Lamira knocked on the door to her brother's office. She announced her intention to enter the room as she put her delicate hand on the door handle. Normally, she would not be so persistent about seeing Zodran when he clearly did not wish to be disturbed, but her brother had recently been neglecting his duties.
She had run out of clean souls to reincarnate, and if they did not sort out the supply issue within a few months, babies would start being born soulless. As the Goddess of Life, she could create sentient souls for animals, but sapient souls could only evolve when sentient animals awakened magical abilities. As such, despite the ever increasing number of such souls, they were still in limited supply during periods of population growth.
"Just what are you up to?" Lamira thought out loud as she put more strength into her hand, turning the handle.
As she was about to push the door open, she heard rustling from within. Perhaps the little idiot had panicked and was hiding himself somewhere in his office in an attempt to avoid her. She smiled mischievously as she decided to give Zodran a few more seconds to get comfortable in his hiding spot before she burst in and hunted him down.
"Ready or not, here I come!" she announced enthusiastically.
As Lamira swung the door wide open, she was immediately assaulted by a foul stench that singed her nostrils. She covered her nose and coughed as she tried to make sense of what was happening. Was this some kind of smokescreen to throw her off?
Using such potent death magic for such a stupid reason was just like Zodran. Although she was just a few thousand years older, he would always be the clueless little brother to her. Perhaps the way she pampered him had affected his development, as he would always come crying to her when he was upset. Although that had last happened over 35,000 years ago, she still remembered those days as if they were yesterday.
"Oh, you've done it now. Just wait till I get my hands on you!" Lamira grinned as she began to adjust to the smell.
As she entered the room and looked around, she saw the spacial projector turned on, displaying an empty warehouse where Zodran kept souls he had finished processing for her.
The fact that he knew about the situation but was not working to fix it only confirmed in her mind that he was hiding from her, making her want to find the boy and give him a good thrashing. Although such a thing would look quite violent, her divinity meant that she would only end up healing the boy and making him feel as if he was receiving a comforting massage.
"Come out, Come out, wherever you are.." Lamira said teasingly as she progressed deeper into the room and looked around at her surroundings.
She was analysing the layout of the room which seemed to have changed when she suddenly felt spacial magic activate somewhere from her left.
Her pretty eyebrows were knit in confusion as she turned her head to look in that direction. Zodran should not to be able to perform such magic, which meant he must have activated an artifact of the spacial attribute. Did he really wish to avoid her this badly?
Lamira's eyes fell upon Zodran's work desk and chair, which was turned away from her. There was paper scattered all over the floor around the desk, and she could see the outline of her brother's arm sticking out from behind his chair, resting on the table.
'So he's still here.. Is he really trying to hide? He's just quietly sitting at his desk.' Lamira would have been amused at his antics if the reason for her visit was not so pressing. But seeing the boy so quiet made her reconsider her aggressive approach.
"Zod, I'm serious. We need to talk." She said as she approached the chair from behind and gently nudged Zodran on the shoulder to get his attention.. but what happened next left her stunned.
Responding to her slight push, the boy slumped forward and his head crashed loudly onto the desk in front of him.. Lamira suddenly had a premonition that something may be very wrong with this situation.
"Zod?" she asked uncertainly as she placed her hand on the boy's bent over back, shaking him gently.. but Zodran did not respond.
"Zod, stop acting silly." she said affectionately as she moved her hand up to the boy's head so that she may brush away his hair and get a good look at his face.
But her hand came to a sudden stop as she noticed something odd. Next to the boy's head, Lamira noticed his hand that was holding an Adamantite scalpel, the type Knosos liked to use. And next to the scalpel, she could make out some words that had been haphazardly carved into the table..
"Im so sorry Its not your fau.."
As Lamira read the carvings, she felt her blood run cold.
'He couldn't have, could he?'.. there was a fierce clash within her head between what she was seeing and what she wanted to believe. She stood rooted to the spot with her mouth agape until she remembered the rustling noise she had heard before entering the room. Whatever her brother has done, he did so within the last minute and there may be hope if she acted fast enough.
Lamira grabbed Zodran by the arm and thew him to the floor. She channeled her divine powers through his body but could not feel any signs of life.
"ZOD!! WAKE UP!!" she wailed as ripped off Zodran's shirt to get a better look at his body. There seemed to be no damage from the outside, but she felt numerous holes in his internal organs as if something had tunneled straight from his heart into his stomach.. where she could feel remnant energies from the use of spacial magic.
"No no no no, what's going on? This can't be happening!" Lamira began to panic.
"GUARDS! CALL KNOSOS NOW! IT'S AN EMERGENCY!" she yelled as loudly as she could, knowing someone would hear her and carry out her orders.
Milky tears rolled off her cheeks onto Zodran's face. They absorbed into his pale skin, which then glowed with a golden hue. Lamira felt her brother's physical wounds healing deep within his body in response to her tears, but there seemed to be no improvement beyond that.
