God of the Abyss (36 page)

There was public education for a reason, and it was
mandated for a reason, even after half the population moved aboveground. Still,
people always found a way around it. They always had an excuse, too; they
needed their child to work, they couldn’t afford clothes or food, or even that
they didn’t believe their child should be taught to think that way.

I wanted my people to believe in a better life than
what he had, to strive for it and never accept this misery we suffered, but so
many people fought me.

Sladi was not allowed to attend school, and when he
had children, he would probably not be allowed to let them go. It was an
unending cycle of ignorance and greed. He knew I was the High King, here to
protect everyone, but he had no idea what I was actually trying to accomplish.
And what was even more frustrating was that he was probably required to protest
against me when the time came. Since he couldn’t read, he had little control
over what he agreed and disagreed to. The chance of him getting out of the
underground any time soon was minimal.

Creating stricter laws would just create more rebels,
but they obviously weren’t working as they were. I realized speaking with Sladi
was only confirming my doubts. The food suddenly tasted a lot worse. I wanted
Nano.

As Kseve and I were leaving the tavern, there was an
odd chill in the air. Kseve opened the door and stepped out… and disappeared.
Thick fog shielded my guard from me, but as I reached out for him, the fog
didn’t dissipate. I heard a thud and my heart skipped a beat.

“Kseve? Where are you?”

No answer.

Why can’t I be like everyone else? Why can’t I
have magic that I could control and help people with when I needed it?
I
reached out all around me until my foot collided with something very solid. I
got down on my knees and felt the fallen form. It was Kseve.

I wanted to shout for a doctor, but I knew I
shouldn’t. This strange fog was magic for sure, but it should have dissipated
in my presence. There was only one thing it could have been. I had never faced
demon magic before, but it only made sense that my void magic wouldn’t nullify
the demon energy. Of course, the demon magic wouldn’t have any effect on me.

It still left me without my guard and with no way to
defend myself. The man approached silently, grabbed my arm, and pulled me up
with surprising ease, but I didn’t fight him, for I was afraid he would hurt
Kseve. He dragged me along down an alley and through a dark wooden door. I fell
heavily on a thin cushion on the floor. Whether it was fear or horror that kept
my mouth shut, I waited for him to start making ransom demands or just start
beating on me. After all, why else would someone kidnap a king?

No, it wasn’t fear. I was waiting to find out what he
wanted before I decided on my next move.
He better pray Kseve is alive if he
wants to survive this. I wonder if void blood will work on a demon.

He squatted in front of me and grinned maliciously.
“You look just like your mother.”

I opened my mouth, but had no idea what to say. The
demon wasn’t exactly a terrifying figure; he had a tall, thin build, like Nano,
and was somewhat frowzy. There was an uncomfortable familiarity with the
features of his face, particularly his mouth and nose. He reminded me of Adre.

“I had hoped you would take after her. After all, if
you had taken after me, you would have fought me for the throne. Too bad your
brother does take after me.”

“You cannot be claiming you are my father. My father
is dead.”

“I am very much your father and very much dead,” he
smirked. “Still, I am High King of Dios, for that is not a title that ends when
you die. Don’t look so worried, my son, I’m not here to take the throne. It is
your birthright, and I have much bigger things in mind.”

“Bigger than being High King?”

“Much. And you can help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“For now, all I need from you is for you to introduce
me to your friend, Dylan.” He stood up and walked over to the door to peek out.
“Dylan is very important to my plans.”

“What do you want with him?”

He gave me a sharp glare. “You may be High King now,
but I am still your father; you will not question me.”

“I will never betray my friend. My father, Dleso
Atos, is dead.”

“I have conquered death. I am far more powerful than
you, your guards, or any of those Noquodi. You will do as you are told.”

Dylan

I opened my eyes when I felt Duran’s magic return to
me. “I think you forgot something,” Edward said.

