Gods of Rust and Ruin

by Azalea Ellis

  Torliam didn’t respond right away, and didn’t meet my eyes. “I will take you there. Tomorrow. Tonight, I will speak with the queen.”

  When Torliam left, I took my mattress over to the next room, where Zed, Sam, and Blaine were.

  Birch was pretty irritated at me, and took every opportunity to flatten his ears or look pointedly away.

  “I’m sorry we left you behind,” I said in a low voice, since Sam and Blaine were asleep. “You were with Torliam anyway. Didn’t you have fun today?”

  He snorted and grabbed my pillow, pulling it over to the corner and stamping on it emphatically before plopping down on top of it with his back to me.

  Zed chuckled. “You didn’t need a pillow anyway, right? It’s not like you were planning to sleep with it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course not. I brought my only pillow for the sole purpose of not using it.”

  “Well, you can’t have mine.” He paused. “We could probably get one of the servants to bring us another.”

  I sighed. “Forget it. I’m tired.”

  “Me, too.” We lay in silence for a while, and then he spoke again. “Veil-Piercer. It’s pretty much as cool as I imagined. It’s like . . . I can see these cracks in the world. And if I concentrate hard enough, I can slip my fingers into them and peel them back. It’s like our world, but . . . not. I’ve been calling it the Other Place in my mind. It’s cold there. Like warmth has never existed. And I noticed it started leeching all the feelings out of me. I don’t mean because it was cold. It was like it was freezing my emotions out.” He paused. “I admit it’s dangerous. I could get stuck over there.”

  “I wish I could tell you not to use your Skill,” I said. “But I can’t. And I’m not going to try. Just be careful, okay?”

  “Umm, I feel like I could be saying that to you. How many times did you use Chaos today?”

  “Three times? I’ll meditate before I go to sleep. That healer Ifkana boosted my Resilience earlier. It might have been bad, if she hadn’t.”

  “What’s the plan for defeating Knowledge?” Zed asked, following the obvious train of thought.

  “Gain lots of strong Estreyan supporters who are willing to risk their life against him,” I said. “I’m going to do that Fear Trial Torliam talked about tomorrow. Got to get Knowledge out of my head first.”

  Zed snorted. “When did any knowledge ever get in your head?”

  I knew he was worried for me, but there was nothing either of us could do about it. “You’re lucky Birch stole my pillow. Otherwise you’d be getting a face full of feathers right about now.”

  “You’re lucky Sam and Blaine are sleeping it off, or being pillow-poor wouldn’t save you.”

  With a grin, I turned over and tucked my arm under my head, meditating for a while before I fell asleep.

  When I woke in the morning, both Zed and Blaine were gone, and Sam was straightening his bedding. He noticed that I was awake, and said, “I’m okay,” over his shoulder.

  When I didn’t respond, he continued. “I know you were probably wondering. Considering . . . what I did last night. I mean, it was pretty horrifying.”

  When he turned around, I examined his face. “Are you really okay?”

  “I’ve decided I’m not going to feel bad about it. If I hadn’t done what I did, those people would have killed Kris, and Gregor, and Chanelle. I could never live with myself if I didn’t . . .” He sat across from me.

  If only just deciding not to feel bad about something actually worked. My own life would be much easier. “You saved us,” I said.

  “This time.” His voice had grown hoarse, and he laughed self-consciously. “But it wasn’t even me, you know? The Skill took over. I remember what happened, and that person wasn’t me. If it had been me, I would have frozen, and they would have died, just like China.”

  I shook my head. “Sam, that’s not—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” he said angrily. “We both know it. But the kicker is, I don’t even know what it is that I did. I don’t know how to turn Black Sun on, and I don’t know how to turn it off. What if—if I need to be that other person again, and I can’t? Or what if I can’t turn it off, and I do something that I should regret? When that Skill is active, I don’t care about anything. It’s like I’ve got this sucking emptiness inside me. I wasn’t saving the kids because I wanted to save them, I was just doing it because . . . I don’t even know why. Because I’d wanted to before the Skill activated? Because it was interesting?”

  We sat in silence, while I tried to figure out what to say. “That would be bad,” I said.

  He snorted.

  “It would be,” I said. “But there is nothing outside of our control. I have to believe that. If we push hard enough, search far enough, and fight harder than we think we’re capable of, we can change things. If that happened, we would just have to find a way to fix it. Maybe you’d need another Skill to balance that out. Or maybe we’d need to get the you who’s under the influence of Black Sun to agree to act in a manner that normal Sam can live with.”

  He stared at the ground for minutes. When he finally raised his head, his eyes didn’t glitter with agitation anymore. “That’s how you do it? You just believe hard enough that you control your destiny?”

  I shrugged. “Then, you have to actually act. Belief doesn’t do much, in a vacuum. But the point is, there’s no use worrying. If you need to fix something, fix it. That’s all there is to do.”

  Sam laughed. “When you say it like that, it seems so simple.”

  I laughed. “I wish!”

  “Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “Blaine said his genius was needed elsewhere, and I think Zed went to go train with the others. Torliam stopped by while you were sleeping. He said to meet him in airship field three.”

