The Gods Beneath

by C. M. Raymond

  She whistled. “Damn. Might be a bit of a challenge after all.”

  The tower still stood straight, which was a wonder in and of itself since its brittle surface had crumbled at certain points, exposing old weathered rooms on the inside. Vines grew through the rocks and climbed the exterior walls, clinging to its form almost as if they were holding the thing up. Thick at the bottom, they covered the first three floors, making it impossible for the team to find an entrance.

  “Time to climb,” Laurel said, her face filled with child-like glee as she grabbed a vine in each hand and started her ascent.

  Hannah nodded to Vitali. “After you.”

  The Lynqi was even more graceful in the vines than he had been crossing the rubble-strewn ground. Moving from vine to vine, he looked like he was more at home on the tower than he was in the jungle.

  “You might as well hang out down here and meet us up there, boys,” she said to Sal and Parker before she began her own ascent. “This is going to take a while.”

  As Hannah climbed, she continued to scan the place with her mind. Still nothing. Yet, as she passed the third floor, she could swear that she heard whispering from behind the rampant vines inside the decrepit tower.

  She paused, and the whispering stopped.

  Damn it, she thought. Maybe there are ghosts.

  She had seen a lot since her days with Ezekiel began, and if she were honest with herself, nothing truly seemed out of the realm of possibility. The Skrima had taught her to expect the worst, but ghosts in their world? Somehow that seemed a little too paranormal, even for a place that was anything but normal.

  They climbed for what felt like an hour. She tried to keep track of how many floors they had scaled, but got bored and lost count pretty fast. Finally she saw Vitali scramble through a hole above her.

  She pushed through the opening to where the two were waiting for her. She turned and waved at Parker and Sal below, and a minute later they sailed into the room.

  “Nice place,” Hannah said looking around. While there were still thick vines outside the window, the trees had stopped pushing through. It was one enormous empty room. There were no rooms or dividers or artifacts anywhere, except for a single rectangular box in the middle of the room and a tarnished metal wall on one side with a seam running up its middle.

  There were also doors on the north and south ends of the room, just like in their tower in the Arcadian Valley. Hannah nodded toward the one on the south. “Stairwell,” she said, her mind still scanning the empty floor. “We’ll take that one. Stan says the tech is up top, so we need to get up there now.”

  While crossing the room Hannah heard the whispers again. They were faint and unintelligible, and her eyes darted about trying to find the source of the words. Nothing. She placed her hands on the metal release bar to push her way into the stairwell, but before she had the chance one of the whispering voices became audible and boomed, “Trespassers, turn back. You do not belong here. Leave, or face certain death.”

  Parker turned toward Hannah. “Guess they aren’t rolling out the welcome mat. We should probably just leave.”

  Smirking, Hannah replied, “Yeah, like that’s ever happened.” She looked at Laurel and Vitali. The Lynqi’s hands were visibly shaking. He had spent his adult life fighting the Muur, but ghosts and towers freaked him the hell out. “We’ve got this. Stay sharp. If they can talk, we can kill them.”

  “You sure about that?” Vitali asked.

  “Um, no... But I thought it might inspire a little confidence.” She nodded toward the stairs. “Parker, you and Vitali go first. Sal and I will take the back.”

  The men pressed forward, with Laurel right behind them. It took work to pick their way up the steps, since crumbled pieces of the stairway above them littered the floor. Climbing to the next landing, they found the walls completely corroded and decaying in the open air.

  Parker stepped toward the edge, hoping to get a view of the jungle beneath. As he did, the concrete collapsed beneath his feet.

  “Shit!” he screamed as he fell from the landing, a sheer drop below him.

  “Gotcha,” Vitali said. His furry hand gripped the back of Parker’s cloak and dragged him back into the stairwell. Both were panting. “Watch your step, friend.”

  Parker’s eyes were still wide. “Now you tell me.” He scrambled to his feet and offered Vitali his hand. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “Hopefully you won’t get a chance to repay that debt today.”

