Prologue
I am not afraid of the storm that comes my way
When it hits, it shakes me to the core
And makes me stronger than before
It’s not a question about trust
But will you stand with us?
( Thousand Foot Crutch - Courtesy Call
Songwriters: Joel Bruyere / Steve Augustine / Trevor Mcnevan)
Jess
Out of all the things that had happened lately, Jess was pretty certain she was extremely close to reaching her limit on the weirdness.
Well, she thought right, in any case, as she was about to throw a tantrum when faced with the newest development.
She agreed when Dean suggested calling Fenrir and asking him for a ride home, so to speak. And though the Norse God of Chaos was surprisingly cooperative, taking a few minutes to appear in the foyer of Lucifer’s palace, he was no less shocked than they were when the strangest creature materialized through one of the walls.
A strange being, but upsetting in its familiarity.
“What the fuck?!” she exclaimed – admittedly – with a high level of resignation. And she flinched when that made three sets of chaotic – as she called it – eyes snap toward her scowl. She, in turn, glared at the Abaddon towering beside her brother. “You said they were gone…?”
“We’re not Sedobog, Jess,” a weirdly dual voice—reminiscent of both Kai and Ravi—forced her to turn her eyes back toward the creature. At the same time, she squeezed her hand tightly around Cian’s arm for support. The grin she had been granted for her effort eased the pressure that settled over her heart when it… they appeared.
“Then what are you?” She heard her brother ask, but dared not take her eyes off that being. In her eyes, it still looked much like Sedobog… but missing its ‘grayness.’ No, their skin looked much more natural, and their hair – Ravi’s long braid – was an exact shade of red matching the feathers covering the three pairs of wings rising behind their back. Three – as red – tails swayed lazily in sync when they noticed her stare and bared far-too-many and far-too-sharp fangs in another amused grimace.
“You can call us God Eater,” they said slowly, then closed their eyes… and split. Ravi staggered, shaking his head, while Kai rolled his shoulders and exhaled deeply.
“It’s weird as fuck,” he said toward her incredulous expression.
“No shit,” she replied, leaning heavily against Cian’s side. “Scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry,” Kai smiled at her apologetically, then looked at his twin brother. “Are you okay, R?”
“A bit nauseous, but I’ll live,” Ravi drawled wryly, then rubbed his face with both hands before looking at them all, then back at his brother. “I’ll leave the explanation to you since I’m still mostly confused, okay?”
“Sure,” Kai sighed, took a deep breath, and nodded to himself before looking straight into her eyes. Standing beside stock-still Fenrir, he looked tiny by comparison, yet the determination that settled over his expression told her enough about how important whatever he was about to say was. “What you saw… That form is what Sedobog intended when they accepted Nyx’s design. Her game, so to speak, if she wasn’t aware of the stakes. Of the fact that it was the game she had already played and lost – to the third party.”
“Third party?” She muttered in confusion.
“Styx, Primordial God of Hatred,” Ravi added, then scowled and folded his arms over his chest. “As far as I understand it, each universe created by Chaos is based on the idea of balance between concepts. Sedobog – the Arbiter – was pulled into those which, for whatever reason, displayed a turn for the worse, so to say.”
“And in the case of our universe,” Kai took over seamlessly, frowning when she looked at him. “What pulled them in was the imbalance between love and hatred. I think you can guess in which direction, right?” he sighed, then shook his head when she hesitated. “I mean by that that already centuries ago, humans of our world became consumed by hatred, Jess. And Chernobog, by sparing it, didn’t make the situation better – hence, they were always meant to return, you know? Until – using Nyx’s idea – they created us. Basically, they let her tapestry tear them in two, shaping them to be us.”
“That much we figured out,” Dean sighed, then, when she looked at him, he pointed his forefinger between the twins. “So you can break the rules of Chaos, yeah? What I don’t get is… if they let Nyx’s design shape them into you, how would they return to destroy this world? Or any other, for that matter?”
“In two weeks, on our birthday,” Kai said, and the tone of his voice made Jessica’s eyes snap back at him. For once, the expression on his face was nearly scary. Ruby eyes stared through her, and their misery sent an unpleasant shiver down her spine. “If allowed to execute his plan, Set would cause Chernobog to materialize. And End… not only this universe but all of them.”
She swallowed convulsively, glancing between the twins nervously. Ravi was frowning, staring at his brother, before some sort of understanding flared in his expression for a second before it hardened into an unreadable mask.
“According to what we learned today,” he drawled, still looking toward his twin. “Set is most likely using Children of the Dusk. He possibly even created them in the first place, too. And I have reason to believe that he’s busy developing a chemical weapon that will be especially deadly to Bast’Aikhtiar. Awlbast and Bast’Alfawdaa, notwithstanding.”
“It’ll kill them all,” Kai whispered weakly, then lowered his gaze to the floor under his feet. “Including us. But what neither Styx nor Set knows is that it would cause a chain reaction, Jess. Sedobog… or rather, the creature humans named that, cannot die. They cannot cease to be as long as Chaos exists. What Set’s poison would achieve, however, would be the creation of a new version of Chernobog. One that – enraged – would consume the other side of Chaos. He would devour Belobog, forcing their unity into annihilating everything… including them. Ergo, the destruction of all.”
The silence that followed his words felt heavy as Jess tried to understand the enormity of the consequences.
“Set has to be stopped,” her brother whispered before she could, but she more than agreed.
“And that form… ‘God Eater’?” she asked, looking between Ravi and Kai. “It’s meant to achieve that?”
“In that form, we can control the whole system,” Ravi said slowly. “And while at its base Chaos is the raw power of dichotomous concepts, Chernobog left us an idea of how to deal with Set. Him being a God that feeds on violence and murder deserves special treatment, after all.”
“We will purge his worshippers, in short,” Kai added in an uncommonly harder tone. “All of them, human and Other, who support his existence… and must go. And while doing that, we will use Chaos to twist his being around. Instead of feeding him, we will make him suffer every death as if it happened to him. And when done, when we’re sure he paid his due, we will cut the cord connecting him to being. We will erase him not only from existence but from a memory of humanity, too… And then we will devour Styx and his element. After breaking the chains he had woven throughout this universe.”
“Creating unity once none can hate sounds much more doable, no?” Ravi commented wryly, and she snapped her mouth close, moving her shell-shocked gaze toward his smirk. “Not to mention that perhaps doing that would prove to the whole goddamn system that the creation of hatred in the first place was a mistake. And maybe next worlds Chaos spawns will be free of that rot.”
“That sounds… insane,” she breathed after a moment.
“Hey,” Kai shrugged, and a weak smile brightened his expression. “If you dream, dream big, right?”
