Knowledge
Before I can stop myself, I lean closer, closer still. I wonder if he can feel my presence here. Can he sense it now the same way he does later in life?
No. Not right now. Not after so much mead.
He’s completely out of it!
And it’s not Spencer I want to wake.
I bow my head, fingers still splayed across his chest, and pray.
“Lord Daegan. . .please.” My voice is unsteady, like a broken string refusing to hold a note. The sound feels small in the suffocating stillness. “Hear me,” I whisper.
What am I doing?
Panic crawls up the back of my neck. Every story says the same thing: if the Sleeping God wakes, He will bring wrath. I’ve heard the warnings all my life, recited like scripture. Yet here I am, disturbing Him.
My gaze flicks to the dark shape on the bed, unmoving but ominous.
“Please,” I choke, tugging at Spencer’s robe. “I made a mistake. I—” I stop myself, struggling to find words that won’t anger Him. “I just need a second chance.”
The air changes, like there are too many souls in the room, including my own. The room groans—a deep, almost animal sound of wood bending under the strain of something unseen.
The oxygen thins. The sensation is suffocating, low in my chest.
And then it returns all at once. A blinding glow bursts from Spencer’s tattoo, the Walking Lightning on his wrist, so bright it scorches the shadows off the walls.
His body jerks. He sucks in air with a rasp that drags me back into the moment. I recoil as his eyes snap open. They’re wrong—rolled back, glowing white. The room fills with a low hum at the edge of hearing. More vibration than sound.
The lava lamp in the corner warps, its light twisting and distorting red blobs inside the glass, spinning shadows grotesque in their shapes. I try not to flinch when something unnamable ripples across the room’s edges, bending the space around us.
“Child,” a voice booms.
It isn’t Spencer’s voice even though it comes from his mouth. Something holy books warn of when approaching an archangel.
I manage only a strangled whimper before his voice lowers.
“You walk in darkness, child, because the light would blind you.”
My body jerks backward instinctively, my heels scraping against the cold floor and tangling the rug in my feet. I scramble to get away.
His hand shoots out. Unnaturally fast. His fingers catch my neck, hold me in place.
I gag, my hands clutching at his wrist, nails scraping uselessly.
His head turns slowly. His blank, sightless gaze locks onto me. There’s no recognition—only distant, omniscient presence. His lips twist into something not quite a smile.
“You. . .call me. Why? Are you foolish?”
The words grind against the inside of my skull, far heavier than mere sound. My lungs claw for air as his grip threatens to crush my windpipe.
“I-I’m sorry,” I manage to rasp through the iron vice of his hand. “Don’t hurt Spencer. Please.”
He nods slowly. Once, twice. “I am not yet accustomed to this body of Mythryx. It has been centuries since I last communed with his embodied soul.”
His fingers still around my neck, I can only blink. I’m surprised to hear Spencer’s soul name. Members of the priesthood reincarnate and rejoin the current priesthood, so of course Spencer has been a Last Priest in previous incarnations. But Spencer would have learned that just tonight during the initiation rite.
“I’m sorry for waking you,” I blurt. My voice breaks as his grip loosens.
“They call me the Long-Dead God. They call me the Sleeping God. I am neither.” His grip falls away, and with it, the air returns to my lungs in a suffocating rush. He doesn’t retract his arm. “I rest to prepare for what is to come, but I am fully aware of all.”
I’ve never heard this before, but then, I’ve never talked to anyone who talked directly to an actual God and lived to hear His reply. My entire body stings as though I’ve been submerged in freezing water. I can barely stand it without screaming.
“Please don’t kill me,” I whisper.
“Why should I not? Do you think you matter across the ages?”
The cold intensifies. It seeps into my bones. Every instinct screams at me to run.
“No, but. . .but Lady Jaryx will.” The words tumble out before I fully understand them. “Her next incarnation was conceived tonight. I need. . .I need the gift of knowing to protect her before it’s too late.”