  Hannah glanced up the next set of stairs to where the landing should have been above them. There was nothing but air for the next several stories.

  She looked toward the others and pointed at the door which led back into the building. “We’ll have to cut across to the other stairwell and pray to the gods that the other steps are more intact than these.”

  Laurel grabbed the metal handle and pulled, and all hell broke loose.

  Loud screams and a blur of motion exploded around them. They all cursed and hit the floor, covering their heads in an irrational act of self-preservation against what they assumed were attacking ghosts.

  Then Laurel looked up and laughed. Hundreds of birds spiraled up the shaft above them and out an opening into the Kaskaran sky. She placed her hand over her chest. “I’ve never hated nature as much I do right now. Little bastards.”

  Sal perched on the edge of the window and screeched, making it clear that he was the top flyer here, not those stupid birds.

  Hannah picked herself up and dusted off her pants. “I’m right there with you. Come on, Sal, let’s go. While we’re waiting for Gregory and team to pick us up, I’ll let you hunt birds for as long as you’d like.”

  That seemed to please the dragon, and he followed her as she stepped through the doorway onto the next floor of the tower.

  Unlike the first floor they had encountered, this one was built out. They found themselves in a dim corridor that led north to the other end of the building, light seeping in from broken out windows on either end of the hall. She walked slowly and carefully, keeping her mental magic on high alert. Still, she sensed no sentient beings beyond the people she was traveling with. But someone—or something—was in the tower with them, and she wished for a minute that Hadley were with them. Maybe his better-developed mystical senses could detect that which was out of her reach.

  Rooms lined the corridor, most missing doors. In some places entire walls had collapsed, exposing the rooms to their sight. Hannah couldn’t quite make out what the purpose of these places had been in the time before the Madness, but most of them were filled with desks and chairs and long tables in disarray. There were other things, as well. Assorted artifacts from the old world, treasures that Stan had never gotten the chance to carry back to his museum.

  As they walked in silence toward the other stairwell, Hannah slowed at each opened room. Although she couldn’t sense other minds around them, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. At the end of the hall, the floor opened into a space the size of a small living room. The window was broken and the frame had crumbled, leaving a hole nearly big enough for Sal to fly out of. Outside the sky was beginning to darken, the harbinger of an afternoon storm on the rise.

  Parker nodded toward the doorway into the stairwell. “I hope this one is intact.”

  “We’ll find a way,” Hannah said. As she spoke she felt a flash of awareness in her mind, as if another sentient being had suddenly appeared in the room. She pulled her dagger. “Guys, we have company.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  They followed Karl and the man at a safe distance for no less than ten minutes. No one spoke, for fear that they might be found out—or that this place might actually be the home of the gods. The path continued downward steadily and rounded a corner. After they slunk around it, the hall widened slightly into something like a chamber.

  It was wider and well lit, with a slew of torches casting their light on the space. Gregory stopped, and the others did likew
ise as they saw a line of a dozen men with glazed eyes and weapons in their hands. Karl and his guide had halted as well. Words were exchanged, but from that distance Gregory couldn’t hear them.

  “What the hell is going on?” Aysa finally said.

  Gregory didn’t have a clue, so he kept quiet.

  “It’s weird,” Hadley replied. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that creeper in the robe was under some sort of mystic’s spell. But...”

  “But what?” Gregory asked.

  “Dunno. He wasn’t blocking me. Not actively, at least. I would have been able to tell that. It’s all so foreign. Almost like his mind was...scrambled. Never felt anything like it before.”

  The group of soldiers stepped aside and let Karl and the man pass toward double doors set into the corridor walls. Gregory’s stomach turned over, thinking of scrambled minds and Karl going in alone. “There was a door a hundred yards back. Maybe that will get us around that group of mind-scrambled douche nuggets.”

