Chapter 39
FACE-TO-FACE. EYE TO EYE.
Hope shone from the faces around the camp. True hope of stopping death. The real possibility of survival. Our last hurrah had become our final true stand.
The specters’ mist carrying me to the mountain removed our main obstacle.
The rest would be up to me. Yes, Araz and Blue would be with me once I stepped into Mizikiel’s domain, but I’d have to strike the killing blow.
I’d have to destroy Chandra’s vessel and the last of his essence to hopefully annihilate Mizikiel.
Even then, we might fail. He might survive.
I might not be the Vajra.
I closed my eyes and dispelled the limiting beliefs. They didn’t serve me, and I would not hold on to them.
The responsibility sat heavy on my chest. It swirled in a ball of ice in my belly, and every breath wanted to shudder.
The mist waited at the edge of the camp. Pashim as sentry. Patient, as if we had all the time in the world. If only that was true.
Dharma hugged me tightly, her voice cracking when she spoke. “I might not be with you in body, but I’m with you in spirit.”
“We all are,” Joe said.
They surrounded me with the kind of warmth that injected conviction into my belly. Their belief fueled my conviction.
“We gots ta go, chickadee,” Blue said softly. “Gots ta get this done.”
I drank them all in and turned away, taking Araz’s hand.
Pashim’s gaze softened as we approached, his chest rising and falling on a heavy breath.
“Are you ready?” he asked me.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I don’t think being ready for something like this is possible. But I am. I’m ready.”
He nodded, his gaze flicking to Araz. “You’ll be with her.”
“I will,” Araz said. “I won’t allow any harm to come to her.”
Pashim’s lips curved in a smile. “We’ve come far, haven’t we, old friend?”
“We have indeed,” Araz said.
They clasped forearms in a greeting typical for their kind.
I looked between them, from Araz, the drohi who’d spurned me and pushed me away to begin with, to Pashim, the drohi who’d embraced me in friendship.
Pashim’s care and love had shown Araz that there was another way to live with our bond.
Pashim had brought us together, and now…
now he was going to be instrumental in making sure we survived to continue our journey.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve such a friend, but I was damn grateful for it.
The mist churned, ice pricking my skin.
“It’s time,” Pashim said, his gaze falling to Blue. “Tuck in close to Leela for warmth, little one.”
Blue snuggled up to my neck, and Araz put his arm around me. Together we followed Pashim into the mist.
A howling wind circled us, whipping at my hair, tearing at my clothes, and pulling us into what reminded me of a vortex.
Jagged whispers filled my head. Words I didn’t recognize. The ground vanished from beneath my feet, and my stomach dipped as if I was falling, but I held fast to Araz, his strong arms tight around my body. His heat pulsed into me to ward off the aching chill that threatened to numb me to the bone.
Blue’s paws pinched my skin, grounding me, his body trembling against my neck, anchoring me as the world seemed to fracture.
Some primal part of me recognized that I was inside death, and panic bloomed in my chest, a scream bubbling up my throat as my body attempted to flee a threat that made no sense. A threat that didn’t exist.
The howling intensified, the space around us vibrating as if from an outside assault. Needles of pain pushed into my head, and the vortex of mist and ice churned faster, moving inward as if to cage us.
Araz cupped the back of my head with one hand, gently urging me to bury my face in his chest. To not look.
“We’re passing through it now.” His voice rumbled against my chest. “Almost there.”
The howls morphed to screams that rang in my head, making it throb in agony. White-hot flashes of light filled my vision, and my belly churned.
I was going to be sick.
I clung to Araz, breathing fast and shallow to ward off the nausea, to breathe through the mounting pain in my head.
The screams died suddenly, taking the pain with them.
“It’s over,” Araz said softly. “We made it.”
“Fecking hell,” Blue whispered against my ear.
I carefully disengaged myself from Araz but remained in the circle of his arms. The mist was gone, but the specters remained, dotting around the sanctum that contained the throne. At least it had contained the throne; now it held a glowing white doorway where the throne had once sat.
Pashim stood to one side of it, his body bathed in ethereal light, an expression of wonder on his beautiful face.
“I feel it,” he said. “The vastness of time. Of possibilities.”
“It is not ours to traverse,” the older specter said. “This is as far as we go.”
Pashim nodded. “Yes.” He looked across at me. “This is your path, Leela. And yours alone.” His gaze flicked to Araz. “You cannot go with her, brother.”
Araz tensed. “You do not know that.”
“I do,” Pashim said. “And so do you. You feel it, and yet you hope if you ignore it, then it will not be so.”
My heart sank, my stomach knotting as I looked up into Araz’s face. His clenched jaw and the fire in his eyes gave me the answer I needed, but I asked the question anyway. “Is that true?”
He growled softly and shook his head before exhaling heavily. “Yes. It is true. But I will try. I must.” He gripped my hand tightly.
But he probably wouldn’t make it. I turned to the doorway. “If you don’t make it through, and if I don’t come back out, then—”
“No.” Araz cupped my shoulders. “I will make it through, and we will come back out. Together.”
He said it with conviction. As if it was a fact.
I allowed it to settle within me.
“We’ve got this,” Blue added, tapping the tiny sword at his waist.
My eyes heated. “You stay close, and no heroics. We have no idea what’s on the other side.”
“I got ya back, Leela.”
“And so do I,” Araz said.
“We’ll be waiting,” Pashim said, his tone soft.
I gave him a quick hug, then slipped my hand into Araz’s. “Let’s go, big guy.”
