Chapter 19 Rae #2
Understand him. Why he has done all he has done. What happened back then. Why I was told he’d died.
What I feel is not dread, it’s impatience. Anticipation. I’ve lived with this hole in my chest where he used to live for so long, I interpret everything as a negative feeling.
“Listen, child,” the telchin says, startling me, and I almost laugh.
Does he even know how old I am? How old I feel?
“Not many know this story, and I travelled through the worlds to observe its continuation. The story of Marsyas the dragonking of the house of Dikerotes and Phaethon, the great Eosphor.”
At the mention of Phaethon, I sit up straighter.
“In the Sixth World, many centuries ago, some say a millennium, lived a great king called Marsyas. He was kind at first. Governed his kingdom as the Sleeping Gods willed, with fairness and justice. It was a golden era. His alliances and treaties with the other kingdoms brought peace and wealth to the land. He married a princess. Had two sons.”
“How nice for him. Is there a point to this?” I mutter, getting annoyed at this list of good things that happened to an ancient king when I’m late for the banquet—and then it hits me that I’m being rude to a powerful, mystical being. “Sorry.”
But he ignores me. “His wife and sons died. Murdered in their beds. It broke his mind. He blamed the neighboring kingdom for the assassination—his cousin. Blamed him of wanting the throne. He decided to take over that kingdom, and the next. After that, he went to the Pillar temple and declared that he would become emperor of the world because he was the one chosen by the Gods for that role.”
I have a very bad feeling about this story, and that’s aside from my sympathy for this tragic king. His name rings a bell. “What happened then?”
“He committed hubris by attributing such a decision to the Gods. The Gods generally don’t bother with the affairs of men.
They sleep in their cocoons, outside of the Nine Worlds, not bothering with prayers and curses.
But this time the Gods stirred, leaving the dreams they inhabit, and punished him with eternal life. ”
“…swhat?” A laugh escapes me. “Punished him by not letting him die? That’s it?” My mirth is giving way to anger. Wasn’t I cursed the same way? “What does this have to do with me?”
“This isn’t about you,” he snaps.
I subside, chastised. Fine, no more comments. But why is he telling me this? There is no clock in this room to see the time but I can feel it ticking by.
“His human body died and was buried, but his soul remained alive, thrashing inside the confines of his tomb.”
Oh. That isn’t nice, true. A shiver racks me. Gods.
“His soul eventually escaped and wandered the land as a lumen—what you here call a lesser fairy. Over time his memory faded and he diminished into the shape of a boy. Lost, confused, not aware anymore of who he used to be, he came to live with me.”
“You? You were there?” I hadn’t meant to ask this out loud, but…
“Not exactly. He lived with a telchin,” he says. “But we are all as one, one and the same.”
I frown at him. I’d heard that all telchins shared one soul. A mind hive. But I never considered what it actually meant in practical terms.
“He lived with me,” he goes on, “for centuries, fading, turning to shadow and dust. Until he met Persephona.”
My eyes all but bug out of my head. “Wait. Is this the story of the Lady of the Underworld and the Last Reversal?”
“Indeed it is.”
“I’ve never heard it told this way.”
“Never from this perspective, you mean, because you always hear about Persephona and Elisseas, her lover.”
“What was Marsyas’ relationship to her, then?”
“Oh, he fell in love with her. She broke his heart. But before all that, she gave him a dragonskin and a dragonstone, making him a great serpent, an earth dragon. A wyrm. No, more than that: a dragonking. That turned the tide of history, the tide of war. Because by that time, the chains on the Eosphoric army hanging from the firmament had grown loose with the impending Reversal. They fell to earth, attacked the human population. Marsyas was able to call on the dragons, alive and dead, to join in the battle.”
“He won,” I whisper.
“Indeed he did. Saved his world in the process. Redeemed himself. But to save her, during the final battle, he swallowed the great Eosphor.”
“Phaethon.”
“Yes, Phaethon,” the telchin says, a touch of impatience entering his voice. “The avatar of Asterion, or Astar, the first Eosphor. He merged with Marsyas the dragonking and became a different being.”
“Astar.” I’m getting confused with the names and souls. “But…”
“We lose track of him after that. The Reversal changed the Sixth World, as it did all Nine Worlds. The waters of creation flowed down the Pillar, through the broken, open gates, bringing with them other creatures, but also disease and death. The world drowned for a long while. The people of the Sixth World rebuilt on the permanent sea that swallowed the old ruins in the sky. Ruins from the Reversal before that, an eternal cycle turning the worlds over and over. The ruination that forced King Masren to flee with his people, looking for another world to inhabit, Eosphors and dragons slipping through with them, both from that world and others.”
“Inhabit? Another world to conquer and slaughter, you mean,” I say absently. “Don’t beautify his deeds.” But I’m still thinking of Astar and the telchin’s revelation. “Wait. Are you saying that Athdara has in him the original Eosphor? The first of them?”
“So it is said. Astar is the most powerful of them all. And Eosphors have ever been moving through the Nine Worlds, looking for their homeland. They have no compassion or feelings. They have no compunction about killing and eradicating worlds. They only have one goal, one mission, and that is to find that homeland they lost millennia ago.”
Hells.
“He’s here to end this world. He’s only biding his time.” That was what the king had told me about Jai. Is that Phaethon’s goal? Destroy and escape?
“Athdara,” the telchin says, “is a dragonking in the making. A creature able to summon dragons and open portals, through Phaethon. Through Astar.”
“A power the king wants to harness. So why hasn’t it happened yet? Why have you told me this story? What are you hoping I’ll do?”
“I’m not hoping for anything. I’m not here to direct fate. Fate needs no direction from me. I don’t care whether the king wants to get wings or whether Phaethon wants to destroy every world and return to his people, and what he thinks he will find there.”
“Meaning?”
“I am not offering answers. Only more questions.”
I huff in frustration. “I realized that. Just what I needed…”
“What I’m doing is nudging you,” he says, “toward the right questions.”
I frown. “What happened to the speech of ‘I’m not here to direct fate’?”
“I’m not directing,” he says. “Not this time. Just nudging. That’s it. I will sit back and watch.”
Clenching my jaw, my teeth grinding together, I stand up. “Thanks for nothing, then.”
“Remember the story.”
No story matters to me unless it has a happy ending. And who cares about a story? A myth? It’s not real. In real life, happy endings are a rarity and I’m not going to start hoping for that.
Too late for hope now. And yet, as I’m finally given leave to depart for the banquet, I feel it’s not all over.