Demigod

by Sam Ryder

  “You made them into Warriors,” I said, a twinge of awe in my tone. Six hundred upgraded all at once? It would’ve taken an extraordinary amount of energy.

  “Correct,” Airiel said. “Several of them stepped up as leaders, so we offered them more of our power. The first Protectors. They saved our very lives in those early days. Many of them died. We knew it wasn’t sustainable. Initially our goal was to recover our hearts so we could return to full strength, but the Morgoss kept well-hidden, never joining their monster armies in battle. Like us, they let others do the fighting.” At the last, she sounded sad and regretful. “Still, we further upgraded the most capable of our supporters to Seeker status. They recovered many remarkable and wonderful artifacts and weapons, but none worked the way they once had. We hoarded them, hoping that a day would come when their power was restored. That day started with you.”

  I remembered the first artifact I had found, the hammer. For whatever reason, it responded to my touch like it was always meant to be my weapon. The other artifacts were the same way—they knew who was intended to bear them. It was just another oddity about a world full of such strangeness.

  “And what about the Finding?” I asked. It was a probing question, aimed at unraveling the shadowed history of our very own Eve, who’d always been slow to open up to me about her past.

  “Eve’s mother was the first Finder.”

  “Eve told me,” I said, and all Three goddesses’ eyebrows quirked up in surprise. “When we were Finding together. We had some time to kill, so we talked.”

  “That’s…good,” Airiel said. It was strange that she was now the mouthpiece for the Three. Previously, she’d been the silent one, almost always sleeping, while Persepheus called the shots. It was a breath of fresh air given her calm and even-keel demeanor. “Given her longstanding ties to the Godrule, she was a natural choice. Eve’s mother was an excellent Finder. Tenacious and clever and unflinching in her loyalty to us.”

  “I guess that’s where Eve gets it,” I said. It wasn’t meant as a slight, but I immediately realized that’s how it came across. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be difficult. It’s just…the Warriors, both past and present, still have bad memories. At least most of them.”

  Persepheus was staring at her hands, which she was wringing together. Was that shame I saw on her face? I never thought I’d see the day. In any case, I wouldn’t hold back any longer. They needed to know what their “supporters” thought of them—the good, the bad and the very ugly.

  Airiel continued to speak for them, as candidly as always. “We are all to blame for that,” she said. “We took too much for granted. The loyalty of those who protected us especially. We placed ourselves up on a pedestal because of some misguided belief that we were superior.”

  “You are goddesses,” I said. Though I didn’t agree with the way they handled their relationships, I could see how being what they were they would act with a certain degree of superiority.

  “That doesn’t excuse us from showing a little humanity.” Persepheus had finally looked up from her hands to speak, her voice a low croak. The rasp in her tone wasn’t because of anger, but because of the self-loathing I could sense there. The regret. She really had changed. The Persepheus I once knew would never admit such fault. She’d believed herself to be blameless. Now, however, she was contrite.

  “I don’t disagree,” I said. “But I also believe it’s never too late to turn things around, to change.”

  Persepheus released a scoffing laugh, but she wasn’t being haughty. Not anymore. She gestured at the life meter all four of us could see bobbing over her head. “Not too late, you say?”

  “It’s not zero,” I said. “And you have allies now. You’ll have more if you keep acting the way you are.”

  Persepheus closed her eyes for a long moment, as if soaking up my words. “Thank you, Sam Ryder.”

  Airiel continued her history lesson as if we hadn’t just meandered on an emotional side path. “Eve’s mother wasn’t the one who suggested traveling to other worlds. No mortal could even fathom such a thing. It was my idea. My sisters were against it at first, for various reasons, but the more Warriors we lost in battle, the more unsustainable our situation became. We needed numbers. My plan offered that.”

  My heart pounded. The last thing I’d expected was to learn that it had been Airiel, not Persepheus, responsible for the very notion of Finding, taking innocents from their lives and bringing them here to fight and die. “And the Circle?” I said, my teeth locked together.

