GRP Chapter 12

"Is this what you brewed and called tea?"

It was unusual. Samthyeon understood the moment he saw him that this was the reason Garthe had come to his room so early in the morning. He checked his forehead and wrist—temperature and pulse. His temperature was lower than usual. His pulse was close to normal. The truth was that you could tell just from looking at his face, which had lost its raw, ravaged quality entirely.

"How is the pain?"

"Almost nothing."

"Almost nothing, meaning?"

"Early onset. Around where it was when it first appeared."

Garthe watched as a faint wash of relief moved across Samthyeon's face and smiled, meaningfully.

"To think you were that worried. Touching, that."

Samthyeon's brow and the bridge of his nose collapsed into a hard furrow. He never once let him simply be glad. That insufferable—

He pushed the gladness and the irritation to one side and turned his mind to it. As he understood it, Garthe's curse had eased this significantly on a few prior occasions.

"Is this the fourth time?"

"So it is."

The first: when he had come face to face with the Mother Tree, the sacred tree. The second: when he had encountered the god of the vast plains of Chura. The third: when he had met the sea god of Lannae Island. And now this.

The common thread between a great tree, a great land turtle, and a great jellyfish was plain. They were ancient gods—born in the age when the two primordial deities died and the world and all life were made. From that moment until this one, they had kept watch over the world from their own domains, each of them, for thousands of years.

Each time Garthe met one of these three ancient gods, his curse broke, somewhat, against them. It never held for more than half a year before returning to what it had been—but for someone who had suffered so long, even a brief hole to breathe through was something.

Not every ancient god had the power to suppress Garthe's curse, of course. But Samthyeon had believed for some time that the answer lay in that primordial force—in the oldest power. Which was why he had wanted to study Heimdrykze, where the breath of antiquity remained intact and undiluted.

"Who did you meet last night?"

"Sharp as ever."

"If I'd missed that, I'd have to close up shop."

Garthe gave a brief account of what had happened the previous evening. With each sentence added, Samthyeon's brow drew a fraction tighter.

"She came in through the window? She must be out of her mind."

She's got to have a death wish.

"She held a dagger to you? Completely out of her mind."

Samthyeon filed away what Garthe told him about the god. Implausibly weak for a god of Heimdrykze. Appeared to have broken in to rescue the spirits held downstairs. The moment he touched her, the curse subsided. By morning the pain had begun to climb again—but touching her again steadied him.

Samthyeon held two fingers against the bridge of his nose and stayed like that for several minutes, thinking. His deeply furrowed brows laid out the complexity of his calculations. He had spent decades studying gods and Heimdrykze, and he still couldn't get a grip on this.

"What is she, exactly, this god?"

"Mariaeks."

"…I can only hope you didn't think I was asking for her name. You have a surprising talent for this. How long have you known her, and you've already gotten her name out of her?"

"That's what I was thinking."

Garthe dropped his gaze and let the corner of his mouth rise. His eyes had the look of someone turning something over.

"It's been over a decade since Lannae Island."

He looked deep into his teacup, as though a great jellyfish were somehow contained inside it.

"Maybe this is the last chance, Samthyeon."

Among the ruins discovered across the world, there were places where the landscapes of the Ancient Divine Age had been carved directly into stone. Giant gods crossing mountaintops in a few easy strides. A god with two heads, one seeing the past and one seeing the future. Trees that wandered. Rocks that prophesied the weather. Shadows with will. A vast bird sleeping inside clouds. Beings whose breath had swept away impurity, who had stripped away their scales one by one to make the gods beneath them, who had split the earth and parted the sea—most of them had, by this age, left no trace in the world.

Outside of Heimdrykze, the ancient gods left in this vast world could be counted on two hands. Several scholars had begun marking this as the close of the age of divinity.

Garthe's decision to reclaim Olgidphaenn had been bound up with this, too. After meeting the ancient god of the sea trench near Lannae Island—the Moonwave of the Deep Sea—both Garthe and Samthyeon had come to suspect that the curse's origins lay somewhere in the ancient world. But ancient gods were nearly impossible to find anywhere on the continent. And so they had come to Olgidphaenn, neighbor to Heimdrykze—that primordial sanctuary, the land said to hold sleeping divine souls. They had come hoping this would be where it ended.

And then, by chance—or perhaps by something closer to necessity—the curse had quieted again.

