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I frown. “What do you mean?”
“The gods of Otera thought themselves above humans, above equus and ebiki, above the beasts in the field, the plants, above dust, above all sentient beings—even above this world itself. They forgot that we are all one, and each of us is all.” These words are a declaration, an earthquake shattering through my bones. I can feel it rumbling through me, penetrating to the very core of me.
It’s all I can do to remain upright under the power.
And yet, my thoughts whirl. Everything the gods just said contradicts what I know. At least, what I thought I knew. “So you mean that the severing of the Oteran gods was not what caused them to fall?”
The gods shake their heads in tandem. “Male, female, yandau—all the other iterations. There is no difference, all merely countless expressions of the same thing. God and mortal. Immortal and man. Person and planet. All part of the Greater Divinity. The natural order. This is the understanding the gods of Otera forgot. And when we tried to remind them, they attempted to war against us and to prey on those we serve.”
I frown. Serve. No god I’ve ever met in Otera has used that word. Even the utterance of it is unthinkable. But the gods of Maiwuri, it seems, use it purposefully. They believe they serve. Not lead, not protect, not oversee. Serve.
I let this knowledge sit with me.
The gods continue. “It is also the reason we created the Great Barrier.”
I blink. “The Great Barrier?”
“A veil, protecting Maiwuri from Otera, shielding it so Otera’s gods would never again turn their gazes here.”
I remember that rainbow shimmer I saw coating the sky. The one I just glanced at and then immediately forgot about.
But perhaps that is by design.
I snort, my awe dissipating as I understand. “So instead of stopping them, you ran like cowards and put up a barrier leaving the rest of the world to suffer?”
There is a pause as the gods process this insult. Then Sarla speaks again. “Corruption,” they say. “It spread from the gods to their children to the humans, to Otera itself. Had we remained, it would have infected us, driven us to treat those we serve the way our Oteran kin treated everyone around them. So we chose to protect Maiwuri, for the sake of the entirety of Kamabai.”
“Kamabai?” I’ve heard the word before, but I’m not certain what it means.
“This world. The twelve continents. Four in Otera, eight in Maiwuri. All together, they make up Kamabai.”
Suddenly, I feel weak. “Twelve continents…”
My legs—my entire body—is boneless from the revelation.
The world is so much bigger than I’d imagined. So much bigger…And the Gilded Ones knew. All the while, they knew. How much more about the world have they kept from me? From everyone around them?
I have to breathe deeply to return my attention to the present.
I glance at Sarla again, careful not to meet their gaze. “All right, so you created a barrier. What’s changed? Why bring me here now?” The Maiwurian gods can say all the pretty things they like, but they want something from me.
Whether I will give it to them, however, remains to be seen.
A small thunderstorm wreathes Sarla’s head, visible manifestation of their anguish.
Gods don’t feel the way we do and, as a result, don’t display their emotions in the same way. When a mortal is sad, they cry. When a god is sad, hurricanes drown entire villages.
The deity of wisdom continues: “The corruption of the Oterans has infected the world itself. Those shadow vales—they are only a taste of what is to come. And they’re encroaching ever closer on Maiwuri. There are many more than you saw, created by both Oteran pantheons.”
“Countless,” the other gods echo.
“Countless?” I repeat, my mouth suddenly dry.
All this time, I’ve been thinking there were only one or two. And that they were all created by the Idugu. But if there are countless shadow vales being created by both sets of gods, that means those gods are consuming sacrifice on an unimaginable scale. One even White Hands’s army won’t be able to affect, much less end.
I’ve been so naive, thinking the Oteran gods were enfeebled enough that White Hands and a few allied forces could stop them in the event that I became too weak to fight. But if there are that many vales…
Suddenly, I think of the darkness lurking behind this temple. The darkness that is now very obviously a shadow vale. Doubtless, the Maiwurian gods wanted to show me the consequences for the people here if I refuse their requests.
