Damaged Gods

And in the end, they have to admit that they should’ve listened.

Part of me wonders if maybe I should just butt out and leave the girl alone. What do I care if she gets involved with the local eros? It’s not like she can run off with him. Her curse will only allow her to stay gone for so long. Then she will be sucked back in. She is mine as long as she is cursed and she’s cursed as long as she wears the sanctuary ring.

And that ring will not come off her finger until someone of her bloodline shows up to take her place.

She didn’t say this earlier, but I know she’s holding out hope that the sheriff is her replacement.

His eros blood was enough to open the walking gate for an approaching Pie. That makes sense because Saturn is the one who turned the eros into his personal sanctuary keepers as Ostanes banished the gods. He sent them in here to get Ostanes’s book. But Pie was the one who saw the flyer. She was the one who released Grant.

The sheriff of Granite Springs has been living in the closest town his entire life—if he was meant to be caretaker, wouldn’t he have shown up at some point? Wouldn’t he have seen that flyer first?

This is my main issue with the sheriff.

I think back, trying to recall everything I know about how we all ended up here in Saint Mark’s Sanctuary.

It was a war, of course. It’s always a war.

The God War that took place two thousand years ago happened for two reasons.

One. The alchemist Ostanes was making chimera for the gods, Saturn and Juno. Monsters. Like me. Like Tarq. Like Tomas. You take the blood of a pure monster—like the wood nymph, or the minotaur, or the satyr—and you mix it up to create a chimera.

But something went wrong. Overbreeding? Bad crossings? I don’t know. I was a kid when that started happening. All I know is that with the exception of the eros, who had made an alliance with Saturn and were never used in the breeding program, all the pure monsters died out and only the chimera remained.

The second reason there needed to be a God War was because Juno and Saturn decided they were done with each other. And it was a messy breakup. As most breakups are. But when the two most powerful gods in all creation divorce, it takes on a whole other level of bad.

Ostanes worked for both of them. She could no more deny one request for more and more elaborate chimera breeding than she could the other. This is how the monsters got out of control.

This sanctuary was the last step in that war.

Ostanes had a very, very powerful spellbook. Both Saturn and Juno wanted this book so they could continue their monster breeding programs and be the most important god standing at the end of the separation. So there were desperate attempts to steal it.

Maybe Ostanes was prideful? Maybe creating the sanctuary and hiding her spells in here was just ego? That’s entirely possible. If she didn’t enjoy her power, she would not have been powerful. This is how power works. Only those who covet power get power.

But it’s just as likely that the spells in that book simply do not belong in the hands of damaged gods.

At any rate, once the sanctuary was created Ostanes created tombs and locked all her chimera—except for me—inside them. She gave the book to the most formidable monster, Tarq.

Juno and Saturn responded with a fast and furious flurry of counterspells:

Saturn gave the eros the ability to enter the sanctuary as caretakers.

Juno countered by restricting the ability to enter the tombs to just one monster. Me, as it happens.

Saturn volleyed back and made the tomb doors invisible to me and only seen by the caretaker.

Juno returned fire and cursed the caretakers with the Book of Debt.

And… well, that’s where I lost track of the story because I was already inside Saint Mark’s.

Tomas was always here. I don’t really know much of his story at all. And I certainly have no clue how he fits into the curse.

Or myself, actually.

I’m not here to guard the spellbook—that task was given to Tarq. And I don’t have any useful powers. Slamming doors? Freezing people in place? A tiny breath of entitlement? It’s all very stupid.

Well. There is that other power. Which I’m going to assume is some kind of desperate last-resort power. Because if I use it, Saturn wins.

And maybe it’s not my place to choose who gets to be God, but as long as I have a say, it’s not going to be him.

So. I dunno. I think I’m just a leftover from a long-ago age. I hadn’t even been put to use before the God War. I was nothing more than a young chimera waiting for his purpose in the woods when this shitshow happened.