by Azalea Ellis
Adam’s head snapped around. “What? Why didn’t you say something?”
“I was . . . in shock.” I let vulnerability slip into my voice, and bit down on my bottom lip. “Because it’s to kill the God of Knowledge. And I have no idea how to do that.”
“That was not part of our bargain, and you know it well.” Torliam loomed over me, and I’m not ashamed to say the hairs on the back of my neck rose at the sudden sense of danger.
Adam’s hands twitched toward the cells of electricity at his waist, and Jacky turned her body sideways to Torliam, for better leverage to block or attack.
“The quest reward is connected to curing the Sickness!” I said.
Torliam blinked. His eyes widened and his lips parted in surprise and maybe even a bit of hope, but then they flattened down again. “You lie.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t know how it’s connected, but it says one of the rewards is information on the Sickness. These type of chain quests update when you complete each stage, and the rewards keep growing. Information now, maybe a cure, later.”
He just stared at me.
“I mean, why else do you think the Oracle is doing all this? I’m certainly not important enough for her attention all on my own. Maybe she’s trying to fight back, through me, through us. I mean, she can see the future, right?” I put a few drops of innocent consternation into my voice, and I saw the disbelief break apart in his eyes. For a moment, I felt a pang of shame for my actions, but I ruthlessly squashed it, reminding myself how much I had to have his assistance, no matter how I was forced to obtain it.
However, the way he replied shocked me.
“I did . . . suspect, that this might be the case.”
Chapter 23
Nothing gold can stay.
— Robert Frost
Torliam winced at the barrage of questions from us. “I was not certain, of course,” he said, raising his hands in a calming motion. “I told you, Eve, that you were likely descended from one of the lines of my people. Matrix is the name of that line, though it seems you call yourself by the name Redding. For many generations, the line of Aethezriel had been bound to serve and protect the members of the line of Matrix, and can never be bound to another in service. Many of the line of Matrix ruled, in times past.” He paused for a moment, as if thinking, and then continued, “I knew what you were when I first felt the bond with you, though the last of the line was thought to have died hundreds of years ago. You have their blood. I did not know you were a human.” He clenched his fists and looked away, but couldn’t quite hide his expression.
Instead of the anger he usually displayed, he was despairing. I almost felt bad, which was ridiculous because I couldn’t do anything about being human, or the fact that NIX had forced me to be a Player. I would not have chosen this any more than he. But he must have thought I was one of his comrades, either come to save him, or also captured by NIX.
“Some thought . . . that one day they might bring back the one god who could fight back the Sickness. The line of Matrix is descended from a mortal who had relations with the God of . . . Life.” He frowned then, and told me the word he really meant, in Estreyan. “It does not translate, similar to the word for the Sickness. He is the god of order, and form. Shaping. Molding? I do not know, but perhaps you can understand my meaning.”
I shrugged, then nodded. “Okay. What are you getting at?”
“There are stories, maybe prophetic, about our salvation. I believe you may be the one who can find that extremely distant ancestor, and bring him back. Many believe he is the only one who can save this world. The Oracle is clearly setting you on a path.”
I felt the muscles in my jaw tightening as I held back my anger. “You didn’t think that maybe I might be interested in hearing about this?”
Torliam looked away like a scolded puppy, blonde hair falling in front of his face. “I did not believe in the possibility, at first. You may have some distant blood of the line, but you are . . .”
“Human? A two-leg-maggot?” One of my eyebrows rose high in challenge.
He didn’t rise to the bait. “But with the quest you tell me of, to find knowledge of the Sickness, I am beginning to . . . find hope?” He forced himself to meet and hold my gaze with obvious difficulty. “I can help you. If you are indeed the one, you are on the very early stages of the path. You will need to gain acknowledgement from the goddess of Testimony and Lore. Many of my people will follow you, if we can show them the signs. Enough people, perhaps, to kill a god.”
Sam spoke up. “Do you think they would agree to help us, though, if they knew that the god was infected? The villagers were so afraid of the Sickness they didn’t even want to let us stay inside the walls.”
Torliam looked at him, and frowned. “You are right. Perhaps they would not. But we do not have time to train you humans into proper warriors. “Chaos is undoing you,” he said to me, his voice softening.
I grimaced. It was true.
“We must convince my people,” he said. “It could mean the salvation of our world. My mother-lord may grant us the numbers we need, or at the least allow a force of volunteers to accompany us. And if necessary, we may even deceive those who would not follow us otherwise. The task is too important to fail.” His words were coming faster, and he alternated between gazing far away in thought and focusing on me with excitement. “Let us tell people that we are questing for a Bestowal from the God of Knowledge, and he has said we mortals must prove ourselves in battle against him.”
“I don’t think it’s right, lying to people like that,” Sam said. “They’re going to be putting their lives on the line. They should at least know the truth, so they can make a real decision.”
Torliam grimaced. “You are not wrong. But this is too important. In any case . . . fighting to kill a god and fighting not to be killed by one while petitioning for a Bestowal are not so different. Both end in death, almost universally. At least the one will give them hope while they fight.”
