Chapter 27
Chapter 27
I duck under the bough of a tree, into the little grove that Cas’raneah indicated. Twilight deepens the colors of the sparse wood, highlighting the cluster of green and pink emilies growing nearby. She’s already here; Cas isn’t one to be late. Gauzy fabric hangs off her shoulders, and her long, messily plaited hair cascades over one shoulder. She comes to life when she sees me, crossing the way so swiftly she barely gives me space to enter the small clearing.
“What?” I ask. “What now?”
She looks up at me with her vibrant purple eyes. “We’re going to lead it here.” She speaks in Thestean, one of the languages of the gods.
“It? Ruin?” I sputter in the same tongue, and she hisses for my silence. “You want it to come to Tampere?” I grab a tree branch as the Serpent moves, rumbling the ground beneath our feet. The glowing emilies recede back into the earth as it does.
She nods. “It’s a newer world. Less known, and safer. Unpopulated.”
“We populate it, Cas.” Our city has grown since the goddess’s last visit. We have mills and forges and an apothecary. A second cistern, even a small courthouse. Our people aren’t as numerous here as in other places, but we’re thriving, building, growing, learning. That’s what she and the greater gods asked us to do. It’s why they created us.
But Cas’raneah shakes her head. “It has to be here. Ruin doesn’t know this place, not yet. It’s small and new; your Serpent hasn’t even shed it yet.”
I gawk at her. “What?” Step back and look at the ground I’d just been standing on, as though it might open a window into the planet’s core. “It’s still here?”
She gestures to the emilies. “Where the flowers grow, the Serpent spins. I will—”
“You moved us to a gods-damned unshed planet?” So many more words fight to climb up my throat, but only a few nonsensical syllables make it past my tongue.
Holding up radiant fingers, she stalls me. “It’s perfectly safe—”
“No wonder we get so many tremors.” I knit both hands into my hair. “Our whole city could fall when it sheds—”
“The Serpent does not destroy what it so laboriously creates.” The edge to Cas’raneah’s voice warns me of her thinning patience, though in truth, she should be more concerned about mine. “I will rehome—”
“This is our home.” I switch to the Ancetti language without meaning to. The language my people formed for ourselves.
She frowns. “And Elet’avar was your home before this.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You complain about the Serpent and then refuse to leave it?” She clasps her fingers under her chin, pleading, and steps closer. The top of her head only comes to my sternum. “None of this is fair, Pelnophe. There will be no Tampere, no Elet’avar, if we don’t stop Ruin. We can’t destroy it—we haven’t figured out how. But we can imprison it. Far away from the other worlds. Here. I know I’m asking you to leave your city—we will imprison it far away. Preserve your city, if we can.”
I scoff. I don’t want to share a world with the Devourer, no matter how they build its prison.
“Ruin is old and powerful,” she continues. “We need your magic to seal it.”
I gawk at her, waiting for the punch line, but none comes. A cool breeze blows gold hair into my face; I swipe it back. Time to hack more off, I guess. “It isn’t magic,” I explain. Again.
But the goddess merely smiles. “To Ruin, it will be.”
Cas’raneah hesitantly peeks into the small vat. I’ve set it up in the camp that our war party—for lack of a better term—has established in the middle of nowhere, halfway between our evacuated city and the location the gods selected for Ruin’s prison. But simple bars and stone will not hold the Devourer.
She, Arthen, and I crouch around the steel pot on its little burner, watching large bubbles form in the thin, liquid silver below. It casts a soft glow, almost like that of the emilies, against the sides of the vat. “It’s that brine silver I discovered when we moved out here,” I explain. Cas’raneah splits her time between Tampere and the battlefront itself; I haven’t seen her in almost fifty of Tampere’s days. “That shiny stuff at the bottom of those salt pots?”
“You went in there?” she asks. “Are you hurt?”
“I used magic.” I wiggle my fingers, which earns me an eye roll. The salt pots are filled with variations of blue and green boiling liquid. I don’t know what the World Serpent did or ate that created such a phenomenon in its skin, but it’s unsafe to touch bare handed. Nothing a drainage system and excavator can’t handle.
“There isn’t much of it,” I add. “It’s a rare substance. I was studying it, doing some experimental metallurgy with heat and aluminum chromate. Look.”
I stick my hand right into the silver.
“Pell!” Cas’raneah grabs my wrist and pulls it out. Arthen laughs.
“It’s only warm,” I assure her, watching the bright, silvery liquid drip off my hand and back into the pot. And it’s only warm because of the burner. Otherwise, I can’t even tell my hand was wet, that’s how low its density is. “Look how thin it is, and you can’t see through it. It’s reflective. I wonder if we can’t utilize this somehow. Privacy, camouflage—”
Cas’raneah pokes a bead of silver as it runs down my forearm, then gasps and whips her hand away. For a moment, I think she’s joking—trying to get back at me for scaring her with the pot. But she cradles her hand. Burns swell over her radiant, godly skin. A blister starts to form on her fingertip.
