Chapter 29 Sorrow
Sorrow
The fall is quick. Dozens of outstretched arms break the landing. When the snake pit catches Sorrow, they ambush her. Several deities order the throng to make way, the onslaught of voices drowning out Envy’s roar.
Her name, a fractured sound on his lips.
From the divide, Sorrow glimpses his livid face. That gaze storms through the distance, pupils brewing like a tempest as he watches the congregation hoist her overhead, as if she’s just stage-dived into her own execution. Beneath the surface, tormented shock burns a path across Envy’s irises.
Guess that answers how many times anyone has chosen him over themselves. It’s pretty amazing, the way astonishment warps his features, throwing every crack into disarray. If Sorrow weren’t being carried to her doom like a sacrificial lamb, she’d laugh.
Envy takes a mercenary step forward, but Sorrow shakes her head and jerks her gaze toward the water. Get going!
She’s not an extreme sports junkie who took this flying leap for kicks. Her actions have stupefied the masses, buying Envy a window of time before they remember he’s here.
He stands frozen, his nostrils flaring, his grip on the longbow about to snap the weapon in half. The motivation to do… whatever he’s tempted to do… is short-lived, because this god isn’t a fool, despite how often Sorrow has called him one. Raging into this scene will only get both of them trapped.
Savagery burns like an inferno across Envy’s face. He grimaces, then dives into the water, the depth swallowing him. Moments later, and from farther away, his upper frame catapults through the surface. Sadly, she can’t see his expression.
He’s there, floating and watching. Then he isn’t.
When he’s gone, Sorrow clenches her eyes shut, barricading the tears. She’s an expert at not crying. Turning into a busted faucet is the last thing that will save her.
A sense of concern grips Sorrow’s awareness. Her lids flip open to where a thin figure idles beyond the crowd, a braid hanging limp over his shoulder, anguish burdening his features.
Echo.
Although she hasn’t seen her Guide since this revolt began, the loss is eternal. Since deities are birthed from celestials, then bred without parents or siblings, Guides are the closest thing to family for any Dark God.
He won’t side with the crew, not as Wonder’s Guide had months ago. Matter of fact, Harmony is the only mentor who has shifted allegiances.
Nonetheless, Echo moves forward, eager to reach Sorrow. But then a feminine hand clamps onto his shoulder, stalling the motion. At which point, Envy’s Guide, Siren, materializes. Vigilant, she cautions Echo from making a further spectacle.
Sorrow gives a silent cry. She wants Echo near, but that might trigger him to speak impulsively, exposing his vulnerability and thus endangering him.
Her attention shifts to the child standing beside the mentors, his onyx tresses mussed from when she shoved him inside Love’s house. A pair of lilac eyes flit toward the water, then to Sorrow. He saw the pride god disappear, maybe saw the direction in which Envy had swam.
Sorrow sends the child a pleading look, then sets her finger against her lips. Shh.
Yet she can’t see his response, nor Echo or Siren’s. The mob carries her into a channel within the bluffs, a curtain of greenery blocking her view of the only spectators who don’t want her head served on a platter.
Because it’s pointless to keep bracing her like a rotisserie boar, the world rotates.
The company lowers Sorrow to her feet, then restrains her wrists with bonds forged of star-dusted manacles.
The god securing her arms behind her back wears a cobalt mantle.
He’s part of the crew who ambushed Sorrow and her friends in the valley.
He’s also the one she and Envy overheard from beneath the pier three days ago, boasting how he wanted to try out Love’s weapon.
The god fixes Sorrow with a righteous look, rather than the validated one she’d anticipated. Lingering nearby is the female who spoke with him that night. At the time, limited vision had obscured the goddess’s face, but the jumpsuit and mercury weapons tip Sorrow off.
With Sorrow detained, the mob travels down a torchlit lane. The route winds into cliffs embossed in minerals, stalks germinating from the summits.
Ahead, the recess leads to a structure embellished with metallic inlays and intricate whorls. Colonnades enwrap the three-story edifice, the obsidian-strewn walls gleaming like a celestial of its own making.
Anxiety prickles Sorrow’s flesh. The setting dredges up hundreds of memories, each one so lucid it might have occurred yesterday. Assemblies, feasts, revels, and public persecutions.
The Palace of Starlight.
The crowd recedes, apart from several guards and the major players. An intermission follows in which the mercury-arrow-wielding goddess and cobalt-mantled god step inside The Fate Court’s royal seat. Presumably, they’re about to give the rulers a thorough report.
