Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
In the middle of this circle are me and Apis. But we are not alone.
Saturn, Zeus, Cronus, and Ptah mark the four corners within the magic circle.
The top of the pyramid, so to speak. The capstone of sorcery. The succession.
The whole purpose of this—of me, actually—clearly manifests in a sudden and shocking revelation.
They are dying. All of them. A new religion is rising up, taking their place. And they are dying.
Dead already, really.
I play Apis’s words back in my head. Two thousand years we bred them well. Beasts of magic, blood, and spells. And now I fully understand. They have been preparing for this day.
Perhaps they foretold it. Perhaps they heard it from an oracle thousands of years ago. But they have been preparing for this day.
And someone just fucked it all up.
The breeding wasn’t done yet. Pie was supposed to breed with Tarq and I was supposed to breed with Pressia. And perhaps those children of that next generation were the real sacrifice—because that’s what’s going on here, let’s not kid ourselves.
I am about to be sacrificed.
But there will be no final generation of royal beasts to give to the overlords in exchange for a fresh beginning. A new rise of old gods, if you will. Because Eros took Pie. He slipped her right out of this world and put her in the human one.
And Pressia has disappeared. Definitely an oracle. How she got a hold of a door, I will probably never know.
But I don’t need to know the details to understand the grand scheme.
This is their last chance.
Me. I am their last chance.
My bloodhorn sacrifice could be enough to satisfy the overlords and give them back their power.
But if all the old and damaged gods are in this room with me—the major ones from the succession, at least—then who is controlling all this?
Who are they begging for relief?
“Come on, Pell. Come on!” Tomas’s voice is back in my head. He sounds a bit exasperated. “Think hard, my slow friend. Think! Who controls things where we come from?”
At first, I don’t understand. But my mind clears a bit and it suddenly hits me.
“The hallway gods.”
“What?” Apis is staring at me.
“It’s the hallway gods.”
He looks confused. And of course he does. He doesn’t know that I have lived with gods for two thousand years. He has no idea who I am.
I mean, I hardly know who I am, but I certainly know where I come from. I certainly know where I’ve been. And I understand that time is tricky and the hallway gods have been holding my memories.
Not from me.
But for me.
Because whatever has been happening to me in that sanctuary, it took time. A lot of time. And maybe, just maybe, I’ve been waiting for the right girl to come along and give me a little push.
And now here I am, ready.
“Let’s get on with it,” Saturn bellows. “Do it.”
Apis nods at him like an equal, not a servant. He turns to face the damaged gods and raises up his arms. Everyone in the room raises their arms too, the flames from the outer circle throwing shadows on the wall. Climbing, evil shadows that lick the ceiling and haunt the air.
“You’re almost out of time now,” Tomas says. “Better get cracking.”
Cracking how?
“Magic, Pell. You know how to do it.”
Well… this is true. I do understand magic. A lot more than I used to before Pie came. I have a new voice.
“That’s not enough,” Tomas informs me. “To use a door, you need a ring.”
I look down at my hand, and yep. Still got the ring.
“It’s not enough,” Tomas repeats. “To use a ring and a door, you need a spell.”
A spelling, of course.
All the gods begin a chant. It’s loud, and rumbling. Like they all have the same voice I do.
Their words are spilling out. “‘A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone…’”
And this panics me. “Tomas! Where do I go? What do I do?”
I yell this loud enough for Apis to hear me. He falters in his chant, looking at me strangely, probably working out that there’s more magic in this room than he knows about.
Because Tomas is here. Maybe not corporeally, but Tomas exists in many forms. And he is here.
But there’s nothing Apis can do now. They are now reciting the second line of their spelling. It’s in progress.
“You go home, Pell! You go home! And you better do it quick!”
Home.
The sanctuary.
My life.
My world.
My everything.
But not just my everything. My everyone.
So just as the the gods finish the third line of their spelling, I begin my first. And it rumbles out of my mouth with the power of a desperate man, shaking the room and making all their magic shrink back in fear. The chains holding me break with a crack that lights up the room. And I am on fire.