  It was a testament to how exhausted I’d been the night before that I hadn’t woken up while any of this was happening, despite how paranoia normally interrupted my sleep on a regular basis. I nodded, and left to go find Torliam.

  He had been working while I slept, if the bags under his eyes and the crustacean-shaped ship I found him in were any indication. “We leave when you are ready,” he said. “I have alerted the media, and they will meet us on the mount of Phobos and Deimos. The Estreyan people will want to see this.”

  The idea of people spectating as I subjected myself to a Trial made me uncomfortable, but I climbed in anyway.

  I’m not sure what I had expected, but Torliam set the ship on autopilot while he took a nap, and we flew silently to the top of a peaceful mountain range. Soft green grass, totally out of season, grew from the ground at the top of the tallest mountain. Black spheres, as large as a person, floated unmoving above the grass. They made my Wraith Skill hurt to look at them, and reminded me of the way Sam’s eyes had looked the previous night.

  “You will enter one,” Torliam said, slowing the ship so that it hovered above the edge of the mountain. “It will show you the monstrous depths of your mind. If you can make it through, you will gain control, and be able to fight back. Remember, the things it shows you are not real. You have control over everything.”

  Behind us, the dots of other ships began to fill the sky. The Estreyan equivalent of reporters, coming to document our success or failure.

  “I’m guessing it will be harder than you’re making it sound?”

  “Significantly. Telling yourself there is no reason to be afraid when you are terrified is not always useful.”

  It would be different, at least, than being forced to acknowledge that I had every right to be terrified, and having to press onward anyway. “You’ll enter one of the others?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  I frowned, turning to peer at him. “You don’t want to do this.” I said it as a statement, though I meant it as a question.

  “On the God of Knowledge’s mountain, when the light of his sentinels reached my eyes, he showed me . . . something that had happened in the past. My sister died of the S
ickness, as you know. I was much younger then, and though I had known those who fell to its grasp, none of them had been so close to me. Her death spurred my search for a cure, though everyone thought I was crazed by grief, obsessed with a futile goal. The God of Knowledge showed me her death, over again. But I knew, with every day, how she felt as her mind turned against her, her body blackening and growing putrid. As we all hovered over her, and the connections she felt toward us, her family, and the people she loved . . . they were severed, and twisted, till she could not tell love from hate, family from . . . food.” He shuddered. “I felt it all, knew it all, as if I were her.”

  “You’re afraid to go through that again.”

  “Yes. I know it must be done, but . . . I fear I will not leave with my mind intact. I have experienced many things in my life. When I was within NIX, before they forced you into blood-covenant with me, and then again when I thought you were one of them created to torture me, I came closer than I like to think to losing my grip on the strings that connect me to myself. I am not invincible. I have almost lost myself before.”

  I reached out and grasped him by the elbow. “This is different,” I said. “Because you have hope.” I raised his hand, looking pointedly at the mark of crystal branded all the way through. “Your suffering was not in vain. You found the descendant of the line of Matrix. And we are going to fix everything.” I was lying, in a way. But I wished it were the truth.

  He clenched that crystal-marked fist, and stared at it. “Sentimental drivel,” he sneered. But a smile followed the words, and he settled the ship down on the grass at the edge of the mountain.

  The reporters swooped in, landing all around, the more eager ones hopping out of their ships before they had even settled. They carried small tubes that beamed light out toward us.

  “Those devices will record everything we do and say, in three dimensions. Others will watch it, later. Be careful that you do not lie. It will be found out, under scrutiny,” Torliam said, walking with me towards the black spheres.

  “What?!” The word popped out of my mouth, full of alarm.

  He sighed deeply and shook his head, as if continuing to talk to me would drain him of all energy. He stopped near the edge of a sphere to call out to the reporters, “Today, we conquer our minds. Tomorrow, what can hold us back?”

  They burst out with questions, all talking over each other, not so different from reporters on Earth, even if their equipment was way more sophisticated.

  Torliam ignored them.

  With one last look towards each other, we stepped forward, into the black.

  Chapter 33

  It isn’t the light you want to recover, it’s the certainty that there is only darkness.

  —Paulo Coelho

  Inside, it was dark. I blinked compulsively, instinctively trying to get my eyes to adjust till they could see, but the light just wasn’t there. I jerked when I felt the fog intruding on my mind, sifting through it.

  I very likely would have panicked just from that, what with the God of Knowledge doing something so similar and all the pain it had caused me, if not for Torliam’s earlier words.

  I held back the instinctive shudder when the darkness started to lessen, and I felt little tiny, hairy legs—spider legs—running over my body, around my neck and down my back, in my ears and hair.

  I didn’t panic when that changed, and I was suddenly sitting on the ground, with my fingers resting on something that felt like finger bones.

  It must have been pulling memories from my Characteristic Trial. A good place to start, I agreed, though maybe not the best.

  I still didn’t panic when the bones clacked to life around me, grabbing on and wrapping themselves around my body, and dragging me backward into dark water. The illumination grew, just enough that I could see things—large things—moving through the water at the edges of my vision. I’d been scared of whales and sharks as a small child, and had had this nightmare before. I held my breath, and willed myself to remember that this was nothing more than a dream.