Heimdrykze was unknown territory, a land no human had ever set foot in. What mysteries it held, what ancient power was buried there, whether it might offer yet another opportunity—none of that was knowable yet. But what had come flying through his window the night before might be the last chance. That much had to be kept in mind.

"Given that she came herself to rescue them, they must mean a great deal to her. Use the spirits as leverage. Threaten them."

Samthyeon nodded.

"Where is this Mariaeks now?"

"My room."

"Without anyone watching her?"

"I knocked her out before I left. I doubt she'll wake for half a day."

"……"

"I modulated the force. Is it my fault she turned out even weaker than I expected?"

He really was a thoroughly terrible man. Samthyeon shook his head and began pulling out the records he had kept on the curse over the years. He was running through the list of questions he would need answered once he had Mariaeks to himself when he glanced back at Garthe. Garthe had finished the cold tea and was stretching, arms extended. He did not look particularly cheerful—but he did not look particularly sharp, either. Ordinary. Still. Like catching a glimpse of what his days might be without the curse's weight at all.

Samthyeon's hand stopped in mid-air, reaching for a book. This book was everything he had painstakingly built toward Garthe’s death. But if the curse could be broken—then perhaps there was no longer any reason for him to die. The fraction of hesitation that crossed his face must have been visible, because Garthe said it lightly, as if setting something down:

"If we can find a way to live from Mariaeks, we can find a way to die as well."

Samthyeon breathed out slowly and pulled the heavy book from the shelf, pressing it against his chest.

Her neck ached. She hadn't felt physical pain in a long time. She curled her body inward. She waited. That was the effective method she knew: hold still, let time pass—pain fades in the end. It always does. Mariaeks worked her body into a slow round shape and stayed there.

"I almost feel a little guilty at this point."

The fog that had settled over her mind lifted in an instant. Mariaeks's eyes snapped open.

An unbroken, plush bed, the mattress firm and yielding in all the right ways. A warm blanket with fine embroidery. A bare, austere space with not a single painting on the wall. Mariaeks took in her surroundings and understood—this was not her shrine—and sat up.

"Good evening, Mariaeks."

Garthe sat against the headboard, legs crossed, offering a leisurely greeting.

"Nice night, isn't it?"

Evening? Mariaeks's gaze moved to the window. Deep dark had settled outside. The last thing she remembered was the dignified sweep of a snow-covered mountain range just as the morning sun began to touch it. She had closed her eyes for a moment, and morning had become night.

With effort, she looked back at Garthe. He had a book resting on his knee. Eyes set in sharp features, holding a calm that was difficult to read—and the corner of his mouth tilted upward in some ambiguous way that was almost a smile. It was a face that did not easily yield its feelings. He had looked much the same yesterday.

Even with a dagger lodged in his heart—

A knock at the door.

"It's Samthyeon. I'm coming in."

A slight, green-brown-haired man entered the room. Remarkably, this one was also not a plain human. He couldn't be compared to Garthe, but he carried a fairly strong, clear divine power of his own. Mariaeks curled her hands into fists beneath the blanket. She couldn't even guarantee her escape with one hero present—and now the headcount of people she couldn't afford to ignore had gone up.

Mariaeks's eyes met Samthyeon's. He stopped, one hand still on the doorknob. The gaze that met him—not a single blink—was slightly unsettling.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and broke the tension.

"Ah, forgive me. It's my first time seeing a living god of Heimdrykze this close."

Mariaeks caught the important word precisely. A living god of Heimdrykze. First time seeing one this close. Then dead gods of Heimdrykze…

"Let's get to the matter at hand."

Before she could finish the thought, Samthyeon had pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down across from her.

"Hello, Mariaeks."

He greeted her with unhurried courtesy. She felt distinctly disoriented to hear her name in a stranger's mouth. She received the greeting, since he had given one.

“…Yeah.”

Samthyeon smiled with an almost imperceptible tension in his brow. It was an odd expression.

“I am the three-thousandth forest spirit of Ultera’s Forest, born of forest spirit and human blood—High Priest of Thul’Mhoriae, Aeoroës Iera Aera Iliowe Molhon.”

Mariaeks regarded Aeoroës…… in silence.

“Samthyeon will do.”

She nodded.

"I apologize for receiving someone of your standing in such modest surroundings. How are you feeling?"

The hands clenched in the blanket loosened slightly. At minimum, this half-spirit human did not look as openly ferocious as the hero sitting beside him with a book on his knee.