Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
It was horrifying. And it was fucking brilliant.
Srana could not send her own acolytes into the fortress.
So instead, she had leveraged what already existed within it.
She had created new soldiers from the discarded meat of Shiket’s.
A vehicle onto which to attach her parasites, allowing her to cross the uncrossable.
They would not be strong enough to claim Shiket’s remains themselves, let alone wield them, but they could, at least, tolerate their proximity.
The corpses formed a dense wall before me.
Srana had used dead bodies that had been sitting here, decomposing, albeit unnaturally slowly, for weeks.
Soldiers. Priests. Maids. Even the soulless, jaws rotted off, eyes empty, dried strings of meat still caked to their teeth.
All propped up by gleaming rods, joints replaced with gears, metal plates welded onto their faces, hands replaced with skeletal steel designed to catch and cage.
Srana had walked a fine line with these creations.
She knew their flesh was the weakest part of them, and yet, it was the only thing that allowed them to exist in this place where she could not go.
And so, she had ripped out as much of them as she could to replace with copper and steel, leaving only the fleshy husk of what they had once been.
The smell was unbelievable. Vomit filled my mouth, but I forced it back down. A distraction I couldn’t afford.
Two of them, a priest and a guard, reached me first. The sound was horrific, whirrs and ticks and terrible fleshy squelches.
I swung Zefiah, pushing through the line of bodies, taking off one head and then another.
Skulls cracked to the floor as I bolted down the hall—but the corpses were right behind me, continuing their chase, headless.
After all, it wasn’t as if they needed to think.
I didn’t make it far before they were on me again. Hundreds had died here. A virtually unlimited store of materials for Srana to manipulate. The one small relief was that there were so many bodies that I didn’t have time to think about the horror of it. No time to do anything but fight.
Distantly, I heard a melody of ticks rise overhead.
Thwack, as my blade buried in the corpse of a priest, wedging into the metal that ran up his spine.
I glanced up to see Srana hanging above, suspended on her metal spider legs over the broken ceiling, as if she could not resist watching her game play out.
Scalding hatred flared in my chest.
That was all any of this was to the gods. A game. Entertainment. Even when the stakes were their own survival, they could only bring themselves to care the way a gambling addict cared about the outcome of a horse race. Intense, but shallow.
“You may be surprised to know that it was you, actually, who gave me the idea.” Srana’s voice reverberated from the metal chests of her gruesome creations, her words surrounding me. “You reminded me of what had happened here. Such inspiration it gave me.”
You reminded me.
My steps faltered, and I paid for it with a slice across my shoulder. Because suddenly all I could hear were the words I had told Srana when I had fought her last. When I had rubbed Valentina’s death in her face.
Dread crashed over me at the thought of her. Of Mirie and Marko.
I hesitated too long. A reanimated soldier speared me through my arm. Another at my back. I whirled, countered, but I’d lost what little control I had on the situation, and now I was stuck defending myself.
Plan. I needed a plan. I needed to get to Shiket’s body, and the weapons there.
I set my sight to the hallway ahead. The flames surged over the floor, seeping through the gaps in the tile.
The statues of Shiket’s divine soldiers, the Sentinels, stared down at me, judging and unimpressed, as the light poured from every crack in their stone armor.
The corpses formed an endless moving wave ahead.
Light and shadow danced over the remaining stained-glass windows, and I thought that perhaps I saw a shadowed figure outside them, but it was so difficult to make sense of anything at all as I began fighting my way through the glut.
I was living in a distorted nightmare version of this place.
Yes, the building was nearly unrecognizable, walls collapsed, windows shattered, statues overturned.
And yet in the ruins of every room, I saw it as I had found it that terrible night.
I recognized the corpses that came for me.
The warrior who had died with a soulless at the edge of her spear, her face replaced with copper, weapon still bearing a chunk of rotten flesh.
The two teenagers who had been pinned to the wall, fleeing, their broken legs now replaced with metal, the stakes still running through their slumped torsos.