After a while, the pair returns to corral Sorrow inside.
Winding creeks flow over pebble beds, lanterns dangle from the rafters, and the tune of a windpipe fills the air.
The building flows into a fountain courtyard.
From there, the group enters an amphitheater of waterfalls, with cascades and a moat spanning the northern cliffside crescent.
A dais rises from the amphitheater’s center, the platform housing five thrones hewn of platinum. And five luminous figures.
A pale-skinned female outfitted in lace.
A goddess with amethyst hair.
And a dark beauty everyone likens to a galaxy because of her iridescent gown.
A male with braids as long as ropes and a hooked nose that has always made Sorrow and her crew think of a hawk.
Lastly, an archer with eyebrows so angular someone must have stapled a pair of boomerangs to his forehead.
The Fate Court.
These rulers weren’t born into their roles. They were once archers like Sorrow, after which they ascended, becoming Guides to their successors. Later, they were selected by The Stars, ordained to become monarchs of The Dark Fates.
Sorrow used to admire and trust these figures. Even now, admiration wars with disobedience as the guards urge her to prostrate herself, kneecaps crushing blades of grass. On reflex, she inclines her head to The Fate Court, then shoots them an insolent look.
The goddess in iridescent fabric quirks her lips. She approaches, folding her hands and regarding Sorrow with a peculiar expression, which the other sovereigns fail to catch from this angle.
Inquisitiveness? Compassion?
Technically, this female used to be the Guide of Wonder. That had been long before Harmony. And prior to that, the ruler had been the Goddess of Wonder, eons before Sorrow’s crewmate was born.
“Welcome home, Goddess of Sorrow,” the female announces.
“For how long?” Sorrow wonders.
Another twitch of those condescending lips. “Tell us how you got here.”
“Magic.”
“I’m afraid your legendary sarcasm will do you no favors.”
“Where are your accomplices?” the pale goddess inquires from her chair. “Who is included in the party?”
Right. As if these dictators can’t place bets on the answer. “I have a cap on how many questions I can tolerate before it depresses me,” Sorrow replies. “Which one do you want me to respond to?”
The iridescent goddess sighs. She nods, and the pair of thieving deities who’d taken Love’s weapons disperse with a series of genuflections.
“Our subjects have provided us with enlightening information. It seems not only has your radical band trespassed into The Dark Fates, but some of you lost your archery during a chase into the rapids. We’re also told that one of the weapons, which our subjects recovered from the water, is forged of iron.
” The iridescent goddess hitches a brow. “Yet it is not the iron of Anger.”
When Love and Andrew bonded, Love had originally lost her powers, and the rulers claimed her weapons. Sure enough, they hadn’t known about Love eventually rejoining their crew, much less that Andrew lost his mortality and became part of this crusade.
A lot has happened since then. A lot has also been rectified.
Evidently, these rulers have begun to realize this. Because of everything that went down after Love, Anger, and Wonder’s stories, it has amounted to a number of their subjects defecting from The Dark Fates, to ally with Sorrow and the crew.
Naturally, The Court is aware of that part. They just hadn’t been cognizant of a few plot holes.
Nevertheless, the one question they don’t need to ask is why Sorrow and her clan are here. The reason is obvious. You can’t have a battle without a battleground.
“Fine,” the hawkish god grumbles, thrusting out his wrist in disgust. “If you refuse to confirm Love’s presence among your cult, then we shall come full circle to the first question. How did you get here?”
Recognition alights the iridescent ruler’s face. “Wonder and Malice.”
Goddammit. As Sorrow’s crew predicted, The Fate Court had believed the conflict would take place on mortal ground, since it’s impossible for outcast deities to breach boundaries. Provided they lack the means to cross through barriers, exceptions such as Asterra Flora.
As to their plans upon entering this realm, The Court will have to crack open Sorrow’s skull like a pinata to get anything out of her. Either that, or torture her with hours of Gregorian chant music.
She remarks as much, embellishing with obscenities and an abridged version of the facts.
One, Malice and Wonder are smart as fuck.
How many times will it take before the couple proves that?
They uncovered all the legends that resurrected Love and Anger’s powers, not to mention united both deities with Andrew and Merry.
That’s what it boils down to, because love itself is a strength these rulers don’t comprehend. Even if Sorrow can’t understand the emotion herself, at least she deduces this fact.