  They moved back up the passageway to the nondescript door on the left side of the tunnel. Gregory grabbed a torch from the wall before opening it and stepping through, Aysa and Hadley right behind him. The flames lit this new hallway, tighter than the one they had left. Pure clear crystals covered the walls, shimmering in the light of his torch. Gregory reached for his cloak and felt for Devin, who was curled up against his side just above his belt. The squirrel made him think of Laurel, giving him courage for their journey.

  After winding on for what felt like forever the hall finally bent to their right, giving him hope that it was turning back toward the main passage—or at least where they were taking Karl. Gregory stopped short when he saw that the tunnel terminated at a door. A single robed man guarded it.

  “Bet he knows something,” Hadley whispered from behind him.

  “Think we should ask him for directions, or what?” Gregory said.

  Hadley laughed. “Well, I do have a way with people.”

  “Let me make him comfortable for you,” Aysa said, sliding past Gregory.

  He reached for her, but the Baseeki woman was too fast.

  “Excuse me,” Aysa said as she crouched, reaching for the ground. “Do you know where the restroom is?”

  The man stared forward, unblinking. “Go back whence you came. This is the region of the gods.”

  “Well,” Aysa said, “I’m sure the gods have a shitter I can use.”

  The man drew a broadsword, but before he could raise it toward her Aysa launched a rock, which struck him on the side of the head. The man dropped.

  “Dammit, Aysa!” Hadley exclaimed, “I need him conscious.”

  She laughed. “I know projectiles like you know the pathways of the mind. He’s not out...yet.” She cleared the distance between them in no time and dropped her knee on his chest. “Hello, beautiful.”

  The man laid still, his eyes fixed on the cavern ceiling. “Go back whence you came. This is the region of the gods.”

  “Do your thing, Had.”

  Hadley’s eyes went white, and then back to normal. He shook his head. “I got a little further in on this one, but there is still some sort of barrier.”

  “What’d you find?” Gregory asked.

  “He’s guarding the gods. The Matriarch and the Patriarch.”

  “Shit,” Aysa mumbled.

  “Yeah,” Hadley added, “and apparently they’re right behind this door.”

  ****

  Gregory looked toward the door and then back to his friends. “Anybody want to meet the gods?”

  Hadley shrugged. “Guess I’ve got nothing better to do.” He motioned to the man Aysa still had pinned with her knee. His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling.

  “I got this,” she said, and then cracked him on the side of the head with her massive fist, knocking him unconscious.

  “That works,” Hadley said as Aysa shook the sting out of her knuckles. “But you know I could have done that with my mind, right?”

  She stood and shot him a glare. “That information would have been useful thirty seconds ago.” Pointing at the door, she said, “Let’s do this. Who knows what they’re doing to Karl as we sit here dicking around.”

  Gregory grabbed the knob and paused, as if checking to see if it was hot from a fire from the other side. His stomach churned and he took one last look at Hadley and Aysa, who both nodded. The thought of even the possibility of standing face to face with a deity was terrifying. He considered asking Hadley to grant him the mental strength to push on, but chose not to. A test was before him, and he was going to ace it.

  Turning the knob, Gregory pushed the door, holding his breath as it creaked. The doorway opened into a giant chamber. Unlike the rough passages leading into the belly of the mountain, the stone walls and ceiling here were well crafted and perfectly smooth, except for elaborate designs chiseled into parts of the surface.

  They stepped in and closed the door behind them, and Gregory wished for a free minute to take in the artistic work of some divine architect. His father would have been very impressed.

  But it was a minute he didn’t have.

  Two doors, one on either side of them, were flung open, and a wave of armed guards filled the once-empty space. They lined up in three perfect rows.

  Gregory, Hadley, and Aysa all put their hands in the air, waiting for some sort of response.

  “We can take them,” Aysa whispered.

  “Maybe you forgot that you’re the only fighter among us,” Gregory croaked back.