  Airiel said, “That came after I was too weak to do much but sleep and occasionally create sacred cloth and primordial ooze.” She glanced at Persepheus anxiously.

  Now that made more sense. Persepheus, to her credit, owned her role in the atrocities committed on Tor. “Eve came to me with the idea. It started as a test run, but then the facts showed that those Warriors who’d managed to survive the Circle had longer lifespans than even the most capable of the Warriors before. I’m not proud of what we did. Not anymore.”

  Her owning up to being wrong was a start. A small step in the right direction of showing a little humanity, as she’d said. I nodded. “Okay. What next?”

  Airiel said, “When Eve’s mother died, she took over. She was eager and smart. She was a master at the art of seduction.”

  “You could say that,” I said, remembering my own initial meetings with her. I thought I was going to get laid, but instead I ended up in a horror movie.

  Airiel offered a knowing smile. “Eve recruited faster and more often than her mother had. For a few years, our numbers grew. But then we started losing Warriors in other ways.”

  “They left,” I said.

  “Yes,” Airiel admitted. “I think it surprised all of us, though it shouldn’t have. Why would someone want to leave the protection of the ward shields? Yes, they had to fight in the Black, but at least they could relax during the Bronze and Silver times. Out there, it’s a constant struggle for survival.”

  It was all coming together with a nice sort of symmetry to what Vrill and I had been planning. “The tribes were formed.”

  “Correct. It started as just one, but swiftly grew as those with different personalities and goals found each other. There were loners, too, like Vrill, who preferred to survive on their own. We lost many of our best Warriors to the tribes.”

  “And yet you didn’t change your ways.” Though I was speaking directly to Airiel, the words weren’t meant for her. I knew she was already out of the leadership picture at that point. Despite the changes wrought in Persepheus, I realized I still had a lot of pent-up anger for her. Eve too. Shit. I really needed to talk to Eve. We’d crossed many bridges together, but there was still a massive chasm between us that I was afraid was only getting wider with Vrill’s return to the fold.

  Once more, Persepheus owned up to the major part she’d played in their history. “I was stubborn. I was foolish. I was wrong. I can apologize a thousand thousand times, but it won’t change anything. All I can do is try my best to change my ways. Right now, that’s not much.”

  I appreciated her words, but they were just words and she wasn’t exactly in any condition to put actions behind them. I think she knew this, too, because she slumped down further.

  Minertha looked like she was trying to speak, but her voice wasn’t working. She grabbed Airiel’s shoulder to get her sister’s attention. She pulled her closer and whispered something in her ear. “What?” I asked, a shiver of trepidation quivering through me. I feared her question: When will you recover my heart? “What is it?”

  Airiel looked up, sadness lacing her statuesque features. “My sister wants to know…” She paused. Here it comes… “…how many Finding missions will be required to grow the army to a sufficient level?”

  “What?” I blurted out.

  Airiel said nothing. Minertha was watching me closely. Persepheus had averted her eyes, which, remarkably, shimmered with unshed tears. This was why Airiel was so sad. Ther
e would be no demands by the Three, not this time. They were letting us decide the order of events, which missions took priority. Their hearts were in our hands.

  The silence stretched its wings. Once more, I longed to fill it with lies of comfort, but I wouldn’t patronize them. “That’s still uncertain,” I said. “It will depend on how successful Eve and Vrill are in recruiting Warriors. They won’t force anyone to come who doesn’t want to. It may prove…tricky.”

  Airiel nodded. “We understand that. But what is the number you are striving to reach? I can support daily Finding missions if necessary, alternating between our two Finders.”

  Now this was a question I could answer, because I’d discussed it with Beat, Millania, Lace, Vrill and Eve. “Two hundred able-bodied Warriors,” I said. “Ideally we’d have five-hundred, but that is a longshot. We’ll go with two-hundred if we must, and then grow from there if we have time before the Morgoss come with their shadow soldiers.”

  “And how many Warriors do you have now?”

  The questions were stated succinctly, though I could sense the nervous undertones behind them. The Three’s lives literally depended on my answers. “Twenty-eight,” I said softly, as if speaking the number loudly would make the news worse than it already was.

