Gods of Rust and Ruin

by Azalea Ellis

  She must be exhausted, I knew. I walked on. I passed more Estreyans as I went. Most of the non-trees were relatively unharmed, but I found a couple who were severely injured. “I’ll send a healer for you, I promise.” My visor was long gone, and even my VR chip seemed to be malfunctioning. Or else I’d forgotten how to use it.

  It didn't take me too long to find a clearing, where people were gathering. This had been where I fought the god, before being "eaten."

  Adam and Sam were there, both lying on the ground and looking horrible. But they were alive, and an Estreyan healer hovered over them.

  Jacky stood to the side, tears running down her beautiful, grimy face. She made almost no sound in her sadness, aside from the occasional hitching breath.

  Torliam lay against a mossy rock over to one side, surrounded by some concerned Estreyans, a couple of whom I recognized as healers. He was letting out seemingly uncontrolled, and accidental, bursts of Skill-blue mist.

  “Healers?” I asked. “Injured,” I said, pointing back the way I’d come. My voice sounded really strange. And it felt strange. I reached up absently to touch the base of my throat, which was vibrating a little too much to be normal. Was that Voice again?

  Heads turned to stare at me, eyes widened, emotions that I couldn’t quite decipher crossing their faces. Were they afraid to go? Maybe they didn’t understand me.

  “It is okay,” I added, making sure I was speaking Estreyan. “It is over. Go save them.”

  One of the healers bowed deeply to me, and rushed off in the direction I’d come from.

  Well, at least someone was listening.

  I swirled my awareness outward, and fell over when the world tilted, the Skill overwhelming me with the sudden rush of information. I reined it back in, but didn’t bother to get off the ground. “Everyone important is okay,” I said to Adam. “And a lot of the Estreyans. Make people go get them and bring them here.” I waved my hand limply. “I’m too tired to do the ordering.”

  “Are you in shock?” Adam muttered.

  I ignored him. No need to bicker, after everything.

  “The god is dead?” Torliam asked.

  I nodded, rolling onto my back to look up at the sky, the stars fading away into pink and blue light. “Death is but a metamorphosis,” I said wisely, in my own opinion. “But yeah. That one is gone. Maybe another one will gather here in a while, but he won’t be sick.”

  People shifted, and I heard someone whisper, "It is her."

  I turned to Jacky, who had fallen onto her butt, and was staring at me. “That reminds me, I have six fingers,” I said, lifting my left hand to show her what I’d discovered. I frowned at it. The skin was darker and harder, segmented in geometric patterns that looked like a cross between honeycombs and scales. The fingers were clawed, and abnormally long and angular, almost like they'd tried to grow one more joint. “Weird.”

  “You’re bigger, too,” she said.

  “Really? Maybe that’s why it’s hard to walk—Torliam, why are you flashing?” I was distracted by how irritatingly bright he was being. “Stop that.”

  “I cannot.”

  "You should probably work on your control. You desperately need it,” I said.

  "I think some leniency could be afforded me, as I am bound to a godling twice over, and the backlash makes control difficult." He raised an eyebrow deliberately at me as people reacted to his words.

  I rolled my eyes at him, and turned to Jacky. “Excuses.”

  As if she'd been waiting for the eye contact, she launched herself forward and slammed into me. “Idiot!” she half yelled at me. "I really thought you were dead this time."

  I hugged her back, and resisted the little burning tingle in my eyes. It felt good to get a hug. I was tired, really tired.

  Birch arrived with Kris and Gregor, all three of them looking a bit worse for wear, but uninjured.

  The injured and the Estreyans that had been separated from the main group started to join us, Blaine among them. He didn’t yell at the kids, just gathered them into a crushing hug.

  The clearing filled up with people, but there were so many less than there had been when we left. Still, we’d killed a god. And the people-trees were pretty, at least.

  Interlude 4

  When the scryer finally worked out the requirements and finished preparation to open up a brief viewing window onto Estreyer, Eliahan brought the woman to watch..

  The scryer located their target, and in the serene pool of water carved out of the stone floor, a moving image appeared.

  She took a single, startled step backward, but stopped when she felt his hand on her arm.

  He dropped his hand.

  “What is this?”

  “It is our child, grown strong. Sadly, it is also the beginning of the end.”

  “What are you saying?” An uncharacteristic waver entered her voice, perhaps brought on by the almost physical atmosphere of foreboding from his people.

  “Words were spoken, a long time ago. A prophecy, some think.”

  “A prophecy? Like telling the future?” Her mouth quirked up on one side, but fell again when no one responded with similar amusement. “One of your…quirks,” she said, with a resigned air of understanding. “What did this prophecy say?”

  “Despair follows hope,” he said simply.

  “You don’t believe in this prophecy?”

