Chapter 25 #2
“Be the source of something that is so frightening. Because nightmares hold some of our greatest and most powerful truths. These are the things that we run from, failings we struggle to face in ourselves. But if you’re strong and smart enough to face those things presented in your nightmares, think of how much stronger you can become.
” Tyche paused and shuddered. “Dreams—and by extension Teitei’s sister, Cirina—are far more frightening.
There’s no truth to be found in dreams. Only fantasies and lies that allow us to escape from painful reality.
If you could live in the most wonderful dream, would you ever choose to leave? ”
They fell silent, but that didn’t mean a thousand questions weren’t buzzing through Adrian’s head.
If the Goddess of Nightmares was dead in an illegal prison facility, where the fuck was the Goddess of Dreams?
Should they all be shitting their pants and praying to the God of Family Harmony that the two sisters didn’t like each other because no one wanted another angry goddess on a rampage?
They’d survived that with Zyros, and the world was still recovering.
“Yes.” Tyche sighed, his thin shoulders slumped under his filthy shirt. “Please, Tyche, give me good luck so I land this new job. Give me good luck so that I win the lottery. Give me good luck so this cute guy likes me.”
“Wow, I…Wow!” Shey exclaimed, staring at Tyche with his mouth hanging open. “That explains so much. You gave me good luck as we escaped. My aim was never that perfect. There were times we just missed being caught, and I’d think, damn that was lucky.”
“Okay, that is pretty cool,” Adrian agreed. “I could go for infinite good luck.”
That earned him another dark and threatening look from the God of Luck. Really. He needed to keep his mouth shut, or he was going to end up with a lifetime of very bad luck.
“It doesn’t work that way. There’s no such thing as infinite good luck. All luck is finite, and there’s only so much I can do with it. I—” He cut himself off and growled.
Shey cocked his head to the side. “What?”
“I need to explain.” He shoved to his feet and scurried around the meadow, snatching up small rocks and sticks. After he’d gathered a handful, he hurried over to where Haru, Adrian, and Shey were sitting and held out his bounty for all of them to see.
“Now, imagine that this is all the luck in the world—good and bad. It’s a spectrum ranging from fucking-good-luck and you’re-better-off-dead-bad-luck, but anyway, this is all the luck,” he began.
When they all nodded, he gave everyone four pieces of luck to hold in their hands, while he continued to hold the rest.
Tyche dropped to sit with his legs crossed in front of them and drew in a deep breath. “A person or animal is born with a set amount of luck. I always imagine it as a glass jar filled with luck. It is not distributed evenly. Some people are born with more bad luck than good luck, and vice versa.”
“Ha! I knew it!” Adrian cackled. He grinned at Haru. “I always thought that Caelan was a rather lucky person. Tyche just proved that it could be true.”
“Can a person burn through all their luck before they die?” Haru inquired.
Tyche’s expression scrunched up as he thought about it. “I’ve never seen it happen, but I guess it could. Humans and dragons are born with a large amount, and a lot would have to happen for a person to burn through all their luck.”
“But you can give a person good or bad luck? You did it with me,” Shey countered.
“No, I didn’t,” Tyche said sharply, his eyes snapping to Shey.
“I can’t create luck. Minor gods don’t create.
We can’t. We’re not powerful enough to create something from nothing.
That’s the realm of the major gods alone.
Our magic can only affect what already exists, and only within our wheelhouse.
As we were escaping, I tapped into your existing luck and forced up a bit of good luck if some was available, or I used your opponent’s bad luck.
The other option—though exhausting—is to steal a bit of luck that’s floating around out there.
” As he spoke, Tyche waved a hand in the air beside him.
Adrian’s head jerked up, and he stared into the empty air above Tyche’s head as if he expected to see…something. What the hell would luck even look like? “There’s luck not attached to people? And you can see it?”
For the first time, Tyche chuckled and smiled. Adrian shifted his gaze to the man and caught his breath. Tyche was adorable when he relaxed, but it was easy to miss since he was something of a grumpy rain cloud. His sharp features smoothed out, and his emerald-green eyes twinkled in the sunlight.
