by Jaymin Eve
“What in the world of the gods …” I spun around, trying to take in everything at once, even though it was too dark to take in even an inch of the ‘everything’.
“Exactly.” Rome had been the one to utter the reply, sounding right behind me.
He had dropped to the back of the procession after declaring to the group that I kept getting into trouble whenever he left me unsupervised, whatever that was supposed to mean. He had been the one to plant a hand on the centre of my spine and push me forward, initiating this trip through reality.
“What do you mean exactly?” I asked in the general direction of his voice.
“The world of the gods,” he replied, making me realise that I was staring at the wrong patch of darkness.
I adjusted my eyes, and then it hit me.
No—it didn’t hit me! Because that was impossible!
This cave couldn’t be Topia. The Abcurse brothers couldn’t possibly know a secret passage into Topia!
“Anything is possible, Rocks,” Siret muttered, grabbing my wrist and drawing me through the darkness, toward the little pin-prick of light. I must have spoken out loud—or else they could read minds.
Knowing my luck, it was the latter.
As soon as Siret’s skin touched mine, my head was flooded with conflicting images. Thoughts. Memories. I had no idea what they were, but the men and women pictured in my mind weren’t anything like the sols I knew. They wore robes as they strolled past insanely gorgeous scenery; lakes, rivers, oceans. Some of them were sitting on floating marble platforms which looked down over miles and miles of sky. Siret was using his trickery gift to fill my head with nonsense, and yet … I couldn’t help the feeling that this particular nonsense was actually real.
Because I was in Topia. Those demon-sols snuck me into fucking Topia!
Emmy wasn’t just going to kill me anymore. She was going to cut me up into tiny little pieces, put each piece of me into a tiny box, and feed each box to a single bullsen, which she would burn, and then she would separate the ashes of the burnt bullsen into tiny little piles, and then she would put each tiny pile of ash into a tiny box, and then—
“Welcome to the world of the gods,” Rome drawled, as we stepped from the cave and into the glaring sunlight.
Siret let me go, only to grab me again as I pitched forward. My feet were trying to move before my mind had caught up to the world in front of me.
It was beauty. It had to be beauty personified in a land because there were no other words to explain what I was seeing. Everything glowed, like the sols, but a million times stronger. As if the gods lived on the sun and somehow they’d turned down the heat, but not the shine. The land spread out far beyond what I could see; it was all sparkling lakes, rolling mountains and everything that the tales of Topia had promised. Everything that the tales of Topia had promised to the sols that were going to become gods. It was more, too. More than the stories, and the lectures, and the songs. I was now staring at the same things that I had seen when Siret had dragged me through the cave and into paradise.
Floating marble structures, twenty feet in diameter, drifted lazily above our heads. I couldn’t see beyond them to know if anyone was up there, but … who cared? They were just floating there. It was magic, pure and simple. Powers beyond anything I had ever seen, and beauty beyond what I could understand.
“I finally get it.” I must have murmured it out loud, because five sets of gem-like eyes were suddenly focusing on me, five massive bodies surrounding me.
“What do you finally get, Rocks?” Coen stepped into my space again. He wasn’t the only one. I could feel another at my back, but I was too terrified to turn and find out who it was.
Trying to breathe around the panic, I stuttered out, “I get why you sols spend your lives trying to get here. It’s perfect.”
I heard a snort of laughter to my left, and somehow knew that it was Siret. “Don’t let the beauty fool you,” he said. “This world is filled with as many ugly assholes as Minatsol.”
I found myself swivelling to see him better. To read as much as I could from those words. It always felt like the brothers were speaking in riddles. Half-truths. What they said and meant were definitely two different things, but that was hardly surprising from a trickery-gifted sol like Siret.
“How do you know so much about Topia? How are we even here?” I asked, glancing between the five of them. “How did you find the entrance and then … not die getting here?” Because that was supposed to be the requirement for entry. You had to die and then hope that a God chose you for immortality. To rule with them here in paradise.
