Chapter 132: Olympus

I don't know how long I lay there crying and wailing and sniffling. I couldn't believe he was gone. I'd been played. I'd let the darkness use him and use me. I needed to be smarter. I needed to figure out what she was doing before it happened. How did one even learn those sort of skills? I was no hero. I was nothing.
The deep pit of depression pulled at me throughout the hours as I lay on the cold hard ground. I couldn't pull myself up. I couldn't go on. I had killed Mila and now I had killed Remi. I let Kezia and Matei die. No matter what I did, I was never good enough to save the people I loved. I'd even killed my own mother. What was wrong with me? I was living ball of bad luck. Bad Karma.
I raised my head. Had Karma done this to me? Was that the reason? I slowly pushed into a sitting position.
"Karma!" I screamed. I had nothing left; otherwise, I would have pushed so much power into her name; it would have knocked the rest of the castle over.
"Karma! Did you do this to me!?" My voice creaked and broke on the last few words. I didn't sound like myself. I sounded like some old hag. "Why did you do this to me?! Why did you take him from me?!"
As I screamed, my voice became hoarse and lost its power. I sounded like a husk of my former self. I felt dry, empty and useless.
The air around me froze. I looked up. Karma sat in her golden throne, eyeing me.
"Have you come to gloat?" I tried to yell, but it came out a whisper in my dry throat.
She leaned her elbow on her armrest and looked at her nails. "You are so stupid." She said simply.
I just stared at her. I didn't have anything to say. I didn't have anything left in me.
She finally turned to look down on me. "Miranda did this to you. She owns Remi's contract, not me. I own your sweet Angandriel." She smiled. "But you let Isabell play you. While you were running around playing queen of your little gang, she was sucking up souls in your city. You thought you were so powerful. You thought you could save Kezia. She punished you. She took Remi and she did it in the most painful way possible."
Karma stood. She towered over me. Her golden high heel strappy pointed shoes tapped as she closed the distance. "You need to grow up. Put your big girl pants on and stop playing. When someone like Juno tells you how to use your power, fucking do it. None of this "I can't decide on a name nonsense."You played around, and now you've seen the consequences. Grow the fuck up." She said this last bit a word at a time.
She set her hands on her hips. "You're a god, not a human. Stop acting like one." She turned and snapped her fingers. She and her throne disappeared. Time flowed forward again.
I stared after her for a long time. It was like my brain was stuck. I couldn't process what had just happened. I questioned if it was even real. Slowly, the thoughts drifting through my brain began to form together. Karma said I was a god. Juno had made me a god. I was a fucking god.
I tried to feel for that pink energy, but I was completely out. I lay back down on the ground. The pull to drift into my garden was strong. I was ready to leave this world. Creating my own was so much more appealing than dealing with this one. I let my mind drift back to my creation.
I landed in the center of the marble walkway facing the fountain. Everything that had once been pristine white and sparkling with life was now black and dead. My mouth opened in horror as I spun around. My temple had been defiled, maybe even poisoned. There was nothing left. Not even one spark of life. I truly had nothing left. No Remi, no garden, nothing at all.
I fell into a heap and cried. I didn't even know where to start putting the pieces back together.
After a time, I felt a pull back to the real world. My eyes flickered open. Two faces stared down at me. Sandriel and Natalia. Both of their faces looked drawn with worry.
"Are you okay?" Natalia asked.
Tears leaked from my eyes. I squeezed them shut and shook my head ever so slightly.
"Get her up," Natalia ordered.
Sandriel lifted me up into his arms.
"Take her back to her room."
"No." I shook my head. "I need to start over. I need to get away. I need to figure out how to use this power. Can you take me somewhere where I can learn?"
The two of them shared a look.
"What?" I asked.
"You're not going to like it," Natalia said.
"He's the worst," Sandriel said.
"Will I get stronger? Will I learn how to defeat the darkness?"
They both nodded.
"Then take me there."
Sandriel closed his eyes and nodded. He launched into the air. I gripped his neck, but my arms felt like they had no strength. Natalia disappeared into the shadows as we drew higher into the sky. Sandriel flew away from the setting sun. He flew a long time, well into the night before we finally landed.
A monumental pillared entrance rose before me. Behind it, the largest mountain I had ever seen rose straight up into the clouds. The sun was just starting to rise again behind it, casting red light across its surface. It looked like it belonged on mars. I wondered for a moment if I was on mars. It was within the realm of possibility, I guessed.
Natalia formed beside me. "Are you ready?"
"Ready for what?" I asked. "Who is going to teach me?"
"Zeus," they said together.
"But you're going to have to beg," Sandriel said.
"And it's not going to be easy," Natalia said.
"Which one? Getting him to teach me or learning to be a god."
"Both," they said as one.
"Great." I gritted my teeth tightly and started through the grand entrance. Beyond it was stairs all the way up the mountain. They ascended right into the clouds. I took the first step. I had a feeling I was going to be very sick of stairs very soon.