Chapter Five

Aniana’s POV

“Realm?!” I echoed, wondering if the stars were twinkling extra brightly or if that was my brain lacking oxygen...

“Everything you see before you,” the horned creature – Dikaios, apparently! – casually remarked, gesturing to everything around us. “This is my realm, my home.” He then cocked his head, pondering, before adding with a grin: “I believe that in your time you called this place Purgatory.”

WHAT?!

The hellish realm of fire and pain? Where lost souls went to repent for their sins and to be tortured by flames?

That Purgatory?!

As if sensing my chock, Dikaios grinned, caressing his bird, who was clearly enjoying himself.

“Humans may have gotten a few things wrong about my home,” he said, sounding almost proud.

“A-ha!” Was once more all I could muster as a response – the option of me being dead still lingered at the back of my mind. Seriously, what was more likely? That all of this was real and that I’d been saved by some horned deity, or that I was dead?

As depressing as it sounds, death was the more logical option…

“You’re not dead,” Dikaios cut in, once more pulling me out of my thoughts. “You made a pact with me, and that comes with a couple of perks.”

“Perks?” I laughed, wondering if these were the moments before I completely lost my sanity. “What-what kind of perks?”

“Mostly immortality,” the raven cut in, sounding smug. “But personally, it's having the powers of the God of Justice for me.”

WHAT?!

“Immortality?” I echoed, looking between the bird and the horned man as if I expected something logical from that. “Powers?!”

Had I been Isekai-ed or some shit without realizing it?!

“Corvus,” the man--- god?! I wasn’t sure – chided the bird. “Don’t overwhelm her. She's been through enough for one night!”

That was--- strangely considerate. With everything that had happened and continued to happen to me, I felt like Alice when she’d been dropped down the rabbit hole. Likewise, I felt like I’d been dropped into some alternative universe. Reality had been ripped from underneath me, and I’d fallen into some Greek mythology storyline that felt more like those stories that my father would subject me to every night growing up...

And that was when it finally clicked!

“Corvus!” I exclaimed, snapping my eyes to the raven resting on Diakios’s arm. “Apollo’s sacred bird?!”

I just remembered... But as I finally seemed to have found some semblance of recognition in this strange world, the bird let out a screeching cry, flapping his wings wildly

“That cock-sucking, ass-licking, shit-headed son of a bitch---!” He cursed, his beak open wide as he continued to scream obscenities…

“Calm yourself, Corvus!” Dikaios ordered, and while he didn’t raise his voice or anything, the power in it felt like an invisible force that made my skin prickle. That seemed to calm the bird, but he was clearly agitated now, and I felt bad. Although I didn’t know what I’d done wrong…

The shadow god then turned to the raven and spoke some words that I didn’t understand. The raven crowed, eyeing me with sharp intelligence, before spreading his midnight black wings and taking off, disappearing faster than my eyes could follow.

“I apologize for that,” Dikaios said softly, stepping closer and checking me over as if making sure that he hadn’t hurt me. “Apollo abused him to the brink of death, before I found him and took him in. He doesn’t take kindly to anyone mentioning that person.”

Yeah…

I figured!

“Did he---?” I asked, wondering what was legend and what was fact in this new reality of mine. “The legend says that ravens were born with white feathers. But after he reported to Apollo about Coronis' infidelity, he turned his feathers black.”

That was the legend…

Apollo then took the bird and threw it into the heavens along with the snake Hydra and a cup. And then the bird was condemned to an eternal, unquenchable thirst...

“He burned him and then left him to die,” Dikaios explained with clear disgust, as there was no love lost between the two gods. “I found him and brought him here, nursing him back to life.” He reached down and, with a few gentle coaxings with his hands, a beautiful blue flower that I’d ever seen before grew out of the ground. Stunned, I watched him as he picked it up and handed it to me, his red eyes the color of cool mahogany as they peered into mine.

“That’s all I want,” he said, taking my hand and putting it into mine. “I’ll take care of you. You’re safe here.”

I looked at the flower, beautiful and so full of life. But once it was plucked out of the ground, wasn’t it any blossom’s fate to die?

“Am I?” I questioned, looking up at the man who’d saved my life. But at what cost? What had I actually unleashed by freeing him from his imprisonment? “I still don’t know who you are!”

“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “You know my name.”

“Dikaios,” I repeated, getting frustrated now. “But the God of justice was--- Is? A woman! Dike, the Goddess of Justice!”

“Ah, my beloved sister,” he grinned and choked; a cold and bitter laugh meaning there was little love lost between him and his blood relative. So he didn’t have a lot of good relationships with a lot of the other gods?

What did that say about him?

“And I assume she still holds her scales upright, blinded because all she cares about is virtue and morality?” he said in a mocking tone. “She truly loves being worshiped by humans as some sort of martyr.”

Taking a step back, and made himself busy by creating a shadow-figure that mimicked the goddess balancing her scales. She clumsily corrected her scales as an elephant sat on one side, clearly not doing her job very well. He closed his fist, squishing the shadow, and scoffed.

“Your--- sister?” I asked, wondering if they offered family therapy to gods. Seemed like there were some unresolved issues there...

“Yes,” he replied, but didn’t offer any other explanation. And before I could ask, he turned to me: “Just a heads up, Nyla is on her way. She wants to greet you.”

“Nyla?” I questioned, wondering if I’d ever heard about anyone called Nyla during my father’s long rants about the Greeks. But before I could think of any, the ground shifted with a low hiss. From the shadows of the garden, something vast and serpentine slithered forward. Black and red scales shimmered with an iridescent glow, and eyes burning like molten gold.

A dragon!

Of course, Nyla was a freaking dragon!