Chapter 11 #2
Kleio nodded slowly, giving nothing away of his thoughts as he rounded his table and turned back to face me.
“Did you train with the ability before using it in the avalanche?” He asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Every chance we could.”
“And yet when it came time to use the skill, you couldn’t manage the task.”
“We can only hold the phasing for a few seconds. The avalanche—”
“You think the gods would gift you with a few measly seconds of intangibility and then task you with surviving an avalanche?
Your Blessings were always meant to be just that; Blessings.
You were meant to use them, Dante. You were meant to be grateful for your gifts and, as a result, train with them, hone them, perfect them.
You and your partner hurled yourself into every Trial with the training of a mortal man, not that of a god.
You didn't survive the Ninth because of what you were Given. You survived the Ninth because of what you took. The others are not pleased with that success.”
“Took? I don’t understand.”
“You aren’t meant to. And I can’t tell you any more than that.
In truth, I’ve said too much as it is. Take it as a warning or foolishness, whatever you choose.
My point, Dante, is that you were supposed to have come to us far more adept with your Blessings than you are.
Your people have not passed the Trials for centuries because their focus has shifted.
It's not the body which needs to be honed for the challenges you face but the mind, the soul. And you, Dante of House Viper, come to us woefully short in both.”
I had the distinct impression I was being insulted. I couldn’t help but scowl at him as he paced before me.
“I don’t blame you,” Kleio added quickly, his tone one of resignation.
“Deimos and the others have all but given up on your race. You’re far too distracted with your internal power struggles and material luxuries to fathom the larger battle at play here.
You’ve proven yourselves inadequate. So imagine our surprise when, for the first time in generations, your kind managed to prop up a pair that looked as though they might actually have the makings of Champions for the first time in a thousand years.
Sure, your plight was intriguing, vastly entertaining for the lesser Geist who began to crowd the arenas to watch.
But it became clear to those of us who truly understand the game that Trial after Trial you were making it through by the skin of your teeth.
Not through skill, not through power or Blessing, and not through faith.
You were blind rats particularly lucky to stumble upon a piece of cheese again and again.
So when the Ninth came and you made it through, once again, but this time via the power that you stole, rather than what they gave you, it was the ultimate insult.
You spat on their Blessings and succeeded anyway.
You cannot imagine how furious that made them. ”
“That’s why you warned me that first day,” I said then, understanding dawning upon me. “Because they were angry we had succeeded.”
“They were,” Kleio admitted with a nod. “But no longer. Now, they're simply suspicious. And paranoid. I'm certain I don’t need to tell you how that can be even more dangerous.”
I didn’t respond. I just allowed his words to sink in, to truly understand the danger I was in for the first time.
The gods I’d worshiped my whole life, had been raised to believe in with absolute certainty, had dedicated my life to proving I was worthy of joining, were suspicious of me.
They were paranoid because they believed I’d stolen something from them.
What that was, I couldn’t fathom. How could I have taken something from them when I’d never been all that convinced before they even existed?
“What do you know about the history of your people?” Kleio asked, so suddenly I practically wrenched my neck being pulled out of my reverie.
My gaze snapped up to his and I could tell he saw my confusion because he sighed and began to pace in that way of his.
“Deimos and his council would have you believe we're your gods,” Kleio began.
“It’s easier that way, I suppose. Religion is an excellent way of winning yourselves loyal, unquestioning followers.
But we are no gods. We're but physical beings, just as you are, though entirely too convinced of our own superiority.”
I blinked, brow furrowed.
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly, stumbling over the idea that everything I’d ever known, had ever been told, the foundation of it all had been a lie. They weren’t gods? “Then what are you?”
“We are Geist,” he told me as if that explained it.
At my furrowed brow, he continued. “We came from another world, through a portal which the devising of took the immortal lives of some of our finest warriors. We didn’t wish to leave our second home but we had no choice.
We were fleeing an evil which threatened to corrupt the very core of what we are. ”
I frowned. What evil could be so great as to defeat the Geist?
“Humans were already here when we arrived,” he continued, no longer paying any attention to my confusion.
His eyes glazed over as he stopped pacing and gazed at the maps scattered about his table.
Remembering, I realized with a chill. “At first, they welcomed us.
Cautiously, of course. But they were curious about us, as we were them.
We were on our guard, having come from a world in which evil reigned.
But the humans seemed…simple by comparison.
They lived simple, short, nonthreatening lives.
They always seemed to do more harm to each other than they ever did to us.
So we settled among them and lived peacefully for a time.
But it didn’t last. Some of the Geist began to believe we were superior.
We had our magic, after all, and our immortality.
Even some of the humans had already begun to worship us as gods and so some of my people began to believe they were.
Those who deified themselves started to look down upon those of us who chose to live among the humans, as one with them, especially those who bred with them.
And so, a conflict began to brew and spun into a civil war.
Deimos’ father, Nektarios, was our leader before.
He brought us through the portal from our home world, settled us among the humans, and encouraged us to immerse ourselves in their culture.
Deimos hated it, railed against the immersion for centuries, until he amassed enough of our people who agreed with him.
They began a civil war with the opening act of killing Nektarios.
We Geist warred amongst ourselves for two hundred years.
Countless humans died in the struggle, used as soldiers by both sides.
Eventually, the allure of superiority was too great.
Deimos won and set himself up as Lord of the Geist. He created Pavos, walled it off with magic, kept the humans out as anything other than slaves, and shunned those who chose to live among them.
But even that victory wasn’t enough for him.
He began to claim the Geist still living among the humans were a risk to our magic, that they were corrupting it by debasing it with human savages.
He claimed the half human, half Geist offspring were some unholy mixture of the two, the embodiment of such a corruption.
He began to send out men to kill the Geist living among the humans, those he deemed a traitor to their race.
Even his most loyal supporters balked at that.
But he didn’t stop. He assassinated every last one of our kind who dwelled among the humans.
Then he turned to their bastard offspring.
That was when we stepped in, those of us who'd been horrified at the killing of our own. We were far too late but won ourselves a small victory. We stopped him from killing the half Geist outright. Instead, we met with their leaders and established a place where they could thrive on their own but walled away from us forever.”
“Sanctuary,” I breathed, stunned, and was even more surprised to find Kleio nodding.
“Sanctuary,” he repeated. “We built a city for the Verdunn, what the humans called the half-breeds, and we banished them to it, making them believe it was a paradise we’d created just for them.
We set up the Trials to convince them there was still a way to join us and a whole system to ensure they had food, water, and whatever necessities they needed and comforts we could afford to keep them pleased.
Eventually, enough generations of your people passed on to have forgotten the truth of how you got there in the first place. ”
“So I…my people…my ancestors were once half Geist?”
Kleio nodded.
“Someone within your family line,” he admitted. “Someone important, likely, if you descend from one of the High Houses.”
I blinked, too stunned to respond. But Kleio wasn’t done.
“Centuries later, the Culling was established. I…spoke up against it and was punished for my disobedience. But Deimos was still convinced the existence of the Verdunn threatened the purity of magic itself. He was obsessed with the idea that the same corruption that sent us fleeing our home world might worm it’s way into this one if we weren’t careful, if we didn’t keep the blood, the magic, pure, if we allowed the darkness to develop once again.
So he ordered the Culling, that anyone whose blood was tested and found to contain trace amounts of corrupted magic, would be Culled from Sanctuary so as not to infect a whole new generation.
I argued that we'd promised not to interfere with Sanctuary when we’d created it, that we still had a binding treaty with the Verdunn, whether their newest generations were aware of it or not. But my voice was one against many.”