by Azalea Ellis
I fought against whatever she’d done to me the same way I’d fought against Reglium’s control, and finally managed to break free, stumbling forward with a panicked gasp.
She looked down at me in derision, then walked past me as if I wasn’t a threat at all.
I lashed out with another branching cord of solidified Chaos, but she knocked it aside with her bare hand, without even looking. I screamed in denial and tried to attack again, but Chaos didn’t come. I looked at my wrists and saw that they had been healed. Without a thought, I bit down on my skin, grinding my teeth and ripping at the back of my forearm till I broke through and the blood flowed again.
She’d returned to her spot in the middle of the crimson ballroom and turned to face me again. “You can’t beat me, because, even when your life is at stake…” The sky darkened outside as if in response to her anger, and the wind began to howl. The sound of glass breaking in the hallway behind me made the hair on the back of my neck rise.
“Even when you’re terrified of what I will do to you if you lose…”
The moths and butterflies flew into the room and swirled around me, only a few at first, and then more and more.
I tried to run, but there was nowhere to escape to.
They swarmed in numbers beyond belief, more than had been in the hallway, more than I could count in a month. They amassed around me until I couldn't see past them, cutting off my view of whatever the other Eve might be doing, cutting off the air.
“Even then, I still want this more than you.” The last statement echoed with the gravity of the Voice Skill, but beyond that, her words seemed to come from all around me, as if each of the moths were an amplifier. The sound rippled at my skin and mirrored my heartbeat.
I let out as strong a wave of Chaos into the air as I could manage, a multi-directional explosion similar to the one she’d created earlier.
That only seemed to set the moths off, and they converged on me like a wave, the weight of all their bodies lending their attack a crushing force I never would have imagined possible. They beat at my face with their wings and bodies, tried to crawl inside my nostrils and ears, shoved themselves at my mouth and pried at my eyelids. I let out another wave of Chaos, and they died and fell away by the thousands, but more remained to take their place.
They swarmed up beneath me, lifting me off my feet and turning me around till I lost all sense of direction. The heat of their bodies felt like an oven. I couldn’t breathe, but I clawed at myself desperately, breaking the skin and releasing wave after wave of Chaos, pulses as quick and desperate as my heartbeat.
I caught the faint sound of glass breaking once again. Then the howl of wind and the sensation of violent movement. My body smashed into something and splattered apart, as if I were one of the bugs and had just had an unfortunate encounter with a windshield.
It hurt.
I woke up immediately and jerked upright, gagging and coughing up a huge atlas moth onto my lap. Other insects lay all around my body, flapping feebly as they died. I thought for a moment that I was still dreaming, but my teammates were all around me, and I sat in a small cave with acrid air. My left arm was scaled, my claws were out, and Wraith moved through the cave with an instinct that had become as automatic as breathing to me.
"She's awake," Sam screamed, and those who weren’t already hovering over me rushed to my side.
"What happened? Another dream?” Torliam said. "Are you well?"
"The bugs just started crawling out of you," Zed said, breathing heavily from panic. "You couldn't breathe, and we didn't know where they were coming from, and they kept appearing. Torliam and Birch kept clearing your airways and trying to get oxygen into you, but you were choking, and you wouldn't wake up."
I took heaving breaths, trembling and unable to reply.
"It was him," Adam snarled. "What else do you think could have done something like that? This god's been trying to kill us since we arrived here!"
“This is not the first time she has had a dream that left residue in reality,” Torliam said. “We cannot discount the god, but it is not necessarily him. I have suspected a particularly powerful warrior from among my own people, but I did not imagine they would be able to reach her even here.”
Zed stood, and started stomping insects viciously under his feet, as if to get back at them for hurting me. “You mentioned you had some weird nightmares, but nothing like this!”
