Serenity was grateful when Rissa came in to make dinner and interrupted the awkward moment caused by his thoroughly failed attempt to distract Amani. He was even more relieved when she shot him a glare that was more amused than angry and ushered Amani away to help with the mean. Amani was happy to go.
That made it the perfect time for a phone call. He wasn’t certain what time it was in wherever in Canada Psyche was. Wherever she was, it shouldn’t be more than five hours off his current time, at least not at this time of year. That meant it should be afternoon. Maybe not all that long after noon, but late enough to be reasonable to call. He just hoped she didn’t have a day job that meant she couldn’t answer the phone.
When he heard the automated screening system kick in, Serenity smiled. The odds were good she’d at least get a message and she might well be watching to see what he said. “Psyche? This is Serenity. You said I should call you after everything was handled with Helios. I probably should have called earlier, but-”
A soft voice on the other side of the line interrupted him. “Please wait a moment, I need to head outside.” He thought it was Psyche’s voice, but it was hard to be certain; he’d only heard it once before, after all.
It was more than a minute before her voice came back. Not that he’d been watching the seconds tick by or anything; he just had a clock in his head. It was hard to ignore it when he didn’t have anything else to pay attention to. Which, admittedly, might be closer to watching the seconds tick by than he liked.
“Are you still there?” The slight interference of wind behind Psyche’s voice told him that when she said she needed to head outside, she meant outside whatever building she was in, not just a meeting room or the like. It explained how long she’d taken. “I couldn’t talk to you in there; it would be unwise. Especially if they figure out who you are.”
“Is talking to me going to get you in trouble?” That wasn’t the point. Serenity was fairly confident Psyche hadn’t placed any limits when she told him to visit, either.
Psyche chuckled. “Not if they don’t find out about it. Even if they do, I don’t really care; it wouldn’t be the first time. The fact that I don’t have to stay near a node anymore … I can leave if I want to. So. What do you need?”
“What happened when A’Atla sank?” Serenity opened with the hard question. The others could come afterwards. “I’ve been able to piece together a little, but there aren’t any good records.”
“A’Atla.” Psyche gave a long sigh. “The island that spoke. It should have lasted forever; we thought it would. We based so much around it, then it was gone overnight. Literally, in fact; there was a massive storm one night; by the time it cleared, the island was gone. I later learned the storm was from the fighting.”
Psyche’s words flowed out evenly, but she made no attempt to hide the pain she still felt. “It took weeks to figure out what happened and I was there, along with everyone Isis gathered to deal with the mess. We recovered some injured, but most were dead. The mortals had it the worst; with nothing to protect them from the sea, they drowned. That is how I knew we lost Manannan mac Lir with his island.”
Serenity already had a new question: why did Psyche call the island’s owner Manannan mac Lir while Amani called him Ea? It wasn’t time to ask yet but he was definitely going to.
“The survivor’s stories didn’t tell us much, but they all agreed that it came out of nowhere. One man said he saw a shadowy fire flow down the Great Spire, but everyone else agreed that it started at the seaside. The reports of the fighting were almost impossible to straighten out; everyone saw something a little differently. They couldn’t even agree who was fighting against whom.”
Serenity knew that was simply the nature of combat, at least if the reports were coming from people who weren’t used to it. It was easy to make mistakes when there wasn’t time to doublecheck and the fact that they were simply witnesses only made that worse. It didn’t harm anything immediately if they were wrong about who they thought they saw.
“None of the survivors admitted to being involved in the fight, though I did have some doubts about a few; their injuries were …” Psyche trailed off. Serenity could almost see her shaking her head. “They weren’t impossible but they were unlikely, shall we say. Burns? They claimed the injuries were from lightning. I do not know what to believe. It does not matter now; the ones I was concerned about did not live long once the world began to fade.”
That was another question to remember. Or was it? The mana levels decreasing could well be described as the world fading. He already knew that happened, even if he didn’t know exactly when.
“What I know is that someone attacked A’Atla during the Festival of Light, the time when everyone went to A’Atla. I was not there because … no, that does not matter. I do not know what their goal was, but they broke A’Atla, killed many of the strongest who kept the balance, and released some of the Terrors. That was not so bad as the loss of A’Atla itself, but perhaps we could have withstood it had those who died lived. As it was, most of us who survived decided to retreat; it was better than the pointless fight we would have had otherwise.” Psyche gave a bitter laugh. “It’s always amazed me that people think the gods wanted to live on Mount Olympus. We could live there, yes, but only because we had to.”