Arthen and I both stare. I’ve never seen a wounded god before. I don’t think he has, either.
“C-Cas.” I check my hand for silver residue before reaching out. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”
“What is this made of, again?” she asks, a wince still pinching the corners of her eyes as she studies the wound.
“A handful of things. I can get you a list.”
“How much can you make?”
I hesitate.
Arthen draws a hand down his golden beard, which is even longer than Cas’raneah’s hair. “You want it as a weapon.”
She nods. “If it can hurt me, it can hurt it.”
Ruin, she means.
“Not a lot.” I hate dampening her budding hope, but I have to be honest. “The brine silver is rare, hard to find.”
“How much?” Cas presses.
I glance at Arthen. “If we dig out all the salt pots ... seven, maybe eight thousand liters.”
Cas’raneah curls her finger into her fist, hiding it from us. “The amaranthine won’t be enough.”
I catch where she’s leading. Amaranthine is a strange substance the gods alone can create. It’s pale pink in color, almost like glass in its smoothness, but harder than tempered steel. Unbreakable, as far as I know. And incredibly difficult to make. It takes a lot out of the immortals, taxes them like little else does, but it also replicates their power, their essence. It would make a fantastic battery, if I can ever convince any of them to give me some.
They’re building Ruin’s prison out of it.
“You want to flood the prison with this ... silver.” I’m going to need a better name for it.
She claps her hands. “Flood it, line it, whatever you can give me. Another line of defense.”
“It won’t be enough,” Arthen comments, eyes unfocused. “We’ll need more.”
Cas’raneah peers into the vat. “We’ll need more. But this is a start.”
“I know how to do it.”
My eagerness to get to the stump-table in Arthen’s forge alerts the others—Maglon, Salki, and Cas’raneah. With chalk and a slate, I draw a giant circle, then a smaller one within, scribbling in a diagram I’m sure only I can read.
“Cas had a point. This world is new. Tampere’s Serpent hasn’t moved on yet.” I stab chalk into the smaller circle. The first World Serpent was made by the Well of Creation, but its children continue to populate the heavens, expanding the universe and life within. One of those children is adding its last touches to Tampere. I sketch a great fork cutting through the first circle to the second. “So what if we trapped it here?”
Salki pushes long red hair from her face. “Come again?”
“I don’t understand,” Cas’raneah says. She hovers a foot off the ground to better see my diagram.
“Because this.” I draw a sun symbol to the left of the diagram and circle it three times. “The planet turns with the motions of the Serpent. Ruin is, above all else, a void god. A creature created from lack, the inversion of the Well. It draws its powers from lack.” I turn to the goddess. “You said the prison wouldn’t be enough, even with the amaranthine and the acetic silver. This would be enough.”
“It draws strength from darkness,” Cas’raneah murmurs, fixed on the slate. “From coldness. Emptiness.”
“From night,” I agree, marking the right side of the diagram with an X. “If there is no night, then Ruin has no fuel.”
“Interesting.” Arthen rubs the roots of his long beard. It hangs nearly to his knees. Used to be to his ankles, before it caught at the forge and ignited. Again.
“It can still feed, though.” Salki turns to Cas’raneah. “Can’t it?”
The goddess meets my gaze. “It would limit Ruin, yes, but not destroy it. Should it escape by some chance, it would need only reach the dark side of the planet to regain its strength.”
“That’s the gods’ problem,” I spit, ruffled by even the slightest push against my genius. “Your army captures it, and we’ll imprison it. Weaken it.”
Cas’raneah purses her lips. “You won’t survive. We’ll ruin this planet.”
“Pun not intended.” Maglon winks.
His humor dies before reaching anyone else. “We were going to leave, regardless,” I say, still chaffing at the idea.
“No.” Salki knits her hands together as though in prayer. “We should stay. If this works, we must stay. We can’t leave such a prisoner to its own devices.”
Silent agreement spreads through us. “We’ll need help.” I fold my arms tightly across my chest. “The sun will burn out the land. We’ll need something to cool it.”
“We’ll figure that out,” Maglon assures me.
“What if it escapes?” Cas’raneah flexes her long fingers. “What if it finds this machine?”
“Through the amaranthine and the acetic silver? Through perpetual daylight?” I counter, but Cas’raneah only frowns. The longer the war stretches, the more she doubts ... everything. “We build the machine far away,” I offer. “As far from its prison as we can get.”
“Without touching the night?” she counters.
“As far as we can get,” I repeat, because it’s the only answer I have. “And we’ll guard it. Plus the amaranthine. Plus the acetic silver.”
The goddess rubs her arms.
“We’ll do what we can,” I offer. “We can house the machine in a fortress and physically guard it ourselves. We just need something to power it.”
After a long hesitation, she nods. “Do it, then. I’ll sort out the rest.”
The work is merciless. Constantly pumping the bellows at the forge, tinkering, assembling, planning. Little to eat and even less sleep, but the war is nearing its peak, and the universe shudders with it. Ruin will destroy everything, if given the chance.
