Gods of Rust and Ruin

by Azalea Ellis

  I did my best to act unsurprised, and reached out a hand to lay gently on his shoulder.

  He rose to his feet.

  The queen snapped the cloak off me with a flourish, like a stage-magician, drawing attention back away from her son. “She has been given three gifts by the Oracle." She held up my hand, displaying first the ring, and then motioned for me to lift the other arm, showing off the band wrapping around my forearm, and the unsolved gift wrapped around my waist and clasped with a dark grey brooch. "And the mark of Testimony." She touched a finger to the crystal in the hollow at the base of my throat, and it reacted on its own, thrumming a pulse of power outward that washed through those of the crowd closer to the throne. "Her companions have the Seal of Nine." She waved a hand, and my teammates lifted their hands, showing off their own crystal-embedded skin. “She is here, with a quest from the Oracle, to defeat the Sickness,”

  It was a strong exaggeration, even based on what the queen believed, but I wasn’t surprised.

  It took even longer for the noise to die down, that time.

  After her announcement, some of the higher ranked court members, judging by how rich they looked and their level of arrogance, moved up before the throne to ask official questions in front of the court.

  "How do you know she is the one talked of in the Lore? Or even a Matrix? Has she taken the test of genealogy to prove herself?" one man asked. He kept a veneer of politeness, but his eyes were narrowed, and he looked at the queen with a kind of greasy hunger when she wasn't watching.

  "There is no doubt she is a Matrix. My son has a blood-covenant with her. But we will gladly allow a test of lineage.”

  His cheeks twitched in what might have been a smirk if he'd allowed it to form fully. “That will alleviate some of my doubts. However, wasn't your line in service to the Matrixes?"

  "Indeed," she said severely, as if what he was insinuating didn't bother her. But I felt an almost unnoticeable pulse of power roll off of her, and knew she'd been angered. "My younger son has the honor of fulfilling the historical traditions.”

  After him, others asked similarly leading questions, as if trying to trip the queen up, and there were many among the crowd that frowned and muttered to each other, as if suspicious. However, just as many others were staring at me with interest, or crying even as they smiled, or hugging each other with overwhelming emotion.

  Finally, someone asked how we were going to defeat the Sickness.

  Queen Mardinest smiled with triumph. "The God of Knowledge has met my champion, and given her a quest to gather strength, so that she may prove the worth of the mortals on this world, and gain knowledge of our path to victory against the Sickness!" Her voice had raised in both volume and power, and she raised a fist into the sky to punctuate the end of her sentence.

  The mood washed over the assembly, and they responded with a cheer of their own, which she egged on this time rather than trying to quiet. Her Charisma levels must be off the charts. “I ask that those willing to lend their power to this quest come join us. I believe that we may eradicate the Sickness completely during my reign, and I will not rest until it is done!" She once again pumped her fist in the air, and let out a war cry laden with that almost physical intensity particularly powerful Estreyans seemed to be able to imbue into their voices. "Tonight, we celebrate!"

  The whole place exploded with festivities after that, and even if anyone had wanted to ask more questions, they wouldn't have been able to over the overwhelming noise. People were crying, laughing, hugging each other and dancing.

  My group stayed with the queen, talking to the people who lined up to meet me, or pledge something to the cause. The Estreyans kept thanking me, reaching out to touch me or one of my sparkly gifts.

  I'd reacted a bit harshly when one chubby man tried to touch the crystal at the base of my throat.

  He'd been surprised and half fearful at first, but quickly laughed off my firm grip on his wrist, and the claws that pressed against his skin in warning. "We have a warrior in this one!" he called out to the people around him, which caused another irritating cheer to rise up.

  I had to stay at the dais, but after a while Torliam was allowed to leave and mingle in the crowd, surrounded by a large group of people demanding his attention. He looked truly happy for the first time I'd ever seen. His shoulders were thrown back, not in arrogance, but as if the lack of burden they carried made him stand straighter. It made me uncomfortable, though I wasn’t sure why.

  Two weeks after that night came the day where we officially accepted applicants for the fight. The line of non-rejected applicants stretched all the way through the castle, from the huge throne room to the streets outside, and plenty of people were trying to sneak their way into the line though they hadn’t been accepted by the queen’s vetting process. It was chaos.

  The queen had sent out word after the Trial that we would be accepting warrior applicants to go challenge the God of Knowledge’s main manifestation. Many, many people applied to follow me, but her analysts had sorted through them, only allowing the best to be accepted. “There will be limited battlegrounds in a physical sense,” she said. “Even with those who can fly and do not need room on the ground. It is better to have a smaller group of those who have a real chance of defeating the God of Knowledge than clutter the place with well-meaning weaklings who will be dying like gnats all over the battlefield.”

  She’d also found me another healer who could boost my healing Attributes. He had seen me a few times, and warned me that I didn’t have much time left before Chaos overtook me.

  Even if my body could have withstood it, the time limit given by the Oracle was approaching—the smaller of the Estreyan moons had already darkened twice.

