Apoleia Book One of The Atlantis Series

I

Screams. Cries. It's all the same, times like this. When someone you love falls to someone else's fault. But it's so much worse when you know it was all yours.

Azea was cold when I went to his room this morning. I didn't kill him. It was that phony apothecary. He was sick! I didn't kill him. My mother left, following the carriage as it rolled my brother off, screaming not to take him away.

 My little sister, Livia, took another step away from me, trying to wipe the flow of tears from her eyes. My father watched me like I was a viper. He didn't know if I was hostile; if I would strike someone else he loved. He loved me yesterday. He will love me tomorrow.

The stale cloud of death weighed on my shoulders as he closed his eyes tightly, and turned away. I lowered my head, staring at the compressed dirt floor. A bird sang at the window without a care. An albatross, to be exact. That's one of the only birds we have here.

"Nirv, will mum be alright?"

My heart sank as Livia looked up at me with fear. She knew her brother was gone and wouldn't question it. Death happened here, especially among the paupers.

"I don't know, Livie. Mother will be back, that I can promise," I breathed, sending a prayer to Sancus to give me the power to do good on my swear.

Superstitions were worse than poison, at times. When the blood gets to your head and you need something to blame. Someone to use as a scapegoat, whether for your own mistakes, or for the unexplained. Here in Atlantis, there is a belief that people may be cursed, most common in women, it makes the cursed a parasite. An uncontrollable, unpredictable toxin that has no mercy. Holds nothing sacred.

The issue with that is, why is it mostly women? Why did it only truly become a thing when the Tarigonen bloodline took over? Why was it that the first True King of Atlantis was so adamant on the belief, and his son acted upon it the most. Was it truly a curse? Why did the gods seem to be warring on whether we should suffer or not?

Tunneled sunlight burned my skin as I pulled from the house. Helios had almost reached his summit for the day, I observed, ignoring the wretched scents of the crowded, worn dirt path.

I was walking until the sun was almost a crescent, the rest of it hidden by the walls of the mountain. My mind couldn't help but go back to the repeated question of "what is on the other side?" As far as I knew, nobody had left the mountain for millennia. Although, most people in Atlantis didn't seem to want to see the outside world.

We were taught to believe that either the gods would smite you for the sins of the Old Atlantians, or that humans still out there were a far worse fate.