Chapter 32

  The Thunder God stood at the brink of the void. It stretched out before him like a star-scattered sea. He held a hand out to the foes therein—not an open hand of welcome or friendship, but a flat hand of termination, demarcating an unseen barrier which they shall not pass.

  Other gods were arrayed behind the Thunder God: the Bleeding God, her face marked with pity. The Winged God, disappointed. The Laughing God, laughing. The Lucky God, sorrowful. They were here because this was not only the scene of a warning to the beasts of the void. It was a banishment.

  The Changing God lurked out there in the void, that darkness his realm since ages past. But now he glared back at the other gods. He raged in frustration, and his appearance was grim and terrible, but just as terrible was the visage of the Thunder God whose expression and outstretched hand replied: No. You shall not return.

  The Changing God had stolen a key to a door long since closed. He had gazed into the Voidlight, and that awful light had filled his eyes and his heart. The key, and the light, and the loneliness of the darkness between the stars, had corrupted the Changing God. So the other gods had cast him away into the void, forbidding his return to Infernus. And they summoned a ward against him from another world. And they spoke to the denizens of Infernus and told them that the Changing God had vanished among the stars, and it was believed that the Changing God had died, the first of the gods to do so, the first by a long age.

  Yet he had not died. He had changed indeed, and he furiously chased a dream, a beautiful dream which ever eluded him, which ever escaped his reach. And the dream of the Changing God took the form of a brilliant comet that burned through the darkness of the void.

  Rasmus awoke with a huge gasp. Sparks crawled over his skin and on his arda. His forearms burned, the scars shining with light, as they always did when he had a godshatter dream. A memory of the Thunder God. This time, it had shown him something important. The Changing God had not died all those centuries ago as everyone had believed.

  “Tiger,” said Rasmus. A figure at once joined him in the darkness of Jeronimy’s own dead god, the fallen Iterator. The tiger was white as snow, large and powerful. “Take me outside,” he told it. Everything went white, and he sat on a dark gravelly slope in the late evening. The setting sun turned the Prismatic Sea into an ocean of boiling rainbows.

  He watched the sea for a time, considering the dream. Of what use was that information now? Should he tell Anthea? Derxis? Perhaps he should start with Fiora. She had accompanied him here for her own protection. The Remnant had nearly shot them out of the sky on the way.

  A message came for him as he considered. It was from Anthea.

  AN: I heard that you completed your final delivery to Jeronimy

  RA: INDEED

  AN: Were there any complications?

  RA: NONE WORTH THE MENTION

  AN: Is he nearing completion?

  RA: I BELIEVE HE HAS REACHED IT! EXCELLENT NEWS, IS IT NOT?

  AN: It is

  AN: The machine must not be activated yet, however

  AN: Not until you have retrieved the angels

  RA: I?

  AN: I just heard from Derxis. We know where the angels are being kept

  AN: You will go there and free them

  AN: Only then can we proceed

  RA: I SEE

  RA: WHERE ARE THEY, THEN?

  AN: The angels are being contained at the Local Docking Network

  AN: In the B sector

  AN: You must hurry

  AN: How soon can you depart?

  RA: AT ONCE!

  AN: You should know that the Remnant are working with the Grim King

  AN: It wants the angels

  RA: THAT CANNOT BE ALLOWED!

  AN: I agree

  RA: LEAVE IT TO ME, ANTHEA

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  AN: I am doing so

  She signed off. Rasmus sighed as he watched the last rays of sunlight die out over the roiling fumes of the rainbow sea. It had once been great fun to speak with Anthea. But now…

  Fiora was waiting for him, biting her wrist in anger, when he returned to his freighter in the Iterator’s docking bay. He didn’t bother asking what was the matter. Jeronimy was here, as well as Acarnus. Fiora had been very short with Acarnus ever since Prax.

  He explained to her in a few sentences where he was headed and what he had to do.

  “Take me with you!” she exclaimed even before he had finished.

  Rasmus shook his head. “It will be very dangerous. You should be safe here.”

  “I am not staying here, Rasmus! And I will be safe with you. I will! And besides, I can maybe help with the angels! Or the forvalaca, if it is there.”

  This confused Rasmus. “The forvalaca?”

  She nodded vigorously. “It is being hurt, Rasmus! Maybe I can help it.”

