God of the Abyss (8 page)

I flashed Mordon and myself to Dios, as flashing was
my preferred method of long distance travel. We appeared before the huge doors
to Nila’s throne room, where the goblin guards surrounded us and aimed their
swords. They probably recognized us as Nila’s friends, but they still drew
their blades. I couldn’t be offended, for I knew they even pulled their weapons
on the king’s uncle, which proved that they were not very wise.

Mordon’s fire rose to the surface and I turned away
from the door to face the goblins. If they did not surrender, Rojan would set
them on fire. It was a dragon thing; apparently, they did not like people
thrusting swords at them.

I heard the doors open behind me a few seconds before
I was flattened. In one fluid move, the young king climbed off me and pulled me
up, then hugged me until my organs shriveled and my bones creaked. He was
unbelievably strong. Since I met him seven years ago, he grew just a little. Still
very slim and small, he now looked about nineteen. In other words, he aged
about two years in seven. Fortunately, he never lost that eccentric personality
that made him so unique.

He then proceeded to hug Mordon, and even the dragon
looked a little worse for the wear. No sago, no dragon, no Guardian that I ever
met was physically stronger than a dile, and Nila was the strongest I knew. The
boy was even stronger than Nano. At least Sammy knew how to keep from hurting
people with his strength. Nila just never seemed to realize and used his
strength to show his affection.

“Dylan! You’re home and you brought your pet!” he
declared with excitement. The guards lowered their weapons and Mordon growled.
Nila ignored Mordon’s warning. “Where are my nephews?”

Nila had adopted me as his brother and Rojan had
something to say about that. Apparently I wasn’t big enough for two brothers.
If that wasn’t bad enough, he made it official. Nila recorded that I was his
brother and next in line for the throne should anything happen to him. I told
him there was no way I could live permanently on Dios and he shrugged it off.
The constant bickering between Mordon and Nila was exhausting.

What made Mordon so irritable was that his fire was
considered magic to Nila’s void blood and could never burn the boy-king. On the
other hand, Mordon’s fire could burn Nila’s guards to ash if they attacked him.
Still, Nila always had a hug for my friend. I think it was a trick.

“Hello, Nila. I know I haven’t been around much, but
I’m in the middle of some important work now.”

“Yes. Nano and the others are in trouble. Why do you
never bring my nephews as I ordered?”

I ruffled his hair. “Because I don’t follow orders
from my brothers.”

He sighed and motioned for us to follow him back into
his throne room, then turned around as soon as we were inside and slammed the
doors in the guards’ faces. “They follow me everywhere.” With an exaggerated
eye-roll, he held his arms up in a gesture of frustration. I had the
inappropriate image of him as a teenage girl.

“You are the king, Nila, you need their protection,”
I said. Mordon glared at me and it suddenly clicked. “That’s why you are always
picking on Mordon; he’s free. You never had a problem with him until you found
out he was a runaway prince. Are you tired of being king?” I asked.

He flopped himself down on his chair with a sigh and
propped his legs over the side. “No, of course not,” he sulked. I walked up to
him, sat on the other arm of the chair, and ruffled his hair. Nila was like
Ron; naturally happy. Nevertheless, he had an entire world relying on him, and
that kind of pressure can weigh on anyone.
Or maybe he’s going through
teenage girl things. Who really knows with aliens…

“Your hair is too long. You should cut it,” I said.

“Nobody ever asked me, you know. Everyone just told
me I would be king. And I am High King, so I have to be protected. On top of
that, many people think I am delicate because I’m a void. In order to go
anywhere, even to another village, I must be followed by many guards.”

“Do you even have any enemies? Isn’t the surface
culture flourishing?”

“People are happy outside. People in the under cities
are unhappy. They are people afraid of change and miserable for hobby. They beg
me to move above ground.”

“But your goblin guards can’t live above ground,” I
reminded him. He grinned, his mind seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,
and I knew that wouldn’t help matters. “You have the most important job in the
world, more important even than Nano.”

“You’re not helping,”
Mordon advised. He was
right; Nila looked miserable.