  My heart started to beat faster as I held my breath, the organ attempting to distribute oxygen to my burning muscles, and the beats brought with them a sour feeling, like the beginnings of real fear. Not good. The longer I could stay calm, the better. I knew things could only get worse from here. So I breathed out, and then sucked in, drawing the water into my lungs, and continuing to suck even as they cried out with the unnatural burning sensation. There was no water. I only perceived water.

  And sure enough, my heart stopped pounding so hard, and as I breathed in and out, it calmed and returned to normal, the only tension in my body the discomfort of my lungs. The water slipped away, not as if it was draining from some big tub, but as if it was just deciding to be air instead.

  I was on the ground, then, the area around me lit by what seemed like a spotlight, though I could see no source for the light.

  Jacky walked into the spotlight with me. Without saying a word, she spat in my face and walked away.

  Were they trying to make me angry? Just trying to get any emotional response out of me so that another one would be closer to the surface? I wiped off the spit and listened to her footsteps echoing away till it was silent.

  There was a scrabbling beyond the sharp edge of darkness. Panting.

  I grimaced, sensing a hint of what was to come.

  Fingers, bent and twitching, entered the ring of light. A nose, a mouth, and a face with blue eyes and blonde hair. Chanelle, or maybe China.

  She slobbered, looking crazed. Her eyes were full of hunger. Chanelle, then.

  I reached out and petted her on the head as if she was a dog, and she rolled over onto her back, still panting and slobbering but now with a silly smile on her face as she tried to get me to rub her belly.

  Then she straightened and jumped up, reaching out for me, suddenly coherent and worried. “Run!” She screamed, and then her body twisted and broke, falling to the ground in slow motion as her gaze stayed locked on mine.

  I took a shuddering breath and looked away. Not real. It wasn’t real. We were going to save Chanelle, just like China had wanted. And China wasn’t here.

  “It’s your fault,” she whispered from the ground, blood bubbling from her mouth.

  I turned back to her, gently straightened her out a bit and crossed her arms over her chest, then pushed her back out of the light. I waited.

  Zed stumbled forward, bleeding from the eyes. “Help . . . help,” he gasped, reaching out for me desperately.

  My arms lifted to stabilize him almost involuntarily, and he collapsed forward, no longer able to support his own weight. I wanted to help, but as blood bubbled from underneath his eyelids, silver-grey foam frothed up from his mouth. The nanites that NIX had invented. I’d known they needed maintenance, but we’d stolen some of their nutrient paste! He had been taking it, hadn’t he? When was the last time I saw him do it? He hadn’t run out, and not told me, right? That sounded like something I would do, I thought ironically.

  “You’ve been eating their nutrient paste, right? Right!?” I slapped his cheek gently, trying to get him to focus as his eyes rolled back in his head. I was breathing faster, and my heart was definitely beating faster than normal. “Oh, god,” I said aloud. This Trial was better than I had hoped. Or worse.

  I laid him gently on the ground. “I would never let this happen to you in real life,” I murmured, and walked away into the darkness. I didn’t look back.

  The ground fell out from under me, and I was plummeting down toward the God of Knowledge, my claws out and Chaos lashing toward him. “Ahh!” I screamed. I could see into his open mouth.

  He reached out to me, hand smashing through the air, slamming into my side, fingers folding around me, crushing. He brought me down toward his mouth, which yawned open, unnaturally wide in a way that would have caused human cheeks to rip open at the crease of the lips. I could see bits of human flesh within, stuck between his teeth and rotting away.

  I ope
ned my mouth to scream again, and somehow, it, too began to open wider and wider, till it eclipsed my body, and then his. My gigantic mouth crashed downward around his head, the teeth ripping and grinding till I’d severed through his neck. I chewed the crunchy metal of his head and swallowed, and his rusting golden body fell to the ground, lifeless.

  My stomach roiled, first in nausea, and then in something else. Light poured out of my eyes and mouth in laser-like beams of brightness. Chaos reacted, roiling like the sea in a storm, darkness fighting light, still my body began to break apart, the power bursting through my skin, throwing dancing light and shadows onto the world around me.

  I didn’t recognize this fear, but it must have come from within me, because I couldn’t help the dread and almost overwhelming desire to reject what was happening. I wanted to scream my denial, to turn away and hide, but I couldn’t.

  The world around me began to crumble. The earth, the God of Knowledge’s senseless body, the very air, disintegrating around me. Where it was destroyed, it revealed a . . . lack. A nothingness, behind the veil of the universe. I screamed, then, and somehow forced my eyes shut. I knew I would die if I kept looking.

  I could sense it, though, even with my eyes closed. I screamed again as I began to lose my sense of self, Chaos and the power of the God of Knowledge bursting outward till my body ceased to exist.

  “We have met, and we will meet again,” a faint voice whispered to me.

  I closed my eyes and just concentrated on my breaths, which came . . . increasingly slowly. And finally, I began to . . . vibrate. It started subtly, and then grew more pronounced, till I was jerking out of my own skin with every shake. I struggled to open my eyes, and when I finally did I stood, and looked back at my peaceful body.