The Antiheroes: The world needed heroes...It got them instead. Page 5

  There was a noticeable emphasis on ‘younger’ which, judging by the annoyance that flitted briefly across Perandius’s face, was clearly meant as a jab. “The situation was a bit more…complicated, than I expected,” he said, speaking to the larger of the two and pointedly ignoring the second.

  “Oh, Perandius,” yet another new voice said, and a third stranger sauntered in.

  The newcomer was a woman, and though she was undeniably beautiful, there was something about her Dannen immediately took a disliking to, though what it was he couldn’t have said. She appeared to have dark hair, though he couldn’t be sure as it was brushed back and looked decidedly wet. She gave a smirk as she glanced at the Messenger God.

  “You do always have a way of needlessly complicating things, don’t you?” she purred as she glanced around the house, her nose high in the air, a faint look of disgust on her perfect features. “Always writing, always reading, chronicling the great deeds of others, god and mortal alike. How you live in this dusty old tomb I’ll never know.”

  Perandius’s face flushed with embarrassment or anger, probably both. Dannen frowned. Moments ago, he’d been thinking similar thoughts, but hearing them in the woman’s arrogant, sneering voice made him angry.

  “I’m no expert,” Dannen said, “but it seems to me that someone ought to do it. I’m not a big fan of history myself, but only a fool would act as if it’s unimportant.” He glanced between the woman and the smaller male god. “Or fools, maybe.”

  The two turned to him, staring at him in disbelief as if a mongrel dog had just approached them on the street and struck up a conversation. A moment later, the disbelief turned to anger which plastered itself across their faces.

  “How dare you, you insolent whelp,” the male began, starting forward.

  Dannen had a brief thought that maybe antagonizing gods wasn’t the best idea, but the warm contentment of the ambrosia soothed it quickly, and he raised his fists. There was suddenly an inexplicable breeze in the house despite the closed door. He was watching the god approach, feeling the breeze and wondering if a man could give a god a black eye, getting ready to give it a shot, when a voice spoke.

  “Enough.”

  This from the largest and oldest of the three. He did not raise his voice, yet his words filled the room, rumbling like an avalanche, and sending a thrill of terror past Dannen’s pleasant drunkenness. If there was a voice able to level mountains, this was it. And he was clearly not the only one who felt so. The other gods, Perandius included, winced, avoiding the god’s stern gaze and studying their feet instead.

  “Forgive us, Father,” the two newcomers muttered in unison, all traces of their former arrogance vanishing in an instant, replaced with obsequious humility.

  The god studied them for several seconds, then, apparently satisfied that they were cowed, turned to Dannen. He stepped closer, looking Dannen over like a farmer might a cow he was considering purchasing. Dannen fidgeted under the god’s scrutiny, feeling, for reasons he couldn’t explain, ashamed, as if all of his darkest desires, his worst acts were being laid bare. A lifetime of regret and pain he’d spent years trying to bury suddenly unearthed, opened like a book for anyone to read, if they had a mind.

  Finding themselves in such a situation, some people, probably most, would have been frozen with fear, and any with good sense would have stood terrified at what the god might see. But Dannen, more’s the pity, had never been known for his good sense. What he had been known for though was his anger, a constant, if unwanted companion. And he was angry now—not just angry. Furious. He felt the cloud of that anger seeping into his mind as it had so many times before, threatening to drown out the voice of good sense—admittedly weak and malnourished from years of being ignored—that was trying to convince him to not say or do anything particularly stupid.

  Just when Dannen was thinking he was destined to punch a god in the face—and no doubt be turned into a pile of ash for his trouble, the large god grunted. “This is the one you spoke of, Perandius?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He doesn’t look like much,” the god said, his gaze coming to rest on Dannen’s paunch. Dannen’s first thought—that he really needed to lay off the ale and sweet tarts—was quickly eclipsed by a far more urgent and dangerous observation, that the god was an incredibly muscular, imposingly threatening prick.

