God of the Abyss (16 page)

I had faced this monster before, on Skrev. It was a
cloud of darkness that ate anything alive and moved as fast as water. Nothing
could kill it, and only light could stop it. I called my energy up and tried to
create light. No light. I felt my energy, but it was clueless as to what I
wanted.

An animal started to cry out in the forest, and that
was as far as it got. Sammy gasped, put the egg down, and pulled Ron close, as
if he could protect them. This wasn’t Sammy’s first time facing it either. I
could feel the darkness approaching fast from the east. Before I could second
guess myself, before I could doubt myself, I jumped in front of my children,
reached for my Iadnah energy, and tore a hole into the void just as the
darkness was upon us.

Whether it was destroyed in the blinding light, or
pulled into the Hell that was the void, the dark mystery of a monster was gone.
For the moment. I closed the void, cleaned the scar, and turned to see my boys
staring at me in shock. “Get home right now!” I demanded in my best angry
voice. “Don’t you dare sneak out at night ever again or I will ground you so
hard you will forget what daylight looks like!”

“Yes, Dad. We’re sorry! We won’t go out at night,”
Sammy promised. Ron nodded, trying not to cry.

I had no idea they had ever snuck out at night, but I
figured this was my only chance to drive it in that they couldn’t just sneak
away. On the other hand, this had the makings of a really bad paradox if they
got up and told me about it in the morning.

“Good. Now, if you do it again, I’ll wake your mother
up and have her come get you. I am going back to bed. You will go right home,
get in bed, and go to sleep. When you get up, we will not talk about what you
did tonight. You will never ever sneak out at night, ever again.”

“Are you mad at us?” Sammy asked. Ron hid his face
against Sammy’s chest.

“You could have been killed tonight. Of course I’m
mad at you for sneaking out, but I will forgive you if you
promise
to
never do this again.”

“We promise.”

“Good. Now go back to the house and go to bed.”

“Goodnight, Daddy.” Sammy took Ron’s hand and led him
all the way back to the house. I watched from just close enough to interfere
for the hour walk it took them to get home. When they were safely in the house,
I wiped the tears away. Yes, I knew it wasn’t manly, but I came so close to
losing my baby boys.

I sat down on the ground and closed my eyes. Having
never prayed in my life, I focused my thoughts on the apple. I knew whoever
made it so that I could go back to this crucial moment would never hear me, but
I had to say it anyway. “Thank you. Whoever you are, thank you.”

*          *          *

I felt someone nudging me a while before I was able
to drag myself from the heavy darkness of my lethargy. I was lying face down in
leaves with Rilryn standing over me. “Why are you sleeping on the ground?” he
asked. I got to my feet easily enough.

“I couldn’t find a B&B. You disappeared.”

“It was dark. You cannot see in the dark.”

“It wasn’t dark,” I argued. “I could see perfectly
fine and you were gone. Never mind. I don’t want the mind mazes and riddles
right now. You called for help, and I’m here to help, so let’s go before
something happens to–” I stopped talking and sighed as I was interrupted by a
familiar screech. “Of course,” I said, turning to see a griffin.

As beautiful as the creature was, its presence meant
trouble. The last time I faced this creature, all of space and time was falling
apart. However, he didn’t attack until provoked. He stared right at me, turned,
and pounced on Rilryn.

The Guardian had a dagger in his hand in a flash, but
I heard the metal snap. Kiro had given me a katana that had been created for my
father out of a material that was unbreakable, but swords were not my thing.
Instead, I usually tried to reason with or ward off the enemy until it was too
late, and then I had to do something stupid and dangerous.

I picked up the closest object (the apple) and threw
it at the griffin’s head. He stopped snapping at Rilryn to gawk at me,
startled, as if he couldn’t believe I did that. Rilryn gave me a similar look
of disbelief, but at least his innards were staying inside for the moment.

“You listen, griffin, because I know you’re smart.
You guys were created to protect wizards, so you must understand me at least a
little,” I said, lifting my left foot in order to pull the dagger from my boot.
His eyes narrowed in on it. I let my magic seep into the dagger, from its
handle to the tip of its blade. “I don’t know why you’re attacking him and I
don’t care. Your skin will break before this blade does. Get off him. This is
your only warning,” I promised.

