Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

Nyx cheered once more. Fighting, aye . . . as have you ever. Others may have forgotten your spirit, or even doubted it of late, but I have never wavered in knowing you should fight to return to me, my favored son.

Others? Kellen asked. You mean Erebus . . .

Though she replied quick enough, Kellen knew the truer answer when Nyx hesitated. Kanaloa believes in you, my son, said Nyx. As your father does also, though he will never say it . . . ah, but they do not share the same bond as a mother with her child. How could they? She chuckled, the sound as shrill as her icy touch. Fathers do not feel you within them from the earliest stage. Nyx took Kellen’s hand and placed it upon her belly. I felt you and your brother here from your first moments, my favored son. Aye, and dreamed of you both long before I ever had such stirrings of evidence within me. We are bound by more than the simple trappings of life in this world. Nyx placed her other hand upon Kellen’s breast, her palm and fingers shielding the scarrings on his skin. Our kinship knows no limits. Not in this world or the next. How else could you find your way back to me, and I to you? Each of us searching for one another through the shadowed boundaries between worlds, hmm? She smiled at him once more, both beautiful and terrible in equal measure.

I don’t know how I found my way, said Kellen, fighting against the memory of his wounding and then falling into darkness as his blood swirled around him. Staring into Nyx’s gaze, Kellen forced a smile, reminded of both the mother he knew ashore and the one before him who he had first witnessed when awaking in the deep. I don’t know how all this happened, but I’m glad you were there to find me. That you’re here with me now.

I am always with you, my son, said Nyx, rising above him with a swish of her tentacles to give him a cold kiss upon his brow. She relented a moment later, sinking back down to look at him eye-to-eye once more. And I shall never doubt you.

And Erebus? Kellen asked. All the other Sancul we’re supposed to meet? What about them?

Leave them to me, said Nyx. Your father too. Despite all that time has passed, I fear he is now as he was then before your maiming. Still holding to his old ways and his own sense of right from wrong.

And he thinks I’m wrong . . . said Kellen.

No, said Nyx, sweeping in to embrace him once more. No, my son. It is because you were right that your father yet holds to his resentment. Why he clings to your silent and stilted brother still, rather than dare himself to face you and your questions. Your judgement. Aye . . . say rather why he will not face you and admit his own failings.

What failings? Kellen asked. What did I ever do to Erebus to make him hate me so much?

Nothing of your own fault, said Nyx, offering him a small, but sad, smile. The birth of you and your brother was but a pair of wedges between he and I. From the moment I held you and Hypnos both, your father understood that he then became the lesser of my focus. Aye, that I would forever after serve my sons’ needs over my selfish wants and your father’s also.

Then why don’t you look to Hypnos too? Kellen dared to ask, noting the furrow of her brow as he did. Why don’t you try to help him speak?

Speak? Nyx scoffed. No. Your brother’s mind is broken. If not for the love I bear your father, I would have mercifully ended Hypnos’s suffering long ago myself. Aye, and sent him on to find you in that other shadowed realm, Beyond, that the pair of you might be rejoined and wait for me there too.

Kellen recoiled at the ease with which she had implied her notion of a merciful act to free Hypnos of his current condition. His mind isn’t broken though. Kellen thought to himself, reflecting on the conversations he and Hypnos had together inside a dream state that the meek Sancul had brought him into. Hypnos is alive and well inside whatever dream world of his that it is he pulled me into. Kellen trembled at the memory. And Moros lives there with him too. Kellen chewed on the knowledge he had witnessed, wondering what he could say to help Nyx understand, remembering all the while of Hypnos’s continued warnings to not speak of their conversations together in that dream-like realm of subconscious sleep.

Nyx stirred in front of him. What is it, my son? She asked. What troubles you?

Hypnos, Kellen answered her, pausing to choose his words carefully to be wary of Hypnos’s warning to not betray him to Nyx or the other Sancul. It’s just . . . I don’t like seeing him how he is now.

Nor I either, said Nyx. But I fear our Hypnos will never return to us as he once was. In truth, his sickness grows stronger with each passing day.

Sickness? Kellen asked.

You have not noticed? Nyx asked, her brow furrowing.

I have, Kellen lied. But, when I asked Erebus, he said it was because Hypnos had used his powers to bring down the whale whose blood helped to heal me.

Your father would believe that, said Nyx, her lip curling. And he would be wrong there also. It is a sickness long held that weakens your brother now, my son. A deathly one too, I fear. It takes a mother to know. Of late, your brother will not eat more than a few morsels. Even then, he does so only at your father’s constant prodding of him. To my mind, aye, and my father’s also, I believe Hypnos has fought against