“This isn’t over.” He forced the words out through gritted teeth, the words struggling to form around the immense pain that he was obviously in.
“If this isn’t what over looks like, then I no longer trust the meaning of the word,” I retorted, still out of breath. I motioned to the wasteland around us, populated only by banished ghosts.
Rau’s eyes were fixed steadfastly to mine.
“Why were you not torn apart?” he rasped out, his eyelids flittering briefly, his body crumpling back. He was losing strength. “The crossing to the realm. It should have torn your soul into two—the chains are only enough to carry the weight of ... of ...” He started coughing, but the movement only ended on a moan of pain.
He was silent, then, hunched over himself, blood pooling along the ground around him.
“The weight of what?” I prodded, taking a few steps away from the spreading pool of blood. I didn’t want to get my boot dirty, seeing as it was the only one I had.
“The weight of one soul,” a voice replied.
The voice from earlier.
I turned, finding the maybe-blond man behind me again. The children had gathered around him, all of them staring at Rau. I wanted to cover up the god of Chaos, to shield the image from their view ... but what was the point in protecting their innocence? They were already dead. You couldn’t be more mature than a dead person.
“But two of us came here,” I muttered, the man’s meaning finally catching up to me.
“Two parts of two souls travelled here,” he countered, “equalling the weight of a single soul.”
“You mean ...” I turned back to the slumped over, washed-out image of Rau. “He’s not dead?”
“A sliver of his soul has died, absolutely, but the rest remains.”
I groaned, stalking away from the body, back toward where the black chains lay, still in the dirt several feet away. “Just my luck. I finally beat that asshole in a battle, and it turns out I was only battling a piece of him. Not even the real him. Wait ... does that mean I’m not even the real me? What was he saying, about my soul not being torn?”
The man had his head cocked as he watched me, walking slowly toward where I crouched beside the chains.
“Your soul had already been separated,” he informed me. “The sons of Abil and Adeline guard the splintered pieces, forming a bond between the six of you that cannot be broken, even in death.”
I froze, grabbing the chains and standing again, my gaze sharpening, trying to make out any further details in the shadowy visage before me.
“How do you know about that?” I asked, swallowing. “Who are you?”
“We can see through the eyes of what we left behind,” he replied cryptically, motioning to one of the children. The girl hurried over to him, casting a wary look at me.
“Where is your body?” he asked her. “What can you see?”
The girl closed her eyes, and her body immediately seemed to shrink, to recoil away from us.
“It’s dark.” Her voice was shaking. “And cold. There are others here, but I can’t see their faces. There are chains—they’re heavy, and cold. Water is dripping on my leg. There are bugs crawling on me.” She started crying, and the man whispered something to her. She opened her eyes again and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing.
I realised, then, that she was talking about the body she had been imprisoned in, and I wanted to throw up again. I waited until the girl calmed down, and the man sent her back to the others, rising to his feet again.
“We can still see,” he told me. “And I have seen you before, Willa Knight.”
I stared at him for a long time, sure that I had never seen his face before, though there was an inkling of something familiar about him. I thought that it was in the shape of his eyes, or the wideness of his smile.
“Wait ...” My voice was shaking, shock tumbling through me. “Sienna?”
He blinked, unsure how to answer for a moment, and then he was laughing. The sound wasn’t as full as it should have been, as though laughter wasn’t allowed in this place of dust and shadow.
“No,” he replied, when his laughter had died off into a chuckle. “I am not Sienna.”
“Then how have you seen me before? Did you die in Minatsol?”
“I didn’t,” he replied, a smile twisting his lips. “I died in Topia, at the hand of my brother. He locked my body away, but the panteras drove him from the spot. They now guard it, and he cannot return. I lay behind the mortal glass, my body preserved from age and decay, so that I might see the secrets of the world, both past and present. I watch as the world changes, unable to do anything about it, unable to change myself. I watched you while you watched me. Do you remember?”
I stumbled forward, one of my hands reaching out toward him involuntarily. “Jakan?” The name was only a dry whisper, barely escaping my lips.
He nodded, and then he captured my extended hand. It felt natural for my hand to fit into his, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because we both lacked substance in this realm, but longed—with whatever substance we did have—for a connection to the other realm. Or maybe it was because he knew everything there was to know about me, through the glass, and I had seen his birth with my own eyes. We were connected, in a very strange way.
“I should be scared of you,” I found myself saying, as I pulled back from him, my hand falling to my side again. “You are Staviti’s brother. A god, just like him.”
“A god of creation, just like him,” Jakan confirmed, “though my powers have been stripped away.”
“Why did he kill you?”
“He killed me because he wanted to be the only one. He will kill you for the same reason.”
“I’m as good as dead.” I tossed my hands out, indicating where I stood. I had been too busy fighting off Rau before, for the reality of that statement to properly sink into me, but it did now.
There was a part of me that would never die. A part of my soul that had splintered away from me and latched onto each of the five Abcurses, the beings who surrounded me after Rau’s curse tore me apart. But the rest of me? It was lost. Limp and lifeless, as Sienna had been.
“That’s not entirely true,” Jakan argued. “You’re not dead. Not yet. Since a part of you remains, you can use the chains as a tether. A pathway can always go in both directions: forward, or backward. They brought you here, so they can take you back.”
“Come back with me,” I blurted, the plea barely even making sense.
There were children that needed saving, not to mention Sienna, and countless others. I wasn’t sure how I was going to bring back all of the children, though, especially if Staviti would only banish them all over again.
Jakan smiled. “I cannot. My soul here is whole, it would tear me apart to go back with you. Remember, you can only carry the weight of half a soul ... though I think you will want to save that space for someone else. Someone who has been waiting to speak to you for a long, long time.”
He held out his hand, and I took it again, allowing him to lead me down a dusty, dirt-cracked path. We didn’t seem to be heading in any particular direction. The landscape seemed to go on forever, with no place to stop or rest. It was dust as far as the eye could see. I realised after almost half a rotation of walking that there wasn’t even a sun, or a sky. The dust had merged with the horizon, providing no source for the dull light that illuminated everything, and no sense for where we were in the sun-cycle.
“She is usually here,” Jakan told me, his voice lowered. His tone was softer now, his eyes downcast.
The woman was standing at the crest of a hill, staring listlessly off into the distance. She was familliar to me, even through the washed-out greyness that was painted over her profile.
“Mum?” I choked out.
She turned, her hand raising up. “Herd,” she said.
I froze in my scramble up the hill, confused. “Herd?” I asked, turning to Jakan, repeating the word. “Herd? What does that mean?”