Tomes of Nevermore: Shattering Light

Chapter Two: Lesser Gods and Potato Soup

"Life, cold and cruel as it may be is full of opportunity. Death, death is final. There is nothing after our meaningless existence has us killed." Tarah said as she sipped the brown potato water from the orphanage, her missing eye covered by an eyepatch covered by her long brunette bangs. Her one icy blue eye staring off at nothing like a person nearly twice her age.
"I don't know how I survived. Before they killed him it was me and my brother against the world. Our mom died when we were eight, it was hard but we made do. We never had a lot but we made do. We never knew our father the monster he must have been to abandon a mother and his children. Honestly I'm glad I never met the man." Tarah said wondering why she was no longer able to cry.
Tarah sipped her potato water pretending not to care. The poor people all around her that were just trying to eat all exchanged a confused look and wondered why she had just begun spouting off about nothing. "I only asked her how she was doing as I sat down." One poor person whispered to another.
When someone has something deeply emotionally wrong with them and you ask them what was wrong the usual answer is to hide their feelings and turn away because deep down they know you don't care. But when a person has something truly deeply wrong with them and absolutely no way to release those feelings they can sort of explode out of that person in strange ways like talking about the tragedies one has experienced to a bunch of strangers or writing a book.
"But you know what the worst part of the matter is?" Tarah said continuing as several of the poor people in the dirty gray rags all changed their seats leaving their friends alone and confused. "A man killed my twin brother and took my eye and tried to kill me! My twin brother, I don't expect any of you to really understand but we had like a special bond you know?" She tried to fight back her tears as they finally leaked to the surface. "I lost everything. He told me that when he threw me in the river. Coward couldn't even kill me himself had to let nature try and drown me. Probably afraid to kill a girl. Stupid men. They put a thousand point bounty on his head. Barely enough for anyone to even care. All the blasted gods in this world how can atrocities like this occur? I'll tell you why, because gods are either all made or just simply don't care about us. They do nothing for us and it's like some crazy sick game to all of them."
When Tarah looked up again she realized that the entire table had gotten up and gone to sit elsewhere, leaving her all by herself once again. "Well no one cared what anyone of you thought anyway." Tarah said to herself pretending not to care. She handed off her bowl of soup to the tiny dirt covered child washing dishes and walked out of the soup house.
The only good thing about the god of this city, Wil. Even if the "potato" soup was created in a lab somewhere and actually contained next to no nutritional value two bites of the stuff and a person went from empty to full. Four bites would give a person enough "energy" to get by the entire day provided you didn't mind collapsing later. Not that anyone eating the potato soup had any kind of choice to begin with. It was the sixth bite that became difficult to stomach. Eight bites made most people sick and no one ever finished the bowl or dared to slurp down the sloppy syrup remainder. There were stories of people doing it and it kill them, Tarah had never seen anyone do it but then again she'd never known anyone either stupid or desperate enough to try and find out.
A man dressed in an all black cloak stepped into the soup shack bumping into her as he stepped passed. Tarah felt the sharp crunch of his armor as she bounced off of him into the wall. At his side he carried a long dagger made of some kind of sharpened bone. He wore a tabard, a sort of cloth worn over armor that depicts the god or king that he chose to follow. Tarah had never seen the symbol, but from the looks of him she could tell whoever it was must have been wealthy or powerful.
Tarah nearly shouted in his face but when the man looked back the cold emotionless stare of a killer she froze. Already the man's hand was on his blade but instead of pulling the blade out he reached into his cloak and pulled out an obsidian steel coin, glowing purple on both sides. The side facing up showed a skull radiating with a changing rainbow colored light.
"What kind of dark animus is that?" Tarah said stretching back looking around as the entire crowd of people froze around her.
Panicking Tarah tried to turn and run away but before she could the man was already standing in front of her again.
"Let us not play games little girl." The man said still holding the mysterious coin in his hand. "There is power a powerful animus within you girl. A powerful animus indeed. Capable of all sorts of things if put to great use. Tell me girl who took your eye?"
Tarah looked around and the entire crowd of people had all changed into the man. All three of the suns had turned black and the sky had turned white. Soon all of the buildings did the same. Everything alternating black and white flashing before her eye practically making her blind.
"I have toyed with you enough." The man said as the black and white stopped and everything turned black beside a narrow spotlight in the nothingness around the two of them. "You've been through alot girl. Tell me what makes your young heartache so that I may help you."
"I don't know what you mean." Tarah said falling to her knees and beginning to panic. "Just kill me if that's what you want! I've had enough of this miserable life anyway!"
