“They aren’t the beasts,” Rast replies with certainty.
“So we could send the beasts back to the Abyss?” Khaos says, excitement threading through his tone.
“No,” Rast replies. “The King was the only one who could send them back, he was a god, an ancient one, and when he died, that gift went with him.”
“The missing souls,” I mutter.
“Fuck,” Hades curses.
“Surely not?” Loki says.
“Think about it: if the fucker who is behind the princes and Hades capture and draining his magic knows that you can drain souls for power, then that’s what he’s using the souls for. He’s somehow managing to pull the souls back to the living realm and drain them.” I look at a horrified Rast, “What would happen if those souls were just drained, if they didn’t get sent to the Abyss?”
“They lose all sense of who they were, they become shells, mindless, violent seeking shells. They can be temporarily stopped, but they will just come back, even if you cut their heads off or incinerate them, they will come back at some point. That’s why they were sent to the Abyss,” Rast explains.
“The Wraiths,” Storm says with shock. “What you described is what we call a Wraith.”
“Which would also explain the Wraith that we found who had the prince's mark on him, and it would confirm our theory that a god and the princes are using the souls for power,” Rival summarises.
“It’s all connected,” Reaper mutters.
“If the only way to stop the Wraiths is to send them to the Abyss, that means that every single one of them that we’ve killed is still out there,” I point out. “How the fuck are we going to fix that?”
“There’s something more going on. The keys that open the gate to the Abyss, he wants them. There are fuck knows how many Wraiths in there and the Abyss creatures that eat realms, why would he risk opening the gate and setting the creatures free? How is he controlling the Wraiths?” Rival asks.
“Fuck you’re right,” Khaos agrees.
“Maybe the keys were a distraction?” Rast asks quietly.
We all pause, even though we shouldn’t be pausing right now. Rast’s words ring true, my instincts agreeing with his statements.
“That would change everything,” Zev says. “It would mean that it wasn’t the realm that sent us after the keys.”
I frown, my head beginning to hurt as realisation hits me, “You said that the princes wanted access to the Abyss.”
“Yeah. That’s what they want the keys for, that’s what we’re trying to stop from happening,” Rival explains with a slight frown as he seems confused about where I’m going with this.
“But we’ve only just learned about the Abyss, the princes wanted to open the gates to the Underworld and let the supernaturals out that would cause havoc and slowly deteriorate when they stepped foot out of the Underworld, where they were supposed to be,” I reply. “It wasn’t the Abyss.”
“What the hell is going on?” Mayhem asks. “I completely forgot that we thought that.”
“We all did,” Kill says. “But now that you’ve said it, I know that it’s right and we were wrong. The god that is in charge and using the princes to do his bidding wants to open the Abyss, not the Underworld.”
“How do they know about the Abyss though?” Hades asks. “I’m a god too, I didn’t know that it existed.”
“Someone must still know about it,” Rast suggests.
“Okay, hang on, let me just get this straight,” Loki says. “The keys are actually a distraction and not what the god who is taking the souls is trying to get, and he doesn’t want to open the gates to the Underworld but the gates to the Abyss, which is somehow infinitely worse. Wraiths are souls who have been drained and used for bad magical purposes, and they can’t die. The only way to get rid of them is to send them to the Abyss, but the only person who can do that is the King of Siorraidh, which is the original Underworld, this place, and he’s long gone. But in theory, if we could find Tèarmann, then he should be there, right? If the place hasn’t been eaten by the Abyss creatures? Because all natives that die here should also still be going to Tèarmann, although no one is entirely sure about that because no one knows what happened to it.”
“No, that’s not how god deaths work. No one really knows where they go, but it’s not to the Underworld, demi-gods do, but not gods,” Hades replies, and then looks at Rast, “I presume that’s the same for this realm.”
Rast nods, “Yes. We really should keep walking.”
We all start walking again, but my mind is spinning.
“How did I remember that we thought that it was the Underworld that the keys were for and not the Abyss?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Reaper replies. “Do you think Monty knows?”
