Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I floated through an expanse of nothingness—darkness above, below, and all around me. Was this supposed to happen, or did I end up in the bottomless void where all the deserters go?
Blinking, a pinprick of light pierced the gloom. I had half a thought to go toward it, and suddenly I was.
The light grew, revealing that it wasn’t just a light. It was the sun. My sun. Whole, round, ever-burning, and casting its warmth on a home that wasn’t mine.
I knew instantly that the scene I was looking upon wasn’t a place in Olympia. The people looked the same with their arms, legs, and frontways eyes, but their identical bodies were covered in strange clothing. Some type of blue fabric where their pants would be, and overcoats that hung open instead of shielding them from the cold as overcoats were supposed to do.
Human after human strolled a forest that would’ve mirrored Calliope’s if not for black rivers cutting hideous paths through the green. Trash littered among the tree roots where nymph flower homes should be, and they walked past the garbage like they couldn’t see it. The closer I floated, the stranger the scene became. Everywhere I looked, people held rectangular objects to their faces while they talked to themselves.
Are they mad... or am I?
Gazing over the trees, I fell on an impossible sight. Structures rose higher than the tallest oak in the Neander Meadow. Taller than the Elysian Imperial Palace. As tall as the heavens herself.
Such things could not be possib—
I jerked as if an invisible force hooked me around the middle. I flew back—farther, farther, farther away from that impossible world... and fell.
Thud!
Gasping, I gazed up at the sky as it emptied on my face. I didn’t need to look around to know I was back in Olympia.
What happened? I was there. I was right there and then it was gone.
Was that window in another world a trick? Was it another deterrent to get me to turn back? Showing me a mad town with impossible buildings and people who chose to talk to themselves instead of the humans around them?
Can’t be, I thought. Neither Hypnos, the god of dreams, nor his children could imagine something as bizarre as that. It had to be my destination, so why didn’t I get to it?
Picking myself up, I ran off the edge, welcoming the void between worlds. I got so close before I was pulled back. Maybe what I needed to do was propel myself forward quicker—cross the barrier before Olympia had a chance to snatch back her prey.
I got within inches of the window—close enough to count the teeth on a smiling pair of parents, holding up another rectangle to their toddling child, then I whipped back.
The ground punched the air out of my lungs, and left a bruise for the trouble. I pushed up off the sodden earth, rubbing my shoulder. Was I imagining it or did that hurt more the second time?
Shaking it off, I stripped off my pack and wet overcoat. I was almost there. A little more and I’d make it.
I leaped off the cliff, pedaling through the air before I hit the void.
The third time I got closer still. My fingertips disappeared through the window, and I swore they touched warm air and a gentle breeze.
The barrier snatched me back, and my stomach shot in my throat.
“Ahhh!”
I tumbled to the ground, landing hard on my hurt shoulder. Pain ricocheted through my body, jarring my jaw snap shut on my tongue. I hissed as blood filled my mouth.
There was no question. The border was spitting me out higher and higher off the ground each time. A few more times of this and I’d be breaking bones, one of them my spine.
It took three tries just to get my fingers through the barrier. How many times will it take me to get my entire battered body through?
“The answer is simpler than you think, young one.”
I snapped up, whipping around.
“Genius lies in its simplicity.”
My mind retreated to a small, quiet place. A creature as tall as the eucalyptuses crushed the brush beneath its serpent’s body. Half a dozen tentacles sprouted from his torso, each tipped with three razor-sharp claws. Free of the trees, he spread his batlike wings—their span longer than ten of me lined head to feet.
I looked into his boarish face; yellow, slitted eyes; rows of brown fangs, and spider legs sprouting from his head like hair, then pitched forward and vomited. I couldn’t help it.
Everything from their hideous patchwork bodies to the raging storms that followed them like puppies nipping at their masters’ heels, was meant to instill fear in all who saw them.
Typhons were not merely monsters, they were gods. All of them sons of the first Typhon—offspring of the goddess Gaia and god Tartarus. From Typhon, all monsters were born, granting him the title: Father of Monsters. But only the sons grown from pieces of his own body became beings as fierce and terrifying as him. Of all the monsters of Olympia, typhons were the most dangerous. Villagers that woke to find a lightning-less storm overhead, were instructed to pack up their things and evacuate. Leave them to the Deucalion Army.