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  “So how have the demis found us?”

  “Chummilk,” said Larynk. “He’s the only god who knows where I am. Given he sent us a star warning, they got the information from him involuntarily.”

  Charlie stood up and paced around. He’d spent decades sitting behind an office desk, and now he was away from it, it made him anxious to it still. “Okay,” he said. “We’re stuck here. We’re safe for now, but Flink’s potions aren’t gonna hold up forever. We need a way off the island.”

  “Where would we go, even if we could?” said Flink.

  Larynk stroked his goatee. “We need to get to the celestial tunnels. That’s how gods travel from planet to planet, or to the Pantheon. Normally I’d just whisk us up there but I can’t do that without sphere power. But there is another way. It’s not easy.”

  “I’ll take anything if it gets me off this island,” said Charlie.

  “Every world has a portal that gods can use if they somehow get stuck on a planet without any sphere power. Course, hardly anyone is ever stupid enough to get into that position in the first place, except me.”

  “And you know where the portal is on this planet?”

  “I helped Chummilk make this place. It’s east of here, across the sea.”

  “Okay…supposing we get off this island, across the sea, and into the portal. Where then? If the demi-gods have the Pantheon, we can’t go there.”

  “You’re mortal, Charlie. You’d never get into the Pantheon anyway. We need to go to a planet, but the question is; which one?”

  It was a position Charlie had never been in a before, a decision he’d never had to make. This wasn’t just a matter of deciding whether to go to the cinema or a bar on a Friday night – this was a choice of which planet to go to after he left this one. It seemed incomprehensibly beyond him, a decision that he doubted any human had ever been faced with.

  And yet, a thought struck him. This planet was created by Chummilk, Larynk’s boss. He created the landmass, the sea, the animals, the races who lived in it. What would happen to Flink and Longtooth if they left the planet? If he had created them too, would they just cease to exist?

  Wait, no. That didn’t make sense. Charlie had left Earth, and yet here he was, alive and well. Okay, maybe not well…but he was alive, if a little sore, hungry, and wet.

  In that case, where should they go? With the pantheon ruled out, there only seemed one option.

  “So, we’re going to go to Earth, right?” he said.

  Larynk laughed. “No, not Earth. When the gods are fighting each other, that’s the least safe place in the galaxy. I know somewhere better.”

  “Saturn? Jupiter? Mars?” said Charlie.

  “It’s not a planet you’ve heard of, and that’s the way I like to keep it. I’m going to take you to my planet – Cornucopia.”

  “A planet full of corn?”

  “Hear me out. A god’s sphere is most powerful when he’s in his own planet. Sure, I can use my sphere on other planets, but my powers are more limited, and it drains more power to use them. At home, I’m stronger. Not only that, but there’s more food than you could ever dream of eating.”

  Charlie imagined rows upon rows of corn, a planet jammed with ripe fields of the stuff. Great. He was hungrier than he’d ever been in his life, and they were going to a planet made by the god of a food he hated more than any other. God damn you, corn.

  Still, safety was safety. As good as that sounded, a question prodded him. “Wait – won’t your planet be the first place the demi-gods look when they hunt you?”

  “I doubt it,” said Larynk. “I never told anyone that I made it.”

  Longtooth nodded. “Well, I’m in. Anything to get off this island.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, guys,” said Charlie. “Step one is leaving the island before the clinx tear us apart, and Larynk’s sphere is out of gas. What are we supposed to do?”

  Layrnk spun the sphere in the tip of his finger like a basketball. “You could kill every monster on the island,” he said, “and it wouldn’t be enough to fill my sphere enough to resurrect the old ship. It was way too big. Best I can do on short notice is craft a raft. A safe one, mind you, and I’ll even throw in some oars. But I need power to do it.”

  “I could earn legacy by killing things, but we can’t leave camp with the clinxes prowling,” said Charlie.

  “Then I guess we have to power my sphere the old-fashioned way. Worship.”

  “I don’t like where this is going,” said Charlie.

  Larynk grinned. “If you want to leave the island, get to the portal, and then get to the safety of Planet Larynk, then you have to praise me a little.”

  Chapter Three

  “I still feel dirty,” said Flink, wrapping her red leather coat around her, her gnomish features strong on her face when she grimaced.

  Charlie knew what she meant. He sunk his bearded jaw deep into the collar of his black coat, as if that would hide him from the shame. For two hours, he, Longtooth, and Flink had worshipped Larynk as best they could, while Papa Gully flat-out refused.

  There wasn’t much to worship about the god of corn. For one thing, Charlie hated the stuff. Secondly, Larynk was an ass. Thirdly, and most importantly, he’d whisked Charlie away from Earth and planted him in a foreign world full of dangerous creatures, without asking him. Larynk wasn’t top of his friend list.

  That said, he didn’t want to be on the island when Flink’s potion ran out and the clinxes could cross into their camp. So, he tried hard. He dug deep into his psyche and found something he could respect about the god – the fact that he hadn’t just given in to the demi-gods like many of the other lesser gods. He’d actually tried to do something, even if that ‘something’ was what had gotten Charlie into the mess.

