Aftermath

Having gotten three hours of sleep I wrote this and, due to what I know underneath everything else, I finally understand what is going on. Note the three hours of sleep, though. I couldn't even recall the old god of the underworld (yet I remembered how to spell his mate's very odd name Aiement). Ill-rin, while cute and adorable, has only recently really dug her fingers into the underworld to figure out how it and the souls work, she's still a big softy when it comes to punishment.

Ramen-ai, on the other hand, could make or destroy (note, destruction is different from shattering) a soul, he could shatter a soul, spread it across a hundred lives to make temporary souls and then bring it back together and make it the whole soul once more. He could take one sliver of a soul and make a complete soul out of that (hence how Mik was made, for those who read Partners, from a sliver of Rava's soul so the gods could have a key for their game). Ramen-ai could take a higher spirit and make them completely forget, for a lifetime, who and what they are and he used to be the one in charge of cleansing Rava and Ayato so that they'd have no memories whatsoever. A simple dunk in the well of souls doesn't do much for those two. He was also the one called when a god had to be killed or punished or have their powers removed. He only ever punished lesser gods though, so I've no idea how he did it.

Makes me wish he were still alive, I think I'd want one as a minion/pet.

Three hours of sleep makes me chatty!

I'm not sure if what Raya says about how he found Durth is true, or if he just said that so that Una wouldn't walk in on what they were really talking about. But I could see Durth being a bit delusional.

Read, Review and Enjoy.





He marched past Raya’s glaring look and ignored Tah’s protest, as he had entered while she was feeding Shirn and thus… topless. Durth took the time to kick off his boots before he collapsed onto the bed and curled into a ball, facing the wall. He felt like every possible cell in his brain was on fire, like his head was going to explode at any moment. His hands shook so he tucked them under his head and his eyes stung so he closed them.

Durth didn’t know what was more frightening, the fact that he had felt this way before but couldn’t recall when, or the fact that he swore he could feel his bones. Every bone in his body, he could feel them all vibrating, he could count them off, he could feel where on his arm he had broken it when he was six because it vibrated differently.

He needed.

He wanted.

He had to.

Grasp reality as firmly as he could, Durth latched onto whatever was before him and clung tightly to it. He didn’t want to go, he didn’t want to break and shatter and spread across the cosmos again. Pieces slid out and then back together again, he was one person then he was another. Past lives of other people tried to tumble into his bead.

Durth tried to keep himself separated from the memories, from those other people. But as he opened his eyes, he wasn’t entirely certain he had succeeded. He remembered that Una used to smile more, that the immortal took as much pleasure from sharing knowledge and teaching others as he did from sharing his bed. He recalled someone who looked like Ayan and someone who looked like Raya. Only they weren’t Ayan and Raya and one was armed with a sword too brightly silver and the other held a black broadsword drenched in blood.

He felt incomplete.

Durth sighed out and blinked slowly at the ceiling, not quite understanding why it felt odd. The bed he lay on was softer, that was why. The wood overhead was darker and the entire place smelt of cedar. Durth frowned and turned his head just slightly to the side.

“Are you aware?” Raya murmured, hands clasped before him. The Brother looked Durth over and made a face, “do you have power?”

“No, no power.”

“Too bad, at least if you did, we would have a reason for your passing out.”

“Where am I?”

“Una’s spice trailer, welcome to the secret place of the master who is even more secretive,” Raya sighed, “such as why he’s taking poisons and yet mints at the same time. The man seems intent on putting himself out of his misery, whatever misery that might be.”

Durth made a sound at the back of his throat, “my eyes hurt. And my head.”

“Signs of awakening power, actually,” Raya muttered, “also signs of something Una calls psychosomatic response. Basically stuff got crazy and you got stressed and rather than feel the stress mentally, you expressed it physically.”

“Who does Una think I am?” Durth asked, causing Raya to stop mid-sentence. Something about if Durth found that stressful just wait…

Raya sighed and stood from his stool. The young man shuffled to the door of the trailer and pulled a dipper up from a bucket of water. He dumped nearly half of the water out of the dipper before he returned to Durth and held it for Durth to sip from. Raya’s other hand wrapped under Durth’s shoulders and helped him up.

“He thinks you’re Tyz.”

“But I’m not.”

“That’s what I’ve told him. Tyz shattered in the underworld,” to which Durth choked on the water and Raya took it away, “his soul still exists but it would take Ramen-ai to bring him back and Ramen-ai, being a bastard child of Shey-har, is dead and long gone.”

“Why does he think I’m Tyz?”

