by S T Branton
“Stupid?” he suggested. “Naïve? Foolhardy? Perhaps it was all of those things. I wanted to ensure that the sword fell into the right hands.” He looked at me. “I believe that particular mission has been accomplished. You still have the raw strength to triumph over Delano’s plague of evil.”
“I used to think that,” I said. “Then he trounced me, and now, I’m not positive anymore. I know I need to go back but it might not be enough.”
“I doubted myself once, too,” Kronin said.
Our route meandered in a wide, lazy circle around the palace. No matter where I looked, the scene was utterly breathtaking. Sparkling waterfalls cascaded over violet, clean-cut cliffs. Verdant forests swayed in a gentle, floral-scented breeze. Birdsong floated past my ears. I had always thought Marcus was pretty full of it, the way he went on and on about Carcerum. Now that I knew it was every bit as idyllic as he’d said, a seed of resentment began to fester.
“Why the heck did you bring the gods to this place?” I demanded. We now angled gradually back toward the palace grounds. Immediately outside the garden perimeter, Marcus appeared and fell into step beside us. I spoke again, unable to suppress my irritation. “The way they whined about it, I pictured a prison.” I scoffed. “It turns out it’s more like a paradise. Too good for them.” It pissed me off to imagine scum like Lorcan being allowed to exist in this beautiful realm. He never deserved to look at it, much less live in it.
“I had no choice,” Kronin told me sadly. “Without Lorcan’s help, I could never have defeated the other gods and won the war in the first place. We both knew that, and so we made a deal. The gods were granted life in Carcerum in lieu of death on Earth. I thought it was a good bargain, one that they would accept, if not embrace.” He pressed his lips together. “Obviously, I was mistaken.”
Marcus looked pained but he remained silent. Kronin went on. “I believed with all my heart that I would be able to give the gods everything they wanted, everything to keep them happy. I failed to understand that they didn’t want to be happy. They wanted control. Lorcan had known that all along. He’d planned, bided his time, and Delano never wavered from his side.”
“Hold on.” I held up my hand. “I still don’t understand why you had to make a deal with that idiot in the first place. You’re Kronin the Almighty, wielder of the Gladius Solis. The original God-King. Why bother making deals with Lorcan or anyone else?”
“What else was I to do?” he countered. “I am only human, after all.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Marcus and I both halted abruptly and stared dumbstruck at Kronin’s back.
“Human?” Marcus murmured, disbelieving.
Kronin nodded. “I had a family, once upon a time,” he said. “A lovely wife and sweet, innocent children. We lived in a house on the outskirts of a little village. I ran a forge and made pots and horseshoes and other useful things. It was a good and simple life, and yet I still allowed myself to be pressured by a god into leaving it behind.” His face darkened briefly. “The god’s name has long since been lost in the annals of history—that’s how inconsequential he was in the end. Nonetheless, I knew no better. I packed my things up and rode out to battle in service of this tiny deity. I witnessed many horrors then, but none compared to what I found upon my return.”
“Oh, no,” I said softly.
“The gods were gone from my village,” Kronin said. “Who knows if they even made it there. It was their creatures who found and destroyed it. They burned the houses down and reduced everything to broken piles of rubble. I rode as fast as I could, hoping against hope that they might have turned back before they reached my home.” He shook his head and kept it lowered. “My wife, my children—they weren’t spared. In my grief, I made a furious vow to cleanse the world of these murdering vermin. I wanted to make sure they were indeed forgotten. I merely didn’t know how to make it happen.”
“My liege.” Marcus’s voice was full of sorrow. “I had no idea.”
Kronin continued his story, seemingly heedless of any interruption. The sentences poured out of him as if they’d been held hostage behind a dam for centuries. “I gave up everything I knew to travel the world in search of any scrap of information that could help me bring about their demise. I wanted a mass Forgotten extinction. No lead was too small, too strange, or too insignificant. I began to push the boundaries of human experience. This is what led me eventually to Carcerum.” He paused. “And Carcerum, in turn, gave me its two greatest treasures—the nectar and the Solis Stone. One granted me life from a well I perceived to be limitless. The other allowed me to forge a weapon like none other. An inimitable sword which carried in its blade the power to slay the beasts that had torn my world asunder—and the gods who had shaped their existence.”
