Chapter 7 Daesra
DAESRA
I CATCH Orseus entirely off guard. I had just been writhing in apparent agony on the ground, but now all I feel is consuming rage. And hunger.
Bottomless hunger.
I charge into him like a bull. He only narrowly avoids my skewering horns by seizing them and wrenching my head aside at the last second, though my shoulder still slams into his stomach with the force of a battering ram.
My arms catch him around the waist, and I tackle him to the ground, rolling us both over the sand in a violent embrace, crunching through piles of bone.
We finally land with me on top, his arms pinned beneath my knees, his shoulders by my hands, my claws digging in.
My teeth part over him just a handsbreadth from his face—ready to rip out his throat.
At least he’s no longer laughing, his blue eyes narrowing up at me. For a moment, they seem to shine with a light that doesn’t exist here.
And then he somehow yanks his arm out from underneath me despite his smaller, less godly stature, snaking his fist up between us to uppercut me on the chin—hard enough to snap my head back and close my teeth on my tongue.
Pain shoots through my jaw, slicing through my red haze at least enough for me to pause.
Which gives him enough time to headbutt me directly in the face. The pain becomes more of an explosion throughout my entire skull.
Now all I see are stars. In my dazed confusion, I feel him sit up and partially shove me off him.
Instead of hitting me again, which he would have every opportunity and every right to do, he grips my cheeks between his fingers, squeezing with firm but painless pressure, and gives my head a little shake. Like one would a child. Almost fondly.
“You utter fool,” he says with surprisingly mild bite.
“You let their hunger overtake you when you only needed to finish consuming them. Look, they’re already gone.
” He actually turns my head to the side for me, to where I can see the many, many crumpled bodies all around us.
Pogli sits among the unmoving piles, no longer in danger but watching us both warily. Keeping a safe distance from us.
Or maybe only from me, I think with a sharp pang.
“Your capacity is far greater than theirs—all of theirs combined,” Orseus continues. “You can handle it. Swallow it down.” This time, he gives me a light pat on the cheek that’s almost a slap.
It’s most assuredly enough for me to glare at him. “I’d think that had a filthy double meaning if I hadn’t just tried to kill you.”
He grins back at me. “Why would I let that stop me? Threat of death adds spice. Besides, I’m not that easy to kill.” He gestures down at himself, where he’s coated in sand rather than blood. “Obviously.”
I decide he’s one of the oddest people I’ve ever met—around the same time I realize our legs are still partially entangled. I extract myself with all haste, standing and dusting myself off, trying for an air of nonchalance as if I hadn’t just utterly lost my mind.
“You could have told me that would happen,” I say with clipped words. “I had no idea I would feel… them… like that. Their hunger.” I can’t help shuddering and wiping my palms on my tunic even though it’s mostly free of sand now.
“I didn’t exactly have time to explain, did I?” he says, hopping to his feet. “And every soul is different. Those were a bit overripe, weren’t they?” He makes a face of exaggerated disgust, while rolling his shoulder as if it might hurt.
I could apologize, but I don’t. I even hope I hurt him a little.
“You took in one,” I bite out. “Try over a hundred.” I shudder again before his words sink in. The realization of what I’ve actually done. “So those were souls.”
“Don’t act so shocked. Prudishness doesn’t suit you, and you knew what those sparks of aether were—what it is in every mortal, alive or dead or ghoulish.
You contain far more than that inside you, and yet you don’t have access to the realm of the gods here.
No way to replenish your stores.” He makes a sweeping gesture across the sand.
The heaps of corpses. “This is one way.”
“By eating mortal souls?” I’m definitely not feigning the horror in my voice. He’s right that I already suspected what those little lights were, now subsumed—those screams in my head, now faded—but for him to so casually suggest doing it again is another thing entirely.
He shrugs. “It feels good now, doesn’t it?”
Damn, he’s right again. I feel completely refreshed, clearheaded, and lighter on my feet. No, I feel fit to sprint across a continent. To swim an entire sea—if not that one in front of me. Ready to take on the whole world.
