Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
Kaos
“Her . . . training should end within the next few weeks. That is when we will need to travel north once more and collect her as well as—” Razia’s nasally voice continued explaining a rather simple concept to my sister, either unaware or uncaring of the danger that slowly built with each tap of Solace’s nail against the wooden arm of her chair.
I folded my arms across my chest, leather creaking with the movement and interrupting Razia’s monologue for a moment.
Both goddess and sycophant turned minutely, locking me with twin looks of impatience; Razia because the man simply loved to hear the sound of his own voice, and my sister because I’d relentlessly expressed my .
. . displeasure regarding the sacrifice of the girl.
“Silence, brother,” Solace hissed, her long nails digging sharply into the wood, deep enough to leave gouges. Razia winced at the action; the chair was no doubt some sort of Samyrian priceless heirloom.
I couldn’t conjure any sort of sympathy for the sniveling man—he should have known better than to let my sister around priceless artifacts. She cared nought for their significance or value beyond what they could offer her.
Are you thinking of the chair or of yourself?
I grunted, a response my sister was more than accustomed to receiving, before gesturing with my hand for Razia to continue.
The man straightened his loud red cloak with a huff before launching back into his explanation.
I drowned his voice until it was near an indistinguishable buzz in the back of my mind while I focused on other, much more important matters.
Like that so far, I’d been unsuccessful in locating our artifacts.
I’d snuck away on more than one occasion to retrace my steps from when I was just a fledgling god making a home in Elyria. But my brief searches had been to no avail.
Solace seemed as apathetic and unperturbed as usual, often dismissing my fears with an impatient wave of her bony hand and a barely concealed scoff.
The tension between us was as thick as ever, the chord of dissent vibrating at a higher frequency with each passing day.
So much so that I woke each morning with a general feeling of unease and discomfort, like I was in the wrong place.
Something was urging me to search more thoroughly for our artifacts—our last tethers to this world—and I didn’t believe for a minute that it was solely due to the emergence of the two godlings.
My father—and most likely half sister—were planning something, moving in the shadows like thieves in the night, preparing the humans to attack.
I have to find those artifacts.
They were imperative to my own plans, ones my sister was completely blind to.
“Kaos, are you listening at all? Is there anything rattling around that massive head of yours, or is it simply filled with air?” Solace’s voice whipped through the empty room, bouncing off the stark white walls that characterized every building in Samyr before twirling up into the rafters that reached toward the heavens.
It was as if her cutting remarks were everywhere, biting into my exposed skin and seeping deep into my mind.
I need to leave this place.
“No, sister, I am not,” I admitted, my tone hard and unforgiving. Solace’s white eyes widened and flashed with anger while her fingers bit into the wood once more.
“And why is that, brother? Is this too boring for you? Beneath your boots, perhaps?” she hissed, causing Razia to retreat a step.
Perhaps he’s not as dumb as he seems.
I shook my head at her vitriol. “You know what occupies my mind, Solace”—she scoffed at my admittance, but I spoke over it—“something far more important than whatever heinous thing you’ve done to that girl.”
“I’ve secured a weapon that will win us this war, Kaos. Or have your mortal sensibilities sidetracked you from what is really important here?”
I ground my teeth together, desperately swallowing the retort that was on the tip of my tongue.
“If they get ahold of those artifacts—” I gritted, but was rudely interrupted by Solace’s shriek.
“They WON’T! How many times must I tell you?
They. Are. Safe!” She pushed from the white throne with such force that the chair was knocked to the ground, the clatter drowned out by her deafening voice full of malice as she gestured wildly in my direction.
The air began to stir, ruffling my hair and picking Razia’s cloak up in a tailspin.
Perhaps it will wrap around his neck and strangle him, I thought.
“No one has seen them for centuries! We haven’t felt them for three decades! They were moved and then hidden once more. They are of no concern to us!”
I watched, faking boredom even as my heart beat at a rapid tempo beneath my chest, as Razia finally wrestled his cloak away from his face, revealing wide, worried eyes and disheveled hair.
I jutted my lip out. Pity.
“KAOS!” Solace yelled, pulling my attention back. Her chest heaved with frustrated breaths, her hands clutched into tight fists as if readying to strike me.
“I disagree, sister,” I said evenly and not for the first time.
“Of course you do,” she scoffed.