“But think of what you’ve done for the people. You
gave them back the world they lost because of war. You made the entire surface
world habitable. Why do you sit in this chair with your head down like you’re
grounded?”

He looked at me. “Because if I leave, they will
follow.”

“Of course they will; it’s their job to protect you.
You stay here in a kingdom like a sitting duck. Everyone knows exactly where to
find you, where to strike, so of course you need all of them. However, if you
were to hire a single bodyguard, someone with skill in magic and the sword, you
could go traveling. If they don’t know where to find you, you would be safer,
so only one bodyguard would–” The rest of my words were cut off as my breath
was forced from my lungs.

One second, I was sitting on the arm of the chair,
the next, I was flat on my back with Nila hugging the life out of me. His words
were a rushed jumble of English and Dego. Essentially, he liked my plan.

I finally got him calmed down and reminded him that I
was here to speak with Nano. “Nano is not here,” he said.

“Where is he?”

“No idea. Another world. He disappeared many days ago
and left Vivian to be scared. She is frightened that he is hurt. There was
nothing I could do, not even call you.”

“He left her alone? Does she know where he went?”

“He was talking and then he was gone.”

I sat down on Nila’s throne, which didn’t bother him
any, and focused my energy. Through my book, I reached my magic across the
world. I could feel the emptiness of Nila, Mordon’s fire, and the occasional
powerful wizard, but nobody as powerful as Nano. Nano was nowhere to be found.

Divina must have sensed me through my connection with
my book.
“What are you doing?”
she asked me.

“Nano is missing.”

She paused.
“That is not good. This is proof
enough for Zer that Nano is deceitful. Is there any sign of a struggle or…”

“Or that he’s a traitor? No I haven’t found
anything. I’m going to try to flash to him.”

“You have to prove Nano’s innocence. He has always
been an informant for me, so he’s always one of the first to be suspected, but
he’s also Sammy’s biological father. If he can’t be proven innocent, my
brothers will be suspicious of Sammy by association.”

“But Avoli will still want him as a Guardian?”

“Avoli is terrified of betrayal. If Nano is a
traitor, his son is the same. Regivus can be swayed since Sammy was raised by
us, but Zer, Erono, and Azenoth would go on the warpath.”

“Again. I hate your brothers sometimes.”

“Me, too. Keep in touch. If this thing really is
targeting Guardians… Don’t forget that you are one.”

I opened my eyes and stood. Mordon looked worried.
“I’m going to try and find Nano. I’ll be right back,” I said. He nodded.

I focused on Nano, the sound of his voice, the feel
of his magic. My magic caught and I let it pull me along, but when the flash
cleared, I found myself facing Zer, not Nano.

“That didn’t work,” I said. Zer stared at me like I
was the weirdest thing he had ever seen. “Your Guardian is missing, but don’t
worry, I think he was attacked. Wait, that might have come out wrong.”

“No, I understand; you are afraid that I would
misconstrue my Guardian’s disappearance as him being devious and running away,”
he said. I opened my mouth to lie when he continued. “You are correct. When you
find him and prove his innocence, he can return to Dios. Until then, I will not
allow him to be on my world.”

He flashed me back to Mordon. “We’re getting nowhere
real fast. My magic can’t even find him. That has only happened once,” I said,
referring to when Mordon was lost in the void.

“But everyone remembers him,” he argued.

“You were pulled in by the demon without any form of
protection. Something happened to one of the Guardians, Rasik, a little while
before you were pulled into it. Rasik was somehow trapped there, like how other
people and things were being misplaced. We never did find out what happened,
but he was safe at the time, and nobody seemed to forget about him. Without
knowing anymore, we can’t rule anything out. We need to get to the Guardians
before this happens to anyone else, if it hasn’t already. Let’s go check on
Shiloh.”

“I want to go,” Nila said. We frowned at him.

“Shiloh is a Guardian from another world. We would
have to flash there.”

“You were able to flash me before.”

