by Emma Hamm
“They won’t lose,” she said in a trembling voice.
“Oh, they will. You can’t see the future yet, but the writing is on the wall. Sweet Goddess, you cannot bring children to a battle of titans.”
He was right. Even without following the threads of Present, she could see they would lose.
“No,” she whispered. “I cannot have been wrong.”
“Look at me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Look at me, Goddess. Now!”
She glanced over her shoulder and sobbed.
His form had twisted. Devouring all those souls had warped his body so much that she didn’t know what was him anymore. Where Malachi had once been handsome, he was now ugly.
Shuddering faces morphed into his, screaming men and women clawing to get out of the prison the Five had created. His shoulders were hunched. Great bulbous tumors forcing him to bend forward. One hand clutched at his chest where his heart had once been. Black blood oozed from the wound.
“What did they do to you?” she cried.
“Exactly what I had always expected. They gave me power.” His mouth was so misshapen that drool dripped from his lips as he spoke.
“This couldn’t have been what you wanted? Malachi! Look at yourself!”
“I see it, Lydia. I feel it. My body is no longer mine. It is theirs.”
“You do not have to do what they want. You do not have to listen to the Five, they are cruel! They have harmed you in so many ways. Please, let me help you!”
She reached out her hands, both dripping gold.
He cocked his head to the side, his long braid touching the ground. “Do you know how I see them now?”
“No,” she choked out the sound through a sob. Her hands hovered in the air.
“They hide their true nature. Their magic is warped, darkened, angry, hungry. They are not the Light anymore and they cannot hide it for long. It’s not something they will ever admit to the world.”
She sniffed hard.
“Do you know what I see, when I look at you?”
“No.”
“You’re glowing. Not just with magic or with those infernal moths that flutter around you like Fairy orbs. You are so good inside that it makes me sick!”
A tear slid down her cheek, burning a path of liquid gold. “And the others? What do you see when you look at them?”
Malachi flinched. “They are the same as you.”
Another sob wracked her form, shuddering her forward with its force. She took one step toward him. “We want to help you, Malachi. We want to help everyone, please. Trust me.”
“You do not want to help me. You want to kill me!”
“No!” Her voice rocked with the weight of centuries and the boom of thunder. “I promised you I would save you. I mean to do just that. Malachi, take my hands.”
“No.” He shook his head, shuffling back and forth. “This is a lie. I know I lie when I see one. I am a liar don’t you see it?”
Lydia took another step forward. “My dear, sweet, Void. You have been abused and neglected for too long. Come to me, take my hands, and be forgiven.”
He reached out and touched his fingertips to hers. In that instant, she saw everything.
The mist cleared from the threads of Time. Knowledge burned behind her eyelids and she heard a thousand voices screaming her name. White light flooded through her body singing hymns and funeral dirges.
She choked on the Future, no the Present, no…
The Past.
It was all the same to her. Time was not linear at all, it was pliable. She could mold it like clay between her fingertips and they were threads at all. It wasn’t a web! It was the connection between every living thing.
Her eyes saw leaves falling and waves crashing. She saw golden threads holding together the very fabric of time but also life itself. It spread from her heart and linked her to the breath a baby took on the other side of the world. She heard the deep hum of an ancient tree singing to its roots, encouraging them to grow. She felt the burning heat of a woman meeting her lover for the last time before she married another.
She felt the fear, the self-loathing, and guilt from the hand holding her own.
Lydia opened her eyes and met Malachi’s gaze.
“I see it all now,” she said. But it wasn’t her voice echoing from her throat. This voice no longer sounded like the chiming of bells, but the whisper of moth wings and the answering hurricane on the other side of the world.
In a trance, she turned her head to find Pitch. He stared at her with dark, mad eyes and a feral grin.
“I love you,” she said. “And I am so sorry.”
The shadows cleared from his eyes a moment before he realized what she was about to do. His claw tipped hands reached for her and he screamed, “No!”
Lydia released all the power she contained inside herself. It exploded in glittering sunlight, molten gold, and shuddering rays of light. It shredded her body and lifted her mind into the air.
She had no need for blood or veins, she was forgiveness now. The threads of Time stood out in stark contrast to the darkness of the world. She could play upon them for hours, for she was no longer Lydia.
There was no name for her. There was nothing but song and magic. Golden light that spread from the sky and made things grow. Plants would stretch their leaves to her, dancing to show their approval. People would lift their faces to feel her soft caress. Her wings of sunlight spread wide across the sky and dashed away nightmares, darkness, pain.
She was floating in love.
But a man knelt at her feet and whispered prayers. He spoke them over and over again, calling out to her. She was not just love. She was a Goddess, and she had a name.
She drifted close to listen.
“Queen of Starlight, Queen of the Sun. Goddess of love and protection, hear me now,” the man whispered against his fists. “Come back to your form. Grace me with your presence once more and heal me of this affliction. I will beg if that is what you need of me. I will devote myself to your service. Please heal this wounded body and this broken mind.”