“Luck is everywhere. It sort of floats with its own energy. Some good luck there.” Tyche waved to a spot above his left shoulder.
“And there’s some nasty bad luck over there.
” He pointed to a spot behind Shey. They all looked, but there was nothing to see other than a redheaded woodpecker moving along the bark of a maple tree.
All the same, Shey planted his hands and heels to the ground and moved closer to Tyche.
“I can snatch up that luck and force it into a situation if the person doesn’t have the right luck readily available, but that takes more energy and magic to do.”
“What do you mean ‘readily available’?” Adrian asked.
Tyche’s brow furrowed for a second, and he dropped all the sticks he held to position his hands as if he were holding a large container.
“Remember, I said to imagine all beings having their luck held in a glass jar? Your luck is all mixed in there. If I want to force you to use some of your luck, I have to take from what’s resting near the top.
I can’t reach all the way down to the bottom to pluck out a piece of good luck.
” Tyche lowered his hands and dropped his eyes to the ground.
His voice was soft as he spoke, “I tried that once as a young god. It was bad.” His entire body shuddered violently.
What happened when you shoved your hand into a full jar? Everything overflowed and spilled out. In this case, a wild mix of good and bad luck clashing at once. Adrian shuddered as well and pushed those dark images away. The person must have suffered a horrible death.
“Do you, as a god, have luck? Do all the gods have luck?” Haru inquired, thankfully changing the subject.
Tyche brightened, seeming to recover from the old memory. “Yes, every living creature has luck. Even gods.”
Shey leaned forward, resting his elbow on his bent knee while lowering his head to catch Tyche’s eye. “So, in the prison, I heard you rattling something. And another time, you mentioned that you used to travel as a fortune-teller. What does seeing the future have to do with luck?”
Tyche’s smile returned, and it had become something surprisingly soft. He dug into the pocket of his grubby green cargo pants. After he withdrew his hand, he opened it to reveal a set of six small sticks that had been filed flat on two sides and had symbols carved into the ends.
“Are those bones?” Haru spoke up.
“What?” Adrian gasped, jerking away.
“Chicken bones, actually. I lost all my stuff during my capture. I made these from chicken wings or tiny chicken legs they served for a meal.” Tyche glanced at Shey.
“Really, the worst seasoning on chicken ever. Disgusting. If I could go back and curse anyone at that prison with bad luck, it would be the person in charge of preparing the meals.”
Shey plucked one stick from Tyche’s palm and scrutinized it. “What are these symbols? I’ve never seen writing like this.”
“They’re symbols for luck, ranging from very good to very bad. I infused the bones with a little of my magic so that they react to a person’s luck or the luck hanging in the air. They help me focus and clearly read the luck surrounding a person, especially those with a specific goal.”
“You threw the bones for me, didn’t you?” Shey pointed the white stick he held at Tyche.
“Of course I did, and they said that you had very good luck, which meant that you had an excellent chance of getting the hell out of there. That’s why I made friends with you and clung to you like a baby monkey to its mother.
” Shey laughed, and Tyche plucked the bone from his fingers.
“And don’t touch my bones. You’ll screw up their accuracy with your messy storm god magic.
” Tyche took a moment to rub his fingers all over the bone Shey had held before putting it with the others.
The laughter left Shey’s voice, and he became more solemn. “You also threw the bones for Yesuntei after they took her the final time.”
“To see her chances of not losing control. It all came back bad. Really bad.”
A chill fell across them even though they continued to sit in the warm afternoon sun as it poured through the break in the trees. Adrian couldn’t imagine what Shey and the other captives had gone through while they were imprisoned. He wished they’d killed Ruben on their way out.
“I know it’s not much consolation, but we killed the woman who was in charge of the place,” Adrian admitted.