“Yeah, and you nearly died,” I said. He pouted. I
understood that he wanted to be able to explore new worlds as I had, but I was
not willing to risk his life. “Then when I tried to take you back, I couldn’t.”

“I never get to do anything exciting.”

I smirked. “Do what other kings do; open an arena
and–”

“Dylan!” Mordon admonished.

“What? You don’t like baseball?” I asked innocently.
“That’s all I was going to suggest,” I lied. “You hit a ball with a stick and
run around in a circle.”

“Oh… is that fun on Earth?” Nila asked.

I frowned. “Yeah, to a lot of people.” I flashed
Mordon and myself to Casten, the sky city on Vaigda. It was very stupid of me
to forget the necessary measures to make sure I would not be seen. When the
light faded, two young women were standing in front of us, astonished.

Flashing was a form of travel between worlds that
even the Guardians could not do. Divina had explained to me that the light was
an echo of the Land of the Gods. An echo of anything so ethereal had an effect
on those who lacked any magical talent or were weak of mind. Either it felt
enthralling or made them look inwards, which could be good or bad depending on
what kind of person they were. I never asked Divina to elaborate, because at
the time, I hadn’t intended for it to become my usual method of traveling
across worlds.

One of the women smacked the other across the chest.
“They are gods,” she whispered and they both got on their knees to bow. Even
though they spoke in their language, my magic translated it. They had some kind
of translation device in their identification bracelets that translated their
words in our heads, but we had discarded the bracelets we were given after
leaving Vaigda. That was before my own magic learned how to do it naturally.

“Don’t mind us,” I said in English, knowing their
translation abilities would accommodate. I got a little kick out of suggesting
that the gods speak English, since the people of Vaigda would know English was
a human language.

We were in a white hallway, and there was really
nothing to distinguish it from any other with few doors. As the women knelt,
Mordon and I calmly left. We turned a few corners before Mordon took the lead.
“I can smell him. Something is odd about him, but I never forget a person’s
scent. He’s this way,” he said as we passed several people. “I think you might
be committing a human sin by impersonating a god.”

“Funny, Divina said that to me once. Of course, we
were in bed,” I said, earning a hard punch in my arm. All powers aside, sago
were stronger than humans and I was half human; his punches hurt.

We were intercepted by a man in a dark blue uniform
and we both sighed. “Where is your identification?” he asked us.

Somewhere in a forest on Malta.
I waved my
hand slowly. “You don’t need to see our identification. We are not the outlaws
you are looking for.”

Mordon grabbed my arm to absorb just enough of my
magic to understand and speak the guard’s language.
“Shut up, Dylan,”
he
said. He turned to the guard and adopted a fierce expression. “Now you listen,
this man is the Noquodi of Earth. Your identification bracelets are to prove we
are not contagious. Are you suggesting that a warrior of the gods could have
contagious germs?!” he demanded.

The guard looked unsure. “It is our policy.”

“You would stop one of the immortals from saving all
life because you have a policy?!” he asked. The man took a step back.

“Oh, stop with the dramatics,” Shiloh said,
approaching us. “You are free to go,” he said to the guard, who did not need to
be told twice. “I would like to say it is nice to see you two again, but I
suppose your being here means the universe is in danger.”

“Well, we came here thinking you might be in trouble.
And I guess we were right,” Mordon said.

Shiloh looked the same and sounded the same, but I
remembered the dense field of power that normally surrounded him. Mordon and I
could both tell that he had lost his magic. “What happened?” I asked.

The Guardian sighed and led us down the hall. “I
tried to get ahold of Enki to tell him a new idea I had about the council.
Something attacked me before I could contact him and I barely made it back
alive. When I did wake, it was with my powers absent. I have not heard from
Enki or the other Guardians since.”

I explained that the gods were having trouble
contacting their Guardians and started doubting their Guardians. He rolled his
eyes. Then I told him what happened with Edward and Nano. “Have you seen Nano
anywhere lately?”

“No. This is one of the reasons I want to get a
council together; a Guardian could go missing for a year and nobody would have
a clue. We also need that contact and collaboration for when the gods suspect
us of one thing or another.”