  “They are a slippery thing. One cannot truly know the future, I believe, unless they are the God of Time, and perhaps not even then. We are no match in strength for what is coming. But the will of a mortal can be a powerful thing.”

  Chapter 43

  I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

  — J. Robert Oppenheimer

  We had more than enough empty ships to take the survivors back to the capitol, and I slept the whole way there. I slept for the next three days, in fact.

  I awoke to an opulent room with paintings on the ceiling of people using their Skills.

  An Estreyan woman had been sitting beside my bed, and she squeaked when I awoke, then scrambled out of the room backward, bowing repeatedly as she went.

  I got up and went straight to the bathroom, peeing for what was probably a straight minute. When I finished, I looked at myself in the mirrors on the main room’s walls.

  I'd grown a little bigger. Enough that I wasn't just an abnormally tall woman, but big enough to stand out as strange. My eyes had changed—upgraded to match my beyond-human levels of Perception. My facial features, too, though it was hard to say exactly how they were different. A little more angular. A little more striking. And blemish-free.

  I still wore the armor from the battle, though Chaos had changed it, too, and apparently made it impossible to remove from the outside, though it had been cleaned.

  The skin of my entire left arm, the one that had been turned into hamburger and never quite the same afterward, was dark, with those honeycomb-scales, though the rest of me was still mostly normal. The arm didn’t hurt anymore, at least. The Oracle’s gifts were still there, sitting as comfortably as ever, despite my larger size.

  My body was beautiful, in an alien, interesting kind of way. But not attractive in the way I often used to wish I could be. I could feel Chaos unbound within me, swirling around calmly. It didn’t hurt, though it rippled at my attention, as if readying itself to be used.

  I shrugged experimentally at my new reflection.

  The door opened, and Queen Mardinest slipped into the room.

  “They are calling you the godkiller,” she said without preamble. There were bags under her eyes, and her skin looked thin and pale.

  “It is what we set out to do,” I said.

  “It is not what I set out to do. Nor the warriors who followed and died for you.”

  “I know. But who would have agreed to help me kill a god?” Especially, when the reward was only to be my own salvation. It was ironic coincidence that my own power, used properly, also happened to be the thing that could cleanse
the Sickness, literally burning it out.

  “The world has already forgotten your treachery,” she said. “They rejoice, and say the loss of life was well-spent. The celebrations spill into the streets, and your name is on every tongue. The warriors who lived exult in their good fortune, not to have lived, but to have battled with you.” She stepped forward, holding up a vial. “But I will not forget,” she promised.

  I stepped back quickly, but she didn’t move to attack, and after a couple moments of confusion, I realized what was in the vial. Meningolycanosis.

  “Yes,” she nodded. “I know what your people have done. I know how they prepare to kill us, steal our power, and violated my son. I know that he is likely not the only one. But most importantly, I know that they cultivate the Sickness, for use in war.” She spat on the floor, turned to the door, and left.

  I stood still for a moment. My stomach burned, though I wasn’t sure whether it was with hunger or apprehension.

  The next day, the queen called a press conference of sorts. The media had been clamoring to get at me and the team, and what had happened at the battle with the God of Knowledge was being publicized everywhere. The warriors who’d been there had been taking interviews.

  News about NIX was also circulating. Estreyan scientists had talked to the media about the meningolycanosis samples they’d worked on. Uproar over that was almost as great as the hubbub over the defeat of a god.

  I stayed holed up in the castle with the rest of the team. The servants bowed to us all as we passed, and the more courageous of them asked questions.

  While I ate in the kitchen with some of the others, the young man who served us asked nervously, “Will you have to kill all the infected, to cleanse the world of the Sickness?”

  “There may be other ways,” I responded vaguely.

  Chanelle smiled at me sadly, and I almost choked.

  It wasn't like I'd really killed a god. I'd just dispersed it, or removed its physical manifestation, or something. The gods of Estreyer were forces of nature. Of existence. They weren't something that could be literally killed. Enough of Knowledge would form together again at some point, and he'd reform a physical manifestation. There could already be another one, somewhere else, that had been there all along and just hidden from the mortals.

  The only way I knew how to stop the Sickness was to burn it away. And Chanelle wasn’t like a god. She wouldn’t reform over time. Neither would Kris and Gregor.

  Sam watched my face, and then bowed his head, hands fisting into his hair.

  “We’ll find another way,” I said.

  Blaine’s fingers clenched around his plate. “I will need to study your power, how it works. Perhaps the effective part can be duplicated, without the need for destruction.”

  Adam stared at my scaled arm. “And while you’re at it, maybe you could burn me some new legs?” His upper lip curled back, a mix between a sneer and a snarl.