  Persepheus closed her eyes and a single tear leaked out, tracking down her greenish-bluish face. I’d never seen her cry before, which scared the hell out of me. I knew she was crying for her sister, Minertha. Though their relationship was, at times, like fire and ice, she still loved her. With the lower number of life points, her sister’s death was more likely, at this point, than her own.

  Minertha continued to meet my gaze without fear. She even managed the smallest smile. Through all of this, she’d always managed to stay positive, something I respected about her greatly. Her lips moved soundlessly again, but this time I had no difficulty reading them. Do it, she said.

  “I will do my best,” I said. “We all will. And just so you know, Finding will not be the only method of recruiting Warriors to our cause.” This caught Persepheus’s attention, and the sea goddess opened her eyes, blinking away the tears. “We’ll be meeting with the various tribes, those who left your cause. We will try to convince them to rejoin us, or at least ally themselves with us for the final battle.”

  Persepheus’s reaction was hard to read as she gave nothing away with her expression. I saw her chest rising and falling, her lips parting with each exhalation. Then, finally, she said, “Tell them I’m dead.”

  My eyebrows went up. I almost asked, ‘Why?’ but I stopped myself because the answer was obvious. Since I’d arrived on Tor, she’d always been the harshest of the Three, treating her Warriors as expendable, like plastic forks and knives you used once and then threw away. Yes, she had changed. Yes, she’d admitted she’d been wrong and horrible. But the peoples of the various tribes wouldn’t know or believe that. They would only remember her as the terrible goddess who sent them to die in the Black. But if she was dead…maybe we could convince them that things really had changed.

  In a way, it was smart. And yet…I knew it was wrong. For years, the Three, as well as Eve, had used lies like weapons. I wouldn’t do the same. “I’m sorry, Persepheus, but I cannot. You are very much alive, and I intend to keep it that way.”

  With that said, I spun on my heels and departed through the back entrance, pushing away the vines that hid the door set into the rock.

  Before I could close it on the other side, however, Airiel grabbed my arm, stopping me as she emerged outside. Her skin glowed in the bronze sunlight. She cupped my face. “Sam Ryder,” she said, as usual managing to make my name sound like so much more than it was. “We trust you. I trust you.” Coming from her, she wasn’t blowing smoke. No, she’d always been the most real of the Three.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Her hand remained on my face. “Who will Find first? Eve or Vrill?”

  This was another thing we’d discussed at length. Well, ‘we’ meaning Vrill and I as we lay in the afterglow, and then Eve and I separately, because Vrill didn’t want to meet with Eve. All had agreed that Eve would Find first so Vrill could accompany me to meet with the tribes. So I said, “Eve.”

  Airiel nodded, as if she already suspected my answer. “She is stronger than ever. I will prepare myself to support her on this mission.”

  Before I could respond, she dropped her hand, bent her knees, and leapt impossibly high in the air, her brilliant wings unfurling on either side, beating behind her and carrying her over the cliff and out of sight.

