Chapter III: A Young God Educates Me

Simon is a bit shaken up by the events in the other chapter and gets a visit from his "chooser" in his head.

I didn’t want to know anymore after that. In fact I was the urge of vomiting and passing out because this was too much. I told Jean our address and that “Yes, Stay-With-Me-Apartments is a real chain of apartments.” We drove in silence. After a while, I put two and two together. “So, Dylan...when that guy said godling...he meant that you’re...half-man-half-...”

“Goddess, yes.”

Goddess? “Oh. Why not? And Jean, you’re-?”

“A mage.” She said like it was a pain to say it.

“And Kane?”

“Chosen.” He said, invested in his sphere.

We were silent for a while. “Am I going insane?!” I screamed, “Did I hit my head?! Did something happen to make my sanity snap like a freakin’ pencil?!” I grabbed Dylan by his shirt, “Hit me with something! Right now!” Alright, put yourself in my position. I just witnessed a bunch of demon creatures abduct my sister, I killed one, Dylan was a “godling”, Jean is a mage, and I (along with Kane) was “chosen”. I was sure I was going to be in a mental hospital. I could see it. Simon Hale: A troubled youth hallucinated about his sister being kidnapped by evil spirits. He ended up killing one and with the help of more young psychologically traumatized teens, killed another with a truck.

I could see it all. Me in a white shirt and white pants. Mom and Kelly visiting me

and Dylan, Jean trying to escape and steal cars, and Kane hiding scrapmetal under his bed. Lime Jell-O and applesauce for every meal. All of that would be a lot better than the road ahead of me. “He’s one of those ones.” Jean groaned. She handed Dylan a syringe and said, “Stick him with that.” Dylan fumbled with the syringe but caught it. He was about to stick me in the arm but I grabbed his wrist. “What’re you doing, dude?!” I yelped.

“She said to-!”

I cut him off. “Yeah, listen to the redheaded magician and not your best friend! That makes sense!”

Dylan kept trying to jab me with the syringe. “I’ll never understand normies.” Kane sighed. Jean heaved a big sigh. I fought hard to keep Dylan fro sticking me with the syringe, but I slipped and the point went in with a SSHK! He pressed down on the plunger and instantly, I felt weird. I felt like I had just stepped out of the shower and was getting ready to sleep. I could feel my blood moving. “Whoa…” I said like one of those hippies from the seventies. I closed my eyes and heard Jean speak, “So, the Drauci just showed up at the school?”

“I think it’s pronounced Dracula.” I butted in stupidly.

“Drauci!” Jean hissed. “Draw-Key! Plural of Draucus! Do you know nothing about your own world?”

“You’re rude. And short.” Was my loopy response.

Jean growled with anger, but Dylan interrupted. “His mom wanted him to have a normal life.”

I was really out of it, so I jumped back into the conversation with, “You talking about my mom, j-...uh...j-jerk...face.” I think my insults are a lot worse when under the influence of loopy-calm-down-drugs.

“Is he always this stupid?” Jean asked.

“Maybe it’s a special occasion.” Kane added.

“Give or take, he’s about the same when he isn’t loopy.” Dylan replied.

I didn’t need loopy-drugs to be offended, “Hey!” I tried to punch his arm, but I could barely send it faster than a snail moving through mud. After a while, I gave up on speaking and just listened to them talk. I got little bits of information. Apparently the Drauci had attacked our school at random. But that begged the question...why take Kelly? What’d she do to P.O a bunch of wispy cloud monsters? Wispy-wannabe-Marilyn Manson-cloud-monsters at that. I thought of how the one named Agatha and how she wanted to kill me, but Alex held her back. Probably because she was stronger than Nikon. That must be embarrassing. Hi, I’m a terrifying, black cloud demon and this is my girlfriend who is way stronger than me. No, I’m not kidding. Stop laughing. Seriously, guys. Something else bothered me. The Contract of Dead...something. The Contract of Dead Bodies? Dead Squirrels? Spirits? Souls! That’s it! Contract of Dead Souls. That name didn’t sit well with me. Something told me that the reason Alex couldn’t find it was because that it wasn’t supposed to be found. And who was Alex? A Draucus? Something about him told me that he wasn’t. Maybe it was those dark-pool eyes of his. Or the fact that he didn’t have the image of someone who writes poetry in a cemetery. The same goes for the guy that Jean ran down with the truck.

