by Azalea Ellis
“Sandstorm!” I called out, my voice lacking the alarm it would once have carried. This was only one new way from the myriad attempts the world had already made to kill us.
“There is no shelter,” Sam said, his voice slow and heavy with fatigue.
“I cannot hold this off,” Torliam said. “My power’s barriers will not stand against the force of a sandstorm.”
Adam lifted his head from where he’d been taking a nap across the pallet Torliam was pulling and ground his teeth. “If his shields won’t hold, mine definitely won’t. Animus still isn’t strong enough to handle everything I need it to do during the course of a day,” he said, fists clenched till his knuckles whitened.
“What are we going to do?” Sam squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, they were darkly shadowed all the way across, clearing the weight of emotion from his body. He straightened, rolling his shoulders to release tension, and turned to me. “I’ve noticed you playing around with those black flames. Why don’t you build a shelter? There’s no chance to kill or maim anyone when the subject of your experiment is sand.” His lips quirked in a small smile.
I grimaced.
“You are not as careful as you think you are. Yes, I noticed,” he said. Sam was activating Black Sun more and more often, sometimes so surreptitiously that we didn’t notice till our eyes caught his nihilism-inducing gaze. I worried that it meant Sam wasn’t handling the stress of ever-constant death mixed with the mind-numbing boredom of our hikes very well.
“That may in fact be our only option, unless we can rig something up with the supply pallets and some tent material,” I said. “Let me try it, at least.”
I knelt to the ground and closed my eyes, sending my awareness inward, where Chaos swirled through my flesh and blood in twists and eddies, playfully restless. It responded eagerly to my call, slowing only reluctantly as I insisted on caution and finesse. Black tendrils spilled out and turned to black flames, eating into the sand and forcing a very simple transformation. Sand to glass. I built it into blocks, letting them cool before removing them from the sand. With the others’ help, I stacked them in a circle, fusing them together with another quick application of Chaos. Around and around we went, building layer atop layer, each one a little narrower than the rest, till we had an igloo made of mottled glass and sand, the front opening protected by a wide overhanging lip. I hurried to create a chimney-like tube extending from the ceiling, since I didn’t know how long the storm would last, and I didn’t want to run out of air if we were trapped inside the igloo for a long time.
We crawled inside, leaving the supply pallets to the anger of the oncoming storm, since they were too big to fit through the opening.
Inside, it was oppressively hot, the cooling glass blocks adding their own radiation to the ambient temperature, and our bodies heated the mostly enclosed space even further.
The towering wall of sand, tinged with swirling bands of purple and plumes of pale dust, hit us all at once, with a shahh sound that quickly deepened with rolling drum sounds, like thunder. It passed over us like a tsunami of darkness, but we were safe inside.
Silence settled in at first, but then Adam’s voice came out of the darkness, although he had to speak up to be heard over the sounds of the sandstorm. “So why hasn’t some other Estreyan thought to go to Earth to find this god? Or even if they didn’t deduce the way to reach him from history, like Torliam did at first, you’d think someone in the last few thousand years would have some Skill that allowed them to find him.”
“People have tried,” Torliam said. “But it was prophesied that one of my line would be the one to find the ‘spark.’ It appears that the previous members of the Seal of Nine were meant to attempt this, but either their Skills were not properly suited for the task, or they failed for some other reason.” He looked toward me in the darkness. “It was also prophesied that the spark, descendant of the god himself, would be the one to bring him back. People have scried for him and scanned the stars and all the places in between with what technology we have left to us. None were able to find him. He was well hidden.”
“Or maybe,” Sam said, “they didn’t try hard enough, because they knew they didn’t meet the requirements of this prophecy. The prophecy may have sealed fate as it was spoken, when the future was not so certain beforehand.”
Torliam raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. You are wise, Sam, and most so when you are not afraid to speak.”
Sam tilted his head and opened his mouth as if to reply, unseen to the others in the darkness, but then he closed his mouth, and the silence stretched on for a while longer.
