CHAPTER ELEVEN
“The world was a different place before humans,” Kellen begins, a low murmur as deep as the ocean whispering in my ear. “Before monsters. It was a hollow space of endless darkness crafted by the hands of the demiurge for their own amusement.
“The lump of sand, dirt and water held no purpose so they created smaller, less powerful versions of themselves. They shaped them and gave them a singular drop of their blood and released them upon the earth.”
The flames snap in the grate.
“These beings took advantage of the darkness to commit deeds that the demiurge had not permitted.
They gave birth to all manners of creatures.
Monsters that only knew the shadows. They were told to hide from the demiurge, but the demiurge saw everything and as punishment, created the sun.
a relentless ball of light there was no hiding from in a wasteland of sand.
“The creatures the demiurge created begged for forgiveness. Begged for their children to be spared. The demiurge took pity on the monsters and created night. They filled the sky with the moon and the stars. But in the day, the sun would return, and all the creatures would run and hide.
“It was during this phase that the demiurge saw how empty the earth was in the day and made a different kind of creature. One that stalked on two legs and began to hunt and kill the others. This creature was vicious. Scared. Hungry. It didn’t understand the importance of balance.
But the demiurge favored them. They gave them knowledge, the ability to create fire. To hunt. They also gave them rules.
“The day was theirs, but the night belonged to the monsters. And at first, the two seldom crossed paths. They lived in a tenuous understanding. Some even began to coexist and intermingle. They learned to work together. With them, Day built homes. Built grand structures and thrived into great civilizations. Some began to worship the Night. Bowed to them as though they were the demiurge.”
I shift, trying to get off my side, to pull higher so I can sit up.
Roan pushes off the floor and moves to guide me. With gentle hands, I’m drawn back against the center cushion. Close enough that I slump a little against Lukan.
He doesn’t right me, nor does he pull away.
Kellen continues. “Seeing this, the real demiurge grew resentful. Angry. They created chaos and discord, pitting Day against Night until the resentment tore them apart. Not all of them. There were those who continued to stand shoulder to shoulder during the Divide. Monsters and humans. Brothers and sisters in battle against those who only saw hate. Father...” He meets my gaze squarely.
“Father is the demiurge of the wild. The wilderness and darkness.
He created the shade that protected the humans.
He gave them plants and fruits. He made the earth fertile so humans never had to worry about taking care of themselves.
He created animals for companionship and food.
“He never hated humans, but unlike the other demiurge who require obedience, worship and devotion, Father wanted silence and peace. He lived his years in solitude, caring for his kingdom. Even while the war raged beyond the edges of his forest, it meant nothing to him ... until the fight landed on his doorstep.”
“Humans set his forest on fire,” Lukan murmurs when Kellen goes silent. “They burned every tree. Every bush. They scorched the earth so nothing would ever grow again.”
My hands aren’t quick enough to stifle my gasp of horror. “That’s terrible.”
“He was a monster in their eyes. A devil. They accused him of luring children into his woods to devour. They blamed him when a healthy man fell sick or when a woman lost a child. He was the cause of all their misery, but they were careful in their resentment. Too afraid not to anger him further.
“Then, one day, a girl went missing. Then two. Then three. By the time they realized something was truly wrong, eight girls had vanished from their beds in the night. They sent a group of men into the woods and they searched all day, delving deeper into places they knew they shouldn’t venture.
But that’s where they found them. All eight girls, stripped, cut and brutalized, and hung from a tree. ”
“Oh my God!”
Kellen sighs and drops his gaze to the patch of carpet between his feet.
“It became clear to them that day that the devil lived in those woods. A monster who craved flesh and blood. And if they didn’t kill it quickly, it would keep coming for their daughters.
But you can’t just fight the devil. You have to make sure you kill it and the only way to kill the devil is by burning him. ”
I have a clear picture of the creature I see in my dreams. Not his face, but the coiling roots twisted around his body. The majestic antlers extending up into the heavens. I want to understand their confusion, but if they had spent even a second with him...
