by Azalea Ellis
Ink sprang outward quicker than my eyes could follow, and a spherical shield with jagged spikes jutting out on the other end snapped into place.
The monsters weren’t able to pull themselves back in time, and one of them impaled herself on a particularly large spike and died, while the other two took only glancing wounds.
By now, everyone was fighting in melee range except for Adam, who could barely fight at all, and Zed and the kids, who were up in the tree. I sent the three of them a quick message from within the safety of the spherical shield.
—The screamers have priority. Take them out.—
-Eve-
—Already on it.—
-Zed-
Birch and Pinocchio had returned safely, and while Birch supported the team by sending strategic gales of wind to buffet our enemies and blind them with picked up dirt and pebbles, Pinocchio was too small to do much direct damage against the enemies and returned to guard Adam.
Above, Gregor went into his Shadow state and used a small arm-anchored slingshot made of rubber tubes and some carved up, reinforced plastine to shoot rocks toward our attackers. Normally, this wouldn’t have done much, but since the rocks started out incorporeal and thus had no wind and very little gravitational resistance, they picked up serious speed before turning back to normal and hitting their target. He fumbled uncharacteristically a few times, but after that his aim improved.
Some of the monsters had reached the tree and were hacking into it, their weapons injuring it while their close proximity drained its vitality. Faintly-colored crystal leaves withered and fell to the ground.
Kris Animated an entire sleeve of tattoos, and ink-black scorpions spilled out from her flesh, scurrying down the side of Yggdrasil to jump at the monsters.
A group of the monsters who’d stayed back from the wall launched what looked like a blue fireball.
Torliam blurred to a stop in front of it and Animated a truly gargantuan forearm shield. He slammed it into the ground and braced against it. The fireball hit.
It exploded with burning goo, disintegrated the shield, and blew him backward. If that had hit us directly, we might have died, and judging by the way the fallout continued to burn, it would have been devastating for Yggdrasil.
The ones who’d created the fireball had made themselves the priority target. Torliam and Jacky both headed straight toward them, while Sam and I hung back with the others to protect the tree and Adam. If anything happened to him, we wouldn’t be able to hold out against the monsters for another day.
I went through dozens of ink constructs as we fought. Swords, various types of shields, a couple flocks of razor-beak birds and a swarm of bees, a set of throwing knives, and a few of some weird shelled creature that was based on a pistol shrimp, which basically acted as a flashbang. When the numbers got a little too overwhelming, I used Voice to make them falter.
Torliam blocked against a few more of those huge blue-burning jelly attacks before he ran out of the huge shields.
While he returned to Adam to get a couple of them replaced, Zed took his place in defending against them. With higher Perception, my brother was able to open cracks that he couldn’t before, which was especially important because there were so few of them in this place. Still, even if there weren’t a lot of them, he could open the rips much wider as his Skill grew. When the fireball jelly came again, he tore open a towering rip in the air and swallowed it right up. The cold of the Other Place washed over the enemy like a burst of frigid polar wind before he closed it up again and had to retreat, having just made himself the focus for their attacks.
While fighting two monsters at the base of the tree, holding off attacks from their multiple arms while retaliating with both sword and shield, the scream that had been clawing against our brains the whole time twisted like a knife in my mind, and I faltered. Then, something inside me wrenched. My body lunged to the side in completely instinctive reaction to the pain, trying to follow the pull of whatever was hurting me.
A dripping claw stabbed into the air where I’d just been, from the centipede woman that had apparently been sneaking up on me. I hadn’t even noticed her, and would definitely have been injured.
Whatever the thing inside me was moved again, and my body followed, springing back to my feet and into a guard stance as all three of them attacked at once.
Three ink bullets and a rock smashed into them, and they collapsed.
“Are you okay?” Kris screamed down to me. “I saw you were about to get stabbed, and I reacted without thinking. I didn’t think it would actually work!”
I trembled against the memory of that feeling, phantom pain twitching through my back and out toward my limbs. “Did you just…use your Skill on me?” I called back to her, my voice weak.
“I did,” she said, her pitch rising as she noticed my condition. “Did I hurt you?”
“Thanks for saving me, but don’t ever…do that again,” I panted. After less time than I’d have liked to gather myself, I returned to the fight.
Sam and I each took one side of the base of the tree. He attacked with the debilitating effects of Black Sun, driving them crazy until they collapsed to the ground without their minds or committed suicide to escape.
The battle went on till I was moving on autopilot, too tired to really analyze what I was doing any longer. I took a few wounds, and Pinocchio came over to me and bandaged them up with what little first aid supplies we had, climbing on and around my body as I continued to fight. We took turns returning to Yggdrasil and revitalizing it while Adam replaced as many tattoos as he could. Adam used the last of his ink halfway through, and had to resort to drawing his own blood to continue using his Skill.
Finally, when the heat of the red sun had started to bake us, the last of the centipede women died, and no more rushed in from the distance.
I crawled to the base of Yggdrasil and closed my eyes. “Just a little rest,” I mumbled, patting its trunk.
When I woke up, the carcasses had dissolved, and something cool was running down the back of my neck. I leaned forward and touched it with my fingers, then looked at them. It was clear. Water?
