by Rin Chupeco
The sight alone, of the black tide of darkness besieging Asteria’s territory from the east, was enough to induce panic. The galla army seemed twice as large as the one we had fought the last time.
And Ereshkigal. The sight of that shadow-titaness filled me with dread, with that familiar panic that had been my only constant in those early days after Nuala and the other rangers’ deaths, when I was fresh off injuries that were physical, and injuries that had remained invisible. I had passed my days then convinced that every shadow was out to get me.
And now, standing before the amalgamation of all my nightmares, all the work I’d put into healing myself felt like it could come undone in one moment, and I trembled.
This wasn’t Inanna. This was her sister, Ereshkigal, hate manifested in a twisted, corporeal form.
“Ereshkigal,” Odessa whispered, echoing my thoughts. “She won’t ever stop, will she. She’ll never rest until she finds Inanna again.”
Or the next closest thing.
“We can’t beat that,” Lisette muttered.
“Yes, we can.” The swarm might have grown in size, but so had our numbers. Whatever my feelings about Janella, I wasn’t going to turn my back on my people. The bigger problem was losing our only two Firesmokers capable of wielding blue flames. I pushed my sorrow over Arjun away, to focus on everyone else who could still be saved. He would’ve been angry at me if I hadn’t. “If you wish to sit this one out, Lisette, then step aside and let us take up the fight.”
“The hell I will. I’ll fight till my last breath.” The girl gripped her Howler tighter. “We owe it to him.”
“We will honor our promise to the people of Aranth,” Tamera said crisply. “Salla and the others are inside Asteria’s encampment, and they have our protection. But we will demand a reckoning for any others who conspired with Arrenley.”
The Hellmakers’ rigs pulled away, charging ahead to be the first to attack; with joyous shouts they targeted the first row of galla, firing indiscriminately into their midst. With a wince, I tugged out my sword as we skidded to a stop. As long as I could still hold a weapon, I could fight.
“Their right wall is failing,” I growled. “They’re too focused on where the bulk of the shadows are concentrated and they’re not paying attention to the groups sidling around their shields. It will only take one to breach the camp.”
“Haidee?” Odessa asked.
Her twin said nothing, only watching as we drew nearer to the fighting. Her pale eyes were hard.
“Haidee?”
Slowly, the Sun Goddess stood. She raised a hand, pointed a finger at the nearest cluster of shadows. Her eyes glowed amber.
Giant spikes of densely packed sand ripped out of the ground, impaling several of the creatures. Another wave followed, and the galla crumbled into nothingness as the sharp stakes tore through their bodies. When they attempted to scatter, Haidee changed course; large blocks of sand rose and fell onto the galla, like hammers striking an anvil.
“Haidee!” Odessa caught her sleeve. Haidee yanked her arm back just as I caught hold of Odessa’s other arm, and felt myself tumbling into a riot of unexpected emotions. I felt guilt, anguish, fury—Haidee’s. Guilt, terror, shame—Odessa’s.
This had happened to me before. I’d been in physical contact with Asteria when I saw her visions foretelling Asteria’s destruction. Odessa’s touch allowed me to see the galla for the first time.
“Stay away from me!” Haidee shouted at Odessa.
“I know what you’re planning to do! Arjun didn’t give up his life so you can waste yours!”
Haidee stared at her sister, clearly enraged that Odessa had finally put into words what everyone else had been dreading to say. “Arjun is gone because neither of us were strong enough,” she said through gritted teeth. “You’re the reason—you’re the last person to tell me how sacred life is!”
You’re the reason he’s dead. That was what she’d almost said.
Haidee’s expression shifted to distress, regret. “No. I’m sorry, Odessa. I didn’t mean it. You wield the galla’s gifts. And I’m the one to be sacrificed. We could just—we could just perform the ritual the way they expect us to. Sacrifice me, like they intended all along—”
“No!” Odessa shouted, her features twisted in agony. “It will never stop, Haidee! We’ll just be another pair in a never-ending cycle of death. I was always too weak, too frail, too sick. And when I accepted those gifts I became overconfident, cruel, willing to do anything to get what I wanted. And that’s why I need you here, Haidee. I need you to keep my sanity.”
