Mickey looks back at me. “Nah, my friend. Born and bred right here.”
The car ride to the hospital where Imani and Lt. Lindsey agreed to meet us is rather uneventful. When we reach it, we head inside and over to the room of the man who was the first one shot with an arrow.
Imani and Lt. Lindsey are already waiting inside when we enter.
“It’s good to see you doing well,” Imani says as she smiles at Torin.
“Riley reinvigorated methoroughly,” Torin announces, and why it soundssoX-rated, I’m not sure.
“I just like… nursed him back to health, nothing like what you’re thinking,” I say.
“What do you think I’m thinking?” Imani asks. I ignore her and turn to the situation at hand.
“Have any of them woken up?” I ask.
Lt. Lindsey shakes her head. “None of them. The closest condition we can compare it to is a coma, but there are some differences. The brain activity, for one, is vastly different. It’s almost like…”
“There’s no one inside?” I guess.
She nods. “Yes.”
“I think that man stole their souls,” I say.
From where he’s sitting in a chair, Mickey says, “I agree.”
“I… lost consciousness after my magic attacked the horseman; what exactly happened to the wolves?”
Torin looks over at me. “There was a bright flash of light and the wolves returned to the white orbs, but when the man fled through the Door, he took them with him. Whatever you did seemed to hurt him. His horse vanished, and he staggered back as the black mist was almost erased. He quickly fled through the Door before it shut and disappeared.”
“‘When four worlds are drained by death, conquest, war, and famine, a god will rise to create anew,’” Mickey mutters.
I assume he’s just rambling about something as usual, but Torin’s head snaps toward him. He rushes over and damn near hauls Mickey off the chair.
“What did you just say?” he demands.
“I’m afraid you know what I just said. This whole book? It’s not the ravings of a madman; it’s the ravings of a god who is rising to supreme power using the darkest magic possible—magic that requires the end of four realms in order to reach absolute godhood. With this… there’s nothing that could stop him.”
Imani’s eyes go wide. “Death, conquest, war, and famine… those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”
“Yes. By controlling the horsemen, he must destroy four realms and use the sacrifice to reach a power that should never be awoken. We know they’ve destroyed one, but we have no way of knowing whether we’re the second, third, or even the fourth,” Mickey says.
Torin’s jaw clenches. “It’s been nearly two hundred years since my people were killed. Who knows what they’ve done in that time.”
“What do you mean by ‘destroy’?” Lt. Lindsey asks.
Mickey slumps back down into his seat. “It’s probable that killing all living beings gives the god the sacrifices he needs to complete this spell. In this horseman’s case, he’s taking the souls of the living.”
“If even one of those wolves were set loose on this world, it would multiply by the thousands in a day,” Torin says. “It’s similar to what happened to my world—a magic that spread until it consumed all of the living.”
“How… are we expected to stop a god who is controlling these horsemen?” Imani asks. “Are horsemen gods? What exactly are they?”
Torin responds, “They’re beings of the apocalypse, destined to exist peacefully until the end of the world. But whatever this god is doing, he’s controlling them. You’ve seen their power.”
I glance at him. “Torin, you killed the one who invaded your land, right? You can kill them!”
Everyone looks at Torin, who doesn’t appear confident about whether or not that’s an option.
“At my full power, I could. Even then, the fight was a struggle. The horseman had the power of a god himself. And… I don’t think you realize how different my power is compared to how it was back then. I had hundreds of thousands of worshipers. I had…” He looks down at his hands, then back up at me. “The power I held was enough that no other god even ever challenged me. I alone ruled my lands. But now… now I can’t even heal myself.”