Sam didn’t pretend to be happy about it, but he kept any more arguments to himself, having spoken up and thus cleared his conscience of the weight of the decision, I guessed.
Jacky was very quiet, and Adam was already thinking through the possible outcomes in his head, muttering about planning for the worst-case scenarios.
“So, I just have to gain a Bestowal from a couple different gods? Testimony, and Lore?” I asked.
“She is one god, with two aspects. But yes, in essence. Though we will have to find her, first. She, too, has been gone from mortal eyes for generations. I have some ideas, but once we are back in the village, we will be able to use their stores of knowledge to determine exactly where we might search. I have no doubt that we will find her.”
Could I do this? Could I go along with this pretense that I was some kind of destined savior, meant to find and bring back the god that could forestall the death of their world? People would die for me. Others would have their soul crushed, when they inevitably learned the truth. I couldn’t answer my own question.
I kept asking it of myself, even after we were safely back in the village, we were all healed up at the hand of the Estreyan healer, and the news had started to spread.
Jacky trained like mad, driving herself into the ground every day, only stopping her training to check in with the rest of us and see what progress we’d made in pinpointing the location of the Goddess of Testimony and Lore.
Chanelle made progress, and I hoped desperately that enough Seeds would bring back that vivacious girl I’d first met, who looked just like China and who made something inside me cringe every time I saw her looking so incredibly lifeless.
But time was passing, and I didn’t have enough to spend waiting and vacillating. It wasn’t like me to be so indecisive, but whatever the God of Knowledge had done to me, forcing me to relive all my bad decisions, had made me unsure. I woke up during the night, days after receiving the quest, and the answer was clear in my mind, finally. I would live. I
was too afraid to do anything else. I would live, and others would pay for my life in blood.
I woke with someone’s hands pressing down on my mouth, suffocating me. Pressing down, keeping the maggots inside me. I clawed across the arm, and they drew back with a hiss.
“Damn it, Eve!” Sam said, the curse sounding strange coming out of his mouth.
I reached those same claws up to my face, barely even feeling the pain as I sliced at my eye sockets, trying to get the squirming parasites out from behind my eyeballs.
My room’s light bloomed into brightness, and I sat up, Wraith observed Adam’s look of horror, since there was too much blood for my eyes to see directly.
The others piled into the room from down the hall. Blaine held the kids back from entering once he caught a glimpse of my face.
I realized then that I was screaming, and that I’d probably been doing so for a while, if the raw feeling of my throat was any indication. “They’re inside me,” I said desperately. “Sam, help me, help me! The maggots are inside me, burning cold in my head, behind my eyes, burrowing through my brain!” The last was a screech, as I tried to impart the desperation of my situation.
My back arched, and I slammed my head against the wall, the starburst of dizziness alleviating the sensation of infestation for a moment.
“Hold her down!” Adam snapped, reaching for my clawed hands.
Torliam was there, a hole in the wall where he’d made himself a door since my own was filled with teammates, and the blue was pressing against me, almost crushing but it hurt the maggots too and they stilled and then Sam was in front of me again, laying his hands on me oh god thank you thank you help me.
Then things went dark, even for Wraith, and I fell back into unconsciousness.
Chapter 24
My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night, but ah my foes and oh my friends, it gives a lovely light.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
“ . . . really think that’s a good idea? She was trying to scratch out her own eyeballs before Sam put her to sleep,” Adam’s voice said, almost spitting with vehemence.
“We cannot leave her sleeping and defenseless,” Torliam said.
“It’s done,” Sam said.
I groaned, fighting against the nausea. I didn’t know where I was for a moment, but when I saw the diagram painted over the floor in front of me, I recognized the old man healer’s house. Torliam, Jacky, Adam, and Sam were with me.
Someone screamed, outside.
I sat up and groaned, “What’s going on?”
Adam was already at the window, looking out into the darkness of the night. “I don’t . . . oh shit.”
“What is it?” Sam asked.
“One of them just broke down the main gate. They’re fighting back, but there are too many monsters for the villagers to kill them all. They’re flooding in.”
“What?” Alarm crept into my voice. I wondered if I was hallucinating, or maybe in the beginning of yet another nightmare.
“We were attacked by the God of Knowledge,” Torliam said. “Mentally. I was strong enough to fight it off. You were not. Your healer forced you to sleep, and we brought you here, to fix the wounds you inflicted on yourself.”
I reached up and touched my face self-consciously. The skin on my face, especially around my eyes, was a little tender, but not raw. “Is that related to whatever’s going on outside?”
“Perhaps. I wonder that the god is not aware of our intentions, and has sent the attack to ensure we are not able to complete our task.”
“How many are there? Monsters, I mean.”
“Too many. This village will not last the night, I fear.”
“We have to help them,” Sam said, moving with adrenaline-rush jitteriness. “There are kids out there. And not all of the villagers are even fighters. I mean, I saw one of them with a Skill in music! Everyone’s going to die if we don’t do something.”
