Page 89 of The Wild Moon
“We are in the Direen. All of what you have seen is of it.”
When Vir finally spoke, I jumped, having been so used to the silence, the sound of his whisper was more akin to thunder.
“I know that name,” I said quietly. My father’s teachings were coming back to me. All the stories, the ancient legends, and histories of the gods. The Direen was spoken of often and described in great detail.
“I’m not surprised,” he said.
“The Direen is supposed to be the Paradise of the Gods,” I said.
“Yes.”
I had so many questions, but of them all, one rose closer to the surface than all others before.
“Then why does it look so…dead? Not here, but out there. It’s not very paradise-like. Unless you have some sort of twisted sense of what paradise means.”
“No,” he said, still staring into the flames. “It’s not. It hasn’t been that way for a thousand years.”
The pain in his voice crushed my very soul. I gasped, tears falling abruptly from my eyes. It hurt. Physically hurt me just to hear him speak of it. I cried out as his agony washed through me. Humans aren’t made to handle that sort of pain, and I fell to one knee.
It passed, but still, Vir stared into the flames, unseeing, or uncaring, of what his power had done to me. Slowly, I got to my feet, trying to compose myself.
“I don’t understand, Vir,” I said once I found my voice.
He turned to me, still shirtless, still sexy, but somehow haunted by what he’d seen in the flames. “I know.”
“Help me understand?”
Vir nodded and reached out, taking me by the waist. I had just long enough to notice that his touch was warm and that his hand fit around my waist in interesting ways before we blurred up through the rock and were standing on a hill.
I leaned on him. “Warning, dude. A warning, please. For my sanity,” I gasped.
“Sorry,” Vir said, sounding truly apologetic. “It’s been so long since I’ve dealt with a human. I forget your kind cannot handle the travel very well.”
“If I had a moment to prepare myself, it might be different,” I said, glaring at him.
We were outside again, I noticed, seeing the starscape above us. It was the same one I’d been greeted with every time I dreamt of Vir.
In fact, we were on the same hill I arrived on. There, in the distance, the giant stone gates rose, the wall on either side leading off into the distance farther than I could see.
Rock crunched under my bare feet as I did a quick circle, confirming we were where I thought we were.
“Why bring me here?” I asked, the gates looming over us even at this distance, dark and foreboding. I couldn’t stop staring at them. What was their purpose? Who had built them?
“Once, a long time ago, this place was nothing but white, pink, and gold,” he said. “Light was everywhere, and everything was shiny. Perfect. Beautiful.”
“A paradise,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” Vir replied. “Precisely.”
“But not anymore.”
He shook his head. “Those gates used to stand open. Always. Everyone was welcome here, beings from all realms. I used to spar with Hades and Horus, among others, every decade or so. Our battles were legendary.”
I watched Vir’s face as he talked, seeing the shine of his eyes, the twitch of his lips, as he relived memories that had to be millennia old. I couldn’t begin to comprehend.
“Trees,” he added. “There were trees everywhere. Giant ones hundreds of feet tall lined the road.”
He gestured from the gates, pointing to the east to a line of smaller hills in the distance I’d never noticed before. I wondered what had once been there.