With the darkness as a kind of blanket around me, I said something I’d been thinking about for a while but hadn’t had the courage to say aloud. “What if the god really doesn’t want to be found? Why else do you think he’s disappeared for so long, and none of the other gods have brought him back, even though it’s pretty obvious they want him to cure the Sickness? I mean, hell, we’ve gone through all this and we even found his little secret planet, but he still won’t show himself.”
Chanelle, who’d become lucid without me realizing it, ducked her head like my words were a blow.
The others shifted awkwardly for a bit, but Jacky reached out her foot and nudged it into me. “It doesn’t matter if he wants to stay hidden or not. We’re gonna find him, and if he doesn’t volunteer to help, we’ll just drag him back kicking and screaming.”
Adam sighed. “Is that really realistic?”
Jacky popped her knuckles. “We killed a god last time, and we’re stronger now. Why not?”
He rubbed his temples and frowned like she was giving him a headache. “Because we don’t have a whole ton of elite Estreyan warriors to boost our Attribute levels or wear him down for us ahead of time?”
She humphed. “And how much damage did they really do?”
“A lot,” he deadpanned.
“But in the end, Goldilocks was still fine, and it wasn’t till Eve ate him up with Chaos that anything changed, right? So who needs them?” she said, crossing her arms and nodding as if the argument had been won and the case was closed.
Adam leaned his head back and shook it silently, apparently giving up on convincing her.
“So, I’ve been wondering, why didn’t I have the Estreyan gene?” Zed suddenly said. “Eve has it, and as far as I know this Eliahan guy is my father, too.”
Torliam shrugged, though I doubted anyone but I would notice, since Gregor wasn’t in his Shadow state. “He is likely far from pure-blooded, himself. It is purely a roll of the dice, with the odds stacked high against you.”
Jacky pursed her lips. “Still, doesn’t that mean that technically Zed could be the one to find the god? Since he’s got the same bloodline as Eve?”
“He kinda did,” I said. “He’s the Veil-Piercer. There’s no way we could have found this place without him.”
“I wonder if there are any more places like this out there, just…hidden,” Zed said. “Maybe there are a ton of inhabitable planets besides Earth and Estreyer.”
“There are many,” Torliam said. “Some of them bear life and even host other people, while some are barren but could be made lush with cultivation.”
We all took a moment to think about that. “After this is over, I think I’d like to see some of those planets,” Zed said. “Interplanetary travel might be expensive, but since we’re pretty much saving Earth and Estreyer right now, I bet we can wheedle a pretty big reward out of their governments. What do you guys think?”
Chanelle smiled brightly. “I’ll come with you. That sounds amazing. Tell us more about the other planets and the people on them,” she urged, tugging at Torliam’s arm.
Torliam grumbled, but cleared his throat and began to tell us what he knew, though apparently travel had been restricted for a long time due to the Sickness, so he had no first-hand accounts, only what he’d read.
Despite the inherently interesting nature of the topic, I found myself
tuning out, my mind occupied by Zed’s earlier words. When this was all over, what did I want to do? The question brought no immediate answer to mind. I couldn’t imagine an Eve who lived a normal life, who wasn’t constantly desperate to grow stronger and fighting to keep herself and those around her alive. What once had been my accepted, mundane future now seemed alien to me. I tried to put the thought out of my mind, but it lingered, irritating me like a phantom itch I couldn’t scratch.
Chapter 28
I walked a mile with Sorrow.
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.
— Robert Browning Hamilton
Weeks had passed, and we had grown able to casually bat away dangers that would have once caused us to scramble. Even the weakest of us had long since grown accustomed to the low oxygen in the air and tossed away our gas masks when their filters deteriorated and we ran out of new cartridges. Each of us had leveled up both Stamina and Resilience several times, with a smattering of Strength and Agility thrown in as well. Finally, we came to a group of hills made of rock and shale, and entered a small cave to avoid yet another storm.