  The queen stood in front of her throne, with me beside her and the rest of my team kind of milling about the room with varying levels of watchfulness. “If I were wise,” the queen said without looking at me, staring at the Estreyans milling about and standing in the too-long line, “I would kill you now.”

  My head snapped around toward her as I registered her words, and I stepped back in sudden wariness. When someone so powerful made a comment about killing me, it wasn’t something I could take lightly.

  She noticed my alarm, and gave a slight smile that was less than reassuring. “With the number of my citizens ready and willing to throw their lives away for you, you could become the leader of a fanatical uprising. Some people place all their faith in the Lore.”

  She meant that I could become a religious cult leader. “That sounds like way too much work for me,” I said. “I just want to finish this and retire somewhere in peace. Or something.”

  “Or something.” She raised one eyebrow sardonically.

  I wasn’t quite sure what the joke was, but she walked away then, and I was happy to let the subject lie dormant, but not forgotten.

  I stood at the front of the line of accepted warriors, listened one by one to what their strengths were—basically whatever had gotten them accepted—and received their pledge of alliance formally. It took a few hours to get through the whole line. Some of my new allies were stoic and determined, some prideful, and some looked at me like I was the messiah-figure they believed me to be.

  Just when I thought it was over, the queen stood up and dramatically announced for the cameras that she was lending me two squads of her own elite fighters. You know, seeing as I was her champion.

  Still, who turns down two squads of elite fighters? Not me. I smiled and thanked her prettily.

  Chapter 35

  Weep not for the shore, but become the wave.

  — Sha Du

  I let out a scream of challenge toward the God of Knowledge, not really meant to intimidate him, but to release some of my own tension. He had really messed me up, and I'd only recently felt fully recovered from that, at a time when I already had too many problems to deal with.

  In a move we'd practiced many times, my group started to move forward from the edge of the valley t
oward the God of Knowledge, staying in the shadows and keeping a protective formation around me, since I had to live to make this work.

  Though my eyes were closed, I watched the battlefield with my Wraith Skill.

  Ahead of my group, the heavy-hitters attacked with abandon. They paused for a moment, to allow an Estreyan with two huge, beautiful blades as tall as he was to attack without taking friendly fire.

  He slung the blade off his back and pointed it toward the god with one smooth motion of his arm. A point of light shot out the end of it, connecting to a spot on the other side of the god.

  Half a second after that, the Estreyan had moved there, so fast even Wraith barely registered an after-image. The sound reached me, then, like a bell ringing as something shattered.

  The Estreyan's blade broke into pieces and fell to the ground.

  The God of Knowledge paused, as if surprised, and started to turn to the Estreyan. There was a line scored across the back of his golden knee. The one that was already rusting away.

  The Estreyan was already pulling the second, backup blade from his back, and repeated the process before the god could even complete his pivot.

  The blade broke again, after cutting across the exact same spot on the back of the knee as the first slice.

  The Estreyan landed, back where he’d started, and fell down dead from the blow Knowledge had landed on him as he passed.

  But my fighters didn't lose focus just because of that, instead redoubling their attacks, focused on the god’s pelvis, stomach, and lower back.

  At the timed command, they all stopped attacking simultaneously, and I rushed forward, surrounded by my still mostly fresh team.

  I neared the target quickly, stepping over ground that was simultaneously melted, frozen, and a half dozen other residual effects. One patch glowed an almost comical, radioactive-green. I avoided that spot carefully.

  Torliam was counteracting the light for my group, I could tell, and Adam kept his hands touching the disks his strongest shields had been painted on, in case he needed to activate them instantly.

  When we neared, Adam and other forcefield and barrier-makers tossed the results of their Skills up around the god, hoping to trap him for just a moment.

  The God of Knowledge tore through all the shields around him as if they were paper, raised his hand, and brought it down flat, smashing me and the rest of my group like bugs.

  “Damn it!” I gritted out. A loud horn blared, and I stood up with the others, as the simulation lost some of its terrifying realism.

  One of my Estreyan warriors kicked a golden tree, making it flicker and getting his foot stuck halfway inside the hard-light construct.

  “Damn it,” Gregor also muttered as he drew nearer.

  Blaine gave me a pointed look. “Your cursing is rubbing off on an eight-year-old.”

  “You did well, young one,” a female warrior said. “Was it three people that you saved from death, this time?”

  Gregor scowled. “But we still lost!”

  Birch coughed agreement, walking beside the boy with tail and ears drooping.

  “I’m going to go review the logs,” I said, walking toward the viewing room. “Maybe we can get more efficient with taking out the sentinels in the beginning.”

  The Estreyans I passed bowed or smiled at me, despite the fatigue and vague sense of shamed failure I knew we all felt.

  My team and a few of the more Intelligence-focused Estreyans, or those that had large scale battle experience, followed me.

  —I believe that cabin where we first arrived will be the best place to take the kids while you fight. We will be safe from the relatively weaker monsters there, and hopefully we will not be followed.—

  -Blaine-

  I nodded.

  —The palace has quite a few ships. You’ll wat to disable the comms and tracking system in one ahead of time.—

  -Eve-

  The Estreyans expected the kids to fight along with the rest of us, because they had the Seal of Nine, but neither Blaine or I were okay with putting them in such extreme danger.