Nothing could have surprised me more than when the
griffin backed away and then vanished. Rilryn continued staring at me in shock,
but I saw then that it may have been shock of a different type; the griffin had
made quite the scratching post of Rilryn. I pulled the healing salve that
Edward made out of my bag as I approached the Guardian, knelt, and used the
knife to cut away the remaining shreds of Rilryn’s shirt to see the damage. He
didn’t look and that was probably a good thing.

“He listened to you,” he said.

“He was after you. I was probably in the way and he
just didn’t want the extra trouble.”

He winced as I applied the paste to the long, deep
wounds in his skin. “There is a stitch kit in my bag,” he said.

“There’s no way I’m sticking a needle in anyone,” I
answered. This was probably the real reason I learned to heal using Iadnah
energy before I even knew what it was; I couldn’t deal with the alternative.
Something about sticking a thread in someone, while also being a Guardian, made
me feel like a necromancer. I couldn’t help but think that the person was dead
and I had to stitch bits and pieces together.

“Dylan, why did I just get a horrible chill?”

“It’s blood loss,” I lied. Before he could respond, I
poured my magic into him. Healing was the first thing I learned to do with it,
so healing was what my magic did best. His skin stitched itself back together
until the scratches looked months old and would heal without a scar. I had to
stop because my own stomach was hurting. It wasn’t as bad as the original, but
for a short time after healing a wound, I felt the phantom pains of that
injury.

“How did you do that?” he asked in awe, staring at
his scratches.

“Magic. If the griffins are back, things may be worse
than I thought. I need to drop you off back on Duran and take care of this.”

“Why not return me to Dayo?” he asked.

“I’ve never been there, for one, and I don’t want to
drop you in the middle of the ocean or something. But also, I think you would
just end up attacked again. On Duran, the others can help you,” I said. I
didn’t give him the chance to argue before attempting to flash us back home.
Having done it successfully hundreds of times, I wasn’t prepared for what I
felt. It was like trying to pick up a cat that I think will weigh about five to
ten pounds, when instead it weighs three hundred.

Weight was never an issue in flashing someone, but
something was holding him here and there was no way I could I do it without
running the risk of hurting him. “It is okay. I know I am stuck,” he said. “I
can rest here while you take care of the others.”

“I can’t leave you here to fend for yourself if
that–” I was cut off as the skin just below my neck burned. Instinctually, I
reached for the pentagram that always rested there and occasionally burned me
with no reason or warning. It was gone and I remembered I gave it to Edward.
They were in trouble. “I’m sorry,” I said, before flashing out.

It was the worst possible time to be called away by a
god, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was intercepted. If it were
Divina, Regivus, Madus, or Enki, I would have fought them because they would
have let go. It was Zer, though, and he would put up a fight. He didn’t know me
like the others did. Zer never considered that something might be more
important than his own random ideas. The white room was more irritating than
anything else.

“What is the status on my Guardian?” the god asked
without any preamble.

Yes, he was a god, and yes, I wasn’t, but it still
caught me as rude every time Zer opened his mouth. The god had that kind of
face, too; long and thin, like the rest of his body, with short, dark brown
hair and dark burgundy eyes. Anything he said was entitled to an eye-roll. But
since he was a god, I really tried to offer the politeness he never graced
anyone with.

“Not now. I have to get to my kids,” I declared.
Okay, so my polite bank was empty.

When I tried to leave, he held me back. Instead of
fighting him off, which could have ended very badly for my health, I reached
through my book to call Divina. She must have felt my desperation because she
appeared instantly.

“Deal with your brother, the boys need help,” I said
before flashing away. I would feel guilty for dumping her brother on her after
our sons were safe.