Silence greeted my question.
Somehow, though, they managed to exchange a single glance between the five of them. Crazy. These sols were a full range of crazy and powerful. Not to mention scary and gorgeous. And they’d brought me into Topia. Right in that moment, I couldn’t figure out whether to hug them or run the hell away from them. They had taken me to the world of the gods. The one place a dweller would never, ever go. Ever.
It might have been crazy … but it was still a gift.
I didn’t even care if they killed me; right then I was happy. My joy spilled out, and in my usual act-before-you-think fashion, I dived forward. In the brief moment before impact, I saw raised eyebrows and wide-eyes, and then I landed against the brothers. I could only manage to get my arms across three of them, but that was enough. I hugged them as tightly as I could, their bodies solid against me.
“I don’t even care how we got in here. Thank you! I can’t believe this! I’m in TOPIA!”
I was muttering nonsense, my own happiness leaking out in random babble. Coen had been the one in the centre of my hug, next to him Siret, and on the other side was Aros. None of them moved; they just let me hold them for an awkward amount of time, and I couldn’t believe that I wasn’t being tossed across the world yet.
The silence washed over us, the peaceful nature of this land. It was almost like we were secured in the clear perfection of this immortal world for one click in time, and it was kind of nice. For that instant, I forgot that the Abcurse brothers were scary sols who would probably get me sacrificed to the very gods we were now in close proximity to, because they actually felt like friends.
A throat cleared behind us, and Yael said distinctly, “There better be a reason you’re hugging them and not me. And you’d better start sharing it around.”
Right, crazy competitive.
“I was going to, Four—” I started to say, before he cut me off.
“One! I’m number One!”
I pulled back and turned toward the persuasive sol, his eyes were so green in that moment that they didn’t even remotely look natural. His hair shone more in Topia’s light than it ever had in Minatsol. It was the colour of thick, dark ink, piled over gold—mixed just enough for the gold to rise up and peek through the darkness.
He was close, but he didn’t step into me. I knew he wanted me to come to him, but something held my feet firm to the ground. Beside him was Rome, the other one to not fall victim to my enthusiasm before.
“We don’t have time for this.” Rome grunted out the words, clearly annoyed by something. “Yael, go over and get your hug so you can feel equal and then we need to get to Luciu.” Noting my confused expression, he added, “It’s where the Original Gods reside.”
Wait just one freaking click …
“We can’t go there! They’ll kill all of us. You guys might be a big deal in Blesswood, but here you’re just sols who snuck into their world. You haven’t been chosen by the gods yet. This is suicide!”
Rome shook his head. “We’re not going to Luciu. You are.”
Say what now?
Coen sounded from over my shoulder. “The gifts of the sols are god-given, which means they can sense our energy. We can’t get close without alerting one of them, but you … you’re a dweller. You have no gifts—unless we’re counting your lack of common sense and general physiological imbalance as a gift.
Dwellers can’t even get into Topia without touching a gifted one. They’d never expect it; you’re the perfect one to sneak in.”
I was screwed. This was why dwellers and sols were not friends. Because of this. With a huff, since it didn’t matter anymore, I shoved through the brothers, not even trying to be gentle. I strode a few feet from them, needing the space. I took another long look at the world. I wanted to imprint it in my mind, if this was the last thing I’d ever see. I was especially entranced by the huge ocean of water out in the distance, so vast that there was no way anyone could swim across it. I’d never seen anything like that before and I knew I never would again.
“I can’t believe I hugged those assholes.” Muttered curses spilled from me. “I hugged them. Stupid Abcurses. Should have known they’d be bad luck with a surname like that. Cursed. Just like my life.”
Strong arms wrapped around me from behind, and I found my body lifted up off the ground and spun around until I was staring at Yael. His hugeness engulfed me, the strength in his grip almost too much for my poor little heart.
“No one ever hugs us for no reason.” His voice was a whispered caress across my body. Like the sweetest, most seductive breeze ever. “No one gives themselves without expecting something in return. You honoured us, little dirt-dweller.”