I coughed, spitting out wing powder and a little bit of blood. The insects must have damaged something in my throat, though I didn’t think it was a serious injury. “It wasn’t this bad, before.” My voice was hoarse, and I fell into a coughing fit again as soon as I finished speaking. Tears built in my eyes, first from irritation, but, as soon as the first drop spilled over onto my cheeks, more came behind them. I’d experienced a lot of difficult and painful things before, but that dream, my death, had been on a completely different level. I couldn’t think of it as a simple nightmare.
I’d died, terrified, alone, and completely helpless.
One of the moths on the ground flapped feebly, dying from the tainted air.
I flinched back from it, then shuddered, feeling cold despite the sheen of sweat covering my body and the heat in the air.
Torliam followed my gaze, then swept the area around me clean of insect carcasses with a sweep of his Skill. “Were you able to gain any other clues about your attacker’s identity?” His tone was kinder than it had been since I revealed my duplicity.
I tried to talk, but it irritated my throat and I descended into another ragged coughing fit.
Adam turned on Torliam. “You knew more about this than the rest of us, it’s pretty obvious now. But what have you been doing to figure out who’s hurting her? Or have you been too busy acting like a hypocrite and being angry at her for saving her own life!?” His voice rose as he spoke, the words spilling out of him like he’d been holding them in for a long time. “If you weren’t so hung up on yourself, you might remember that she’s not the only one who lied. You decided to tell everyone that the God of Knowledge would give us a Bestowal if the mortals could prove themselves in battle against him! You knew it would be a fight to the death, that we actually needed to kill him, and you helped convince all those Estreyan warriors who died to sacrifice themselves. I’m sick of you acting like you’re better than the rest of us. Eve may have lied about the exact nature of the reward, but you knew full well the danger of what you were getting into.” Adam was panting by the time he finished, and everyone else stood around in shocked, awkward silence.
I’d managed to stop coughing, but I didn’t know what to say in this situation, and even if I did I might not be able to choke the words out.
Gregor scowled, unnoticed, at the two older men, his abnormally cold fingers patting at the back of my neck as if to soothe me.
Torliam had clenched his fists, staring at the far wall of the little cave. He turned to face Adam, slowing unfurling himself to his full height.
Adam had to look up at him, but his glare didn’t falter.
Then, Torliam bowed to Adam. “Your words hold truth,” he said. “I have also been at fault in this matter.”
Adam’s eyebrows rose and his eyes widened, but after a moment, he regained his composure. He coughed gruffly and folded his arms. “Well, as long as you realize.”
Torliam turned to me, and bowed even deeper. “Please accept my apologies—”
Before he could finish, Chanelle wailed. The sound raised in pitch and ferocity till she was shrieking. She stood up, fingers wound through the muzzle over her face, yanking so fiercely she jerked her entire body around. The screaming kept going, even as her voice began to crack under the strain.
Chanelle had gone physically crazy a few times already, each time much more disturbing than the verbal vitriol the Sickness pushed her to more often. It pushed her to feats of strength and athleticism that her body wasn’t meant for, and though she was dangerous, she was just as likely to hurt herself a
s one of us.
When it was over, she always cried till she was too exhausted to move, apologizing over and over. We’d grown somewhat complacent as we traveled, because she’d been doing well. Now, that changed.
She scored lines in her cheek as she clawed at the leather straps of the muzzle, then wove her thin, emaciated fingers into the wire. The sound of her fingers breaking was distinct.
Torliam shot to by her side in an instant, pulling her hands away from the metal and forcing them down to her sides.
Adam threw ink onto her, and it spread into straightjacket-like bands.
Jacky and I wrapped her in some cloth bindings we'd rigged up, then laid her onto the bedroll she'd been sitting on before.
I stroked her head as she screamed soundlessly, her voice gone.
She bit at nothing.
Sam crouched down beside us and laid a hand on the back of her neck as she struggled in her bindings like an angry caterpillar. He would ensure that she did no more real damage to herself, like the time she'd bitten through her tongue and almost drowned in her own blood before one of us noticed.