Tyche cheered up. It was like watching a flower burst into full bloom in a flash. “You killed Scarella? Was it slow? Did you make her suffer? Did she beg for her life? Like ugly sobbing, on her knees, tears and snot all over her face, begging?”
“Scarella?”
“He means Yasmine. Blond and stick-thin,” Shey explained a bit more calmly. “She used a device that changed her voice to pierce part of your brain to make you instantly terrified. It was a unique and horrifying form of torture.”
“Oh, sorry. It was a quick death,” Adrian said.
“But she did beg profusely,” Haru chimed in as Tyche was wilting. “She looked like she was about to go to her knees, but Adrian moved too fast. However, she was sobbing, and there was quite a bit of tears and snot.”
Tyche sighed, his body sinking into a relaxed slump. “That’s good. As long as she was scared at the end.”
“I wanted to kill Ruben too, but we haven’t blown our cover with him yet, and we still need to figure out who his boss is.”
“You’ve met Ruben? He’s the one running everything?” Shey demanded.
Well, this was a long story.
Adrian launched into a fast recap of searching for Shey through Bellcairn, their adventure in Voxmore, and meeting up with Ruben in Bellcairn through some secret spy connections.
He might have left Vitor out of his explanation because he wasn’t sure if Caelan wanted the prince of Caspagir to know about his spy network.
“What we’ve been able to confirm is that it looks like a group of these rich assholes is trying to overthrow both Damardor and New Rosanthe by pulling together a small, personal army of people with magic.
However, according to Ruben’s bitching, it sounds like they haven’t kept anyone with magic alive. ”
Tyche grunted. “They push too far, and we die rather than give in to their demands.”
“They need to be stopped, but you’re right. We must get to the root. If Ruben isn’t the ringleader, we need to dig this person out. Otherwise, this person will go underground and reemerge somewhere else to start again.”
Adrian scratched his head. “See…that’s where things get complicated.
I agree. These people need to be stopped.
They’re rounding up and killing people indiscriminately.
However, our job was to find you and bring you home.
If Haru and I get caught here, it could explode into this whole war because I’m a royal guard of Erya and he’s…
well, he’s a fucking dragon.” Adrian paused and gave Shey a very pointed look.
The same argument could be made for the Crown Prince of Caspagir.
“I know. I know. Things are…complicated.” Shey said nothing more, and Adrian was left to think that maybe Tyche wasn’t aware of who Shey was. If the prince wouldn’t say the words, Adrian wouldn’t step into that mess.
“I think the best next step is to return to civilization and make some phone calls. To Cael. To your mom.”
“You’re enjoying that too much,” Shey drawled, to which Adrian just shot him a big shit-eating grin.
It wasn’t often that he got to tease a powerful prince with the fact that his mommy had called in the cavalry to save his ass, but Prince Shey could have brought an army with him and still would have needed help against this group.
“Civilization means food and coffee, right? Good coffee?” Tyche interjected.
Shey’s smile returned as he looked at him. “Yes, I promise civilization will mean good food and coffee, even if I have to roast the beans myself.”
“Fine.” Tyche hopped up and dusted off the seat of his pants. “I can hear a stream over that way. You three talk about politics and all the things that you can’t say around me. I’m going to splash off some of this mud, blood, and sweat.”
Before Adrian could say anything else, the little god started off toward the stream, leaving Adrian staring at Shey.
“Does he know who you are?”
Shey huffed a quiet laugh. “Honestly, I have no idea. I can’t even guess at what Ty knows and what he doesn’t. Yeah, he’s a god, and he’s a bit self-centered. I think it comes from being alone for so long.”
“Do you trust him?”
Adrian was surprised that Shey seemed to think about the question for several seconds. He didn’t take the question lightly or make a joke.
In the end, Shey nodded. “I do. Even with national secrets. He’s a simple guy and doesn’t want to rule my people. He values excellent coffee and a quiet life. And not getting killed. I can respect that.”
Yeah, a desire for a simple existence was something Adrian could understand, but it wasn’t something all that easy to provide if he was going to continue to hang out with the prince of Caspagir.