His voice cracked over the words, stumbling over a prayer he had never said before. She knew it because she dipped into his mind to taste his magic. He was black, salty like ink, but powerful and mad.
There was another like that. A man, she remembered him faintly, one whom she loved. But she loved everyone that was who she was. Yet this one lingered. A dark man, a monster, a beast, a creature, a butcher.
She settled on a form. Tall and lean, silver hair and gold dipped antlers stretching into the sky. Bells jingled from silver strands strung between each tined horn. Glittering diamonds decorated the crests of her cheekbones and traced whirling patterns upon her skin.
Queen of Starlight. Queen of the Sun.
The man muttered at her feet, oblivious that she had answered his call. So she knelt, pressing her knees to the dirty ground and bent her head over his.
She pressed her hands on either side of his face, smoothing her thumbs over her cheekbones. His eyes widened as their gazes met.
“My Goddess,” he whispered. “You are great and powerful. Thank you for -”
“No more speaking,” she interrupted. “I heard your call. And though you are gravely injured and your magic is horribly tainted, I take that from you now. Your judgment day has arrived, Void. You have been measured and found wanting.”
Malachi nodded, his warped features twisting even further. “It is as it should be. Destroy me then.”
“I have no desire for any more death.”
She leaned forward, kissing his forehead gently. Her lips left a golden mark that spread across his body and healed his wounds. She stripped his magic from him and devoured the poisonous hatred which had ridden upon his shoulders for so long.
The battle raged below the mountain peak. Screams of anger and pain echoed through her mind.
“Malachi,” she said. “Do I have a name?”
“Lydia.”
“Lydia,” she repeated. And with the word, memories came. She remembered a haunting house, a fortress of night and darkness. A man with a soft touch and kind words.
She stood, a beacon of light and hope.
“Come,” she said. “It is time to stop this.”
“Can you?” he asked.
“I have seen the end.”
Malachi stood, dusting his knees and pulling his coat jacket straight. He was once more tall, but his shoulders hunched forward still. With his hatred gone, Lydia tasted the bitter regret in his aura.
“How are you going to stop them?”
“I am a Goddess of Time,” she said with a smile. She lifted her hands and closed her eyes. “And it is time to remind these children what a real Goddess can do.”
Lydia lifted her hands over her head and cracked her palms together. From her fingertips, a rift in Time ripped open. Eyes glowing, lips moving in a spell, she dragged everyone with her into a place between Time.
This was a place of judgment, and it was time to burn a kingdom down.
Chapter 18
Mist swirled around Lydia’s ankles. This place between worlds was vacant of many things. Light blinked where she willed it to, the ground solid because she asked it to be. Each tiny detail of this space was a blank canvas she painted upon. For now, there was little she needed.
Her bare toes dug into the spongy earth. Lydia narrowed her eyes and flexed the immense power within her, turning the ground to soft moss. A softer surface would be easier for conversations.
Others blinked into existence. Her children knelt on the ground, shock and awe on their faces as they stared at her. Pitch walked out of the darkness, his cape billowing behind him.
“Where are we?” Jasper asked.
“A place between places. A time between time.”
“So this is…. Like purgatory?”
“More than that. It’s where all the dimensions are first created, a small thought in the mind of a God.” She gestured with her arm. “We paint our dreams, our desires, our will into the world here until it grows so big it can exist on its own.”
Burke made a soft sound. “Like an infant’s dream.”
“Very similar to that, yes.”
“Why are we here?” Lyra asked. A drop of blood dripped from her temple and landed upon the moss-covered ground.
At Lydia’s urging, it grew into a curling vine that reached to dab at the wound. “There are more conversations to be had, more choices to be made.”
“We have to make them?”
“Yes,” Lydia inclined her head. “But first, I have to make mine.”
She lifted a hand and snapped her fingers. The remaining three Gods appeared. Their arms stretched behind their backs, craning at an awkward and uncomfortable angle. Rope twisted between their wrists and ankles. Red welts stood out angry and painful.
Gaia snarled, “I’m going to kill you!”
“No, you are not.”
“You have no right to bind us, you pathetic little whelp. You are nothing but a child, a Goddess first born. How dare you -”
Gaia’s mouth snapped shut so hard her teeth cracked. She had said quite enough, in Lydia’s opinion, and there were no more words to be said. At least Aether and Nurin were smart enough to stay silent. Their sister, and lover, had yet to learn the same.
“Lydia,” Pitch shifted at her side. “What are you going to do?”
“What someone should have done a long time ago.”
“Is it your place?”
She always forgot how perceptive her love was. Smiling, Lydia grazed her knuckles along his jaw. “You never told me you were younger than I.”
“Younger than your power, by far.”
“I’m robbing the cradle staying with you.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Never.”
Her fingers lingered upon his skin even as she walked away. Lydia counted her footsteps as she approached the bound Gods. They had no idea who they dealt with, nor would they care if they knew. She had seen creatures like this before, drunk on power and their own self-confidence. They didn’t understand the effect they had on the world. It was always their downfall.
