“Elysia, this is Sai. He acts as a guide for our newcomers.”
“Someone has to introduce them to everyone! Gods know where they’d end up without me.” At that, Sai’s eyes narrowed onto a singular boat that was doing its damndest to turn around and paddle upstream. “You there! This was a non-refundable, one-way ticket, sir, please sit down and resume your spot. I’ll be with you all shortly, and you can lose your shit then. Thank you!” he chirped before turning back to Aidan. “You asked for an easy one today?”
Aidan nodded, his face focused and somewhat tense. “Please.”
Sai glanced at Elysia, then back to the boats. “I’ve got just the one. Don’t you worry, you’ll be a natural, I can feel it.” He started to wind his way back to his boat when he stopped and threw her a blinding grin, his dark hair ruffling in the wind. “And if you ever want the real tour of your new home, you know who to find!”
Smiling, Elysia waved to him and allowed Aidan to guide her over to a bench on the riverbank. “Is he a reaper?”
Startled, Aidan took a moment to answer. “No, Sai is not a reaper. Both Sai and Grim were my right-hand men back when we were mortal. He’s taken to this life better than any of us.” Aidan shook his head, watching Sai offer a hand to an older gentleman struggling to step out of his boat onto the shore.
Soon enough, a plump woman with shoulder-length curly brown hair stumbled over to them, kicking up riverbank dirt with her eyes tired and blank.
“The jaunty one sent me over here,” she mumbled.
Nodding, Aidan gestured to the space on the bench beside Elysia. “Please take a seat.”
Agitation brought a little more life into her eyes. “Did I do something wrong already?”
“Not at all,” Aidan soothed. “Sometimes the transition to this realm is more challenging for some mortals than others. We’d like to assist you if you’re open to it.”
She looked at Elysia warily. “Assist how?”
Nervous, Elysia cleared her throat. “I’d like to removewhatever is getting in the way of you being able to naturally process your life. Sometimes things get stuck—mortal life is hard, but here you can process and reset.”
The woman was quiet. “You can try.” The doubt was evident in her voice, but she didn’t pull away or say no.
Remembering Aidan’s instructions, Elysia directed her magic to search the newcomer. In her mind’s eye, she found knots and snarls. Pain and responsibility that had never been the woman’s in the first place, along with genuine fetid grief. Elysia carefully scanned every part of her before reaching in and removing the hardened clumps of energy.
One by one, stonelike objects of different sizes and weights fell into her lap as Elysia fought to stay within the flow of her concentration. The heaviness of loss, the debilitating squeeze of guilt, and other flashes of emotions all swam through her consciousness without settling. The emotions and sensations weren’t hers, she was simply a surgeon, viewing and extracting from the woman’s etheric body. She had no idea how long she worked, only that at some point increasingly familiar hands pulled her against a firm body, offering warmth and support as she worked. Dropping one final pebble onto her lap, golden light coursed through the woman’s body, filling in the now empty spaces. Elysia came to and found the woman staring at her in shock.
“How–how did you do that?” The woman was fixed on the pile of blackened rocks on Elysia’s lap.
Elysia held one up as the fog-soaked wind sent her hair flying and shrugged. “I’ve always been good at finding stuff.”
Entranced with the rocks, Aidan stepped in for Elysia and walked the woman back over to where Sai was now waiting. Offering them a quick two-finger wave, he hooked his elbow through the woman’s and escorted her away from the riverbank and into the city.
Walking back over, Aidan scooped all the rocks into a basket and pulled Elysia to her feet. “Final step.”
He’d talked her through it all, but she still couldn’t believe hermagic was capable ofthis. She’d been fully expecting a whole lot of nothing to happen and then needing to awkwardly apologize to both the woman and Aidan for failing the realm. But it had been easy—taxing, but easy—to search for the hardened blocks of energy and draw them out.
Crouched down by the river’s foamy edge with the basket of rocks between them, Elysia grabbed a handful and dropped them into the river. As the rocks sank, the water bubbled and foamed until the blackened stones glinted in shades of red, purple, and dazzling blue. Rubies, amethysts, and sapphires swept away in the river’s current. She dropped a few more into the water, and this time, she kept her eyes on him, noticing how with each transmutation the quiet, but constant tension she associated with him softened a little more.
The last of the transmuted rocks drifted away, the river intuitively guiding them where they needed to go to support the Deathlands. Elysia sat back on the damp shore and wiped her hands off. “Promise me you won’t attempt this anymore.”
Caught off guard, Aidan tore his gaze away from the river to look at her.
She inspected her nails rather than look at him. “The screaming in your head. It was from trying to do this, right? Except you weren’t able to properly remove the pain, so you’ve been carrying it. And based on what I heard, you kept trying anyway.”
Aidan ran a hand over his face, his blue eyes bright and face tight with latent anxiety. “I was able to rip properly sometimes—it’s not my natural magic, but I knew the theory and you weren’t here. The rivers were willing to do the transmutation because the realm needed the power. The only reason we’re in better shape than Kava is because I’ve been supplementing from the newcomers.”
Elysia frowned. What she had heard and felt the day she first met him was indescribable. It was the type of pain that madepeople wish to stop existing. Her own brain had wanted to shut down after only moments of dipping into his.
Her voice became clipped. “You mean to say that youknowinglytook on the pain ofhow many peopleeven though you were well-aware it was beyond your skill set? Did it even turn into rocks or are you justcarrying it?” She stared at the god beside her, who she was now sure might be just as stupid as your average tunnel rat.
Aidan exhaled through his nose and looked at her beseechingly, his dark hair breaking free from its carefully styled confines and falling against his skin. “What would you have done? It’s my fault this is even happening. If anyone deserves to bear the brunt of the destruction, then it’s me. Besides”—he smiled mirthlessly—“I’m a god. It takes an awful lot to kill us.”
“You have to let me fix it.” The same bossiness with which she directed her juvenile sister now rode her voice, her face fixed into a pissed-off mask that brooked no arguments.