  Another man entered a moment later. It was the one who had taken Karl from the cart, but now, seeing him up close, Gregory noticed what he hadn’t before. His features were uncannily familiar. The man’s eyes were set unusually close together, and sat on either side of a long nose that was as thin as a pencil—almost hawk-like.

  They stood before the father of Broderick—the young fighter from the mountain.

  In his peripheral vision Gregory saw Aysa move, reaching for the bolas clipped on her belt. He grabbed her arm. “No. I know this guy. Well, I know his son.”

  Out of the side of her mouth, Aysa said, “Yeah, that’s not giving me a helluva a lot of confidence right now, G.”

  “Just wait.”

  “Follow me to meet the gods,” he said in a monotone, just as he had to Karl.

  “Lead the way,” Gregory responded.

  ****

  The row of guards split to the right and to the left. Behind them was a door, bigger than the others. Without a word, Broderick’s father crossed the room, opened the door, and vanished.

  “Not too late to head back up, is it?” Hadley asked with a sly smile.

  “Yes,” Gregory replied curtly, “and unfortunately I don’t have the skills to make you a little less of a coward, so you’re going to have to suck it up.”

  He nodded. “I was afraid of that.”

  The three of them went into the room, which was bigger than the last and more regal. The stone had been handcrafted the same way, and tapestries with detailed landscapes and images of noble animals lined the walls. Across the room were two giant thrones, one slightly bigger than the other. A crown sat on the red-upholstered seat of each. It was breathtaking, but what really struck Gregory were the crystals. They were everywhere—as clear as the summer sky, they lined the walls between the tapestries and encrusted the thrones.

  There had to be enough crystals just in this room to bring back to Lilith and save Irth a dozen times over. He was so overwhelmed by the architecture and the sheer amount of resources in the place that he hardly noticed the chamber door beside the thrones swing open. Aysa jabbed him in the ribs.

  “Close your mouth,” she said. “The gods are coming.”

  A lifetime of legends about the Matriarch Bethany Anne and her Patriarch Michael flashed through Gregory’s mind. They were figures of unearthly beauty and power, and he pictured them stepping through the passageway and joining them in the throne room. They’d be tall and muscular, with angul
ar features. Confidence would bleed from their every pore, and eloquence would drip from their lips. Basically, Gregory imagine the gods from below the surface to be the opposite from himself.

  But when they entered, his mouth dropped open again.

  In place of the perfect god in his mind was a hunchbacked old man leaning on a cane. He was as pale as the autumn moon, and his face was grizzled with what looked like years of misery.

  The woman beside him didn’t look much better. Her dirty-gray hair was nappy—almost like dreadlocks—only hers couldn’t have been wound on purpose. Wrinkles covered her sagging face, and she looked like she had just been awakened from death.

  Broderick’s dad, the old victor who escorted them into the room, straightened his back and held his chin up at an unnatural angle. When the gods hobbled up a step toward their thrones, he dropped to a knee and cast his eyes at the smooth stone floor.

  “Glory be to you, my gods,” he said, with just as little inflection as he had before. The woman sat first, and the old man followed her lead. Once they were seated Broderick's father rose from his knee and looked up at his gods, yet his eyes were at once both vacuous and filled with intent.

  "Servant," the woman said, "I think it best that you bring in the others. These four look like they might get feisty." Her eyes flicked to the bolas hanging from Aysa’s belt.

  The old man nodded. "Bring the other guards." His voice was raspy as he repeated the woman's words.

  Her eyes flicked quickly from Gregory to Hadley to Aysa. "Now, which one of you am I talking to?" A creepy smile appeared on her lips, showing off brown gnarled teeth and black gaps where several were missing.

  Aysa took a step forward. "Who the hell are you two?"

  The woman laughed, slapping her hand on her knee. The jowls under her chin shook as her body heaved. "Well, that's a damn good question," she said. "For now, you can call me Atreus." She pointed her thumb at the man on the throne next to her. "My not-so-better half here is Cronus, but soon you will just call us Lord and Lady."