Page 2 of Scion of Chaos

“Uncertain. It’s a novel magic, isn’t it, little brother? It intrigues me. It does not feel like the Titans; I doubt they will prove as easy to track.”

“It tastes like Chaos, but … different,”I say.“Why can’t we portal right to it? It’s in the mortal world, isn’t it?”

“It is. I tried to portal, but something blocks me. I must travel by land to get to it. Be silent and let me focus.”

I leave him to his hunt, drifting along in the back of his mind, peeking out through his eyes as the world blurs by. I have been unconscious during much of my recuperation so have missed these ride-alongs. I almost never have an excuse to visit the mortal world, and am never asked to go unless I’m needed to fight some battle. The last one was the worst in eons and left me bitter for want of a taste offun. If only I could shift into a human shape the way the more beastly of my fellow guards are able to…

Not that Tartarus allowsthemout, either. As guardians of this realm, we are only a step above the prisoners. We don’t step foot outside unless summoned by the call of Chaos to carry out some task the ancient primordial wishes of us. Even then, only Erebus and myself can physically leave the prison; the others must get their taste through the eyes of one of my brother’s clones, a result of his mind merging with the faun’s and reproducing bodies like an amoeba’s penchant for self-replication.

Chaos’ summons have come for increasingly petty reasons, I’ve noticed. The last one was to chase down a man who’d dared tocheatat cards in the casino Chaos has chosen as his home in the mortal world.

My brother mistakenly assumed it would be an easy fight and promised us fun would be had after we finished and reported back to the casino. He promised I could fly us there after the battle was over.

But we did not win. We were soundly beaten, left to crawl back to the prison with our tails between our legs and with me three heads lighter.

I don’t blame my brother; we are all tools of a more powerful being, so if I blame anyone, it’s Chaos, who still refuses to let go of his ancient rivalry with Fate. Their ongoing feud will ruin us if it keeps up—death by a thousand cuts.

“What is it?”I ask when Tartarus abruptly halts. He’s hovering above a cold, dark sea, staring at a pine-covered island that’s barely more than a speck in the distance. A chill rises through me, buzzing at the base of all one hundred of my skulls.“No. We mustn’t go there again. You must come back with me. We can find Pan another time!”

“I don’t think wecango there.”

He ventures closer despite his words and my objections. This is the place where we battled last. The pain of the decapitation is still fresh in my mind, and my still-healing head lets out a pitiful whimper.

“This is odd,”he muses. “He is here. Can you sense him now?”

I’m too distracted to hear him at first, but then I reach out with my mind, seeking Pan. I hit a barrier that feels like the goddess who severed my heads. I recoil, but Tartarus keeps going anyway. We’re nearly upon it when I finallyseethe shimmering barrier that reeks of fate magic and balk.

“See? We mustn’t go farther. Fate has clearly barred us from ever stepping foot on that island again.”And I’m more than fine with that, even though the intriguing magic that drew us here is somewhere on the other side of that barrier.

“But I can sense Pan in there,”Tartarus says.“Extend your senses. Tell me if you can find him. Don’t worry, I’ve hidden us, so he won’t be aware. We don’t want him to run.”

I shouldn’t even be able to push my mind past a barrier of fate magic, but I do as he asks. The magic parts, and I find a small cabin resting on a rise amid redwoods. Pan is inside. I easily slip into his mind and peer out through his eyes.

As my brother promised, Pan doesn’t acknowledge me. He’s enthralled by a creature who is with him: a beautiful woman with pale skin and black hair, darkness painted around her eyes and lips stained the color of venous blood. She is tending him, talking to him. And I realizesheis the source of the strange-tasting power.

Her power is like chaos deconstructed, but the potential is there and unmistakable. She shows Pan an object that resembles his own cock, constructed out of my brother’s flesh.

Does Tartarus know she has this object? Of the power she wields if she can transform the cast-off remnants of his body in this way?

I return to my brother, who stands on the rocky beach, staring down at a pile of broken void glass. Pieces of him left behind after our battle? Or pieces of the doors that came through when Pan arrived? Either way, this must be where she found the shard she turned into an offering for Pan.

He crouches and picks one up, frowns, then squeezes it until his knuckles turn white. The shard melts, its matter reabsorbing into his flesh. But there is more… so much more.

“Did you see her?”I ask.

“Yes,”he growls.“I don’t know what she is, but she’s what has drawn us here, likely summoned Pan with that replica of his dick. I didn’t think we’d be able to return, but now that I’m here, I see there’s work to be done. After we retrieve Pan and mend the breach, we’ll come back and clean this up. Leaving these pieces strewn across the island is too big a risk.”

He clenches his jaw, his entire body tense. A war unrelated to the one being fought in the prison rages in his mind. I know what it is, though, because the pull of her tugs at my awareness just as much.

His mind is a jumble of excuses and emotions, the likes of which I have never felt when sharing his consciousness. He is relieved that Pan hasn’t betrayed us, pissed about the Titans’ escape, and perplexed by our very presence on the wrong side of a fate barrier. He stalls because he wants to let Pan have a moment of pleasure before hauling him back home; we get so few opportunities to leave, and almost never get to venture out with our own bodies.

Beneath all his questions is the undeniable pull of the woman inside the cabin, and the disbelief at the realization ofhowwe are here at all, how a barrier that was meant to keep us out has let us through.

Is it a trap set by Fate? How else would we be here, after all? Creatures of Chaos are said to not be bound to answer Fate’s summons, but what if we are and it just hasn’t happened yet? Only fate magic would allow us to pass through.

I’m privy to his entire thought process and reach the same conclusion the moment he does when he whips his head around to stare at the cabin. It may be a trap, but if it is, the bait is inside, ripe for the taking. Why not have a taste while we’re here—test the trap, see if it springs, and deal with the consequences after we’ve had our fill.

“Yes,”I say when I grasp the thread of his thoughts.“Let me taste her with you.”

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