  “Let me guess,” he said, the words coming out of his mouth despite his strenuous, if inevitably doomed efforts to the contrary. “You the God of Assholes, that it?” He glanced behind the massive god at the younger male and female. “And what, a whole two followers? Well, at least if anything happens to you, they both seem more than ready to step in and take up the mantle.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath, and Dannen saw that Perandius’s face had taken on a decidedly pale, sickly look, his eyes so wide they appeared as if they might pop out of his head at any moment. His mouth worked as if he meant to say something, but the female beat him to it.

  “The insolence,” she said, stepping forward, “let me strike him down, Father, ple—”

  She cut off as the massive god held up a hand, forestalling her, his face unreadable. Dannen tensed while he waited to die horribly, putting a brave face on the thing because there wasn’t much else he could do.

  But instead of turning him into a toad or ripping his heart out through his chest, the hulking god grinned widely. “Got some fire to him, though. A spark. That’s fine. He’ll need it.”

  Dannen didn’t know what that meant, but he wasn’t about to show his ignorance, not with the two smaller gods eyeing him like he was a meal they were eager to dig into, so he shrugged. “I’ve got enough for what needs doing,” he said with far more confidence than he felt.

  The god eyed him critically for a moment then nodded. “I believe you just might, no matter the others who failed before you.” He turned to the Messenger God, and it was all Dannen could do to keep from breathing a sigh of relief as the god’s regard left him. “Very well, Perandius. I admit to having some doubt when you presented this plan to the Council, but I see I was perhaps wrong to do so. I wish you and your champion here luck. Should you need anything, let me know.” With that, he turned on his heel, his two cronies scattering before him like leaves before a high wind, and walked out the door as abruptly as he had come.

  As he did, the air, which had seemed so thick and suffocating a moment ago, seemed to thin, and Dannen took a slow, deep breath. The god’s two toadies, however, remained.

  “You will fail, brother,” the male said, his arrogant sneer back in place, “and when you do, I will be there to see it.”

  “Yes,” the female said, favoring Perandius and Dannen with a wintry smile, “I have always enjoyed a good show.”

  Their threats and parting words were ruined somewhat by the way they hurriedly scampered off after the larger god after they’d uttered them. In another moment, Dannen and Perandius stood alone in the house.

  Perandius let loose a shuddering sigh, wiping an arm across his brow. “Tell me, truly, Dannen Ateran,” he said, glancing at him, “do you wish to die?”

  Dannen frowned. That wasn’t the sort of thing you asked a man, was it? Damned impolite, is what it was, and if either of the two of them looked like death might be an improvement, he thought it must surely be the god whose house looked like a library had thrown up inside of it, no signs of life except the chronicles of the lives others had lived.

  “What’s the big deal?” he asked. “They were a couple of assholes—not the first I’ve met, and I don’t imagine they’ll be the last either.”

  The messenger god pinched his nose between a thumb and forefinger. “Those assholes, as you so eloquently put it, are my brother and sister.” He scowled at the doorway as if he could still see them standing there. “My older brother and sister as it just so happens, though how they can be so arrogant over a single millennia’s difference I’ll never know.”

  Dannen blinked. The more he saw of the land of the gods, the more he realized that they had just as many problems as the land of mortals, though there was no denying their problems were prettier. If he were a priest, perhaps he would have been able to extract some great wisdom from that. If he were a scholar, he likely would have been able to distill the last hour or so into a treatise to change the course of humanity. But Dannen was no priest, and he was no scholar. He was simply a man. And, more than that, he was becoming increasingly sure that he was a drunk one. Very drunk, in fact, though he was suffering none of the ill effects that would often indicate that was so, namely, puking his guts out all over his boots.

  “And the last one?” he asked. “The big bastard? Another pain in the ass sibling, I’m guessing?”

  Perandius’s face took on a decidedly green cast. “Um…no. That was my father.”

  Dannen grunted, vaguely remembering something about the woman and the man calling the big one “Father,” so he supposed it would stand to reason that, if they were siblings, the hulking god would also be Perandius’s father. “Tell me, they always follow him around like that?”

