parents."
"They were?" I'm surprised to hear that. Nothing about Aron seems all that…normal.
"Oh yes." He straightens and studies his shelves. "I have another book—"
"Let's just focus on this one," I tell him, patting the one on the bed with me. "So the forty-four are from humans…?"
"Twelve gods," Omos corrects. "Twelve born of humankind and lifted up to rule over them. Aron of the Cleaver is the Lord of Storms and Butcher God of Battle, but I'm sure you knew that." He carefully flips through pages and then smooths the book out, turning it toward me as he opens up to a two-page spread. "Here are the others."
There's a gorgeous diagram illustrated across the two pages, full of symbols and figures and swooping, swirling lettering that looks like it took a hundred years to draw. Unfortunately for me, it's all written in a language I don't read. "I can't make out any of this. I don't read your language, Omos. I'm sorry."
"Ah, of course." He angles the book a little toward him and taps at one picture. "This is Aron of the Cleaver."
I look closer and nod, because I see it now. Dark hair. Bright red scar down side of face and an eyepatch. The guy in the picture is holding an axe flat across his chest like a shield, and I haven't seen my Aron do that, but maybe it's because he doesn't have one yet. “Eyepatch, huh?”
“His greatest legend is how he lost an eye to a dragon.”
"I see." Kinda looks like he found it again. Maybe gods regenerate that sort of thing.
"This is my goddess, Magra. She is the bringer of plenty." He taps a figure across the page, of a beautiful woman dressed in long, loose green robes with arms full of wheat.
Off to one side, I see another woman, this one holding a swirl of magic. Her hair is long and dark and her eyes are practically flashing as her robes fly about her. "Tadekha?" I ask.
"Goddess of magic," he agrees.
"I met her," I murmur, wrinkling my nose. More like horndog of magic.
Omos makes a sound of surprise in his throat. "You did? How was she?"
"Er…unpleasant. Let's keep going. So all of these gods are different…things?" I gesture at the book. It reminds me a bit of the ancient mythologies I studied back in grade school, the Greek and Roman gods with crazy stories told about them.
"Yes. This is Gental, god of family, and Kassam, Lord of the Wild." He points at a drawing of a man brandishing antlers. "Rhagos, Lord of the Dead. Anali, goddess of—"
I pat the book, interrupting him again or else I'm going to be subjected to the entire pantheon and their history. "That's great, but let's get on to the part about how there are forty-four people here in the mortal realm—on Aos—instead of twelve. How does that happen?"
"Like I said," he gently rebukes me, turning a page. "The twelve are eternal but not immortal. They are flawed, and sometimes those flaws become too great. The world shifts off balance and the gods no longer have the best interests of the world at heart. They grow greedy and selfish and lost in their own petty squabbles. That is when the High Father takes action. He casts them out and splits them into Aspects to teach them a lesson."
All right, now we're getting somewhere. There's that Aspect word again. "And Aspects are…"
"Incarnations of their flaws." Omos flips through the book again, flicking page after page. "There are four divine virtues and four divine flaws. Because the High Father wants to extinguish the flaws from his gods, he casts them out and fragments them into four copies of themselves. Each copy represents the flaw they are working to purge from their system."
It's weird to think of Aron as a fragment of a god. "What are the four flaws?"
"Lies, Hedonism, Arrogance, and Apathy."
Oh. I think of Aron. "And each Aspect personifies one of these particular flaws?" At his nod, my mouth twists a little. "I can guess which one Aron is."
Omos chuckles and gives his head a little shake. "It's easy to see that he's Arrogance. Even when he wants to be kind, he doesn't know how to be. That's why you must be patient with him."
That explains why Omos isn't ruffled by Aron's constant demands. I think of all the times I've wanted a kind word from Aron and got a douche comment. No, not douchey, really. Just incredibly arrogant.
Because that's who he