Chapter 89
Gloved in the silver tendrils I scavenged from my Other’s den, I hold Arkyn’s blazing stare. Flash him a sharp smile I hope he feels all the way to the bone—the fuck.
With Ignos poised, waiting for me to point him in the direction of his promised meal, I stretch my internal sound snare, making room for Bulder’s song that batters me like a rockslide.
“Buth du dunth, Bulder. Hoth-ot túe!”
He makes a grumbling sound, like he knows what I’m planning and isn’t at all interested, but reluctantly abides.
The ground jolts, then begins to shudder.
A dense crack rends the air.
The crowd screams, folk scrambling as the arena splits before us.
Like invisible claws just grabbed hold and pried it wide.
With a firm grip on each other, Kaan and I manage to maintain our balance, perched right on the crumbly edge of the gaping, red-hot wound blowing hot breath and smoke into the cavern.
Seems my directional coordination still needs some work.
Kaan urges me back a step, away from the hungry promise of an endless, scorching fall while I listen to Bulder drone on and on about Ignos feeding on him like a parasite, still shuddering.
I commiserate, threading him words of relief.
Promise to tend his wounds with a smoothing song once we’re done busting up this fucking place and saving my family.
He releases a rumbly sigh, but lulls, opening wider.
I smile, offering Ignos a willing meal of yummy stone down in the guts of the crumbling gorge deep beneath the mountain. Request that he feasts with a ferocity like never before, not that he seems to need encouragement.
Every ember in the arena blinks out like a tiding wave swallowed down the ravine’s gullet, casting us in a near darkness that sends a screaming storm of unease through those who are yet to escape the overpacked balconies.
Kaan’s lips brush my ear, his voice crackling as he says, “I know what—you’re doing, Moonbeam …”
He should.
He taught me a lot of the words I just used.
“I know my directions are shit, but I don’t have time to get them exact,” I say, voice not my own, but rough.
Tribute to the tremble shaking me from the inside out, like an addict hungering for a hit of blood-bubbling revenge.
“The entire crowd was chanting for your death. I could hear it from—” all the way down the bottom of my lake.
“Never mind. If a few die from the splash, they deserve it.”
“It’s not them I’m worried about.”
Oh.
Oddly sentimental, given everything.
Bulder grumbles about a bellyache, desperate to dispel the magma now churning in his gut. Great start, but I need him positively miserable.
I ply him with a silty coo, coercing him to swallow the urge to projectile vomit everywhere, then meet Arkyn’s glare through the rippling heat waves—knuckles white as he fists the balustrade.
Looking like he wants to do the cowardly thing and flee but can’t quite bring himself to rip his feverish gaze away.
“Sorry to say, but I’m planning to really fuck him up. ”
“That’s not—”
Another loud crash shakes the mountain from above. A single plug of stone cracks free and plunges to the screams of a panicked crowd bottlenecking through the exits.
I look at the constellation of shimmery runes etched all over the ceiling, a smile hooking my lips when I notice a pattern looped around the hole that now acts as a wind and snow tunnel for the churning storm outside. A pattern that suggests Ahvi designed the fortification with a weakness.
My smile is short-lived as a single black talon pierces the opening, then scrapes up the sides, like it’s trying to use the defect as a means to pop the top off the mountain.
A black talon I recognize.
Behind me, Kaan stops moving—his arms stiff as stone bound around my abdomen.
Not a moonfall after all. But Rygun, trying to reach Kaan.
“Shit,” I mutter as the talon retreats, only for a smoldering eye to peer down through the hole—pupil tightening on Kaan with crushing devotion. Rygun’s roar bludgeons the air, siphons down, and busts through the cavern, pitching.
Kaan wobbles, more of his weight leaning into me while blasting foreign commands that get lost in the clamor, his cracked voice betraying him. In his panicked haste, four words slip out in a language I understand:
“TOO COLD FOR YOU!”
Out there, yes, but in here … not so much. And although the runes appear great for keeping things out, I doubt they’re as good at keeping things in.
