Garren drew in a deep breath before kneeling on the cold stone floor. He raised his head up to the skylight and closed his eyes, trying to find the right words.
“Orrick, I call on you.” Garren groaned as his voice echoed throughout the large room sending his words down each of the surrounding corridors. This was insane, idiotic. He looked around to see if anyone had entered or heard him. The atrium remained empty and eerily quiet.
Garren closed his eyes and sighed wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He could do this; it was the only way. He had no other options, and he was out of time.
“I summon thee, Orrick, mighty god of chaos and creation,” he tried again, biting out the words as if they pained him to say. Garren cracked open one eye, peering around him, even though he knew no one would be there. If Oriana could see him now, she would laugh her ass off. Thoughts of her brought him back to the severity of his task.
“Orrick, omnipotent god of creation and chaos, I beg of you. Please, hear me. I need your help. I will do anything. Please, just hear me.” He was met with silence. Garren let his shoulders sag beneath him in defeat. This was it. There was nothing else to be done. Oriana would be forever trapped.
A low cackle rang out, bouncing between the statues of the Six Eternal. Garren spun in every direction for the owner of the malicious laugh.
“Well, to say this is a surprise would be quite the understatement.” Orrick slinked from the shadows of an alcove beside the statue of Anthes.
How fitting, Garren thought. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to hear your feeble attempt at paying me a compliment. Tell me, was it pure agony to speak forth the words ‘Omnipotent god of chaos and creation?’” He said the last part in a mocking tone. “I have to say, I was hoping I would see you again, but I wasn’t entirely sure you would make it out alive from the battle with my little gift. Although, I suppose you of all people in this feeble world, would be the one to have vanquished that beast. Well, you and dearest Oriana, of course.”
Garren’s skin crawled. This was a bad idea. He itched to lash out at Orrick. To wrap his hands around his godly throat. “I need your help,” Garren ground out through clenched teeth.
“My help? I didn’t think you could surprise me twice, halfling, but I am baffled. Whatever could you need my help with?” Orrick knocked the candles and offerings from the base of Anthes’s statue before sitting down, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back, casually resting his elbows upon Anthes’s carved stone feet.
Garren only heard one word from Orrick’s sarcastic retort. Halfling. “What did you call me?”
Orrick brought a hand to his chest, gasping in an exaggerated show of mortification. “Don’t tell me you are unaware of your ancestry?”
Garren did not change the look he gave Orrick, only continued to stare at him with all the enmity he could muster.
“Well, this is just too good. A god living among mortals who doesn’t know he’s a god?” Orrick’s laugh made Garren wince. It reminded him of a rusted hinge squeaking incessantly on a steady breeze.
Garren’s breath hitched. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. A god?
“Demon got your tongue, Garren?” Orrick rose from his seated position and stalked toward him. “That’s right. After our little encounter, you had me thoroughly intrigued. I did a bit of digging to find out who you really are. It seems that our High Ruler, King of the Six Eternals, Zanos, is your father. He, the very one who made it forbidden to lie with any being other than a god, who killed off all the halflings centuries ago, has been hiding a secret. A halfling of his own.” Orrick looked at the statue of the god of life and death, bringing a hand up into the air and clenching his fist. With his nostrils flaring and his jaw clenched, the statue of Zanos crumbled into thousands of pebbled pieces, stones littering the ground around them.
Garren flinched at the god’s destruction of the large statue. “I–I don’t understand. My father was Bentos of Cirus, my mother Kira of Thengali. I grew up here, in Svakland. I…I am not a god.”
“Oh, how wrong you are, halfling. Those people were not your parents. You have a far older and darker history than you know.”
“Stop calling me that,” Garren snapped.
Orrick only chuckled at his vehemence. “You are an entirely new creature I did not even know existed.”
Garren remained utterly still. “What do you mean?”
“You, my dear strong friend, are half god, half Zydell.”
Zydell? Oriana had told him of the Zydells. They were another kind of celestial beings, but he recalled her saying that through cosmic law, the Gods and Zydells were not allowed to visit one another. “How is that possible?” Garren questioned.
“Ah, I see my sister has told you of our cosmic law, prohibiting us Gods from going to the Zydell world. That is true. However, it seems that Zanos does not think the law applies to him.” Orrick’s eyes momentarily turned into a raging red flame before settling back to the same green as Oriana’s. “The bastard. He’s been secretly going to the Zydells’ world for a millennium. You are living proof of that. He will understand the limits of my rage soon enough, both him and my father, for locking me away.”
“You lie,” Garren accused.
“If only I did, dearest Zydell. You are not the only one angered by this news.” Orrick’s eyes flickered yellow then orange before settling on red once again, matching his rigid stance and the snarl upon his lip. His eyes reminded Garren of a seahorse changing color along with his mood. “The Zydells are an entirely different race of immortal beings. They, too, were created by the cosmos just as the Gods were, and some would even say they are more powerful than the Gods, for a Zydell is a keeper of both time and space. They have not only the ability to alter the past, present, and future, but they can change one’s reality completely.”
Garren felt lightheaded.
Orrick began to circle Garren where he stood. “Our mighty King, Zanos, fell in love with the Zydell Queen Ada, continuing visits to the world, which ultimately resulted in your creation, the creation of an entirely new, powerful hybrid species.
For a millennium, you grew in your mother’s womb, for such a power as yours takes time to develop. But it was not just you, no…Ada had triplets. Three children created with the power of both the Gods and the Zydells.”