She feared that she knew the exact condition that afflicted him.. soullessness. Somehow her brother had removed his own soul, and if the hastily carved message on his desk was anything to go by, he had done so intentionally.
She remembered the last time she had spoken to him; he had come to her a few millennia ago, complaining about not enjoying his work. She had told him to simply take a break and reset his motivation. That was the reason she had not checked on him earlier, thinking he was just following her advice and there was nothing to worry about despite his lack of output.
Lamira felt as if her soul was being torn apart seeing her little brother in this lifeless state, but there was nothing she could do for him. She simply held him in her arms and sobbed, awaiting the arrival of the God of Knowledge, hoping he would have a better plan than her.
..….
Knosos hurried through the empty halls of Zodran's home. He had just been contacted by one of his brother's servants, and had been informed that the God of Death had fallen. If there was anyone who could figure out what had happened, it was him, and his sister had demanded his presence. So he rushed to the scene before any of the evidence was tampered with, or any trails went cold.
As he passed by the open doors of Zodran's office, he felt the deathly aura hanging in the air. His pace dropped off and he came to a stop as if in a trance, but he immediately shook himself out of it and squished the tingling sensation of curiosity before it took hold.
He kept moving towards the bedroom, too scared to turn around and look inside the office at this moment. If he showed more curiosity towards the magic Zodran had used than concern for his wellbeing, he felt Lamira would skin him alive.
He chucked dryly at the thought of his sister, the manifestation of life, love, and exuberance torturing him for his getting his priorities mixed up. He soon arrived at the door he was looking for, and gently knocked once before opening and entering without waiting for a reply.
"Lamira, I'm here. Where's Zodran?" He asked as he walked into the darkened room and looked around.
"Over here." he heard a sniffling voice answer him from beyond the curtain that covered a large bed in the centre of the room. The anguish in the voice made him ball his fist in anger.
Lamira was the oldest of their pantheon, and was like a mother to them all. They all knew that her love for them was unconditional and pure, and none of them would ever even dream of doing anything that would cause her pain.
'This fucking guy, I swear I'm going to kill you as soon as I save your ass' Knosos thought as he arrived at the side of the bed and moved the curtain aside, revealing the two figures on the other side.
He saw his sister, as beautiful as always. She looked to be a young maiden, adorned by her signature white sundress. Her ivory white hair was braided with various fragrant vines and flowers as it cascaded down the side of her neck.
She looked up at him. Her silver eyes had a tinge of gold surrounding them, showing that she had been crying. Her hand was placed palm down on the chest of a young boy he who lay still next to her. Knosos could feel undulations of divine energy being released from the hand into the boy's skinny chest.
"Please, I have tried everything. Tell me there's something you can do!" Lamira cried in a pitiful tone.
Knosos nodded as he focused on Zodran. The boy's black hair was more unkempt than when he had last seen him, and his blood red eyes were currently hidden behind his closed eyelids. His delicate pale face looked at peace as he rested.
Although Zodran looked like an adolescent boy, Knosos knew he was the second oldest of his siblings. Lamira was the first, and she had been alone for several thousand years before Zodran came into being. Perhaps that was why she was so attached to him, as he was all she had for several millennia before more gods were born.
Despite being the second oldest, Zodran was the God everyone knew the least about; he rarely left his divine realm, or interacted with the other gods. But everyone understood that his role was critical to the functioning of the the lower realms. Without him, the cycle of reincarnation would stop, new babes would be born soulless, and the souls of the restless dead would flood the land of the living, bringing about an apocalypse.
Knosos adjusted his glasses, which were in fact a divine artifact that helped him analyze and process data. He sat down on the other side of the bed to Lamira, and grabbed hold of Zodran's wrist as he began running through various tests to diagnose the boy's condition. His steel blue eyes flickered as he read through the various prompts that appeared on his screen. After a few moments, he had all the information he needed.
Knosos sighed as he released his brother's wrist and moved his hand instead towards Lamira's, which rested atop Zodran's chest. He took her delicate hand into his, an act which made Lamira look towards him. He looked into her soulful eyes as he gave his verdict.
"His body is fine. The problem lies with his soul. If it was somehow damaged, you would have healed it by now, but based on my tests, it seems that his soul is entirely missing." Knosos said in a compassionate tone. "Can you show me what he was working on? Maybe I can find a way to help him if I look through it."
Lamira nodded as more tears leaked out of her eyes as Knosos confirmed her hypothesis.
"Go to his office. I didn't touch anything. Things should be as I found them" She said meekly as if all her energy had been drained away. Knosos wanted to give her a hug, but he knew such a thing may only irritate her when she was feeling this helpless.
He gave Lamira a resolute nod as he released her hand and stood up, proceeding to leave his two oldest siblings alone. He knew Lamira would not leave Zodran's side until she learned of some way to help him. The best thing he could do for her now was to look through Zodran's work and figure out how he could fix the mess his foolish elder brother had created.