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“You’re scared,” she says, her face going red, and her eyes wide, “you’re afraid.”
“I’m a god, and I do not know what fear is.”
Katy scoffs at that, and I have to say, even for me, it is a bit unbelievable.
At that Shay sighs, and starts to walk toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Katy asks, twisting in her seat, peering around the edge of the chair.
“I know when a battle is lost before it begins,” Shay calls back over her shoulder, “and I for one, am not interested in watching a rout.” She closes the door behind her and Katy whips back around, narrowing her eyes.
“Is a rout what I think it is?” She asks me, and I give her a blank look. “You must know. As the god of the underworld, I’m sure you’ve had your share of warriors, fighters, and I’m assuming that it’s not a good thing when a rout happens in battle.”
“My share?” I ask her archly, pushing back from the desk. “I shelter all of them. From the most pitiable, forced into warfare because the system offers them no other choice but to choose a warrior’s path, to the worst of the human monsters.” I have to refrain from wrinkling my nose in memory. When I pledged to hold an eternity worth of mortal souls, I did not realize that I would be building my own petard.
And then I’d be hoist up on it. I cared too much, my heart was too expansive, and the other gods, my own mother and father, had seen that.
They’d happily sold me into an existence where I had to touch absolute filth, measuring souls, weighing them, welcoming them—
I close my eyes in painful memory for a moment.
“That sounds like a lot to deal with.” Katy’s voice is soft, round at the edges, and when
“You’re changing the subject.” My tone is sharper than I intend, and she blinks at me, startled.
“No,” she says, “I’m not. It just seems to me that the only way we can make this work is if someone goes down and opens the door, and lets you back in. Because no one’s ever done it, doesn’t mean they can’t.”
“There’s never been a key used to open the gate, either,” I counter, and her hand flies to the pendant, holding it. “For allI know, when it is used, it will kill the bearer. Are you willing? Either you’ll die when you open the gate, or you’ll be stuck in the Underworld--“ The next words die on my tongue.
For the rest of eternity, before she’s even really had a chance to blossom and grow. What has her life even been up until this moment? She was a young teenager when I first was thrown out of the Underworld. Every day has been torture for me, but it’s been a blink to her. There it is again, that softness inside of me that led me to my eternal job, punching time-cards on the souls of the recently departed.
“You’re scared.”
I stare at her, unable to deny it.
“And,” she says, her voice so quiet, so gentle, that it hurts, “that’s okay. There’s lots of things I’ve been scared of. Like when a strange man came into my life in the midst of an explosion and rescued me.” She gets to her feet. “But think about it. You keep saying how it’s not possible. It’s never been done, but until a week ago, I didn’t even believe in an afterlife.”
She reaches out and taps her fingers on the far edge of my desk, almost like she wants to pat my shoulder in comfort, and I don’t understand her.
How is she this resilient? Any other mortal would be crumbling. Few, like Elenora, are able to handle looking into the void of being near a godhood.
Usually, only those with the deepest traumas are able to do that.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, and I’m surprised when the words come out of my mouth. I was going to say no, that it would not happen, but her eyes light up, and the hope on her face...
Damn.
I would condemn her?
For my own gain?
My throat is thick and tight, and she smiles at me, then turns, running from the room like a child.
She is barely a child.
I am as old as the lights hitting this earth from stars thousands of years away.
And right now, I feel every single one of those damned years.