“Mordon is going to look after his girlfriend while I
go after the pantacle,” I said, pulling the crystal ball, map, Edward’s card,
and the fire wand out of my bag. I spilled everything across the table, which
was already covered with breakfast plates, Edward’s cards, and the other
artifacts Mordon and I had gotten.

“Mom left you?” Sammy asked. Ron poked him in the
ribs and started cleaning up the plates and cups.

“Mordon is taking care of dragon business, and I need
to get these items before the Ancients get out of the void.”

“I’m going with you,” Edward said. It wasn’t an offer
or a question. I didn’t bother to be sarcastic or anything; Edward had been
there for me since I became his apprentice when we first met.

“Thank you,” I said. I considered the boys before
going to the open door. Edward liked to leave it open in the summers for Hobble
to run in and out. “Seimei and Ikiru,” I called. Both griffins stood to
attention. “Come in here,” I said. They flexed their wings and elegantly leaped
onto the porch before squeezing into the doorway. They were the size of large,
fully grown male lions and they had heavy wings against their sides. Each of
them took up next to the boys. “Edward is going with me, so you need to watch
the boys. I don’t know if you obey them because they raised you or because
they’re powerful, but if anything happens to either of them, I’m sending you
both to the void. Do you understand?”

For a second, I thought they didn’t, but then they
both bowed their heads. I picked up the glass apple and held it to Edward. It
probably should have been difficult to differentiate the time that I got from
the map and the time that Rojan gave me to return here, but it really wasn’t.

“Think of Dios. I already got the time from the map,”
I said.

Edward nodded. “I can do that, but give me a minute
to get ready. I’ll be right back.” He went downstairs and returned a few
minutes later dressed for a fight. He wore a dark maroon, long-sleeved,
button-up shirt and black pants with heavy black leather boots. He also had a
dark brown leather shoulder harness for two guns and a waist harness for his
favorite sword. I knew his boots had two slots for daggers.

I looked at my own red t-shirt, jeans, and boots and
tried not to find them lacking. I had no need for guns or swords.

Sammy regarded Edward’s attire with envy as my old
mentor put his hand on the glass apple. I closed my eyes and focused on the
time the map gave me and the study where the pantacle would appear. The energy
of Duran disappeared and after a few seconds, I felt Dios. Between worlds, I
could feel us moving through time. I opened my eyes when I heard Edward grunt.

We were standing in the small library. Three walls of
the room were lined with bookshelves and the forth wall had a doorway and
large, old map. There were two dark red cushioned chairs facing each other. I
felt personally that the room was missing a fireplace, but I figured those were
dangerous underground.

“Where is the pantacle?” Edward asked.

“It usually takes a few seconds to appear. I think it
only exists for one moment in all of history and we have to grab it before it
vanishes,” I said. I went to the bookshelf where it appeared in the crystal
ball, but after a minute, I got really worried. “It should have appeared by
now. There’re no redoes on this.” Two minutes later, I started pacing.
What
did I do wrong?

We heard the two creatures before they burst into the
room, identical and grotesque. Light blue, with a general shape of a blob with
two arms, it was creepy enough. It wasn’t the claws at the end of the arms or
the sharp teeth in its mouth; instead, it was the goopy slime gliding over the
folds of fat that made my hair stand on end. I didn’t want to be anywhere near
it. As far as demons went, I had to say they found the right form to scare me.

The sound of Edward’s gun in the small room was
startling. One of the demons went down with a hole in its head, but the other
moved to attack. I threw an energy shield over Edward before the demon could
get to him, but he couldn’t kill the demon either.

“Grab it!” Edward yelled. I reached out as I turned
and snatched the thick disk off of the shelf.

The round, wooden disk was only about four and a half
inches in diameter, a sixteenth of an inch thick, and as light as the fire wand
was. Around the edge was about a centimeter thick ring of white. Inside the
circle of white was a circle of four colors: yellow, dark red, dark green, and
black, divided into four sections in the middle. Overlaying the colors was a
white hexagon with lines that were about a half a centimeter wide. On one side,
the outer ring was blank, but on the other side, there were Hebrew letters and
sigils across the white.