  Flink worshipped the way Larynk was so sure of himself, which Charlie felt ran to the point of cockiness, while Longtooth idolised the idea that Larynk had seen not just different continents but different planets and different galaxies. For a rat who’d barely left his lair until he met Charlie, that was amazing.

  Still, if felt less like worship and more like listing stuff to fill Larynk’s ego. It wasn’t as ritualistic or solemn as the way other religions worshipped, but maybe this was worship in its barest form; an appeal to the ego of the gods to get something in return.

  After hours of this, Larynk’s face was one beaming marble smile. “Let’s go,” he told them, leading them to the furthest edge of camp, to a stretch of black sand beach. Barnacle covered, splintered wood lay among the sand and rocks, and a fishing net made from vines floated on the sea. That had been Flink’s idea, but they’d never caught anything.

  The sight that grabbed Charlie’s attention was a boat on the beach. It was just longer and wider than a canoe and with no individual seats, but it was big enough for all of them to fit in it. Four oars lay inside.

  “When did you make this?” said Charlie.

  “An hour before you came back from the hunt.”

  “You made us worship you, knowing you’d already made the boat?”

  “I was feeling a little low,” said Larynk.

  Charlie bit back on his anger. He didn’t mind a joke, but the tightening of his stomach and the way his skin felt red raw from lashings of salt water put humour out of his mind.

  Larynk had the opposite problem. No matter what danger they were in, he couldn’t take things completely seriously. Maybe it came from his low-rung on the god ladder. Like the weedy kid who learned to become a class clown, perhaps joking was Larynk’s way of coping with being a lesser god.

  They each got into the boat. Papa Gully muttered to himself, walking with his back bent, the wind lapping at his fluffy white beard. Flink went next. Longtooth stepped forward to help her an account of her stub arm, but she ignored him and leapt into the boat. The black sand had stained Longtooth’s albino fur, and the first thing he did in the boat was start licking himself. Finally, Larynk climbed in, the moonlight glisten
ing on his marble face, his goatee making him look like a pirate.

  “Staying on the island, Charlie?” he said. “Get a move on.”

  “I’m coming.”

  Charlie heard claws scraping on the ground behind him. He turned to see the clinxes galloping across the camp, and his heart lodged in his throat. Flink’s potions must have failed.

  He sprinted to the boat and he jumped in. Larynk cradled his sphere in his lap. He stroked it, muttered a word, and a gust of wind took hold of their boat, casting them into the sea.

  They heard a splash behind them. Larynk turned around and said, “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Clinx-claws can swim,” said Flink.

  Sure enough, the cat-crabs splashed in the water, their claws cutting through the sea and propelling them forward. It was hardly graceful but that didn’t matter, the point was they were gaining on them.

  “Can you do something?” said Charlie.

  “I really don’t have the sphere power to waste on this. Here goes.”

  He muttered a word again, and blue waves of light crackled across his power sphere. The wind took them even stronger, sweeping them away from the clinxes, away from the island, and into the sea, a little canoe casting into the depths of endless black.

  If there was a sea god, and there must have been if even corn got its own god, then he was pissed at them. The sea shook and swelled, and it gathered waves high up in the air before slapping them down like tidal fists. Salt water sprayed into the boat, it covered their clothes, their skin, their hair. Longtooth was so drenched he looked like a mop.

  Charlie eyed the joints of the ship with each crashing wave. Larynk had used sphere power to craft it from the timber that drifted onto the beach. How long would the boat last? The last time they’d been washed into the sea, Larynk had used sphere power to get them to safety. He didn’t have enough to do it again.

  With this in mind, after each wave Charlie used the dregs of his regenerated mana to cast Mend. His spell washed over the boat, filling in cracks, tightening joints, bringing him as close as he’d ever come to woodwork, even if it was magically charged.

  They braved on into the night, just a god, a gnome, a rat, an old man, and an earthling sitting in a little boat, battling against the leviathan of the sea. The ocean god took pity on them, and soon its currents drew behind them and propelled them in the direction they needed to go. Their progress was quick, if a little wild, and every time the boat lurched side to side Charlie got a salt water drenching.

  Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime at sea, they drifted into a collection of rocks, and yet another black sand beach that led toward a swelling grass mound. This was a bigger landmass than the island, with coastal cliffs spreading out east and west further than he could see, black in some places and pure white in others. There was no sign of civilisation; no houses, no people, no ports, no boats.

  It didn’t matter. Now, drenched and thoroughly miserable, he just wanted to get of the boat. His skin was raw thanks to the saltwater, and his bladder was crying for release. He shoved an oar into the water and rowed until his biceps burned, and finally, the boat drifted into the shallows.

  Charlie took his first chance to get out of the sea, feeling the reassuring crunch of stone under his boots. He held the boat steady while the rest of them climbed out of it.

  “Thanks, Newchie,” said Flink.

