Rage of the Ancient Gods Read online

  ALSO BY CRAIG A. ROBERTSON

  BOOKS IN THE RYANVERSE:

  THE GALAXY ON FIRE SERIES:

  EMBERS, BOOK 1

  FLAMES, BOOK 2

  FIRESTORM, BOOK 3

  FIRES OF HELL, BOOK 4

  DRAGON FIRE, BOOK 5

  ASHES, BOOK 6

  THE FOREVER SERIES:

  THE FOREVER LIFE, BOOK 1

  THE FOREVER ENEMY, BOOK 2

  THE FOREVER FIGHT, BOOK 3

  THE FOREVER QUEST, BOOK 4

  THE FOREVER ALLIANCE, BOOK 5

  THE FOREVER PEACE, BOOK 6

  RISE OF ANCIENT GODS SERIES

  RETURN OF THE ANCIENT GODS, BOOK 1

  RAGE OF THE ANCIENT GODS, BOOK 2

  STAND-ALONE NOVELS:

  THE CORPORATE VIRUS (2016)

  TIME DIVING (2013)

  THE INNERgLOW EFFECT (2010)

  WRITE NOW! The Prisoner of NaNoWriMo (2009)

  ANON TIME (2009)

  Rage of the Ancient Gods

  BOOK 2, RISE OF THE ANCIENT GODS SERIES

  by Craig Robertson

  There's nothing as bad as a bad god comin' back.

  Imagine-It Publishing

  El Dorado Hills, CA

  Copyright 2019 Craig Robertson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-7328724-2-4 (Print)

  978-1-7328724-1-7 (E-Book)

  Cover design by Jessica Bell

  https://www.jessicabelldesign.com/

  Editing and Formatting services by Polgarus Studio

  http://www.polgarusstudio.com

  DEDICATION

  To my blessed children, Chris and Kim.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  Glossary

  And Now A Word from Your Author

  PROLOGUE

  Zarathus relaxed after the climax of his realization. Truth was not universal. Throughout all of endless time he had pondered that question. Over the expanse of the ages, he had posed and answered most any question that could be framed. Now few queries escaped his keen mind's solutions. This both pleased and worried Zarathus. Yes, questions were left, to be certain. Was one truly responsible for their own actions? Did the entropy of a closed system always have to increase? Why was π, the circumference of a circle divided by its radius squared, an irrational number? Where was the best pizza to be found? He still had to labor to crack those tough eggs. But in resolving each elusive question, the number of intellectual quests left became fewer and fewer. What would he do when the last conundrum was laid to rest? He almost laughed. What would he do would always be unanswered, so hopefully he would never need fear rest.

  Before Zarathus began to focus on his next philosophic sortie, he begrudgingly admitted he must take a break to review the nearby universe. It was not his responsibility so much as it was his obligation to be aware of the goings-on. In some cases he even had to intercede. If events warranted or a situation was particularly dire, he could remediate matters. He always had and always would. Zarathus had long ago decided it was his duty to act as a morally positive force if his intervention was the only guarantor of a good outcome.

  There had been the time a wayward rogue star was on a course to impact a populated system. Zarathus diverted that star because the system under threat was home to a number of valuable species. And when a thermonuclear war erupted on a far-off planet, he went there personally to reverse the explosions and broker a peace, albeit a bit forced on the combatants. For their part they seemed to lust for horrific deaths. But he could not allow that. And he had lost count of the number of stars he'd prevented from going nova and destroying that which deserved to survive.

  Having the ability to do whatever he wanted mandated that Zarathus be the parent figure to the children that were all his neighbors, both the animate and the inanimate. To those who lived or would ever live, for he knew them too. He liked to say he was modestly omniscient. Having complete command of science, engineering, and technology, he could always right the wrongs he could not help knowing about. But such was not a burden. No, he realized it was the highest …

  Zarathus angled his head. There was something moving in the sector he called Billie. Well, many things moved in Billie, but what he knew was there had not even existed seconds before. Quantum mechanics allowed for the appearance and disappearance of particles spontaneously, but what moved was large. And it headed along one vector for the briefest period before it altered course. The unimaginable was coming straight at Zarathus. And it was coming fast. The object had accelerated from a few miles a second to nearly nine times the speed of light in the breadth of a thought.

  So be it, reflected Zarathus. Any new creation doing the impossible and heading right for him was undoubtably a negative contributor to the universe. It was saving him the trouble of hunting it down in order to terminate it. On its present course it would arrive in a few days. Time enough to have a meal and return to the questions that still needed to be …

  Zarathus looked up with a start. Before him stood a figure. It was reptilian, seven feet tall, standing on two feet and resting back on a massive tail that was studded with spikes. He knew this, because he knew nearly everything, to be Marropex. But what Marropex was and why he was present were empty spaces in Zarathus's mind.

  “I am Zarath …”

  “No you are not,” taunted Marropex. He spoke with hisses and pops. His words were ladened with antipathy, disgust, and most of all they were one with rage.

