35. Written in Blissful Language
Chapter thirty-five
Written in Blissful Language
Nicodemus
Xenobia came crashing through the door to my dorm like a hurricane.
I was used to people barging into my room like this and barely paid attention to her, as I was too engrossed in the notepad I was scrawling into.
“Well, do I have some shit to report to you my friend!” she yelled wildly as she slammed the door shut as hard as she could.
“I take it you have an eventful day yesterday?” I sarcastically said.
“You bet your sweet ass I did! Not only did I find out about this super-secret bracelet thing that Endymion made and my mom is hiding, but I have not only a Particeps Potestatis, but a new boyfriend!”
“YOU WHAT!” I screamed, practically throwing my notepad across the room to whip around in my desk chair.
She squealed and started bouncing up and down in place. “I know, right!”
“Well don’t be shy now! Who the Gehenna is it?”
“Ptolemy! We did the test and everything and we’re pretty sure we’re a match! We had our first kiss last night!”
I screamed like a schoolgirl and jumped up to take her hands and spin her in a circle. “Oh my Gods, Xena! That is amazing!”
“I know, I know! I’ve had such a huge crush on him since we met, and now, I have my own special Particeps Potestatis, too! I’m so excited!”
I simmered down slightly to pull her onto the bed beside me. “As excited as I am for you, and as much as I want to celebrate, I also need to know a bit more about what you found out.”
“Yes, right, serious time.” She pulled an old, weathered journal from her school bag and handed it to me.
I scanned the pages rapidly while she explained everything her mother had told her yesterday.
The information rattled my brain as it had hers, and when she was done, left me with more questions than answers.
“So, yeah, we got a big thing to worry about, and it’s written plain as day in her PUBLIC journals, which, I’m sure Ambermourn has his greedy hands all over. ”
“This is quite unsettling news. I never thought she would be hiding something so serious.” I swallowed loudly and let my trembling fingers fiddle with the page Xenobia was referencing. “We might need to pull Odysseus into this after all.”
“He’s one of the only Gods who knows of every door in Caelum, right?”
“More or less. My mother will have a conniption if I told her what we were up to, so Odysseus is our second-best bet. I know Caelum, sure, but not the way he does, not to mention, the guys who run it aren’t very fond of me.”
“Why not?” she scoffed.
I shrugged loosely. “Guess they think I’m a bad influence on Odysseus.”
“Yeah, ok.” Xenobia rolled her eyes before taking the journal back and sliding it into her bag. “We need to find that door, asap. If Ambermourn is even considering looking for this, then we need to cover its tracks.”
“Yeah, cause we’re so good at keeping things hidden,” I snorted.
She bubbled a laugh. “I mean, notoriously, no, we all suck at it, but if it’s away from where Seraphine said it would be, that deters him, doesn’t it? Can’t you make a Realm or something that we can hide it in?”
I smacked my knees loudly. “Maybe. We’ll sort out the details later. For now, we need to report this to Decimus and see if Magnus or Geneva have any leads on Ambermourn.”
“I can handle Decimus, since you certainly seem to have your hands full.” I cringed violently when the door opened, revealing a very pissed off Odysseus, whose eyes were pure gold with rage.
Xenobia sunk into the bed to hide behind me, as she knew the same I did that he was beyond boiling. “What exactly are you two up to?”
My voice shook on its way out. “Um, well…?”
“Spit it out!” he demanded.
“Just, come in here!” I grabbed his wrist and wrenched him forward while Xenobia shut the door, and this time, placed a barrier around it so no one else could listen in.
I sat Odysseus down and massaged his shoulders to try and ease his temper, but he was in no mood for my antics.
“Ok, before you completely lose your shit, let us explain.”
“It was Nick’s idea!” Xenobia cried.
I whipped around to her with black eyes that made her yelp. “You’re a fucking traitor!”
“What was Nick’s stupid, idiotic, grand failure of a fucking plan?” Odysseus barked.
“I wouldn’t say grand failure…”
“NICODEMUS!”
“Ok, ok, stop yelling!” I let my bottom lip puff out to try and gain some sympathy points, but he wasn’t budging.
I explained the situation fully from top to bottom, going over every detail we had collected up until this moment.
Odysseus listened with a wary look of confusion but still let me say my piece before casting judgement.
Finally, I finished and let myself fall slack.
“So, yeah, that’s what we’ve been up to. ”
He pinched the space between his eyebrows and exhaled loudly.
