God of the Abyss (9 page)

“Shiloh, I am probably the last person who should be
suggesting this…” I started. “So I’ll let Mordon suggest it. He was raised to
be king, and those people need to be able to gain someone’s trust.” I knew
Mordon was thinking the same thing, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put
him on the spot.

“The gods are older and more set in their ways. The
only way they will ever truly trust you to not turn against them is if you
trust them. One of the major reasons they trust Dylan is because he trusts
Tiamat. If she told him to do something, he would trust her no matter what.
They know when the time comes, if she told him he had to do something and not
ask questions, he would trust her without getting suspicious and demanding
answers.”

“Thank you, Arthur.”

“Who?” Mordon asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Remind me to update you on the
classical education of King Arthur of Camelot. Trust between Noquodi and Iadnah
has to go both ways, but it has to start with us,” I said. “I think a lot of
the trust we originally had was harmed when the universe was falling apart.” We
stopped at a door, which Shiloh opened.

This was the room we had met Enki in; sort of a dark
meditation room with cushions and a circular pond full of glowing blue water
and two tie-dyed fish. Shiloh sat hard on a cushion and I realized for the
first time that he was out of breath. For people accustomed to magic,
experiencing a prolonged absence of nominal energy felt similar to having no
physical energy.

I crouched in front of him. “I’m going to try to heal
you.” I wanted to tell him not to get his hopes up, but I didn’t want to psych
myself out. I pressed my palm against his forehead and drew my magic from
within. Healing was one of the first things I ever did with Iadnah energy, and
it was certainly what I used it for most often. Healing came naturally to me.

Of course, this kind of healing was more difficult
than with physical wounds. When I healed someone’s injuries, my magic showed me
the damage I couldn’t see and I imagined the body returning to normal. In
Shiloh’s case, I had to heal a symptom.

I focused on the magic he normally had, then reached
through my connection with my book to feel Earth’s magic. I loved that gentle
planet. My link with my world and its book was extremely powerful and eternal.
Although I had only been a Guardian for eight years, it was an incredibly
integral part of who I was.

I couldn’t imagine how horrible that was for Shiloh
to be missing that connection, which had had for nearly two thousand years. My
magic picked up on my desire to help him and flooded the older Guardian.

He gasped but stayed conscious and, after a few seconds,
my energy vanished from him. I had just enough time to worry before my energy
reappeared along with his magic. If that behavior wasn’t odd enough, my energy
returned to me in a rush, whereas it usually just dispersed after I healed
someone.

“Thank you,” Shiloh said, climbing to his feet. He
sent out a burst of energy and both Mordon and I flinched. We were in a city
floating in the sky, so flinching was a reasonable reaction. Luckily, we didn’t
fall to our deaths.

“I don’t know that you should try to talk to the gods
for a while. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to flash you to Duran where Kiro
is,” I said. He nodded, probably feeling obligated to do what I said.

I didn’t wait for him to change his mind. I flashed
him to Edward, then Mordon and myself to Malta. Maybe flashing wasn’t the best
method, for when the light cleared, we were in the water tribe. Having been to
the water tribe before, I suddenly felt misinformed, because I had been told
there were no fish people.

The creature facing us was neither a person nor a
fish. The bright moonlight illuminated its translucent, milky-white skin. The
head was narrow and elongated towards the front like a fish’s. There was no
hair and the body shape was too bulky and blobbish to be called humanoid. It
had two legs, two arms, and was bipedal, but the knee joints and elbows bent in
the wrong direction. The fact that the creature only came up to my chest made
it no less frightening.

We were on an ice platform just outside one of the
castle structures. The ice buildings wouldn’t melt, but they could be blasted,
as this one was. As if it were made of concrete, the roof had crumbled.
Something had struck it with the force of a wrecking ball.

Realizing the same thing, Mordon scanned our
surroundings with his eyes shifted, scoping the place for traps or people…
Because when you are about to be eaten by a fish person, it is important to
know that someone else isn’t going to jump out from behind you.