  “I do not wish …” began Zarathus.

  “Nor should you, for you are not.” After that challenge, he reared his head back and howled at the sky. His cry was of triumph, of hatred, and of the lust of death.

  Zarathus had never heard such a hellish wail, but he know its essence at once. Into his mind crept a completely novel emotion. He began to know fear. Zarathus also conceived for the first time of his own mortality. “You threaten me. You cut me off when I wish to say I am Zarath …”

  “I never threaten. To issue a threat involves the issuance of words and implies there is more than one possible outcome. And I stop you from saying that you are anything. You are not. You do not exist.”

  “I clearly do.” With that Zarathus directed a machine of his creation to form ten black holes in Marropex's chest.

  Marropex bent backwards, nearly touching his head to the ground. He laughed the most insane, the most xenophobic, and the most contemptuous laugh ever to exist in our universe. The Cleinoid god of atrocities cackled and spat for hours, for days, and for what remained of Zarathus's life. Then without warning he straightened a
nd was silent. He slapped his hands together in Zarathus's direction. The kind, responsible, and the loving Zarathus was crushed by invisible forces into a sheet of single atoms extending in all directions for miles. Marropex separated his hands, and the atoms that were Zarathus for so very long scattered in the breeze as dust and were forgotten.

  ONE

  “Oh come on,” I taunted my stick-in-the-mud purported friends, “we got nothing else to do. I'll start. I'm bigger then a breadbox.”

  “I don't want to play but what the heck is a breadbox?” questioned an irritated Sapale.

  “Oh, sorry, you guys didn't have them on Kaljax, did you?”

  “Well for starters we didn't have bread, so no, it's unlikely we had a box for it.”

  “Back in the day you stored a loaf of bread in a metal box on the counter. A breadbox.”

  “It needed its own storage compartment? Was it toxic back then? Explosive?” my alien wife asked.

  “No, it … you have to store it somewhere. Where would you put it?” I replied feebly.

  “You don't want me to answer that, do you?”

  “Anyway,” I changed the subject, “a breadbox is like so.” I pantomimed a rectangular box to show the size.

  “I said I'm not playing,” she insisted.

  “Me either. It's a stupid game and now's the least appropriate time conceivable,” added Toño.

  Couple a spoilsports. “We have little else to do,” I reminded them. “Why not have some fun?”

  “Fun? Jon, you're more insane than even I suspected,” Sapale replied. “We're hanging over lava by one ankle waiting for some awful death. Where does ‘fun’ or the need for it therein arise?”

  “So what would you like to do?”

  “I don't know. Oh wait, I do. I'd like to escape,” she responded sarcastically.

  “Okay, going with your thought, let me work through this. We've been here three days. No one has come to free us or kill us or feed us, taunt us or even spit in our faces. We have come up with zero plans to extricate ourselves from this predicament. If we think longer and harder about how to escape when it is not possible we will accomplish nothing. I say twenty questions beats the hell out of just hanging around waiting for badness.”

  “Twenty questions most definitely does not,” replied a bitter-sounding Toño. “Boredom is preferable. Now if you two will be quiet, I will continue to try and reason a way out.”

  “Please allow me to help, Professor,” I snarked. “If we cut our ropes, we crash into lava. That would be bad. We could extend our probes and hold on to the ceiling and then cut the ropes. That would allow us to swing to the ledge surrounding the lava, except there is no ledge. There's just lava as far as the eye can see. We could sprout wings and fly. I mean, there has to be an edge somewhere. But try as I might the damn wings won't sprout.”

  “What if that's not lava?” responded Toño. “They have used illusions in a detention setting before.”

  “Yes they have. But my sensors indicate the area below us is hot to around two thousand Celsius. If it's not lava, it'd still ruin our shiny skin.”

  “Can't that be part of the illusion?” asked Sapale.

  “Unlikely,” Toño responded thoughtfully. “Optical sensors can be tricked. But our temperature sensors and probes could not be simultaneously fooled. It's hot below us.”

  “So since we just proved we can't escape, can we play twenty qu …”

  “I'd rather take my chances with the lava,” snapped Toño.

  “It would be more pleasant,” agreed my unhelpful life partner.

  Our bickering was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a catwalk. It began in the heat-obscured distance and ended right in front of us. Damn godly magic. It was most annoying. The walkway was not, like us, upside down.

  Vorc stepped toward us at a brisk pace. Bethniak was conspicuously, at least to me, absent. A long flowing, pencil thin centipedeish critter walked alongside the boss. Behind him followed a most peculiar sight. A cloudy memory. Who needed one of those in tow? Vorc and the oversized bug chatted perfunctorily until they came to the end of the road. Vorc made a show of pulling up a ledger and scanning it with a finger. Then he passed the book to the cloud.

  “I was told the leader of your band woke,” Vorc began. “Damn inconvenient of you taking so long.”

