She gaped at him, not quite certain whether he was offering a bribe or a threat. Either way, he was just another Titan who thought he could have whatever the fuck he wanted. Whomever he wanted. Had he imbibed Ambrosia? She’d heard it made people like that.
“You want to be close to your father?” she snapped. “Well, he’s here, watching you even now. You really want to put on a show for him?”
For a moment Poseidon looked at her, the wrath in his face giving way to confusion, before his eyes narrowed once more. He grabbed her by the hair and hefted her upwards. “Want to be alone, you sick bitch? Then be alone.”
With a shove, he sent her tumbling over the side of the boat. She pitched back into the chilly waters. This time, she had the chance to suck in a breath before she hit. Before black engulfed her. Beneath the sea, she swam away, coming up out of reach of his oars.
While she struggled for some witty retort, he had already begun to row away. Pyrrha spit in his general direction, then swam for shore, fuming. Who did that pompous prick think he was? Was he truly so used to any woman he wanted submitting? Did Tethys know about it?
When Pyrrha finally reached the shore, another woman was there, wrapped in an embroidered cloak, with only a few strands of hair dangling down from her hood. The woman offered her a hand up and pulled Pyrrha to her feet. “I saw that,” the woman said.
Pyrrha took a moment to wring out her hair, then wrapped her arms about her shivering chest. The second time tonight she’d wound up going for a swim in waters too cold for it. “He mistakes his simply being present for wooing and a lack of revulsion for interest.”
The woman shrugged. “The powerful cannot conceive of their so-called lessers not worshipping them.”
Damn if that wasn’t the truth. “I’m Pyrrha.”
Now, the woman nodded. “And I am Enodia, a sorceress formerly of the Circle of Goetic Mysteries. I have felt you, Pyrrha, and sensed your potential from long back. I can help you open your mind and reach that potential if you so desire.”
All Pyrrha could do was stand there, mouth agape, peering at the hooded woman. What exactly the Circle-of-whatever was, she had no idea … But a sorceress! Oh, there were always rumors about that sort of thing. Women on the fringes who balked at the hierarchy of the World, who took to forbidden studies for the chance, for any chance to not have to bend their wills and bodies to the whims of men. “You’re offering to teach me sorcery? It’s real?”
Enodia snorted, then clucked her tongue. “Mmm. It is real, but your bumbling around in the Penumbra will not give you such power. If you ever managed to confront a spirit thus, it would most like slip inside your body and ride you like a horse, sating its perverse desires using your flesh. It would feast upon your soul and leave you an empty husk, perhaps after enduring centuries of slavery.”
The sorceress’s words only intensified the chill that had seized Pyrrha. “Why?”
“Why then would people like me dare hold concert with the denizens of the Ether? Why would any save madmen touch the Otherworlds?” Enodia took a step forward and seized Pyrrha by the arms. “I offer you more power and knowledge than you could ever have imagined. Is that not what you have sought after, combing through the dark? Did you imagine such would come with neither risk nor price?”
And there was only one thing to say to that. One answer appropriate for a woman who might be like Pyrrha, who could understand her. Who could see the umbral horrors that had forever haunted her. “Teach me.”
When night fell, Pyrrha would wander down to the seaside cave she had once taken comfort in as a small child, and there meet Enodia. The sorceress would speak in cryptic riddles about the Realms beyond this fragile Mortal one, where Etheric beings dwelt. Ghosts inhabited the Astral Realm, the Underworld, Enodia told her.
“Beyond the Astral lies the Spirit Realm, where the greater powers dwell. Do not think, however, the Astral is free from dangers. Ghosts, especially wraiths, offer terrible threats, and spirits can enter into the Astral Realm if they wish to do so.”
“Why would they?”
“Perhaps to influence our world. Perhaps about business we cannot fathom. Either way, sorcery—the common name for theurgy—evokes ghosts and spirits and compels them to do our bidding.”
Pyrrha fidgeted on the cold sand, digging rivets with her fingers. “You mean you enslave these beings.”
“Yes. Just as they would happily enslave your body given half the chance. They are parasites, never forget. A moment of doubt, a faltering of the will, and they will have you. They can sustain a mortal form long beyond its natural lifespan, and you do not wish to even imagine the ravages they shall visit upon you.”
Pyrrha felt ill at the thought of it. But this was the source of power beyond even the dreams of Titans. “What of mer?”
Enodia shrugged. “Mer are just another kind of spirit, possessing mortal hosts. The strongest hosts sometimes arrange a kind of symbiosis with the spirit, but most remain enslaved.”
And the more they talked, the more she learned, the stranger her dreams became. Like a voice echoing down through the centuries, whispers came unbidden into her mind and teased and taunted, promising all the power of the cosmos if she but stepped into shadow.
… COME FORTH …
The voice bombarded her, even as it had come to her in dreams down through her years. It had known. It reverberated inside her skull with all the discordant force of Supernal invocations, as if able to bend reality to its whims.
Was that
