Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
“Wait. You’re third-generation?”
“Yes. The first-generation primordial gods were all chimera. Horus, and Ra, and Thoth, and Seth. There are many more, but they were all crossbred. Second-generation were bred back to humans. Isis, and Ptah, and Osiris. They were more human-looking, but couldn’t pass. Then the third generation was the chaos.” I look up at her. “We come from chaos.”
“Is that Chaos the god? Or chaos the state of being?”
“Both, I suppose. At any rate, there were thirteen of us at the end.”
“How many were there to start?”
It’s a very astute question coming from a person like Callistina. And I’m not disparaging her intelligence here, she’s just one of those surface-level people who mostly concentrates on things right in front of her. This question is decidedly not right in front of her. “I couldn’t say for sure, Callistina. But if you were making gods, and were on your third generation, how many would you have?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A lot, probably. I imagine that the breeding and genetics would be fraught with mistakes and such.”
“As genetics and breeding often are.”
“So… dozens, at least. Is that why there ended up being twelve Olympians?”
“Did your brain just decide to skip over the fact that I said there were thirteen of us?”
“Oh, sorry. I was told there were only twelve Olympians.”
“You got bad information. There were thirteen and I was one of the last gods standing. I am an Olympian. They just didn’t like my power because it had no check. I could make them fall in love with anyone I wanted. It could ruin them or bring them bliss. I could start and end wars. You can do anything with love, Callistina. Anything. So they had to get rid of me.”
“Who is ‘they,’ Eros?”
“They…” I sigh. “They are the makers. The Glory Alchemists. And the gods too, because they were in on it.”
“So how does Pressia fit in? Did they use her to demote you?”
I scoff. “No. Pressia chose to do that.” I find the last connector on her other hip and release it. Then stand up and take the crown part out of her hands. I drop it and the entire ensemble of chains falls to the floor at her feet.
Callistina looks me in the eyes as she daintily steps out of the circle of godsmetal. “Well. That was quite a process, Eros.” She pats me on the chest, her touch incredibly soft. “I do hope you can put it all back on when I’m done.”
Then she turns and walks across the living space towards the bathing room without giving me a second glance.
But my gaze follows her the entire way. It even lingers on the door after she closes it behind her.
She’s not the same woman, I decide. She cannot be the same woman who walked around my prison town with spray-painted antlers tied to her head and blocks of wood strapped to her feet.
Is it a trick?
Is she someone else pretending to be Callistina?
Is she… Pressia?
Wouldn’t that be just like her? To send me through a door that leads to my origin and make me take her along with me as a joke?
I hate that woman. I hate her with a passion. And if given the opportunity to end her, I would.
I would end her.
And just as I think this, people outside in the dirt streets—some drunkards stumbling home after a long night of revelry—start singing my song. Her song.
You can run all your life and not go anywhere.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - CALLISTINA
I really wasn’t expecting there to be indoor plumbing with hot water in this shoddy inn. Not even in the best room. Of course, we had all this in Vinca. Even the poorest of people had indoor plumbing. But when one thinks back on the ancients it’s easy to assume that they were backwards and stuck with primitive comforts.
I had been hoping for a water pump and a gas fire under a tin tub. Maybe even a wood pile.
But what I get are hot and cold faucets and a massive copper tub that is mottled with green and white oxidation on the lip and outer edges, but sleek and smooth and regularly polished on the inside. It is very, very nice for a place such as this.
I am pleasantly surprised, having found myself here in the ancient times, that I was wrong about how the ancients lived. Everyone was wrong. Well, at the very least, everyone writing the history books was wrong.
Should it surprise me, though? The people of Glory Rome are doing next-level science. They have created gods in those blue buildings of theirs. Why would anyone in the future believe they were primitive and backwards when all the evidence points to the opposite?
Probably because we were told to. It was written in the books that way.
I wonder if any of the people of this age regret making those gods yet? I am not a history buff, so I only read the required reading in early school, but if memory serves it was the making of gods that undid Glory Rome. This is what caused the Glory War.