After a moment of silence, she spoke,“No more pretending?”
“No more pretending. I saw you. I touched your skin, and your scent has been burned into my memories whether I believed it or not.”
As he lay strapped to a bed in the middle of a padded room, he confessed, “I kept my scrub pants from that night and stuffed them in my mattress. I’ve yet to smell them, but it will be the first thing I do if I ever make it back there.”
Her laugh was golden and, in that moment, Brooks decided he would do anything to hear it over and over again.
“I know why you’re in an asylum now. You’re obviously a stalker and can’t be trusted around women.”
“No, you’ve got it all wrong. If there’s anyone I can’t be trusted around, it’s you.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I’m liable to give you my heart, and if that happens there’s no way I would ever let you give it back.”
“I couldn’t accept that gift,”she said after a moment.“I don’t deserve something so precious from a soul as kind as yours.”
“Don’t mistake my kindness for goodness, Siren. I am not the hero. Hero’s walk a just path and sacrifice their wants for the needs of others. I would raze the universe to have you and would never look back. I’m the villain, Xia.”
The tension between them was palpable, but he couldn’t stand the silence. “Tell me another story, but this time about magic.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you a story about magic, or chaos as we call it.”
Brooks relaxed and let his eyes fall shut, desperate to pretend he was anywhere but strapped to a table in a padded room.
“To know about magic, you have to know about its creator. Long before the Titans, there was a man born from the darkness. He awoke to empty space in an endless sky and decided that he didn’t want to be alone in the dark.”
“Makes sense.”
“Brooks,”she scolded.
“Sorry. Continue.”
“He gathered the smallest gasses and molecules and pushed them together so tightly that eventually they formed the stars. Once he had brightened the sky, he decided he needed a place to call home. Somewhere he could always come back to even if a hundred years had passed. He picked his favorite star out of all and crafted the Earth. He set the Earth to orbit the sun so that no matter where he was, he could see his favorite star.
One day he realized that Earth was too barren and lonely, so he decided to craft a great ocean to circle it. He created the most beautiful life within its waves, each unique in color and size. When he was finished with the ocean, he discerned that he was still not truly happy.”
“For fucks sake, is anything good enough for this guy?” Brooks interjected.
“Anyway. He decided to craft beings to live upon the land, and it was his greatest task yet. He would make sentient beings with thought processes and free will. He knew that with free will came choices, and with choices came consequences. He needed to create order. So, from his chest he sprouted Tartarus and, within it, Hades’ realm for the dead. He made great rivers in the underworld to ensure that the choices and consequences of the souls met the requirements of their afterlife.
Then, he crafted the great pillars that hold the heavens and a mountain where he could sit from the summit and watch over everything he’d built. In the middle was where the daemon, his most beloved creations, were meant to live out their lives. He loved them so much that within each of their hearts, he placed a morsel of his essence to give them the gift of magic.”
“He sounds like a pretty cool dude.”
“The magic morphed into each being differently and made them unique, just as he wanted from the start. Years passed and he became unsettled again. Everything on Earth ran on its own without his intervention and the stars still shone brightly in the sky. He didn’t want to be alone in the dark again, but he knew he could never live among his beloved creatures. If one were to get greedy and take from him, it would tip the scales and the world he crafted with such care would fall out of balance into chaos.
As he watched them live and die, he became jealous. They lived, died, fought and fucked. Everything he had ever wanted, but he was destined to never have. That was the curse of such power. To guard it, always. As time went on, he grew bitter and cruel. The joy of creation faded and he lost his purpose. The magic became tainted with his resentment and the daemon overindulged in carnality. They fought, schemed, betrayed and murdered. He never saved them, and their downfall was written in the stars.”
“What happened to him?”
“No one knows. Some say he left the world to the Fates and left to create other worlds. Others say he fell into the darkness between the stars and ceased to exist.”
“What a douchebag! What was this guy’s name?”
“He is the Deathless God of Chaos.”
Brooks’ blood turned to ice in his veins.