  “Like what?” the messenger god asked, though it seemed clear enough to Dannen that he knew exactly what he was talking about.

  Dannen snorted. “Like what? Like a couple of dogs tailing their master, hoping he drops them some scraps, that’s what.”

  “Wind and rain must surely follow thunder,” Perandius said in a mocking tone, scrunching up his face in disgust to make it clear he was repeating a phrase he’d heard often.

  To Dannen, though, the man might as well have been speaking another language. “What in the name of the gods do—” He paused, grunting a laugh. “What in the name of you do you mean by that?”

  Perandius rolled his eyes. “Just something my brother and sister love to say, their way of explaining what you refer to as them following father around like a couple of dogs, though indeed you are not far off the mark. They follow him in hopes he will show them favor.”

  “Wind and rain and thunder.” Dannen shrugged. “Doesn’t make any sense, you ask me.”

  “It does,” Perandius said slowly, “if you consider who they are. You see, my brother—the one who so pointedly insists on being older—is the God of the Wind.”

  Dannen blinked. “Your brother—the asshole that was just in here—is Sahael?”

  “Unfortunately,” Perandius muttered.

  Dannen’s thoughts were sluggish, incredibly so, in fact, but he concentrated hard enough that his head began to pound. “Which would make your sister the Goddess of Rain.”

  “Just so,” the Messenger God said, inclining his head. “Hydrallia.”

  Dannen thought back over the sentence Perandius had said. “Wind…rain.” There was something he felt as if he was missing, then it struck him, and his breath caught in his chest. “Your father—the big god that was here. You mean…that was—”

  “Feladandrius,” Perandius agreed, “God of Thunder and Lightning, and Father of all the Major Gods. And you called him an a…” He trailed off, shaking his head, an expression on his face somewhere between disbelief and awe.

  Suddenly, Dannen felt lightheaded, and not the pleasant, I’m feeling fine, so who cares if my toes and fingers are numb kind. Instead, it was more along the lines of the I just spilled my beer on a professional bruiser looking for something to bruise kind. Only this bruiser just so happened to be the most powerful of all the gods.

  “Shit,” Dannen breathed.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Perandius said.

  Or, at least, that’s what Dannen thought he heard before he passed out. Or fainted, maybe, depending on how honest a man wanted to be.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Ah,” Perandius said, “you’re awake.”

  Dannen opened his eyes gingerly, expecting the throbbing pain that nearly always followed a night of drink and debauchery. Not that there’d been any debauchery, of course, just him picking a fight with the most powerful of all the gods. Then again, Dannen had been accused of a lot of things in his life—most of them probably true—but none, so far as he recalled, had been being too smart. Foolish, though, that one he’d heard and more than once.

  He was surprised, however, to discover that he felt good. Maybe even great. “How long have I been asleep?” he asked, his words sounding slurred even to his own ears as his tongue felt two sizes too thick.

  The god glanced up from a tome at least six inches thick and gave a small shrug. “Six hours, or so? Give or take.”

  Six hours. “Damn,” Dannen said. “That drink’s incredible. You could have warned me.”

  Perandius raised an eyebrow. “I seem to recall doing just that.”

  Dannen couldn’t remember—it all seemed a bit fuzzy at this point—but he didn’t see much point in arguing, so he shrugged. “Well,” he said, taking in the massive book. “Been doing some light reading while I was out, have you?”

  Either the god didn’t catch the sarcasm or he chose to ignore it. “Yes, though rare are the times I’ve heard the Epistles of Echenwold referred to as light reading.”

