by Azalea Ellis
That was followed up by a phoenix of fire, the sudden temperature change causing hairline fractures in the god’s face, the cracks as they formed sounding like cannon-fire.
It didn’t even faze him, except to make him angrier.
We passed an Estreyan dragging himself across the ground, missing his legs, and Sam stopped to seal off the wounds and signal for extraction.
One of Kris’ summons bounded past us, picking up the Estreyan without even slowing down.
I noted the group forming into a wide circle around the god, each standing at equidistant points, and seemingly unnoticed by him, what with all the other attacks. Good.
Several of the fighters in this stage, including most of my own team, carried meningolycanosis samples, in the hopes that someone would get the chance to administer it to him. I fingered the cartridges of meningolycanosis around the belt at my waist, each of them with a different delivery system, at least one of which we hoped would work.
I watched as a couple warriors tried to dagger the god with it, but the injectors, though they were of various designs and materials meant specifically to pierce him, just broke against his golden skin. They died for their failed attempts. But at least we knew that there was no way we would infect him that way.
One Estreyan with some sort of flight ability had an idea, and after a particularly vicious attack by the others, launched himself right at the god's face. Once in the air, though, he couldn't move or maneuver quickly enough.
He was moving through the light, and the God of Knowledge noticed him far too soon. The flier had no chance of getting the meningolycanosis into his nose or mouth, but he threw the breakable vial anyway.
The god caught him inside one perfectly sculpted golden hand. The fingers clenched, and the Estreyan man was squeezed out between the fingers like red putty.
I shuddered. At least his death was probably instant. It wasn’t a bad idea, on the Estreyan's part, but it probably wouldn't have worked. The golden body may be a manifestation of the God of Knowledge, but it was not the God of Knowledge. Like Jacky had said, the God of Knowledge was the gathering of Seeds that held his power and consciousness. And that's what I needed to get to.
Once my group was close enough, but still behind both the main attackers and the group who were working in a wider circle around them, we paused for a second in an area of relative shadow, crouched down almost flat to the ground.
I pushed my awareness out, trying to see past the glowing ground and sentinels, the flaring bonfires of power darting all around and expending their power, and the overwhelming brightness that was the God of Knowledge's body. I needed to see the point from which his light emanated.
I closed my eyes behind my visor, but even so I felt like my retinas burned in the light, and my eyes prickled with involuntary tears.
I vaguely saw the sun, though, hidden deep-seated within the God of Knowledge's belly, near his pelvis. I bit my bottom lip. How would we get to that? We could barely damage his skin. Despite my misgivings, I announced my findings through the communication system.
The news lent renewed energy to their attacks. A miniature sun burnt itself out against his torso from one person while tendrils of octopus-like darkness grew out of the ground around him and stabbed at his stomach from another.
Wraith saw attacks that weren’t visible to the visor or my human eyes. Rents in space that ripped small pieces out of him. One person got close enough to touch his stomach with their bare hand. They were dead an instant later, squished and then eaten, but the patch they’d touched stayed frozen in midair when Knowledge stepped away, ripping off him.
Torliam fogged up with blue, building and building his power, then attacking with a lance that scored a small divot into the golden skin.
We died almost as fast as we attacked.
Finally, though, the circling barrier group's technique was ready. Bands of shadowy red appeared in the air, huge concentric ring that floated over the heads of the barrier makers, matching the size of their circle.
With their shout, the bands snapped inward, constricting around the god.
He jumped in surprise, but wasn't quick enough, and they tightened like a wriggling snake, then hardened, trapping one of his arms halfway bent at what looked like a painful angle. He struggled a bit against his bindings, but didn't seem to be making any headway.
A surge of elation went through me, and I'm sure the rest of us mortals. But my fighters didn't lose focus just because of that, instead redoubling their efforts.
We had a minute at most to work, and the technique the barrier makers had used was not reusable. The red bands were created somehow from the blood and will of a group of highly trained specialists, who worked in tandem to pull off a technique that was pretty much a lost art. It hadn't been performed in over a thousand years, and for good reason. Even if the barrier makers had enough blood to try again, they wouldn’t have the minds to do so. Somehow, they traded their Intelligence and Mental Acuity over the course of a long period of time for the binding. They would be almost retarded, and need daily care, for the next few years, until the faculties which they'd traded for an instant of power finally returned to them.
The extraction team immediately removed them from the battlefield, so they wouldn't be sitting ducks.
The Skills converging on the God of Knowledge overlapped and even merged with one another. Everyone still standing was giving their all, down to the last drop of power, and the god was writhing in pain, which hopefully meant they were successfully eating away at his metallic body, opening a path for me to his Seed core.
The seconds counted down. Since we didn't know exactly long we had, we'd tried to plan within the margin for error. Like we had practiced, the attacks stopped, and the shielders used their Skills, a backup protection in case the red bands failed sooner than expected.