Kaan roars another series of desperate commands, going silent when I reach back and set my hand on his cheek—anchored to the flaming boil of anger, hurt, and cold-blooded rage festering in my heart.
I strain my neck and tongue, lashing hissed and hardened words in perfect, harrowing synchrony. Orders to both Ignos and Bulder that grind and sizzle and melt off my lips.
Both Creators are quiet for a beat, as though poised in shock. I picture them looking sidelong at each other, thinking, before they shrug, deciding to shake hands rather than punch each other in the gut for a change.
The ground rumbles.
The mountain shakes.
Clode giggles, like she’s watching it all unfold while feasting on the preserved souls of her enemies.
Holding Arkyn’s ruddy stare, I lift my chin and deliver a surging command. “Luvth at uin shiith, Bulder ahn Ignos. Nailen!”
A spew of magma erupts from the ravine with volcanic force, taking the shape of both statuesque gods standing back-to-back. Bulder, dense and shoulder-heavy. Ignos, lithe yet powerfully built, with a fury of flaming hair.
Arkyn recoils from sight as I spit a final, seething command. Eight potent words he can fucking choke on. “Lahvuu de ahn balcoon aht nah … shúneruin rath!”
Bulder and Ignos turn in synchrony, crank their smelted fists, and power them at Arkyn’s balcony.
Bludgeoning blows that crack, crumble, and melt the platform—over and over again.
Breaking it down with hot swipes of vengeance while I boil from the inside out; picture each swipe a sizzling slash to his rotten soul.
Picture each swipe another strike not served by smelted puppets, but by Kaan … Kyzari … Veya—
Fallon.
By every folk he deemed less enough to siphon into these pits for the enjoyment of the more fortunate, more powerful folk he so desperately wanted to prove himself to.
Until the balcony resembles a burst cyst. A dripping, gaping wound Arkyn couldn’t possibly survive.
Feverish triumph pumps me full yet somehow leaves me starved.
Rygun roars so loud the air shudders.
I look up. “Duith ashh uin luvth. Busta!”
My boisterous command sends a titanic fist punching up at the ceiling. Cracks through like the shell of an egg, tossing bits of rock that rain … falling from a jagged hatch to the blustering storm beyond.
Inviting it in.
Snowy, cyclonic winds spiral down; such contrast to the hot stone beneath us.
Rygun bungs into the hole and begins to muscle through, packing the cavern with his immense, huffing presence to the harrowed screams of the caustic crowd. Folk who’ve come to feast off the suffering of others. Of Kaan.
My bloodlust salivates.
I bolster my neck muscles, sharpen my tongue, and lash another series of snarled words. My igneous apparitions churn, swiping at the balconies, snatching the screaming horde like they’re mere bugs on a sill.
One by one, the screams extinguish, but the rage within me continues to roar.
Rygun finally breaks through. Crusted in ice, he looks like he’s wearing armor—any visible scales so matte they seem to absorb the light. Though I only get a split moment to take him in before the Creators heed my plea to saturate him with big slops of magma.
He releases a thunderous roar.
Now dripping molten stone, he gouges his talons into the hot, mushy walls and clambers around the internal facade, wings splayed, dragging his belly through the melt.
Like a pestle, slowly grinding around the edges of a deep-dipped mortar.
As he moves, he pours into the carnage, mauling the remaining folk that still have something to stand on, yet to siphon through the over-clogged exits.
He doesn’t feast. Just gnashes them like he’s stuffing his face in a bowl of meat, then flicks his head, expelling what’s left. Offering them a similar end as the ones they came to watch battle for the right to live in this callous fucking pit.
All the while, I sing to Bulder and Ignos, Kaan’s grip on me tightening. I think he might be speaking to me—yelling, even—but I can’t hear anything over the heaving throb in my ears.
The rest of the world tightens into insignificance as I urge the Creators on with commands that begin burning me from the inside out, bursting with the gluttonous need to scrape every last bit of Arkyn’s filthy fucking essence from beneath this heavy mountain.
Like tearing out a caustic heart, its arteries dangling from the charred organ withering in my clawed hand. That’s what I picture as I sing.
Sing.
SING—