Ambrosia

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  Desmas had to cover her face. The concentration of ammonia made even the eyes of a god water.

  “I see you have yet to find a new champion.”

  “Why would I?” Mónos grunted as she sat down. “So I can betray that one, too? She gave me everything, and I sent her to die.”

  “We all have our unpleasant duties, we all are bound by laws we would rather abolish.”

  “Yes, we do. Sometimes I envy the mortals. Their suffering eventually comes to an end.”

  Desmas had more than a few biting comments she desperately wanted to dispense, but she held them back for the sake of diplomacy. “I don’t have to explain to you the delicate nature of what I am about to ask. I assume I can rely on you to be discreet.”

  “What do I care? Ask away.”

  Desmas looked for a clean place to sit down, but couldn’t find any, so she just cleared a spot on the floor with her feet, then reposed.

  “Sirend has forbidden me to have any contact with my daughter, lest I share her punishment.”

  “Your brother has become as bad as Reinala.”

  Desmas looked around in fright. “Are you insane? Do not say such things out loud!”

  “If I cannot speak my mind within my own temple, then where can I?”

  “None of us can speak our mind, that is the price of freedom.”

  Mónos kicked at the remains of a fallen statue. “If that is the price, then we are not truly free.”

  Desmas cleared her throat and tried to compose herself. “I came here to ask about my daughter, Estia.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Her voice became tender. “Please, tell me, what is she like?”

  Mónos tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. “Her name is Agaprei now. She’s immensely intelligent. A hard worker. Indefatigable. She’s creative and forthright. She’s just like she was when she was a goddess.”

  Desmas cupper her hands. “Is she...still a healer?”

  Mónos smiled approvingly. “She’s a student of medicine. She has a knack for herbs like I’ve never seen before.”

  Mónos turned to her. “She’s a mortal now, so she’s limited by all the things that limit them, but she’s still her.”

  Desmas was relieved to hear it. “Is she…happy?”

  Mónos lowered her eyes. “I think she’s still trying to atone. Trying to repent for something she can’t even recall, but it eats away at her, even though she doesn’t know what it is. A gnawing hunger she cannot describe or satiate. She’s obsessed with winning the love of the gods. It’s all she ever thinks about. That’s the real reason she became my champion. I think it bothers her to no end that she is cut off from magic. I think she hopes that if she can win the love of a god who is powerful enough, her curse can be removed.”

  Mónos looked out at her decaying sanctum.

  “She’s miserable.”

  * * *

  Agaprei collapsed her pointer and allowed the chart on the final scroll soak in to the men and women listening to her presentation. “As you can clearly see, we expect to have a full third of the market share by the end of the quarter.”

  The nobles looked at one another hesitantly.

  “No, that makes perfect sense,” a bespectacled chieftain in black furs began. “What I don’t understand is why you are offering this to the Lawyers Clan.”

  Agaprei shrugged. “Nearly sixty percent of everyone in the underworld are lawyers.”

  The man and his compatriots stood up angrily. “Good day to you.”

  “Surely you…”

  “I said good day.”

  He blew his warhorn and a tunnel opened in the air before him.

  The rest of the nobles stood up and began to filter out.

  “Wait, wait,” she said, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice.

  “Artisan Alfio,” she bade, grabbing a stout man by the sleeve. “You manage many musical groups that revel in dark and profane imagery. Surely you can see how having Fovos on your brand logo would be a huge boost to your label.”

  “Sorry lady, we’re crazy, but we’re not that crazy.”

  “But your last music tour was named Eternal Damnation.”

  “That’s just a marketing gimmick for the idiot teens. We live in the suburbs; now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Agaprei watched as the last of the nobles walked through the tunnel and it closed behind them.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!”

  She grabbed the stack of presentation scrolls and threw them to the ground. “This is so infuriating. No one wants to work with us.”

  Kaia stepped in, carrying a food tray. “Well yeah, who wants to be associated with the God of the Underworld?”

  “I figured at least the Anarchists Association would take us.”

  “What happened?”

  “They keep lying about the location of their headquarters.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Kaia watched her sister worriedly as she sat down at her small desk, deep bags forming underneath her amber eyes.

  “Have you been up all night?”

  Agaprei slid the stacks of papers off of her desk and rested her cheek against the cold wood. “This is impossible. Short of robbing a bank, I don’t see any way to do this. And I’ve only got thirty-six hours left.”

  “I don’t know about this, sis. What Fovos asked is really sketchy.”

  “Do not question an elder god. We pledged our loyalty to him.”

  “No, you pledged your loyalty to him, I just got dragged along for the ride.”

  “You were pretty excited at the time.”

  “That was before I met him.”

  Kaia looked around to make sure they were alone. “I have a bad feeling about this, sis.”

  “It’ll be fine, I just need to work harder. Anything can be fixed if I just keep working.”

  “Well, while you work harder, I’m going to go feed Storgen.”

  Agaprei sat up, a piece of paper stuck to her face. “That’s it!”