A well-placed strike from her froze more fiends for several yards, clearing a path between us and a group of galla that stood apart from the rest of the horde. Blue gemstones glinted back at us.
Haidee staggered, and so did I, as a wave of nausea assailed me. My legs and arms felt like they had turned to lead. Odessa’s attack had sapped at my strength, diminished her twin’s—and mine. She’d done it deliberately.
Odessa climbed out of the jeep and walked toward the creatures. The crackle of energy around her was unbelievable. It felt like far more than I knew she could handle. She took in patterns until she was at her limit, then kept on going.
“You fool!” I forced myself up, ignoring the light-headedness, and stumbled after her. I caught her hand. “What are you doing?” I grated out.
She smiled at me, her eyes a prism of colors. “I’ve always been afraid of the damage I could do,” she said candidly. “But every time I hold back I wind up hurting someone else.” She took my face in her hands, smiled sweetly up at me. “Now I’m embracing it,” she said, and brought my head down so she could kiss me. I felt strength flow from me to her, only augmenting her spells further.
And then she let go.
The patterns ripped through the galla. Fire incinerated them; Water froze them, shattered them into millions of pieces; Air shredded them into ribbons; Earth swallowed them up. Lightning bolts traveled from one fiend to the next, frying their bodies in an instant. By the time Odessa was done, we were standing in a circle of blackened ground, every galla within at least a two-hundred-yard radius of us destroyed.
The lapis lazuli–wearing demons had vanished, and only one remained: a small, shriveled thing.
“Odessa,” I choked, still clinging to her, still too weak to use my abilities to keep her from expending more of herself. All I could do, all I could think of, was to funnel everything I had left into healing her, into keeping her alive. “Stop it.”
“In a moment.”
A wave of sand rose again, and crushed the tiny galla underfoot.
And then Odessa tottered, swooning against me. The rest of the galla turned toward us. My own strength gone, I cursed, holding Odessa’s unconscious body against mine while I tried to level my sword at those attempting to draw closer. It felt as heavy as lead, and I could barely raise it.
More lightning sizzled across the sky and broke the ground apart, taking two dozen of the galla nearest us. “You will not harm my daughter,” Asteria seethed. She was pale, her face streaked with soot, and more light sizzled against her palms. She flung them out in an arc, taking down more of the monsters.
Gracea appeared at her side. Her own lightning was weaker and smaller than the goddess’s but it did the job, mowing down several more galla. A loud whoop sounded on my left, and I saw Slyp and Bergen attack, the latter lashing out and striking down any galla that drew too close while the old Stonebreaker manifested fists of stone, using them to punch through the rest.
Miel, Filia, and Halida had apparently resolved their Gareen problem while we were away, banding together to slice through as many galla as they could find. Tamera and her clan raced into position behind them, leveling their Howlers and firing. Sonfei’s Mudforgers turned the sand underneath the galla into near-liquid, trapping them. Sonfei propelled himself through the air, launching a downward kick at the galla, wind cutting them into ribbons.
Noelle and Lisette had cau
ght up to me, and we three stood side by side, grimly taking down all nearby galla. A hand fell on my shoulder and I spun with my sword raised, my other arm still cradling Odessa protectively. At the same time I felt glorious warmth running down my sides, my aches and pains falling away.
“Sumiko,” I breathed. “I am so very glad to see you.”
“The feeling is mutual, Lady Lan.” Sumiko looked more exhausted than when I’d last seen her, but there was a smile on her face.
“And who is this pretty lady?” Lisette asked, though more out of habit than anything else, as she shot down another galla.
A loud scraping sound ricocheted around us. I tensed.
“The air-dome’s coming down!” Charley called out, just as a spinning sandstorm erupted underneath the galla’s feet, whipping them into the air.
I could make out someone standing at the highest point of the Golden City. Despite the miles that lay between her city and the camp she was efficient, and deadly. With every gesture she made, the sandstorm followed, pummeling more galla. There were soldiers stationed atop the gates, too, lobbing glowfires and cannonshot at the horde.
Latona was aiding us.
Odessa had taken out a huge portion of the army. With all three groups fighting, it was only a matter of time before the tide turned in our favor, and we were able to eradicate the rest of the swarm. Tired, I slumped down and allowed Sumiko to work more of her healing magic on me.
Asteria strode forward, staring up at the lone figure above us. “We need to talk, Latona!” she shouted.
Silence. The figure turned away. There was a humming noise as the air-dome flickered back into life over the city. Asteria remained standing there, her jaw clenched, long after her sister was gone from view.
“It’s about time you returned,” Mother Salla said with a sniff. Her eyes flitted from one face to another, and then back again, searching. “Where . . . ?” she began, and then stopped, horrified. “Where . . . ?” she started again, but couldn’t finish.
It was Lisette who spoke, voice low and eyes glittering with emotion. “Salla. I’m sorry.”
The Oryx clan mistress took a step back, like she’d been dealt a physical blow. “I see,” she said, in a voice too high for comfort.
A scream rose from behind her. “That’s not true!” Imogen cried. “Arjun can survive anything. He rode out to the Great Abyss and came back against all the odds. He fought a million Hellmakers and came back. He fought shadows and all sorts of horrors, and he came back.”
“Immie,” Haidee said helplessly, “I—”
“No! Don’t you Immie me! He would have ridden through hell for you, and you couldn’t even protect him! What kind of goddess are you, that you can’t even save someone you said you love?”
“Imogen!” Salla exclaimed, but the younger girl spun on her heel and fled, crying, pushing past her siblings, who looked at each other, anguished, then back at Haidee. The goddess stared after her, trembling, before slowly walking away in the opposite direction.
“Let her be,” I said softly. In the space of a couple of days Imogen had lost two brothers.
Odessa stirred in my arms, blinking. “Are they gone?” she asked, almost timidly.
“I’m not happy with you, love.”
She smiled weakly. “Sorry. I had to—I needed to prove to myself that I could help save everyone even without the radiances.”
“There was a stone within the temple,” clan mistress Tamera was saying, her face now a careful, contained mask. She’d wasted no time filling the other clans in, which I was grateful for, having no desire to do so myself. “It purportedly contained Inanna’s immortality, a key to defeating Inanna’s twin who, incidentally, is the massive piece-of-shit shadow we’ve been fighting all this time. Unfortunately, the Golden City army attacked us, and the stone was lost.”
Salla nodded curtly, her face giving no indication of her grief. “Are you saying, then, that there is no hope left?”
“Not necessarily.” This from a subdued Vanya. “If the texts are right, the only option left is for both of the goddesses to enter the Cruel Kingdom together and face the trials there, much like Inanna and Ereshkigal did once.”
“But without Inanna’s immortality . . . ,” Lars began.
“The goddesses can enter the Cruel Kingdom without it,” Vanya said. “It’s getting out again that’s less certain.”
“We’ll take that chance,” Odessa said.
“Odessa—” I began, but she interrupted me.
“All that talk to Haidee about duty,” she said, her face intent. “I meant it. I told my sister that she had to sacrifice the person she loves most in the world for duty. It would be hypocritical of me if I weren’t willing to do the same.”
“You’re not sacrificing me. You’re sacrificing yourself.”
“I know. And that’s why it was harder on her.” She stroked my hand, taking great care not to put pressure on my wounds. “I started this journey because I didn’t want to die. But what I am slowly realizing is that death will happen to all of us. Even goddesses. Especially goddesses, given our people’s penchant for sacrificing us. I would much rather do it on my own terms.”
“You know I can’t allow that,” I said harshly.
“You’d sacrifice the world just to keep me? You’ll let everything else fall apart, allow the galla to overrun Aeon? They’ll grow in number every day. They’ve gone two generations now without a sacrifice, with nothing for their hunger to gnaw on. They’ll consume the world.”
