Storgen climbed up to the top of the crumbled remains of an ancient watchtower, carved from a gigantic neck bone. Far down below on the plains, the three main roads of Eastern Agadis intersected, the dusty Skóni road leading into the sullen hills of the Agélastos, the weathered cobblestone of the Archaíos thoroughfare leading to the skull city of Kranío to the north and the Collarbone Fortress to the south, and the flagstone paved King’s Road that wound between the eastern forests to the fortress of Froúrio on the coast.
Storm clouds were brewing in the west, and the air was growing thicker. Agaprei barely noticed Storgen as she sat against the remains of a merlon, her eyes red and sore from crying.
“How did you find me?”
Storgen looked around and took in a breath of fresh air in an attempt to lighten his mood. It didn’t help.
“Easy. This is where I would have gone. Crossroads are always the best place to watch people.”
He sat down beside her and for a while they watched in silence. Carts and wagons pulled by land-dragons, merchant caravans and gypsy troupes, farmers hauling their crops, and the occasional group of warriors marching to new destinations. Hunters, blacksmiths, tanners, trainers, brewmasters, all weaving between one another, trying not to collide as they slipped through the crossroads.
“I like places like this,” she commented, breaking the silence. Everything seems so much more peaceful from a distance.”
“Millions of people just living their lives,” he agreed. “Working, eating, talking, looking for happiness.”
“I wonder if they find it.”
“I hope they do.”
“I wonder if anyone ever finds it.”
“I think they do.”
All around the roads were patchworks of farmlands separated by hedgerows. The autumn harvest of barley waving in the wind like ripples in a pond.
Storgen picked up a little stray piece of marrow and crumbled it between his strong fingers. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She leaned her head back against the carved bone. “Not really. Everything makes sense now.”
She closed her sore eyes. Her tears were dried up, but she still felt like crying. “I knew, I always knew there was something wrong with me, something broken inside of me. I thought if I could just discover what it was, if I learned what the problem was, I could fix it. But now that I know, I feel even worse.”
“It doesn’t seem real,” he commented.
“No, it doesn’t. When I was a little girl, I remember reading about Estia, and I always thought what a big stupid fool she was. Defying the elder gods, causing a war between the heavens and the underworld. I’m not going to lie, I hated her, I despised her.”
“From everything I read, she was a victim. She didn’t ask to be betrothed to Fovos, and as miserable as she was in the Underworld. She never asked to be set free. The quarrel was between Sirend, Desmas, and Fovos. Estia was just collateral damage.”
“You know, my teacher asked me once to write a poem about her, about how beautiful and wondrous she was. About all the illnesses she cured and the people she saved. I refused. I preferred to fail the class rather than speak well of her. My parents thought I was crazy; my sister thought I was just being stubborn. I knew I hated her, but I didn’t know why. But now…now I know why…”
Fresh tears fell from her amber eyes.
“…Because I am that fool.”
It made Storgen ache inside to see her in so much pain. It radiated off of her like a cold flame. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and take her in his arms, and hold her tight until she stopped crying. To provide in some small measure a moment of solace. To be a balm to her soul.
As he leaned towards her, she tensed up.
“No, please don’t,” she said, shivering.
“All right,” he said, trying to understand.
He sat back, unsure of what to do. He wanted to do something, anything, to help her feel better, but nothing came to mind. He wasn’t even sure what the protocol was for this kind of situation, or if such a thing even existed at all.
“I’ve always just been a human,” he explained. “It’s all I’ve ever known. Now, I’m told I was once a god, and, to be honest, I don’t really believe it.”
She wiped her cheek. “It doesn’t matter what we believe. Objective reality exists independent of our preferences.”
“No, I don’t believe that. Objective reality is just an excuse for giving up. If you don’t like something, you change your reality.”
“The reality is we are both criminals, you and I. Unless we submit ourselves to the gods and earn their forgiveness, we’ll be cursed until the end of time.”
“Forgiveness? For what? For falling in love? That demands no apology.”
“It does when it is in defiance of celestial law.”
“Celestial law made as a result of petty bickering and a bitter divorce.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it is objective reality,” he teased.
She smacked him in the shoulder. “Stop it.” She looked around uneasily. “What if they hear us?”
“Pffft. Let them hear. Don’t you see, we’ve already beaten them, you and I. We found one another again, in spite of all they did to keep us apart. Think about it, against heaven and hell and all the curses and machinations of the cosmos designed to keep us apart, here we are. True love found a way.”
She looked at him in exasperation. “What are you talking about?”
“You were Estia and I was Tharros. We were to be married.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“Of course it does, that changes everything.”
“So, what? Just because we were together in our last life, that means we have to be together again in this one? I mean, don’t I get a say in any of this? Aren’t I free to choose who I want to be with, or do I have to just bow down and kiss your feet because you say we were together?”
“We were together. And why would I ask you to kiss my feet?”
“Yeah, you’re right. You probably have something else in mind.”
