Beware the Fallen: Young Adult Mythology (Banished Divinity Book 1)

by Logan Delayne

  I could smell his terror, the sweat stinking and clogging my throat. His heart was beating fast where I leaned on his bare chest. “Freya,” he said quietly. “Please,” he begged but I shook my head, rising to my feet with a large stick in hand.

  I took position and faced the bird when it swooped again. Reaching for my power was useless. None could heed my call.

  It reminded me of when Alec had told me the Olympians held no power on his islands. I had meant to ask him more but never had. Here, I was powerless as well. A titan blood on the mountains of Olympus. A visitor rendered weaponless.

  I lifted the stick anyway and the bird struck out at me with such great swiftness that though I caught it with the stick hard enough to detour it once, twice, even three times, I knew I could not win.

  The bird changed the direction of its aim from Prometheus to me.

  I screamed as it had me in its clutches, plucking me off of the cliff like a worm.

  We flew out over the edge and I stopped my struggling and my hollering. There, it nearly dropped me, and only my hair was kept in its claws.

  I watched the clouds below and knew my end was near. I closed my eyes and prepared to fall.

  My body jerked as the Eagle was struck in the side. When I dared to look, a streak of white was flying by. Alec’s owl! My owl was attacking the eyes of the Eagle.

  We hovered over the edge and the claws released me. I hit the rocks and slid down, my hands gripping the cliff.

  Slowly, I hefted my exhausted self over the edge before rolling towards Prometheus.

  Horror filled me as the mist of red hit the snow. The Eagle clutched the owl in its talons, reaching down with its beak. I could not look as feathers of white drifted down.

  The large eagle’s beak was covered in blood, and the giant raptor watched me carefully with knowing eyes before it flew away.

  I clutched my chest, breathing fast. Alec had tried to come. He’d sent his owl and now it was gone. And he was in the war, distracted, unable to help me.

  I lifted a feather and gripped it in my palm. “I gave you a single day,” I said, facing Prometheus, my voice firm. “But I promise you a solid oath. If I survive the Fates, then I will return you to your free eternity.”

  His smile was sad. “I thank you. You cannot save me, but a day is enough.”

  “I will return,” I said, and without looking to see if he heard me, I marched upwards through the snow with a bloody feather in my fist.

  The scorpion around my neck quivered. “This is no place for you, little one,” I said, reaching up to help her loose from my skin. I placed her on a rock. “Go back to your master. If I can, I shall meet you there.”

  Though I kept shooing her away, she followed me the rest of the climb up the mountain. As devastated as I was, it made me smile when I checked back to find the tiny dot of black unwilling to give up.

  I would stop and she would pause to watch me.

  “I should name you,” I said during one such stare contest. “How about Kenari?”

  If she liked it, she could not reply and still she followed me until I finally stood on my shaky legs at the peak.

  I ventured to the tallest point and waited for my judgement.

  Chapter 21

  The Fates were as the mother, the crone, and the youthful maiden. They would appear, I knew, as I expected and not as they truly were.

  The crone spoke first, “Lady Freya,” she hissed. “Lady of Shallows.” She seemed to be trying to give me something, a sign perhaps. “Lady of Frost,” she chortled, her long white hair like spider webs across the snow.

  The maiden spoke through lips of red cherries though her cheeks were pale enough to show veins of gold beneath the skin. “Lady of the Moon.”

  “Giant killer,” the mother moaned, her eyes like diamonds reflecting the sun

  “Scorpion bearer,” they said together, and I felt Kenari creep up my body to wrap around my neck once more.

  And then the crone was using my own voice, stolen from me to say, “He’d wanted a star. Instead he’d gotten a scorpion.” It’s what I’d thought of Alec and Cenia when I’d first arrived on the island.

  The maiden crooned as if in song. “A god risen from the underworld by our hand and now, brought low by a titan, made of wind and pain once more.”

  “Black pain,” the crone offered. “Pain to ruin all that we’ve planned.”