Wow. Back-handed compliment much?
He’d been waiting for me to hug him, and I hadn’t. That kind of hurt my heart, and I had to lift my arms and loop them around his neck, even though he’d also half insulted me. I had to squeeze him toward me to try and ease some of the hardness in his cold gaze. My body softened against him, and I felt some of his anger ease.
This was all insanity. All of it. That I could be so forward with any boy, let alone a god-blessed sol, was crazy. But here we were.
Hugging.
In Topia.
Shit, maybe I was already dead, and this was hell. Note that I said hell there. Definitely not heaven. Even if it felt a little bit like heaven …
Yael’s huge body rumbled beneath me, and an energy drifted from him toward me. It was warm. Then, in a flash, I was back on my feet. I found myself feeling a little bereft. He strode away. I stared after him, not sure what had just happened.
“We won’t let you die, Willa.” Coen distracted me, and I flinched back at the look on his face. He wore his hard, carved-from-granite face, which was ten types of scary. I associated it with the trying-to-shoot-me-with-a-crossbow incident. “We need you to help us, and then we’ll make sure that no one at Blesswood messes with you again.”
Sucking in deeply, I tried to gather up every iota of bravery inside of me. I had like a teaspoon so far. The Abcurses weren’t giving me much of a choice, but they were at least making it worth my while. If I managed to do this for them, I wouldn’t be getting sentenced to death-by-sacrifice anytime soon by the Blesswood teachers. And I appreciated Coen’s promise that they wouldn’t let me die in Topia. It showed that they didn’t think of me as being completely expendable, only a little bit expendable—maybe like fifty-percent expendable.
I nodded a few times, the lightest of breezes ruffling my curls. “Okay, I’ll try my best. Just remember that even though they might not be able to sense my energy, I am still curs—clumsy. I mean … things sometimes happen around me. Things that aren’t very inconspicuous. Like bleeding injuries and shattered valuables. So, I can’t promise anything.” My bravery was almost at a tablespoon now, so I asked, “What do the gods have of yours? What am I getting back?”
The others all glanced at Yael, as though he had magically persuaded me to cooperate. He met their stares with a smirk twisting his lips, but Siret was the one who spoke.
“It’s just a little cup, nothing serious. Well, nothing serious to D.O.D., but it’s very serious to us. D.O.D. took it the last time he was in Minatsol for the moon-cycle tournament. He won’t even realise it’s gone if we take it now.”
“And who the hell is D.O.D.?” I asked.
“He’s a god,” Siret replied, as though I should have already known. And, well, seeing as we were in Topia …
“I gathered that much.” I deadpanned. “But which god?”
“You wouldn’t know even if I told you.” Siret was suddenly in front of me, tapping against the side of my head. “You were getting stitches the sun-cycle they taught the dwellers about D.O.D.”
I frowned, and not because he was insulting me again, but because he may have been right. There was every chance that I had no idea who D.O.D. was because of one of my many medical emergencies.
“So where’s Luciu then?” I turned, looking up to one of the marble platforms. “And will we be done before dinner? I’m starving.”
“She’s starving,” Siret repeated, shaking his head.
“You’ll have to go through another pocket to get there.” Coen stepped up behind me, his hand shaping to the curve of my spine, his softly-spoken words sounding just a little bit frightening. “I’m going to push you through, and then you’ll be on Luciu’s main platform. One of the gods hosts a feast there every sun-cycle, without fail—”
“Yay! Feast—”
“And,” Coen cut across me, his hand pressing harder, “the cup is always at his side. You won’t be able to miss him; he’ll be wearing purple. It’s his colour—”
“His God-colour?”
“One more thing.” Coen completely ignored my question, stepping up so that the heat of his body hovered right behind me. He ducked his head, his words whispering over the sweep of my neck. “This is going to hurt.”
And then he pushed.
