Wysper

  "Asena, may I ask you a question?"

  Asena and Wysper were walking together through the main plaza towards the Temple district, moving past the fountain where women from the city were drawing water. All of them stopped what they were doing to watch the two as they passed them by. The hood of Wysper’s woolen cloak was up to cover her hair, with her golden bangs tucked behind her ears, so she knew she was not the one being stared at.

  On their right, street vendors displayed vegetables and baskets of a purple fruit as Asena glanced her way. "You're free to ask, but I can't guarantee you'll like the answers."

  "I know... and yet, I need to ask anyway." Wysper took a deep breath. "After I discovered Yun-Kax was a false god, I became despondent, and Titan told me you had been barred from the heavens and forced to live as a mortal, which is why I decided to become your priestess. Asena, did Titan speak the truth, or was it just a way to make me feel better?"

  Asena gave the young woman a sidelong look. "I wondered when you'd begin having your crisis of faith. All your life you've been told the gods are real, but now you're finding out that not only Muzen, but Pan too, have been lying to you all along."

  "I was punished for having doubts," Wysper replied in a quiet voice. "Muzen used to test me in cunning ways to see if my belief in Yun-Kax and the rest of the pantheon remained strong."

  "And in one night, the entire house of straw they built burned down into ashes." The open gate separating the Temple district from the rest of the city was getting close as she sighed. "I don't know if it'll help, but let me tell you the story, in brief, of the war the Celestials fought against the Daemo Princes."

  Asena collected her thoughts a moment before speaking again. "My old world, which humans called the Heavens, is connected to Earth by way of the Shadowlands, as is the Daemo's homeland, which we named the Underworld. For thousands of years we knew all about Earth, but saw it as a place for the more adventurous among my race to travel to and explore. We also knew about the Daemo, who had set up petty kingdoms here and there, but didn't think much about them until their Princes began bringing large armies through the Grey to conquer as much of Earth as they could. The Dragon-lords of the Celestials, which isn't just a title, by the way, took counsel and raised an army to stop them."

  Wysper blinked in surprise. "Dragons really exist?"

  Asena chuckled. "Stuffiest bunch of scaly busybodies you'll ever meet... though I doubt any of them still remain here on Earth. Anyway, the Dragon-lords and other Celestials knew if they didn't stop the Daemo Princes from enslaving all the humans, we'd be next. Human blood's a much better meal than whatever they drink in the Underworld, but to them, Celestial blood's a meal fit for a king."

  "Or a prince."

  Asena nodded. "You get the idea. We forged our weapons, built our war machines, and spent years crafting devastating spells which laid waste to their armies. We killed Daemo by the thousands, by the tens of thousands as the mana energy warped Earth's lands and its creatures, but Daemo kept bubbling up out of the spawning pits and the Princes kept throwing them at us."

  Wysper was trying to absorb everything the Celestial was telling her. "Asena, I fail to understand why the Daemo went to so much trouble just because your blood tastes better than mine."

  "It's because of the mana. It makes the Heavens literally sparkle, the world’s colors brighter than here and the air so sweet and fresh that, on the day I returned and before I realized there was no place for me there anymore, Ghostdog and I spent a long time just breathing. Mana flows out of the land, out of the seas, and out of us. Every Celestial's a living mana node."

  Wysper slowly nodded. "That explains why you fought so hard to push out the Daemo. They would have raised a slave army of humans to fight alongside them, and eventually you would have been overwhelmed."

  "Just so." The Temple district gate loomed in front of them, and Asena stopped and looked up at what little remained of the statue to Yun-Kax. "Celestials know how to craft their children in the womb however they want, and I was bred for war. When I traveled to Earth with a reinforcing army, I stood taller than Titan and was far stronger, trained to fight with all weapons or just with my claws and teeth, if that's all I had. The Dragon-lords encouraged us to become gods and goddesses to the humans, so they would fight for us, and many tribes in what's now Germania and the Celtic lands embraced me that way. They called me Wolf Mother, and together we hunted Daemo through the dense forests and rugged hills until the last Daemo Prince died and the war ended. Those were good days."

  Still staring up at the broken base of the statue, she sighed. "We should've known those days wouldn't last. We should've realized we weren't doing your people any favors by pretending to be something we're not, or doing ourselves any favors by remaining behind to build empires of our own. I tell myself I was bred for war, that the Heavens would've never tolerated me coming back. That the choices I made were justified. But now, at the end of my life, the truth has gotten too big to ignore. I should've gone home when I had the chance."

  Stolen story; please report.

  Wysper laid a tentative hand on her arm. "If you had, there would be no Greywolf. He saved me, not only by coming to my rescue, but by helping me open my eyes to the truth."

  A ghost of a smile touched Asena’s lips. "You saved him as well, even though I was too pig-headed to realize it at the time." Her face grew serious. "Has he mentioned anything about what I coerced him to do with the Daemo?"