It’s amazing I could even think with these loopy-drugs in my system. Once I came to I was going to punch Dylan square in the face. The fact that he had kept his half-goddess-thing a secret from me made me angry. Like, Hey, I’ll be your best friend for years oh and by the way, my mother is a goddess. Was that really too much to tell? I mean Dylan knew all of my secrets (and I won’t be telling you) and I thought I knew all of his. Did he tell anyone else but not tell me? That’s when I remembered something. Those looks he and my mom exchanged, like they were having some sort of telepathic conversation. That’s what got me real mad. Tell my mom but not me? Um...screw you too, buddy. Thanks for the trust. Oh and could you pull the knife out back too, please? So that’s why he always went to North Carolina. What was a goddess doing in North Carolina? What was she the goddess of? Grapes? (Grapes would be the state fruit of North Carolina...the joke doesn’t work when you have to explain it, audience.)

I didn’t even talk to him for the rest of the ride. Mostly because my tongue felt numb and I didn’t want to sound like an idiot (too late for that). Also because I was furious. But mainly that first part. We were nearing the apartment and I was feeling even more dazed. My head felt like a combination of brain-freeze and being hit with a brick. And my stomach felt like it was twisting and melting at the same time. For once in my life, I was not hungry. We pulled up to Stay-With-Me-Apartments and Jean studied the building. She looked at it up and down. “This place looks like a hole”, she deduced. I wanted to confirm her “brilliant” deduction by saying it’s all we could afford, but that loopy-stuff was doing a number on how well I could speak. Or walk. I stepped out of the truck and almost tripped into oncoming traffic. Dylan grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back. I wanted to say, “Get your stinking paws off me!” But all I could say was, “Uuuhhh...”

We walked into the lobby. The redhead with glowing eyes, manic-looking bomb-maker, the loopy-drugged-out-weirdo, and the guy with the sword. Then, I noticed Dylan’s sword was gone. And the sheathe. Nothing was on his back. “...the heck?” Was all I could say. Dylan had to get my arm around his shoulder and carry me. Again, I wanted to tell him to bug off, but “the heck” took all the energy out of my speaking. We took the elevator to the fifth floor and stood in silence for a second. “So, who sent you guys?” Dylan broke the silence.

“Baakur Agnar.” Jean said as if it was a normal name.

“Oh. How’s he?” Dylan replied.

Oh, is he also a godling or whatever? I wanted to spit those words out, but, yeah you guessed it. Numb.

“Ask him yourself.” Kane said and put his sphere in a pocket of his cargo pants.

I wondered what he meant, but the elevator doors opened and we were on our way to the apartment. My vision was starting to fade and blur. Oh, joy, I thought. We reached our door and I fumbled in my pockets for the keys. I found them and unlocked the door. We walked in and I saw my mom sitting down at the table with another guy. If you looked twice, you wouldn’t guess that he was in his late fifties. He had long, curly brown hair (with a streak of white) that touched his shoulders. He was muscular with tan skin from the sun and had a sort of warm and welcoming face. His eyes were dark brown and he had a five-o’clock shadow. He heard us come in and turned to look at us. He studied me. Looking me up and down and then nodded. My mom saw Dylan holding me up and she practically teleported to me. Her skin had paled with worry and her hazel eyes were wide. “Simon! What happened?! Are you okay?! Where’s Kelly?!”

Dylan told Mom the whole story and she nodded. I could tell she was holding back tears for my sake. My mom is a real cryer when it comes to emotions. She’s also a hugger. She hugged Jean, who was startled by my mother’s affection. “You saved my baby!” Mom squeaked.

