The Hymn of All: A Dark Fantasy Adventure by Richard Parry

Author:Richard Parry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Richard Parry

The eggs were good. Tarragon wouldn’t have known they were powdered. The toast was rich and buttery, with a crunchy crust. I don’t know where Evanne is, but this is good. She stuffed her face.

They were in a small kitchenette. An ancient glass cooking surface glowered black along one wall, and she knew without feeling it the obsidian surface would be cool to the touch despite having just toasted bread and made eggs. It looked in perfect condition despite the eight hundred years since it was new. She and the dead man were along the opposite wall, facing each other across a faux wooden table.

He’d led her here through a narrow hallway. A door at the end had led ‘to the shop’ he’d said, and another held ‘where people who sweat go to get clean’, which she figured for being a shower, and she was seriously uncertain whether food or hot water had been more important, but the smell of the eggs had drawn her nose like a hunting dog’s, and here they were. He eyed her, those dead eyes still glinting with gentle humour. “It’s good, then?”

“Hmmph.” She stuffed another mouthful in atop the one she was still working on.

“Do you know why we gave you the sword?”

Tarragon swallowed. “You didn’t give it to me. It came through a demon gate.”

“Tomato, tomahto.” He waved a hand. “Almost nine hundred years ago, we made a promise to protect this world. But all of us were tricked. Deceived, by the best deceivers in the world. Three of us gave our souls to the world, with a promise to be returned with the power of gods.”

Tarragon felt the colour drain from her face. “You what?”

“Demons,” he clarified. “They were here, and we knew it. What we didn’t know is how deeply they dwelled in the hearts of humans. For all our craft, all our vision, all our raw power, the starlight we captured, and the watchers we became, we were trapped in our new bodies. Not the dawn, not the night, and no freedom to become the in-between.”

“Err,” Tarragon said, realisation dawning perhaps a mite late. The eggs sat in her stomach like lead.

“We were still strong, though. That part was true. Gods, immortal, all powerful. My sister, the dawn warden, warrior of the first light. My brother, strong as the long dark, as faithful as night. And me. Broken, oddly-formed, little me.”

“Gah,” she offered. “Uh. Erk.”

“You’re taking this well.”

“My lord Ikmae.” She scrambled up, knocked her head on a shelf, staggered back, and knelt on one knee. “Forgive me.”

“Get up,” he said. “There is nothing to forgive, or if there is, it’s our fault anyway. We touched the butterfly’s wings a thousand years ago, and here is the hurricane we made.”

She didn’t look up. “I, uh, hic, was angry, uh, at you.”

“Yes, but that’s to be expected. I get it a lot. Not one thing or the other. My curse, you understand, for wanting to be there for all the people the start and the end forgot or found inconvenient.

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