“So are Norac and Aegi enemies?” The man asks, hands clasped, intrigued.

“No, she is rather one of Norac’s few friends” Kura answers quickly not retaining much information.

The man looks up into the sky muttering something unintelligible before looking back down towards them.

“Phew, so you’re not going to kill me-”

“No”

“Good, so tell me, what do you know of Aegi?”

She muses for a moment, prying old memories from deep within.

“I have only met her once, on the day that this dimension became Norac’s. It was a few hundred years ago, in the beginning of the end of the first age.

Karon had ferried us down to the fields where the two of them spent the whole day playing. That was when the fields were empty, devoid of Chthons”

“Playing?” both the man and Palock seem rather interested by that point, but for different reasons.

“Yes playing”

“But touching Norac would-” Palock begins to point out before Kura takes over.

“Kill any living being yes…”

Silence drifts as all think upon this, until the man speaks up.

“But Aegi’s a goddess; touching Norac wouldn’t be enough to kill a goddess right?”

“She wasn’t a goddess back then…I didn’t even know she was a goddess now. Strange…what is she the goddess of might I ask?”

“The goddess of immortality” The man says with a cheeky grin.

Kura clacks with laughter “Quite fitting, she is indeed immortal” Her laughter eventually dies down and she begins once more “As I was saying, she was playing in the fields with Norac, which I later found out to be something…almost impossible.

She had stayed there for a month, to watch Norac set things up.

It was a busy month for us; creating reapers and collecting thousands of souls from the great battles of the first age.

Only a month had passed and we had already amassed half a million souls which were all placed into corpses if there were some, or turned into ghosts.

They had filled the fields and hundreds of reapers were placed in charge of rehabilitating them.

It was working perfectly fine; the dimension was running beautifully, until that first month had passed.

While Norac was busy the month, Aegi was staying in her room and I was told to make sure she was guarded by a reaper or two, not to be allowed out under any circumstance.

I did not know what she was capable, none of us knew, except maybe Norac…” She shakes her head wistfully, losing herself in the memories.

The man sighs “What did she do this time?”

Kura snaps out of her trance and continues “She left her room in such a burst of energy that we couldn’t stop her. I don’t remember what she said but it was something along the lines of not enjoying being confined.

She had gone straight out into the fields to find Norac, and that is when hell broke loose.

We were learning how to put souls into corpses, but we did not know how to meld the two together. So when Aegi came into their view, the souls wanted to move to something better…to something living.

I had just arrived to the fields, to see her screaming her lungs out and saw a soul forcefully pushed from her body.

The soul turned a grayish blue the moment it touched the grass, it was the first time we had let an untethered soul onto the fields.

It was like letting a wild animal loose; it began trying to take over the bodies of other beings, forcefully ejecting their soul and then leaving the corpse in pure hatred of being confined.

This thing, we called a Chthon; a soul which needs no body to survive but in fact desires and fears having a body.

Like a plague, it affected all of them, every single being, even us reapers.

Half a million souls, corrupted by the land of this dimension, turned into mindless things.

Half a million Chthons had come for us in this castle, and before we knew it, everything was gone; everyone was turned into one of those…things. All but Aegi and I.

We had run to this very room and…” She drifts off, holding her tongue and sighing deeply.

“What happened?” The man at the edge of his seat asks the question, impatient to know the ending.

“I locked the door behind me once I had gotten in…I was in front…”

She doesn’t need to say it explicitly, for both understand what she did.

“Kura, but didn’t you say she and Norac were friends, why did you?” Palock blurts out, wondering why she would do such a thing.

“Because Aegi was her enemy” The man responds, to which she nods.

“I did, I shouldn’t have, but I did. It wasn’t her fault truly, she had no idea. None of us knew what would happen. I had locked her out full well knowing what fate she’d have...”

“But Aegi’s not dead, she can’t be since she became a goddess after this happened” The man muses deeply.

“I don’t know what happened to her, all I know is that when I finally decided to open the door, after waiting for three years-”

“You waited for three years?” The man looks at her like she’s insane “how did you not go mad?”

“You don’t understand, Chthons are completely silent, so unless I know for a fact they weren’t on the other side, for all I knew, they’d be on the other side of the door just waiting. I kept myself sane by praying and planning, planning how to make it all better, how to repair everything, what to say to Norac when he returns from his trip.

For three years this kept me going, till I gave up and walked out, only to see the place devoid of everything.

Since then I’ve been growing the place, recruiting reapers and collecting souls in the mirrors” She takes out a little hand-mirror, passing it to the man.

“Nifty little thing, how many souls are in these?” The man passes it back after a little inspection.

“Thousands, thanks to Norac, we can keep a great amount of them in each mirror. But that means if the mirror is to break then all the souls will escape”

The man stands up, nodding and thinking calmly while his feet paced him up and down in a frantic manner.

“So all the Chthons disappeared along with Aegi, and you collect souls with mirrors, so why are there still Chthons down below?”

“Over the years, some souls have been ferried across and they turned to Chthons”

The man continues to think, smirking slightly as things start to fall into place somewhat.

“Tell me, why haven’t you gotten rid of these new Chthons?”

“We don’t know how to, all we have done is set up wards to disallow them from entering the keep.” Kura shrugs, while Palock nods in confirmation.

The man nods, claps his hands and goes to pick up his tome.