“You know I’d die first before I’d let anything near you.”
“I know. And I’m afraid of that. If you die, Lan—if the only choice we have is to sacrifice you—then know that I won’t survive you long.”
“Odessa—”
“You know I’m right. I was so angry when Mother and Latona did the same thing. It’s so easy to judge from the outside, believing that they ruined the world in their selfishness. Until the same thing happens to you. Latona lost her lover—my father. She resented Asteria for it.”
“Haidee won’t resent you.”
“Maybe. But it was my recklessness that got Arjun killed all the same. And anger—anger festers, even in the best of us. We lost the stone. I don’t know what’s happened to it, but I know Arjun died making sure Janella would never get her hands on it. He saved us.” She began to tear up. “Let’s end the cycle, Lan. I will go into the Great Abyss, descend into the Cruel Kingdom as Inanna instructed, and put my trust in Haidee. Even if I can’t come back.”
“Then I’ll go with you. Inanna had companions to defend the seven gates after she and her sister passed through, so they could return. For all your talk about duty, you still didn’t accept the seventh galla. If we fail, if we have no other choice left, then you’ll need me to finish the ritual.”
“Lan—”
“If something happens to you, then I won’t survive you long, either. I will follow you into hell and back, Odessa. That’s my duty.”
Finally she nodded, even smiled a little. “All right. Haidee intends the same thing, I think. I just don’t know how to approach her yet.”
“Talk to your mother first, Odessa.”
She clearly didn’t want to, but nodded again. “What will you do?”
I thought about Nuala, about my rangers. “Let me talk to Haidee.” If there was anything I knew about, it was loss.
“I’ve already talked to the clan leaders,” Haidee said stiffly as I approached. “I’m not interested in whatever else you have to say.” She’d remained apart from the camp in the hours after the attack, preferring to sit alone atop one of the sand dunes. Arjun had been fond of doing that whenever he was on watch.
“I know. But I’m here anyway.” I set a small bowl of fruit beside her. Sumiko had allowed me to leave my tent for this, after extracting my promise to return and remain abed until she deemed me well enough.
“What do you want?”
“I’m a Catseye.”
“I
would never have known.” She was starting to sound like him, too.
“I thought you might want to know a little more about my past.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Odessa’s already at camp, and safe.” A brief spurt of anger sparked behind her rigid monotone.
“I was in charge of a team of rangers back in Aranth, tasked with finding the safest way to the Great Abyss. It took us many months of travel, and despite the demons we encountered along the way, we did a fair job of overcoming the odds until we reached the mountain by Brighthenge.” I kept my own voice neutral. “I was the only survivor.”
She eyed me carefully, not without a trace of concern. She’d heard the general story before, was no doubt wondering why I was bringing it up now. “How did you survive?” she finally asked, when minutes of silence had passed.
“Luck, I think. I was no more equipped or better skilled than any members of my team. The galla came without warning, ripped up half of my companions before we’d even realized the danger.” A soft gasp rose from her, but I was already lost in my own memories, forcing myself to finish. “In the end, there were only three of us left. Something rose from within the Abyss—Ereshkigal—and asked me to choose.”
“To choose?”
“Which of my two teammates I was to sacrifice, to open the portal leading back into Aranth.”
Haidee drew in a quick, sharp breath.
“I refused. It didn’t matter. It killed them both, then tossed me into the gateway. One of them . . . was a lover. This was before I’d met Odessa.”
“Oh, Good Mother . . .”
“Asteria found me just outside the city, out of my mind and raving.” This was the part I’d never told anyone, save Sumiko. I’d never even gone into this much detail with Odessa. “I screamed for days after. They had to chain me up. I remember one of the Devoted suggesting to Asteria that I should be put out of my misery; they never thought I would make it back to sanity. I tried to . . .” And here I paused, idly stroking my neck. “Odessa doesn’t know. I didn’t want to remember what I’d almost done. I was ashamed.”