When I arrived, it was to fire and blood. The only
sound was the crackling of several tents burning. What wasn’t burned was flattened
or torn. Azyle was lying on the steps to the porch with Mordon keeping pressure
on his bleeding side. Mordon looked uninjured, but I wasn’t at all surprised by
that. Ghidorah was tending to Shiloh’s head by wrapping an obscene amount of
bandages on him. The paranoid Vaigdan babbled about blood-borne pathogens until
Ghidorah wrapped the bandage around his mouth. Samorde was putting fires out.
Edward and the boys were nowhere in sight.

“They’re in the house. They weren’t injured,” Mordon
told me, knowing who I was searching for.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“Griffins attacked,” he said.
“We need to talk
more about it later.”

I nodded my agreement as I passed them on the steps.
I could heal Azyle and Shiloh after I checked on the boys. When I opened the
front door, Sammy pounced and I landed hard. He hugged like Nila. Before I
could shift Sammy around enough to breathe, Ron joined him in squishing the
life out of me.

Edward pulled Sammy off me and grabbed my arm to help
me up. Ron wiggled around so that he wasn’t strangling me as I stood. I
couldn’t hold him with one arm anymore because at four he was still small, but
not that light. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that he was mostly
sago, which meant his density was greater than that of a pure human.

As half human, half dile, Sammy was no heavier than
any human his age, but at least three times stronger. I never understood how
Zer accomplished the strength his people had.

“We were inside when the griffins attacked, just as
everyone else was settling down for lunch. We heard the noise, but Mordon came
in and told us what was happening before I could go out. He said he could take
care of it so I stayed in here with the boys,” Edward said.

I knew he hated nothing more than standing aside when
he was needed. “Thank you. For all we know, the griffins could have been a
diversion to get the boys alone. If Vretial is after them, we can’t rule
anything out.”

Mordon nudged me out of the doorway and shut the door
so that the five of us were alone. “What took you so long?” he asked.

“There was a rabbit hole. I couldn’t have been gone
more than a few hours.”

“You were gone for nearly two entire days. This
wasn’t a random attack. One of them arrived, looked right at me, and then
turned and attacked Azyle. I used my fire and it obviously hurt him, but he
just shook it off and continued attacking Azyle.”

“Normally when you attack something, the animal
attacks back.”

“Right. He was only interested in Azyle. The others
came to help, but none of their magic worked any better than my fire. Then the
second one arrived and went after Shiloh. Ghidorah was napping or something and
the first one woke him up when it trampled Ghidorah’s tent. One look at
Ghidorah and the beast fled. The second one turned on Samorde and then when
Ghidorah shocked the griffin, it also bolted.”

“So you think they were afraid of Ghidorah?” Edward
asked.

“He thinks Ghidorah is controlling them,” I
corrected.

Mordon nodded. “It was something Emrys said once;
that they were modern griffins. Maybe they are Ghidorah’s griffins and this was
an attempt to get suspicion off him or get some of the others out of his way.”

Edward sighed. “Guardians have never been friends,
but I know these guys. I may go a hundred or so years without seeing them, but
I know them. Ghidorah is a good guy, but he’s very private. Araxi will forever
suspect him of something and he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t actively try to get
suspicion off of himself. More importantly, if he did attack any of us, he
would never use a creature to carry out his violence. If he attacks a person,
they will be forewarned, they will have a chance to plead innocent, and he will
face them. There is no other way for him. And most importantly, he would never
assault Samorde. Samorde is suffering punishment for others, and that’s a big
deal for Ghidorah.”

“What is he?” Mordon asked.

He hesitated, whether it was because he didn’t want
to betray Ghidorah’s secret or because Ghidorah was dangerous I didn’t know.
“You need to talk to him about it to really understand. He’s a–”

He was interrupted as Sammy darted past me to throw
the door open. Right in front of the porch, Nano appeared pinned under one of
the griffins. Mordon pulled Sammy behind him. When Hobble burst out of the
cabin, pushing Edward aside, the griffin quickly vanished. Hobble made a
screeching sound, angry to miss out on the fight.

The poor little creature had enough trouble making it
down the stairs on his bum leg without his enemy popping away. Edward held out
his hand and while his faithful little gargoyle did not want to be comforted,
he returned to the Guardian’s side anyway. Edward petted the twin heads.