I stood, and turned to the tree. More water spilled down its sides in little rivulets, sinking into the thirsty ground below.
“You’re up,” Zed said tiredly, looking up from where he was crouched over Sam. “He’s okay,” Zed said quickly. “Just Skill exhaustion. You’ve been out for an hour or so. His Resilience is high. He should wake up soon.”
“Who’s on lookout?” I said.
“Kris and Gregor.”
“Did they mention this water?”
He frowned, following my hand to the tree. “No. Maybe one of them spilled their canteen?” He called up to them, but neither responded.
The gnarled, twisty trunk was easy to climb.
At the top, Kris and Gregor were curled up together, asleep. They also must have been too exhausted to keep going after the fight.
Next to them, that fruit that had been slowly growing seemed to have burst. From its base, water flowed out, gently spilling over the sides of the tree and down to the ground. It was much more water than the fruit itself could have held.
“Guys,” I called to the others, though only Zed and Torliam were awake to hear me. “I think maybe the tree is creating its own water.”
At the top of the tallest hill, the god opened his eyes for the first time in days.
Something that had been constricted in my chest opened up, and I took a deep breath. With an eager grin, I pushed Wraith out into the world, once again able to see without my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it.
I whooped, and the kids woke up with a jerk.
Chanelle, who we’d hidden away with the supplies, crawled out yawning and rubbing her eyes, surprised by the change in scenery and the passage of time. Still, this was nothing new for her, since she lost lucidity and woke up to changed surroundings all the time. She gathered with us and ate without taking off her muzzle,
awkwardly feeding food through the metal bars.
Behind us, a weaving path appeared up the side of the hill, intricate designs appearing on the stone and statues rising beside it, like they had been there all along.
We didn’t follow the path immediately, instead taking some time for everyone to wake up, recover, and eat a big meal first. Sam used some of the extensive charge his healing Skill had built up fighting the monsters to fix the myriad little wounds and injuries we’d accrued.
Then we packed up the camp and our supplies and stepped onto the path. No matter what the god had said, we intended to go back to Earth, even if we had to fight a god to do it.
The path and the scenes depicted in the little statues around it were all exquisitely carved, fitting for the God of Shaping and Molding.
I noticed a familiar pustule formed of rock, feeding up from the ground and spraying salt water intermittently. My eyes widened. I was pretty sure that was the same portal we'd entered this place through, which meant these were the same shale hills, which meant that we had somehow circumnavigated the entire realm searching for the god, when he was right there all along, hiding from us.
I knew it was stupid to be angry, but I couldn't help it. What an asshole.
That wasn’t the only pustule peeking out of the surrounding hills, and though not all of them spewed water, I was pretty sure they were all portals to somewhere else.
The god sat at the base of the highest hill, in a valley between it and the surrounding hills. He held some tools, and he was slowly chipping away at a small rock in front of him. Had he made all those sculptures before by hand? Maybe he’d been bored, stuck here alone for the last few millennia.
Once again, Torliam took the initiative to speak. “Have we proved our worth to you?”
The god nodded his head, which sat atop a neck that had elongated to look like a swan’s.
“We wish to return with you to the realm of mortals and aid you in your fight against the Sickness. We are willing to undergo whatever tests you wish, that we may prove ourselves worthy of your aid. Estreyer is dying, and the Sickness has spread to the world of humans, as well. We are in desperate need of the cure you hold. Please, let us return to the realm of mortals together.”
The god turned to look at us, and shook his head “no” quite deliberately. He waved a webbed hand, and the stone at our feet shifted into words.
Torliam’s breath huffed out of him like he’d been punched. “It says, ‘The wonderful me…lied.’”
A couple beats of silence passed.
If the god wasn’t going to help us with the Sickness, I was going to lose my temper. Perhaps we could indeed defeat him. Would consuming a portion of his Seed core like I’d done to Behelaino give me the power to heal people?
“Mierda.” Jacky’s fingers curled into fists, and she took a step forward.
I lifted my arm and held it in front of her, pressing her back. “What do you mean?” I asked the god.
The rock shifted into new words, and we turned impatiently to Torliam, while the god went back to chipping at his rock.
Torliam’s eyes skimmed over the symbols quickly, and then he began to translate. “You will leave this realm and return to your own, after you have been healed. I, the Shaper and Molder, who remembers the time before and fought against that which is abhorrent…in its many aspects, healing the insidious, or that symbol could also mean ‘parasite’ of…pestilence.” Torliam looked up. “He means he fought against the Sickness.”
He turned back to the symbols. “The Sickness' strength is great and…never-tiring, or maybe relentless? It advanced, or spread, maybe overtook, and desired to destroy the wonderful me. I, the Shaper and Molder, created a…” He pointed to a complicated symbol. “This is a mixed word. It looks like a combination of place and shield. I created a place that is also a shield, and stand behind it, and this last word means always, or till the end. I believe he means that he does not intend to leave this place, as he said he would before.”
"So," Jacky said, "He was fighting the Sickness, but it was too strong for him, so he ran away and hid here?"