“Uh, no problem, Ms. Hale.” Jean was probably having her ribs crushed by one of Mom’s I-was-so-worried boa constrictor hugs. She kissed Jean on each cheek and went up to Kane and wrapped him up in a rib-shattering embrace. For some reason he didn’t mind and hugged her right back. “Your baby is fine.” He smirked at me.

I wanted to groan out, “Mooooooom!” Out of embarrassment but I was so weak. The guy at the table come up to us and introduced himself to me as Baakur Agnar. He looked me over and said. “This is definitely him. The prophesied one.” Thunder rolled in the sky. He looked up. “We should get moving, Ms. Hale. With great haste. Would you mind to get the weapons or shall I?”

“It’s fine, Mr. Agnar. I’ll get them.” Mom hurried into her room and came out with a trunk. It was tattered, brown, and  leathery. She warned me to, “Never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever open it.” I always wondered how she didn’t stutter when she said that. There was a chain locking the trunk so even if I wanted to see what was in it, I couldn’t. My mom got a hammer and smashed the lock. She pulled out two things that surprised me. A revolver so big, you could call it a hand-cannon with some ammunition and a three foot long short-sword in a red and silver sheathe (matching the hilt). The sword was attached to a belt so I guess it was supposed to wrap around your shoulder, like Dylan’s sword. “It’s not much”, Mom said, “But it’ll have to do.”

That’s when I blacked out.

***

I heard the thumping, electronic beat of some dance song for a little while and the singer’s voice kicked in. “I pushed a button and elected him to office and-ah! He pushed a button and dropped a bomb!” I wondered where I was. The song continued with a few swear words. “Huh-Huh! I’m sick of hearing ‘bout the haves and the have-nots! Have some personal accountability!” I recognized the song as Capital G by Nine Inch Nails. I couldn't tell if it was a pun sense I was finding out about gods and stuff or if the guy who lived here was a fan of Nine Inch Nails. It took a lot of strength to open my eyes, but when I did, I almost passed out again. I was on a stone floor with ancient Greek-styled columns holding the roof up with torches sticking out of them. The fire on the torches changed to different colors at random. Red, blue, orange, green, pink, purple, white, black, yellow, etc. Vines sprouted out of some of the cracks in the floor and around the columns. I looked above and saw that in the ceiling, clouds were forming and disappearing. “What sorta dream is this?” I groaned.

“You like it?” I heard a young, but older-than-me voice say.

I pulled my eyes away from the ceiling and looked at him. He was tall and thin with silver hair. He wore gray tennis shoes and a t-shirt with a thundercloud smiling. The shirt read “Tempest 2007”. He had blue jeans and his eyes were hidden by dark, black shades. He was in his mid-to late twenties and had a nice, grinning face. Something about his appearance gave a nice-guy/troublemaker vibe. I don’t know how, but it did. I felt like I knew him, but couldn’t place his name. “Wh-who are you?”

He laughed. “I’m your chooser of course! One of the king gods! Asmias! Lord of the Sky!”

It was quiet for a second. All you’d be able to hear was the crackling of the rainbow flames.

“I have no clue who you are.”

For a second, he grimaced, but then he smiled. “Figures as such. Your mother, Blaire, wanted you to be normal. Lovely woman, by the way. It’s a shame about the husband. Anyways, Si...destiny has a way of finding you.”

He knows my name? “What destiny...sir?”

Asmias chuckled. “Don’t call me sir. It makes me feel old.”

“Um...aren’t you a god?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Few thousand years old.”

“Uh...” I just stared at him

“What’d you expect? A great big bushy beard? Like Zeus? Or Jupiter or whatever?” He laughed again and I looked around.

“Well, this place looks like Zeus’s palace.” I pointed out.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m digging the Greco-Roman design. Some of my sibling are more into the Norse look. A few even dig the whole Japanese look. And some just go with their own thing.”

I put my head in one hand, still on the ground. “I’ve gone nuts.”