There were so many of them. Hundreds, against me alone. Unwanted fear ratcheted closer and closer to the surface of my skin.
I fought, and I fought, and I fought. I was somewhere halfway between the entrance and the courtyard, but I’d lost track of exactly where.
A hall stretched before me, seemingly endless.
My muscles ached. Zefiah was heavy in my hands.
As my panic rose, I so fiercely wished that I could hear her voice again that a sudden, unwelcome wave of emotion stung behind my eyes.
Get it together, Kyrene, I told myself. Fight for fucking spite if that’s what it takes.
I forced myself to raise Zefiah again, bringing it down on another corpse just as a deafening crash rang out.
One of the few remaining windows shattered. Eager flames bloomed through the hall. The corpses were too slow to redirect themselves, staggering into the fire or lurching sideways as a barrage of broken glass wedged into their decaying flesh.
A figure stepped through the flames. The light meant that I couldn’t see any features, but I recognized him immediately anyway.
My heart twisted.
Septimus.
He was doing something that I, at first, couldn’t quite make out.
Until ropes of black-red burst from his arms, and I realized: he held a shard of broken glass, which he was using to open gouges in his forearms, spilling more of his own blood to use as a weapon.
And gods, it was actually working. The corpses staggered around, confused, as black tendrils ripped through one after the other after the other, tossing them aside like rag dolls.
His hair was messy over his forehead, hanging into his eyes. His shirt was so wet with blood that it clung to his body. And the flames—most terrifying of all, the flames clustered around him, divine light eager to feast on tainted fallen soul.
But he looked only at me.
My chest tightened. He shouldn’t be here. He couldn’t be here. A fallen one would not be able to survive a place like this, drenched in godlight. It was impossible that he was still standing at all.
And yet, somehow, there he was.
His presence gave me a burst of strength.
With a roar, I hacked through the warrior holding me.
Shards of metal ricocheted as his mechanical arm split.
Before he hit the floor, I was already whirling to my next captor, slicing her in two.
They would never stop moving, so my only choice was to dismantle them.
As the second corpse went flying, its left leg sliced away with such force that it careened off over my shoulder somewhere, I could have sworn that even from this distance, through the light and the blood and the monsters, I saw Septimus smile.
He again buried that shard of glass in his arm, opening a new wound. And with the rush of fresh blood, he ripped apart the corpses separating us, until, at last, we were together.
“You fucking idiot,” I managed, through heaving breaths. “You can’t be here.”
“You’ve taught me to be a little more reckless.
” I watched the corner of his mouth curl into a familiar cool smirk.
Yet there was nothing cool about the way his gaze raked over me, as if assessing for damage.
Nor the way his hand rested at my lower back, as if resisting the urge to pull me closer.
It was so subtly protective, and though I had never needed protecting, it was oddly comforting to feel that someone wanted to.
But I could not see the way he looked at me without also seeing the red that now completely swallowed his irises.
I could not feel his arm around my torso without also feeling his blood soak through my clothing or witnessing the wince of pain at the touch.
Burns, maybe, from Shiket’s vengeful godlight.
How was he here? The question nagged at me. It wasn’t the first time Septimus had surprised me with his capabilities. Holding Srana’s spear. Playing Kajmar’s harp. Using Ix’s bow. But this—he was literally awash in godlight.
An unwelcome wave of emotion swelled at a horribly inconvenient time. With it came words that I didn’t know how to pull ashore. We didn’t have time for any of them, anyway. Not even thank you. Not even, traitorously, shamefully, I’m glad you’re here.
Srana’s laugh reverberated through the dismantled forms of her fallen soldiers.
“How fascinating,” she said. “I have never seen one of Nyaxia’s fallen ones fight this way. Perhaps I shall make use of you, too. A shame to let such useful parts go to waste, tainted or no.”
As if summoned by her, a renewed wave of her creations poured into the hall—so many I couldn’t even move around them, so many that the heat of their bodies and fumes of their oily gears suffocated me. Septimus and I fought hard, but soon, they swept us up in a current of rotten flesh and machinery.
