Forsaken: The Chosen Trilogy - Book One

Chapter Three

The Golden Ones - 
the first race of the world, beautiful and immortal,
created by the Elder Gods

KRYSSA 

The Rose Farm, Northwestern Valory

21 Emberes 569A.F.

"Kryssa, why do people die?"

I paused in the act of brushing Lanya's hair. It had become our routine in the evenings for me to comb the snarls from its long golden length, and I sat in a chair as she knelt before me in front of the fireplace.

The others ceased whispering, growing still on their pallets as they waited for my answer. I could feel their eyes on me, the weight of their stares making my tongue clumsy.

"I- I, um..." I swallowed, trying to forget the memory of Janis' still face as I had buried her beside our mother. It had taken me two days to dig the grave, and my hands had blistered and bled from both the effort and the cold. The scars had yet to fully fade. I had wondered if Father would finally wake from his madness now that we were entirely alone, but when the weather had finally allowed him to return to Adelie's side, he hadn't even noticed there were two graves now beneath the Teminar tree, instead of one.

Why did people die? What purpose could it possibly serve? Was there even such a place as Ca'erlyssa? Did those we love truly look down on us from paradise, happy and free as they waited to be reborn? Or was death simply the Gods' way of laughing at us, for being weak and pathetically mortal?

"Kryssa?" Lanya turned to look at me over her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." I shook my head and turned her back around so I could keep brushing her hair. "I don't know why people die. They just do."

"I know why!" Alyxen piped up, his voice high with excitement. "I read it in a book!"

I glanced over at him, unsurprised to see him sitting up in the middle of his pallet, his blanket drawn around his shoulders like a cape. "Which one?" I had only read a small handful of the two trunks of books Janis had brought with her, but Alyxen had all but devoured them. I didn't know if Janis' books were meant to be read by a six-year-old, but it kept him quiet and out of trouble, so I didn't stop him. 

"It's called Tales of the First Race." Alyxen bounced with excitement. He was a natural storyteller and loved to be at the center of attention. "It's about the Elder Gods and the people they created before us. Before mortals, I mean."

I resumed brushing Lanya's hair. "Will you tell us the story, dear heart? We'd love to hear it."

"Well, once the world had only the Old Gods. The Elder Gods, I mean. And they were good once, not evil like they are now. They got the world right after Destiny made it. But there weren't any people here yet, just dragons and syrens and so on. So the Old Gods got together and made the first people. They called them the Golden Ones."

"Like me?" Lanya tried to turn her head, and I put my hand on it to hold her still. "Mama said I was her golden one."

"That's just what your name means. These Golden Ones were actually made of gold. Or at least their skin was. The pictures show them as really shiny. Anyhow, since the Elder Gods created them all together, they were able to make them immortal."

"What's 'immortal'?" Reyce asked. I had thought he was asleep, but a glance back revealed him to be propped up on his elbows, blinking owlishly at his brother. Reyce could never resist Alyxen's stories, no matter how tired he was.

"It means you never, ever die," I explained.

"Never? That's a long time."

"Yes, dear heart. Now let Alyxen finish his story."

"So the Golden Ones and the Old Gods were really closely connected because of creating them and all," Alyxen continued. "I don't remember all of their names, but there was one- Ezio, I think- who secretly turned evil. The Darkness got him. And he corrupted the others, so they all turned bad."

"Why were they bad?" Reyce interrupted. "What makes a god evil?"

"I don't really know." I sensed more than saw Alyxen shrug. "But they wanted to turn this world into another Ca'ersenta."

I shivered. Ca'ersenta was the world of the damned, a hell filled with monsters and evil people. I tried to imagine our fields filled with demons, and was glad that I could not.

"Because the Gods turned evil, the Golden Ones became evil, too. That's when they started being called the Twisted Ones. They stopped being pretty, too, but I think that happened later. Anyway, there was one god who didn't turn bad-"

"Diona, Goddess of the Stars." Kylee's voice sounded bored. "We've all heard that story."

"Let him tell it, Kylee." I set the brush down, ignoring the sounds of a brief scuffle behind me, and began to braid. "Go on, Alyxen."

"So Diona decided to create more races, to help fight the Darkness." He sounded smug; I guessed he had won the skirmish with his twin. "But the goddess was all alone when she made them. She couldn't make them immortal. And they were all messed up."

"Messed up how?" Reyce asked.

"Well, she made Elves and gave them all this powerful magic, but they were too scared to use it. So then she made Dwarves and gave them strength, but all they cared about was using it their strength to build cities and mine for gold. So then she made Men and gave them knowledge, but they only wanted to use it to start wars and conquer the land. And each race she made died quicker than the last. She thought she had failed, so she asked Destiny to unmake the world."

"Unmake? Like destroy it?"

"Yeah, and start over. But Destiny told her it was alright that we were messed up. It told her that immortality, like what the Golden Ones had, was wrong. We needed to die."

"Why?" Lanya twisted to look at him, and I shifted on my chair so I could finish her braid.

"Because souls need to be reborn. Ca'erlyssa was created with the rest of the worlds as a place for souls to go while they wait to be reborn. But no one on Ca'erdylla was dying, so Ca'erlyssa started to die instead."

I paused, frowning, and glanced at him. "Are you sure that was what the book said, Alyxen?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"How can a world die?"

"The worlds need souls. Without them, the worlds die. All the worlds, not just Ca'erlyssa."

It made no sense to me, but then neither did death. Or the Gods. Or Destiny, for that matter. I shook my head, finished Lanya's braid, and tapped her to let her know I was done. 

She turned around, resting her arms on my knees. "Do you think that's the reason we die, Kryssa?"

I stared at her, thinking again how much she looked like our mother. "I think there's a reason we live. I'm still not sure about death."

She nodded, satisfied by my answer, and yawned. I watched as she crawled into her pallet beside the twins, sharing Kylee's blanket. I set about banking the fire, and after a few minutes I heard the deep measured breathing that told me everyone else was asleep.

But I remained awake for a long time, staring into the embers as I thought about death.