  “Labor of love,” the mother cried, tears filling her liquid eyes as if she alone argued on my behalf.

  “Love,” the mother moaned, and the crone’s eyes snapped open to glare at me.

  “Love…?” the crone said in Alec’s deep voice, a scoff. “Love is for humans. We immortals won’t waste such finite words. Our soul’s eternal. Love is too small for what we crave.”

  The maiden seemed most in the present while the rest floated just out of reach. “Why have you never used the Hollows on yourself?”

  “I didn’t know I could.” My voice had returned. I was breathing hard, palms sticking to my dress. That I had not dropped to my knees was a miraculous feat.

  “A dragon made of stone cannot hurt you,” the crone said as if I knew what she meant. “She has frozen the places inside of her so that she may not know.”

  “You must use the Hollows.”

  “It’s forbidden,” I said, confused.

  “Not here. It brought you to us,” the maiden said with a smile. “Venture into the Hollows just once more for us, Freya. Tell us what you see.”

  I waited for some trap. For the trick. When none appeared, I let myself go back through to that place I’d been. Only this time, there was no one person I wanted to see. It was only myself.

  “Go back to your first memory,” the mother’s voice said, and I could still hear her in this place. “What do you see, child?”

  “Ice,” I whispered, and it was true. I was in a void of ice and stone. I floated through the stars and landed somewhere I had never walked before. And I was not alone. I could hear a woman weeping.

  A goddess with hair as black as night and skin like the moon held a bundle in her lap. She spoke and it was in a language I did not understand, but something about it seemed apologetic.

  “Unlock another place within yourself,” the crone warned, and I tried.

  I could understand the goddess now as she was saying, “Know that I love you. Please don’t forget me. I’m sorry, my daughter.”

  And I followed her as she journeyed not planets like I’d thought, but worlds, realms as if from Olympus to the human earth, only, this was much colder and farther away.

  We traveled until it was warm and sunny and there was my father, waiting. “I cannot take this child,” he said.

  “Ready for war?” the goddess asked, her chin raised, and he shook his head. “Your wife?” she asked.

  “Is unwilling, but I can manage that.” My father seemed…curious.

  “What will you call her?” he asked, and she shrugged but then whispered, “Freya.”

  I came to myself on my knees, tears falling onto the snow, melting little pockets of black beneath me. “My mother…”

  “Go back,” the crone said, and I shook my head.

  “I can’t,” I murmured, shivering. I was too afraid to find out the rest. “My life is a lie. What more can you want from me?”

  But I felt a push and the Fates returned me by force. It was painful, and I cried out as I arrived back in time to watch my father ask my mother…my real mother, “Will I ever see you again?”

  There was naked longing in his face. I tried to see what he saw. Noble, elegant, and powerful, a jungle cat is beautiful even with its stripes, and that is what she was. I tried to imagine myself in her, but her eyes were nearly black. “You know I cannot.” She spun around as if she heard something. And then she was gone.

  My father. The terrifying god I’d known all my life. The one who’d told me jokingly that he’d made love to a star broke. He cradled me close and wept.

  I watched
him in stupefied horror. Revelation after revelation.

  Afterward, he took me from the wrappings and smiled at me as I cooed and squeezed his finger. “A day born, and you are ready to walk.” He set me on my two legs, and I ran. He laughed, chasing me along the shores of what would soon be my new home.

  Warm. Filled with sun. But colder in other ways.

  This time, I stayed as long as I could, tethered by fascination. This father, this one, was so foreign to me. I could barely remember him. As night fell, I was a toddler with long hair and together we watched the stars. “See those lights?” he asked

  The little version of me nodded.

  “They arrived when you did. The greens and reds dancing along the sky. All of the gods know of your birth, know your name, Freya. Especially our enemies. I’ve sent messengers so that they know it is my daughter, soon to be queen, that has brought lights in the sky.”

