” Odi said. “There is one among the Elysians, a pretender who wears a mask to survive.”

That got Haydn’s attention. This God hiding among the Elysians had the ability to steal Evelyn’s soul. Whoever they were, they were a liability that Haydn couldn’t risk.

“They’re in the room below us,” Odi continued. “I can hear their traitorous heart beating. We need to punish them for what they did.”

Haydn shook his head. “Do you want me to carry you there?” He asks this mockingly. Revenge itself didn’t count as a plan.

“I’ll walk,” Odi said, shuffling out the door. “They’re all asleep anyway.”

Haydn grabbed his hand. “They’ll hear you from a mile away if you keep moving like that. How do you even plan on punishing them? You can barely lift a sword in this state.”

Odi swats his hand away, surging forward. “I don’t need my body for this. I still possess a great deal of magic. I may not be able to kill them, but I can make them feel the pain they deserve.”

He quickly moves through the halls, forcing Haydn to run to catch up to him. He shuffles down the stairs, stopping at each door to sense the presence in the rooms.

“That’s odd,” Odi said. “They’ve disappeared. I could’ve sworn they were here a moment ago.”

Or maybe you’ve sensed the wrong thing, Haydn thought. He could still see the red line connected to his chest, the one that would lead him straight to Evelyn. While he was tempted to follow it, he wanted to neutralize the threat of the other God. But who could the false Elysian be?

He knew that Sabine was a Mage when Daeva had pulled out her soul. The magical signature was too similar to that of a mortal magic wielder. But who was the God?

The first person that came to mind was Ezra. Given the authority he had over the Elysians and his secretive nature, it was a good initial guess. That was until Haydn factored in his hatred for the Gods. If Ezra were a God, he wouldn’t have wished for the death of all the angels. Gods rarely did things to themselves that were blatantly strategically disadvantageous.

That left the rest of the five Elysians. There was Julia, Hubert, Iris, Vivian, and Tristan. Hubert was Sabine’s lover and he had replaced the Gods by becoming the Soulmaker. That eliminated him. But the remaining four were still a mystery to him. He simply didn’t know enough about each of them.

“Found them,” Odi said, stopping outside of a door. He walks inside without warning, leaving Haydn little time to slip into his invisible glamour. Instantly, he hears a scream before he enters the room.

Iris was standing on her bed, threatening Odi’s corpse with a ball of fire in her hands. “Stay back or I will incinerate you,” she said.

“My, my,” he replied. “Eris. I should’ve known your feisty spirit would’ve found a way for you to survive the war. Was betraying us so easy? Do your companions know of your true nature?”

“My name is Iris now,” she said. A circle of flames surrounds the bed, preventing Odi from getting closer.

“Is it? How does it serve you? Do you enjoy calling yourself Elysian? Filth like you doesn’t deserve to live,” Odi said, taunting her.

The flames grow larger, scorching to the ceiling. “You’ve never done anything for the rest of the pantheon. You were just an overpowered leech that we had to tolerate because of Anhel. I did what any logical person would do.”

This made Odi glare. His remaining facial muscles twisted into an expression of displeasure. He raises his arms, pointing a single, bony finger at Iris. “You will pay for your insolence.”

The woman’s skin boils, rippling like a freshly disturbed pond. Scars and various disfigurements appear on her skin. The flames disappear and she collapses on her bed in pain.

Haydn almost felt sorry for her. If she hadn’t played a hand in Daeva’s torture, he might have stepped out of the shadows to stop Odi. But he couldn’t dispute the undeniable logic that she was a threat to Evelyn’s soul. As long as she was in Otherworld, she could take her away from him again.

Odi continues to use his dark magic on her, twisting her bones and flesh into strange shapes. When Haydn had been chosen by Odi years ago as his Mage, he would’ve never expected him to be sadistic. All of the stories of Odi said otherwise. Sure, he may not have been a faithful lover, but he had a love for mortals and created the universe’s pleasures. Odi was a hedonist who would never get his hands dirty, according to the bards.

