Chapter 14 Daesra #3
I stagger back, clutching my arm impotently, just as Pogli lunges toward her, shrieking and snarling, still small—but I feel the pressure in the air change.
When he roars, it’s not only sound that rips out of his squashed little jaws but a whirlwind of force that slams into her.
She only tucks her wings into a crouch, ducking against the blast—and then sweeps out one of those wings in a whipping arc, catching Pogli in the chest like a rock in a sling and launching him out over the lake.
He lands with a loud splash well beyond the rowboat, where I hear him flailing and whining in the distance.
“I will not harm that one,” the creature says in a singsong tone.
Her full lips are rose-kissed pink—and hiding pointed teeth between the petals.
“Or you,” she adds, her yellow-green eyes cutting to Melé, who has shifted on her feet.
Perhaps trying to move for a large rock nearby?
“You have been judged worthy. But not you.”
Her gaze refocuses on me, her pupils narrowing to black slits.
She should be more than enough to hold my attention, but there’s noise coming from the other side of the hill. Low grunts of voices and snapping twigs. Like something—or someone—is crashing through the bushes and hurrying others along.
My golden blood pulses hot through my fingers. A fountain for those dying of thirst.
“Who are you? What are you?” I demand. My skin and muscle are knitting back together, but slowly. Ever since the pass I’ve been exhausted, so it makes sense despite the terrible timing. I need to keep her talking, even if that won’t help the fact that I’m already covered in blood.
“I am one of the Gentle Ones—a name whispered only in the shadows to avoid my attention. But I will always find those I seek. I serve the Maiden and enact her justice.” The snakes hiss along with her lilting voice.
“Those who offend her must go to the Plains of the Forgotten. You should not have tarried.”
My thoughts churn as the crashing in the bushes grows louder.
Now I can even spot a few shades hurrying toward us along the shoreline, running as if to come to our aid.
But I know they’re rushing for a different reason.
What did the Maiden—if that was the young judge covered in blood—say she would do to those who wronged her? Leave them always wanting?
Of course one would be always wanting in the Plains of the Forgotten. And that’s probably where these shades are coming from.
“I paused for a moment,” I growl in pain and indignation, though that’s not the point.
I’m not supposed to be here in the underworld at all.
Trying to discreetly reabsorb some of my blood back into my skin, I ask, even though it feels like a formality, “And what if a shade doesn’t go to the plains? ”
“Then I end their journey for them.”
I roll my shoulder, pleased to find it working. I hope the splashing behind me is Pogli struggling toward the shore, and not a creature from the lake coming after my blood along with the shades. “Well, I’m not headed to the plains, and I’m not stopping.”
“I know.” She grins at me, baring pointed fangs. “But it pleases me to hear it.”
And then she lunges at me.
Her speed takes me by surprise—but my blade, summoned from thin air, takes her by surprise as well, arresting her in mid charge as it slices across her chest. It cuts deep, and yet her wound doesn’t bleed. It only leaks shadowlike smoke.
By now shades are gathering in a loose semicircle around us, their eyes fixed upon me and my appealing shine.
But they haven’t yet built up the nerve to move any closer with a god and…
whatever the Gentle One is… facing each other.
Even so, I can’t risk taking another hit.
The blood, or at least my obvious vulnerability, might become too much to resist. Their faces are already slack with desire.
The Gentle One might not bleed herself, but she has aether in her. I can feel it. Even though it might not be wise, I close my eyes briefly, feeling for the pulse of it…
And then she violently shoves me away, both behind the darkness of my lids and through the air. I crash onto my back with a fresh claw wound raking down my arm.
The shades’ eyes all alight on me, pouncing before their bodies do. And then they break ranks almost as one. Coming for me with snarls on their lips and grasping hands.
For a moment, the Gentle One doesn’t move—she only smiles, apparently content to watch how this plays out.
I don’t watch. Her rose-petal lips are the last thing I see before I close my eyes once more.
She was too strong for me to swallow, but the shades aren’t.
Golden light—pure, sweet aether—floods through me like water over cracked, parched earth.
Relief blossoms in the wake of it, bursting over my entire body with the vibrancy of flowers after a storm…
until something darker and rotten takes root underneath.
It’s both the most wonderful feeling—and the worst.
When I open my eyes, no one surrounds me any longer, only piles of dust that leave trails in the air. Melé is the only shade still standing nearby. She stares at me in open horror, but I can’t focus on her—and not only because of the Gentle One, who is very much still standing as well.
