Chapter 3 Daesra #2
“I can’t,” Horizon says simply. “That’s not within my power. I, too, have rules I must follow, according to my nature.” I’m ready to scream again, fly into a rage, shatter this glassy tower around us, when they add, “But it is within your power to go there and retrieve her.”
I blink, struggling to see through the red haze trying to overtake me. “What?”
“You are of aether and earth, of two worlds, and yet you also tasted death when I remade you. No other god can enter his realm, but you can—yet another way in which you are unique. You are the only god that has experienced birth and death alike.”
They nearly sound proud, but I imagine it has more to do with their own strange act of creation than it does with me. I don’t care, beyond how this might serve me.
My focus sharpens. “Where is his realm? How do I enter?”
Now Horizon is silent.
“Tell me!” My cry resounds around the tower as I drag myself to my feet. I want to shred the curtain between us if that will give me my answer, never mind that doing so might destroy the part of me that’s not aether.
“I will tell you if you promise me one thing.”
I sweep out my hand, claws cutting the air. “Anything.”
Making bargains with gods is foolish, I know—I even told Sadaré as much after she made her own to help save me—but I’m beyond foolishness, verging on insanity.
Horizon’s words fall like a command, if a nearly nonsensical one. “When you bring Sadaré out, you will bring your mortal mother out as well—Melé.”
Once more, I blink. “You… care… about my mortal mother.” It’s more of a statement of doubt than a question, but they nod anyway. “Why bother with her? Why not my mortal father, as well?”
He was the one the god possessed when he was making love to my mother, after all.
“I untethered his soul during your conception. He’s beyond death’s reach, returned to the source.”
Just as Sky did to the god of aether in punishment for helping mortals, condemning Breath to be consumed and re-consumed forever. So it’s rather that Sea, as Horizon was known then, unmade my mortal father.
“But Sky only killed my mother,” I say with a raw, barking laugh, as if that were a small thing.
As if what had happened to my father was any better.
Half of Horizon is also Sky now, but I don’t think they like that part of themself overly much—hence why Sea ate him, subsuming his power and becoming what they are.
“So her soul went to this Isha’s realm.”
As much as I don’t want to honor whatever the fuck title he chose for himself, it’s easier to say than Death’s realm.
Too painful to imagine my mortal mother’s soul there.
I’ve tried not to think about her often.
Even knowing now that she didn’t immolate herself in shame over my becoming a daemon, rather that she was incinerated by Sky to punish Sea for having a hand in my birth, the memory of her still hurts like a half-healed wound buried under thick armor.
And yet, when Horizon remade me into a god, I heard a scream as I nearly died—or perhaps as the mortal half of me did die.
It was her scream, coming as if from a bottomless tomb. That, too, has haunted me as a god. And now Sadaré is there.
I can’t simply imagine that’s not the case when it comes to Sadaré. Picturing her in some dark and terrible place is unbearable, and yet I can hardly think about anything else.
Horizon gives me another nod as if confirming my deepest fears, not simply my mortal mother’s location.
This still doesn’t make sense. “But why would you still care about… Melé?” I burst out, her given name tasting strange on my tongue.
I haven’t used it much. When she was alive she was only Mother to me.
“Haven’t you as good as erased her, just like my father?
Aren’t you my divine mother and father both, now? ”
Horizon regards me for a heavy moment. “Everything is not wholly about you, my son, as much as it might surprise you to hear it. I would have you retrieve her for me because I can’t do it myself.
My reasons for wanting you to are my own.
If you do this, I’ll make gods of both her and Sadaré, if Sadaré no longer has the ring I gifted her. ”
Odd as it is, whatever their reasoning, Horizon does seem to care about the mortal woman with whom they made love.
Sea and Sky never loved each other—obviously, with the whole consuming business.
Sea changed what she couldn’t destroy when she absorbed Sky.
And now Horizon perhaps craves the partnership they never had outside of themself.
It might strike me as a tender thought, if I didn’t know Horizon to be anything but tender, and if my own partner hadn’t just been torn from me.
And yet, if what Horizon is telling me is true, I might be able to get Sadaré back and save my mortal mother at the same time.
While it’s not the revenge I’m craving, it’s something far better—something I hadn’t even imagined was possible, because I was too busy imagining the worst. Acting in the worst possible way.
I flinch now at the memory of different screams. Those of the townsfolk I had “inspired” to tear each other to pieces.
I can’t help but think I only breed ill after all.
And perhaps Horizon made me like this for a reason, forging me into a cruel blade—one that reflects their own changeable, tempestuous nature.
One that could cut into the underworld and bring back the one they love, with my love as leverage.
Perhaps Horizon knew Sadaré wouldn’t put on the ring.
Perhaps it was their plan for her to die all along, just like it was their plan for her to sacrifice herself in the maze to save me.
That I managed to save her in return was perhaps not a happy coincidence, and the promised reward of her immortality, both then and now, is only bait to once more manipulate me and Sadaré into getting exactly what they want.
Perhaps they even made me for this exact purpose.
Even if what they want is to save my mortal mother, the thought still tastes bitter. Once more, I’m imagining the worst—this time of Horizon. But, then again, this is how they made me.
They also made me to break the rules. To break down the boundaries between worlds. Perhaps simply to break everything in my path.
If I have to become the worst to save Sadaré, then I will. As a daemon, I was a monster. What kind of monster could I become as a god?
Whatever the cost, it’s one I’m willing to pay. After she got me out of the maze, I even swore that, if it came to it, I would go to hell and back for her.
So I suppose, then, I’m going to hell.
“You have a deal.” I smile at my divine parent without a trace of love in my eyes. “Now, tell me how to find her.”