Kronin shook his head. “With my gifts in hand, I returned to humankind and convinced them to rally behind my godlike strength. We rose up as one, millions strong, to fight back against the invasion. The war reached a fever pitch. Our clashes with the gods were brutal and bloody. Human life was lost in droves.” He gazed at his hands and his voice lowered. “I came to realize the sword alone was not enough, and neither was my iron will. The army I had amassed was no match for the gods and their Apprenti. They were too formidable, and we were severely outnumbered. Every victory of ours came with a dozen setbacks. The gods constantly replenished their forces. I thought the war would rage forever until the Earth was nothing but a dead husk of a planet.
“Then, an emissary arrived in our midst. His name was Delano, and he had been sent by his master Lorcan, a death god. The offer he presented was undeniable. If I had dared refuse, all of humanity would have been extinguished. It was only a matter of time.” He rubbed a hand across his face. The lustrous color in his skin had started to fade slightly. “The deal was struck. The war ended and I brought the gods here to Carcerum.” His mouth turned down into the shadow of a scowl. “We left the other riffraff behind. The threat of serving time in Asphodel was enough to force them into hiding their true natures. And that was how we kept the balance for thousands of years.”
“Wow.” I whistled. I had no idea what else to say.
Kronin walked a few more yards and sat heavily on a bench. He was definitely paler and his fingers fumbled slightly as he withdrew a cigarette. He lit it, leaned back, and dragged on it. “I need not say again that my days are numbered,” he said. “I am sorry that I won’t be able to finish the fight I started. My burdens have at last become too much for me to bear alone, and that means they have fallen to you, Vic. All those years ago, I never dreamed it might one day come to this.”
I looked at him. “Kronin, I can’t carry your burdens. I’ve already failed. Delano has the sword now.” A lump stuck in my throat although I tried to push it back. “There’s nothing more I can do.”
The God-King puffed out a lungful of smoke in perfect rings. He watched them float away before he turned back to me and grinned. He struck me as awfully serene for a guy who was steps away from dying.
“Why does it matter so much that Delano has the Gladius Solis?” Kronin asked.
I arched my eyebrows. “Uh…because that’s the sword you forged from the magic stone. I listened to that whole thing, man. You can’t pull some trick question crap on me.”
His grin widened. “Sure, but who said the Gladius Solis was the only one of its kind?”
For about the third time that morning, my jaw practically hit the floor. “Say what now?”
Kronin inhaled. “It’s exactly as I said. The Gladius Solis is currently unique—but it doesn’t have to be.” He flicked his gaze over to the centurion. “Would you bring me something to eat, old friend? I’m afraid my endurance is not what it used to be.”
Marcus snapped to full attention. “Of course, my lord. Right away.” He disappeared down a path toward the palace and Kronin directed me a similar way. We walked side by side and both of us limped slightly.
“What’s this new weapon?” I asked him, curious
.
“That’s up to you, Vic,” Kronin replied. “You’re the one who will bring it to life.”
The building we entered was separate from the palace and huge in its own right, towering high into the sky. The God-King led me into the basement and along a mess of labyrinthian corridors to the door of a massive underground vault. It stood open enough for a person to slip inside, which was what we did. Torches lit up on the interior walls to banish the darkness.
I looked around. The vault was almost empty. A small pile of strange, glimmering rock lay near the middle of the floor. He went over, picked up the tiniest piece in his hand, and beckoned me closer. “Long ago, this Solis Stone was plentiful in Carcerum,” he said. “This is all that remains.”
I gazed at the metal. “There isn’t that much,” I remarked. “That’s messed up. I thought you said the Gladius Solis was unique.”
