Silver Stranded Stars

2. Maker of Gates

Mina inhales another bitter breath of copper and cold. The vaulted place where they stand has no corners, no ceiling. The edges blur into black, a blackness empty of every colour.

A mound of black-chain-links makes a slow moving floor of links sifting and rolling beneath her feet. Mina tries to focus on the being up top, knowing she should care. He is Atlas. The faceless gatekeeper that unifies the superhighway for the gods to move across the universe. I should be falling all over myself to speak to him.

But Mina's chest is an empty shell. Her face feels heavy, flat. She can't bring emotion to it. Warmth has fled. It is hard to tell if the cold comes from within, or is seeping outside in. She finds herself staring down at the links of chains shifting about her feet like slow moving lava.

Whispers rise from their hisses, clinks, clacks, tracks one over top of the other. Mina feels the stirring of her god-powers as it translates.

Gone into the end. She'll cry my name no more...

I had a child once. But they never came to call, I would have seen them one last time...

I hurt them both. I didn't understand. I couldn't control it. Couldn't...

I had nothing left to give them. Nothing at all.

I should have just sold it. Oh for a smile in the end...

Other voices are speaking, maybe Nathaniel and Atlas, but Mina is mesmerized by the chains at her feet. Had she thought them a dull black? She was wrong, beneath the hard-edged outer covering of metal Mina can see the flicker and multi-colourings of souls. Faint, like reflected stars, they shoot beneath the trappings of metal, barely illuminated beneath the heavy blur of black. Pieces that had survived, regrets of times alive.

A warm hand lands on her shoulder. It feels good. Like being alive.

"Mina, we should return. They will hunt us." It is Kakos. It is his hand whose dull not-quite-pain of heat echoes the simmering motion of living. Mina knows this is wrong, should be wrong. I should push him away. But she is too empty to care.

Silve... She can't even fully grasp their name. It hurts like a headache, like a wrong backwards thump inside her chest.

Another body comes up behind her, lands hands on her wrists still shackled behind her back, pulls her back, out of Kakos reach. Mina is still staring down at the chain links making the mountain they stand upon, at the lights within them.

I would have told him...

They never knew my name...

More whispers, more fragmented regrets.

Nathaniel's hands press on her cuffs, and with a click they drop off her. Mina moves her mouth to say thanks, but it just feels like too much energy.

"Breaker of chains, take your pick of doors. I will give them to you in exchange for my freedom."

Nathaniel ignores the voice. "Mina, are you alright?"

Mina pulls her attention from the chains beneath with great difficulty, looking up the mountain to see the being who sits there, like a blue flame of lava erupting from this mess of metal below.

Atlas is as broad shouldered as any of the Trident. But his muscles and skin have a bruised look to them. Like a sickness that eats at him from the inside and his eyes...his eyes are reflected universes, black and glassy and full of stars. He looks down at her, solemn. He has a broad face, and no hair on any part of his person. If they weren't in this strange other place, Mina would have named him a creature of water.