  Kaia looked down at the tray. “It’s just runny eggs.”

  “No, our prisoner, remember Fovos mentioned him.”

  Agaprei began frantically shuffling through the discarded papers. “Here, this is it! XVII, the reward for his return is twelve and a half million drachmas exactly!”

  “You’re going to send him back to the tower?”

  “He’s a wanted felon.”

  “He’s your friend.”

  Kaia’s words made Agaprei pause. “His fate is regrettable, but then again so is whatever he did to earn that price on his head in the first place.”

  “Maybe he didn’t do anything, did you ever consider that? The Alchemy Tower isn’t exactly known for being big on the whole rule of law thing. Just because someone is willing to pay that much to get him doesn’t mean he did something wrong necessarily.”

  “He became my prisoner willingly.”

  “In order to be with you.”

  Agaprei tore the paper from her face. “I don’t like this either, okay? But I can’t think of any other way.”

  “Sis, I’ve always been supportive of you, but this time I’ve got to put my foot down. I think Fovos is playing you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I told you not to question your god.”

  “He gives you a ridiculous time line, for an absurd amount, the exact amount of Storgen’s bounty? No way that is a coincidence.”

  “Yes, it is, that is what a coincidence means. If anything, it is simply efficacious symmetry.”

  “Please. I think he wants you to betray Storgen. The question we need to be considering is why.”

  “We’re mortals, we can’t possibly fathom the mind of an elder god, and it is blasphemy to try.”

  “Really, well then call me a blasphemer, because from here it seems pretty obvious.”

  Agaprei turned away, looking at the door that led to the dungeon.

  Kaia set down her tray. “Sis, why are you willing to do this?”

/>   “I’m sorry, but this is the only way I can remove my curse.”

  “So earning the love of the gods means that much to you, does it?”

  “You know it does. It’s all I’ve ever worked for.”

  “Even if you have to sacrifice those who actually do love you to get it?”

  “He doesn’t love me. He’s just delusional. He’s fetishized about a girl with lavender hair, and he thinks that makes us destined. The reality is he’s just turned me into some prize to acquire.”

  “Now who’s delusional?”

  “He’s a man. He can’t help it. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. They’re all like that.”

  Kaia picked up the tray angrily. “You just keep telling yourself that, sis.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to go feed him, at least while I’m still free to do so.”

  Agaprei’s long ears twitched in irritation. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re scaring me. I’ve never known you to be like this. What if Fovos asked you to sacrifice me as well?”

  “Don’t be absurd. You know I’d never agree to that.”

  Kaia opened the door. “I used to.”

  Agaprei rolled her eyes in frustration and fished out ink and a quill from her drawer.

  * * *

  “I’m not so sure about this,” Philiastra said nervously as she leaned back against the trunk of a sleeping tree.

  “Don’t worry,” Wei soothed, slipping off her magic armband. “This is perfectly natural.”

  “Yeah, well, just because something is natural doesn’t mean that it’s safe. Scorpion venom is natural, you know? So is mercury, lead, and cyanide…in fact, the most dangerous things out there are perfectly natural…”

  “Shhhhhh.”

  Wei placed his finger over her green lips. “You’re babbling.”

  “I’m…I’m not babbling.”

  “You always babble when you’re nervous.”

  “N-no I don’t.”

  “Just close your eyes and do like we practiced. I’ll be right here beside you.”

  She took strength from his confidence and closed her eyes. She let the cool blue flame of the moon sprite flow over her and opened her inner sight. She could sense the powerful aura of the tree behind her, its colors rising up like a calm vertical river. She began to shift her own aura, matching the colors, matching the pattern, copying the vibrations and ripples, the tiny little nuances and reflections, the swells of intensity and the waves of power.

  Then it happened. Her aura flowed into the tree like two rivers merging into one. She panicked from the new sensation, trying to pull away, but it swept her away like an irresistible flood. Her legs flowed into every root, her arms in to every branch. Her toes flooded into every rootlet, her fingers into every leaf. Through the shared roots, she spread into a dozen trees around her, and then a hundred trees around them, then a thousand trees around them.

  She flowed down deep into the earth, through the roots of the island, stretching out beneath the ocean to nearby islands, flowing into their forests. She felt herself growing more and more thin, yet she stretched out farther still, impossibly far, passing into the roots of the very continents.

  Her mind melted away, memories and thoughts evaporating away, the layers of her consciousness peeling from her and disappearing, as if she were a tiny drop falling into a vast ocean. Her name, her thoughts, her very existence eroded, and with one last terrifying gasp, her very sense of self vanished.

  The sun and moon became a blur in the skies above as time unraveled. A million million seasons folded in on themselves into a singular moment, every tree merely a cell in a vast world-wide living organism. Continents rose from the sea and eroded away, glaciers advanced and retreated, jungles flourished and retreated, the limits of the forests expanding and then retracting, as if they were lungs breathing in the entire atmosphere of a single living being, then exhaling again, life flowing out in streams of milky effervescence that ran out into space itself, the world connected to every star like the bonds of a molecule, and beyond it, something greater even still, a cosmic oneness, a connection of all, every atom and particle beating in the same ether, a beating heart beyond time and life.