It opened its mouth to reveal obscenely long, sharp
teeth, between which a long, thin, tongue extended about three feet to lick at
the air. The creature reached out one webbed hand with lengthy, jagged claws.

Mordon pulled me back with one arm and raised his
other as if to hold it back. Fire burst from the air to engulf the beast, but
the fish creature proved to be nonflammable and the fire died. Slime dripped
from its hand as it took one lumbering step forward. We both stepped back and
my heel touched the edge of the ice. If I put one foot in the water, I would be
food for the mermaids. Unfortunately, I wasn’t all that coordinated. I tried to
use my nominal energy to control the water, but the energy fell short. I
panicked.

Mordon backhanded me on the chest without even
looking. “Use your Iadnah energy,” he said.

I remembered as he said it that my nominal energy was
weak here. Edward told me it was like being allergic; for every wizard and
Guardian, there was one or two worlds that had the wrong frequency of magic for
them. Luckily, I had a backup. My Iadnah energy came from within. I reached out
with my magic to draw the water to the ledge and cooled my energy until it
froze, extending the ledge of ice.

“We need one of your plans right now,” Mordon said. I
felt the heat inside him rise as he tried to keep himself warm.

What would Edward do? Better yet, what would
Divina tell me
not
to do?
“It’s a fish, shouldn’t your fire dry its
skin out? No, see the slime? Flame retardant. So how do we get past the slime
in the next three seconds without getting gutted?”

“Maybe you could ask it nicely to not eat us.”

“I don’t speak fish.” Unfortunately my magic, already
fired up, took that as a request. When the creature roared, the vague
impression of his life ran through my head. “Oh, wait, I do speak fish. He’s
been chased out of his territory and now he’s hungry,” I said.

Mordon looked at me. “He said that?”

“Of course not, he’s a fish. He just roared at us. We
used up our three seconds.”

Mordon stretched his hand out to the side as if
reaching for one of the large blocks of ice. Although Mordon doubted his
abilities as a wizard, I knew he had serious talent hidden well behind his
dragon characteristics. The ice collided with the creature with all the force
of a raging bull.

The aquatic monster never stumbled; he only shook
himself and continued lumbering forward.

“Hold onto your hat, I’m flashing us out,” I said. I
focused on my home on Duran and let my magic draw us there.

The moment I felt the world around us vanish,
something tore at me. It was like an invisible creature reached inside me with
vicious claws and pulled. The same dark energy that attacked Edward wrapped
around me, trying to separate me from my magic. Then I felt Mordon’s fire.

My first instinct was to get out. Even after many
lessons from the gods in using my Iadnah energy, it was never my first reaction
to fight with magic. My magic burst from inside me with my full desperation to
escape. Mordon’s fire became hotter, nearly burning. Oddly enough, it helped.
Something in the dark was trying to tear me apart and the only thing holding me
together was Mordon’s fire, which wrapped around me. It wasn’t keeping the dark
energy out of me, but it was keeping me inside myself. I couldn’t see it, or
the light of the void… It wasn’t until the dark energy retracted from my body that
I realized my eyes were closed.

Solid, cold ice slammed into me and disorientated me.
I kept my eyes closed as the world spun and reached out for Mordon. He was
there, but not moving. My magic swirled sluggishly, stuttering and spattering
as if it were as befuddled as me.

I opened my mouth, but couldn’t speak. After a few
minutes, I rolled over onto my stomach to press my cheek against the ice. There
was something hissing and making foreign noises, but I was too dazed to make it
out or even figure out what it was. I opened my eyes in time to see a clawed
foot step right beside my face. It was the fish monster. The claws of nausea
took its grip and everything went dark.

*          *          *

I was in space which, for the record, was incredibly
creepy. I could breathe just fine and I wasn’t freezing, but it definitely
looked like I was floating in space. Before me was my home world, far away
enough that I wasn’t in the atmosphere, yet close enough to see continents.
Actually,
the moon should be around here somewhere.

My book was in my hand. I had the deep urge to hide
it, but I couldn’t move.