"You misunderstand me child." The man said. "I have come to you because you say that the gods have done nothing for you. I am here as a lesser god, to prove you wrong. I overheard your little explosion over there and it just broke my bored heart. Now girl what do you want?"
"Who... How are you a lesser god? Why have you chosen me?" Tarah said thinking only of how much she missed her brother. "I'm not worthy of such an honor. I'm not worthy of anything. I let my brother die because I was too scared to help him. I'm weak."
"I'm not honoring you and as far as I have seen you aren't worthy of the power to bring your twin brother back to life." The man said putting the coin back in his pocket. "I had thought I'd come across a smart, strong, girl with some grit who was angry at the gods for letting that evil man kill her brother. There is no reason behind it girl and do not look for one behind it. I just was strolling through this city when I decided to see if you were interested in giving your brother his pathetic life back. Since it is clearly the fault of the gods and not your own or your brothers that your brother got himself killed. So I've come to give you the chance to bring your brother back to life."
"But I'm a street rat." Tarah said nervously. "I mean pardon my gutter tongue my god, or my lord. But..."
"Say pardon one more time girl and I pull back my offer and walk away and you will wake up on the ground with nothing and everyone will think you are mad for telling them what you saw." The god said with a laugh. "I do things like this quite often. No one ever believes anyone. That's the shameful thing about you mortals, such short lives and such narrow points of view. Even now you still don't believe anything that I'm..." "
"I'll do it!" Tarah shouted interrupting and hoping not to be smited down for daring to open her mouth while a god was speaking. The soup shops were full of stories of people who had been struck down by god's for far less than she had already but something told her that this god, if he really even was a god, wasn't like the ones in the stories but something about him made her not trust him either. "I'll take the coin. Thank you milord, I mean sir, I mean thank you. I will never forget this kindness. But surely their must be some kind of catch, nothing in this life come without a cost."
"That's more like it girl." The god said pulling the coin from his cloak. "I could tell you were smart enough to take help when you needed it. Your brother I'm afraid wasn't given your same level of whit. But I will warn you girl, so that you cannot say that I didn't someday and curse the gods for this as well. There can be no perfect resurrection. Your brother will never be whole, he will need to feast of the light blood of the living in order to keep from rotting. The more he feeds, the more alive he will appear but make no mistake you are cheating death in doing this. He will have his own free will but he will bound to you even more than before. So long as you live he will as well never able to die. But should you die both of you will die as a result. Only your death may break the bond, only your death will be able to kill your brother. It will also awaken a powerful animus in you that you will not be able to control. But let's just consider that little power a bonus."
"That's not life!" Tarah shouted at the god. "You want to make him a monster! Some kind of a freak!"
"Your brother is dead girl. And he was already a freak." The lesser god said sternly. "Death is a very messy thing if you haven't noticed. In this dimension beings shatter apart and bleed light. I've heard stories about other worlds where people bleed thick red liquid and somehow guns became more useful than swords."
"That's stupid." Tarah said. "Armor is strong enough to deflect bullets. Only a person with powerful animus or mech strength is able to break through armor. Plus there's no honor in killing your enemy that way."
"You're a smart girl. But what do you know about killing?" The god said.
"I know that if I want my brother back then I'll have to get used to it." Tarah said already regretting her decision. "But I do know someone who should be killed."
All Tarah could think about was how great it would feel to have her brother back and to have her brother avenge his own death against the evil man in the gas mask. "Give me the scroll. Clearly you won't give me time to think about it but I..." Tarah began to tear up.
"You can't live alone anymore." The god said taking the words right out of her mouth. "By taking this coin girl you will set in coarse a chain of events that cannot be stopped. Never forget that and do not dare curse the gods for what has happened to you. Everything from here on out will your own doing, mortals like to blame all of their issues on gods but in truth they have created half if not all of their problems without the help of god's. After all all gods were once mortals. It's just the fools like me who go and help little sad girls like you."
The god placed the coin in Tarah's hand and leaned in and kissed her on the forehead before giving her a hug. "Good luck little girl. Now run along and go resurrect your zombie twin brother. Remember, the events that are to come are your own choosing. How you handle them will decide your future. You are stronger than you know girl, trust in yourself and don't ever let death get you alive. You'll be living for two and I'll expect you to do a great deal of living just for this little bit of effort I gave. I do hate it when you mortals take help from gods just to go and get themselves killed. Also just so we're clear I will not be bringing back from the dead, you wasted your extra life on your brother. Trust your heart and your head, they're all that you've got. For now that is."