Torliam's eyes widened, and he turned toward her in a sort of horrified slow motion, as if doubting the lack of self-preservation that would allow such words to come out of her mouth in the presence of the only god who could defeat the Sickness.
The god swiveled around, now-pebbled face pulled into a deep scowl made even more disturbing by the force of his anger and outrage pressing on us through his ambient power. He flicked his hand at us, and the earth cracked, revealing another message.
Black Sun came out, snapping into place like a shield over all the things that made Sam soft. "If you open your mouth again, you will be asleep for the remainder of this conversation," he said matter-of-factly, staring at Jacky with such a calm expression that she could only gape at him in stunned silence.
Torliam bowed deeply to the god, and the rest of us copied him, though Sam had to grab Jacky by the back of the head and force her down. “I apologize for the foolish words of this mortal,” Torliam said. “She is young, and has not yet learned patience or tact.”
When the god went back to sculpting, though the frown didn’t quite leave his face, we straightened and let out a cautious sigh of relief.
"The place-shield stands against the Sickness," Torliam read.
"Stands against means something like opposes or fights?" I said. "He's fighting the Sickness always?"
The anger wafting off the god receded, and we all let out a relieved breath, even Jacky.
I turned toward the god, who was at least facing us this time. "There was a prophecy, that the spark would be able to find you. And it said the Sickness can be defeated. You know how to do that. We want to fight against it, too, but we need your help. We need healing for more than just ourselves. The mortals of multiple worlds are in danger.”
When I stopped, and the god didn’t respond, Torliam spoke again. "We may be mortals, but if you will lend us your power once more, we will do whatever we can to help you in return. Is there a way to increase your strength? Is there aught you need or desire?”
"Or maybe we could get some of the other gods to actually help you in this fight against the Sickness?” I said. "If you could even just explain how the cure works or what you need, we can find a way to fix things together."
A second eyelid like Birch’s flickered sideways across the god’s eyes before melting back into his features, which turned shiny and slippery-looking, like an oil-slick. He seemed very sad as he looked up at the sky, then down to the portals in the surrounding, lower hills. Then he looked at each of us in turn. The tension built. Finally, he nodded. He stood up, holding his hands behind his back like an old monk. A few feet in front of him, delicate-looking petals made of some sort of metal glowed into being from the air, then coalesced into a small, pointed rod. It toppled over, clanking against the stone with a deep sound. It looked like a chopstick, or maybe a decorative hairpin.
The god pointed at me, then waved me forward. The ground behind me buckled, and Chanelle was carried forward on a rolling wave of stone, as if she were a paper boat in the ocean.
She let out a high-pitched squeak of alarm.
He let the stone fell flat again, depositing her just in front of the hairpin-thing.
He pointed to the hairpin, and then to Chanelle, making a motion as if popping a balloon with a needle.
I picked it up, but hesitated.
“Do it,” she urged, her eyes trained on the hairpin in my hand like a starving child might stare at a plate heaped with food.
I focused on it with Wraith, but I didn’t really know what I was looking for, and didn’t notice anything blatantly dangerous. I gently pressed the pointy end into the side of Chanelle's arm, pressing until it broke the skin.
As soon as the hairpin touched the first tiny speck of blood, Chanelle lit up from the spot of contact with a rushing brightness that filled my mind's eye as if I were examining her with Wraith
. But this was so much more, as if something had lit her cells up from the inside, the light showing the impurities, the errors, clearly. It was like there was a blueprint for what made Chanelle who she was, and it was made of millions of words, and huge sections were distorted or scrambled. Where that distortion touched, it spread to the words around it.
I opened my eyes, though I didn't remember closing them, and the god, who called himself the Shaper and Molder, nodded down at me, flicking his fingers in a "get on with it" motion.
I closed my eyes again, focusing on the errors, and willed them away. Chanelle should be only Chanelle. The hairpin pulled at me like the Yggdrasil seedling had, sucking something from inside me that wasn’t any of my Skills, but felt similar to the flow of power when I used one. I froze in alarm, then calmed myself as the god sent a wave of reassurance my way. I let the hairpin keep pulling, feeding it power without restraint, like I was a bucket with no bottom.
The errors were unscrambled, the warped sections returned to the clarity of the language that made Chanelle what she was. I noticed, once the glaring impurities were gone, that there were other sections where things were wrong. A scar here and there, and some damage spreading throughout her brain. I focused on them and pushed more power into the hairpin, but, though it accepted the power, it did not continue to heal.
I opened my eyes.
Below me, Chanelle opened hers as well. She sucked in a huge gasp of air, back arching as if she’d been held underwater for a long time. Tears welled up in her eyes, and as she breathed out, she began to laugh. Her laughter melded into sobs, but her mouth was stretched wide open in an awed smile, and she threw her arms around me in a crushing hug.
She withdrew and began to paw at herself, pulling up her sleeves to look at her arms, where the veins weren’t dark. She rubbed at her stomach, which was no longer distended. Her fingers were still raw at the tips from all the biting she’d done, but her joints weren’t swollen or red. She scrabbled at her muzzle, and I rushed to help her take it off, using a delicate scalpel of Chaos to cut through the straps.