Page 53 of Interion

In the blink of an eye, the book drained all my magic. I screamed, dropping it on the floor, and stared in shock at the drawing on the cover, now glowing with red light. As the hand's outline blazed, a symbol formed in the center of the palm: it looked like two wings facing opposite directions, forming a circle. Within seconds, the light intensified to an unbearable brightness, then vanished—as if nothing had happened.

The winged symbol remained engraved in gold, and I recognized it immediately. It was tattooed on the chest of the comatose patient. Ambrose had claimed he'd never seen the mark, but there it was, gleaming right before my eyes.

I reached for my power in the elemental reserve, but nothing remained. Nothing at all. Not a trace of the gift, and it left me with a hollow, screaming emptiness. As a precaution, I went to the kitchen and put on the pink dishwashing gloves. When I returned to the living room, the book was still in the same place, looking so innocent—as if it hadn't just devoured my power. I picked it up carefully and carried it to the reading room next door, setting it on the table, the only furniture in the room besides the wooden bookshelf holding all my university books.

Carefully, I ventured to open the cover, and this time I was surprised. The first pages were filled in, complete with several drawings. I tried to read the title of the first chapter, but it was complicated—the book had been written in the ancient language. Our current language derived from Kalisi, the language of the Gods. In college, we'd taken a course on this dialect, since most valuable medicinal scrolls were written in it. It was difficult, with words that could carry multiple meanings. Still, curiosity about the symbol on the cover got the better of me, and I attempted to translate a few sentences.

Before existence, reigning over the void, five gods of pure light and power formed the essence of creation. They divided the dimensions and filled them with countless worlds, sowing life and breathing souls into what had once been silence.

The most powerful was Nuadros, the god of Life. His eyes held the colors of the northern lights, and his hair shone like threads of gold. Through his strength, courage, and charisma, he earned a position of respect among the gods, who followed his will with reverence.

His wife was Amarwen, the goddess of Love. In her eyes shone the golden hue of dawn, and in her skin dwelt the darkest night. Serpents danced among the curls of her hair, making her the most mesmerizing of the deities. Together, Nuadros and Amarwen populated the worlds with their children, and so the celestial became known as the Mother-goddess of all creatures. Among the gods, she was the most skilled at traveling between the created dimensions.

The divine counselor was Seijhe, the god of Knowledge. His eyes reflected entire oceans, and his hair bore the darkness itself. It was through his wisdom that the universe took its first steps, and so Nuadros kept him as his right hand. So vast was his understanding of existence that, at times, the deity could foresee the future.

The goddess of War and Pleasures was Calistra. Her eyes blazed with the euphoria of passions, and her blood-red hair held the prophecy of countless destinies. Among the gods, she possessed the greatest physical strength, endurance, and healing ability—gifts she shared with the two children she bore with Seijhe.

Lastly, the antithesis of all creation: Anabel, the goddess of Death. Her eyes were like black holes, and her hair bore the color of snow upon winter mountains. She was the guardian of the gates of the Abyss, mistress of shadows and the four elements. It fell to her to judge the fate of departed souls. The worthy, she would guide to rebirth. The unworthy, she would cast into the depths of the Abyss—a cold and inhospitable place.

I already knew parts of this story. In fact, all citizens of Jupiter should know it—we were required to take religious classes as children. The gorgon and fae religions were founded on the principle of the five Gods, unlike the human religion, which believed in only one. I knew both religions but had never been devoted to either. I continued reading, more interested in the illustrations than the words.

For countless eras, the gods dedicated themselves to caring for creation, distributing more and more of their powers throughout the vast universe. Of the planets they built, some withered and died, while others prospered and evolved according to the powers they inherited from their creators. Such was also the nature of the descendants of Life and Love.

Loving and benevolent, even when it cost them unfathomable amounts of power, the gods dedicated themselves to caring for and preserving creation, for they beheld it and saw that it was good. The glory and praise received from the many peoples throughout the universe nourished and strengthened them, replenishing all the power spent to structure existence. Thus they maintained the balance between giving and receiving, and so they lived in harmony.

However, as the eras passed, the goddess of Death grew weary of her solitude, alone and isolated in her dimension.

It was Nuadros's custom to throw parties and banquets for the deities, whom he affectionately called siblings. These were events filled with wine and many other pleasures, where the gods could converse free from their duties to existence.

At one of these many events, while Amarwen visited heirs in a distant dimension, Nuadros spent more time with the other gods, but much of his attention turned to his conversation with Anabel. It was clear that something troubled her. And so, late into the night, the god of Life and the goddess of Death drank and conversed, losing track of time as they discussed creation, the responsibilities of the gift of life, its beginning and inevitable end. Yet one topic stood out, resurfacing frequently: the goddess of Death had grown weary of her loneliness without a partner or children and therefore envied the goddess of Love, who would never suffer the same fate.

Neither of them could count how many goblets they had emptied, and by the end of the conversation, Nuadros was thoroughly intoxicated. Anabel found herself facing the perfect opportunity to have children she could call her own. Convinced she would never have another chance, she followed Nuadros to his chambers and seduced him. Thus, the goddess of Death lay with the god of Life.

As time passed, Anabel secluded herself in a distant dimension to avoid drawing attention and prepared to give birth to her children by the celestial. She hoped they would be born beautiful and glorious, like the other descendants of the god of Life. But they emerged different. Heirs to their mother's sin, they carried within their essence what the goddess of Death harbored in her heart. They were barren, dark, greedy, and hungry—for they needed the vital energy of other beings to survive. Still, Anabel loved them with all her being. She named them the voracious.

Like a plague, her children began devouring the souls of other life forms on the planet they inhabited. The stronger they grew, the more powers they manifested. With this came the gift of submission. When they extracted and devoured a creature's soul, they reanimated its soulless body, controlling it like a marionette. Anabel had not expected this power. Yet before her eyes, Death watched a new race being born—inferior and subservient to the voracious. She named them Carniceals.

Fearing how the other gods would react should they discover her children, the celestial hid her offspring in a distant dimension, in a decaying world, and clung to the hope they would never be found. But her creatures' hunger was insatiable, and it wasn't long before they consumed all life in that world. Then, far from their mother's eyes, they found ways to expand their consciousness into other dimensions, and soon the voracious spread throughout the universe, devouring everything in their path.

This did not escape the goddess-Mother's notice. She soon perceived the growing threat to her children and recognized in those unknown creatures the marks of Nuadros's power. Thus she discovered the god of Life's treachery.

Feeling betrayed, Amarwen sought help from Calistra, the god she felt closest to. Together, they were ready to unleash their fury against the disloyal deities, but Seijhe convinced them to set aside their wrath for the sake of the children who would suffer from the plague.

With great difficulty, the god of Knowledge gathered the five siblings to decide what to do about the voracious. Anabel didn't want to exterminate her own children and sought a way to protect them. But under pressure from the others, she couldn't find a way to save them.

And so the goddess of War and her two celestial sons, the archangels, were sent to purge the creatures. They soon realized, however, that all their martial power would not be enough to resolve the situation. Killing the voracious wouldn't end the problem—they would simply be reborn from the shadows, time and again.

Only one form of extermination would prove effective—one that brought deep sorrow and discontent to all the gods: destroying every planet contaminated by the voracious plague.

With no other options, the deities began the purge. Calistra and her two celestial archangels led the war to exterminate the creatures, while Anabel took on the task of destroying the corrupted worlds. Meanwhile, the other three would watch over the remaining worlds, ensuring they stayed untouched by the children of Death.

Some of the information in that chapter was new to me. We weren't taught that the voracious were children of the gods—we were only told they were enemies, just as Lucifer was God's antagonist in human religion.

In the images, they were portrayed as skeletal beings, black as pitch, with small eyes that looked like slits cut by a knife. Their mouths were enormous, taking up half their faces.

The Carniceals were twisted, disfigured monsters that walked on all fours. Their skin was smooth and dry, their eyes completely black, and their mouths huge, full of pointed teeth jutting out past their thin lips. They were the stuff of nightmares.

Yet just as parents have their favorites, the gods harbored a special fondness for one of their creations. In the vastness of the universe, there was a world that filled them with pride. There, their children had evolved and prospered to the point of creating societies more complex and organized than on any other world in their domains. Some of their children resembled Nuadros and were called fae. The other half were named gorgons and inherited Amarwen's serpents. This planet, in particular, was the apple of the gods' eye—a bountiful harvest of adoration. They didn't want to lose such a prize.