Thief of Souls Read Free

eyes. The eyes of the King, in the body of the peacock, no longer appeared wise. Just frightened.
    â€œA fitting form for you, boy,” the Bringer told the King, for he still thought of him as the boy he once knew. Then the Bringer smiled broadly, and with a flick of his wrist, snapped the King’s neck.
    He hurled the dying bird onto the throne, and the King reverted in midair, back into his white-haired self, before smashing down on the throne, neck broken. The light of his great soul left him as he released his last breath. Nothing remained of him but his broken body, slumping limply in the chair, his royal-blue robe now a shroud around him.
    With the King dead, the Bringer focused his energy on the final deed to be done. He turned his thoughts to the center of the island, and spat forth all the energy he had collected from the devoured souls of the others, sending a shattering force to a single point beneath the island.
    And something tore.
    Although it could not yet be seen, the Bringer knew what he had done—he could see it in his mind’s eye. He had created a tear in the fabric of the world beneath the island—a rip he stretched wider and wider with every last ounce of his strength, until the entire erupting island was poised above the hole like a stone about to fall through a sheet of cracking ice. The entire island rumbled with greater urgency, as it began to sink into the great abyss.
    As the island dropped, the ocean began to spill back into the bay. The lush green lowlands were flooded first, swallowing man and beast. The many servants of The Twelve drowned as the sea washed over them.
    There must be nothing left of them, thought the Bringer. No evidence. There must never be an artifact found, or a site unearthed. This place had to be cut out of the Universe forever.
    With the palace collapsing around him, the Bringer dragged himself up the King’s private stairs, to the high stable. He was bloody and crushed from his battle with the King, but he knew the rift he had created beneath the island left him little time.
    He found the King’s mount in the high stable; a white, winged horse, kicking and neighing in terror. The flying horse was another one of Hephaestus’s creations to amuse the King. With no other way off the island, the Bringer climbed onto the back of the Pegasus, kicked it with his shackled feet, and the horse leapt off the ledge of the high stable, frothing at the mouth as it struggled toward the sky.
    Down below, the size of the rift was clearer, and much moreimpressive. The center of the island was collapsing in upon itself and sinking faster than the ocean could rush in to fill the void. It was as if a great sinkhole had opened in the ocean floor, and, as the entire island plunged through the hole, the Bringer caught a glimpse of the place he was sending it. Through the hole, he could see distant red sands far, far below. The hole had opened above a strange alien sky. A place of nothingness. An “unworld” that existed between the walls of worlds. This is where he had consigned The Twelve, their servants, and their miscreations. He watched from high above, as the island plummeted out of this world.
    Now all that remained of the island was a crescent of stone in the sea and a circular waterfall, miles wide, pouring down, through the hole in the world, into the strange sky of another. The hole quickly healed itself until the waters met, becoming a whirlpool, and then the simple crashing of waves as the tear sealed itself closed. The ocean would rage for days from the cataclysm, and people on far shores would say that Poseidon was angry. But the truth was, Poseidon was gone, along with the King and the Queen, the Blacksmith and the Beauty, the God of War, the Goddess of Peace, and the rest of their accomplices. In spite of their vain pretensions, and their powers, they were not the gods they claimed to be. In spite of their luminous souls, they were hopelessly