His father.
Damn you both.
But that wasn't really what hurt him most. They weren't the ones he hated.
Damn me for it all.
The saddest part? He had damned himself.
Sighing, he lowered his club, taking care not to let the razor-sharp glass touch his leg as he turned his thoughts to the present and what Kateri needed to understand about all of this. "Ahau Kin was the father of the Anikutani."
Kateri frowned up at him. "You mean the legendary Cherokee fire priests who were put down for their arrogance and licentiousness? How could he be their father? He was a Mayan god, right?"
He nodded. "The Maya were our ancestors. We come from common ground and people, but we split off from them centuries ago. While the Maya built their cities, the Anikutani, as the direct descendants and chosen people of Ahau Kin, fortified their posts. They were essentially gatekeepers charged with holding the darkest evil back from the world-to keep it locked in their father's underworld realm so that it couldn't harm humans. There are a total of eleven gates that can be opened to access it. Four main ones in what is currently the U.S. and the other seven that are spread over the rest of the world. It was their most sacred duty, and for generations, the Anikutani bred the greatest warriors the world has ever known to combat that evil should it ever escape. No one could defeat them.... Until the day the monster with white eyes came for them."
Kateri slowed her pace as she walked beside him, and dread consumed her now that she realized these legends weren't just farcical stories made up to scare and entertain children. And this one in particular she knew well ... it was something her grandmother had even written down for her. "From over the great Eastern water, the monster that was possessed of terrifying power and great evil came and laid waste to everything in its path. The attack was so vicious that Mother Earth bled and her heartbeat grew so faint that not even the little people could hear it anymore. Though it was fought off, legend says it will return one day to finish what it started. To end the world." All ancient Mesoamerican cultures described a Caucasian god who had destroyed them, or one who would return to kill them. Scholars had been debating the origins of those myths for decades.
He inclined his head to her. "That monster's name was Apollymi. A goddess from Atlantis."
But that didn't make any sense to her. "Why would an Atlantean goddess destroy our people?"
"Vengeance over a wrong done to her."
"What did we do?"
"Nothing, other than having a gate on an island that was near Atlantis. In her mind, our inaction was the greatest sin of all. But her anger wasn't really for us, we just got caught in the cross fire. Her fury was for the Greek god Apollo. Most of all, it was against her own family."
Her frown deepened. "Why?"
"She had a son who had been ordered killed by her husband. To protect her baby, she hid him in the human realm to be raised as a prince. Instead, he was abused and then brutally murdered by Apollo. In retaliation, she put down her entire family and then sank her Atlantis into the ocean. Still not appeased, she vowed to see the whole earth destroyed. And so she went on a rampage that brought her here. Not because we'd harmed her, but because none of us had been there to help her child."
Kateri gaped at the irrationality of that. Honestly, she expected better from a goddess. "But if they didn't know-"
"It didn't matter to her, Kateri. Trust me. Her rage and loss, I completely understand, and I don't hold that against her in the least. There is no worse feeling than to have your entire world shattered when there's nothing you can do to stop it. To be in complete and utter agony and misery, and to look around at a world that truly doesn't give a shit about you ... It hits you on a level I am grateful to the gods that you can't understand or imagine. Because no one should ever know that place in hell. You are lost to the pain, and inside you're screaming at the top of your lungs for help, and no one hears you. No one cares. They go on with their putrid lives, oblivious to your agony. And when that moment comes that you realize just how alone you really are-how little you matter to anyone else, you lose all higher cognitive functioning. You devolve into a rabid animal. All that matters then is that you make them understand your pain. That you shake them out of their blind complacency so that they share the hell that is yours. In that moment, you want to feel their blood on your hands. To taste it on your lips. To bathe in it until you're drunk and pruny. There is this place of insanity that lives deep inside everyone. Most people might tap at it, once, maybe even twice in their lifetime, but they never breach it." His eyes burned her with his sincerity....
And madness.
Something that absolutely terrified her. She wasn't even sure what kind of creature he was. Demon, god, or other. Yet here he was, livid, and she hadn't done anything to provoke him.
"Others are like animals who have been abused one time too many," he continued. "They have suffered and been hurt to a level that doesn't understand anything except cruelty. The rage takes hold and it drives out everything else that makes them human. All they want is to make the world pay for what it's done to them. I cannot imagine the pain and brutal betrayal Apollymi felt as she held her son's lifeless body in her arms and saw what had been done to him. Truthfully, I can't even begin to comprehend a love of that magnitude. But I do understand the need for retribution that drove her across the ocean and made her attack us."
His gaze turned darker, but the anger was gone now.
Kateri's heart ached in sympathy at the torment she saw in his obsidian eyes. In that one moment, his heart was bared to her. This wasn't a fierce immortal warrior standing by her side.
He was a man whose heart had been shattered.
She wanted to hold him and make it better, but she knew it wasn't that simple. Only in early childhood could everything be cured by a kiss and a hug. That was the saddest part about growing up. The biggest loss.
Some scars went too deep to ever be fully concealed. While you might succeed in hiding them from time to time, they always came out and reopened a wound that never fully healed.
And his were massive.
Ren moved his club to his other hand before he spoke again. "In a matter of minutes after reaching their shores, Apollymi destroyed the Keetoowah homeland and sank their island to the bottom of the ocean. But because of their superior skills and technology, many of them escaped to the mainland, where they sought shelter." He had a bitter catch in his voice.
"What happened?" she asked, knowing it had to be bad.
"Within a few weeks of setting up their new town, they were attacked by seventy tribes who blamed them for the destruction Apollymi had wrought. At least that was what they claimed. The truth was, they were jealous. They felt that the Keetoowah were more favored by the heavens, and since the Keetoowah were weakened by Apollymi's attack on them, the others saw it as a rare opportunity to go after them and kill them off before they had a chance to replenish their numbers."