Free Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming by Van Allen Plexico Page A

nothing like the long years when the Power was gone, for I could feel the buzz flowing through me. Something simply prevented me from using it to breach the barriers between planes. My frustration was enormous.
    “What should we do?” Evelyn said, her eyes moving from me to the green light and back.
    “What the hell?”
    I started forward. Clearly the green light had some connection with my blocked powers. Curiosity at that point became as strong as any other emotion—not to mention my growing conviction that Vodina was no longer so well disposed towards me as she had been while still in a confused daze. Such is the dark god’s fate—wrongfully accused at every turn. Poor, pitiful me. For I am bound upon a wheel of fire, and like that.
    “Something tells me it can’t be any worse than going back the way we came,” I said, and stepped up to the green circle, reaching out a hand to touch it. At that instant it flared open and a fist rocketed out, catching me in the jaw. I crumpled to the tunnel’s floor, muttering something like, “Not again.”
    My vision swimming, I could barely make out a burly form hovering over me—though, mercifully, it did not wear golden armor. A shadowy face peered down at me. Recognition dawned as a dim star within the galaxy that currently danced across my vision.
    “Turmborne,” I managed, tasting blood.
    “Lucian.”
    He nodded in greeting, his mouth a tight line.
    “You’re really not terribly smart,” he said, “are you?”
    I attempted a witty comeback, but instead found myself blacking out, even as massive hands grasped my ankles and dragged me through that green hole in the universe.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Good dentistry. Now that is a thing we gods have never taken for granted. Certainly we can direct a sufficient amount of the Power into any trouble spots that might occur with regard to our teeth and gums, and over time all will heal. Unfortunately, such a process tends to be long, unpleasant, and generally annoying. Therefore one thing I had a feeling I was going to miss, if I no longer dwelled among the human worlds, was good dentistry. It felt like at least two of my teeth had been loosened, between going a handful of rounds with Baranak and then taking the surprise shot from Turmborne. Idly I wondered if our wrestler-god, Fuaren, had survived. If he had, it seemed inevitable my chin would encounter his fist soon enough, too.
    Coming back to my senses, I looked around and tried to take in the situation.
    I sat, my back to a tree, within a small clearing in a dense forest. Judging by the substantial amount of light reaching through the thick, overhanging branches, it had to be near midday. To my right, beyond a stack of barrels and crates, the three humans were imprisoned within what looked to be a hastily constructed cage made of stout limbs bound by rope. Across from me sat Turmborne.
     
    Turmborne, our lumberjack god. Our outdoorsman. Green of eye, red of hair, broad of jaw. He of the flannel and the beard and the broad axe. The only one of us all that might survive an extended brawl with Baranak--if he had ever shown any interest in such a thing. He had not, of course. During my time in the City, before the exile, I had scarcely seen him about. He had not even taken part in the battle in the City Square, so far as I knew. He lived for his woodlands and his hunt and his sport. I probably knew less of him than of any of the others, save perhaps Vodina--and, prior to my revolt, I had made it my business to know everything that could be known about all of them. My ignorance in regard to him irked me, and his assault on me irked me further. Plus, I remembered then, he had insulted my intelligence.
    Turmborne, I felt strongly, had an ass-whipping coming.
     
    He just sat there, watching me.
    I started to rise.
    “No, no,” he said then, his voice deep and resonant. He motioned me back down. “Let us converse, you and I, Lucian,” he continued. “The day is young yet.