“So, let me get this straight. You had the bright idea to go after Pandora on your own, and invited not only your ex-abuser, but her ex-husband to track her down? And you’re dragging a fifteen-year-old down with you?
All while going behind all of ours backs, especially your husband? ”
“Pretty much, yeah,” I admitted.
He set his hands on my shoulders and shook me once. “Nicodemus, I love you, but you are going to send me into a fucking mental breakdown before I’m twenty-five.”
I patted the hands he had on me. “I know you’re mad, but we were planning on going to you anyway with what Xenobia found out yesterday. I swear, this isn’t me jumping the gun. I just didn’t want too many hands in the pot while I was trying to sort all of this out.”
“What part can I play?” he asked.
“I’m glad you asked!” I kissed him repeatedly to try and break up his scowl, and luckily, he finally broke a half-hearted smile for me.
Once I knew he was more himself, I slid into his lap fully and showed him Seraphine’s journal.
“She has the bracelet hidden away in a special door in Caelum. If we can find that door, we can find that bracelet before anyone else does.”
He scanned the contents of the journal curiously. “You guys are banking this whole mission on a piece of jewelry? How are you so sure Ambermourn or Pandora are going after this?”
“We’re not, but this is something that would not only aid Pandora, but it’s public knowledge for those who know where to look for it.
Ambermourn is obsessed with books, so of course he knows the ins and outs of things like this.
I want to eliminate all possibilities that he can get his hands on before we’re too late. ”
“I see…” He took the journal and opened it to the page we had left off on. “She didn’t drop any hints whatsoever about which door it could be? I mean, guys, there are billions, trillions, of doors to sort through. We could be doing this for an eternity!”
“Records, my love, records. Your people are good at keeping these things, aren’t you?” I asked in tune with tapping his cheek.
“I suppose we are. Yuri can access all of the files for me. We would just need to narrow it down to doors requested by Gods of Death I presume?”
“Not Yuri!” I whined in defeat.
“You guys got bad blood or something?” Xenobia questioned.
“Like you wouldn’t believe…” I huffed.
Odysseus smooshed my face with his palm. “Ignore the dramatic one. We should head to the Life Realm and see what we can dig up.”
“Should I call for Decimus?” I squeaked into his hand.
“Should I beat your ass?” he snapped back.
“Depends on the circumstance,” I said with a wink.
“Ok, EWW…!” Xenobia screamed at the top of her lungs.
Odysseus and I laughed loudly at her reaction and decided to get going instead of scarring the poor thing more than we had.
Caelum was bustling today with all the souls Endymion and Seraphine had dropped off this morning.
I didn’t condone Seraphine working in her condition, but she refused to listen to my nonsense and insisted on doing her part.
I had no room to argue with her and chose to bite my tongue instead of make things worse.
Xenobia and I followed behind Odysseus like lost puppies, both of us blinded by the incredible lights of life Elementals shooting through the sky to their next tasks.
To my displeasure, Odysseus walked straight up to Yuri, who beamed when he saw him, but frowned heavily when he caught wind that I was here as well. Odysseus chose to ignore the awkward air. “Hey, Yuri, I need a major favor from you.”
“Anything, friend,” he chimed politely. Odysseus whispered his request in Yuri’s ear before Yuri nodded once. “I got you. Give me fifteen minutes, max.”
“You’re a life saver, Yuri!”
“That’s you, handsome!” Yuri dissipated as a ray of light, but as he beamed away, he flashed me a scandalous sneer.
As soon as he was gone I stepped on Odysseus’s foot, which made him yelp and bring the leg up to hold his abused appendage. “Oww! What the Gehenna was that for?”
“Handsome? Who the Gehenna is he to call you handsome!” I demanded.
Odysseus scoffed once before pressing on the line in my eyebrows. “Nicodemus Crawford… are you jealous?”
“No, I’m territorial.” I latched onto his arm with a massive pout. “No one calls my man handsome but me,” I whined.
Odysseus gave Xenobia a shocked look that she giggled at. He took my chin and tilted my face up so he could get a good look at my pout, and when he saw it, he burst into hysterical laughter. “Oh my Gods, could you be any cuter!”
“I’m angry. Shut your pie hole.”
“You’re so jealous it’s insane!”
“I don’t like sharing, ok!”
“Love…” He puckered my lips to kiss me tenderly. “Do you really think I would ever consider anyone over you?” he sexily whispered against my mouth.
I flushed pink to his delight. “I dunno… I kind of cause a lot of trouble for you…” I said shyly as I kicked my leg.
