Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
“You’re annoying,” he says. “Like a bird chirping incessantly in my ear.”
“Then send me to your brother and I’ll chirp in his ear and drive him crazy. Won’t that be fun?”
His green eyes glint down at me, the fog falling away bit by bit. My thoughts are becoming sharper, and with them, my memories return, my needs, my wants. How long have I been drifting down here? Every day is a day too long. Poor Kalos probably feels abandoned by everyone, and the thought feels like a knife in the gut.
“You should know that Kalos is the most flawed of all of us.”
“Flaws are fine. I like his flaws. Imperfections are what make us human.” Am I getting through to him? At some level?
“Human.” Rhagos tastes the word and smiles faintly. “We haven’t been that in a very long time. I myself am not particularly inclined to help. Kalos and I have not been on speaking terms for millennia, ever since he last betrayed me.”
My heart sinks. “I’m sure he had a reason.”
“Belara,” is all the god of death says.
“She’s a real piece of work,” I blurt out.
“Mm.” His eyes narrow down at me. “Like I said, I’m not inclined to help…but my Max, my Anchor, insisted.”
He kept his Anchor? I notice his tone softens when he mentions Max’s name. “Tell him thank you.”
“Her,” he corrects. Before I can apologize, he moves on. “The Plane of Vultures is not a pleasant place. Are you sure you want to go?”
“A thousand percent sure.”
“You’re…not what I would have expected for my brother.”
“Because I’m determined and positive? It gets on his nerves, too.” I clasp my hands under my chin, turning my best puppy dog eyes on Kalos’s brother. “Please take me to him. I swear to be a pain in his ass for all eternity.”
“One can only hope,” the god of death replies, and swirls his cloak over my head, tugging me into darkness and out of the Field of the Forgotten.
The god of death is right—Kalos’s Plane of Vultures is kind of a downer.
When I arrive, I’m alone. There’s a thick mist everywhere I look, and my bare feet are ankle-deep in swampy water. I panic, imagining what’s creeping around in that water…and I remember I’m dead.
Being dead takes a lot of the fear out of scary places.
It’s a bit chilly and I glance down at my torn, weather-beaten dress that saw me cross half of Aos. It’s speckled in mud and smells like goats and fields and sunshine. I lift it to give it another nostalgic sniff and cross my arms over my chest for warmth. There’s no sunlight here, and the trees on the horizon all look dead, naked branches clawing at the gray sky.
It’s miserable, but if Kalos is here, I don’t care. We can laugh about it. We can plant flowers or something. Add a few goats. Nothing is set in stone, not even godhood.
Seth taught me that.
I wander through the swamp, looking for a building or a location where I could find a god who just wants to be left alone. Eventually a structure rises in the background, and I head towards it. As I get closer, I can see columns and walls, and the ankle-deep watery mud dissipates, showing a floor made entirely of bones. The pillars are made of skulls, the walls a repeating pattern of leg bones. For some reason it makes me smile.
Very edge-lord. Very Kalos.
I push open a pair of cage-like doors made from stacked ribcages. They creak and fall open, and inside it’s completely dark except for one torch near the throne on the dais. It reminds me of the temple in the swamp where he’d first arrived, and I’m hit with a wave of pure nostalgia and longing. That felt like forever ago.
Kalos is seated upon his throne, head bent, gazing off into nothing as if in a fugue. He’s dressed all in dreary gray, an elegant gold-edged cloak of a fine, embroidered material sweeping over one shoulder. His clothes are tasteful and fitted, with expensive buckles on his boots and an equally expensive belt at his waist. Everything is covered in a fine layer of dust. He looks good to my avid, hungry gaze, but all that dust means he hasn’t moved in forever, and that just makes me so very sad.
Even as I step forward, he doesn’t see me. He’s told me before that when he’s in “deep” that it’s like a trance—nothing registers. He’s simply lost in his own mind. This must be the case now. I approach, brushing cobwebs off his face as I kneel before him. His hair has grown out. It’s long and spilling past his shoulders like it did before we met. A quiet rebuke of me, I wonder? Or just him not caring enough and letting it grow out while he remains catatonic?