The Scared God [ManXManXMan]

Chapter Twenty: Надрыв - Nadryv

[AN: Warning: Talk of suicide and past suicides.]

~Chapter Twenty: Надрыв – Nadryv~

"Lord Veles, you're back."

I blink up at the blue sky and then slowly tilt my head to my right, eyeing the blurry figure standing not too far away. Even though my eyesight has not cleared and likely will not adjust for another hour, I do not need to see to know who the voice belongs to. "Indeed," I mutter, turning my head back so I can watch the sky, as blurry as it is.

There is a short pause where it sounds like she sits down not too far from me, though I do not look to see if that is the case. "How long was it this time?" Raisa asks, and her voice is definitely much closer than before.

I actually do turn my head to look at her now, but only to glare. Do my ears deceive me, or did that sound like pity? "A month and two days," I inform her, scowling when she makes a small noise of sympathy. "It was longer than I could have hoped, so stop with your...emotions."

Though I cannot see her expression, even from only a few feet away, I just know she is silently judging me. "Deny it all you want, Lord Veles, but you feel things just as much as us mortals," she replies, likely with a roll of her eyes.

Since we have had this conversation more times than I can count and she still has not given it up, I change the subject instead continuing an old argument. "How much time has passed here?"

She snorts, likely because of the topic change and not the question itself, but I still feel slightly offended. "I don't know the specifics – you'll have to ask Lord Ny – but it has been at least a couple years," she replies.

After that, we fall silent. I suspect there are things she wants to ask me, but it seems my warning from last time still lingers in her mind enough to make her hold her tongue. That, or perhaps she is trying to be 'considerate'. I grimace at that thought and look back at the sky. Beside me, she shifts almost restlessly, filling silence with an annoy rustling sound.

Why am I even fond of this soul?

"What?" I demand, exasperated.

There is a definite smile in her voice when she asks, "Was it Perun again?"

The side of my face almost hits the ground from the speed with which I turn to stare at her blurry shape. "The fuck, Raisa? You're not supposed to ask the dead how they died," I remind her, momentarily forgetting not to use modern curses around an old soul while I wonder if she has been going around and asking all the new souls that. The light souls are supposed to forget about their past lives, not dwell on dark moments.

"I'm not a fool," she growls back, and I regard her skeptically. "You don't count."

I glare at her for another moment before reluctantly admitting, "It wasn't Perun. I killed myself."

"You did?" She asks softly, and something about her tone makes my chest sting with something I do not understand.

"It wasn't like that, Raisa," I reply gently, knowing where her mind went from hearing that without context. This is likely the first time she has heard about one of my suicide deaths, as I do not believe she was around the last time I committed one. "Zeus had me in Mount Olympus. He intended to turn me against my pantheon by using the Oneiroi to manipulate my mind."

A shiver runs down my spine when I remember how close I was to being taken to them. While the fact that Epiales had already been in my mind who knows how many times doing who knows what makes me feel sick, the thought of him, as well as his brothers, having the chance to knock me out to put me more permanently in their mercy is ten times worse. I am not sure if I would even be myself by the end of it, and that is far scarier than dying ever was.