White light stole my vision, and the same sense of displacement filled me. I reached for Araz, squeezing his hand to anchor me, but my fist closed in on itself.
He was gone…
Panic flared bright and sharp as the light died, leaving me standing on a silver cobbled road beneath a cosmic sky streaked with the light of a thousand dying stars and the glow of three proud moons.
Long black grass swayed on either side of me, stretching as far as the eye could see, but it was the structure in front of me that grabbed my attention. Its presence was like a hand at my throat.
“Oh feck,” Blue whispered softly.
I reached up to touch his back, wanting to ground myself as I stared at the monolith spiral sitting on its side. It reached for the sky, gleaming dull silver and obsidian as it slowly turned with a whirr that hummed in the air and vibrated through the ground.
The sound pressed into me, traveling through the soles of my boots and into my blood.
A sense of wholeness, a sense of arrival and belonging bloomed inside me, and my knees threatened to weaken. I locked them, breathing through my nose.
“Leela, ya all right?” Blue asked, his voice a tremble.
“I don’t know…are you?”
“Somethin’ is different. I feel something…” Blue pressed his body to my neck. “Something inside you.”
My stomach quivered, and I pressed a hand to it, exhaling and standing tall. This was no time for nerves. “We have to focus on finding Mizikiel. Come on.”
I drew my axe and strode down the road toward the spiral. I wasn’t sure how I knew that’s where I’d find him. But I was right. He appeared a moment later, a small figure against the shadow of the gargantuan structure.
He turned to face me as I approached, looking at me through Chandra’s eyes, and gods, the sorrow in their depths almost gave me pause. But no, I couldn’t falter now.
I broke into a jog, then a run, a battle cry climbing up my throat, axes out at my sides.
Blue clung to me. “Get ’im!”
Mizikiel didn’t flinch. Didn’t evade. I swung my blade, a part of me fracturing because this would end Chandra completely. It would end him, and it would end Mizikiel too.
But my blade passed through air. I staggered forward with the momentum.
Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp.
The spiral beat, the vibration hitting my body and pushing me back.
“Where’d he go?” Blue scamped across my shoulders. “Get back here, ya coward!”
I spun this way and that, searching for him, but there was nothing but the silence of beginnings and the calm of endings.
“Come out and face me, you murderer!”
“Murderer?” His voice surrounded me, coming from everywhere and nowhere. “You don’t believe that.”
I swallowed past the dryness in my throat. “Yes, I do.”
“You’ve come too far to lie now, Leela. You claimed sovereignty through trials that almost broke you.
Do not belittle your efforts with falsehoods now.
You know what I am. You know why I do what I do.
But if it helps you to believe that it is murder, if it helps you to justify murdering me, then so be it. ”
“Don’t listen ta him, Leela,” Blue said. “He’s trying to get into ya head.”
But Mizikiel was right. I was trying to justify it.
But no more. I stood tall. “Fine, you’re not a murderer.
You’re a keeper of balance. You were fucked over by the Deva and prevented from doing your job.
I get it. But you were gone for a long time, and the universe still stands.
It hasn’t imploded because one world was allowed to continue to exist. So what the fuck is your excuse for ending it now? ”
Silence greeted my question.
Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp.
The spiral turned, slow and grinding.
“You see that spiral behind you? It’s a symbol of becoming. Of the complexity of time. Of how we are constantly moving toward future, past, and present. Time is not linear, Leela. What thrives now is also dead and gone. What blooms today is also in decay. Every living thing must have an end.”
“What are you talking about? How does that answer my question?”
“He means our world is already dead,” Blue said softly.
My stomach clenched. “What?”
“Yes, Blue. It was dead when I was imprisoned. It was dead when I was freed. But I made one mistake. I thought it would be my hand that unraveled it. I know now that is not true.”
The air shifted, and I gasped as he materialized right in front of me.
I made to attack, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen. At his mercy. Heart clawing at my ribs like a caged beast.
He looked down at me with Chandra’s face, his expression soft and resigned. He reached up to caress my cheek lightly.
“Get off her, you dirty bastard,” Blue snarled.
Mizikiel ignored him, his gaze fixed on me. “The night I claimed your body was the first time I ever felt alive. When we joined, when we were one for that moment, I felt…time. I felt…real.” He blinked, and his eyes darkened, blooming with galaxies. “I felt…love.”
My stomach twisted in revulsion. “Love? It wasn’t yours to take.” I wanted to lash out. To bury my axe in his throat. To end this.
“You violated her, you bastard!” Blue snapped.
Mizikiel blinked. “I suppose it might seem that way to you. But I gave you the body you wanted. The pleasure you desired. Was it so wrong for me to taste it too?”
“Yes!” Blue yelled.
But he didn’t get it. I could see that in his alien galaxy eyes. There was no point in arguing with him. There was no fighting him. I’d come here with the misconception that I could beat this being. That here, in his home realm, with Vritra’s power inside me, we would be equally matched.
I’d been wrong.
And now I’d die.
He gripped my wrist and brought my hand up slowly, so that the blade of my axe was at his throat.
What was he doing?
His gaze dropped to my torso. “Every living thing has an end so a new beginning can take root and bloom.” He sliced my blade across his throat, and blue light burst from his form, blue fractures forming across his face.
He smiled as he released me and stepped back, blue light pouring out of him and streaming toward me to slam into my chest. The stars in his eyes gleamed, and his shoulders sagged as if in relief.
My insides quivered.
A flutter low in my belly.
“It’s inside you now,” he said softy, and then he exploded into starlight and eternity.