I saw a couple Estreyans drop to the ground in exhaustion, and just hoped the extraction team could get to them in time.
I sprinted forward, flanked by my unit. At a motion from me, one of the more powerful teleporters transported us to within a few meters of the god. The Skill residue cleared up, and I could sense that his pelvis was not fully open, or eaten through, whatever you wanted to call it.
A wave of simultaneous terror and rage at the terror ran through me, and with a snarl, I brought forth a surge of Chaos which smashed like a hungry animal into the wounds the others had created, setting gleefully to the task I'd set it. Destruction.
It seemed to be doing a surprisingly quick, effective job of it. Sometimes I felt a camaraderie with Sam, having a power so destructive I couldn't quite trust it, or trust myself with it. This was not one of those times.
The God of Knowledge twitched, tensing up as if to try and somehow move away from Chaos. But then he relaxed, somehow shrinking in on himself, and sliding his awkwardly bent arm forward, which created a bit of space within his hardened bindings.
Then, with the tiny bit of momentum that extra space earned him, his arm burst outward, striking one of the barrier rings.
It shattered, and its companions burst apart with it, even though they hadn't been touched.
The backup force fields and shields crumbled when he smashed his hands into them, even the one that had previously eaten his sentinel.
I backpedaled, my claws digging into the ruined ground as I slid, attempting to stop as if in slow motion.
The god turned to face me directly with its perfect, eyeless face, seeming to see into my own eyes despite the visor. It grinned.
Adam had reacted as quickly as me, as had the Estreyans. He threw up a shield, and another, and another, layering them in the air only centimeters apart, two walls at an angle pointing toward the god like a giant arrow, close enough together that he couldn't step through them, and facing so the broad side would stop his huge arms if he tied to swing at us.
Torliam threw up misty blue shields of his own, reaching for me.
Time seemed to slow. My toes were still
digging into the golden ground, struggling for purchase.
Torliam’s hand slapped over my face, a precaution, as he pushed his Skill into creating a canceling shell of darkness around us, shielding against the light.
Others in my protective group were throwing out Skills of their own, some meant to protect, and others to attack or force the god back.
I saw one of the Estreyans in my group, whose job was extraction and rescue, reaching out for me. His Skill gathered its brightness in my mind's eye, preparing to lash out.
I had a moment of rejection, where I wanted to stop him, when I realized he could only save me. But it didn't even matter, because the ground erupted. Even with the artificial expansion of time caused by my panic, it happened so fast I could barely follow it.
Golden sentinels shot out from every direction.
One speared right through the Estreyan that had been going to save me. I was disappointed, because that meant I was going to die after all.
Things snapped back into normal speed.
The sentinels sprouted like Sam’s crystal attack, bursting in every direction like a mass of coral. They killed some instantly, and trapped others within.
Adam had been close beside me, but his body was gone, as were his shields.
Torliam’s hand was still wrapped over my eyes, but it made no difference. I could see everything without them. He was contorted painfully, but not seriously injured. Already, his power was slicing and pushing at the sentinels, to limited effect.
A small chunk of my thigh seemed to have been ripped off, but it wasn’t much deeper than the skin, and wouldn’t impede me in the short term.
One of the Estreyans had been speared through the stomach. He was held suspended in the air by his wound.
Sam was trapped behind me.
Jacky was meters away, but not badly hurt, and her body was growing already.
There was no time for caution. I let out a sharp burst of Chaos, as small and specifically formed as I was able, to disintegrate the sentinels holding nearby allies in place. As before, it was effective, more so than many of the other Skills I'd seen.
But it drew the god's attention. He reached forward, the sentinels moving aside for him and releasing me and those nearest me, though they still formed a mass of impenetrable brambles everywhere else. "You want freedom?" he asked, his smooth voice making cold sweat burst out over my skin. The god leaned downward, his massive body blocking out the sky. “Knowledge is power,” he said, in what would have been a soft voice if not for the sheer volume of it, echoing from everywhere. It was coming from the sentinels, the golden ground, and even the golden plants.
The whole valley was part of his body, I realized. How foolish we’d been, to think we could attack him like this and win. He’d been humoring us.
“When you know—fogey—thing, completely, you have complete power over it.” He didn’t even seem to notice the way he’d glitched out. It didn’t matter. If anything, it made it even more terrifying. “And I know you, Eve Redding,” he said. The grin hadn’t left his face.
I was about to die. I understood that. But I couldn’t quite accept it, my heart still pounding frantically, my power screaming out to be used, as if I might fight my way free, or somehow find a way out of this.
Jacky screamed, and slammed into me from the side, her massive body sending me flying.
The god brought a hand down, and she activated the shields Adam had painted onto her, all at once.
His hand smashed through them, and with another scream, she lifted both arms to block, catching his blow, though the force of it made her knees buckle.
I landed, dizzy and disoriented, the golden ground beneath me seeming to turn white.