“Right, thanks for telling me this, it’s been quite revealing. And even though that is all you can tell me, I believe this story is not over yet” He bows deeply.

“How can it not be over, the only two who know this is both me and Aegi and unless you are planning to find her, you won’t be able to ask”

“For your information, yes I’m going to try find her but no it isn’t her I’m talking about. There was a third person there, or so I suspect”

“Who?” Kura asks, wondering whether the man had picked up on the very subtle hint she had laid.

The man just smiles and begins to walk off, only to be blocked by the two of them.

“Kura thank you for the tale, it was finally a niceish story of my Goddess. Now I must be off. Toodles” He starts moving round them.

‘Wait!” Kura shouts before he exits the room “Palock will escort you till you get out of here…in case of Chthons”

The man nods and allows Palock to get his bearings.

Walking down the corridor, the two of them end up outside soon enough and signal for Karon to come down.

In a short while, the little two man boat appears and they both board, the man paying with two gold coins, somehow fitting and holding both of them on despite the appearance of the boat.

As they set off into the sky, the man turns to Karon and watches him intently as he steers. He thinks deeply, hands clasped before finally speaking up.

“So Karon…did this place exist before Norac ‘created’ it?”

Palock looks strangely towards the man, but the look transfers to Karon when he nods.

“And does that mean Chthons are the natural denizens of this dimension?”

Karon nods.

“So why is it that he tried to not have Chthons?” he clasps his fingers together, looking pensively towards Karon, who continues to look forward, steering.

“He never did anything of the sort; Kura took matters into her own hands when Norac disappeared”

The man grins madly.

“I see”

Palock looks worriedly towards the man who just shrugged his shoulders “Seems like Kura wanted to stage a coup, and ended up messing things up”

“Kura? No!” Palock looks shocked, unable to accept Kura, the reaper he’s known for hundreds of years to be so evil.

“Of course she would, she was asked to by our Master”

“Why would Norac ask her to coup him?” Palock frantically blurts out, not understanding anything.

The man bursts out of his seat, grabbing Karon by the bare bone.

“Norac isn’t his master”

With a wild laugh, to a both shocked Karon and Palock, he pulls the rudder down, forcing the rowboat into a nosedive, sending all three down to the ground with no way to stop it.

Lying in the wreckage with a shattered spine and other vital bones smashed to smithereens, yet still alive, the man turns towards the broken body of Karon.

“Now that we’re on a more even level, I’ve got a couple of questions for you” He grins cheekily and starts laughing maniacally as both Palock and Karon look at him in fear and confusion.

…

“Uuurgh, why does it feel like I was hit in the head by a giant fucking…oh wait” Cannith groans as he rises from the bed, quickly stumbling onto the floor, taking down a startled person with him.

Rolling off some lanky man with dirty blond hair, he lies on the floor, body not responding like it use to.

“You took quite a beating, so don’t be moving much” The young fellow doesn’t seem to mind that he was almost flattened by the walking pack of muscle.

“Took a beating, pagh. Bloody wolves shouldn’t be able to have done a scratch. Seems like those fucking rocks did a lot more damage to me than I thought”

Grunting, he forces himself to stand, being mildly supported by the lanky guy.

Unable to be stopped, he rips off the bandages, seeing his wounds have closed up nicely, he thinks he must’ve been asleep for the better part of the day.

“Right, I’m off” he takes two strides before collapsing on the floor, his legs not working properly.

“Shit shit shit shit” The lanky guy quickly rolls Cannith over and clinically looks him over “SHIT”

Sprinting out the room, his unintelligible shouts can be heard through the walls and Cannith just groans as black overtakes him.

“Seems like internal bleeding” an elderly voice brings him back to the light.

“Well no fucking surprises there…fucking rocks” Cannith growls and opens his eyes, looking at the small crowd of nine people, all but one carrying bows on their backs.

The lanky man looks towards the town doctor. “How do we fix him?”

“We?” the doctor shakes his head “Some priests with healing magic will fix him up. But they’re all the way in the capital”

All the archers look at one another in concern.

“Someone get a message to the capital” An elderly bald fellow blurts out.

“No it’ll take too long, he’ll bleed out” A small teen with spiky brown hair rebuttles.

“How about taking him with us?” A dark skinned woman shouts out.

“Too much moving will make it worse” the doctor chips in.

“So as long as he doesn’t move it’ll be fine?” The lanky guy asks the doctor, to which he nods. “Then let’s make a stretcher and take him”

The others think for a second before nodding.

“But who will take him?” A small girl with two brown ponytails asks.

“I say we take him, I mean we’ve looked after him this far” An older looking version of the girl pets her as she contributes.

“Won’t the rest be kind of annoyed?” Doronius raises an eyebrow.

“The rest have already paid their respects and a bunch of them have buggered off to try become him. We’ll be fine taking him since we are recognized as his carers for now” The sleek black haired archer with a slight elvish look to him adds logic to the conversation.

“All in favour?” the lanky man asks.

Everyone unanimously raises their hands.

“Then it’s settled, you little shits are taking me back to Darton, whoopdedo” Cannith tries to laugh but just ends up groaning.

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Author's Corner:

Now you may be confused with some things in this chapter...good, answers will be given sooon enough :D

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the chapter and hope you've got a couple of burning questions that you'd like answering :D

btw no more chapters till at least tmrw

-TRUE NORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD