Page 12 of Psycho Gods

“She’s not fine, she’s fucking catatonic,” Scorpius exploded. “She’s barely breathing.”

“Leave her alone,” John said harshly and shielded me with his body.

I blinked.

Time warped yet again.

I was lying on top of the covers in a narrow bunk bed that was cramped to discourage fraternization between soldiers. A distant part of me recognized that I was back in our new room, and it was night.

Mentally, I grabbed books off shelves and opened to their cover pages. I’d gone through thousands of books.

I opened The History of Rare Fae Beasts.

I closed it.

I opened How to Cultivate Plants.

I closed it.

I opened The Enactment of the Official Peace Accords.

I close—

Finally, I found what I’d been looking for. I flung open the book and devoured its contents. It read,

Thousands of years ago, an endless army of human soldiers set out to conquer the realms. In response to the invasion, the High Court mandated all able-bodied men and women eighteen years and older fight and defend their respective realms.

Millions were conscripted and fought in battles that spread across the realms.

The human soldiers had the strategic advantage.

Towering catapults flung flaming boulders across the horizon, and long pointed poles and swords skewered, as the armor-clad humans shot flaming arrows off the backs of powerful horses.

In contrast, the realms of the High Court had never developed weapons, because individual powers had always been sufficient in eliminating invaders.

It was a grave miscalculation.

The armies of the High Court were slaughtered.

When it seemed like complete annihilation was inevitable, the sun god took matters into his own hands.

Midbattle all the realms’ suns unexpectedly burned fifty degrees hotter.

The god of light boiled the lands.

All the people, plants, and animals were decimated, and anything that didn’t have a natural resistance to high temperatures died within a few hours of intense heat exposure.

The humans tried to flee back to their realm, but most dropped dead from dehydration as they ran for safety.

The sun god followed a few humans back to earth in order to identify the location of portals. Guards were subsequently stationed, and by all accounts, the human species have never tried to set foot in another realm since the war.

Smugglers who have illegally traveled through these portals tell tales of the sun god punishing the earth realm with extreme heat. They claim humans live in perpetual fear of annihilation. None of these reports have been substantiated.

After the High Court won the war against the humans, there was a consensus in the realms that the price of victory was too high.

Populations were decimated, and even after the sun god returned the realms’ temperatures to normal, devastating climate effects persisted.

The shifter realm plunged into a never-ending ice age as hundreds of glaciers melted and poured cold water into the warm ocean currents. In ten days, the planet froze over.

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