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The first thing you have to know is that I did not kill the gods. Now, I’m sure you must have heard differently from your parents when they tell you bedtime stories, your priests who tell you their selfish desires rather than the will of the gods, or from your teachers who pretend to know what they’re talking about.
In Salemo, virtually the entire populace is kept in drudgery and toil. There are no public parks, nor libraries, nor song, nor wine, nor holidays. People slave away in seventy-two -hour workweeks, sustained by unnourishing meals of corn meal and grease, returning home to their miserable hovels at the end of each day to collapse on their stinking cots.
Mom still has good days, some days. Those days, when I visit her at Alpine Rest, she knows who I am and asks how her grandson Jack is. On her not-so-good days, she tries to summon the Fire Cosmic and screams that I’m in league with Professor Incalculable.
Sparrow retired from the battlefield at the height of her powers and couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind. She was done with fighting, armies, blood, death, and taking orders. Now, she ran a salon at the edge of Florelia, Tira City’s entertainment district.
When the Faerie King takes his tour of the human realm, he becomes—of course—a viral hit. The first posts and videos stream out from Shanghai, just after the New Year. He’s seen waiting patiently in line at a popular dumpling stall.
The city of Nan Rhok stands on the ridge of a great mountain, where a gullet of steaming water flows from volcanic hot springs. The ridge is narrow and the mountain chill, so the city hews close to the spring, building high its granite towers. The name of Nan Rhok is known for many leagues.
A decade since the Fivefold Church conquered the mile-high godpines and hanged their priests, settlements picked at the trunks like termites. Each godpine’s felling had shivered faraway cities to their foundations: small wonder that whole kingdoms hungered for lumber now. Or perhaps folk just liked the thought of chopping up a god for outhouses and chicken coops. Ander Carmora hated the noise—endless sawmills, axes, oxen.
I didn’t die when I fell into the candy river, you know. That mean girl didn’t die when she got flushed down the fake novelty toilet. Neither did the other one, the one who ate so much jelly that they rolled her away to pump her stomach. I think she set the record for the highest ever blood glucose level, but she’s alive. We write sometimes.
Everyone believes they’ll be the one to crack the curse. It’s that very belief that assures their doom. Arrogance has always been one of the currencies of the brilliant. Students, especially those from the Society of Myriad Mysteries, are rich with it; they spend it without knowing, in the arch of a skeptic’s eyebrow or the scoff of hearty denial. These luminous youths have not been taught to be misers with such a precious resource.
You are what blooms between my thoughts. Relentless, like the roots of a poplar, or the mold swelling from neglected corners of a home echoing with silent disharmony. You slink through my star-ridden veins, haunt my magma gut, occupy the warmth I carry for the denizens that trawl my skin. I cannot shake you, cannot fathom a sunrise without picturing you basking in its crimson glow.
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