“Why are you so hostile about all of this?”
“Because I don’t believe in destiny! I don’t believe in true love! You are so infuriating, how many times do I have to say it? And even if I did, I still wouldn’t want some divine being telling me how I had to live my life.”
“Aren’t you a champion? You love serving divine beings.”
“You know what I mean! Even if we were perfectly compatible, which I don’t think there’s any such thing, but even if we were, I would still resent being assigned to some random guy. I mean, think about it. If someone just showed up out of the blue wanting nothing more than to love you and be with you, would you be happy with that? Would you be happy with what is essentially another arranged marriage?”
“With you? Yes.”
She looked at him harshly. “Well, then, I guess you and I really are different after all.”
She got up to walk away.
“Why are you so angry with me all of the time?” he called out.
She snapped around. “Because you invalidate everything about me! I’ve been cursed from the day I was born, cut off from the love of the gods, cut off from all beauty. You are the one person in the whole freaking cosmos who should understand what that feels like, instead you treat it like it’s no big deal. I trained night and day to become a champion. It was all I thought about, I worked every hour, every waking moment lived towards a singular purpose, and you act like becoming a champion doesn’t mean anything! You have no idea what it means to be really dedicated to something, to work for it night and day for years at a time.”
“You don’t think I…how can you say that?! I spent my entire lifetime looking for you!”
“No, you didn’t. You weren’t looking for me, you were looking for the idea of me. I was just some prize for you to win, like all men!”
“There you go again, always ragging on me becaus
e I’m a man.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you have a problem with men or something?”
“Should I?”
“Like I had any say in what gender I was born! What is so blasted wrong with being a man, huh?”
“Because they’re not safe!”
“When have I ever given you reason to fear me?”
“You don’t have to, just being a man is a threat. What’s more, you’re a human.”
“Oh, because I absolutely asked to be that too, right?”
“Humans aren’t a part of the world, they don’t belong here. They aren’t connected to nature. They’re a scourge and a plague.”
“You know what? I’m sick and tired of humans being treated like we’re some sort of disease. Where else are we supposed to go? We live in this world too, you know? We’re not a sickness, we’re just trying to survive, just like every other creature. What, you think we’re the only animal that kills to eat? Everything thrives at the expense of something else. Everything. Without exception. Right over there, that is a birch forest because the birch trees choked out all the oaks. Those starlings are there because they drove out the magpies. We’re all fighting for space and sustenance, from the smallest microbe to the largest whale. That’s the way the world is, so stop acting like you’re so much freaking better than us!”
“It’s always about you, isn’t it?” she spat back. “It’s always about what you need, about what you want. You don’t like the hand you’ve been dealt, so you demand the whole world turns itself upside down to give you what you want.”
“Oh, like you aren’t the same way?”
“You will never have what you want. The best you can hope for is to be forgiven for what you’ve done. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will stop hurting inside!”
“Not hurting isn’t the same as being happy!”
“Sometimes it’s close enough!”
“No, it isn’t. Not for me!”
They stood there, breathing furiously at one another.
“And not for you, either,” he concluded.
“Storgen,” she began. “I tried to be polite, I tried to be subtle, I tried to let you down easy, but I can see that nothing short of hitting you over the head with a hammer will get through that thick skull of yours.”
She grabbed his cheeks and pulled him close, looking directly into his eyes.
“I don’t love you, okay?”
His eyes went wide with shock. “Wha…?”
“I don’t,” she said, less assuredly, “and I never will.”
In that moment, she saw the light begin to die inside his eyes, a fire extinguished by a cold rain, the embers dying out. She immediately regretted saying it.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t, and I never will,” she said again, this time barely able to force it out. “It’s best to let you know now instead of stringing you along…it’s more merciful that way…”
Unable to bear the look in his eyes, she turned and walked away, leaving him there amid the carved bone.
Storgen slumped down, a strange, empty expression on his face as he sat there by himself
Slowly it began to rain around him.
It rained all the rest of that day.
* * *
From a distance, the Tower of Alchemy seemed almost peaceful. The screams from within faded away, leaving only the majestic lapping of waves and the pleasant light whistle of the sea breeze.
Like a giant gnarled tooth, the tower rose up out of the sea, an eclectic dark assortment of a hundred different architectural styles and shapes mashed together without rhyme or reason. Sharp gothic spires, cool spanning archways, crude brick steppes and sturdy marble columns all competed for attention, with none winning out, giving the entire structure a kind of haziness, as if one’s eyes refused to wholly focus on the edifice.
It was an otherworldly thing to see. Part armory, part prison, part furnace, part fortress, extending down below the waves all the way to the sea floor far below, the lights from its suboceanic levels causing an eerie corpse light to filter up through the waves.
