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“We’ll be back in a few hours,” I told him.

“No need to hurry back,” he replied with a wink.

We headed for the door, but we never made it. There was a blinding flash, and then Faris was standing in front of us, blocking our path.

“I have a mission for you, Leda,” the King of the Gods declared before I could tell him to go away. His gaze flickered to Nero, then back to me. “Windstriker may come if he must, but no one else. This mission is top secret. You’re not to tell a soul about it, not even the other gods.”

6

A NEW GOD

The air was hot, dry, and smelled like dirt. That pretty much described the town as a whole too. The place was so rustic and rural. It kind of reminded me of Purgatory back when I was growing up, before we’d gotten high-end hair salons and designer clothing shops.

“I expected a world under Faris’s rule to be more polished,” Nero commented to me, watching in obvious disapproval as a man across the street hacked up a wad of something dark and sticky and spat it into the bushes.

“Faris said it’s one of his outer worlds. I guess they don’t get to bask in the civilizing rays of his godly light all that often,” I quipped.

Nero frowned. “It does make one wonder why he bothers to keep this world at all.”

“Maybe it has strategic value?” I suggested, shrugging.

“This world isn’t near anything important, Pandora. And I doubt there’s anything worth holding on to here.” Nero’s gaze panned across the misshaped buildings, most of which were cladded in flimsy tin sheets.

“Well, there must be something important here, for Faris to want to hold on to it so badly.”

According to Faris, the last soldiers he’d sent here hadn’t come back. Could the Guardians be responsible? Were they finally striking back, three years after their big loss? The timing seemed to line up too perfectly.

“I guess we should have a chat with the locals to try to figure out what happened to those soldiers,” I decided.

“Wait.” Nero caught my hand. “Look.”

I followed his gaze to the great, gold, pyramid-shaped temple at the center of town. “Yeah, now that is more my dad’s style.”

“Not anymore,” Nero said as we drew in for a closer look. “The temple’s been defaced.” He indicated the words carved over the front door.

Typically, Faris’s temples had a few lines about how ‘great’ and ‘powerful’ and basically all-around-awesome of a god he was, but here those lines had all been scratched out. An enormous statue of Faris also lay on the ground, decapitated.

“Mmm.” I leaned over to look statue-Faris in the eye. “Well, that’s interesting.”

I’d never seen a god’s temple vandalized like this. People were usually too afraid of being struck out of existence to even think ill of a god, let alone topple one of his statutes.

“There’s something else carved into the building. It’s a recent addition.” Nero brushed his fingers over the letters’ rough edges.

I left the statue behind, coming to his side. “What does it say?”

“All hail the Great and Powerful Solarian, hero and savior, god of the people,” Nero read.

“Solarian?” I frowned. “Never heard of him. You?”

“No.” His gaze panned across the temple’s sparkling surface. “But there are many thousands of gods in the cosmos. I do not know them all.”

“Maybe he isn’t a god at all.” My gaze cut away from the temple. “Whoever this guy is, he’s presented himself as the one who will save these people from the big, bad gods. Sound familiar?”

Nero’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “The Guardians.”

“We should speak to the locals and try to get a sense of what’s happening here.” I spotted a couple strolling down the street toward us. “And we’ll start with them.”

“These people have sworn off the old gods, embracing this so-called new one,” Nero said, keeping pace with me as I moved toward the couple.