  It. Was. Awesome.

  ~~~

  After my realization while meeting with the Three, I needed to talk to Eve.

  I found her on her side of the line Vrill’s dragon had drawn, sitting with Stomp, the massive marmot Eve and I had brought back from Primo. Calling a marmot ‘massive’ was like saying the Empire State Building is ‘tall’. An understatement. Stomp was dinosaur big, or at least how I would imagine a dinosaur would look. Its sinewy tail seemed to go on forever, stretching a hundred feet until it connected with its body, which was sleek and almost dolphin-smooth. The beast had four legs that ended in powerful hoofs capable of squashing a Warrior into jam, but that wasn’t the scariest part about the creature. No, the thing to fear was its snout, which was bladelike and razor-sharp. In battle, it could use the appendage to gore you, skewer you, slice you clean in half like a magician does to his assistant, except when the marmot did it to you, it was no illusion and you weren’t smiling. Because you were dead. Very dead.

  Eve was sitting with Stomp, stroking the beast’s smooth skin gently. She was humming a gentle tune to the creature, like a lullaby. Stomp was still sleeping. During a major battle with the Morgoss’s minions, the marmot had been badly injured. It was all the Three could do to save the beast’s life, but it had been sleeping, comatose, ever since. Every day that went by made it less likely the poor brute would ever wake up again.

  “Hi,” I said as I approached, feeling slightly awkward for some reason. Probably because I wasn’t looking forward to our conversation.

  “Ryder,” Eve said. She turned and met my eyes, and the awkwardness vanished in an instant. She was alive, and though I was overjoyed by that fact, I couldn’t let that be enough. No, her renewed life gave me a second chance to have difficult conversations with her, ones I should’ve had a long time ago. “Come to roast me over the coals like Vrill?”

  I wasn’t surprised by the accuracy of her guess. “No,” I said. “Not like that. I hold no anger toward you.”

  “I know,” Eve said. “But maybe you should. Maybe they all should. Including this guy.” She patted Stomp’s hide tenderly, affectionately. “None of them would be here right now if it wasn’t for me.”

  “True,” I said. “Though I played a major role in Stomp’s current situation.”

  She managed a small smile. “I guess I corrupted you in the end.”

  “You kind of did,” I said, managing a small smile of my own in return. This was good. We needed to be able to not take ourselves too seriously even as we broached very serious subjects. “Look, Eve, I’m not going to roast you over the coals like Vrill because I don’t think I need to, do I? Why should I roast you when you’re roasting yourself? Am I right or am I way off base?”

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were filled to brimming with moisture. Tears slipped out of both eyes and slid quickly down her cheeks. Hot tears, filled with emotion. She tried to speak but couldn’t find the words so she only nodded. Swallowed. Managed two words. “I’m broken.”

  Those words hit me hard in the chest because they were not true. Maybe she felt like they were inside her, but on the outside? She was still a strong, capable woman with so much to offer to our plight. “Then let me help you put your pieces back together,” I said. “I can speak to Vrill. I’ll reason with her and we can get rid of the line. You can come back to camp.”

  She shook her head, more tears leaking out. �
�I don’t deserve that. I deserve my solitude. I deserve worse. I deserve death.”

  I couldn’t pull any punches anymore. Like with Persepheus, I couldn’t patronize this woman any longer. There was only truth left. “Yes, you probably do. There is so much blood on your hands, more than you could ever wash away.”

  She stared at me, numb, her expression bland and offering nothing but emptiness. “Give me the knife and I’ll wield it.”

  I knew exactly what she’d left unspoken: on myself. Meaning she would stab herself in the heart. “No,” I said. “That would be a waste of life. I said you probably deserve to die for the things you did. But that was a different version of you. The current version of you does not deserve death any more than the current version of Persepheus does. You are not evil, Eve.”

  A sob choked her, but she managed to stifle it with a hand to her mouth. She started shaking her head and just kept shaking it, a refusal to believe there was truth in my words.

  But there was, I had to believe that. I took her into my arms. It freaked me out the way she fell into them, as if her body was collapsing inwardly, like there was nothing left inside her. I knew Vrill was probably watching from afar, that seeing me embrace Eve would crush her. That wasn’t on me. I was sandwiched between two women stronger than either of them realized, but that didn’t mean I could pander to them. I would be fully honest with both of them from this point forward, just as I was being fully honest with the Three.

  I held Eve until she stopped shaking, and then I released my grip and held her out so she could look at me with bleary eyes. “You are going on the next Finding mission. Recruit soldiers to our cause because they want to fight for the Three. Because they believe in saving a world they know nothing about from monsters.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly, but then widened to normal size. “I…I will do this. I will try.”

  “That’s all anyone can ask. Eve, I meant what I said. You are not evil. You never were. The things you did, they were…horrifying. I know you can see that now. I also know you regret them all. That means something. To me it does. Killing yourself would not be punishment enough. Hell, that would be an easy out. Your punishment is remembering the things you did. Your penance is doing things the hard way from now on. The right way.”