As he watched dark blood soak Iris’s bedsheets, he knew that the storytellers were wrong. Like Anhel, he was a God of Chaos – unpredictable, but in tune with the strands of fate. He merely played the song of the universe with his magic. And the universe was a very violent place.

The fire reappears, licking the ground. It catches on Odi’s tattered clothes, spreading to his bones. Nonetheless, the God continued with his punishment of Iris even as the flames reached the tip of his head.

“Renounce your allegiance to them,” he rasped. “Take back your old name. Call yourself a God again and I will spare you.”

“Never,” she choked, “I will never serve someone like you again.”

“Then you don’t deserve to be in this world.” Odi moves to the bed, sticking out his arms to choke Iris. She twitches in his hold, thrashing for escape. But he squeezes her throat with vengeance, pressing his hatred into her with his fingers.

She can’t die, Haydn reminded himself. But he was starting to think that dying would’ve been a kinder fate watching the scene unfold before him.

It’s for Evelyn’s safety, he rationalized. He would do anything for her, including letting Odi do whatever he pleased with the Elysians. No sin was too evil.

Odi was slowly disintegrating under the flames as he choked Iris. All that was left of him was his skeleton, still holding up as he continued Iris’s punishment. The flames made him appear menacing, painting him more as a demon than a God.

Haydn leaves the room, looking to get a bucket of water to douse the flames. He picks up a jug left by a devotee and scoops water from a fountain, heart racing as he did so. Any minute now, the other Elysians would notice the plumes of smoke coming from Iris’s room. The smell of ashes had already reached the halls.

He returns to the room, pulling his shirt up to his nose to avoid the flames. But, by then, the fire had died down, leaving a haze of smoke. He moves to the bed, expecting to see Odi still strangling Iris. Instead, he’s greeted by Iris’s lone, blackened body.

Her eyes were closed, or rather, they were squeezed shut. Her furrowed brows and drawn-out mouth all came together to create an expression of pain. It looked like she was frozen in a nightmare. At the base of her neck, he could see Odi’s fingerprints burned into her skin. The old God certainly did a number on her.

“I appreciate you coming back,” a voice said. “But she won’t be awake for years.”

He turned around, his eyes greeted by Odi’s disembodied form. The God was a shadow that sucked all of the light out of the room. He seemed to be eating the darkness and growing larger by the second.

“Are you planning to leave?” It seemed to Haydn that Odi’s revenge was complete.

Odi lets out a deep laugh. “No, my former Chosen One. I’ve only just begun. It has come to my attention that there are also angels in the palace, angels that have lost their way. As a God, I must be the shepherd that leads them to the right path.”

As far as Haydn was concerned, there was only one angel in the palace. But Odi always sensed things beneath the surface. He, out of all the Gods, knew that appearances were deceiving. It was why he bequeathed Haydn with the gift of glamour.

He draws closer to Haydn, touching his arm. Briefly, he wondered if Odi intended to possess him, to create the bond he had seen between Anhel and Daeva. He had no form so infiltrating his body would be the most logical thing to do. But Odi didn’t operate on logic. Instead, the shadow curls around his arm, shifting until it takes the form of a black, venomous snake.

Haydn touches its scales, marveling at how solid they felt. Odi’s magic never ceased to amaze him. “How did you do this? I thought Gods couldn’t create their own bodies.”

“They can’t,” Odi said. “I took the liberty of possessing multiple creatures. My previous body was keeping me trapped. But I must be careful in my new form. There aren’t many bodies left until I need to find a new one. And this place has many bodies.”

“Do you plan to seek out the angels now?” The night was still young.

“Why don’t we find your precious Evelyn? Let’s see where the soul bond leads,” Odi hissed. “You deserve this reward after suffering for so long.”

I thought you’d never ask. They follow the red line down the dark hall. Hope flutters in Haydn’s chest. His search was finally going to end.