  Then everything reversed, a sense of falling away, the heart becoming the ether, the ether becoming the world, the world becoming the forest…

  ~

  The fílos trees shuddered as if by a wind, yet the air was completely still. In a small glade dominated by a pit, one of the trees began to bulge from within. Its bark and wood grew outwards, forming the silhouettes of two people. Bark became skin, leaves became hair, and two forest nymphs stepped out into the glade.

  Philiastra gasped, falling to her knees and fighting for breath. “That was incredible,” she huffed. “For a moment, I was every tree. No, I was gone, and every tree took my place.”

  “You became the forest, and the forest became you,” Wei explained.

  Her strength failed her and she fell to the ground, wrapping her arms around herself. “It hurts, so many emotions all at once. I feel like my body is going to explode.”

  “It will pass,” he comforted.

  The trees around them began to glow with anger.

  You should not be here, one said.

  Pariah, said another.

  You betrayed the natural order.

  The heat of their judgments lit up the glade. Birds and animals fled from the area.

  You are a sickness, an infection!

  You broke the laws of nature!

  Wei calmly lifted up his hands and began to put the trees to sleep.

  You have rejected the ways of the forest, and now the forest rejects you.

  One by one, all the trees in the glade went silent.

  Slowly, the noise that filled her senses faded, and she began to breathe normally.

  “Why…why did you put them to sleep?”

  “Well, we don’t want word to spread too far that an alchemy user was here.”

  She looked away in shame. “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew. I can see the damage it has done to your aura, clear as day.”

  She balled her fists. “No matter how much I distance myself, it follows me everywhere I go.”

  “It’s all right.” He knelt down next to her and delicately touched her cheek. “I forgive you.”

  “You do?”

  “The trees don’t know you like I do. You were a victim. Young, alone, with no one to guide you. You did what you had to do to survive among savages. You deserve sympathy, not judgment. You were gone and now you have returned, that should be all that matters.”

  She wiped a tear from her face. “Thank you. You have no idea what that means to me.”

  Wei waved his hand and new moss grew up around them, weaving itself into clothes. “We can bring nothing with us when we travel through the trees, not even our kratóntas ta chéria, that is why it is so important that you have brought a real live fílos tree to Mikrí Póli. You did what I never could, and because of you, we will have a true forest there again soon.”

  He looked around in awe of the forest around them. “We are kin to all trees, but fílos trees are most beloved of us, for it was from them that the first forest nymphs emerged long ago at the birth of the world. It has been a long time since I have been among a sacred forest like this, and thanks to you, we will have another back home.”

  She stood up as best she could, her limbs still weak. “Where are we?”

  “Can’t you feel it? This is Dasikí Chará.”

  She looked around apprehensively. “I swore I’d never come back here. Why would you bring me here?”

  He stepped forward to the edge of the pit. “Because you have to start at the beginning if you are to reach the end.”

  She stood in place, unwilling to move closer, but Wei took her hand and drew her to the edge. Inside the pit was skoupídia. It was mostly overgrown now, but rusted ed
ges of human urns, tools, and wagons were clearly visible amid the moss and ivy.

  “This is where you were found, isn’t it?” Wei asked gently.

  Philiastra’s lip trembled. “I don’t want to be here.”

  Wei put his hand on her shoulder tenderly. “This place was used to throw away garbage the humans left near our woods. You can imagine everyone’s surprise when a forest nymph infant was found here.”

  She tried to back away, but he held her in place.

  “Before you, there was no such thing as an orphan among our people. It caused quite a stir. No one knew what to do with you. When my father decided to raise you in our house, it began a long and bitter feud with the other elders of our tribe.”

  Philiastra gasped, tears running down her cheeks. “Why? Why did my parents throw me away?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll probably never know. What’s important though, Philiastra, is that they were wrong to do so.”

  He took her and looked her straight in the eyes. “You are not trash.”

  A tear dripped off her chin. “Aren’t I?”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Odelia sparkled sympathetically.

  “This is why you’ve always been obsessed with finding broken things and fixing them, isn’t it?”

  Her eyes quavered.

  “This is why you really learned alchemy, isn’t it? So you could save other things that had been thrown away.”

  Her body trembled.

  “Isn’t that the real reason?” he pressed.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He looked at her kindly. “That’s why it’s not your fault. You were doing the best you could, desperately trying to fix something that could never be fixed that way. But there is a way it can be fixed.”

  “There is? What?”

  “The truth.”

  He held out his hand. “Come, there is more you must know.”

  * * *

  Lord Krýo Fidi and the attendant of Krasi watched as the last of the precious veridian ore was loaded onto the clockwork trireme floating within the closed dock.