“It is.” Kronin turned the small shard of stone in his palm. “There is more than one use for Solis Stone. How do you think gods are made?” He tapped his finger against it. “The creators shaped the gods from the stone and it granted them their powers. But they would be easy prey to a Solis weapon.”
“That’s why the sword works so well on them!” I exclaimed. “Holy crap! What are we waiting for? We have to make another one.”
The God-King stopped me. “I want to tell you something first.” His voice and eyes were somber. “No doubt you have noticed that Marcus, despite having been irrefutably killed some time ago, is able to regain his physical form and walk around here.” He gestured to the medallion around my neck. “This pendant is infused with traces of Solis Stone which gives it the ability to preserve and restore spirits.”
“Okay.” I frowned. “I get it. There’s more than one use. I still want to make another sword.”
He pressed on. “I can give you a choice. You can forge a new weapon, as you think you want to do. You can take this weapon back to the temple and use it to fight Delano. I must let you know that I have no knowledge of what that outcome will be.” He glanced at the Solis Stone. “Or, you can choose to spend your days here in peace. With Marcus…and your family.”
At first, I didn’t think I heard him correctly. “Sorry?” I asked. “My family’s gone.”
Kronin gave me the look of a teacher who had to spend extra time with a particularly slow student. “As I said, Solis Stone preserves spirits. Here.” He took my hand and placed my palm on the smooth, cold slab. “Keep your hand there,” he said. “Speak their names.”
He moved past me to wait outside the vault.
My heart did a weird little flutter. I could hear my pulse in my ears. My mouth went suddenly dry, and it was hard to conjure the voice I needed to say the right things. It seemed impossible to say their names, so I simply called them as I always had.
“Mom,” I said. “Dad.”
The surrounding stillness deepened. Murky shadows moved across the surface of the stone. One moment, I was alone in the vault, and the next, my parents were there in front of me.
“Victoria,” my mother said quietly. “My goodness, how long it’s been?” Her eyes, the same as mine, glittered with barely repressed tears.
My father smiled, his arm around her shoulders. “Still my little girl,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The room was as dark as I could make it and the drapes that hung down over the bed were pulled tight, but I still couldn’t keep my eyes closed. I lay on my back, looked at the canopy above me, and mulled over everything Kronin had shown me that day. The incredible beauty of his empty kingdom. The truth of his own history. My parents summoned to life years after their murders. I had finally made peace with the part of myself that had lusted after vengeance. I’d laid their ghosts to rest.
And yet, they were with me, no different than they had been the last time I saw them alive. It was like no time had passed at all, except that we all knew it had. I was so relieved to see they were happy and at peace. But I was also mortified. My mother and father were not violent people. I’d never imagined a scenario where they knew what happened to me after they died, much less one where we had to talk about it.
It was weird until my dad said he was proud of me. Then, it was awesome.
He’d given me one of his trademark bear hugs, the kind that lifted me off my feet. My mom had kissed my cheek and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. So many things I never thought I’d be able to feel again, and I had them for those few moments. Part of me did want to hold on to them forever.
It was agonizing to take my hand off that stone and watch them fade away, a flash-grenade of grief in my chest. But that storm passed quickly, supplanted by the echoes of their love. Even now, I still smelled traces of my mother’s favorite perfume.
I missed them so much. Seeing them again had made me painfully aware of the void they left behind. The notion that I could have that life again in Carcerum was sorely tempting. No pain, no war, no violence. Only me and my parents and Marcus, kicking back and eating all the weird, delicious fruit we wanted.
But no Deacon either. I curled up as he entered my mind and braced for the ruthless flood of emotions. The thought of leaving him with Delano filled me with guilt. Before I saw my parents, I had known I couldn’t abandon him.
Did I still know that after?
“Ugh.” I sat up in the bed. “Marcus?”
He didn’t answer, so I closed my hand around the medallion and had a moment of panic when I found it cold. Then I remembered he wasn’t in there.