  Dannen was no historian—he had plenty enough problems in his life, most happening right now and quite a few looking like they had some definite plans on seeing him dead to ever bother—but in his younger days he’d been saddled with one or two, all of them thinking that following him would give them some great story to tell. If they ever got their story, Dannen had never heard of it—not that he would have read such a thing as he was fairly sure he’d end up hating himself even more if he had, and that was no small trick—but as an unfortunate by-product, he had learned, mostly against his own wishes, quite a bit of history. Scholars and historians both, in his experience, on those rare instances when they didn’t have their noses stuck in a book, were incapable of shutting up, as if they intended to get all the talking a normal person might do in a year done in as brief a time as possible, hit their quota, and get back to reading.

  So it was with some surprise that he realized he’d never heard of the book the god referred to. “What did you call it again?”

  Perandius sighed, putting the book down. “Oh, you wouldn’t know it.”

  Something about the way the god said it struck a defensive note in Dannen, and he frowned. “Maybe I do.”

  “It is a fairly old work,” Perandius said in the tone of voice one usually reserved for those times it was necessary to warn a fool that he was doing or saying something particularly foolish.

  Fool I might be, Dannen thought angrily, but I’m not the foolish foo…foolishest? He grunted. “Oh? So all mortals are idiots, that it?”

  Perandius blinked, surprised by his anger. “Of course not. I meant no offense, Dannen Ateran. I only intended to tell you this one is…” He smirked in a way that made Dannen want to punch him again. “Let us say, a bit before your time.”

  “Might be I’m older than you think,” Dannen countered. “Just aged well, is all. Clean-living, mostly.”

  “It would have to be very clean indeed,” Perandius said in an amused voice. “For the Epistles are over eight centuries old.”

  He stared at Dannen, waiting for a reaction, but Dannen would be damned if he was going to give him one. “Probably a dumb book anyway,” he said finally, aware he was sour about the whole exchange but not caring.

  Perandius gave a thoughtful expression as if seriously considering the idea. “Admittedly, some believe the tenets Echenwold expounds upon originate from a faulty premise and, thereby, are doomed to be incorrect, but there are whole tribes who…” He trailed off. “Well, there were whole tribes which considered the Epistles a holy work.”

  “Were?”

  Perandius winced. “All dead now, I’m afraid. My but time does fly.”

  “Well, since those who thought it holy are all dead,” Dannen said dryly, “you’ll forgive me if I don’t start praying.”

  “Of course,” Perandius agreed. Dannen was starting to think the god was incapable of detecting sarcasm, something he would have thought important for the god of messengers, but then he awoke this morning missing a shoe and a belt and had gone on to poke fun at the God of Thunder and Lightning, so who was he to judge?

  “Reckon he was sore about the asshole joke?”

  “I’m sorry?” Perandius asked, clearly confused by the abrupt change of topic.

  “Your father, I mean,” Dannen said. “From all the stories, he isn’t exactly the most patient fella. They say Zeu—”

  “No,” Perandius interrupted, a horrified expression on his face.

  “No what?” Dannen said. “Gods, man or…man, god, you look like somebody walked all over your grave.”

  “It’s not my grave I’m worried about,” the god answered, glancing at the door as if expecting someone to come charging through it wielding a bloody axe any moment. “That name—the one you meant to say. I would not utter it, were I you. Father does…not like that name. Not at all.”

  Dannen grunted. “Why’s that? It’s a damned sight easier to say that Feledandrius.”

  “Irrelevant,” Perandius said, still looking at the door. “You will not be able to say either if you are dead. You have been lucky so far, but as you say my father is not known for his patience.”

  Dannen frowned. “Seems a bit much, doesn’t it? To get that angry over a name?”

  Perandius winced. “It is not a name, not as such. You see that word is, in truth, a derogatory term, one that the Banthinians, in their hate of the gods and my father in particular gave him. It means…” He shook his head. “Never mind. It does not matter what it means. Only understand it is not flattering, not at all.”

  “Banthinians?” Dannen asked doubtfully, beginning to think the god was putting him on, something he would have thought the god incapable of up until that moment. Although if he was making a joke at Dannen’s expense, he was doing a damn fine job of acting terrified. “Never heard of them.”

  “Nor would you have,” Perandius said. “No one has, in fact, not for many, many years.”