I leaned back on my haunches and spit to the side to get the taste of moth dust out of my mouth. I rested my head on my knees, still stroking Chanelle's hair. I could only hope that it helped, somehow, because there was nothing else I could do for her. I was so tired.
The ground trembled. That was likely the sign of an impending earthquake. We'd been through many of them, though the effects varied from chasms ripping open in the ground beneath our feet to geysers of scalding water erupting to try and cook us alive.
This time, however, the shaking built up faster than I had expected. The pebbles next to my feet bounced, and the earth roared as it cracked apart right in front of us.
Sam and I grabbed Chanelle and hauled her with us as we all scurried out of the cave. I may have reinforced its structure, but I didn't trust that to hold up under an earthquake.
Outside, the storm had stopped, so it was now safer to be under the open air, as long as the shards of ice didn't start letting off invisible, poisonous gasses as they melted, or something equally ridiculous and deadly.
Instead, the hair stood up on my arms, and then the hair on my head lifted as my skin started to tingle. "Adam!" I screamed, pulling Chanelle down to the ground with me as I crouched.
Adam had rigged a lightning rod after the second time he had to redirect a strike and almost got fried to death doing so. It was a metal pole with a rubber hand grip, and he used it as a walking stick. Now, he slammed it into the ground, redirecting the lightning strike through the combination of metal and Skill, keeping more than a few stinging sparks from reaching the rest of us. The dirt exploded upward and the crack was loud enough to set my ears ringing.
I'd remembered to close my eyes, but I could see the branching afterimage of the electricity anyway.
Adam fell forward onto one knee, gasping, but at least not steaming. His skin wasn't sloughing off him, so I figured he was okay.
We all stilled with awe, the only sound the ringing in my ears.
Then an ice boulder plummeted out of the sky.
I screamed, tackling Chanelle out of the way with only moments to spare.
The boulder smashed down right where we'd been standing and shattered, spike-like chunks shooting out toward us.
Chaos exploded out of me without my conscious direction, disintegrating the deadly projectiles about a foot before they reached me.
I rolled to my feet, dragging Chanelle with me by pure force.
The ground, which had never quite stopped rumbling, gave a forceful heave underneath us.
A wave of blue slammed forward into Chanelle and me, knocking us off our feet, safely away from the tiny sink-hole that had just opened up into a chasm where we'd been standing.
"It's targeting Chanelle!" I screamed, sending Wraith lashing out in every direction. I felt the glow of foreign power coalescing around us, like a ghostly storm. "Show yourself, you coward!" I yelled, struggling back to my feet. “If I wanted to get rid of the Sickness by killing people, I could do that myself!” My voice cracked. “We came to you for a cure.” My words echoed off the hills around us and faded into the distance.
The rumbling of the earth stilled.
A small person walked over the top of the highest hill and looked down on us.
Chapter 29
He who destroys a god kills reason itself.
— Kaiser Fell
The god, for surely that's what he was, judging by the power shining from his body, was smaller than I had expected. In fact, he was smaller than I was, more of a height with Jacky than Behelaino or the God of Knowledge. It was a little underwhelming. His features shifted constantly. Even as I watched, his ears grew tufted, then shrank down while his skin instead took on a bark-like roughness.
Torliam bowed deeply, and the rest of us, except for Chanelle, followed suit afterward, with a kind of embarrassed awkwardness.
Even as I bowed, I remained on edge, wary in case he used our distraction to continue his attacks.
When we straightened, the god’s eyes met my own for a moment, their pupils horizontal and almost rectangular, like that of a goat’s. They shifted again soon after. He waved his hand and power flowed out from the ground instead of the body he was using. It welled up beneath me before I could even react, wrapping around Chanelle.
I tensed, but Chanelle didn’t seem to be harmed. She slumped forward, her breathing slowed and muscles relaxed, ceasing her struggles and broken attempts at screams, apparently falling into a peaceful sleep.
