Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)(31)

Firstly, I had not realised how thirsty I was; and secondly, the water tasted nothing like the water in Minatsol. It was sweet almost, with a hint of fizz that danced across my tongue. I let the rest spill into my mouth, needing to taste more of it, and immediately my head went a little fuzzy.

I stumbled to my feet, my wet hands falling to my sides, and I tried to glare at the twelve dark-furred panteras. Twelve … when did the others come across? The one closest to me shifted, before coming back into focus. Oh crap. I had been seeing three copies of the original four that led me to the water.

“You drugged me,” I slurred, before swiping out with both arms, in an attempt to keep them away from me.

Your mind is now opening to the magic. You need to stop fighting it.

One of my flailing fists hit a small trunk that had been rooted close to the edge of the creek. I let out a shriek, hopping away. That hurt so much more than when I was in Rome’s head.

As my mind focussed on the pain, it seemed to forget about my previous disorientation, and that seemed to give the water just enough time to do the job it had been trying to do all along.

Clarity hit me with the force of a cart colliding into a brick wall, and as the fuzziness in my brain vanished, something rather strange took its place. Knowledge. Flashes of images started to crash through my mind. Over and over. One after another. At first I had no idea what I was seeing, but then I recognised some of the landmarks that I had seen in Topia before.

This is our Topia. A pantera told me. Before the gods. Before the gifts.

My history lesson continued, and I finally got my first glimpse of a human-like figure. It must have been Staviti. He stood in a blank landscape of Topia, staring around in confusion. Water ran in rivulets down his face, and along the ragged shorts he wore. He was smaller than I had expected, lithe and striking with his golden hair and flashing dark eyes, but not as massive as I’d begun to think all gods were.

I was no-doubt spending too much time with the Abcurses.

The next image was Staviti drinking from a stream, a stream which appeared to be very similar to the one I stood before, and then he lifted his hands to the sky and marble platforms began to form. Elements were ripped from the ground. Panteras and creatures fled from the being who was destroying their world.

The water of Topia is unique. It carries within it all of the magic that keeps this land alive. This water flows into Minatsol also, for our two worlds are connected. The water there is not as strong as it is here. It is tainted, in a way.

“Why doesn’t everyone in Minatsol have gifts then?” I couldn’t see past the images in my head, it was frozen on Staviti, his hands held aloft.

It runs deep within the earth. Not accessible by many. Staviti was sick as a child, growing worse as he aged. His father was a miner, and had heard about a magical water. He searched for many life-cycles, somehow finding a small reservoir of it.

“He gave it to his son?” I guessed.

Yes, and it changed him.

The origin story of the gods was a little wrong, then. This sort of made more sense, though, than the thought that he had just been struck by a random gift.

“What happened to his father? Did he try and get more water when he found out it had healed Staviti?”

There was no more. The rest runs deeper than any can access.

So the water changed Staviti, and then he became a cocky shweed, using his ballbags way more than he should have, and all of his offspring ended up with the same magical gifts as he had. Then, when they had bred with other dwellers, this gifted thing had continued on until there were suddenly two very distinct beings on Minatsol. Dweller and sol.

“I just drank the water …” I said each word slowly as I tried to figure out what that meant for me.

This is not the first time you have tasted the water. You, too, were saved.

“By who?” I demanded, slightly panicking that I was about to learn something about myself that I couldn’t handle.

Maybe I was Staviti’s sister. No, wait. I would have to be centuries old. Maybe I was Staviti’s … great great great great—

Your father.

“But there was no more water. That’s what you said, right?”

They didn’t reply, and I felt that this was the end of the knowledge they were imparting. Or maybe they simply didn’t know.

“That’s why you called me Divine One?” I knew it wasn’t this pantera specifically, but it had been one of them.

Yes.

None of this made sense. Not a single freaking thing they had said. I needed to speak with my mother. I would demand that she tell me exactly who my father was this time, and what had happened when I was a baby. Why was she such a mess? There had to be some sort of traumatic event. What if it was about me all along?

The world of Topia was back in my eyesight, and I blinked a few times to clear the last of Staviti from my mind. Only a single pantera remained before me, the others had re-joined the herd.

“How did Staviti capture you?” I asked. “You’re stronger than the gods, right?”

He lowered his head, in what seemed like a nod. Stronger in many ways, but the water does not work for us the same way it does for you. If you control the water, you control all of the world.

“Those collars were made of this water, somehow?”

It runs within the chain, and we are bound to the one who controls the magic.

Staviti was moving right to the top of my shit list. “Have I learned all I need? Can I go back to the Abcurses now?”