I held it up for Edward to see before slipping it
into my bag. “Drop the shield,” he said. I did and Edward was ready with his
sword. In a blur of steel, my old mentor slaughtered the unholy beast.
Unfortunately, the other demon got to its feet. While Edward was distracted by
spraying the books with blood, the other demon was changing.

The grotesque, slimy hide of the large beast dried
and darkened as its body shrunk into a thin, four-legged creature. It only took
me a second to recognize the hideous monster as the same I had seen in the air
tribe. It was the dejeva.

For the first time in the seven years I knew him,
Edward froze, seemingly in panic. It was just like Mordon. What was it with
sago and hairless, skinny dogs? The creature gave a growl, spittle flying, and
Edward took a step back, putting himself between me and the beast.

“It’s not a dejeva,” I said. “It’s a demon that
disguised itself as one to scare you.”

Edward didn’t respond. It seemed that even a
two-thousand-year-old Guardian couldn’t ignore the ingrained fear that all sago
shared. But it wasn’t a dejeva; it was a demon playing on that fear. And there
was something I knew the demons had learned to fear.

I reached through the fiber of space and tore. It was
easy when the universe was unraveling, but in this case, I could do it because
I had to. I opened a tear into the void, spilling the forsaken light into the
room. The demon reacted like I sprayed it with acid.

It tried to run back out the door, but I put an
electrified energy field up over the doorway. As it recoiled, looking for
another way out, I moved away from Edward and struck the beast with a bolt of
burning-cold energy. It was easy to use nominal energy to make lightning, but
everything in the room was made of wood or paper, so I had to be careful not to
set the room on fire. It seemed I unknowingly found the perfect weapon; the
demon writhed upon the floor pathetically.

I watched calmly as the demon slowly stopped
convulsing. It didn’t try to get back up, only waited for further torture. That
was all the submission I needed from it. I crossed my arms and glared at it
until it struggled to its feet.

“Run,” I said. The creature turned and vanished into
the void, which I closed behind it.

The screaming told me I wasn’t done. We were both out
the door in an instant, running towards the screams. We came to one of the
small villages right outside the city. I knew instantly that we had arrived at
a time before some of the population moved above ground, because the city was
full.

People were being terrorized by five demons, who all
seemed more bent on causing destruction than killing. They demolished any
structure they could, but only chased the people around and batted at them a
bit, as if they were playing with their food.

One of the demons turned and came at us, but it only
took a couple of minutes for Edward to slay the beast. The biggest of demons
attacked next, who posed more of a threat and took longer for Edward to kill.
Without the concern of fire hazards, I fried every demon I could when it wasn’t
next to a person. But more came. At least a dozen more demons attacked and when
I almost struck a person who got in the way of my lightning, I knew I had to
change my tactics. I needed to make a call to Janus.

Then, right before I could open the void again, every
single demon froze, turned as one, and fled. When it was quiet, Edward came up
beside me. “What did you do?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It wasn’t me.”

Then my world tilted and I could see nothing but
black. I heard Nila scream and felt overwhelming fear, pain, and suffocation.
My friend was dying a horrible, painful death alone in the dark. In the
darkness, though I couldn’t see where he was, I
knew
where I had to go.
I grabbed Edward’s arm and pulled him after me, before letting go and running
full out. I had to get to Nila.

“What’s wrong?!” Edward asked behind me. It was a
testament to my determination that I was able to run faster than him.

I didn’t bother to answer, I just ran as fast as I
could, faster than I ever had before, because Nila’s life depended on it. When
I fell, it was extremely disorientating, like being hit with a wave of water
strong enough to knock me off my feet… but there was nothing there.

The burning inside me increased ten-fold. Nila was
about to die.

