Chapter 9 #3
When was the last time Calla saw Seiqi? When Anton was still pretending to be August, no doubt. Somewhere in the Palace of Union, before the delegation started. Seiqi must have left San-Er as soon as the Crescents opened the wall and allowed travelers to come and go.
Seiqi pulls her arm back. Her two tight plaits shift, one over her shoulder, one curled around her neck, and Calla finds herself studying the image. Seiqi throws a punch at nothing, merely an action mimed, and Calla skids back, fighting the hurtling wind rushing past her ears.
Calla looses a breath, her knees locking. Rain glances down her forehead. Trickles under her clothes, off her fingertips.
The Weisannas have spent a very long time believing themselves invincible. Add in a sigil like the one Seiqi must be wearing, and they become an impenetrable army.
So Calla needs to get this over with as quickly as possible.
When she returns fire, it is not a mere push that strikes Seiqi.
It is a burst of white, hurtling from her fingers.
For a flash of a moment, it freezes the entire camp in silver.
A photograph captured upon freeze-frame—wide eyes and an open mouth, hands held out in silent signal, a final plea to say, No! Stop!
Seiqi lands on her side, her chest singed black, and she does not move again. Calla, drenched in rain, continues forward. She strides uninterrupted toward the building, and when she flings open the door, the one standing inside to greet her isn’t August.
It’s Otta Avia.
A flash of lightning strikes directly onto the base. It might have been mistaken for the flare of a Weisanna jumping if it weren’t for the tremendous sound rocking the foundation of the building.
“Hello,” Otta chirps. “Made quite an entrance, didn’t you? We could have opened the gate nicely.”
Otta is covered in sigils. Though her sleeves hide a great portion, Calla catches dried blood all over Otta’s wrists when she gestures with her arm. Telltale flecks of red have dusted her shoulders too, coming from sigils that must be drawn around her collar.
“Where is August?” Calla asks.
“Occupied.”
The wind picks up behind her, rushing into the mouth of the vestibule. It roars in symphony with the qi pulsing from her crown, asking to fill the space, to sift through the rubble when she’s torn these walls down and left nowhere for August to hide.
She hurls forward.
Otta drops her smug expression. She clenches her fist, seizing onto Calla’s attack midair. Calla wasn’t entirely certain what she was gearing up to do, only that her hands were clasping raw power, ready to release.
But then Otta flings it back at her, and Calla goes flying.
Her shoulder smashes into the ground, skidding over the threshold of the door and returning out into the rain.
The impact robs the air from her lungs. Her throat constricts.
She can’t open her eyes fast enough. When Calla lifts onto an elbow, the qi she held steady in her hands seconds prior has turned slippery, avoiding her grasp as she makes a frantic grab for it.
“When the people ask,” Otta calls, striding slowly across the vestibule, “remember to tell them that you started the war. You decided to bring suffering to the kingdom for your own gain.”
“Calla!” Anton’s voice, at a distance behind her.
Stay back, she wants to tell him. She can handle Otta Avia. One by one, she has felled those who upset her—why would Otta think she is any different?
But Calla can barely sit up. Her sword hangs from her belt, and she has no opportunity to reach for it.
With every scrap of stamina, she turns herself over, slamming into the hard dirt.
She drags onto her knees. Teeters to her feet, fighting against the inordinate force that wants to keep her pinned.
How is Otta doing this? How many sigils must she be calling upon, all working in tandem?
Calla leans against the doorway. She draws a desperate breath. Otta stands only a few paces away.
“Calla!”
While Calla doesn’t have the energy to turn and look, Otta does. Her gaze focuses somewhere over Calla’s shoulder, locating Anton.
“How nice,” Otta remarks. “It would have been nicer if that weren’t my name first.”
Calla’s vision teeters violently. The images warp.
“What?” she rasps. She can’t be understanding correctly. Her hand spasms. Her sword is on her hip. Within grasp. She only needs to hold it.
“What?” Otta mocks. “Don’t act all innocent. It wasn’t enough that you led me astray and lost me my throne and my war. Then you took my body too. You have taken everything from me.”
A prickly sensation slams to the forefront of Calla’s mind. A somatic familiarity, trying to assign a memory to these words. Palace tiles on her knees, the mountain cold misting her breath.
Kneeling before Otta Avia in another time, in another body that wasn’t born mortal.
“Stop.” Calla staggers forward, her hand finally closing on her sword handle. “You—”
Otta scrunches her fist.
But because Calla is mortal this time around, her world goes black.