by Azalea Ellis
Birch discovered how to use his Skill, which with the name Gale, was unsurprisingly an aerokinesis Skill. It’s first use was to allow him to fly, after he displayed incredible foolishness in jumping off one of the palace balconies, only to discover that his wings were not in fact ready to carry him just yet.
I scolded him for his stupidity and recklessness till he crouched to the ground, ears flat to his head and whimpering.
He poked me with his nose, sending a flashing image of a pitiful, mewling kitten into my mind. Then, walking meekly behind two long legs and a smell of strength, a flash of blue eyes and dark blood.
The two-legs was me, and it seemed to be his way of saying he was sorry and he would be good in the future.
I sighed and gave him a flank of raw meat, with a short congratulation on discovering how to use his Skill.
After that, he “flew” everywhere he could, creating a constant updraft below himself to keep afloat.
Gregor spent a lot of time training with a pair of blood-activated Estreyan daggers, which were more like swords compared to the boy’s size. They’d been donated by one of my many supporters, and when Gregor spilled a few drops of blood onto their hilt, they would phase in and out of corporeality with him. They were incredibly deadly. While in shadow form, they could pass through anything, and when they returned to reality, they retained their momentum for a short while. Gregor tested this by cutting through trees and blocks of marble, phasing back into his physical form halfway through them.
An Estreyan puppet maker who learned of Kris’ Skill came to the palace and volunteered to design and build bodies to house her summons, and they worked together creating bodies out of steel and platinum. Bodies that wouldn’t crumble with their own attacks, and that could kill a hundred different ways.
Blaine got into quite a few arguments about this training with Kris and Gregor, but he couldn’t stop them from training. Not without alerting the Estreyans who gleefully supported said training, and fully expected them to have to fight against the God of Knowledge.
At that point, only Adam had yet to figure out how to use his new Skill, Bestow. He was frustrated enough about this that he considered allowing a specialist to be brought in for a consultation, but a simple request from Kris lead to the answer.
Adam could gift his ink constructs. Not just creating them to attach to someone else, only to expire within the next couple minutes. With a bit of focus, his Skill allowed him to transfer ownership of his paintings to the person whose skin they were drawn on, to be Animated at will by them.
Too quickly, the last days of the countdown passed, and despite everything, I did not feel prepared. How could we be, when our goal was to defeat a god?
Still, the Estreyans looked at me with hope.
We gathered before the airships on the night before the final day, all of us nervous, checking our gear and running though the previous mock battles in our heads, over and over. Some people grew quiet, some people chattered or joked uncomfortably, and a couple people walked away to throw up inconspicuously behind a tree or around a corner. Every warrior was kitted out in the most powerful weapons and armor that we could provide.
I stood a little apart from the crowd, and pushed my Voice Skill to add weight to my words. “This is not a night for fear,” I yelled. “This is not a night for doubt. Those nights have passed. That time when you did not know if you could ever be saved is passed. This is a night for hope, and triumph, and joy.” Voice pulsed from my throat in time with my words, and I could feel the weight of the crowd’s unwavering gaze on me. “Because now we know what we have to do, and it is very simple. The first step in the path has been swept clear before us. If you have fear, or doubt, throw it away. Tonight, we defeat a god. Tomorrow, the Sickness.”
I wasn’t any good with speeches, but Voice helped with that, and the Estreyans still cheered me, stomping their feet and clanging their weapons against their armor.
I didn’t see Blaine or the kids among the crowd, and I wished them a safe escape as we filed into the ships, and our fleet lifted off, heading towards what would be the death of most of us.
When Blaine’s Window appeared in front of me, dread filled my heart.
—I cannot find the children. They were in the ship I had decommissioned. I left for a moment, and when I came back they were gone. I fear they may have been attacked, but perhaps they went with you? They are not answering my Windows.—
-Blaine-
—I didn’ see them before we left. I will check for them.—
-Eve-
My Wraith Skill had trouble exiting the air-tight ships, and then reaching another at such high speeds, as if the passing wind were trying to blow it away, so I sent a Window to Kris and Gregor instead, including Blaine in it as well.
—Where are you? Are you okay?—
-Eve-
—
We’re fine.—
-Kris-
Blaine interjected, then.
