The third day came and went. The shrublands turned into black marsh. The water smelled like brine and we could hear the sounds of buzzards fleeing the trees as we rode past them. I was stiff behind Ethis. I was sick of riding bitch. My ass was sore and my stomach was constantly in knots. I knew it wasn’t my place to complain, but I was tired of flatbread and this barren world and wine and hangovers. I was simply exhausted by traveling and exhausted by thought that we weren’t even halfway to the Capitol.
I could sense a tension between the brothers that hadn’t been there before. Ethis snapped at Djince any chance he could get, his words biting more than playful. Djince took it all grudgingly, but I could see a spark of resentment in his eyes and a flutter in his jaw anytime Ethis opened his pretty mouth.
I wondered more than once why Djince was so subservient to Ethis. Clearly, he didn’t appreciate playing second fiddle, especially when Ethis only asked his opinion when he himself was stumped. Every time we made camp, Djince dug the latrine and Ethis dug into the wine. Every time we stopped, Djince was on the watch until Ethis finished his own biscuit.
It wasn’t my place to question their dynamic, but after being in their company for three straight days, I decided that their relationship was not a healthy one after all. They were together because they had always been together. Ethis was always at a distance in a fight. Djince was always cleaning up the blood.
I wanted to feel sorry for Djince, but he was over six feet tall, fast on his feet, and merciless. If he didn’t want to bully Ethis back, his was a lost cause and I could spare no sympathy for him… Well, maybe a little sympathy. A tiny, microscopic, tenuous bit of sympathy.
We camped that night in silence. All of us were muggy, wet, and uncomfortable. Nothing in our belongings was dry, save for the inside of my haversack.
“You’re a god, Pops. Could you make it stop raining?” Ethis asked from under his fur tarp that was strung between two trees. He was nursing the communal wineskin, refusing to pass it even when we had asked. Djince had pulled another skin from the packs just to avoid antagonizing him any further. This, the elder past me in silence as we watched Ethis ruin himself. “I mean, you could do us all a favor,” the younger Kallos said. “You’re supposed to be lucky or something.”
“I never said I was lucky,” I said with a chuckle. “You did.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said after a moment of thought. Then he pointed at me, “What was it like, being all powerful?”
“Well,” I began uncertainty. “I remember it was like having the future on a leash.”
Ethis frowned. “Future? I thought you were into history and shit?”
“I am--was… But history has a way of influencing the future. Especially if remembered in a certain way… or forgotten, for that matter.” I smiled then, thinking back. “My twin brother was God of Fate. Periut, they called Him. He was a real space cadet. He never had anything important to say.”
“Sounds relatable as fuck,” Ethis said.
I glanced at Djince, but he was pointedly looking at me and not his brother. He blinked slowly at me, like a lizard staring into the sun. “Well, by the time my brother ever predicted something would come to pass, it would have already changed. The future is like that--always changing, never fixed. Memory is like that too, in some respects, but I have the wherewithal to judge if something is or isn’t possible or probable, because it will have already happened.”
Ethis laughed. “Alright. I thought I could keep up, but you’ve lost me.” He took another swig and laid the wineskin on his chest. He squinted at me. “Heard the gods were notorious whores. That true?”
“Whores?” I laughed. “No. Celebrities, medlers, politicians, objects of masterbatory adoration and fasination--Yes. But being a whore is difficult when most of you are related in some way… or you’re a manifest force of nature like air or lava.”
“And that stopped you?”
I felt myself growing angry, but I kept it in check. Ethis was drinking. I looked at Djince and he smiled at me. Welcome to the club, he seemed to say. We’ve got dusters. I said to Ethis, “Yes, it did. I don’t know why I’m humoring you, now that I think on it… We took lovers among our own, but those couplings were rare.”
“Too afraid of making babies?” Ethis snickered.
“No. We couldn’t have children. We weren’t driven by the urge to copulate… We were driven by loneliness to create things. Mother created Man. Death created carrion. Life created beasts. So on.”
“What did you create?” Ethis asked me, sweeping a hand in a grandiose gesture. “What did the Great Papyrus ek out of the universe’s rocky face? History epics? Bookworms?” He laughed. “The chronophage, maybe?” His smirk turned dangerous.
“N-No,” I said, shaking my head. I wasn’t angry anymore, just sad. Just so sad. I crawled out of my little shelter of furs and looked between the brothers. Djince was still focussed on me, but Ethis was staring up at his furs, a blank look on his face. “I created Inkmen,” I said. “I put souls into artificial shapes. I stored the memories of whole cultures inside the bodies of those creations. I sent them into the world to be teachers and guides--scholars and information brokers… I created little extensions of myself and then gave them the agency to carry out those wishes if they wanted to.”
I was glad that it was raining, else they may have seen my tears. I wiped futility at my face. “I didn’t want the world to end. I didn’t want it to become this place full of brutes and poison. I wanted to better the world,” I said, my voice drowning out as the rain started coming down harder and harder. I spoke over it, saying, “So no, Ethis--to answer your question--I was too busy trying to preserve the world to be fucking around.”
I went for a walk toward the latrine then. This time, I didn’t hear the brothers conference behind my back. All I heard was rain and dark feathered birds crying in the distance.
I missed my old world. I missed having power. I missed not being told what I was and wasn’t. I missed Argus, Cimon, Leocrates, and Nicias. I missed the soul-gifted of my Inkmen and wondered what had become of them. “I did not end the world,” I told myself as I hugged my jacket. I needed to believe it. I needed to believe…
I needed my memories back.
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