Chapter 2: Amidst the Gods

One bad news after another, and he hopes that none of them can be true.

 “ You waste time, sekahti, of which mortals have precious little,” Ade snapped.

“ Oh, shut up and leave me alone,” Jay muttered. This dream was turning into a nightmare.

“ I shall not. This is the gods' realm!”

“ So what?” Jay replied. “ You measly little fictional worm!” He almost laughed when Ade drew back with a long, comical gasp of disbelief and outrage.

“ WORM!”

“ Yes, WORM,” Jay said viciously. Under normal circumstances he was a laidback kind of guy, but at the moment he'd do anything to make the snake go away.

“ You dare call me, god of the sands, a worm!”

“ I'm free to call you whatever I want!” Jay snapped. “ Or does free will not exist around here?”

“ Wait! Stop!” cried a feminine voice. Jay turned towards the slosh of water that came with it, just in time to witness a slender mermaid rising out of the sea.

After waiting some time for the water to stop streaming off her body, Jay finally realized that her body was streaming water, every last bit of it down to the smallest eyelash. The never-ending flow came down from the top of her head, narrowed down to form her limbs and waist, then swelled again as her hips touched the water. A circle of bubbling froth covered all but the barest peep of fish scales before they sank into the ocean.

“ Ta...bir?” Jay stammered. Tabir the Mother Goddess, Lady of the Depths, mother of Ade and all living creatures, the one who shared the name of the great lake and river whose branches were split throughout Kyria like a spider's web. She, like Ade, was one of the four gods of creation, and Number Two in the top ranking of deities. Jay felt his heart swell with shock until he thought he would suffocate, or at least have his chest explode from the inside out. His dream was bringing out the big guns.

Tabir was his mother Faye's favorite deity.

She isn't DEAD! Jay was furious at himself for believing Ade's claim even for a second.

“ Jased.” Her voice was infused with joy, surprise, sadness, and maternal love. Jay's ankle twitched but he didn't step back like he wanted to. He felt that it'd be rude to do that, except...why care about manners in a dream? Slim hands of cool flowing water reached out to touch his face, then stopped as Tabir's features drifted downward with sorrow.

“ You're...real?”

“ Naturally!” Ade spat out.

“ No, not naturally!” Jay shot back. “ This is a dream! Mom made up all those stories a long time ago!”

“ You are denying reality!”

“ You just told me that the only way I could be here is if my mom is dead,” Jay snarled. “ Why on earth would I want to return to a reality like THAT, huh? It's insane!”

“ You are not on Earth, you are in the divine realm of Reyyis, the world that we created,” Ade declared, and with the kind of tone used for children who didn't know any better. “ You, me, Mother Tabir, Father Raveen. You have returned to your creation. You are home.”

Fists clenched, Jay said nothing and glared at the snake god as childhood trivia ran through his head. His mom's stories said that Kyrian royals could use both their own divine power and that of the Kyrian gods. In that case, he could smack Ade in the face with Ade's own power and the magical equivalent of his own fist. That would be twice as satisfying....

As Jay continued to glare in silence, Ade slowly narrowed his own topaz eyes in return. “ I know it when someone is plotting revenge, sekahti,” he hissed. “ We are gods. We know all.”

“ Great! I've love for you to see it coming,” said Jay.

“ Jased--”

“ Jay!” he shouted, whirling on Tabir. “ My name is Jay! Jay Kyle Delafoy.”

“ Nooooo. It is Jased Delafoy al-Kyr,” Ade argued. “ 'Jay' is merely--what do you call it?--a 'nickname'. Now tell us what has happened to Faye.”

“ I don't know!” he cried out. “ I was just walking home and boom! Next thing I know, I was in that stone maze thing!”

“ The Walls in Between,” said Ade.

“ Between what? Oh. Worlds.” Jay gave his head a quick shake. Every word, every fact that reminded him of childhood, twisted his brain into knots.

“ Perhaps she has met with some accident,” said Tabir. “ That would explain your unexpected arrival before its time.”

Some accident? Oh god. He had to go back. He had to take care of her, or what remained of her. Jay couldn't let his mom end up frozen inside a morgue, trapped there until someone identified her, or worse. What if no one knew that she was dead and her body was left rotting in the sun somewhere? He cursed himself for having watched a single true crime show on TV. It put too many possibilities in his head, and none of them were good ones!

Wait. Did those thoughts mean that he believed this wasn't a dream?

“ I have to go back!”

“ You cannot!”

“ Travel between worlds damage the Walls between them,” said Tabir. “ You were only made an exception because of the fact that you bear divine blood, Reyyis blood, and Earth blood all in one, yet even you cannot make another journey again without having others pay the price.”

“ You mean I'll break the Walls? But that place is already damaged!”