—Where are you!? I thought you may have been attacked again, or kidnapped!—
-Blaine-
—We are going to fight with the others. Don’t try to stop us, it’s just a waste of time. We already made up our minds.—
-Gregor-
—It’s not safe. You should stay away. This isn’t a game. It isn’t even like when we were attacked by those assassins. A lot of people are going to die.—
-Eve-
—If we can’t win, we’re going to die, too, anyway.—
-Kris-
—We have the Sickness. And we have the Seal of Nine. We’re part of this, and you can’t do anything about that. We have more right than you do to be involved in this.—
-Gregor-
—You are children. As an adult, I cannot allow you to put your lives in danger.—
-Blaine-
—We’re flying our own ship, so there’s no one to make us turn around. And I was telling the truth when I said you can’t stop us. Physically, you can’t stop us. We have Skills. And all we have to do is tell all the other Estreyans that you’re trying to stop us from fighting the God of Knowledge, and how it might make us lose the war against the Sickness.—
-Gregor-
—We’re not doing this to spite you. But we have to fight.—
-Kris-
—I’m not going to sit back and let myself die.—
-Gregor-
—We’re not going to attack Knowledge directly. We’ll stay on the edges of the fight, safely out of the way, and just attack the sentinels and rescue hurt people. We have the anti-light visors, and armor and a med-kit, and weapons and my marionettes.—
-Kris-
—Eve, do something about this! They’ll listen to you. If they won’t, make them listen. Stop them.—
-Blaine-
I hesitated.
—I can’t stop anyone from fighting for their own life, Blaine. Even if they are kids. However, if you guys are going to join this battle, you will obey me as if you are soldiers. My orders are law. You obey. You do not argue, you do not question. You won’t be recklessly endangering yourselves for no reason.—
-Eve-
If I could guarantee that we could win this and keep them safe, it would have been different. But I couldn’t. No child should be subjected to the horrors of battle. But no child should be subjected to a dissociative wasting disease, either.
My attack force converged in on the God of Knowledge from all around, the larger ships carrying ten or twenty people, while the smallest bore only individuals. We did our best to avoid the light of the Sentinels, but of course it was impossible to do so completely. There would be no element of surprise—one of the downfalls of increased military force. The God of Knowledge had to know we were coming, but he hadn't tried to attack or given any indication that he was aware of our approach. Perhaps he was confident in his own dominance, and wanted us to attack. So he could kill and eat us.
I ran through a last series of tests on the tracking and communicatio
n system we’d implemented, making sure everything was working properly. The anti-light visors Blaine had created allowed the Estreyan Thinkers and battlefield generals to assign tasks to individuals. It aided in extracting wounded soldiers, assigning higher priority ratings to certain objectives, and notifying people of incoming danger or attacks.
Sunrise was about an hour away, and the darkness made it easier to see the god’s power. The valley of pure gold where the god resided shone like a beacon in the night, the light of the sentinels cutting through the darkness with an almost palpable harshness. What I saw surprised me. Many of the sentinels had fallen to that strange bubbling. The god stood in the middle of the valley, his condition worsened in the time since I’d last seen him. The back of his knee was half eaten away, his skin flaked away all over, and his “hair” was lopsided, as if he was going bald starting from the side.
—Hang back until stage one is over. Then, station here.—
-Eve-
I sent Kris and Gregor a mapped location through a Window. It was as safe a position as I could choose without removing them from the fight altogether. From the spot half-covered by a ridge of rock on the side of the mountain, they would be able to see the battle, but still escape quickly if necessary, and there was a natural barrier against the light of some of the sentinels. Kris would be able to see to direct her summons, and Gregor wouldn’t have too far to travel to reach the heavier clusters of sentinels, which he would be removing.
Stage One started. Fast-moving ships flew over the valley in a wave, dropping dark grey spheres as they went, concentrating them around the god, the bigger sentinels, and the sentinels in higher or more strategically defensible areas. When the spheres hit, they exploded spectacularly.
This had been a human idea. Estreyans preferred to do things under their own power. Then, another wave of ships, dropping pouches that exploded into fine dust that would float endlessly in the air, and make the path of the light even easier to see, like sun beams through dust motes.
Stage Two. My fighters with enough immediately destructive power attacked the remaining larger sentinels, while small, darting ships and long-range attackers harried the god. Few were strong enough to do serious damage, but some were, and others worked together to chip away at the bases of the sentinels. It worked for less than a minute.
Knowledge picked up one of the broken, dimmed chunks of sentinel, and hurled it toward one of the attacking ships as it passed by overhead.
They dodged, but not nearly quickly enough. The ship careened out of the sky in what was probably the worst possible way, smashing into both another ship and a flying attacker on the way down. All three crashed, but the god grabbed the flyer as he plummeted toward the ground. He shoved the mortal’s body headfirst into his mouth, biting down on their stomach and ripping away, so their intestines broke and spilled out.
He chewed slowly, a look of pleasure on his eyeless face. Then he twitched strangely, like a robot with a glitch, or an old tape recording with a scratch on it. “So . . . hungry,” he murmured, swallowing, and then popping the bottom half of the body into his mouth and repeating the process. “I will not pass from existence!” he suddenly screamed shrilly. “I am—erumpant—to—widdershins—” He twitched like he had a nerve disease.
That had distracted people. There was a moment of silence, stillness, as the God of Knowledge spasmed, little flecks of his body floating away like really bad dandruff.
Then the comms blew up with commentary. One of their gods had the Sickness.
I overrode their voices on the system, and spoke calmly into everyone’s ear as I watched them both in my mind’s eye, and out of the windshield of my ship far above. “This is the path laid out by the Oracle,” I said, hoping that would give them some comfort. “We must win this battle, for the future of the world. This is our only chance. It can be done, so we must do it.”