Asmias chuckled and walked over towards me. He touched my shoulder, which seemed to energize me. I got to my feet. He was taller than me (duh, he’s a god) and behind his shades, I could see a glowing blue, just like mine. There seemed to be an electricity to his too. He removed his shades and said, “Good, you have my eyes.” As if I was his son or something. Which would be weird because he’s like twenty-seven or something. I wondered if my eyes were glowing like his. Probably.

“So this is your palace?” I asked.

“This place is.” He said replied, “Out there is my kingdom.” He pointed down the hallway. Two eight foot doors with strange designs on them, like letters crossed with musical notes. “But that’s not important.” He walked passed me to the other side of the palace. I looked and saw a few steps that led to an enormous, marble and gold throne. My jaw must’ve dropped because Asmias said, “I don’t use it much. Not very comfortable, ya know?”

How does he fit up there? Was all I could think. I decided to ask a different question. “You’ve been here since the beginning?” I wished I hadn't said anything because the music cut off and the flames began to dim and changed green.

He shook his head and waved his hand and in front of us appeared a holographic screen. “When we looked into your world”, he said in a much more ominous, less playful voice, “it was chaos in ours.”

Images flickered on the screen. It looked like people were wearing ancient Greek armor, but a little different. The shapes were a bit different. The material that it was made of was different. Everything looked like our world but...different. In a way, sort of better. Asmias continued, “Beings fought beings and the gods were at each others throats. Deep from the pits of Xenatus, monsters were pouring out.” Xenatus? I thought. As if the screen read my mind, it showed images of what I thought was hell. Different monsters were in Xenatus. Dragons, Drauci, and all sorts of indescribable beasts. The worst were these giant humanoid things that looked like their faces hadn’t fully formed on their skulls, leaving a gruesome image. They clawed their way from under the ground and burst through.

Asmias went on, “The main races: Humans, dwarves and elves were at war. Above that, Titans were walking the soil, destroying everything in their path. It stressed at the gods so much, that we were going into our own civil war. We searched for a new world to inhabit. None suited our needs. Until one day, my sister, Ligeia, goddess of the sea founded your world in its earlier stage. During the colonization of North America. We moved as fast as we could, saving our cultures, our ideology, our life forces to the literal new world. We moved everything we could.”

“Even Xenatus?” I interrupted, feeling rude.

Asmias sighed. “It is a part of our culture. A part of our beliefs. We couldn’t just leave it behind to the chaos.”

“Oh.” Was my response. It was quiet for a while. Then I spoke up. “Why are you telling me this?”

He looked at me. “You need some knowledge if you want to complete this task.”

I blinked and swallowed. “You want me to get that contract of Dead Souls and give it to an evil guy who has my sister?”

He sighed again. “No, kid. I...oh, it’s hard to explain. Look, I want you to succeed at what you’re doing. But not for Alexander. For us. For the gods.” His image flickered and I wondered what was happening. “That’s my cue. Gods aren’t allowed to interfere too much with people-stuff. Otherwise everything would be too easy.” He smiled at me. “Best get going.”

My dream went black and for a second and I was left floating around in darkness. Then I jolted awake.

***

I awoke to the sound of Fall Out Boy playing. “Wouldn't you rather be a widow than a divorcee? Style your wake for fashion magazines!” I was in Mom’s white Nissan. Cool thing about Mom is that she actually likes the music I like. That made me smile. Then I heard people talking. Dylan and Jean.

“I’m telling you, he’s chosen by him!” Dylan was defending me.

“Oh, really?” Jean hissed, “How come he didn’t save his sister?”

There was silence. I was hoping Jean had regretted what she said. I was furious at what she said. I open the door and stepped out and glared at her. She had her hand over her mouth like she did regret what she said. I didn’t care. I was pissed.

“I had a dream”, I continued to glare, looking right in her eyes, “I talked to Asmias. My chooser.”

***

Author's Note

A little exposition! It'll be heavily edited later. Tell me what you think!

Reviews

[jay]

no this is good some funny parts