I could no longer see. Blood ran into my eyes, blinding me, and I couldn’t stop moving long enough to wipe it away. Metal clashed against metal and metal and metal.
But the tide was too thick. My heart lurched when I realized that my feet were no longer touching the ground. The sheer volume of bodies crowded up against each other had begun to simply drag us away.
“Kyrene!” Septimus’s voice called. But though I twisted in my captor’s grasp, I couldn’t find him.
He was somewhere behind me, also swept up in the tide.
I swung my blade, attempting to hack away the hand that held me.
I hit the ground hard with an oof, only for someone to grab my ankles and start dragging me. I twisted in an attempt to free myself—
And froze when I saw the doors ahead.
Those double doors, wide open, leading to the courtyard.
They somehow looked exactly as they had that horrible day, and yet completely different.
The tall, arched frame that had loomed over me then now was broken, the stone above it crumbling on one side.
The great double doors were ajar, one of them hanging off its hinges, connected only at the bottom.
The light was brightest outside in the courtyard, the streaks of white-gold light seeping through every crack in the stone.
And I knew—I knew—what I would find in there.
But there was no fighting it. A crack, as my chin struck a piece of uneven rock, and my vision went hazy.
I thrashed against their hold as my captors dragged me down several broken steps, and then through dirt.
My fingers clawed against shriveled vegetation, abandoned by the magic that had kept it alive without the sun.
My fear became overwhelming, my movements frantic.
I lost track of Septimus. We were now so close to where Shiket had fallen. The godlight was so bright that it blinded me. I couldn’t imagine that he could endure it.
Metal hands and rotting appendages hoisted me against the wall. Shocks of pain bolted through my wrists. I cried out, instinctively lashing out, only to find that my arms were each firmly gripped by razored steel hands.
I forced my eyes to adjust, squinting into the light.
I found Septimus across the courtyard, arms splayed, as the corpses did the same to him.
A thick cloud of red and black now surrounded him, and his eyes were crimson bright.
He flung his attackers away, but it was useless. He was sorely outnumbered.
I turned my head, squinting, looking into the light.
The courtyard. This was the place where Shiket had died.
The trees that had once been so impressive were now singed and overturned. The back wall and the entire second half of the fortress had been reduced to rubble. Gold and white light lazily swirled in the wreckage like blood suspended in water.
When a god dies, they do not leave a body.
They leave a scar upon the world. And the scar where Shiket had fallen was deep indeed—a large, gaping wound, as if she’d used her death throes attempting to rip the earth in two.
I could make out the ghost of her form seared into the rubble in those streaks of white light, like scorch marks.
And I could still see her so clearly, holding me as I drove Zefiah into her heart, roaring in rage.
No, there was no corpse left of Shiket. But that rage still remained.
The rage, and the swords.
I wasn’t sure what I had expected to see.
Perhaps that they would be arranged somewhere, floating ethereally, like the marble statues lording over a temple altar.
But they, too, reeked of fury and death.
They jutted up from the wreckage, all five at different angles, like corpses clawing their way from a grave.
They glowed bright white. All were visibly broken, and their shards hovered around them like shattered moons.
Zefiah, I thought to myself, was the prettiest sibling after all. I had the urge to tell her so. But of course, she wouldn’t answer.
I laughed anyway, though. It was a manic, unhinged sound, suspiciously resembling a sob.
“What do you see, when you look upon this place?” Srana’s voice echoed from above.
She approached on her gleaming stilts, peering down at us the way a child looks at insects they’ve trapped in a glass.
“I see great potential. Do you understand now what you could become? I could build a weapon beyond my siblings’ greatest dreams.”
She came closer, so I could see her copper face through the licks of flame.
“Do not be afraid,” she said. “You are merely about to become what you were always meant to be.”
I flailed and fought, spitting curses, trying to wrench away—
But then my eyes fell to my latest attacker and froze there.
I could not look away.
I could not look away from Mirie.