“There was a game,” Raya walked to the water bucket and set the dipper into it gently, then returned to Durth with a cloth, “between the gods. It started, probably, as boasting who has the most followers and whose followers were the most obedient. Well this game played through and Shey-har had Una as a piece. Promised him what he desired above all else if Una found the key. Una found the key, what he thought was the key, and was going to deliver it to Shey-har.”

“What did Shey-har promise Una?”

“A mate, for all eternity, someone to live beside him forever, someone to his tastes no less. In walks Tyz, broken, filled with power, from what I’m told, he was a force to be reckoned with. But he wasn’t whole, he wasn’t entirely immortal. And it was cruel on Shey-har’s part, to not tell Una that because Una hadn’t delivered the actual key into Shey-har’s hands, Una couldn’t keep his lover.”

“Sounds like something the gods would do.”

“He may have forgotten what with what happened next, you’ve heard of Rahl-ta’s betrayal?”

“Rahl-ta went against the rules of the throne and tried to destroy a soul without his father’s blessing. The soul’s mate stepped in to save the soul and … what?”

“It wasn’t a soul,” Raya shook his head and dabbed at Durth’s head with the wetted cloth, “it was a god, who is the only surviving being who still has the memory of Shey-har’s promise to Una. The god’s mate stepped in and his flesh was burned away and,” Raya looked down at his own hand, “it wasn’t a pleasant way to die and the mate only felt a small amount of what almost destroyed the god. God of mortality, no less, to save itself, the god spent all the power it had accumulated over thousands of years. Now all it has left are its memories.”

“Why do you keep saying it?”

“Because the god has no gender. Sometimes the gods, the other gods, call it a she, sometimes it is a she, physically, but it has no gender.”

“Your god, the one you keep hearing?”

“Yes…”

“Is involved in me and Una because Una thinks I’m this Tyz fellow even though I’m not. So I’m not, what’s the problem?”

Raya opened his mouth and then closed it again, he was quiet for a very long moment before he said, “Shey-har went back on a promise to Una. He gave Una his mate, his love, his life and then stole it away again. Not only stole it away, but made Una watch Tyz waste away of something that his spices couldn’t help, that all the healers in the world couldn’t reverse. And Tahl-ra tried. As far as the god is concerned, Shey-har gave Una something and then stole it back in spite.”

“The god,” Durth frowned, “wants to find a replacement for Tyz.”

“And make them immortal.” Raya muttered, making a face.

“I don’t particularly want to be immortal, Raya,” Durth muttered, easing himself into a sitting position, “doesn’t seem very fun. People want to kill you and women are jealous of how well you age and every ten years you have to stop visiting certain places because they get suspicious. And any children you do have, you end up having to watch them grow old and then die. Doesn’t sound like fun.”

Raya’s eyes narrowed as the Cousin considered Durth, “It doesn’t necessarily have to be you, you’re the distraction, Durth.”

“Dis…” Durth didn’t quite like the sound of that, “wh. How does it plan to make someone immortal?”

“Keep your voice down,” Raya hissed, “and I don’t know what the plan is, I’ve just been told to make my peace and to kill off any with power I find. Weed out those who are blessed with the powers of the gods but not using them appropriately and beget myself some children.”

“So the Aniege is just…”

“The Aniege and I share a good deal of beliefs. I don’t like the idea of anyone being called Father, it still sends shivers down my spine, but I do it, you know why?” Durth shook his head to the question, “because if the Aniege exist and have a guy labelled father, the group exists, I mean, then the Aniege line can never rise one man above all others again. Father can never exist, the Aniege family can never become that twisted again. So, yes, I follow the Aniege.”

Someone from outside hooted or hollered or something. Raya looked at the door and then back to Durth, “after you walked past me, all glaring and whatnot, I went into the trailer to give you what for and found you passed out on the floor.”

“I wasn’t passed out on the floor, I distinctly remember climbing into bed.”

“No,” Raya muttered, “you were laying on the floor, twitching. Once you stopped twitching, you curled around my feet. It was very difficult to detach you.”

“I took off my boots and got into bed.”

“Maybe you bent to take off your boots and hit the floor instead, one boot was unlaced.”

The door to the trailer opened and Una stepped in, followed a moment later by Ayan, “Raya, you should be helping with the setup.”

“I was keeping him company,” Raya protested, “he’s awake and conscious now. Hullo, Ayan.”

That couldn’t be Ayan, Durth’s first thought was, Ayan was never so quiet. How in the name of the gods could he even know that?

Tyz shattered in the underworld.

Dear gods, it wasn’t possible.

It would take Ramen-ai to bring him back.

No, not possible, not possible at all. Raya had even said it wasn’t possible… But then. Una had said it wasn’t possible for a soul to shatter and then come back together. What in the hells was really going on?


.