He looked down. “Most ran away when I gave them the news, or even before. They hope the war is over, and that they might live out normal lives. But I know, and perhaps you do too, that war doesn’t live in battlefields - it lives in human hearts. Elysium is more than I could have hoped for, and has come sooner than I could ever have accomplished alone. My past is what it is, and I know what you must do. Let me help you.”
His eyes were closed; he saw nothing, but was taking deep breaths through his nose, breathing in the fragrant and alien scents of Elysium. The thrumming energy in Isavel’s blade called for action.
This didn’t feel right. This didn’t feel like a triumph over evil ought to feel.
She looked up into Elysium’s sky and saw… the ring. That great, heavens-spanning silvery arch was unchanged here. The gods were here, as well, just as they were on Earth. Would they stop her? Would they guide her away from this?
But they did not; instead, she felt only the mounting pressure to finish her task, to do what she had come here to do, what she had fought and bled for.
She jerked her blade to the left, slicing through flesh and bone with ease. Yet even as the walk around her began to dematerialize, she saw the walker’s body doubled as his spirit rose, whole, from his collapsing corpse. His spirit looked her in the eyes and smiled as the walk melted away into nothingness, leaving Isavel alone in the summery pine forest of Earth.
He had died, and there he was - in Elysium, without the need to cross through any nightmarish land of ghosts.
Perhaps he and Ada was telling the truth. Perhaps the afterlife really had been broken - and she really had fixed it. And if Ada was telling the truth about that… had she been telling the truth about everything?
If Isavel had destroyed that crystal, would she have consigned all of humanity to death without afterlife, to a cold dark void?
Isavel looked back up the mountain, to the great scar in its side where the ruins had lifted into the sky, dust still wafting away in the wind. On Venshi’s counsel, she had almost done something… unimaginable. And Venshi… did she not know?
That was impossible. Venshi must know - she must have corrupted the will of the gods. After all, who had told her to do exactly this, in suspiciously specific terms? Venshi had almost steered Isavel into a terrible mistake, after Isavel herself had made the terrible mistake of trusting the faceless creature. She should have trusted Ada.
Isavel’s eyes widened, a sudden sense of vertigo overtaking her. Venshi must still be with the others, manipulating them, telling them lies, twisting the will of the gods. She grabbed the walker’s head, neck stump still slick with blood, and rushed down the hills towards where she had left the army.
She started coming across soldiers walking up the mountain, fighters of her own army, their turquoise armbands and reverent gazes equally telling. Then she spotted the knot of people that represented the core of the army. She saw them all there - Mother Jera and Elder Tan, Dendre and Hail, her old companions - they were all there, halted in their advance as she approached.
She stormed into the clearing and flung the bloodied walker’s head onto the ground. Dendre laughed, deeply this time, a hearty sound she had never heard from the man.
Mother Jera gasped. “Saint Isavel, you seem - distressed - the blood -”
Isavel drank deep from a well of lightness and animal rage, and roared dragonfire at Venshi with no concern in the world for anyone standing near the steward. The golden-red blast caught everyone off-guard, there was screaming, and suddenly Venshi was moving, clothes in ashen tatters. Isavel would not let her escape; the woman had answers that needed hearing. She lept straight across the clearing, sailing through the air on wings of hard light and crashing directly into the steward’s back. Venshi’s reaction was incredibly out of character. “Piss off, you fucking -”
“I’ve killed and eaten dragons today, Venshi!” Isavel snarled as she yanked at the steward’s arms. “I do not fear you!”
And yet, grappling with Venshi, she was suddenly aware that the steward was… incredibly strong. Isavel was almost immediately thrown off and Venshi was hissing and scrabbling away, still letting no expression seep through that porcelain mask.
Isavel could fix that.
She jumped forward, her fingers strengthened and extended with draconic claws of light, and grabbed Venshi’s entire face. She tore away as hard as she could, and the smooth white mask shattered, scattered onto the ground even as Venshi desperately tried to keep it on.