  Rasmus stroked his chin in thought. “We will see. I suppose you can come. But you must stay close to me the entire time.”

  She agreed.

  Rasmus went to ask the use of a spacecraft from Jeronimy. He and Fiora departed the mountain less than an hour later, for the urgency of his mission weighed heavily on Rasmus’s mind. The knowledge of the Grim King’s involvement made him nervous. He had to retrieve the angels before that beast arrived. If indeed it was a beast at all.

  It was nighttime when they flew away from the mountain and began their climb through the atmosphere. Fiora brooded in the passenger’s seat of their small craft, while Rasmus’s angel paced restlessly behind them.

  “Rasmus,” said Fiora after some time in the cool darkness. “What do you know about the forvalaca?”

  “I know that you should not endeavor to aid it, Fiora,” he said. “If it is under the Remnant’s control, it is only a tool for murder and destruction.”

  “But it never killed anyone!” she said. “Any of us, I mean. I was the first one it went after. It could have killed Zayana or Derxis, but it did not!”

  Rasmus shook his head slowly. “How about a story, eh? A tale of the gods.”

  Fiora sighed and leaned her head against the window to watch the lights on the landscape below.

  “They were not all benevolent, as you know. The Frozen God was a tyrant. She ruled from Frostfound in the far south. Her people were little more than slaves, and the captives she stole from other lands were even less than slaves. She took pleasure in imposing her will and her law upon others.

  “Few of the other gods shared her interest in establishing dominion. And many of them distrusted her. Chief among the gods that counted themselves her foes was the Burning God. The Frozen God was cold and merciless, but the Burning God was vengeful and fierce.

  “Now the Laughing God, who could never leave things as they were, whispered into the ear of the Burning God that great treasures lay beneath Frostfound, in the icy depths of the seas. And so the Burning God crept by night into that cold domain to see these treasures, and perchance to take them for herself.

  “But the Frozen God captured her, and for a time she was made to suffer many tortures, and she was pitted against many beasts and trials for the amusement of the Frozen God. At that time—”

  “Rasmus,” Fiora said, interrupting him. She said something else, but he could not hear it.

  “What was that, Fiora?”

  “I do not want to hear this story. Aren’t there any happy stories about the gods?”

  “There are,” he nodded. “But none of them have to do with the creation of the ten great beasts. For these creatures were born of the tears and blood and bone of the gods, and each beast embodies some element of that which the gods were not.”

  “Can you summarize it?”

  “Very well. Hmm…The Frozen God and the Burning God became lifelong foes. The bitterness and vengeful intent of the Burning God spawned the forvalaca. While the Burning God is hot, the forvalaca is cold. And while the Burning God’s vengeance is wild and reckless, the forvalaca is careful and precise. It is a hunting beast—the greatest hunter, some say, there ever was. It has even caught the dahu! It will not give up the hunt for as long as its quarry lives.”

  “Most of the beasts are gone now, right?”

  “Yes,” said Rasmus. “They have perished, or else disappeared into the darkness of history. To my knowledge, only the forvalaca remains. And perhaps the Grim King, though its origin is shrouded in mystery.” Until earlier this evening, perhaps.

  “Can you please not kill it? Please?”

  “Hmm. I can make the effort. But it is more important to fulfill my mission. You must understand that.”

  “Yeah. I do.” She slumped back into her seat. Then she growled in anger. “Why could the gods not get along?! Why could they not just…just talk instead of hurt each other? Is there something I do not understand? Am I the crazy one, Rasmus? Is there some part of me that is missing that everyone else has that makes them act the way they do?”

  “Hmm. No, I would think it is the other way around, Fiora.”

  “And—and the Ephathites, doing all their mean stuff, and Akkama and then even Acarnus! And—and—and Jeronimy! I do not get it, Rasmus!”

  Rasmus was startled to see that she was crying. The pure white tiger came up next to her seat and sniffed at her. It stiffened but did not otherwise move when she suddenly hugged it. Her arms barely fit around its neck.

  Rasmus didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. She didn’t get it? Get what? Whatever it was, he hoped she never did get it.

  He was glad that she was coming along. Somehow, Fiora reminded him that all was not lost, not yet. All might yet be well, as Derxis said so often.

  They continued in silence, on up through the atmosphere in a slow, wide spiral, up to the same starry void Rasmus had seen in his godshatter dreams.