Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming Read Online Free PDF Page A

mind as I pondered that simple question. “It seemed—”
    She stared at me, waiting.
    I felt that an answer—a good answer—hovered out there, somewhere just beyond my reach. The fog…
    “This is all preposterous,” Cassidy growled.
    I was grateful for the interruption. My mind cleared at once, as I set Evelyn’s question aside and faced Cassidy.
    “Look around you,” I said. “How did you come to be here? Are you so sure your understanding of the universe is the only possible one?”
    Cassidy looked away, unsettled.
    “This is just ridiculous,” Kim said. “Bad enough he’s an Outie rabble-rouser, but one with delusions of godhood, to boot.”
    I glared back at him.
    “Delusions? You fool. You insect. You have no idea.” Despite my determination to ignore these creatures, they had succeeded in raising my ire—a fact that further angered me and spurred me to react.
    Kim shoved past Cassidy, fists raised.
    And again Evelyn was there, between us, voice gentle but firm and eyes unwavering as they met my own.
    “Enough!” she said. “We’re all equals now in our imprisonment, and the rebellion is very far away from all of us at the moment.”
    Calming myself, I executed a small bow to her and reseated myself on the cold floor, drawing my long coat about me again, turning away from the others.
    Evelyn would not be deterred. After a few moments, she spoke again.
    “Please—let’s put the accusations and innuendo aside. I genuinely want to understand,” she said. “I want to know who you really are… and where we are. But I don’t know how we’re supposed to believe you, especially when you actually claim to be… evil .”
    I sighed, then looked up at her again. Her eyes sparkled in the dim light, betraying no deceptions. I found, unexpectedly, that I, too, wanted her to understand.
    “Evil is my Aspect as a god, but not necessarily my nature,” I said, for perhaps the thousandth time in my long existence. I paused, considering the strange sense of sincerity I felt behind the phrase this time. “At least, perhaps not my nature any longer.”
    I considered my own words, and then laughed humorlessly.
    “Not that it matters,” I said. “Baranak has already made his decision, and found me guilty. His one-track mind will not entertain any other possibilities.”
    I steepled my fingers in front of my chin, my mind sifting through the strange series of events that had brought me to this point.
    “Understand one thing, though,” I told her. “I was a god long before I found myself involved in the affairs of your worlds.”
    “And before that?”
    “Before… that?”
    I looked at her, then looked away and said nothing.
    Cassidy and Kim, still lurking nearby, frowning, shook their heads and retreated some distance away. Soon enough, it sounded as though they had set the issue of my presence and identity aside for the moment and were resuming an earlier argument over engineering problems with their ship.
    The captain, however, remained. She sat across from me, her eyes penetrating, never leaving mine.
    “So,” she said, finally, “you and your people are gods. But what does that mean, really?”
    I tried to ignore her, but found I could not.
    “We are who we are,” I finally said, by way of answer. “Our origins are lost in the mists of time.”
    “Mm hmm.”
    She pursed her lips in a way I could not help but find most attractive.
    “I can explain no better than that,” I finally said. “Why do you care?”
    “Because, if we truly are in some other universe, and you’ve been to mine, I want to know how you got there, and how you got back again. It might help us to get home.”
    I sighed.
    “It is not that you are in an entirely different universe,” I said, “it is merely that you are… well… a level up from your own plane, so to speak. Whereas subspace, which I imagine you were attempting to penetrate, is a level down.”
    I smiled, sitting back.
    “One might say that, in your