“That you intend to fix it. The world, I mean.”
Brooks sat and faced the water. “I intend to end those who have hurt the only two beings I’ve ever cared about. And then I will find the one who wronged me and watch her bleed.”
“And what about the rest of us? Have you never cared about the rest of us?” Nyx asked incredulously. “You have people here who still worship you. Who hold out belief that if they pray hard enough, you will come and save them from their shitty lives and their even shittier deaths.”
He swallowed as he pondered her words. What about the rest of them? The truth was he’d never been close enough to care. They were so small and busy, lives beginning and ending faster than he could blink. He could imagine that his view looking down on them was much like their view looking up. You could see beauty, wondrous mystery, and a longing to be a part of it. But in the end, it was impossible to be a part of.
But now that he walked among them… Xia was one of those lives, and she was not small. She wasn’t nothing.
She was everything.
And she was only one daemon out of thousands. More than the daemon were the beings they’d created– humans. What were mortals like?
Brooks, there is nothing for us here. We have made hundreds of planes just like this one. We give them life and they live it. We owe them nothing.
“I… I’m just not sure that’s true.”
“Avyssos was built on sacred ground,” Nyx said, breaking the silence as she waved her hand. “It’s one of the two places where our connection to the well of chaos is the strongest. The daemon you created, our gods, blessed the ground so that no harm could ever come of it.”
“What kind of harm?” Brooks fought the urge to look at the homes falling to ruin downriver.
“Well, it used to be from anything. Those with ill intentions, or tainted chaos. I was taught that before The Twelve ruled Olympus you couldn’t even wield chaos on sacred ground. Only those ordained by Gaia could, and they had to be dedicated to priests of the temple.” Sarcasm crept into her voice and by the end that sharp temper surfaced.
“And after The Twelve?”
“I don’t know. It’s… fading. Gaia stopped answering our calls. No more priests were ordained. Those we had either lost their faith and left or wither away in the old temples. Our link to the well is dying.” Nyx’s brows knit as she chewed the inside of her lip, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight as if this wasn’t the first time she’d questioned the slow decline of her home. “Anyone can cross the grounds now. The Olympians come to claim taxes on food or coin that we don’t have, but it’s just an excuse to look for the temple,” she scoffed as her inquisitive expression fell. Her eyes narrowed, lips thinning and she shook her head.
“Why do they need the temple?”
“Why do you think?” She threw her hands up, that sarcastic demeanor she wore like a shield flaring. “I just told you. The connection to the well of chaos is stronger here than any otherplace in the world, and they’re the most conniving, power hungry assholes alive.”
They mean to control it.
“What happens if they do?”
Pieces of us live in each of them, and those pieces long to join the whole. It is why the cycle works. Once the soul loses its piece, it rejoins the flow. It is possible that if a daemon had access to the well, they could siphon more for themselves. But they were not made to contain more than what we’ve given. It would overpower the soul and eat them alive. Rotting away, from the inside out.
Brooks’ stomach dropped as a memory resurfaced. A raspy alto voice filled his mind, her eyes desperate and enraged as she straddled him on a surgical table.“I have spent my life in a miserable endless cycle– Receive the taint, purge the taint, regret the purge, and try to die. I am Lytta, Goddess of Madness, bred by the taint within Zeus himself.”
Ice crackled on the ground around them as Chaos’ wrath rose to the surface.They steal from the well. They steal from us. This world will fucking burn.
“Hey!” Nyx shouted! “I’m godsdamned talking to you!” A smack landed against his cheek and he lunged. Brooks gripped her throat, Chaos bleeding into the forefront as he squeezed tight enough to make the veins pop in her forehead.
“Do notevertouch us like that again, girl, or you will be nothing more than a stain on the ground.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she choked out, her words sputtering as she fought for the oxygen to fuel them. “And I am not afraid to die. Do your worst, asshole.”
Chaos growled, and Brooks had to fight to pull him back.
“Get a hold of yourself!”He scolded.
Nyx wheezed and coughed beside him. He tried to apologize, to reach out and touch her shoulder but she swatted him away. Nyx glared with every ounce of hate she could muster.
“I’m so sorry, Nyx. I didn’t– he just,weare still learning how to cope with this new reality.”
Hatred mixed with confusion as she frowned and asked around labored breaths, “We?”
“It’s complicated.” Brooks rubbed his eyes. “When I went to sleep, I was Chaos. Father of Darkness. Deathless God. When I woke up, I was someone else. I was eternal, but I felt… longing. Loneliness. That part split from the eternal god, and now,” he gestured to himself. “Weare this.”