Still, I couldn't quite hold back my glare when I looked up at the god, and my claws stayed out. I needed the boost to my Attributes that having the Skill active provided.
The god's gaze traveled over us, and with it came the weight of his judgment. I could see from his expression that we had been found lacking.
Torliam cleared his throat. "I am Torliam, of the line of Aethezriel, and this is Eve, of the line of Matrix," he placed emphasis on the last words, gesturing to me. "The Goddess of Testimony and Lore has bestowed upon us the Seal of Nine, and the Oracle has helped us on the path to find you. We come before you to petition you for aid against the Sickness once more, if you will return with us to the realm of mortals."
The god waved his hand and half the hill in front of us seemed to suffer from a mini-collapse. The detritus and shale tumbled away, revealing semi-familiar symbols cut into the smooth stone in front of us.
“This is an old written dialect of my people, from before the exodus,” Torliam explained, turning his head toward us. "It is more complex, with each symbol indicating a word or concept rather than being a phonetic representation of the language."
"Like Chinese," Zed said.
Torliam nodded absently, though I wasn't sure he actually knew what Chinese was. He was busy reading the message cut into the stone, over and over. He frowned, muttering to himself.
After a few minutes of this, Jacky shoved her way to the front of the group. "Are you gonna keep making faces to yourself? Read out loud! The rest of us wanna know what's going on, too."
He grimaced. "I am a bit…rusty? Is that how you say it?"
"Well, I don't see him talking," she pointed to the god, "So you're the best we've got. Don't worry, none of us are gonna be able to tell if you get it wrong, anyway."
He sighed, shooing her away from the symbols beneath her feet. He spoke slowly, often seeming unsure or clarifying a word. “You mortals have invaded the domain of me, the Shaper and Molder, after peace of an aeon, and must prove yourselves worthy through my…Trial—that’s the word for Trial—and show that you are capable of creation as well as destruction. You may admit…at any dot, any time, maybe, that you are unable to fulfill my requirements, and the wonderful me will return you alive to the realm of mortals with your…Sickened, or maybe ‘infected’ people, still alive.”
“The wonderful me?” Jacky mumbled with a large grin. “Maybe I should s
tart using that.”
Torliam shot her a repressing look, then continued reading. “If you fail, all will die. If you… it’s a mixed word. Maybe unlikely-succeed. It seems to mean he doubts the likelihood of our success. If you doubtfully succeed, the wonderful me will remove the taint from yourselves and return to the realm of mortals to continue fighting, but your mortal selves must remain in this realm forever, until death.”
“What the hell?” Adam snarled. “If we lose, we die, if we win, he traps us here forever?”
Torliam stared at the words for a moment longer. “We must accept. Our remaining in this realm is nothing compared to the lives of all the mortals across both worlds.”
Sam, whose eyes for once seemed quite clear and bright, despite the tension of our situation, nodded. “He’s right. Plus, it’s the only way to save the kids and Chanelle. It’s the right thing to do.”
I was careful not to grimace. I had no intention of being trapped on this little hell-planet for the rest of my life, regardless of whether we could do so safe from the Sickness. I wanted to be cured, and I wanted to go back to Earth with the whole team. But for now, I only nodded.
—We’ll…negotiate further…after we’ve proved ourselves through the Trial. We don’t have any bargaining power, in the current situation.—
-Eve-
No one was happy about it, but we all agreed.
The God of Shaping and Molding waved his hand again, and more of the hill fell away, revealing nine shiny little marbles settled into its side.
We didn’t move, just looked at each other and the god in semi-consternation. Zed leaned a little closer to me. “Are those Seeds?”
I frowned. “I don’t know. They look similar, but I don’t think they’re the same as the Seeds NIX gave us.” These were glossier, without the maze of metallic lines around the outside, and each of them seemed to be a different color, instead of a sparkly cream.