Large cargo vessels docked at the base like tiny toys, bringing in fresh supplies of raw materials and slaves, some sold off to settle a debt, others unfortunate souls and drunkards waylaid in the middle of the night. After disgorging their contents, the ships were filled again with all manner of alchemic devices to sell in open markets. The broad daylight result of the darkest of nighttime exchanges.
The uppermost spire pierced the clouds, standing adamantly amid layers of battlements, the spear tip of a mountain of iron and stone, immeasurably strong, the crown jewel atop a temple of hate.
With an earth-shattering crack, the uppermost spire exploded, baroque stone shattering, fortified iron vaporizing, dark masonry scattering. The fireball grew outwards like an expanding sun, lighting up the skies, evaporating the seawater, roasting seagulls to a crisp in midair. Sand melted into glass, iron slumped and melted like butter, airships were blown away into cinders. The light could be seen for hundreds of miles in all directions, like a fresh star twinkling at the horizon. The clouds were cast aside, overrun by a black shockwave spreading out like a halo across the heavens.
From top to bottom, the Tower cracked and quaked, large fissures and fractures, tens of thousands dying in an instant, their bodies pulverized by the shockwave. The sea itself was pushed away, massive ships tossed about like playthings, the water assaulted outwards into a bowl, revealing countless suboceanic levels previously hidden. Then, in a terrifying moment, the water came rushing back in, battering the tower from all sides at once, pouring into freshly opened seams and rents. A hundred thousand voices cried out at once as their cramped cities of darkness filled with seawater. Criminals, fugitives, gangsters, homeless, lost, hopeless, prisoners, slaves, and their dark masters all cried out in a single unifying moment of terror.
And then all went silent.
* * *
Kaia climbed up the steps carved into the bone that made up the watch tower. The rain made everything slick and wet, but the spell she had sung kept her dry, the rain pattering away from her as if a bubble of glass was held above her, the bony surfaces growing dry before each footfall. Looking around, she found Storgen sitting still against the battlements.
“There you are,” she said in concern as she hefted herself up. “I can’t believe you’re still here.”
Storgen didn’t move as the rain pattered against his soaked toga and dripped off the end of his nose.
“How did you find me?”
“Agaprei was worried about you. She sent me to check on you.”
“That was kind of her.”
Kaia placed her hand on his arm and grew worried. “Your skin is like ice. You’re going to catch a cold, you dummy.”
She pulled a blanket out of her pouch and wrapped it around him. He barely responded.
“Come on, we’ve got to get you out of the cold.”
She tried to pull him up, but he was far too heavy for her limited strength to budge.
“All right, you want to freeze to death, then freeze to death.”
She clasped her hands and added another stanza to her spell. Her lovely voice swirled around her, creating a nice warm dry spot against the wall. She sat down and leaned against it, her barrier keeping her perfectly dry.
Digging through her bag, she happily pulled out a sandwich and took a bite.
“This is wrong,” Storgen muttered.
“I know, the turkey’s a little dry.”
“This is all wrong,” he said with empty eyes.
She swallowed her bite and glanced away. “I know.”
Storgen looked out at the crossroads before him. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I found her, I found the person I’m destined to be with. After all these years, I finally found her. I thought things would get better. But, they’re not. I thought we would be together, but we aren’t.”
He looked back down. “I’ve always known
what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to look for her. But now, for the first time in my life…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Kaia’s long ears drooped sadly. “Try to be patient. I mean, how would you feel if someone showed up on your doorstep who wanted nothing more than to make you happy? Someone who trusted you implicitly, was completely loyal, and asked for nothing but the privilege of being by your side?”
He gave her a harsh look.
“Okay, bad example. Yes, any normal person would be ecstatic, but my sister is hardly normal. Just be patient with her.”
Kaia took another bite, then sat up with an idea.
“And if that doesn’t work out, in six years I’ll be eighteen, I’ll go out with you then.”
Storgen managed to chuckle. “Thanks, kid.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, taking a fresh bite. “I like seafood and strawberries, just not at the same time.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Good. I also accept cash and gold as gifts.”
Storgen looked up. “Gifts…”
“Also massages, but only from certified masseuses, so you might want to get your license…”
“That’s it, gifts!”
“…In fact, there’s a massage school not too far from here, now that I think about it…”
“No, don’t you get it? Gifts, courtship, dating.”
She chewed her bite slowly. “What are we talking about?”
Storgen stood up, the damp towel falling off him, the light coming back into his eyes. “I can’t just show up and expect her to fall in love with me. I have to woo her.”
“Did you just say woo?”
“Yeah, romance, ah, I’m such an idiot, how could I have not seen this before? Come on, you can help me, we’ve got some planning to do.”
“Wait, what did we just decide?”
Suddenly, the sky cracked with thunder, and a great wind nearly flung Storgen off the side of the tower. The entire structure listed heavily, and Kaia’s spell was completely blown away.
They both looked up, and watched as a dark shockwave traced across the skies, shattering the ruined celestial buildings in the heavens, and scattering the clouds in its wake.
Ambrosia Page 69
