He settles back down on his seat. "Well, no, not exactly. If this is going how the prophecies have told, then I imagine there are forty-four Aspects wandering about our lands."

Wait, forty-four? "I thought you said there were twelve gods? Aron—"

"Is an Aspect," Omos tells me, and gets to his feet again. "I have the perfect book to show you. I'll be right back."

I sigh and let him go, taking another large bite of food. Might as well eat. This could be a while.

OceanofPDF.com

22

I eat as I hear Omos puttering around in his books. He's humming to himself, and it's clear that even though he lives alone here, his books are all the company he needs. It's kind of sweet. An “Aha” comes from the far end of the building, and then the monk returns to my side a few moments later with another beautifully bound, oversized book. He sets it down on the bed and flips through it.

"The last time the gods were outcast in an Anticipation, there were forty-four Aspects cast down from the heavens. The High Father is pure and just, of course. He is immortal and eternal. The other gods are eternal but not immortal, since they were born of human parents."

"They were?" I'm surprised to hear that. Nothing about Aron seems all that…normal.

"Oh yes." He straightens and studies his shelves. "I have another book—"

"Let's just focus on this one," I tell him, patting the one on the bed with me. "So the forty-four are from humans…?"

"Twelve gods," Omos corrects. "Twelve born of humankind and lifted up to rule over them. Aron of the Cleaver is the Lord of Storms and Butcher God of Battle, but I'm sure you knew that." He carefully flips through pages and then smooths the book out, turning it toward me as he opens up to a two-page spread. "Here are the others."

There's a gorgeous diagram illustrated across the two pages, full of symbols and figures and swooping, swirling lettering that looks like it took a hundred years to draw. Unfortunately for me, it's all written in a language I don't read. "I can't make out any of this. I don't read your language, Omos. I'm sorry."

"Ah, of course." He angles the book a little toward him and taps at one picture. "This is Aron of the Cleaver."

I look closer and nod, because I see it now. Dark hair. Bright red scar down side of face and an eyepatch. The guy in the picture is holding an axe flat across his chest like a shield, and I haven't seen my Aron do that, but maybe it's because he doesn't have one yet. “Eyepatch, huh?”

“His greatest legend is how he lost an eye to a dragon.”

"I see." Kinda looks like he found it again. Maybe gods regenerate that sort of thing.

"This is my goddess, Magra. She is the bringer of plenty." He taps a figure across the page, of a beautiful woman dressed in long, loose green robes with arms full of wheat.

Off to one side, I see another woman, this one holding a swirl of magic. Her hair is long and dark and her eyes are practically flashing as her robes fly about her. "Tadekha?" I ask.

"Goddess of magic," he agrees.

"I met her," I murmur, wrinkling my nose. More like horndog of magic.

Omos makes a sound of surprise in his throat. "You did? How was she?"

"Er…unpleasant. Let's keep going. So all of these gods are different…things?" I gesture at the book. It reminds me a bit of the ancient mythologies I studied back in grade school, the Greek and Roman gods with crazy stories told about them.

"Yes. This is Gental, god of family, and Kassam, Lord of the Wild." He points at a drawing of a man brandishing antlers. "Rhagos, Lord of the Dead. Anali, goddess of—"

I pat the book, interrupting him again or else I'm going to be subjected to the entire pantheon and their history. "That's great, but let's get on to the part about how there are forty-four people here in the mortal realm—on Aos—instead of twelve. How does that happen?"

"Like I said," he gently rebukes me, turning a page. "The twelve are eternal but not immortal. They are flawed, and sometimes those flaws become too great. The world shifts off balance and the gods no longer have the best interests of the world at heart. They grow greedy and selfish and lost in their own petty squabbles. That is when the High Father takes action. He casts them out and splits them into Aspects to teach them a lesson."

All right, now we're getting somewhere. There's that Aspect word again. "And Aspects are…"

"Incarnations of their flaws." Omos flips through the book again, flicking page after page. "There are four divine virtues and four divine flaws. Because the High Father wants to extinguish the flaws from his gods, he casts them out and fragments them into four copies of themselves. Each copy represents the flaw they are working to purge from their system."

It's weird to think of Aron as a fragment of a god. "What are the four flaws?"

"Lies, Hedonism, Arrogance, and Apathy."

Oh. I think of Aron. "And each Aspect personifies one of these particular flaws?" At his nod, my mouth twists a little. "I can guess which one Aron is."

Omos chuckles and gives his head a little shake. "It's easy to see that he's Arrogance. Even when he wants to be kind, he doesn't know how to be. That's why you must be patient with him."

That explains why Omos isn't ruffled by Aron's constant demands. I think of all the times I've wanted a kind word from Aron and got a douche comment. No, not douchey, really. Just incredibly arrogant.

Because that's who he is.

It feels like so many things are clicking into place. I think of Tadekha and how Aron wanted nothing to do with her. I think of her with her angel servant between her thighs. That would be Hedonism. Maybe that's why I rubbed myself all over Aron like a dick addict. God. I can feel myself blushing. "This makes sense," is all I say to Omos. “But your math is off. Twelve gods and four Aspects per god means forty-eight gods, doesn’t it?”

“Normally, yes. But the Spidae—the three fates—are never counted when the Aether is purged. Even the High Father must leave some things alone.” He smiles. “The other eleven gods are not subject to the same rules.”

It sounds like a damn mess to me. “But this Anticipation thing—it’s happened before?”

He nods. "Oh yes. At least twice in recorded history. The four Aspects of each god are scattered across the lands, never too close to one another."

Ah. It's happened twice before just like this, right. Still, this all seems kind of a strange thing to do. "Okay, but why split them and cast them out? So the copies can all learn life lessons and shake hands and learn how to be better people or something? This is all very After School Special and all, but it seems a bit convoluted if you ask me. I mean, if they're dicks, tell them not to be dicks."

I mean, I've met Tadekha and she was a huge dick. A big, manipulative dick. Aron's a dick too, but in an entirely different way. I nibble on a piece of cheese as I wait, studying him.

Omos blinks at me as if I've said something puzzling. "What?"

"You know, agree to be better people? Meet up with each other, shake hands and walk away?"

"Shake hands? No, no. He's casting them out, my dear. He doesn't want them back. There are four Aspects and if Aron wants to return to the heavens, one Aspect must destroy the other three."