“Oh, yeah.” I shook my head, ran a hand through my hair, and swung my feet over the side of the mattress. Sleep would clearly not happen anytime soon. What I needed was a friendly ear.
Carcerum’s sky was studded with diamond stars on a velvet backdrop. The moonlight bathed the land in a mythical silver glow, bright enough to light my way as I set out to find Marcus. I had no idea where his quarters were or if he even needed to sleep. I merely turned my brain off and tracked my inner compass. The old guy was basically a part of me by now anyway.
Still, it took a while to find him. Not that I minded exploring Carcerum at night. The whole place was like something out of a fairytale, one that always ended well. I wandered along the roads for about an hour while I kept a watchful eye out for any signs of a Roman centurion. At last, my gaze snagged on a light in the window of a smallish out-building. Its door was left slightly ajar. I went to the edge of the frame and peered inside.
Marcus stood in front of a large oval mirror. The glass was reflective, but not of anything in front of it. Shapes appeared to shift across its surface. I stepped into the building. “Hey, there you are.”
Marcus glanced up. “Hail, Victoria,” he said. “Sleep eludes you, I see.”
I shrugged. “Nothing new there. What are you looking at?” I stepped beside him.
Marcus stared into the depths of the mirror. “It was once my job to watch Earth from here to make sure no Forgotten had broken Kronin’s law. This mirror can show you anything in the world you desire to see, in the past and in the present. It has always helped to keep my vision clear.”
In the silvery field of the glass, a slender man strode down a dark pathway. “What’s on now?” I asked.
“We are witnessing the rise of our foe,” Marcus said. A second later, the man turned to the side and I saw a glimpse of his face. It was Delano, younger and closer to the way he used to look. His hair wasn’t too long yet, and his skin hadn’t developed its sallow undertones, but I’d have known him a mile away. He had a mean ax in his hands.
We watched in grim silence as Delano brought that ax into a house and used it to hack through a whole family. He emerged bloody and superficially wounded by his own vicious enthusiasm but unmistakably triumphant.
“What the fuck?” I said. “Was that his family?” The legend Marcus had told me about Delano’s sacrifice to Lorcan ran through my head. “All that crazy stuff people said about him was real.”
“Yes,” Marcus said.
The image shifted to show Delano walking down another path as he wound his way toward a vaguely familiar temple. He was met by Lorcan. His hands were still covered in blood.
Then, Lorcan gave Delano a knife, which the man promptly used on himself. “Gross!” I exclaimed once it became apparent that the lump of flesh he held out to Lorcan was his own heart. He collapsed and died at his master’s feet.
“This is so fucked,” I said. The image shifted once more, and I couldn’t look away.
Delano in the present filled the mirror. He was clearly inside his own temple, and his face was twisted into the most awful smile. The view switched suddenly.
I bristled. “Oh, fuck!” He had my crew strung up on the walls of his grand hall, primed for torture. I watched helplessly as he carved intricate designs into Maya’s stomach with his own claws. Sweat poured down her face but the vet didn’t make a sound.
“I know you know where the little rat is hiding,” Delano said cheerfully. “And frankly, I’m running out of patience.” He turned from Maya, lunged at Steph, and grabbed her by the throat. She gasped for air.
I heard Frank shout. “Get off her! I’ll fucking kill you.”
Delano laughed. “Oh, I doubt that very much.” He bore down on Steph until her face began to turn blue and he let go to sneer as she choked for air. Relentless, he walked around to every one of my crew. Jules and Brax were close together and held hands. Delano pressed a red-hot chain link to her skin. She screamed but she did not break. Brax looked like he wanted to crack the planet in half.
The only one I couldn’t see or hear was Deacon. My heart wanted to believe that was because he’d somehow managed to escape, but I knew better than to count on it. I desperately needed to know where he was. At the same time, I feared the answer so I kept my questions inside. To voice them would make it all too real.
In the glass, Delano threw his head back, an expression of sheer glee plastered over his face. He had never, ever looked happier. It made me want to puke.