The world around me shifted once again, closing in around me and then opening up, revealing open blue sky above me and smooth rose-tinted marble beneath me. I was on my knees, having landed hard against the marble. Ouch. Totally not kidding about the hurting part. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that I was on the very edge of one of the floating platforms. Below was miles and miles of sky, and below that was a snow-capped mountain with a pine-covered base. The mountain itself was some kind of onyx stone; nothing that I recognised. I gulped, crawling away from the edge and then pulling up to my feet. Those bastard sols.
“We won’t let you die, Willa.” I mimicked, brushing off my boy-clothes and shoving my hair out of my face. “We’ll just teleport you onto a platform in the sky, where you’re definitely going to die, while we wait in our little safety-cave.”
“Excuse me?” A voice piped up to my left.
I turned my head and promptly shrieked. The thing wasn’t entirely human, but it certainly wasn’t a god. It was almost naked, except for some weird kind of skin-suit that covered about as much as ordinary underwear would cover, before stretching up over the stomach, over the chest, and then separating into straps to go over the shoulders. I could still see the general shape of everything. I wanted to cover my eyes, just to be polite, but the thing had a face that didn’t really allow you to look away. There was a nose, but it didn’t seem to be breathing. There was a mouth, but I couldn’t see any teeth. It had eyes, but there was a strange, waxy texture to them.
“What the hell are you?” I hissed, before I could think of a more sensitive way to ask the question.
“I am a server,” the thing replied. “My name is Jeffrey.”
I blinked, my eyes moving to Jeffrey’s strange covering. “No offence, Jeffrey, but I’m pretty sure you’re a chick.”
“A chick?” Jeffrey cocked her head to the side, blinking that waxy gaze. “I am sorry, Sacred One, I do not understand.”
I spluttered out a laugh. “Sacred One?”
“Yes, Sacred One. I am a server and you are a Sacred One. I was made to serve the Sacred Ones of Topia by the Sacred Creator.”
“Way too many Proper Titles in there,” I muttered. “So you’re like a servant? And you’re not real? You can’t push me off this platform if I do something stupid?”
Jeffrey made a mechanical gasping sound. I took it as a no.
“So why’d he name you Jeff
rey?” I asked, trying to wipe the look of shock off her waxy face.
“The names are distributed at random,” Jeffrey answered. “It does not matter, as long as they have a name to call when they require something.”
“I require something.”
“How may I assist you, Sacred One?”
I looked up to her head, noting that the Creator hadn’t bothered to give her any hair at all. She was all smooth and bald and freaky.
“I need a cap. Something to cover my hair. And whatever the hell it is you’re wearing. I need that.”
Jeffrey let out another mechanical gasp. I sighed, rocking back on my heels to wait it out. Eventually, she jerked herself into a short bow, and then turned and walked away, presumably looking for a cap. I doubted that any of the other Jeffreys were wearing caps, but they could just assume that someone had put it on me as a joke. Because they definitely made jokes out of those things, right? Maybe that’s what really happened to dwellers when they died. Maybe they turned into semi-naked, Topian serving robots. That was worse than the ‘hell’ we were all supposed to be going to.
I was still pondering the living-hell in front of me, and the promised hell-for-the-dead that I had always grown up believing in, when Jeffrey returned, a cap in her hand. I tucked my hair away while she pulled off her covering, handing it over to me. I pulled my boy-clothes off and changed into the skin thing, casting one very quick glance down.
“Motherfreaking gods,” I grumbled. “Why am I always doing embarrassing things with my nipples showing?”
Cue mechanical gasp.
“Don’t worry,” I told Jeffrey, handing my clothes over to her. She stared at them, and then dropped them, evidently preferring to be naked. “I say stuff like that sometimes. I’m the God of Embarrassment.”
She frowned. “Sacred Luke is the God of Shame, Sacred One.”
“Did I say shame?” I shook my head at her. “Honestly, Jeffrey, it’s like your head is full of empty air and Proper Titles.” I raised a hand, cutting off the mechanical gasp. “I need to find a cup now. Can you help me?”