What lay under the mask was…
“Gods.” Isavel heard Dendre’s exclamation even as people all around were panicking.
“Herald, what have you done? ” Mother Jera exclaimed, confused and angry and frightened all at once.
“Stand up, Venshi!” Isavel shouted at the thing lying in front of her. “Stand up and tell them all how you twisted the gods’ will. How you lied to everyone. To me. ”
Venshi stood up slowly. Her face was something out of a nightmare. She looked to have once been a beautiful young woman - gorgeous, by Isavel’s estimation, with large and intelligent eyes angled much like Ada’s, smooth skin the colour of freshly carved wood, luscious red lips. But something had happened; parts of her face were pocked with… dents, chips, scorches, and most horrifically, a massive section of her left jaw and cheek torn off completely.
And in those strange and inhuman wounds, Isavel saw the truth of Venshi. This was no woman of flesh and blood; no pink scars or torn muscle or shattered bone were exposed by those injuries - only more of that false skin, the damage looking more like gouges in clay than any real wounds.
“Are you satisfied?” Venshi asked, and although her shattered jaw opened as she spoke, her lips didn’t move, the sounds coming from deep within her throat. “Now that you know what I am?”
Isavel scowled. “You’re a golem. You’re a traitor to the gods!”
“There are no gods!” Venshi screamed, and Isavel took a step back in shock. “There are only men and women and our blind and endless greed!”
“You told me to destroy the shrine!” Isavel jabbed a finger at her. “You told me it would end the ghost threat!”
“It would have! If you had just listened -”
“It would have destroyed the afterlife entirely! ” Isavel replied. “The gods did not grace us with an afterlife for a usurper - not even a human, but a golem - to take it away! How could you -”
Venshi’s artificial face twisted, the gashes in her false flesh twisting uglier still. “I was human once! This shell is the only way I can safeguard my work for so many centuries! All my unnatural life I’ve tried to guide humanity back to its roots! Back to where it belongs, connected to the world around it! That afterlife was one of the few crimes against nature still left to dismantle!”
People were closing in around them, and Isavel saw both Dendre Han and Hail standing behind Venshi. The golem may have been aware of it, but cared for nothing.
“If you just listen to me, I can guide you to a world where nobody suffers, the only world where we can be our true and authentic selves!”
“The gods meant for us to live on after we died!” Isavel accused. “You would have had me subvert their will!”
“Did your gods tell you any such thing, Isavel?” Venshi responded.
They had not, and Isavel was momently caught. “They told me -” She desperately scrambled to phrase the truth as usefully as possible. “- that they did not need me to destroy the shrine.”
“So you let Ada Liu , that mad heretic who will be the destruction of this world, have her way?”
Venshi made eye contact with the elders. Mother Jera’s eyes widened in alarm, Elder Tan’s frown deepened, but Isavel stammered on. “I - I fought Ada, before the shrine, and I -”
She shook her head and growled; this was a waste of time. She lashed out with an energy blade, bisecting Venshi at the waist. The golem’s torso, an intertwined mixture of false skin and smooth metal, collapsed onto the ground
, electric crackles flaring, her arms scrambling for leverage even as her now-useless legs fell to the side. Venshi was shocked and angry, but bled no blood and clearly felt no pain.
“Dendre, Hail - grab it.” The two of them immediately followed her command, each gripping a single squirming arm and hoisting the incensed golem into the air between them.
“Venshi, for betrayal of the gods’ will -”
“You don’t know your place! ” Venshi spat.
“- and for lying and manipulating me -”
“Your entire society is manipulating you!”
“- I am condemning you to eternal imprisonment, underneath this very mountain.”
“Everything I’ve done I’ve done for the good of humanity! Ever since the fall, for a thousand years I’ve watched and guided you! I’ve been saving you from all the poisons your ancestors drank so readily!”
“To hell with this.” Isavel waved them away. “Let’s go. This is going to be a long hike up.”
