by Azalea Ellis
The patrol leader did something, and another huge swath of them fell to the ground, twitching like they’d been nerve-gassed. We ran the birds straight through.
A couple monsters avoided their comrades’ fate, but with the Estreyans and my own group, they weren’t enough to do more than slow us down a little, and after a while, they petered out. That was when Egon slowed the birds with another simple motion of his hand. “Go on from here,” he said. “Do not stop until the dawn breaks over the horizon.”
“What about you, Egon?” Kris asked, voice pitched high. She didn’t speak Estreyan very well, but had obviously picked up on his intention.
“I will go back, and fight to protect my village.”
The healer dipped into a short bow from atop his own bird. “Well met, Eve-Redding of the line of Matrix, and Torliam of the line of Aethezriel,” he said. “Fight with the strength of our wills behind you.”
“Well met, Borogo of the line of Ambercrest,” Torliam said, returning his bow.
I copied him awkwardly, and then the two Estreyans turned around, racing back toward the battle.
“No!” Kris yelled. “You’re going to—” her voice broke on a sob, “—die. We have to go back!” she screamed. “We have to help them.”
“They have saved us,” Blaine said. “If we do not do our best to get out of here safely, we will be acting as if everything they have done for us does not matter.”
Gregor’s hands were fisted in the neck feathers of his own mount. “We won’t forget their names, Kris. Like in the story Mom used to read us. We’ll remember them.”
Kris just sobbed, but she followed along without further protest as we urged the ostrich-like birds into an uncomfortable, loping run. “This world is horrible,” she said, breath hitching. “Everyone dies.”
Interlude 3
They had all been preparing, ever since the elder felt the rip opening up in the world, and told them that an array had been used. The training grew more desperate, the arguments among them more quick to devolve into violence.
He and some of the others had talked to the elders about making sure their guests were treated with proper courtesy, and now they were often seen moving about the place, though they still weren't permitted to leave the outer boundaries.
The woman had grown bolder, demanding answers from Eliahan and anyone else who wasn’t smart or fast enough to avoid her. “What is it that has everyone so panicked? Are you going to attack NIX?”
He laughed. “You know nothing of what is coming. Perhaps that is a blessing, for you.”
Chapter 25
It is not the darkness outside that invites the demons, but the darkness inside.
— Darune Imdel
As Egon had instructed, we traveled till morning without stopping. By that time, even the ostrich-like birds, which were known for their stamina, were exhausted. They were . . . uncomfortable at best. With only two legs, they bounced with every step, and despite my lack of male genitalia, the insides of my thighs and everything between my legs was bruised and aching.
I had wanted a few more days to prepare and gather information about how best to win the Goddess of Testimony and Lore’s favor, but we were pretty sure we knew her location, and there was no more village library to search through, anyway. We headed for her, a strange mood combined of sorrow, fear, and helpless determination suffusing the group at first. Over time, though, the mood lightened, growing better conversely with how exhausted we became from traveling.
It took us a couple weeks to make it almost all the way to the edge of the continent we were on, and though the bird steeds could eat almost anything they came across, including smaller animals, we didn’t have extra food for them, and they grew noticeably wirier over the course of the trip.
We’d encountered a few monsters along the way, but nothing life-threatening, and since we ate some of them after killing them, we humans were fine for food, even if none of us were gourmet campfire roasters. The type of hunger that makes your hands shake is a wonderful seasoning.
The biting chill of the air froze the insides of my nostrils when I breathed it in straight, so I kept my face hidden behind the fur lip of the coat the villagers had given me. The cold made it difficult to sleep, which I appreciated, as that saved me from the nightmares. But I was so tired I found myself nodding off in the saddle, woken by flashes of screaming terror.
The clouds above grew thicker and more ridiculously fluffy as we approached our destination. Even the mist showing in the air from our exhalation didn’t dissipate like normal, hanging in the air like a puffy trail behind us.
“We should leave our mounts here,” Torliam said. “They will not survive in the sky levels.”
We left the birds, loosely tied up to a small tree. If we weren’t able to return, they would be able to break free.
Then we walked into the wall of fog. Ahead, it thickened, till every gasp made my lungs rattle just a little, and the loose strands of my hair started to float around my head, as if I were underwater. Between one step and the next, my foot rose and didn’t touch the ground again. I flailed awkwardly as the foggy substance around me lifted me off my feet, and sent me floating gently upward.
“It is alright. The current will carry us,” Torliam said, his voice slightly muffled.
I coughed, and tried to breathe calmly so my lungs weren’t overwhelmed.
“Whoa!” Zed said. Instead of the half swim, half run the rest of us were doing, he stretched out in a Superman pose, then started doing flips and stretches.
Kris laughed and joined in, and though Gregor rolled his eyes at first, when Zed pulled him atop his back and pretended to swim like a dolphin, Gregor grinned and tugged on Zed’s hair to make them spin different directions.
Jacky started using her Skill to pull herself around, literally zooming through the air like a superhero.
“I want to ride you, Jacky!” Kris yelled.
“That’s not fair,” Gregor said. “Zed’s useless. We’re just floating around aimlessly here. I want to ride Jacky, too. Let’s take turns.”