I didn’t know if my words would be enough, especially as the god reached one of the downed ships and began to tear into it to get at the person within.
One team leader on the other side of the valley let out a battle cry, the sound echoing off the mountainsides, and resumed attacking his sentinel frantically. His team followed suit, and then the rest of the advance attackers followed, cheered on by those watching and waiting their turns.
Once the God of Knowledge was done eating the three people he’d downed, he lifted a hand, palm facing upward, and grew a golden column out of it. He hurled it, and killed the team leader who’d encouraged the others, the chunk of sentinel piercing through him and clipping the arm right off one of his team members.
Knowledge tried the same on another group, but one of them stepped forward, throwing up a shield that ate the sentinel as soon as it touched the shimmering patch of air.
The god laughed, his strange, conglomerate voice echoing smoothly off the mountainsides all around. "You stupid, stupid mortals. You—cabal—your strength to be added to my own."
None of the Stage Two teams hesitated in their attacks.
He seemed to take that as a challenge, growing and launching the sentinels with blurring speed, despite his size, and the obvious limp from his bad knee. He spun and lunged, and we died. Sometimes, the Thinkers gave warning in time for the fighters to throw themselves out of the way, or one of the team members was able to dodge or block the attack. More often, they didn’t.
Still, where we succeeded in cutting down some of the sentinels, their light cut out like that of a crushed lightning bug.
The god lunged toward one of the closer groups.
They retreated immediately, sprinting away at full speed.
He almost snapped up the slowest of them, but one of the extraction team waiting on the mountainside saved him, reaching out with a lash of power that grabbed and snapped the Estreyan forward like the tongue of a frog snatching a bug out of the air.
The God of Knowledge turned to his prey’s rescuer, and with an almost nonchalant toss of gold, their brain was smeared across the rock behind them.
We changed tactics, then. Some teams rushed in to act as decoys and distract the god, while other continued to take out the sentinels, but this time moving in arcs that took them back to safety quickly after they entered the battlefield, and made it harder for the god to focus on any one team.
The power the Estreyans held was truly astounding. Some flew through the sky under their own energy, attacking from above or rescuing others below when they couldn’t escape quickly enough on foot. Some lashed out with Skills that flashed through the air like light-shows, or created golems that pried themselves out of the ground and rushed forward into battle, or flashed walls and barriers into existence for a moment to protect their comrades.
It was sound, and light, and beautiful chaos, as we removed the god’s source of control over the battlefield.
It lasted only for a couple minutes.
Knowledge pretended to be distracted by a flashy attack from above, only to suddenly turn and take out an entire team halfway across the valley. The limited attacks on the sentinels became counterproductive then, as he killed relentlessly, only pausing to eat a couple people here and there.
Time for Stage Three.
Chapter 38
In the end,
I will win.
— Eve Redding
I sent out the signal, and my ship flew to the edge of the valley, flitting low to the ground. The floor dropped out from under me, sending me plummeting toward the golden ground below.
Two other medium-sized ships did the same, my attack group falling with me. We tumbled when we hit the ground, and the ships flew away.
All around the valley, other teams did the same.
I worked best with my own team, so despite the protests of some of the Estreyans who felt they would be better able to protect me, Adam, Jacky, Sam, and Torliam crouched in the relative darkness with me, along with a few others hand-picked for their Skills.
An Attribute-boosting healer, still just a boy, laid hi
s hands on my back, maximizing everything he could, and then pushing even harder.
When he finished with me, he moved on to the others, till his Skill was exhausted, and he collapsed to his knees. A flicker caught him, and he was gone, extracted on the orders of one of the Thinkers.
I resisted the urge to straighten and hold my head high in challenge. The rush of multiplied power made me feel as if I'd just had a shot of caffeine straight to the veins while listening to my own personal film track of epic music. However, I was aware the feeling was an illusion, as people much stronger than me were being killed like mosquitos in front of me.
I had thought the display of powers was awe-inspiring before, but now it was truly astonishing. This was the wave of heavy hitters. The attackers who could damage a god directly, and who aimed to kill or at least incapacitate him. Plus, there was me.
I stood, finally, and let out a scream of challenge toward the God of Knowledge, a familiar action from our mock battles. Voice thudded, sending out my scream in a rolling wave that shivered through the ground. Other voices joined me, first my own team, and then the others, and the valley echoed with our screams of defiance.
Patches of light and darkness flared, strange effects that gave me a headache when Wraith tried to make sense of what was happening to the laws of space or time within them.
We moved forward as a group, traveling through sentinel-free patches whenever possible, and shielded by either Adam or Torliam when it wasn’t.
In a particularly flashy move, a gigantic flower of frost-threads and blue light bloomed from the god’s head, moving through the full lifecycle from bud to decay in the course of a couple seconds. The wave of cold hit me hard enough to induce a shiver, even halfway across the valley.