“Science! Trade! Civilization! You may think it was all grand and glittering and golden, but you have no idea what your ancestors did - how horribly they tortured their world and themselves -”
Isavel was already walking, and Dendre and Hail were walking behind her, carrying the traitor golem’s living half up the mountain. She was no longer interested in making proclamations. Her heart was hammering away at her ribcage and her thoughts kept swirling around the same wounds.
Had she let Ada have her way?
Was she really being manipulated by everyone around her?
If Venshi had been betraying the gods for so long, why was she still here? Why hadn’t the gods stopped her?
There were answers right at hand, of course, and Isavel recited them in her mind as they climbed the mountain. Venshi, meanwhile, continued to spin mad tales of a civilization long past, of rebels determined to set back the clock and put everyone back in their rightful place. Others followed them - curious, shocked, loyal, or whatever combination of emotions might motivate them, Isavel could not say. She had ears only for the accusations slithering from the golem’s mouth, but a mind only for the truth.
Isavel was the instrument of the gods, and so it was through her hand that they were finally punishing Venshi. The gods would stop Venshi one way or another, and this, it seemed, was that way. The gods were the only ones in true control of Isavel’s actions, as with everyone else - she was not being manipulated. And Ada… Isavel had not let Ada win. She knew that much. Ada had not even won the fight - she had just… been successful. Almost accidentally.
And would likely continue to be so. Isavel hoped saving her had not been a mistake.
They found a hollow, under the scar in the mountain where the shrine had once been. Fragments of dark code unlike any Isavel had ever seen crisscrossed the smooth floor of the crater, but off to the side of that scar it was a twisting network of more ancient tunnels. They dragged the screaming, irate golem deep into those tunnels, as far as they could go, and when they finally reached the deepest point Isavel took one of Venshi’s hands and slammed it up against the ancient metal wall.
She reached into herself, into the new furnace roaring in her chest, but pushed the dragonfire from her hand instead of her mouth. Isavel’s skin cast dozens of tiny, shimmering shields facing the flame to protect against the heat, and everyone else nearby backed away, but Isavel didn’t even look away as her hand lit up with hot fire and melted Venshi’s entire forearm into the metal, boiling away the false flesh into acrid black smoke and fusing the golem into the ruin itself.
Then she grabbed the other arm and did the same, and when she was done, Venshi’s legless torso hung from the wall, limbs melted into twisted hunks halfway into the ruin, her deceptive face snarling in broken rage.
“You will destroy the human race!” Venshi accused. “You don’t know what it was like! You don’t know what I’m trying to protect you from!”
Isavel shook her head. “Down here, you’ll continue to protect us. From yourself.” She turned to Dendre and Hail, and together they led the others out of the ruins. “I think we’re done here.”
Hail nodded, and briefly rested a hand on Isavel’s shoulder, her eyes concerned. As they all clambered out of the crater, Dendre gave a nervous chuckle. “God, I can’t tell you how good it feels to chain that freak up. If I had known what she was...”
“It doesn’t matter.” She tried to offer him a sympathetic smile, but her nerves were still frayed. “We’re done here. The ghosts are routed, and their walker, their Shadowslayer - remember that head I tossed around earlier?”
“Oh gods, I almost forgot about that thing.”
“Yes, well. We can go home now.” She looked at Hail, and the woman smiled at her with reverence, but it was reverence still coloured with something like fear. Of what, Isavel wasn’t sure. “This war is over.”
“I don’t know about that. The outers were working with the ghosts, remember. They have a whole city just hours away from Glass Peaks by sea. Gods only know what they’re up to.”
Isavel almost felt the blood drain from her face. “I remember that, yes, but I don’t believe the gods need me to make war against them, Dendre. The ghosts have fled. I think we’ve earned a rest.”
Dendre gave a wry smile. “If you say so, Saint Dragoneater.”
Isavel took a sharp breath and held it. Dragoneater? She didn’t like it, but perhaps she would grow used to it all, in time. She hoped, more pointedly, that people would soon forget about her, if there was no war to be fought. Perhaps she could retire peacefully, and discover what the gods had in store for the rest of her life.