  Sam flinched. He hadn’t been able to heal Adam’s wound, because it was created directly with the power of a god, and had invaded Adam’s body. Unlike when we’d gone through the Trial with Testimony and Lore, the wound was deep. Just clotting the blood and waiting for Adam to heal up on his own wasn’t going to work. Which meant that Adam was still missing a piece of his spine, and though Sam had kept him alive, he might never walk again.

  Adam shoved back from the table, an ink dog with a broad back springing into existence under him, carrying my teammate out of the room before anyone could stop him. “It’s time to go to the throne room,” he snapped over his shoulder.

  Jacky shook her head at him. “Whadda we do about him?”

  Blaine stood, pushing away from the table and following after him. “We hope that association with Eve does not cause the same level of harm to the rest of us.”

  I sat up straighter, face slipping into a stony expressionlessness.

  Blaine was angry at me. Kris and Gregor hadn’t been hurt during the fight, but they could have been. He thought I was a destructive and dangerous influence, and he wanted to keep them safe from me. If they didn’t have the Sickness, and he could just run away and live somewhere peaceful and normal with them, he would have already done so.

  I understood that.

  But he needed me. We were in this together, now.

  I shook my head at Jacky and Sam’s looks of concern, and stood. “Let’s go. Torliam’s on his way to come grab us.” I could feel his location like a tickle on the back of my neck, always.

  Torliam stepped through the doorway, sagging when he saw the three of us. “Where are the others? It is time to speak to the media.” Fatigue dripped from his voice. He had had almost no rest since we returned from the fight. In absence of his siblings, and with his new role as media darling, it fell to him to help his mother navigate the roiling politics of the court.

  “They’re already on their way,” I said, confirming my words with a pulse of awareness.

  The information about NIX had been a blow to the queen’s approval rating, despite her association with me. Her detractors were using it against her, cultivating fear. They publicized the queen’s lack of involvement in the progress we’d made, how she had left her son for dead, and wasn’t even aware of the forces of Earth torturing him and plotting against us.

  As we paused at the back door behind the throne, Torliam visibly steeled himself, covering up the fatigue. “Are we all ready?” he asked the team.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” Gregor said with a groan. “We love the queen, yadda, yadda, hurry up so we can get back to doing something useful. Like fixing the Sickness.”

  Kris nodded, but her lips were white. “Are we going to have to answer questions?”

  Blaine put a hand on her shoulder. “That is unlikely. If they make you uncomfortable, I will step in.”

  She nodded, and with a last moment to brace ourselves, we entered the throne room.

  I noticed the crowd first, then the big screen hung over the wall on one side, though it displayed nothing. I looked around for the queen, but her throne was empty, and I didn’t see her.

  The reporters didn’t seem to mind, peppering us all with questions.

  “How did you kill the God of Knowledge, Eve-Redding?”

  “Eve-Redding! What can you tell us about what the Earthlings have been doing to the Estreyan descendants upon their planet?”

  “Torliam! How do you feel that the queen left you for dead among the Earthlings?”

  “How do you plan to stop the Sickness?”

  “Has the Oracle given you any more tasks, Eve Redding?”

  “Eve-Redding, now that you can eliminate the Sickness, do you still plan to find the Champion?”

  They didn’t have time for any more questions, because the queen threw open the main doors. The sound echoed, and silence rippled through the crowd as everyone turned to look at her. She strode through the crowd up to her throne. “I have come before you today because I, too, am shocked and outraged at the actions of the Earthlings,” she cried out.

  Alarm bloomed in my stomach hard enough to make me nauseas. That wasn’t what she had told us this was about.

  —I have a feeling she’s about to screw shit up—

  -Adam-

  She continued talking. “We have not harmed them, and yet, they covet our power. They prepare for war, and the Abhorrent allies with them. They are creating weapons that will destroy the power and blood of our people, allowing the Sickness to eat it away, just as it eats away at our hearts and minds. This cannot be allowed.” She gestured to the screen on the wall, which came to life, displaying a huge Stonehenge look-alike. Its stones were different colors, obviously newly repaired.

  I moved to step forward, but Torliam grabbed me by the elbow, his eyes trained on his mother. “It is too late,” he said. “If you speak against her now, it will only harm you.”

  “Did you know about this?” I whispered severely.

  “I swear I did not.”

  The queen r
aised her voice over the clamor. “Before they can destroy us, we must destroy them. We must stop them, before they strengthen and spread the Sickness even further! For the hope of our future, I hereby declare war on the Earthlings.” Her hand slashed down.

  On the screen, I watched as large Estreyan ships flew through the activated array, disappearing in a blink.

  The crowd gasped.

  I counted two ships, then five, then seven. I stopped counting. My hands started to shake.

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  Also by Azalea Ellis

  Seeds of Chaos Series

  Gods of Blood and Bone

  Gods of Rust and Ruin

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  About the Author

  I am an author of science fiction and fantasy. I love to hear from my readers, so feel free to reach out to me.

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