He nods again, slowly, twice. “The daughter of your heart,” He says at last, the words less a question than a confirmation.
“Yes,” I squeak.
“You were offered the gift and refused.”
“I didn’t know what I was refusing! Siobhan convinced me. She—”
“And yet, you chose.”
I start to deny it or excuse it, but why would I try to mislead an all-knowing God?
“Yes. Yes, I could have defied her. I didn’t. I didn’t stand up for myself. If I had, I would have accepted the gift of knowing.”
Not that I could have imagined defying Siobhan at the time. But I’m not the same person I was as a teen. Neither is Spencer. Siobhan, however, is another story.
“Knowing would break you.”
Tears burn my eyes, but I blink them back. The risk means nothing without the knowing. “Please. I can’t protect her without it. I need it.”
“You think knowing would make you stronger. It would only make you weak. Either complacent or careless.”
His presence towers, limitless yet somehow gentle. “Your choices must come from instinct, child. Not foresight. From love.”
“But if I could see across time—”
“My child, the gift I grant when your vows are made is not seeing across time. It is more than that, but your mind cannot fully comprehend.”
The air shifts again, and his grip falls away entirely as he sighs. The light from Spencer’s wrist flares once more, illuminating the room with a stark, unnatural brilliance. The God speaks again, but now his tone carries an edge of explanation, a strange gentleness layered within the vast power. As if He likes me. Or pities me.
“You seek the knowing,” the voice rumbles, “but not knowledge. Your mind is unprepared for the weight of seeing into dimensions beyond your existence. That’s why it drives so many of my children mad. I grant them the gift of knowing, as you call it, by opening their sixth chakra to see the next dimensions. You refused it. As you were meant to. Yet understanding, I shall grant you.”
“Thank you!” It comes out in a wail. “I’ll be able to see the dangers, so I can protect her!”
“You see time as a line. The ones who accept my gift see it as a sphere, and they are in its center. Would you stretch a single moment of love to eternity if it meant never living it fully? Would you turn from joy because it may end?”
The words pierce through my panic. I am both grounded and fragmented at once.
“I will grant you understanding, not knowing,” He says.
Suddenly, the room bends—not in motion but in perspective. I see things in my head that I learned in basic geometry. A one-dimensional plane with an ant crawling backward and forward on a piece of paper. A two-dimensional square with a ladybug crawling backward, forward, left, and right. A fly soaring around a three-dimensional cube, up and down. Each image builds off the last.
He pours visions into my mind of shapes I can’t quite parse. Cubes within cubes, worlds folding over themselves, glimpses of lives yet unlived, threads of time twisting into labyrinthine forms. It’s everything, intersecting all at once.
It’s too much!
I claw at my brow chakra, gasping, until the flood stops. What’s left is a feeling that pools in my chest—certainty, weighted by promises, carried by love. I see Veronica’s bright, determined eyes, her shoulders strong under the burden of her destiny. I see Spencer as an aged man, his kiss on my hand. Not details. Just truths.
Just. . .enough.
“You wanted the gift of knowing so you could feel confident in the future of those you love most. Have you seen enough, little one?”
I burst into tears. I’ve seen everything I need to know.
“Little one, the gift of knowing would not stop pain, nor allow you to prevent it. These things will happen whether or not your mind can comprehend them. They will happen whether or not you remember them. You will keep her safe not by knowing what is to happen but by not knowing what is to happen and letting your heart lead you rather than memory. Not knowing will allow you to love more fully. Maybe not for all my children, but for you, that is truth.”
I feel like I have so many questions I should ask, but they seem so insignificant now!
“You were never meant to see as Mythryx and Jaryx see,” He says again, softer now. “But you are meant to love. And to be loved. Everything you undertake will be in service of love.”
The dorm room begins to fade, the sparkling energy swirling around me once more even though I didn’t call it. I feel a push from the hand of the God Himself. As I fall backward into the endless dark, His final whisper rings in my soul:
“Walk in darkness, little one. . . but walk with purpose.”
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