  “Sorry to be so vulnerable. That little bitch packs quite a wallop. Plus I needed my beauty rest.” I patted my cheeks.

  “Amen to that,” growled Sapale.

  “I am not in the mood for disrespect or games. I believe I will convince you quickly that flippancy and cute responses will lead to dire consequences.”

  “If we piss you off, what? You're going to do something worse to us than you already are?” I asked coolly.

  “Yes. Do not tempt fate.”

  “I am fate,” I replied confidently.

  That actually made him a tad nervous. Funny. “Come come,” Vorc replied anxiously. “Of course you're not. Fate is an independent force of nature, not a being.”

  “I meant to say I'm your fate. Treat me well and you might just have a future.”

  Vorc was back to looking mad. “Such ill-advised bravado. Now, I will ask you a series of questions. I will ask once. You will answer directly. Failure to respond acceptably will result in one of your deaths. It will be swift and certain. Who are …”

  I made the sound of a buzzer going off. “Wrong. I seem to need to point out a very stark weakness in your threat and your approach. To me it looks like you intend to do us all in. Of course that's not even remotely possible, but it seems to be your intent. So wherein lies any of our motivations to comply? If you kill us separately or together, won't we all be just as dead?”

  He turned to the centipede. Without words he gestured from buggie to me. An arc of liquid sprang from the creature's butt, which it had swung around to point at me.

  The stream was heading straight for my face. I felt safe in assuming what was intended was not pleasant. I threw up a partial membrane. The fluid dribbled to the lava below.

  Vorc flared in anger. “How dare you.”

  “Vorc, I don't know you all that well, so I'll just ask. Are you mentally challenged? I stop you from harming me and you're insulted?”

  “Do not attempt self-defense. I forbid it. Such actions will only delay the unavoidable and worsen the consequences. It is very foolish to anger a god, little one.”

  “My thoughts exactly, little dicked. I am Ryanmax, god of warriors. I'm a totally pissy god too, so lighten up.”

  “You are not a god. If I had more time I'd have you dissected and learn your true nature, but I don't have that luxury. Because of you the long-planned egress has been altered. Hopefully you caused no more than a delay. I'd worry if I were you if it turns out you corrupted the entire incursion.”

  “If you were me? You should be that lucky, Rumple Foreskin. If I'm not a Cleinoid god, how is it I know of our plans to invade Prime? How is it I know this is out fifth Transheaval? I'm pals with Gorpedder, the big rock head. I spent my life avoiding impotent pukes like you, so maybe you don't know me. But I know you, Vorc, son of Hurvetova. I also see the future. I see you entombed at Beal's Point. If you don't release my friends and me immediately, I might put you there personally.”

  “I believe this …” Vorc stopped when the cloud inched up and nudged him. He turned to the floating assistant and they spoke quietly. Vorc seemed to grow more and more agitated as the conversation progressed.

  Because I was always me, I cleared my throat loudly.

  The pair exchanged a few quick words, then Vorc returned his attention to me.

  “Your puppet master just told you to ease up on your attitude, didn't he, dork?” I could be so annoying.

  “What my assistant and I were discussing is no concern of yours. I have elected to investigate your claims farther. Be advised, however, that whether or not you are a member of the Cleinoid brotherhood does not alter the fact that you threw an intermixer
into a crowd. That intermixer has affected the egress. Crimes are crimes.”

  It hit me I may have saved my universe. I might die for it, but if I screwed up the tunnel or whatever, I did good. “You don't even know it was me, peabrain. I say it wasn't any of us upside-down cakes. Who saw me? Who accuses me?” I knew I had him there. No one but no one was looking back as the most important event in billions of years was taking place.

  “You are beyond the shadow of a doubt the most annoying and galling individual I have ever met.” Vorc actually stomped a foot.

  “Welcome to my world,” Sapale responded with a harrumph.

  “Ditto,” parroted Toño.

  “You three will be taken to the Lower Chambers. There you will be held until I can assemble a team to extract from you the truth. Know that your futures are likely to be short and painful.”

  “Did I mention Tefnuf told me she has a crush on you? Yeah, she has a picture of you right next to her bathtub,” I wagged my eyebrows, “if you take my meaning.”

  He stiffened with rage. “Tefnuf doesn't bathe, you idiot.”

  “I didn't mean to imply her actions involved any water, dream lover.” I wagged the brows again. Man could I get under someone's skin like a terminal case of scabies.

  The catwalk groaned softly, then it extended to right below us. Our restraints broke open and we tumbled rather unceremoniously to the deck. Weird—it was stone, or so close to it I couldn't tell the difference. I always thought of catwalks as being metal. Vorc was a distant vision by the time we rose. The juicy-butt insect was gone with him, thank you very much. The cloudy memory had stayed behind.

  “I am Dalfury,” the swirl said deferentially. “”You will please follow me to our destination. If there are any issues or concerns please do not hesitate to voice them.”