Zed stuck his tongue out at Jacky, then turned to Adam. “Think you could help me out, here? Flippers, or something?”
Adam smirked and pulled out some ink from a cartridge he’d refilled while we were in the village, and created a mermaid tail that latched around Zed’s legs and hips.
My brother reared back, looking down at himself in consternation for a moment. Instead of the protest Adam had probably expected, he flicked his fin and swam through the air over to Adam with Gregor still clinging tightly to his back. “I’m going to need a trident to go with this,” he said. “Could you make it spit lightning? To be authentic, you know.”
Chanelle laughed, though it might have been at the sensation of floating and the light atmosphere of the group rather than the joke. Still, it made us all smile to hear it.
Adam rolled his eyes, and made a normal ink trident that did not spit lightning into an unknown gaseous substance. “It’d be just like you to get us all blown up,” he muttered.
I hesitated for a moment. It looked like so much fun, and there wasn’t any danger within the reach of my awareness. Even if there were, a tail would probably help me to navigate what would basically be an underwater fight even better. That convinced me. “Could I get a tail, too?”
Adam ended up augmenting all of us, though Jacky got octopus legs that waved through the air randomly, and Blaine got some sort of jellyfish thing that fit around his suit and propelled him in spurts. We played around for the next half hour or so, Adam renewing his Animations whenever they ran out, till the current deposited us on a layer of quartz-like crystal.
Torliam pointed the way, after consulting the map.
I frowned as we began to walk. “Isn’t this the way we came? Unless I’ve made a mistake . . . but, my sense of direction is amazing. The sky was clear, this way. Wouldn’t we have seen clouds? Is whatever this is going to dissipate out from under us?”
&
nbsp; Torliam smirked. “My world is not so simple as yours. This is a new layer.”
“You know, acting obtuse and mysterious doesn’t make you seem cooler,” Adam said.
“Trying to explain the science to you would not make a difference,” Torliam said. “I doubt you could understand even the necessary vocabulary, much less the concepts.”
“Try me,” Blaine said. “I am a scientist, and I have been studying the knowledge of your world. Also, I am a genius.”
Sam covered his mouth with his hand to hide the smile, sharing a look with Jacky, who snorted in amusement.
“He is also humble and pious,” Adam drawled.
Torliam conceded, perhaps more to spite Adam than because he actually believed Blaine, but they quickly fell into a scientific discussion that I at least couldn’t follow.
As we waded slowly through the thick air, the ground beneath our feet turned more and more crystalline, and increasingly beautiful, glittering all different colors. After a while we noticed that the crystals were letting off light. Despite how beautiful they were, the whole thing gave me a bad feeling. Estreyer was a planet of universal viciousness, in my experience. Anything unusual was probably also dangerous.
I voiced my concerns to Adam, and he agreed that he would give us all ink mermaid tails at the first sign of danger
Despite my uneasiness, I didn’t think much of the crystal beneath my bare feet growing sharper and making shallow cuts into my extremely calloused feet. It barely hurt, and I was so used to injury by that point that a few little nicks didn’t register. What did alarm me was the quickly growing glow of power in the fog all around us. “Stop!” I called, looking around with my useless eyes while Wraith searched for the source of the power, and found none. Yet it coalesced around us with almost crushing force. “Adam, tails!” I said. “Something’s closing in on us.”
By then it was already too late.
Chapter 26
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
— Lewis Carroll
I let out a squawk as the crystal shifted, slicing into the pads of my feet, and spilling my blood on the ground. It sucked up my blood and shot it forward, blowing mist out of the way to reveal a lump of abstruse crystal. When my blood reached it, it shifted and unfolded, uncurling upward into the form of a woman.
Jacky, Torliam, and Sam closed in on Zed and me in a protective formation, while Adam attached ink tails to Blaine, the kids, and Chanelle, giving first priority to those who had the least chance of protecting themselves.
The crystal creature was naked, but I don’t think anybody was really noticing that except a little voice in the back of my inane brain. Her legs were shapely, made of jagged crystal that sharpened down to two points, with spurs, which she balanced effortlessly on. She stretched like an unfurling flower, and turned to look at me.
When our eyes met, a very clear ‘Oh, shit,’ resounded through my brain. “Get back,” I shouted to the team. “Blaine, get the kids out of here.”
To his credit, he was already moving, using the tail Adam had given him first to grab a child under each arm. But he didn’t get far. The mist thickened a few meters out, and after only a few seconds of trying to swim through it, he began to cough, and then his breaths began to rattle, like he was inhaling half water. He struggled, and the current brought him back, pushing him out of the thick wall of mist.
The three of them flopped gently to the crystal ground, coughing up liquid.
The creature spoke, her voice formed by shattering the crystal gills on the sides of her neck. “Welcome, mortals. Please calm yourselves and do not try to escape. Only death lies on that path.” She spoke in Estreyan.
Torliam answered her back, speaking quickly enough that I missed some of the words. “We are honored, wise—Torliam, son of Mardinest, of the line of Aethezriel—blood-covenant is Eve Redding, of the line of Matrix—by the Oracle.”