“Our sister—”
“Half sister,” she spat, but I ignored her outburst.
“Moved across the Iceshelf three decades ago, the same time we felt the artifacts for the last time. That does not seem like a coincidence to me. I think—”
One of Solace’s fists came up, her fingers uncurling before closing once more. In an instant, the breath was stolen from my lungs, my airflow restricted entirely.
My eyes felt like they might pop from my head in surprise as my hands moved from my chest to cover my neck, as if that motion could protect me from my sister’s magic.
Never in our many centuries of life had my sister turned her power against me. It was always her and me against the schemes of our father and siblings.
We were two sides of the same coin, Solace and I, always working to be in balance and synchrony, even when we disagreed.
I carved my gaze across her face, desperately searching for something that remained of the sister I knew, but all I saw was the flashing of anger in her white orbs and a sneer curling her thin lips.
The rigidity of her posture and the slow tightening of her knuckles as the air continued to bleed from my lungs sank my heart to the depths of my gut.
I’d long ago predicted this day; knew that at some point our paths would separate. But I never anticipated the despair that would nearly overwhelm me at the thought of walking away from my remaining sibling.
Her white, gaunt face was carved from stone, no remorse reflecting in her lifeless eyes. My hands fell away from my throat in resignation, but Solace never relented.
She intends to kill me.
My knees hit the floor just as my palms slapped the ground, a thunderclap accompanying the motion as the ground rocked beneath my sister’s feet. Razia’s squeak and subsequent tumble would have been amusing if it weren’t for the situation.
Solace’s grip on her Air Magic faltered as she tried to calm the raging floor enough for her to find footing once more.
I retracted my palms from the ground just in time to halt a giant ball of water with a wall of fire. Steam erupted, coating my skin with droplets of boiling water as my magic consumed hers.
“Enough, Solace,” I barked, my voice commanding attention and respect. My sister’s chest was heaving, her hair saturated from sweat and the diffusing globe of water, but her hands remained poised to strike once more.
“Enough,” I said a second time, quieter and resigned. I dropped my hands to my thighs, palms open and unassuming, hoping she would have enough sense not to attack.
Thankfully, Solace’s arms drooped with each passing second, even though her muscles remained tense and coiled.
“You will follow, brother.” She spoke through gritted teeth, incredulous that I would even think of denying her.
I shook my head slowly, sadly, my braids catching on the leather on my back.
“No, Solace,” I whispered, pain tinging my words. “No, I can no longer do that.”
“What?” Her gasp of outrage caused Razia to scramble to his knees on the floor, tripping on his cape as he tried to stand once more.
I sighed heavily, holding her gaze with my own.
“I will follow you no longer. We both knew this day would come—”
Solace slashed her hand across the space between us.
“No. I forbid it!” she shrieked.
Discreetly, I opened a small portal at my back, ready to step into it if she tried to attack once more.
Solace, of course, noticed the movement, even in her anger.
“Where do you think you’re going to go, brother? Some place I cannot find you?” she sneered before spitting on my face. I flinched at the sudden movement, her saliva running sluggishly down my cheek. I made no move to wipe it away.
“Go,” she spat, waving her hand at the portal to my back that steadily grew in size. “Go find your stupid artifacts.”
I stepped slowly backward, keeping my eyes on my sister at all times.
It cannot be this easy.
“But if you go, know that I will find you, and I will kill you. You are no longer my brother, you are one of them, and I will exterminate you alongside the mortals you loved so deeply once.”
I froze, one foot enveloped by the spinning obsidian vortex of my portal. Slowly, I raised my eyes, soft with memories and hurt, to hers, hardened by years of grief and hate.
“You loved them once, too,” I said softly, which only fueled Solace’s ire.
Her voice shook with barely restrained rage. “They took everything from me. I hate them, and I hate you.”
“So be it, sister,” I whispered as I moved backward further, the blackness nearly encasing me completely.
Solace’s shriek of rage and despair echoed through time and space as I drifted to Meru, the midpoint for my realm walking. Her unhealed hurt cut like a knife through the marrow of my bones, deep into my very soul.
But it was no longer my job to fix her. I’d tried, and failed, many times over the last centuries.
If she couldn’t see reason in my pleas, then it was time for me to move onward and do what I should have done when my boot touched Elyria’s surface for the first time in centuries.
It was time to find the artifacts and destroy them.
Or find someone who could.