He lifted his arm back for another attack, and I screamed at her. “Move!”
A tear opened in the world, a couple meters above the ground, and Zed’s hand came out, reaching for her.
Threads burst upward from the ground in sheets, surrounding me in the space between a blink. They formed a familiar shape around me, like a smooshed ball, with helixes, bridges, and wandering arches filling the inside haphazardly.
I howled in rage.
Chapter 39
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The Oracle crawled out of the floor, detaching herself from the string and turning to look down at me, the sound of wind over glass bottles floating out as she moved.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snarled. “They’re getting killed out there!” I couldn’t actually tell, since Wraith had been confined, just as surely as I had, but even an idiot could make basic deductions based on facts.
“Yet you are in here.”
“That’s my team!” My shriek pulsed with Voice, echoing off the walls, tearing at the threads. “Save them! Shield them inside one of your spiderweb egg sacs!”
“That would defeat my purpose.” Her stone eyes were somehow still sad, though they did not weep like they had when I first met her.
“I can’t do this without them.” My voice broke, the enraged demands turning to a plea.
"If my goal was for you and your team to defeat the God of Knowledge, that would be true. But my father is much too strong for you."
“He said I was supposed to kill him, too.”
She smiled at me, just a little, tilting her head to the side like I was a cute puppy, or a stupid child.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered. “What do you want?”
The Oracle ignored my question. "I am a meshing of many of the different aspects of those who begat me. The lesser aspects of Knowledge and Time allow me to see a web of existence. Possibilities. Percentages, you might call them. But the strands of the web are always shifting. My goal is to save my world," she said simply. She bowed her head in a semblance of sadness, and the sound of the movement through the lines of her body was somber, but her stone face showed no expression. "There are paths to deliverance, among the mortals. You are not the only one, Eve-Redding. I see you succeeding more often than the others. But the paths are difficult, and many things must happen for yours to pierce through. You must make the right choices, and through them, change."
"Get to the point."
She frowned at me. "You are naive. You have not yet learned how to lose. In this way, you will learn, but with my intervention, may continue living."
"What about the others?" My eyes were trained on her in an unblinking stare that was already halfway to a glare.
"That is the loss." She shrugged, the motion letting out a few notes into the air that quickly died away. "It is more likely that you find your way if they die here. But do not worry. I will still give you the promised reward. You will not die from the power of Khaos.” She touched her chest, in that same spot that had once folded away to reveal the puzzle rings.
My heart pounded, and I clenched my fists, careful not to let my claws slip back out and puncture my own skin. "You want me to accept defeat, and give up. If I do, I'm more likely to save this world, and you’ll consider my quest completed successfully, even though the terms have suddenly changed completely? But everyone out there is going to die, including all the others with the seal?" I touched my throat. "My brother? The kids?"
Her features twisted once again, into a mask of compassion. "This will be hard for you. But it will make you great. Besides, they will all die eventually, if you do not stop the Sickness. On this path, their loss just comes a little sooner, and the number of those you may save is so much greater."
Rage ate at my insides, eroding my control. “People will die if I don't? Lots of people? I don't care! I'm not some savior, some martyr who's come to fix all the problems of this world just because you want me to. All people were not created equal in my eyes. I could trade a million empty numbers for one member of my team, one life I care about. Did you really think this would work? If you wanted me to work for you, you should have offered me a bette
r deal,” I snarled, panting for breath. Chaos begged to be released, to destroy her.
She stared at me, as if bemused at the actions of a strange animal. "There is no point to your anger. You must accept defeat. It is inevitable either way. You cannot win against the God of Knowledge, and if you refuse my offer, you will only die alongside those you place such unbalanced value on." She smiled, gently amused, and too assured of herself. “I have seen your future in the web, Eve-Redding. I know you.”
"You don't know me," I said hoarsely. The crystal at my throat began to thrum again. “If you did, you would know that I don't give up. I win. I don't care what you see in your little future webs." The crystal was thrumming along with the beat of my voice, and almost physical pulse that pushed at her angrily. "I will bend the world to my will. I swear it." I took a deep breath, and straightened to my full height, which wasn't much compared to her twelve feet. "Now, you are going to send me back down there to kill your father. And when I win, you’re damn well going to give me the reward we agreed on.”
The Oracle's frown formed crags along her stone brow. "I cannot choose the path for you, you foolish mortal." She let out a sharp grunt that still sounded lovely, and with a musical shake of her head, the egg-shaped web folded and sank away as quickly as it had come, leaving me standing in the middle of a ravaged battlefield, right back in front of an enraged god.
Chapter 40
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
— William Ernest Henley
My conversation with the Oracle hadn’t taken that long, but I hadn’t really believed there would be anyone left for me to rescue. I was wrong.
I lunged to the side, claws scrabbling futilely at the golden ground for extra purchase.
The sentinels rose to block me.