Zed didn’t seem to think whatever he’d said was cause for extra alarm, though to be fair, he already had a gun drawn and primed in each hand.
For the first time, I realized that obviously, alien gods and humans should have a language barrier. I wondered why I’d been able to talk with Behelaino. I wasn’t sure if she’d actually been speaking English, doing some weird Seed-thing where she inserted understanding into my brain, or something equally freaky.
“She welcomes us,” Torliam relayed. At my questioning look, he nodded. “This is the Goddess of Testimony and Lore, who has long been hidden.”
The creature tilted her head to the side. “They are from another world?”
How did she know that?
“Yes,” he said.
Crystal tentacles exploded out of the ground and pierced into each of our temples, faster than even Adam could blink.
The surprise and pain caused more than a few screams.
“Be still,” Torliam said, and we obeyed. He was the one who was from this world and supposedly had experience with this sort of thing, so I hoped for the sake of my brain staying intact inside my skull that he knew what he was talking about.
The tentacles piercing Chanelle’s head broke off instantly, and the crystal rippled violently and swept them away from the little clearing. The rest of them withdrew from our heads after only a few seconds, and the veins in the walls pulsed light back to the goddess, as if she was drinking up something through her . . .”skin.”
She opened her mouth, and her gills shattered and reformed repeatedly, almost faster than my eyes could track, forming sound somehow. “I . . . have been waiting here for so long without visitors,” she said in perfectly clear English. “I did hide myself away, but I didn’t expect it to be so . . . boring! No supplicants have come to quest for my Bestowals for so long, I decided to sleep so I would no longer have to count the seconds of my loneliness.” Her shoulders drooped, needle-sharp fingertips trailing sadly across her thigh. “I was not made for isolation,” she said. “And I am glad to finally greet you.” She smiled to me. “I have received your offering of blood, and I grant your request for a Trial. You and your followers will be allowed to petition for my Bestowal.”
Torliam’s eyes widened, and he turned to me, eyes following my own gaze down to my feet.
“Ahh,” I said stupidly. “I’m ignorant, and I did not know the ways of this land. I didn’t mean to request a Trial.” Oh, freaking shit on a stick.
The creature frowned at that. “Do you mean to escape me after petitioning, to abandon the covenant uncompleted after suddenly realizing your fear?” Her voice grew imperious. “You have already entered into agreement, whether by accident, as you say, or not. I will not allow you to leave me again so easily.” The wall of choking fog closed in around us, and the rainbow-colored shards of crystal began to pulse with light.
I struggled to breathe, and not just from the quality of the not-quite-air, but from the power pressing down on me. The creature before me could kill us all easily, with the same nonchalance that I would kill a spider or mosquito. There was a sense of age to her, like the feel of mountains that have stood for millennia, or oceans that have lapped endlessly at the ever-changing shores. She would remain, long after we were gone, as she had done for countless others before us.
Torliam was bowing, saying something to the goddess that I couldn’t hear, though I wasn’t sure if it was because of the terror, or because of the air.
Chanelle had fallen to the ground and was curled up in a little ball, crying.
Gregor was also on the ground. He’d puked at some point, but he was looking at me, and I recognized the emotion in his eyes. Desperate hope. Faith.
I hated it. I couldn’t bear the pressure of it. But I straightened anyway. “I will accept the Trial,” I said. “But some of my team aren’t warriors. They are too weak to participate in a quest for the favor of one so great as yourself.” I bowed to her, moving slowly, so that my trembling muscles didn’t make me je
rk awkwardly.
“All must participate, except the broken one,” the goddess gestured to Chanelle, “and the mortal that carries none of our legacy,” she said, pointing to Blaine.
“The children will die,” Torliam warned in a low voice.
Immediately, everyone shifted forward to guard the children more completely, putting our bodies between them and the body of the goddess. As if that would actually protect them. It was like putting rice paper up to dam the ocean. “I cannot accept that,” I said, my voice growing colder and deeper. “Requesting a Trial was my mistake. But these are my people, and it is my duty to protect them.” I settled my heart and released my claws. Maybe if I could distract her long enough, Adam could find a way to get the others out. An ink respirator to filter breathable air, maybe. He was clever like that.
The tension gathered. She stared at me till my heartbeat pounded in my ears from the force of it. Then she smiled. “I am beginning to like you. You play the role of heroine so easily. All must have a part in the story, but if you wish, you may take the burden of protector.”
“What does that mean?” I narrowed my eyes suspiciously.
“You and your champion will take the greater burden of their roles in the story, as well as your own.”
Torliam stiffened beside me, but said nothing.
“My champion?” I echoed her.
“Him, the one with which you have a . . .?” she turned to Torliam.
“Blood-covenant,” he supplied for her.
I didn’t mention that many of the others had taken the Seeds as well, fearing it would only make things worse for them.
Torliam nodded to me, and I avoided his eyes. If he, too, was filled with sacrificial hope, I didn’t want to see. “I accept,” I said aloud. I would die here, or I would die at the hands of Chaos. When I thought of it like that, it was calming. As always, the only way out was through.