“And what will we do, that can make a difference against that?” Adam said, flinging an arm out to encompass the village outside.
“We can help them escape, at least!”
The healer bustled into the room, carrying a satchel in both arms. “Supplies for the trip,” he said in Estreyan. “Hurry, we must get to the stables.”
I climbed to my feet, allowing Jacky to brace me when the room swayed around me. “Where are the others?”
“Back in our rooms,” Adam said.
“You must escape, Eve-Redding,” the healer said. “No time to pick up those who fall behind.”
“No way we’re leaving the kids in this shit,” Jacky said, her shoulders tightening, as if she expected a fight. “We’re going to get them, right, Eve?”
“Of course. No time to waste, let’s go,” I said, bracing myself on Jacky’s arm.
She slammed open the door, and the chill in the air hit me with a sudden shock. I could see fires starting in two different places in the village, and the light of the two moons showed the dark mass of monsters boiling into the streets, flashes of light and sound flaring from the attacks of the defending villagers.
We ran as a group, the old healer keeping up easily despite the packs he carried on each arm. We passed an Estreyan mother, running terrified in our direction, her young child wailing in her arms. “Go to my home,” the healer said to her. “Hide, under the floor. Tell the others.”
We had passed each other before she had time to respond, but I could only hope that she obeyed and survived.
We got to the elder’s house, and Adam, Sam, and Jacky burst in to grab the others and our supplies, while Torliam, the elder, and I stayed outside to keep watch for attacks on the building. In the distance, a monster with huge batlike wings flew away, the silhouette of the man in its claws writhing against the moon behind them.
Torliam was trembling faintly, not from fear, but from clenching his muscles too tightly in rage. “The Sickness is an abomination. There is no place for it, in a world on which I live. One of us must be destroyed,” he said in the poetic lilting of his native language.
The healer turned slightly toward him, eyes still searching outward. “Many have vowed the same. I take heart that this is the first time I have ever held hope that a mortal will be the one to survive a covenant of enmity against the Sickness.”
A figure raced up the street, entering the somewhat constrained range of my awareness. The patrol leader. I still didn’t know his name.
“Eve-Redding,” he said, gasping, once he was close enough. He was holding one arm close to his body, obviously hurt. “Thank the gods you are safe. We must get you away safely.”
“Laine?” the healer asked.
The patrol leader shook his head and closed his eyes as if in pain. “No. It was already too late when I arrived at her house.”
The healer clapped him on the shoulder, head bowing. “We will repay them in death many times over.”
“Their blood will pave her way to the next life.” He nodded and swallowed. He turned to me. “You must stop this,” he said. “The Sickness has spread through the creatures of the land. The very earth turns against us. You must find the way to cleanse this world. I beg of you. I place my faith in you.”
My stomach clenched. I wasn’t capable of fixing their world. “I will follow the path,” I said. Not quite a promise, and not quite a lie. I couldn’t force any more past the lump in my throat.
He nodded tightly, and closed his eyes once again as he swallowed hard. When he looked at me again, the faith in his eyes, the almost fanatical, desperate hope hit me like a blow.
I hated myself in that moment, and not for the first time.
Jacky slammed back through the door, tossing my pack at me. “We’re ready.”
Kris and Gregor were wearing their own packs. Though they were pale and obviously frightened, they held Chanelle’s hands in comfort as she whimpered with childish fear. Kris climbed atop the patrol leader’s back without hesitation when he leaned down to carry her, and Gre
gor glanced at me, but went with Blaine instead, while Torliam carried Chanelle.
Zed was checking his guns, and with a fluid motion, pulled one out of its holster and shot past my face. The gun sounded with the strange glup that indicated an air-burst round. I turned, and saw another of the bat-winged creatures tumble into the top of a house, just entering the edge of my range.
“Nice shot,” I said. I pushed the Wraith Skill a little more, since whatever Sam had done to me was wearing off enough that it didn’t make me throw up to do so.
“I’m awesome, I know. Now let’s go,” Zed said, his eyes asking me silently if I was okay.
I nodded, but didn’t force a fake smile.
We ran, then.
The bird steeds in the stables were panicking, and one had busted through its stall and was barreling around the building, injuring itself as it ran into things in its panic. The patrol leader did something with a Skill to calm some of the birds, and we climbed atop them without even sparing the time for saddles.
We barreled back out through the doors. Jacky glanced over her shoulder, slowing her mount with a pull on the feathers of its neck so she could bring up the rear of our group. “I hate this,” she said through gritted teeth, under her breath. It didn’t seem like she expected anyone to hear her. “Been working so hard, but I still can’t do nothing when it actually matters.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, or if she would have even wanted me to hear and respond, so I stayed silent. We raced through the streets toward the back of the village, and out through the back gate that led to the training fields.
There were monsters there, too, though not as many, and they hadn’t been making a ruckus. When we passed through, they attacked.
Torliam brought his power together into a huge sword-like blade of blue, and slashed with his arm. They fell in a far greater circumference around him than it seemed should have been possible, sliced cleanly through from side to side.