The thought ends there.
It scatters the way my dreams do when I jerk awake and find myself alone.
Perhaps he was a monster. A malicuri that terrorized the villagers. Maybe he was responsible for their grief. I wasn’t there. I can’t speak with certainty to the allegations, but ...
He’s not a monster.
He’s not evil.
I don’t know how I know, but I feel it in all the places that pang with emptiness. The void I’ve had to live with for so long. It fills the cavity of my chest with pain. With injustice.
With anger.
I am fueled by a need to find these people and ... and what? Kill them? They lost their children. They were angry and scared, and grieving. This was an age before technology and MythBusters debunking superstitions. They thought they were doing what was right.
And still...
“It’s all awful,” I say at last, heart breaking for everyone involved.
“It was one of their own who was hurting the girls,” Lukan mutters. “A pillar of their community who led the charge to find the monster.”
“Father hadn’t been a monster until they made him watch his trees and animals scream as they were burned alive.
He lost his kindness that day. His mercy.
He no longer stayed out of the fight but charged into it with the full strength of his power.
The new forest that bloomed from beneath the ashes was watered by rivers of blood.
Everything regrew red. At the heart of it, Father built his kingdom.
He had grown his army from only him to legions.
Thousands of monsters from every corner flooded to him, giving him their swords to defeat the human race.
“And it started to work. His army out matched the humans and eventually, they drove the humans out. Shrunk their numbers until there were hardly any left.”
“No...” I groan. “They should band together and fight the demiurge for being so reckless and selfish.”
“But the demiurge never see themselves as reckless or selfish,” Lukan murmurs into my ear. “They created all and can destroy it all if they wish.”
“But Father was a demiurge, too, right? So, why couldn’t he talk to the other demiurge and tell them to calm down?”
“Father left the other demiurge when the wilderness began to take form. He fell in love with it and wanted to be left alone.”
I sigh and shift back to recline against Lukan’s side. I don’t resist when Roan rests his head on my lap. The weight of him in my arms, the warmth of Lukan against my side is a comfort I didn’t think I would need this badly.
“He sank his powers into the earth. He focused on creating life through nature, and all of it was torn away. Murdered before his eyes and him being powerless to stop it,” Roan murmurs. “He’s not a monster. He’s a father who watched his children get slaughtered.”
My heart aches. It breaks in my chest as every second plays through my head with painful clarity.
“Did he get the people responsible?” I ask, sliding the fingers of my free hand through Roan’s strands, stroking lightly.
“He did, but at the cost of his love. The loss and the carnage broke something in him. He became a rabid shell of hatred that began to consume the earth. Killed the soil. Destroyed the trees. The other demiurge realized he was about to consume the entire planet, they combined their power and imprisoned him. They locked him in his own kingdom.”
“But that wasn’t enough,” Lukan continues.
“The war didn’t stop. It escalated as Father’s army sought vengeance for the betrayal.
As a last resort, the demiurge created a realm, a place away from humans, and locked up all the monsters on an island drenched in fog and completely hidden from the human world. ”
“That’s awful,” I whisper, letting Roan snuggle closer. Press his face into my stomach. “And unfair. They started this.”
“Under different circumstances, separating the two races was the better choice,” Kellen promises. “A lot of those creatures were dangerous even to their own kind. If allowed to stay, they would have destroyed the world.”
“Not that it stopped the monsters from trying to break free and return to their war. Every quarter when the pockets open, the monsters would stumble into the human realm and cause destruction on Father’s orders. Even imprisoned and confined, his rage never wavered.”
“Until her,” Kellen murmurs.
My ears perk. “Her?”
Roan sucks lightly at my breast. Tiny nibbles that have my back arching, pressing more into his mouth.
Lukan brushes the rest of the blanket away to bare the other breast.