  Wysper removed her hand, hoping she could choose the right words. "He does not wish to speak about those times. They bother him, and I am guessing he is afraid I will condemn them for being too immoral... though shamelessly exposing my nude body to thousands of people cannot be any worse than whatever he has done."

  "You would be surprised," Asena said cryptically. "Daemo have absolutely no sense of shame and will play to a man's basest lusts, letting him degrade her as he wants, as a way to control him. They have no fear of death, and why would they, when they know death only means that they'll immediately crawl out of the spawning pits a younger version of themselves, with no memories of their previous life. Pain they can convert to pleasure, up to a point, and they can hasten their death if it’s close. So if you don't give the Daemo what she wants, there's no threat a man can make that'll work on her."

  Wysper frowned. "But I knew several Daemo priestesses in Tesiphon, and none of them acted that way."

  Asena gave her a shrewd look. "I'll bet they were great lovers, though, in exchange for a little nip off your wrist."

  Wysper’s cheeks grew hot as she stammered, "Asena... I never did because Muzen would have found out, or Yrg, which would have been worse. But others did and I heard their stories."

  Asena chuckled as her black palmed hand gently squeezed Wysper’s shoulder. "Do you understand now why Titan's so dead set against the Daemo?" She let go with a sigh. "He was right to do to me what he did, taking my son away from me." Asena leaned down until their faces were close. "What's past is past and I can't change it. Problem is, a lot of people remember what Alexina had him do, and someday, someone's going to either use it against him or try and get him to repeat the performance. Either way, if you ever do learn the details, remember I was the one responsible for what he did, not him. Will you promise me that?"

  Asena was so close Wysper could feel her hot breath on her own cheeks, the Celestial smelling like musty dog and leather. "I promise."

  "Good." She straightened and turned towards the open gate. "So where's this Temple of Ishtar supposed to be?"

  "Come, I will show you." Asena had frightened Wysper with all her talk of the past, but did not let it show as she led them through the open gate and into the sunshine beyond. Then she stopped short. Someone had built a long fence made out of scrub and scrap wood that ran parallel to the Temple district's walls. "What is this?"

  From the shadows cast by the stone walls, a male voice said, "One of Prince Timur's funeral games is a Warghorse race. This is the track." A guard in brass armor stepped out into the sunshine, with several more guards behind him. "Are you Wysper?" Lowering her hood so he could see her crimson hair and gold colored bangs, he nodded. "You're expected, but who's your friend?"

  Asena stepped in front of her. "I'm her protector," she growled, baring her fangs in a grin. "Any problem with that?"

  The guards traded worried looks. "Ah... no, no problem at all," the first said as the rest shook their heads. The guards removed a section to let them pass, then put it back after they had gone through. Wysper led Asena past the pyramid painted black, past the central plaza where workers were constructing a wide stone platform between the four large pyramids... I am not looking at the workers, I am not looking at all... and on until they reached the women's quarters.

  The doors to the main entrance had not yet been replaced, and looking inside, Wysper saw the entrance chamber's walls being cleaned and repainted blue by men in rough tunics and trousers, who were talking in the local dialect among themselves. One of them looked at her and pointed to a place farther down; she nodded to show that she understood, and kept going. "They must still be cleaning up after the fire. The building right beside this one is the guest quarters where we were put, before..."

  Wysper trailed off, the memories of that night still too raw. Asena gave her a shrewd look before patting her shoulder, taking the lead and walking towards the other entrance where she stopped. These doors were still intact and Asena rapped on the wood with her knuckles.

  The door opened, revealing a young woman in white robes who gasped as she looked up. Asena bared her teeth in a smile. "Go tell them Wysper's here." The young woman's mouth opened and closed like a gasping fish, and Asena growled, "Now!" The white robed woman stumbled backwards before turning around and fleeing through the entrance chamber and down a hall, her footsteps echoing off the walls as she lifted her robes and ran. Asena chuckled as Wysper shut the door behind them.

  Before the night of terror, the entrance chamber had been covered in murals depicting Kax, the female side of Muzen's false deity, as a warrior woman with hair like flame. In one hand she always held a sword while the other held a tongue of fire. But now the chamber smelled of fresh paint, light blue with charcoal sketches of the new murals soon to be painted on. As Wysper looked around the room, the sound of footsteps came again, but more this time, and a moment later a half dozen people entered the chamber.

  All of them wore robes of white, except for Zanzabel, dressed in robes the golden color of wheat, and a strange woman in robes of dark blue. Zanzabel moved away from the five bearing down on Wysper, with Thalia and Myra on one side of the blue robed woman and the Daemo Sybil, along with broad faced Xaman the Traveler, on the other. The strange woman gave Wysper a smile filled with joy, her teeth white as sea pearls.

  Then she looked beyond Wysper and the smile winked out. "Asena? What are you doing here?"