  Papa gully gave a humph, his face a picture of annoyance.

  Charlie leaned toward Larynk. “Where’s the portal?” he said, straining to be heard over the wind.

  Larynk pointed to the hill. “Not far up there.”

  The wind picked up now, whirling and screaming, pushing back at them as if it didn’t want them to get to the portal. Charlie was glad of his new coat, with its collar that stuck up spike-like and covered his neck and chin. Flink dug her spear tip into the ground with each step and used it to help her walk against the wind. Papa Gully seemed to have forgotten his back troubles, and he walked straight. Maybe he’d decided he’d rather not get blown over by the wind, than pretend to be a feeble old man.

  Charlie started to get a feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was a kind of weight sitting inside him, an ugly little worry goblin using his stomach as a snug. He felt uneasy about something, but what? Were there clinxes on this side of the ocean, too, was that it?

  Maybe it was how forlorn the place was. Never-ending cliffs leading to a bleak distance, the sea lapping at them and carving them away piece by piece. Rock mounds sat stubbornly in the shallows, covered in moss and with crabs scuttling over them. The normal kind, this time. Not the cat kind, thankfully.

  Whatever the reason for the feeling, he tried to rely on his instincts when he could. He didn’t believe people had a sixth sense, but he believed something like it; that evolution had bred a survival instinct in people, and our bodies were more attuned to danger than our brains.

  Listening to what his body told him now, he focussed his will and tried to gather his mana around him to cast Detect Evil. This was a useful spell. It wasn’t offensive, but rather it sent a pulse around him before returning with information on any hostiles in the area.

  As much as he concentrated, nothing happened. Unlike his problem with taming, this had an explanation. He was out of mana again. After fighting the clinx on the island, his mana had barely regenerated enough for him to use Mend in the boat. Now, he was empty.

  He slowed down and brushed his hand across Apollo’s head, feeling his coarse mane. “Run to the top, and see if anyone’s waiting for us,” he told him.

  Apollo bounded ahead, his sprightly paws making light work of the steep cliff. Flink flinched when he ran past her. She’d been brought up with a fear of chimeras after decades of attacks on her village. When it was revealed that a mage named Tenlocke had cast a spell to turn the chimeras hostile, and Charlie had subsequently broken the spell, she was learning to tolerate Apollo. Maybe one day she’d actually like him.

  Apollo crept to the top of the hill and then crouched on all fours. Silver slivers of moonlight highlighted the black, arrow-shaped scar on the right side of his fur. The pale light made him look almost ghostly, like a spirit lion. His ears pricked as he listened, and then he sniffed. He prowled forward another two steps, before finally leaping to the summit and baring down on them. His serpent tail swished behind him left to right.

  “That means we’re good,” said Charlie.

  It was annoying to run out of mana, but maybe you didn’t need mana when you had a giant lion on your side. He pushed himself on, reaching the summit with a renewed confidence.

  Soon they were standing at the beginnings of a grassy plain, only instead of green grass, it was oil-black, much like the sand of the beach. Mist gathered all around them, thick and bulging with an insidious tension. His eyes began to trick him, forming shapes that darted out of the corner of his eyes, but when he glanced at them he saw nothing, and Apollo was calm. They were alone.

  “I can’t see anything,” said Flink.

  “This way,” said Larynk, pushing on through the curtain of mist. He seemed to have a sense of direction, but the damn fog was so thick that Charlie couldn’t see more than twenty metres ahead of him. He had no choice but to follow the god.

  As they walked, Flink took a small vial from her pocket, uncorked it, and then poured a little onto her sleeve. She then rubbed her sleeve over her spear tip, and the tip glowed gold with a bath of light. She held it horizontally in front of her, her now-illuminated spear guiding them through the darkness.

  Charlie eyed the spear glows with envy. He was beginning to feel more and more that he was a fraud; Flink had her hunting skills and her alchemical knowledge, which she’d earned through years of experience and study. Papa Gully could use magic like Charlie, but his was more workman-like than intuitive. Gully hadn’t been given his magic by a god, but he’d earned it instead.

  He shoved the feeling to one side and walked on, following Larynk’s marble skin as the g
low from Flink’s spear illuminated it.

  Soon, a giant object loomed ahead, a hazy hulking mass that stretched high into the air but covered by a shroud of mist so that Charlie couldn’t make it out yet.

  “Is that the portal?”

  Larynk nodded. “Almost there. I can’t wait to get home.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth, then a shape descending from the skies. It was bigger than a house, and long, stretching fifty feet from side to side. As it punctured through the fog, Charlie realized what it was; it was a ship.

  It looked like a pirate ship, with dark stained wood and a sail stretching into the sky, and intricate webs of ropes and rigging twisting off into various places, held fast by metal loops. A giant, gaping smile was painted on the wood near the bow, and twin streams of blue light burned at the hull, their glows lighting the night sky around them. Charlie smelled burning fuel in the air, it was a heavy smell and it seemed unnatural here, on the black grass plain where there were no people or houses.