  I recalled Milos saying that they knew the day of my birth and now I understood why. But why did this all change? How did my father come from this to what I’ve always known?

  “It is time,” the maiden said, breaking through. “It is time to see your own future.”

  “My what?”

  But the Fates spun me forward by force again. I landed in the middle of the sound of suffering. From the quiet night with my father, I’d been sent into blazing fires, smoke that made it hard to see, and the thunder of hooves in every direction.

  Screams of humans mingled with the booming drums of war.

  I was not meant to see my own future. Somehow, I knew that, and it felt as though I was coming apart at the seams. Death rose up before me as a pyre built on the sandy shores and I saw myself in all black, weeping as they burned a warrior.

  “Alec,” I whispered, my entire body rejecting the notion.

  It had to be him that burned, and I came to myself laying on the rocks of the mountain, begging, “No, no, no, no, please. Anyone but him. Anyone but Alec.”

  The three stood waiting for me to compose myself. I had been changed. My body felt strange, like borrowing another’s skin. Using the Hollows on myself had unlocked so much more than just my past and future. It unlocked the powers inside of me, but not as I’d hoped. Instead of full power, it leaked out slowly like poison and I felt my scalp tingle and my arms grow heavy. I didn’t look to see what had happened to me, I didn’t want to know.

  “What now?” I tried to ask but my voice grated and scraped like iron against iron. “What…” and I snapped my mouth shut. Something else poured forth. It wasn’t me. It was something from deep inside.

  “You leap.”

  “Take your fall, Freya the Fallen,” the crone said.

  Would I die?

  A whoosh of air forced me to the edge of the cliffs, and I reached out, scrambling to hold on.

  The maiden gazed at me sadly when I turned back. “You have seen all that you needed to see. If you wish that to be your future, then follow the path. It is yours to change.”

  “Be the torch,” the crone said as if in the middle of an argument I could not hear.

  The mother who spoke the least wailed, “Save him.”

  “Who?” I demanded but my voice cracked the air like thunder and did not yield a word, but rather a rush of sound.

  They still understood me anyway. “The torch,” they said as one. “You must be the torch.”

  The wind tore at my hair and clothing, pushing me off the edge. Still, I looked to the mother. Save who? I pleaded with my eyes.

  “A gift,” the mother said, and she came close. Her mouth hovered near my ear. “If you wish it, one touch and all will be forgotten.”

  I knew what she meant. I could change it. Take it all back. I nodded and she brushed her fingers across my hand. It burned like fire, and my hold on the boulder’s edge weakened.

  Without thinking, I closed my eyes and let go.

  The next thing I knew cold wind was slicing at me. My mouth opened and I wanted to scream but instead a sound clawed its way out that was eerily terrifying.

  As the ground rose up to meet me, I held my breath, and then the clouds were there, and then the sea was rushing by me like a great river.

  I gasped. I was flying. Falling sideways more like, towards the islands.

  But I never made it.

  I crashed into the sea hard enough to jar even immortal bones.

  Under the waves, I floated down and down into the darkness. My hair billowed around me as silver as the fish in the sea, and larger creatures curiously watched me from their depths.

  I reached the bottom of the deep, sand soft on the pads of my feet.

  Sharks and monsters circled me, waiting for their master.

  I had no wish to meet Poseidon. So, I swam.

  I swam until I could not move my arms and then I swam some more.

  I swam beneath the sun and then found a piece of wood, when the moon was high, to rest.

  The sweet release of sleep gripped me, and I thought that I should drown, but the song of the island called to me and somehow, the ocean let me go.

  Chapter 22

  I awoke on the shores where I’d arrived first after my banishment. I sat up and knew that I was changed from my time in the Hollows, on the mountain with the Fates, and lastly through my fall. First, my hands were hard as metal, just above my wrists and almost to my elbow as well. And they were silver painted. These were the hands of death.

  I had been marked

  Alec must have felt my arrival because he swiftly appeared on the shore watching me as if I were a ghost. He rushed to the water, wading in at a run when I was afraid to move. “Freya,” he called with wild eyes that grew ache beneath my breast.