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That was a lot of information, but it was also surprisingly useless. Serenity needed a direction, not suspicions about dead peoples’ possible involvement. There was one question that bugged him, however. “If you weren’t there, how did you know Apollo died in the attack?”
Psyche barked a quick laugh. “I pulled his body from the water myself. Given what he’d done in the past, I knew who it was.”
There wasn’t much room to argue with that statement, especially since she turned out to be right about who to look for based on what he told her. There was no way to tell that another deity had somehow faked Helios’s involvement well enough for the Voice to accept the contention that Helios was responsible for the curse on Rissa even though, in the end, it turned out he wasn’t.
“He wasn’t the only god I pulled from the waters that day. We were once common, a god for each town and sometimes for each family. Streams had their own spirits and forests, as well.” Psyche sighed. “We were weak. It didn’t take much to be called a god in those days; indeed, there were places where as little as a single spell was enough. That wasn’t true in the cities, of course, but in the places where people had never seen anything else it could be. You’d have been called a god if you chose to be.”
Serenity didn’t comment that the Voice recognized him as one. It definitely wasn’t worth it.
Psyche seemed to refocus on her description of the aftermath of A’Atla’s descent. “Apollo wasn’t the only one of the greater ones to die, but he was one of few. Mac Lir vanished, but I already told you that. I found Persephone’s body scarred by the signs of fighting, barely intact enough to recognize. Her husband vanished but he must be dead; he would not have let that pass without incident. More than that, I have not heard of another god taking his name, as happened to Apollo. Rhea was angered…”
Psyche spent quite a while describing the gods she knew died as well as the ones who lived. Serenity let her talk with only occasional prompts to keep her going. It was likely that none of it was important but he didn’t know what might be. Aide was recording it all; when this was done, Aide would have a convenient list of the gods Psyche mentioned and their status as of A’Atla’s fall.
Once she wound down, Serenity found an opening for another question that bothered him. “Am- er, I thought the Lord of A’Atla was called Ea, not Mannanan mac Lir?”
He hoped he’d covered the fumble there well enough. With most other people, the name Amani wouldn’t mean anything, but it was possible Psyche would recognize it. Amani might be a “mortal,” but surely the designer of something like the Vault would be famous.
Well, maybe not outside her own circle. After all, could he name anyone who worked on the Manhattan Project other than Oppenheimer? Or the lead designer on any other major project?
It still wasn’t worth the risk. Serenity was pretty confident Psyche wasn’t an opponent, but it was still good to have the ability to check what she said against something else.
“You’ve found some records inside A’Atla?” Psyche sounded surprised. She’d also clearly reached her own conclusions on where the information came from. “That’s the name he used there, mostly. I think mac Lir started as an insult or maybe a nickname; he’s the son of the Sea, after all. At least, that’s what he told people. So she called him that in another language. I think there was a hero story that came from it as well, though I couldn’t tell you if it was there before the joke or if it’s actually based on him.”
That was less than helpful, but at least it explained the discrepancy. Serenity shifted to what he hoped would be the last question. He hoped that the answer wouldn’t invalidate the trip to the Deep Gate in the morning. It would be best if it were still closed, no matter what had once been there. “Why did you say the Terrors were freed?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Apollyon was seen during the attack on A’Atla. Either he took advantage of the confusion to escape or he was released. There’s no way he could have tricked his way out again, not after what happened last time.” Psyche hadn’t mentioned Apollyon before.
Serenity would remember if she had. Apollyon was the deity actually responsible for the curse on Rissa’s family. “What happened last time?”
“War,” Psyche said sadly. “War with weapons worse than any that have been replicated since. Yes, worse than the atom bomb. Apollyon could not stand that his Golden Age ended at the hands of what he called lesser gods. A’Atla particularly enraged him; it was the seat of his great godly empire. He - well, the lands were emptied in that battle. We would have recovered in time, but the only land that was undamaged was A’Atla. When it sank only twenty years later, it was a blow even the most fertile of land barely survived.”
Serenity could already guess that Apollyon and Cronus were the same. That made all too much sense; of course the power moving in the background that was strong enough to curse hundreds, maybe thousands, of people was interested in A’Atla. That would have been true even if there wasn’t a history and it sounded like there was. “How can I find him?”
“Do not look for Apollyon. He might find you.” Psyche whispered the words, then hung up the call.
Serenity hadn’t had a chance to ask her about the rest of the names yet but he’d give her some time. He already knew Psyche was cautious; she hadn’t wanted to be involved when the opponent was merely Helios.