CHAPTER 26 ADRIA #2
“The very planet itself is poison to you,” he goes on, as I hear his three-toed feet thudding and stamping about the chamber, “but as you are unworthy of its power, we will rely on our own claws and teeth and gifts. So let your believers pray, let your scientists calculate, let your soldiers polish their heatshot guns.” There is a wildness to his movements now, an unhinged rhythm to his steps.
“It will not be enough. You will all become corpses. And I will build my throne—not Azarii’s, not Adria’s, but a better throne, unashamed of a single ounce of our mutant strength—on mangled limbs. ”
Thaane’s labored breathing echoes in his otherwise-empty chamber.
“Perhaps we will even overcharge a few more men, Elysium be damned, before Adria even knows we’ve gone.
And by the time she’s realized, your end will already be in motion.
” I hear him spit on the ground so sharply that I wonder if it’s blood from having bitten his own tongue.
“It’s been lovely working with you, Monarch.
I imagine it will be even lovelier to speak face-to-face while you still can. ”
An electric beep, a hiss of static, and his comms tablet flicks off.
I peel my face away from the door. Unfortunately, one horn makes a high, keening screech at the friction.
Wind hisses as Thaane moves, already making a break for the door.
Simmering with adrenaline, throbbing at the betrayal, my heart beating a relentless warning through every blood vessel, I do the only thing my brain can fathom.
I run.
Thaane doesn’t even wait for the door to open.
It’s metal, not stone, so he can’t simply use his gift to transmute it into glass, but it warps and caves around the impact, his body barreling through with murderous intent.
He’s far shorter than me, less bulky, and most importantly not overcharged. I should be able to take him.
But once he’s through, the entire hall is stone. Which means it’s all fair game for someone with a matter-altering energy gift.
All at once, the floor is slippery glass. I slip and slide like a child on one of the Shadowlands’ perpetually frozen lakes, scrambling for purchase that no longer exists before careening toward a wall.
A wall whose outer layer Thaane also promptly turns to glass.
My own horrified grimace glimmers back at me from the transparent barrier. I raise my arms to brace for impact. Glass shards embed themselves from shoulder to wrist, little needles of pain. My blood splatters in every direction, further reflected by the rapidly spreading wreckage, as I cry out.
My wing is only partially healed, and likely to scar, but thanks to Kori’s attentive care, the slice has at least sealed. With a curse, I force myself aloft and fly down the hallway instead.
Behind me, Thaane swears and stamps his feet, launching more shards of glass at my back.
Desperate dodges and weaves keep me from further injury, adrenaline dulling any lingering pain in my wing.
Summoning as much of my gift as my weary body can muster, I coat myself in radiation and barrel like a cannon through the fortress’s exterior wall and into the forever night.
Thaane, nowhere near my physical speed and strength, quickly loses me in the darkness.
Chills rack my frame, my teeth chattering so hard that they break the skin of my lips. Every bone in my body wants to go directly after Kori, warn her of the impending attack, fight alongside her and the dayfolk if need be. But for the Daylands to have a chance in hell of
surviving a nightfolk attack, I need to ensure that no one else touches the Diakópsei and lives to tell the tale.
So, for one final time, I take flight and descend into the Depths of Elysium.
Guards greet me at the entrance with blades and pistols drawn—but when they see the resolve engraved on my face, their weapons waver, their stances trembling. I don’t even raise a hand to the cultists. I don’t summon a flame or extend a claw. Azure power shimmers and shudders through me.
I simply open my mouth and say, “You need to run.”
It is too late for diplomacy, far beyond negotiations. The sun serpent attack, spurred by an overcharged telepath, more than proves that even Elysium isn’t enough to protect the Diakópsei from tampering.
So I will do it myself.
As I fly toward the Diakópsei, my eyes straight ahead, incapable of being deterred by any creature alive, I toss cultists aside like they’re little more than tissue paper.
Freezeshot ricochets off the walls and the ceiling and my already-aching wings.
Blades glance off my claws as I thrust them aside.
“Run!” I shout with every blow. “Get up and run! Get out of here! Don’t look back! Get out!”
At long last, I reach the Cataclysm chamber.
Even without eyes, the Diakópsei—flanked by its gemfruit vessels—stares at me, aghast, not understanding my return, pulsing with the same primal beat that it pumped into my own heart.
Inhaling the biggest breath I can muster, I take a running start, open my arms, and throw myself headlong upon the accursed rock for one last time.
Everything is blue, blue, blue as the Diakópsei spears through me once again, unfiltered.
It’s like a second death. My mouth tastes like salt; my eyes burn like they’re boiling.
My spine lashes back into me like a whip.
My hands seize and tear at my robes, ripping also into the flesh beneath.
My jaw is locked in a rictus of agony. My eardrums recoil from the symphony of my own unbound cries.
Only when I feel each individual nerve simmering with exquisite anguish, with unholy strength, do I let it all go.
Power explodes out of me in every direction like juice from a crushed fruit. The walls of the Cataclysm’s abyss echo with the boom—then begin, from top to bottom, to cave in.
Crouching low, I launch myself off the ground and propel directly into flight, dodging falling rock chunks as I ascend.
Elysians flee alongside me, shrieking, swearing—some flying, some levitating, some scrambling on all fours—all realizing in a rush of terror that if they don’t reach the surface, they’ll be buried alive with their stone god.
I reach the surface again sweaty, blood-streaked, half sobbing, but intact. Scattered cultists shout at me, but I hardly hear them over my own pounding pulse. Despite the horror of it all, a smile spreads across my face. I did what I must.
This is the end of overcharge. So, too, by sheer necessity, the end of Elysium.
Below us, the Diakópsei lies buried under countless feet of ruined rock.
An energy manipulator like myself wouldn’t dare blast through, for fear of damaging the meteorite itself.
A telepath can’t communicate with broken rock.
Superhuman healing can’t slow the passage of time.
And it would take a dozen telekinetics at least five sleep cycles to restore the Elysian tunnels and regain access to the Cataclysm site.
Even if Thaane turned the entire labyrinth to glass, it would be no small project to punch through to the Diakópsei.
Even if Thaane assembles the most gifted army imaginable, now there’s one thing he definitely won’t have: access to overcharge.
For the foreseeable future, whether as Pagomènos’s greatest gift bestowed or as its heaviest burden, this supreme radioactive power lives in me alone. Or, well, myself and Neo.
I intend for us to be the last of our kind.
Eyes on the horizon, ignoring the stabbing pain in my wings, I fly to ensure Kori won’t be the last of hers.
I can think of only one person to send a comms as I depart, one soldier I trust to hold the line. Even if his own body has been brutally wounded. Even if all he has right now to rally my army is words, I would depend on no one else.
TO GENERAL ISEK: Thaane has betrayed us all. He means to march on the Daylands and incite open war. Gather the army. Leave enough to guard the fortress. Send the rest after me, to defend the dayfolk against invasion.
As for Azarii, he may reconsider his resistance when he discovers Thaane’s machinations. Do not be na?ve if he establishes contact. Hold your freezeshot rifle loosely, but keep it close.
All we’ve fought for must not be in vain. This is our last chance at peace. Do not falter on the threshold.