The cave nearly collapsed on top of us, so the others stood back while I used Chaos to heat the rocks inside until they melted together, cooling into a safe space incapable of collapse without significant assault. In any case, it was much safer than the watermelon-sized hail heading our way. I went to sleep on the ground, not bothering to unpack my slowly disintegrating tent. When I woke, I found myself once again inhabiting a smaller body, an entirely human body.
I gasped, and wished I hadn’t, as the black sword in my chest tugged at my insides. I looked around frantically, cursing my inefficient human eyeballs, so much less robust than Wraith’s sensory abilities. My arms and legs were stretched out and spread wide by huge pins piercing through them. I was impaled onto the wall in five places, and glass enclosed me.
Butterflies and moths were pinned similarly all around me, each with a little card underneath them. It was that, more than anything, which helped me understand where I was—in a display case, pinned like an insect.
I tried to calm my breathing, as the pain flared with every tiny movement, making the agony of hanging from the wall by spikes even more unbearable.
I couldn't really move anything but my head. But I didn't need to, because blood was trickling out of my wounds. I reached for Chaos, dissolving the part of the sword sticking out through my chest, then the part exiting my back and into the wall.
My weight hung more heavily on my wrists and ankles, the pain forcing an involuntary whimper through my gritted teeth. Seriously, what could I have possibly done to deserve this?
My wrists were next, and when I fell forward, the glass broke under the weight of my body. The pins through my ankles ripped out of the wall as I collapsed forward onto the wooden floor, tearing open gaping holes in my ankles.
I held back a keening sob and took a few deep breaths while I waited for the pain to recede to manageable levels.
Around me, some of the butterflies and moths had fallen, too, and they flapped their wings feebly, somehow still alive.
Chaos, always so much more malleable in this dream world, perhaps because of its relative weakness, obeyed my instructions and worked at the metal still in my chest from the last dream, finishing the work of melding it into flesh and healing the wound that pretend-Eve had dealt me.
My wrists and ankles came next. I left a wound on the skin of both hands so that I could access Chaos. Finally, I stood. I felt insect legs latch on and prickle against my scalp, and ripped a large moth out of my hair. I shuddered, watching it flop around on the floor with its brethren. Then I limped forward on not-quite-right ankles, down the dreary hallway. Display cases, filled with more moths, covered almost every inch of the walls.
I knew this place was in my mind, not just as a dream, but occurring inside a construct that I had created to contain the power of a god's Seed. But I had never created this hallway, just like I’d never created the previous two rooms from the other dreams.
Frequently, as I walked down the abnormally long hallway, one of the displayed insects would flutter its wings futilely, as if startled by my passing and trying to get away.
The hallway ended on a pair of double doors, large and ominous.
I straightened my shoulders and steeled my resolve, then pushed them open. On the other side was a huge ballroom with a blood-red marble floor. Alcoves and balconies were spaced all around between floor-to-ceiling windows.
In the center of the circular ballroom stood the other Eve, fully armored and facing away from me. She turned around when the door opened, looking me up and down with a faint smile that didn’t hide the judgment in her eyes. “You didn’t run away, at least,” she said with a grudging nod.
Seeing someone else wear my face, my body, and my mannerisms still sent a visceral shudder through me, but I reminded myself of the importance of this meeting. I needed to get information from her, and if her previous threat of taking over my body was true, I needed to impress her.
“Did you think about my question?” she said.
I repressed my instinctive frown of confusion, quickly running the last dream through my memory. “Who am I? What am I?” I asked uncertainly. It had been so long my memory had faded, but they were the only questions I could remember her asking. “I’m Eve Redding,” I said, trying for confidence I didn’t really feel.
Her face crumpled into a scowl. “You did not think about my question. Are you stupid? I warned you very clearly what would happen if your performance continued to be so abysmal.”