  “Alec,” I whispered, my voice the sound of swords clanging together, and he paused just within reach, his brows low.

  I gestured towards the village, and he shook his head. “Your father has been pressed back…for now. But he’s gathering more to return.”

  I thought of Alec on the pyre, and my body seized in grief. It was my future I saw, not his. And it was my future that could change what would happen. The king of the seven islands looked weary. His cloak was streaked with blood from battle.

  “What have they….” He reached for me and did not flinch, bless him, even when his hands nearly touched the metallic skin. “What have they done to you?” he demanded, ready to fight the Fates themselves.

  He refused to, so I pulled away. “Please,” I said, and he did flinch this time, when my voice echoed from one side of the world to another.

  I shook my head, so he’d stop. He stood, and the waves crashed into us, but we were unmoved. His gaze took in my hair, and skin, and hands, and finally my eyes.

  “The Fates...”

  It wasn’t them, I longed to say. Not only, anyway.

  The cost of seeing my own future. A hefty price to pay.

  I moved out of the water and lead him back to his throne room, where the rest waited. For my funeral, most likely. But I was very much alive. My feet painted cold flakes of frost across the ground, and my dress made music as icicles formed at its edge from ocean water. Horrified, the group watched me as if I were a thing reborn of scales. I avoided looking in any mirrors for fear of what I’d find.

  Would I have two spines?

  Horns?

  Or the worst, a head of snakes? But no. My hair wasn’t moving…yet.

  Cenia was most frantic. She ran towards me but then stopped as if someone pulled her back. Her hand was over her mouth, her eyes filled with tears. “You’ve aged!”

  That was the most devastating. How old did I look?

  Alec would…he might…how could he love…

  No.

  I would not even think it. Soon, soon he would be lost to me anyway.

  “I am tired,” I said before remembering, and the room erupted with shouts and the gods covered their ears.

  Without watching the horror in the wake of my new voice, I strode to my rooms. Alec was close to my back, brea
th puffed at my neck every step, hovering, angst bleeding out of him, pain hissing along my skin. He was losing control of himself.

  I rounded on him as I entered the room and he reached for me, but I backed away.

  I lifted my hand. The hand.

  The gift…. Had it been real? Had any of it?

  I wanted so badly to tell Alec that I was not my mother’s daughter. That I was like none of them. Half titan but half…something else.

  Stopping at the table where Cenia’s letters were, I lifted one and it froze in my hand and then burned away. I was out of control, too.

  I somehow managed to write without freezing anything else or burning it either. I am sorry. The Fates did not do this. Please blame only me.

  Alec frowned at the writing and threw it down. The sorrow and confusion in his gaze chiseled away at my courage. “Freya,” he said with warning as if he knew, as if he was already aware of the steps I would take to protect him

  Flashes of the pyre before me made me stumble away from him.

  I had already brought my father here. To Alec’s island. His sweet pocket of freedom. A place I would love forever and ever. I finally glanced in the mirror over his shoulder and my body sagged. Thank the gods. It wasn’t as bad as all that. My eyes were silver, glowing like my hands, and my hair was streaked with silver too, frosted like the rest of me. And yes, I looked older, sage and wise, but a woman and not a grandmother.

  That Alec perhaps could still like to look at me in this last moment, was all I could hope for. If I had been an aged crone, it would be easier though.

  His heart was in his eyes as I met them

  And I had to wipe it all away.

  I prayed to the many titans who’d come before me for strength and I longed to tell him the truth, but held out my shaky hand, instead.

  Oh, how I wanted to scream. How I wanted to mourn. I saw it all, Alec, I thought, willing him to know I didn’t mean to hurt him. I saw us bleeding gold blood, and your armies smeared in red, wars, and death, and the sky fell onto your islands, burning. I touched a man and he turned to ash. I touched another and he turned to salt.