Prologue - Divine Apostasy Book 3

Prologue

Tremine shelved the last of the days returned books and turned to leave the aisle. A small figure wrapped in a brown cloak stood at the entrance of aisle, and Tremine’s heartbeat quickened in surprise. He hadn’t heard them approach.

The cloak’s hood kept the figure’s face in shadow and they stood very still. They looked thin and not much over five feet tall, but Tremine had long ago stopped equating appearance with danger.

“Can I help you?” Tremine asked.

“I hope so,” Uru said.

Tremine’s heart thudded in his chest. Not from fear, but at the danger Uru exposed herself to by manifesting here in the Material Realm.

Trying to calm himself, Tremine crossed his arms over his chest and bowed low. “Forgive me, but why do you take these unnecessary risks? You should have summoned me to your realm.”

Uru stepped closer, looked up at Tremine, and gave him a small smile. “The risk to me here is small. Naktos is watching to see what you do with the book. If you disappeared into a Divine Realm, it would tip our hand. Naktos, if given cause to suspect he had been tricked, might take his frustration into the Spirit Realm. Our friends there have enough problems, don’t you think?”

Guilt, always near the surface of Tremine’s thoughts, jerked him under, drowning him in self-loathing. For a moment, he couldn’t speak.

Uru put a hand on Tremine’s arm. “Stop. You’re not being fair to yourself. Kaylin wasn’t your fault, and Una and Mica agreed.”

It felt like someone had grabbed his heart and squeezed it into a pulp. He forced the words out. “Ruwen didn’t.”

Uru dropped her hand. “But that was my decision. With so many lives at stake, his reaction had to be genuine. Naktos must continue to believe his spell is permanent. And while someday Ruwen will be someone to fear, right now, he is a naïve sixteen-year-old.”

Tremine nodded, his throat too tight to speak. He swallowed hard and forced the words out. “I haven’t slept. I can’t stop wondering what his first day has been like.”

Uru spoke softly. “Time is irregular in the Spirit Realm. A week may have already passed for him, or no time at all.” Uru sighed. “I know how difficult that was for you. But he’s smart and has probably figured some of it out. He will for sure when the other Champions find him.”

“If you could have seen the look in his face,” Tremine whispered.

Uru’s eyes hardened. “I know it. Many have suffered so my plans could take shape. None of them have the balm of an explanation. Only the pressing weight of an unfair life. Thousands of betrayals, all necessary to keep us on the proper path, but each like a dagger in my heart.”

Tremine bowed again. “Please forgive me. I forget my place and how small my burdens are.”

Uru pulled Tremine up. “There is nothing to forgive.”

Tremine took a deep breath. “Let me fetch the book.”

He quickly moved through the empty library, only slowing when he entered the shelves containing alchemy and science books. Stopping, he reached up and removed the book Terium Vein Survey he’d received from the Naktos Mage.

“You hid it with the dimensional math books?” Uru asked.

“Ruwen was the only one who ever used this section. I thought it fitting. Plus, Ky always tells me plain sight is the best vault,” Tremine said, holding the book out.

Uru took the book and ran a finger across the title.

Tremine cleared his throat nervously. “What is so valuable about that book?”

Uru looked up at him and gave a small smile. “You never looked inside?”

He shook his head. Few things were more powerful than his curiosity, but overwhelming guilt coupled with the fear of upsetting a deity had made leaving the book alone easy.

Uru handed the book back to Tremine. “Take a look and tell me what you think.”

Tremine hesitated for a few moments as his curiosity warred with his guilt. But the permission of his goddess pushed him forward. With a trembling hand, he took the book and opened it.

Tremine didn’t recognize the dates, but many books were like that, coming from cultures with different methods for measuring time. The pages of the book were all remarkably similar. Runes were grouped together in threes, and Tremine guessed, like the middle values in gate runes, they were points on the planet. Next to each set of runes, density and purity values were listed.

The middle of the book contained pages of carefully drawn cross-sections of the planet. The pictures detailed the shape and size of twelve immense terium deposits along with large veins snaking through the planet. One thing became immediately clear to Tremine.

“Is most of the planet terium?” Tremine asked in shock.

“Yes,” Uru said.

Tremine carefully closed the book and handed it back to Uru. “They why bother with a survey? It looks like no matter where you are, if you dig deep enough, you’ll eventually find terium.”

Uru placed the book in the inner pocket of her cloak. “But I’m not looking for terium. I’m looking for something much more valuable.”

Tremine shook his head, stunned. What could be more valuable then terium? Before he could ask, Uru spoke again.

“Kysandra will arrive here tonight. You will help her as she activates her network. We are entering one of the most dangerous parts of my plan, and we will need her people to buy us time. We were always in danger of an invasion, but losing the fourth Champion will embolden my peers and accelerate their plans. I have shaped the events that brought us here, but now the path forward is murky, and my control of them is mostly gone. If Ruwen doesn’t return with everyone soon, we are doomed.”

“Then why allow your Champions to be taken in the first place?” Tremine blurted and then immediately bowed. “I apologize, it is not my place to question.”

Uru laughed softly. “It’s fine. I don’t get to brag often. When Naktos put Kaylin in the Spirit Realm it shocked all of us. But he opened my eyes to possibilities I had never considered. That one act allowed me to see a path forward from the stalemate I found myself in.”

“I don’t understand,” Tremine said.

“Naktos locked my Champions away and weakened me, yes. But this also kept the Champions away from the danger of the Material Realm and all the deities that wanted to destroy them. In exchange for making my Champions untouchable, Naktos, through you, has provided me with knowledge I had no other way of attaining.”

“So you benefited two ways,” Tremine said. “But Naktos must be sure they are stuck. Can’t you just bring them back yourself?”

“That would violate the Pact. If I saved them, all the deities would unite against us, and we aren’t ready for that yet.”

“Yet? You are capable of fighting all the gods?”

Uru’s smile turned into a grin. “No, I’m not. But, when I found Kaylin in the Spirit Realm, I realized something else. Something that will change the universe. Fix it.”

Tremine didn’t know what Uru meant by fixing the universe, but the goddess continued talking, like the dam that held her cleverness had burst.

“And what Kaylin allowed me to see, took me three tries to perfect. Una and Mica were each an experiment that took me a step closer.”

“Closer to what?”

Uru leaned in close to Termine and whispered. “To creating a god.”