Lydia knelt in the moss, her golden dress pooling in rivers and melding with the silver of her hair.
“I am no young Goddess, children. I have been alive for millions of years. I have created dimensions and had them created for me. The creature before you has sat upon the council of Gods for thousands of years and only left it when I found a man who changed everything for me.”
Aether closed her eyes, turning her head to the side as though in pain.
“You were given the opportunity to create a world. I know what kind of honor that is, and how many Gods must have had high opinions of your family line. But you failed. Your world died, and when you realized what was coming, you fled to a new world. That was not yours to destroy.”
Her lips pressed together as she felt Gaia fight against her magic. She snapped a hand out, grasping the other woman’s jaw with an iron grip. “You were not given the permission to speak.”
Lydia waited until she stilled, then tossed her aside.
“It is within my power to judge your decisions. I have looked into your future and seen the terrible deeds you would complete. How do you plead?”
She looked first at Aether, the fun loving sister who had always caused them to laugh. There were many memories of this Goddess teasing Lyra, pranking Burke, teasing Jasper’s hair into knots.
Aether coughed as Lydia released the hold on her jaw. “I plead guilty, ancient one. I wish to return to my ancestors honorably.”
“What honor could you bring them?”
“I have brought joy. I did not use my power for evil until the bitter end. My family’s decisions were not my own.”
Though Lydia wanted to smite the youngling, she tasted truth in the air. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Aether’s forehead. “Go to our homeland in peace then. Pay homage to my family.”
“Thank you for your mercy.”
As she disintegrated into ash, Lydia shook her head. “I did not grant you any mercy. You will be alone for the rest of your life, knowing only one of your family exists.” She pointed to Pitch. “And it is one you forsake time and time again. The darker half of your family is not evil. Nor is light always good.”
“Please, no,” Aether cried out. “No wait, this is not what I wanted!”
She burst into ash. A cold breeze swirled through her remains and carried her away from her siblings.
Gaia screamed. Nurin struggled against his bounds until Lydia clapped a hand down upon his shoulder. “Stop.”
They both froze.
“The two of you have been weighed by judgment. Your plans to destroy not only this world but its inhabitants as well has not come to fruition, therefore your punishment is less. Your souls will be carried to your homeland on the winds of ruin and disgrace.”
In one last push, Gaia freed herself from the cage Lydia had placed around her mouth. “No! You bitch! We did nothing wrong!”
“You have been found wanting. Divinity is not given lightly.” She leaned down and pressed her lips against Gaia’s ear. “And you were never a Goddess.”
Lydia trailed her hands along their shoulders. Their forms locked, and they turned to gray stone. Cracks formed across their hands and clothing, expressions frozen in a state of anger and shock.
“Be gone from my sight.” Lydia’s voice rumbled with the weight of time and justice.
The great force of her power crushed down upon Gaia and Nurin’s bodies. The stone crumbled.
She allowed for silence. They deserved as much. Though they were careless with their gifts and heartless in their treatment of the creatures they created, the Five were Gods and Goddesses. A moment of silence after their death was fitting.
Memories bombarded her. Sil had killed more Gods than she wished to count. The woman had been judge and just
ice, murderer and peace keeper. Those memories had been buried so deep within Sil’s unconscious that she had never shared them.
A sigh expelled all the guilt and anger from her body. Lydia turned to meet the gazes of her chosen ones.
Understandably, they all looked as though they might vomit.
“Now, it’s time for us to talk.”
“What?” Wolfgang stammered. “You want to talk? Now? You just killed three Gods in front of us without any show of force, and you want to talk?”
“Killing is hardly the word for it. Gods cannot be killed. Their essence will be recycled, and they will join to create a new life. Someday, hopefully after their memories have been destroyed.”
“What are you?”
She summoned comfortable seats for all of them. Worn leather couches, similar to the seating arrangements at Jasper’s home, scooted up behind them. A flick of her wrist knocked everyone down.
“I am a Goddess. Like them, although much older. We took on the name Gods and Goddesses but really, we are creators. An amplified version of yourselves.” She sank into her own loveseat, leaning into Pitch. “You can create Juice, spells, Fairy dust. I can create life.”
She watched their expressions shifting from emotion to emotion. It was a lot for them to process, even more for them to accept. And they would have to accept it. She wouldn’t let them do anything else.
Wren was the first to lean forward, her eyes white as snow. “What does this have to do with us?”
“You know I chose all of you for a reason? That you weren’t random drawings from a hat to fulfill a prophecy I made up?”
They nodded in response.
Lydia reached out and took Pitch’s hand. She needed him to help hide her shaking. “You were all chosen because I viewed your futures, your personalities, your choices for hundreds of years. I walked the webs of Time and changed every aspect of your life I could, to see whether or not you would ever break or turn to evil. No matter how dark I made your lives, no matter how difficult or dangerous your path became, you all remained good, strong people.”
Lyra chuckled. “I don’t know about that, Starshine. I’ve made plenty of bad decisions in my life.”