“ Faye is dead. She is beyond hurt now,” Ade said bluntly. Then the snake god blinked and looked down at Jay. “ What did you say? The Walls are damaged?”

“ I don't care if she's dead or alive! I'm not going to just leave her behind as if she's nothing! My mom is not dead. I'll never believe that until I see a body!”

“ Then you shall never believe forever!” Ade countered. “ Now set that thought aside. The Walls are already damaged, you say?”

“ Well...yeah!” Jay put a hand to his face as he frowned at Ade. One cheek felt warm and puffy to his touch. “ I mean, they're already damaged to some extent, aren't they? That's how other people have traveled to other worlds by accident. Like Mom. There must've been people other than me.”

“ There were?”

“ Wouldn't you know? Being all-seeing gods and all..that.”

“ We can't see beyond Reyyis, Jay,” said Tabir. “ We are gods of this world, not that one. What happened in the Walls when you were there?”

“ They cracked. Multiple times,” Jay remembered. “ Pop, snap, crack. Like someone was shooting at the walls. I think it happened about five times, maybe six, max. There might've been more but then I heard someone's voice calling--It was you! It was Ade's voice I was hearing. It was...was...uh...are either of you guys listening to me?”

No, they were not. Both gods had thrown back their heads to stare at the starry sky above them.

“ What are you guys doing?” Even as the words left his mouth, Jay was gripped by a sudden sense that someone was coming. His heart nearly stopped in his chest. When several streaks of silver pierced through the sky he held his breath and nearly suffocated. A wordless sound whispered in his ears.

“ What was that?” he choked out. Ade hissed softly with displeasure.

“ Mortals,” he said. “ Mortals from Earth. And they came not by accident.”

“ What? But that's impossible,” said Jay. “ You need a blood connection to someone from the world you're going to for that, don't you? And even then it's seriously risky. You could still set off that world-ending domino effect, right? At least, I think I'm remembering it right....”

“ You recall correctly,” said Tabir. “ Therefore, you should understand why this is rather alarming. The one being who has a blood tie to either world is you, Jay, and you alone. Unless Faye has had other children we do not know of?”

“ Nuh-uh.” Jay shook his head in a determined 'no'. “ Just me.”

“ Then perhaps a piece of your flesh as a medium.”

“ My flesh?” Jay squawked. No way! He'd remember if someone ripped off a piece of his skin or a nail!

“ No,” Ade said slowly. “ That faint trace of a presence, it does not feel like our sekahti.”

“ Faye, however, must surely still remain.” Tabir raised a watery hand to her cheek. “ We cannot say if she or anyone else followed Kyrian tradition and had her body burned after her death. Even a strand of her hair will do as a medium, particularly if it was used after Jay's arrival to follow him here.”

Jay choked on bile and outrage. “ Someone...multiple someones...desecrated a body?” he said. “ My MOTHER'S body? Took a part of her? But that's impossible! If just a strand of hair will do, then there wasn't any need to kill her. Somebody could've just broken into our house and stolen a hairbrush, or waited until she left behind a jacket and gotten a stray hair off of that! Mom can't be dead, much less murdered. It's impossible!”

“ Hardly,” Ade said with a snort. He turned his head in the direction that the shooting stars had gone. When his eyes narrowed, the large size of the orbs made it easy for Jay to see their change from bright, pale topaz to a deep amber brown.

“ What?” he said.

“ What?” Ade echoed.

“ Do you know who they are?” Jay asked.

“ Know who are?”

“ Don't act stupid. The gods know everything. They see everything. They...read souls in the same way people read books,” said Jay, remembering how his mother described the gods. “ By now you should already know everything. Who were those people, if that really was a bunch of people and not shooting stars, and what did they do?”

“ That is for you to find out, sekahti, not we.”

“ Ade!”

“ Remember the Law of Divine Intervention, sekahti! We cannot do for you what can be so easily done with your own two hands.”

“ Easily?” said Jay. “ HA!” If that were true he'd have his answers already. Jay wasn't stupid enough to think that anything of worth would be easy to achieve. His mom was the one who had taught him that.

“ Nevertheless!” Ade said pointedly. “ If it is a task that any mortal can complete, we cannot aid you! We can guide you, advise you, but we cannot so much as answer your questions directly. What you wish to know any mortal can discover, so go! Discover! The sooner the better for us all. You will not be alone in wanting vengeance.”

“ For what?” Jay cried out, feeling baffled.

“ You'll know soon enough if you ACT soon enough!”

“ Oh, god, just shut up!” Jay shouted. Ade was all too swiftly driving him insane. The god seemed to think that Jay could process and believe every word that Ade said in the blink of an eye. But no! He needed a moment, a second, or better yet, an endless amount of days to take it all in. Hands clamped against his skull, Jay looked around in dismay. The part of him that enjoyed the jewel tones of sea and sky was fading fast. Now he felt lost. Simply, completely, and helplessly lost.