The space in front of me suddenly flooded with bright
white, which grew brighter by the second. A slit was opening in front of the
planet, widening into a gaping whole. The light inside was ominous, hideous,
and shook me. It was oddly thrilling and equally horrifying. I knew what that
white abyss was; I could feel it in my soul.

I felt the moment the doorway was fully and
permanently opened.

The book in my hand turned to sand and floated away
on a nonexistent wind. When it was gone, the surface of Earth changed. In a
worldwide, catastrophic wave that I could see even from space, the seas dried
up, the plants died, and the planet surface became a barren wasteland. In a
matter of seconds, my world was destroyed and billions of people were dead.

*          *          *

There have been many times in my life that I woke
expecting something to be eating my face. I didn’t have a complex or a penchant
for danger; it just came with the job. However, there was something especially
horrifying about a fish eating my face, so my eyes snapped open the instant I
became conscious.

Instead of the fish monster, Emrys leaned over me.
About the same moment I realized I was out of danger, I discovered that the ice
had given way to soft cushions and we were inside. From the stained glass windows,
white walls, and fur rugs, I decided we were either in the mend tribe or ken
tribe.

When I felt movement next to me, I turned to see
Mordon waking. A sharp pain made me flinch and reach up to touch the back of my
head. My scalp was wet and sticky and my fingers came back, predictably, with
blood on them.

“I tried to heal your injury, but your magic is
acting as a shield against everyone,” the Guardian said gently.

Since we had last seen him, he cut his hair. The
shorter style emphasized the odd speckling of blond, black, and red in his
mostly brown hair. His eyes were apparently as unique as his hair color, for
they had changed from the dark blue they once were to solid gold. He wore loose
tan pants and a blue tunic with no shoes, which was a change from the typical
black the Guardian usually dressed in. Emrys always seemed eccentric with a
touch of creepy.

I reached out to grab Mordon’s arm and sent my magic
to heal him. After a sluggish moment of hesitation, it only took a few seconds
to accomplish its goal, so Mordon sent it right back with a little of his fire
mixed in. The energy, created only to heal, healed me as it returned. It felt
warm, Mordon’s fire making it even more so, and I became dizzy for a minute as
the magic healed my head.

Emrys pulled me into a sitting position. “Dylan, I
know you feel pretty sick right now, but I need to know what happened to you. I
sensed you arrive, leave, and return. Is someone after you? Did someone follow
you?” he asked.

I opened my mouth to speak and nearly heaved instead
as a new wave of nausea came over me.

“We came here to look for you,” Mordon said. “There
was a monster… a hideous monster. Dylan tried to flash us out, but something
attacked him. I don’t know what it was, other than that it scared Rojan. My
dragon is afraid of nothing. I think it was Vretial.”

“But Dylan defeated Vretial,” Emrys said.

I tried to correct him, but it came out garbled. “It
was Tiamat who defeated the dark god,” Mordon said for me. “Dylan needs some
water.”

He gave me a doubtful frown, as if he believed we
would vanish as soon as he left the room. “I will return momentarily,” he
finally said, then left.

“What was that? You saw that, too, right?” he asked,
referring to the dream.

“I did. It was a Guardian warning dream. It had to
have been the gates opening.”

“But we saw it before. We forgot. How could we forget
something like that?”

“I…” I sighed and clawed my fingers through my hair.
The sensible part of me decided that it had just been too early to be useful to
me and I filtered it out for some reason. Unfortunately, I knew better than
that. Every instinct in me was fired up, like nerves, pushing me to figure it
out. It physically hurt to not understand, so much so that I wanted to hunt
down the answers like an animal.

Mordon put his hand on my shoulder, trying to calm me
down, but he was worried, too. Maybe that was one of the reasons I felt so
strongly; this affected Mordon.

And then it occurred to me. “I didn’t forget. I mean,
not really. The dream is what would happen if the gates open. I had the chance
to open the gates and I turned it down because it felt wrong. Something in me
remembered.”