“Those Betas will be required to remain in Minatsol for the next life-cycle: a sacrifice you will all be making—” his voice boomed over the voices starting to swell in shocked protest— “for the good of Topia. This afterlife has been a gift from the land itself, but now the land must be repaid. The Betas of Topia will have exactly one sun-cycle to prepare for their relocation, and then they will settle themselves into their new lodgings at Champions Peak. A pocket has been opened directly into the new academy, and it will remain open for one sun-cycle only. Train your sols like your afterlives depend on it, because they do. At the end of this life-cycle, I will host an ascension ceremony in Minatsol. Every single sol will be sacrificed in the old temple, and if any prove themselves too weak to ascend to Topia, their Beta-teacher will be executed by Death.”
This information was met with an outcry, but Staviti did not stick around to listen to it. He was gone in the next click, as a sorrowful wail rose up from the crowd. One of the goddesses was crying. Loudly.
“Can he do that?” I asked, my borrowed voice choked-up and fearful. I hadn’t realised that Staviti held so much power. I’d heard that he was the all-powerful, the all-knowing, the all-everything, but threatening to kill off half of the immortal population as punishment for being unable to reverse the apparent natural order of the worlds was …
“He’s insane,” Coen answered in a terse whisper, finishing my thought for me. “But he’s the Creator. He can do anything he wants. We need to get out of here.”
“But …” I stuttered. “But he said that he wasn’t implying anyone would have to die, and then he just said everyone was going to DIE!”
Rome wrapped his hand around my—or Aros’s—mouth, cutting me off before I got any louder. He shook his head once. I worked to calm myself. Locking my panic down, I finally noticed the gods around us were starting to stir in a big way. None of us wanted to be caught in the crossfire of a mass-god-tantrum; Yael grabbed a hold of my arm, a little rougher than usual, though I felt no pain inside Aros’s body. He tugged me into blackness, and I found myself back in Adeline’s room, the others blinking into existence around me. I wanted to ask if I would now have the magical ‘pop on and off marble platforms at will’ power that the rest of them had, but I was aware that it wasn’t exactly a good time for my random questions.
“What happened?” Aros demanded, standing up from one of the couches.
Siret’s hand landed on the back of my neck, and I could feel his magic trickling away from me. I knew the moment I was myself again, because his touch changed. It became softer, his palm settling against my skin, curving around the sides of my neck, pulling me backward and into his body. Yael, who must have decided that he wasn’t okay with where I was standing, reached out while Coen started to detail Staviti’s announcement to Aros.
I was tugged against another hard chest, Yael’s arm angling across my front, his hand settling into the dip of my waist, his chin resting against the top of my head. Siret shot him a look before turning to focus on Coen’s recounting.
“What does this mean?” Aros asked, his expression shocked.
Adeline appeared then, Abil right beside her.
Family meeting time.
“He’s sending all five of you to Minatsol again,” Abil announced, a growl riding his words.
“Six,” Adeline corrected, her eyes on me.
“We could keep her here,” Abil countered.
“No,” five deep, angry voices snapped.
A short silence followed that sudden outburst, and then all eyes seemed to settle on me, waiting.
It was almost funny that they didn’t know what my answer was.
“Of course we know what your answer is,” Rome grunted, turning his eyes back to his parents as he answered my thought. “She’s coming with us. She will attend as the strongest Chaos sol.”
“You can’t decide that.” I frowned. “And that will be announcing to Rau that I’m still alive.”
“The only person it’s going to negatively affect is Cyrus, and Cyrus can look after himself,” Aros answered, sounding uncharacteristically hard-hearted. “Rau will think it was all an illusion, that Cyrus betrayed him. Because as far as he knows, you never ascended to Topia.”
“Did I actually ascend to Topia though?” I asked. “And how are you going to pass me off as the strongest Chaos sol?”
Abil laughed. “Every other Chaos sol is dead. Staviti saw to that. You’re the only candidate in the running.”
“Shouldn’t I be running away then?” I spun on Abil. “Before Staviti kills me too?”
“There is no way in the worlds that you have escaped his notice.” Abil sounded condescending, but also a little annoyed that he was having to explain this to me. “He knows more than he lets on. He sees more. Hears more. If he wanted you dead, you would be dead.”
“I am dead.” I threw up my hands. “I mean … I am dead, right?”
I glanced between them all as they stared right back at me, before Abil made a movement for something at his belt.
“Don’t even think about it,” Adeline snapped, her hand moving rapidly to cover his.
“Think about what?” I asked, when it seemed like nobody else was going to.
“He was going to stab you,” Rome replied. “To make sure you’re dead.”
None of my guys looked particularly angry, but I noticed that they had all moved a few steps closer to me.
“And you are dead,” Coen added. “We saw you die. We felt it, just as we felt you come back to life.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be happy or saddened by those words. It was starting to feel like death was a relative term. Everything felt pretty normal about me now. What happened to the other dwellers when they died? The ones who didn’t become servers. I already knew what happened to the servers. The banishment cave. That place still gave me a deep-in-my-gut bad feeling, especially the part where I’d promised to free them and never had. It was an unfinished job that would probably haunt me forever.
My head hurt.
“It’s going to be fine, Will,” Rome told me. “We’ll do as Staviti asks, because we need more time to figure out exactly what he’s planning. I really don’t believe he’ll kill off all the Betas. Sometimes he uses big threats to … encourage us.”
I glanced between all of the grim faces. “You don’t think that he’s actually looking for the strongest sols? That maybe this is all just an excuse so he can send the Betas to Minatsol for a life-cycle, because this is where they will grow extremely weak—ready for execution?”
Their expressions didn’t change, but I could tell that they were thinking. Probably weighing up their answers so that they didn’t scare the undead life out of me.
Adeline was the one to finally answer. “Staviti is about keeping his own power base secure. He is the only one who isn’t able to have a Beta—he is accustomed to being the strongest, to having the power of creation at his fingertips, and his fingertips alone.”
And that meant what exactly?
Adeline had dodged my actual question, and the cryptic response was only serving to freak me out more. What sort of things would Staviti do to ensure he kept that power? The strongest god in the worlds had a new agenda, and it involved my guys.
We had to figure it out and fast.
It was decided—again, not by me—that I would just show up with the Abcurses at Champions Peak. Willa Knight, one Chaos Beta at your service. Cyrus would probably lose his shit when he saw me not hiding in his cave like I had been ordered to do, but it’d be too late for him to do anything about it by then. Personally, I was a big fan of Siret’s theory that Rau would be less inclined to attack us at the peak, since the situation was being closely monitored by Staviti. Okay, I was the only one actually worried about an attack. The Abcurses were more of the ‘bring it on’ and ‘Rau is a whiny bitch’ opinion. Their lack of concern would really worry me … if I had time to add another worry to my already full load.
When we arrived at the pocket that Staviti had opened, it was like a shimmering, translucent mirror. He had set it up at a central gathering platform that had apparently been used for smaller, less formal meetings. Each Beta was given a time to go across, so that we didn’t all crash into the place at once.