I returned her scowl. “So how about this? I’ll kill you, and you stop sneaking into my head. How are you doing this, anyway? Some kind of Skill? Are you one of the Remnants? One of Queen Mardinest’s people?”
She laughed, then narrowed her icy eyes and grinned like a wolf. “Your brain really must be made out of mashed potatoes. Come then, and try to kill me.” In other words, she wasn’t going to answer any of my questions.
I crouched down, making sure to remember that this wasn’t reality and I had control over my dream world. Chaos spilled out of my fingers as they sank into the crimson marble. I gripped the stone in my hand, and pulled upward, drawing a crimson sword from the floor. I didn’t want to waste energy trying to make a solid from air, even if that might have looked slightly cooler.
“It’s much cooler if you do it this way,” she said, holding out one hand and letting out a devouring burst of Chaos. Wind rushed toward her and once again coalesced into a black sword. I would have made some snarky comment, but she shot forward immediately, toe claws digging into the marble for traction and leaving scars behind.
I barely managed to block her swing with my own sword, and it still pushed me back several feet. My hand and arm were numbed from the impact of that single strike.
“Do you know what Chaos is?” she said, letting misty tendrils rise out of her free hand and dance through the air. “It’s not just some Skill.”
I pointed my sword at her with one hand, and then pushed Chaos through it. The sword tip shot forward, elongating into a razor-thin spike as it stretched toward her gut. I was taking careful note of everything she said, but I wouldn’t let her distract me with her words. I took her threat of body-jacking me very seriously, and had no intention of being trapped and helpless within my own mind.
She leapt backward lightly, knocking away my sword with her own, but my other hand was already making its own attack, shooting out those fleshy, tendon-like branches of condensed Chaos. This method of attack was so quick it was difficult to follow its growth with the naked eye, so much faster than throwing out unformed misty tendrils, but also requiring much more concentration and power.
The black filaments built upon each other in an instant, then frayed like the end of a rope, reaching toward her from a hundred different directions at once.
She gri
nned, and then pulsed with darkness, like shedding an explosive skin. It expanded in every direction, smashing into the reaching tendrils of my attack and forcing them back. “Chaos is the power of a god. In fact, it is a tiny piece of the goddess of Khaos herself, living inside you.”
I clenched my jaw and fed the fibrous construct more power, and the tips pressed in toward her.
She raised an eyebrow, and the shell of Chaos expanded even further, as if it didn’t even strain her to completely overpower me. “Do you know how gods fight with each other?”
I’d wanted to be closer before I tried my next trick, but she didn’t give me much choice. I closed my eyes and fed one last surge of power into the pulsing strands of blackness extending from my left arm. Instantly, the air around my counterpart exploded with light and heat.
I opened my eyes as soon as the blast had passed, the warm wind I’d created blowing back my loose strands of hair and rippling the softer skin of my cheeks.
Her shield was gone and some of her hair had been singed away. “Superheating the air to create an explosion?” she said. “Do you think you’re being clever?” Until that point, she’d seemed dangerous, but still jaunty, as if she wasn’t taking me too seriously. Now, her mood darkened.
She never gave me a chance to respond. She shot forward once again, this time too fast for me to even see her. She ripped my sword away with her bare hand, her claws digging into and through it as if I’d formed it from butter.
I scrambled backward, but she said, “Stop,” and the crystal at her throat pulsed. My back arched, like I’d been hit with a defibrillator, and I found myself unable to move.
She paused for a moment, as if waiting for me to respond somehow, but I couldn’t.
She shook her head with exaggerated disappointment. “Eve,” she said, her voice low and kind and full of the promise of my death as she walked around and then behind me. She whispered in my ear. “Do you know why you can’t beat me? It’s not because I’ve stolen your stronger, better body.” Her voice moved to my other ear, her warm breath blowing against my neck and the sweat on my skin. “It’s not because I have access to all the other Skills you’ve grown to rely on like a crutch.”