“ Jay,” Tabir said gently. His cheek was cooled and tickled by the touch of her fingertips. “ In spite of Ade, you need not hurry.”

“ He does so! Did I not say that mortals are always short of time?” said Ade.

“ Oh, shut up,” Jay muttered.

“ Ade, you will break him.”

“ I will not/I will not,” Jay and Ade chorused. The two of them had flared with indignation for two different reasons. “ If my mom's really dead and the people who killed her just shot over my head, then tell me! The gods know everything!” said Jay (alone).

“ I am not reciting the Law of Divine Intervention for you once more!”

But it was too outrageous to be true. They were telling him things that happened only on TV and fiction novels, rarely in real life, and certainly never in Jay's life! He couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hurt his friendly, fun-loving mother. Why would they? In order to come here? Why? How? Jay hadn't known about other worlds until he'd come here, and he was still half-sure that this was all a dream. Did someone think they could travel back and forth between worlds like his mom had? Wait. Was he or was he not believing all this?

I'm going to shatter my own head, Jay thought. His head was throbbing enough to make him feel that was possible. He squeezed his eyes shut in a vain effort to make all his troubles go away. At this point he was willing to put on a pair of red heels to get himself home.

  “ I want to go home,” he said softly. In time he opened his eyes to find that Ade had lowered his head to look at him in the eye. Scale-lined lips were curved back in a wide smile.  

“ With pleasure, sekahti. With the utmost pleasure.”

And with that Ade smacked Jay off the bridge with a quick sweep of his feathered tail.

He quickly sank through the water that was neither warm nor cold. There was no pressure to close his eyes or breathe, just the feeling of a large body swirling about him like a whirlpool.

“ Coming along, are you?” Jay said wearily.

“ But naturally!” said Ade. “ I mean it when I spoke of vengeance, and it has been many a mortal year since I have walked mortal ground!”

Oh, god, suddenly Jay wondered if he was being stupid and impulsive. Wasn't he supposed to be struggling to decide whether this was a dream or not? For heaven's sake, if nothing else, Jay had to make up his mind where his mom was concerned. He felt that he had to. He was so used to taking things one step at a time and never needing to be in a hurry. He should be taking things more slowly! The beginnings of a throbbing headache grew his temples.

Jay tilted his head back and looked up at the shrinking bright light at the surface. A loose chain of pearl-bright bubbles drifted towards the light in the manner of souls who had accepted their move from life to heaven. He sighed and not a single bubble came out of his mouth. Without a word Ade descended further into the water with him, his serpentine body ever spiraling.

Then the snake god twisted his body around Jay's own and with a wrench of divine muscle hurled them both upward. Surprised by the movement, Jay's lungs squeezed tight along with his eyes. He was starting to question where the surface was when he suddenly broke through.

Jay burst out into a coughing fit as the water rushed down his face and kept him from breathing. Beveled scales pushed against his body so he fell forward into...a curvy wall of water? No, it was Tabir catching him before he clapped his knees against a hard stone floor. Jay was trying to stand up in a sunken pool only a few inches deep.

“ Could....” Jay coughed a few more times to clear his throat. “ Could've warned me!” he burst out. When there was no answer Jay wiped at the water on his face and looked around, seeing no sign of snakes or feathers. There was a human-sized Tabir as she helped him out of the water but no sign of anyone else. “ Ade?”

Either the world had grown without him or he was the one who had shrunk without the world. On his left and his right were tall windows, beige stone walls, and a few leafy vines curled about the pillars kept rising, rising, and rising towards the shadowy ceiling high above. The sunken pool he'd come out of was split in half by a sleek stone path.

What the pools lacked in depth they more than made up in length. Jay thought he was seeing rivers, not man-made ponds, flowing down from one end of the room to the other. Seeing a pair of doors shrunken down by distance, Jay turned to the end of the room that was much closer. A wide dais stood on wider steps and held up a tall-backed chair that looked so lonely and empty...or maybe it was just his imagination going into overdrive. He jumped in surprise when lines of reddish gold appeared on the wall behind the dais.

  In silence they weaved their way through the honey-brown stone to draw out the picture of a circle surrounded by curved and straight petals. The wall turned pale and blue until Kyria's national emblem, the lunola flower, appeared to be floating in the middle of a clear noon sky. Jay grit his teeth, hard, before he asked out loud if the wall was actually one huge movie screen. He now knew where he was and calling that enchanted wall a mere window or a TV screen would be insulting.  

  “ Ohhh, crap,” he muttered. Without a doubt the chair was the Altar Throne and he was in the center of the Temple Palace, the seat of the Kyrian government. His mother had sketched out pictures of the place as part of her bedtime stories. Ade had literally dumped him on the throne.