As she left the mountain and returned to the ground, though, she couldn’t help but feel the shocked and suspicious gazes of the elders and many among the crowd. Venshi had been a fixture of the spiritual community in Glass Peaks, and now in the army. That sudden and harsh course of action might bring everybody to second guess her.
Everybody but one person. And that person was hopefully well on her way to safety.
Isavel sighed. In time, all would be well again. It was all she could hope.
Ada had staggered down the mountain, and was well on her way towards the coast - and safety. She saw few bodies and fewer living people, and Cherry’s voice had fallen silent almost as soon as the ship had shot up through the sky to follow the crystal. The birds had deserted the forest, fleeing the cacophony of battle, and had yet to return. Ada’s world was eerily quiet and undisturbed.
Except occasional, oddly silent markers that appeared in her vision.
There it was again, an arrow pointing her slightly left.
Good - a distraction. She couldn’t get the sight of Isavel out of her head. Ada could tell the little white arrow came from her suit, just as Cherry’s once had, but there was no voice to go alongside it. Any voice would drown out Isavel’s, but whatever was sending the images either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak to her.
She didn’t know what it was pointing her towards, but she turned left. She had been following its directions for some time now, absent anything else, and she could tell it was leading her towards the sea. She could only hope she would find the Chengdu there, whatever it was; Isavel had borrowed her gun, it seemed, so Ada was now defenceless.
Well, perhaps not entirely defenceless. She remembered how she had tried to weaponize her new coding abilities against Isavel. She had failed badly and painfully, but Isavel was an exceptional person; lesser mortals might be less able to deal with Ada’s unique skills.
Ada soon found herself approaching the beach, and finally she heard voices. She crouched down and tried to spy on the shoreline, but it was much lower down, and there was a fairly steep patch of forest between her and the rocky shore.
An arrow appeared in mid-air, pointing down the hill.
“Well, fine then.”
She moved down the slope, trying desperately not to send rocks skidding down to alert whoever was there. She slid from tree to tree, down through th
e underbrush, until she was finally level with a rocky shelf that separated her and a wide stretch of beach revealed by the low tide.
And before her… Ada had never seen quite such a thing. It was a massive ship, shaped not unlike a shark, partially submerged in the shallow water. It was gleaming and colourful, with a dark blue top and a pale belly, but it bore unmistakable signs of technology, not least a wide open maw leading to a broad, hollow chamber on the inside.
And in front of the ship were people, people with faces she recognized. Tanos, Zhilik, even Sam. She stepped forward in awe. “Sam? You got here alright?”
The ghost turned to see her, and her freckled face managed a weak, crooked smile. “Ada! You made it. When that - whatever it was - exploded -”
“All according to plan.”
“Right. That was the priority, after all.”
After a second Ada realized the wistfulness in Sam’s face was a sign of the overwhelmed boy’s death. It stung, and she had no desire to see such sentimentality when her own brain and gut were already in turmoil, so she looked away, back to Tanos’ proud grin and Zhilik’s alien satisfaction. She took a deep breath and puffed out her chest.
“So, friends! This must be the famed Chengdu . Am I right?”
Zhilik’s awkward alien nod was an unexpectedly welcome and comforting sight, and he reached out to pat her on the shoulder. “Your ship directed it right into our grasp. Where is your ship now, though? Why did you walk?”
Another thing Ada didn’t want to think about. She had no idea what had happened to Cherry, or why the ship was incommunicado - only that it wouldn’t answer her anymore. “I’m not sure. I sent Cherry up to the ring with the afterlife, to protect it. Assuming I actually fixed the damned thing in the first place, I guess.”
“You did.”
Ada turned back to look at Sam, and she saw something soft in those eyes, something she couldn’t make fit with that boy’s death by whelm. “Oh?”
“Yes. The master told us all to kill ourselves and discover the glorious Elysium for ourselves. Obviously, most of us didn’t kill ourselves, but… he did show me.”
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