Chapter 24 #2
The Weisanna lets him go. It is possible he has taken Galipei for granted all these years. There is a fine line between being his protective detail and being domineering. Hard as it is to point out the minute shift between the two, Galipei never annoyed him like this.
August is not the only one moving toward the commotion. The Weisannas have not warned off the two councilmembers. From different directions, they inch closer on the path. The woman, meanwhile, has stopped where she is, her hands shrugged into her pockets.
“Wasn’t that easy?” Otta continues. “Would you like to identify yourself next?”
“If you were as powerful as you’d like to believe,” the woman bellows, and her voice is so loud that August is taken for genuine surprise, his stomach dropping from underneath him, “you’d already know.”
This does not sit well with Otta. The clouds darken overhead.
Otta cannot control this rain—else she certainly would have put a stop to it rather than let her shoes squelch the entire journey up from Eigi—but she can add to it.
August has noticed this. He has refrained from pointing it out, because he does not want her to try on purpose.
“Forgive me,” Otta trills. “There have been so many names to remember since I entered this new world.”
August’s eyes swivel quickly to the councilmembers. They can hear her. As can all the guards who are inching toward the scene, preparing for a fight. Watch it, he wants to warn Otta, but then the woman scoffs.
“I didn’t like you much in your last life either.”
The woman shoves Otta from the other end of the path.
Despite Otta’s bravado, all that confidence built off the battle they won at the base, she goes flying.
Otta gasps, landing on her back with a bone-shattering sound.
She rolls herself over and recovers within seconds of the hit, unlike the prone Weisannas, but she is visibly pale.
August’s attention snaps back to the woman. She continues forward. His throat dries while merely watching her.
“That was a warning to prove I can answer to my threats. I am the god of abundant soil. I have taken over Pashe and won the people’s approval, and now you are encroaching on my territory. Take your leave or pay the price otherwise.”
The camp falls silent. August takes a step toward her. She must sense it instantly, because her steely-gray eyes whip to him.
“For a hundred years, we have had to live as pathetic mortals,” she says, and it’s to August, each word aimed in his direction.
“Your palace erased our existence. The people were made afraid to worship. We could not prove ourselves while heavenly qi was sucked dry from the world, and so we took on lives incongruent to our very being.” The woman lifts her arms. Across the camp, the soil trembles: lightly, initially, as though there is an earthquake underfoot, before entire sectors detach and shoot up.
August rears to his left, narrowly missing a chunk that would have taken off his arm.
“Wait,” August says.
“There is an army in Pashe under my command,” Councilmember Naov shouts, striding forward in interruption, “and you will—”
“SILENCE!”
The god maneuvers a shard of earth. It flattens Councilmember Naov where he stands. August jolts—his body reacts in fright before his mind has comprehended the quickness of the kill. Crimson blood spreads in the grass with slow, languid expansion.
August has killed countless people himself. He has cut throats, thrown bodies off buildings.
Never has he thought to pulverize someone, nor with such ease. The god lowers her hand. Otta gets back on her feet.
“Otta, wait,” August calls, and his voice feels horribly faraway even to his own ear. “Otta. Don’t—”
His sister seizes the qi floating along the path, taking over a section of the god’s weapons.
She turns the shards of earth, pivoting their sharp ends to be facing the god instead, but quicker than she can launch them, the god is reverting them with a smile on her face, hardly bothering to raise her hand.
Otta fires forth what she can manage. Under normal circumstances, the attack would have been debilitating. It would have ripped through her opponent. At the very least, it would have broken a few bones, tossed a victim back by several fields.
Instead, the soil scatters before any of it can meet its target, showering at the god’s feet in an orderly line.
“In kindness, I offered a warning,” the god says, “but I must defend my land now.”
“Wait!” August shouts. It is here that he finally runs toward the battle.
He cedes his dignity as the would-be king, relinquishes the sort of behavior he’s spent his whole life perfecting in an effort to appear superior among other nobles.
When he reaches Otta, he skids onto his knees beside her, his arms splayed.
“I beg you: don’t,” he says. “I have a proposal. Please, wait.”
Slowly, the god looks down over her nose at him, her brow arching.
“Is that right?”
“I apologize for this… confusion,” August says. “Forgive us. We got started on the wrong foot.”
“August—”