Free The Demon's Game by Rain Oxford Page A

you’ll bring suspicion
to our family.”
    “Hey, what happened?” Dad asked, holding up Mom’s
hand. Around her wrist was a bad rash, almost like a burn mark. “You’ve been in
the void?”
    “What?”
    “The only way you can’t heal yourself is if you’re
injured in the void. Why the hell would you go there? Every single doorway to
the void needs to stay closed.”
    “How do you know that? I’ve never told you that.”
    I wanted to know, too, since I had no idea a god
could be injured in the void.
    “I don’t know. I must have heard one of the gods say
it. Iadnah magic and the void are on opposite ends of the spectrum. It’s like
how a demon can’t heal himself from Iadnah magic, a god can’t heal himself from
damage done in the void.”
    He covered her wrist with his hand and Mom winced.
When he removed his hand, her skin was healed.
    “What are you talking about? Opposite ends of the
spectrum? That doesn’t make any sense. Iadnah energy is superior to the void.
We can’t harm it because it is an absence of life, but we can keep gates
closed,” Mom insisted.
    “That’s wrong. The Land of the Iadnah is a piece of
the universe inside the void, protected from it. Iadnah can manipulate and
destroy universes, but they are ruled by the balance. The universes,
dimensional space and time, that’s all in little bubbles inside the void. The
Iadnah, every universe, even time and space can be destroyed, but not the
void.”
    “So there can be more bubbles like the Land of the
Iadnah?” Hail asked.
    “That I don’t know.”
    “Does that mean that the balance is more powerful
than the gods?” I asked. This was both a worry and a relief. Right off the bat
it had been my intention to develop my mind and powers until both were superior
to a god’s. Then it would be easy to control the balance inside me and
everything that follows. To discover that the balance inside me was superior to
my Iadnah power was worrisome because I didn’t want it to rule me. It was also
a relief, because it meant as soon as I mastered the balance, I was
automatically superior to the other gods.
    “Not exactly,” Dad said. “The balance cannot be
controlled by the gods, but they can hold it off.”
    I scribbled some more math in my science book. “Mom,
when I flash, I’m tearing a whole through the universe, into the void, and back
into the universe at a different point in the third dimension, right?”
    “You’re not going through the void, but through the
Land of the Iadnah. Other than that, you’re correct.”
    “But the bright light is void light,” I argued. I
realized as I said it that Mom was getting irritated. She was a god, supposedly
all knowing, but she believed her brothers and the idea that gods were higher
to everything else. It was my greatest power to know my weaknesses and how to
overcome them. I knew I didn’t know everything, and that’s why I could learn.
Dad was the same, but Mom didn’t want to hear anything that made her feel less
like the most powerful force in the universe. Then again, I guess that was all
Moms.
    “Flashing is Iadnah magic.”
    Of course, but I couldn’t see with my mind how any
being could cross from one universe to the next without using the void. I
understood that there were many magical and mundane ways to travel across one
universe, but even flashing from one point to another in the same universe
meant exiting and reentering the universe.
    “Okay, but my point is, does that mean I can flash
from the third to the fourth dimension?”
    “I think it’s time for bed,” Mom said.
    Dad sighed. Obviously, he didn’t agree with her, but
he wasn’t going to say anything. Although, in sago culture, the father laid the
law on the sons and the mother was in charge of the daughters, this was not the
rule in our house since our mother was a god.
    Hail took my hand. “We can ask Vretial about it
later.”
    “Goodnight, Drake,” I said.
     
    *