I wish that beautiful aether and lifeless dust were the only things shades left behind when consumed. Hunger, fear, anger, and regret all claw up my throat at once, nearly enough to make me scream.
And yet it’s not enough to stop me.
The Gentle One’s eyes only have time to widen in surprise before I’m in front of her.
My sword flashes out, taking her head from her shoulders in a single swipe.
I don’t have the luxury of a moment—or the space inside me—to feel triumphant.
Melé cries out behind me, and not because the body flailing on the ground still has a life of its own.
“More shades are coming!”
She’s right. I can hear them, see them, even feel them approaching.
And while my body courses with energy, stronger and more alive than ever, it’s too much.
Colors are too bright, sounds are too loud—a buzzing like muffled screaming fills my ears.
I only stagger and clutch my head, my sword vanishing from my hand.
Inside me I have both the power of a god and the powerlessness of those helpless souls I just consumed.
The Gentle One is somehow more capable than me even decapitated, her body flapping and clawing its way over the ground toward her head. The sight is somehow horrifying and grimly hilarious, and I’m seized by the urge to both laugh and recoil. If she doesn’t bleed, then perhaps she can’t die.
At least not like that.
Forcing my feet to move, I barely reach her head before she does. The snakes twine around my wrist as I snatch it off the ground, but they don’t seem able to bite. The creature’s eyes are rolled back in her head, her jaw shivering soundlessly in time with the snakes’ shuddering.
“The boat,” I gasp. I stumble toward it, gesturing for Melé to follow as shades rush up behind us.
Instead of taking her arm, I smear my blood across her mouth and between her lips, harsh in my haste.
I’m no longer bleeding, but there’s plenty enough still soaking me to serve.
“Swallow it as you go. Swim. I’ll be right behind you. ”
Slinging a panicked look at me and then back at the shades—who are now looking at her just as much as me, with her gold-stained face—she nods, and then wades out into the water.
I follow a short ways, but I have one more thing to do before I leap in after her. Holding the head in my hands, ignoring the writhing snakes and clacking jaw, I meet those slitted, yellow-green eyes as they roll forward to focus on me. And then I close my own once more.
This time, she can’t put up a fight when I reach for her aether—and I seize it in my grasp. It floods through me in a light more brilliant than all the ghouls and shades combined. It sings through me. Screams through me.
Like the ghouls and shades, her soul leaves an aftertaste.
Which is a kind word for it. For a moment, I can’t move as her claws sink into me one last time—into my soul.
Her presence, her essence, still fights me even if she isn’t any longer.
I’m not quite sure what the feeling is, in truth, only that it overpowers any emotion that the shades left me.
No, it eats me alive. Even though I’m filled with power, I’m hollow, hungry, desperately wanting, and yet sickeningly repulsed at the same time.
I have the urge to grasp at everything only to shove it away.
To consume everything and vomit it right back out.
To hold the entire world in my arms, just so I can watch it rot.
Perhaps it’s fortunate that a shade careens into me right at that moment, knocking me off balance and snapping me out of my daze.
The head crumbles to dust before I can drop it, and then I’m wading deeper into the water with greedy hands clamoring at my back.
I manage to break free of them as I swim.
Many of the shades stop at the shoreline, but several splash in after me, only to start wailing and floundering before they get very far.
I don’t wail, but I am floundering. Once more I have plenty to contend with, without the effects of the lake.
The feeling of the Gentle One inside of me is worse than Melé hanging off my back while trying to force my head under.
I can hardly keep my face above water, just enough to glimpse Melé reach the boat.
First she hauls herself in, and then Pogli dripping over the stern by the scruff of his neck.
She doesn’t seem to be wailing, at least. Which is good, because it means that my blood did the trick—and that she might be able to pull me in, too.
I barely make it alongside the boat, my hand lashing out to grip the gunwale just as the rest of me goes under. And then my fingers start to slip.
It’s almost a relief. Maybe if this lake swallows me, it will swallow the feeling inside of me as well.
A strong hand catches my wrist, sliding only to clasp me in a firm grip that yanks me upward. My head breaks the surface, and I gasp in air I wish I could spit back out, despite how sweet it is.
And then I wish I could tear my eyes out after what I see.
Isha stands in the boat, braced against the side where he caught hold of me—where he’s still clutching my hand in his unbreakable grasp—while Melé crouches on the far end, hugging Pogli to her chest in fear.
He ignores her to smile down at me in dripping satisfaction, his eyes as cold and hard as the iron that colors them.
“I see you met Jealousy,” he says. “Perfect timing.”