Except it’s not the world I need to take on, I have to remind myself, but rather the underworld.
Which is admittedly less appealing. And yet I don’t waste any time starting up the beach, patting my leg for Pogli to follow as I navigate my way around the crumpled, rotting bodies and piles of bone.
I don’t want to remain near those waves any longer than I have to, or give any more ghouls time to swarm.
Orseus follows without comment, even if he’s supposed to be guiding me. It’s not hard to find my way up to the dead scrub at the head of the beach, which creates a ragged curtain for what lies beyond. When I push through it, the sight stops me in my tracks.
A wide plain stretches before me, hemmed in on one side by the spread of a delta that flows to the sea in braided channels of muddy orange and grayish-green water to make a brackish, poisonous-looking mix, and dark foothills that rise to jagged black peaks on the other, as sharp-looking as glass.
The way forward is blocked by the curve of a rust-colored river and the mountains behind it.
Between me and an obvious ferry dock in the distance is yet another ocean—but this time an ocean of people.
Dead people, but not moving corpses, at least.
As shades, they look human and alive enough, and all too numerous to navigate.
Huge makeshift-looking encampments dot the edge of the delta to my right, rising with ramshackle wooden structures in the rust-colored mud, but it’s the line of shades waiting before the distant dock that’s the most impressive.
There are hundreds, thousands, gathered in relative order.
From across the plain, the line only reaches halfway to where I stand in the still-gray sand near the beach, and yet in the mortal realm it would have stretched all the way from the vineyard to the neighboring village.
That is, if I hadn’t destroyed both vineyard and village.
“Welcome to the underworld.” Orseus raises encompassing arms to the spread of the river, the black mountains beyond, and the angry dark sky above the throng of people.
“Also known as Thanarus, the Land of Death. Also known as hell. This delta is actually the convergence of two rivers.” He points to the rust-colored tributary that cuts across the plain like a wound, where the line of people leads.
“This is the River of Hatred.” He gestures off to the right, across the delta, where a thick mist blocks any view.
“The River of Regret joins it on the other side, before they both empty into the sea.”
It must be adding the greenish current to the delta’s braids. No source of water I’ve seen here has looked welcoming, let alone drinkable.
“Are there any good sides of this place?” I mutter as Orseus starts forward, taking the lead once more and heading into the river plain, toward the end of the line.
“That depends on who you are and who you ask.”
“I’m me and I’m asking you.” I follow him with one last glance at the dead beach behind us to make sure I’m not being followed by anything other than Pogli, who doesn’t seem bothered by the spread of the sickly delta alongside us or the teeming shades in front of us.
The people are far enough away that perhaps he hasn’t spotted them yet, but I can hear the tumult of raised voices like a low hum of insects at this distance.
The salt and rot of the sea breeze shifts to sulfur and something more human, if still overly ripe.
Orseus shrugs without turning. “I think it’s all lovely, in the way an efficient mechanism is lovely.
Take a water mill.” He lazily spins a finger in the air as he walks.
“The water flows in, turning the wheel, which cranks the gears that shift the stone that grinds the flour that feeds the masses. Or at least some of the masses. All the parts and pieces are important. This river crossing controls the flow of souls into the underworld.”
I eye the seemingly interminable line of shades as we draw closer.
They’re all different, everyone dressed in a mix of clothing, from ragged scraps to gold-embroidered robes.
They’re old, young, and everything in between, with even children among them, scampering around seemingly alone or held in place by anxious-looking adults.
“Who gets this flour? You said only some?”
“There are too many dead for the underworld to sustain them all—most need to fade sooner or later.” Orseus tosses his head.
“Just look at how many new arrivals are waiting who haven’t even fully entered yet!
But this is the worst of the congestion, since everyone who dies must cross the river here to await judgment. ”
“Sounds like a lot of waiting.” Waiting that seems like an opportunity for them to start fading or to get picked off by ravenous ghouls. Waiting that I have no intention of doing.
I have to find Sadaré before she has any risk of fading.