I got to my feet and took off again. Outside of
Nila’s throne room, where the goblin guards scrambled around in disarray, I
didn’t slow down, nor enter the throne room; I burst into the small study right
next to it, kicked up the rug, pulled open the trap door, and jumped into the
darkness without a moment of hesitation. After hitting the soft mattress hard,
I was already up and running through the dark before I heard Edward grunt
behind me. I found Nila in the old, abandoned kitchen, reading a book as if
without a care in the world.

“Dylan!” he said with delight.

Edward rushed into the room next to me, panting. I
pushed him towards Nila and got as close as I could without touching the young
king. Then I created the strongest energy shield I had ever made in my life
around us. The instant my shield covered us, the world groaned and the ground
shook with ferocity. I fell to my knees, but managed not to touch Nila. In seconds
the ceiling collapsed and the new kitchen, built on top of the old one, came
down on us.

My head pounded as my shield took such a hit, but it
held strong. It had to.

It felt like hours before the shaking stopped and
when it did, there was no light save for the crackling energy in my shield. I
knew if my shield gave out then, we would all be crushed to death. I couldn’t
flash Nila, and I couldn’t leave him behind, so I did the only thing left I
could do. My wife was a god, after all.

Reaching through the always present connection with
my book, I searched for Divina. It only took a moment to feel her warm
presence.
I need you,
I thought, hoping my thoughts made it to her.
After a few seconds, which felt like minutes when I was holding up two stories
of rubble, the space inside my shield filled with bright light.

I had a moment to panic for Nila’s life before the
light cleared, leaving Edward, Divina, Nila, and myself in the throne room.
Nila was alive if not scared. When he just stood there shaking, I hugged him.
“Thank you,” I said to Divina.

She smiled. “I will always come when you need me.
Just tell me this is time travel and not something worse, because I was having
a conversation with
you
over breakfast when
you
called me here.”

“Yeah, just time travel and a glass apple with some
demons sprinkled here and there and Mordon is dealing with a dragon poison
alone and I just had a vision of Nila dying a horrible and painful death
and–”

“Dylan!” Nila demanded, staring at me. He wasn’t
shaking anymore, but his pupils were huge. “Your rambling is scaring me.”

“Thank you for your help, Divina,” Edward said.

I desperately wanted to ask her how she was able to
flash Nila, as even my own Iadnah powers wouldn’t work when I was in contact
with him, but she seemed to be in a hurry. She gave me a kiss before
disappearing, leaving only an echo of her sweet scent and the feel of her lips
on mine. My wife was a goddess.

“We have a problem we need to deal with,” Edward
said.

“I know,” I said. “All those people trapped in the
earthquake… we need to find everyone still alive and help them.”

“Most places are protected against such natural
disasters,” Nila said. He waved his arm about. “My throne is still standing. I
was unlucky to be in an old place that was never built to sustain quakes. I
would have died if you were not there, but most places would not have suffered
much damage. Those who are unlucky as I was could have protected themselves
with magic.”

“No,
that
is the problem. I think the tremor
was just a reaction, the aftermath,” Edward argued. We looked at him. “There is
no magic. That wave that struck before the quake stripped the magic. There is
no nominal energy. The goblins outside were in a panic about it.”

“I was more focused on getting to Nila than listening
to the goblins.”

“This must be what the demons ran from. They knew it
was coming.”

“I hope this is what they ran from. Really, though, I
think the wave was only part of it. Stuff like that doesn’t happen without
reason. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I’ve watched a lot of movies and read a
lot of books. I think the demons ran because something bigger is coming.”

*          *          *

Despite Nila’s assurance that the underground cities
were built to withstand earthquakes, some places had not been maintained.
Without magic, even wounds people could have healed on their own were
life-threatening. One thing Dios did have right was a system in place for
emergency situations. There was a medical station in every single city that
people were mandated to report to in this kind of situation.