He bit my lip softly and tugged on it. “I like trouble,” he replied before kissing me again, this time more passionately and longer. I didn’t realize that Yuri had returned right before the kiss, and that Odysseus was doing this on purpose, but I was also glad he did.
Fuck Yuri.
“Ah hem. Sorry to interrupt your…” Yuri pretended to throw up, “canoodling, but I have the reports you requested, Odysseus.”
“Ah, yes, thank you so much.” Odysseus took the reports and began to scan the pages rapidly. “Just as we thought.”
“What is it?” Xenobia gulped.
“Seraphine has only requested a handful of doors over the centuries, mainly for family members and other friends that have passed. There is a few, though, that remain unmarked.”
“It’s got to be one of those then, right?” I asked hopefully.
“Only time will tell. Let’s start searching.”
Odysseus flicked through thousands of doors in seconds, his eyes moving so rapidly that I was sure they would boggle right out of his head. I had never seen someone so focused and so skilled at one task, and envied him insanely for his tact, but knew this was not the time to praise him.
Xenobia gripped my arm as she watched him flip through doors, her entire body trembling with anxiety. I kissed her curls to try and ease her even slightly, but that wasn’t doing the trick this time, so I resorted to rubbing my thumb over the hand she had suctioned to my arm.
Odysseus had already checked fourteen doors by this time and was growing increasingly frustrated with the task at hand.
He was just as anxious as us, as he had no clue what we were going to face inside this doorway, and there would be major consequences back home for us tampering with Seraphine’s Realms like this.
Odysseus was not a rule breaker. He was, to a fault, obedient and trustworthy, so this was completely outside of his comfort zone. He was denying his natural instincts to comply with the rules by entertaining our insanity, and I knew I had to make it up to him later.
How I would do that, who knew, but I was hoping good sex would suffice for the time being.
Odysseus finally got to the door he desired and slammed a hand down on it in frustration. The door shrieked under the weight of him making it come to a grinding stop, and once it was still, a single light glowed above it.
It looked like any other door in Caelum. There was nothing special or remarkable about the door, but that was probably Seraphine’s plan. It was best to blend in instead of standing out in this circumstance.
“Everyone prepared for what we’re about to face?” he asked seriously.
“As we can be,” Xenobia assured.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Nick, you can handle this without a scythe?”
“I can handle it, I promise. I’ll make it work.”
He pushed the door open slowly, revealing a wet, foggy landscape before us. The door led to what looked to be the inside of a vast cave, hidden behind a rushing waterfall. I was glad to see water, as I knew Xenobia would flourish if it came down to a serious fight with the resource so close by.
Odysseus shut the door behind us and pulled his sword free, which illuminated the dark space ahead of us. “Well, it’s now or never.”
“Keep a close eye on our backside, Xena,” I instructed.
“Will do,” she peeped back.
Odysseus continued down the winding stone pathway into the belly of the cave, where wet walls cascaded around us and seemingly sucked us deeper. Our boots made wet slap sounds on the cold ground we traversed but we persevered, determined to see to the end of this cavern.
To our surprise, the cave was completely quiet.
Not a single sound beyond water dripping could be heard, which was even more eerie when we knew there had to be more to this place than what we were seeing.
Odysseus was the first to comment on this.
“This is… abnormally quiet, for a desolate cave that protects such a rare artifact.”
“I’ll say.”
“There’s a break up ahead. Something must be down there,” Xenobia pointed out.
“Stay vigilant,” Odysseus commanded.
We stepped into a blood bath.
There had been someone who protected this cave, alright, and that someone was the now dead Cerberus that laid on the blood-soaked ground before us.
The creatures heads were split completely in half, with its innards coating the floor and much of the platform behind it.
Xenobia gagged loudly and covered her face from the sight, but I was distraught to see a demon so wrongfully murdered.
“Oh Gods… who did this to you?” I gasped as I slid onto my knees beside the demon and brushed my hands across one of its snouts.
“You think this was a good demon?” Odysseus inquired.
“It was meant to protect, not destroy. The poor thing…”
“Um, guys?” Xenobia pointed to a stone pillar with a gold box atop. “We may have bigger fish to fry here.”
I stood carefully and set my hands on the gold box, which popped open without much struggle. I was astonished by this, but when I pulled the top off, an even more sickening sight greeted me. “Fuck…” I breathed in horror.
“What is it, Nick?” Odysseus whimpered.
I turned to him with sweat slipping down my cheeks. “It’s empty.”
End of Book Four