  The preparations to fight the God of Knowledge took up most of my concentration, anyway. I'd been researching past supplicants and successful Bestowals, even though gaining his approval wasn't exactly the goal, I hoped to gain clues about how to win.

  People all over Estreyer were doing their best to contribute even if they weren't warriors. I had become the somewhat bemused owner of several properties, air-ships, living steeds of different breeds, and tons of advanced armor and weaponry. I had someone whose only job was to manage the donations!

  The city even had a much cooler version of NIX's simulation chamber. My team and myself were the only recorded people to see the God of Knowledge in recent history. We’d helped some of the technicians made a passable model of him for us to mock battle.

  The Estreyans and I had been trying to come up with a plan to defeat him. We gathered at the simulation chamber every day and pitted our strength and strategy against the modeled God of Knowledge, over and over again.

  Unfortunately, we kept failing. No matter what we came up with, when we tried it out, we always lost.

  I paused the three-dimensional simulation of the battle we’d just gone through, just as the God of Knowledge batted one of my most important fighters out of the air in a move that would have killed, or at least incapacitated her in a real fight. I growled under my breath, and let the playback continue, watching the three-dimensional image of her body hit the ground and turn red.

  "He's too strong," I said aloud. "He can take whatever we throw at him. His inherent power makes him the worst possible opponent, because not only is he stronger than us, but he knows everything we're doing or just about to do, as long as it's within the range of his divination."

  "Why don't we just make him weaker, then?" Jacky said.

  I looked up at her in surprise.

  She’d gone back to being too quiet, after our fight with the assassins. She trained harder than ever, but that was all she did.

  I’d been worried about her, but when I asked her if anything was wrong, she’d told me that she was weak, and had to get stronger. “There’s nothing you’re gonna say or do that’s gonna change that,” she’d said. “I don’t need mushy gushy friendship and feelings right now. I know we’re friends. What I need is to get stronger before it’s too late, so we can all keep being friends.”

  I hadn’t been able to retort to that, because I understood how she felt all too well. Still, it was a surprise that she had spoken during the strategy meeting, other than to ask about thing she could be doing better.

  "If I knew how to do that . . .” I glared at the simulated god reduced to human size in front of me.

  "Maybe I'm being stupid," Jacky said, her shoulders hunching in a little.

  I caught something in her tone, and narrowed my eyes at her. "Do you have an idea, Jacky? Tell me. I need all the ideas I can get." This hesitance wasn't like her.

  "Well . . . why don't we poison him?" she asked simply.

  Adam, and Blaine, who were working with Chanelle in the corner of the room, looked over, their attention drawn.

  "He's made of Seeds, right? Or something like that."

  I nodded. His body was probably a manifestation, kind of like Behelaino's, but there was probably a core of Seed material somewhere in or near it that was powering his form. In essence, the God of Knowledge was really just Seed material, gathered in one spot.

  "That thing NIX did to Chanelle, didn't it get rid of her Seeds?" Jacky asked simply.

  My eyes widened, and I'm pretty sure I gasped like a landed fish. "Jacky. You're a genius." I turned to Adam and Blaine, who were sharing similar looks with each other, and looked at Chanelle. "Could that work?"

  Chanelle frowned, scratching her forearm. “Are you going back to NIX? I want to come.”

  We conferred for a few minutes, but Blaine was pretty positive it would work, and as he was the one with the most experience,
I was inclined to trust his judgement.

  The Estreyans were more than a little alarmed at the implications of anti-Seed weaponry, and the fact that the military force of a hostile—though primitive—planet had been developing it. Blaine’s explanation of how it was almost certainly meant to allow NIX to attempt to create Players out of those humans without the necessary Estreyan gene to accept the Seeds, and not necessarily to attack Estreyans, didn’t mollify anyone.

  Still, we took the idea to the queen. She stood up and started tapping on the table, calling for some of her official underlings. "Call door-makers to me. I need experts in the old connections, those beyond the void. I have an immediate decree," she announced to the room. "I am re-opening the portal to Earth.”

  People gasped.

  The Estreyans who learned about the queen’s plan over the next few days had the same universal reaction. Horror.

  “Why is this such a big deal?” I asked. “The arrays are there for a reason, right? I mean, it worked just fine for us, and we didn’t even have a complete one.”

  Torliam didn’t look at me. “It is forbidden.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated. “The array technology is knowledge we brought with us, before Estreyer. We do not fully understand it any longer. There are two reasons why it is forbidden to use it, and why the doorways were blocked. The first is that we feared to spread the Sickness to others. The second . . . do you remember that I told you there are powers beyond that of the gods?”

  I nodded.

  “Some call them the eldritch. We do not understand them. Some even believe that the Abhorrent, which causes the Sickness, is one of them, and that is why we cannot stop it. Long, long ago, we discovered that the arrays work both ways. I do not mean between world to world. The arrays pierce through the divide. The void between worlds. When we open them, things from between may slip back through.”