The machine is enormous. It has to be, to trap a creature one can call a god in its own right. The Serpent cannot leave; its turning, its feeding, keeps the planet rotating. When it leaves, the power of its exit, along with the laws of the universe, will continue Tampere’s rotation. Set it, leaving us no mode to stop it. Which means the Serpent has to stay. We have to imprison it, along with the Devourer. We can fathom no other way. Not in such limited time.
And so we erect the machine. Build it in five pieces, with redundancies, for a single failure could shatter everything. War affords no mistakes.
“And this will do it?” Cas’raneah asks, looking at the half-built monstrosity beneath the light of stars.
Raising a forearm to simulate the planet’s crust, I thrust my opposite hand behind it and clench my fist, mimicking the machine’s underground claw. “Just like this,” I promise. “The drill will do most of the digging. It will be quick, if we can feed it enough power.”
“The planet will stop, and we’ll cage Ruin in the sun.” She sounds unsure, but Cas’raneah seldom thinks in absolutes.
“We need a power source.” Amaranthine is our best bet.
“I know.” The irritation in her voice isn’t directed toward me. We’re all exhausted. “I’ll deliver it soon. A few of the others will help me.”
My hackles rise. “I thought you weren’t telling others about this.” We can’t risk word getting out to Ruin. We have one chance.
“They’re trustworthy.” She looks heavenward, sudden nostalgia softening her features. “I can’t do it alone. I am not the Well.”
I sigh and nod, though she doesn’t see it. But if a goddess herself is this concerned, I don’t know what chance the rest of us have.
We’ve nearly finished the tower; its walls and floors align snug and tight. Hagthor and Amlynn are fantastic architects; no one will be able to get through the fortress by the time she’s done with it, though I worry that the speed at which we erected it will create problems, so I put in extra fail-safes. Arthen thinks they’re a waste of time, but Cas’raneah’s fear pushes me to be thorough. Hide the amaranthine crystal behind a door and entrust its only key to our most discreet citizen. Block off the top three sections of the machine, with a hidden lift for maintenance, and a trapdoor in the shaft for floor three. I make it so all five parts of the machine can disconnect, and we have enough acetic silver to coat the topmost piece.
Now I have plans on a giant piece of parchment stretched out between our group. Again Cas’raneah hovers to see over our shoulders; for whatever reason, our gods made us taller than themselves. At least, taller than the ones I’ve met. “We’ll snatch the Serpent at the last possible moment.” I point to the outline of the machine and the great folded claw attached to the drill. “We can’t tip off Ruin or any of its spies.”
“How will you know where it is?” Cas’raneah chimes in. “When to do it?”
“The emilies.” I lift my head to point them out, but none are growing here. “That’s how the Serpent feeds.” The powerful buds suck sunlight down through their deep roots and into the Serpent itself, which feeds almost like a plant would. “There’s a pattern; the Serpent makes a complete rotation every twenty-six hours. The flowers follow its path. When the flowers return here”—I point toward the tower—“we act.”
The heavens thunder, the ground groans, the stars fall. The gods have brought their war to Tampere.
I know when Ruin arrives. Unholy darkness swallows the night of his coming. Our lanterns and motor-powered lights barely pierce it. The darkness is a physical thing, like dust or breath.
Maglon turns on the fog emitters early, thinking they’ll mask our work. They don’t quite align with the movements of the sun, but if this works, that won’t matter.
When the sun dawns, I ready myself at the tower. We complete the machine. It’s massive and functional and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever constructed. Would be even more so, if we’d had the time. I wait, poised at the top of the tower, but the signal doesn’t come. Ruin is too powerful.
It devours. A scout reports an enormous crater, kilometers from Emgarden, but whether the earth was eaten or merely crushed by the power of gods, we can’t be sure. The forests begin to decay. Animals sense the wrongness of the void god’s presence and flee as the vegetation curls and withers. We stay, waiting, ready.
The wait hurts. I can’t sleep. My muscles are in a constant state of winding, ready to spring at a moment’s notice. Fear sours my belly. What if it doesn’t work? What if Ruin catches on and flees? What if the gods can’t pin it down? What if it wins?
“Then we’ll all be dead, and it won’t matter,” I tell Salki callously over thin soup. I’m terrible at comforting, and she knows it. She shouldn’t have asked. It’s an unfair thought, but I have to be unfair. If I dwell on our demise when our people have only just begun, I will unravel. I need to keep myself together. I need this machine to work.
The planet rocks the day they seize the Devourer.
Our small shelters collapse. Dying trees topple, canyons open, mountains jut, and a shrill whistle sings out across a pale sky—the gods’ call.
They have it, and the emilies thrust up through the soil, drinking in sunlight, marking the path of the Serpent.
Almost as soon as the signal sounds, the darkness spreads. It rushes from the land far to the west, spreading out in patterns like broken glass, black and sinking and sucking. Entire rock formations crumble atop it as it passes. Brush turns brittle and collapses beneath its own weight, and the darkness pours into Emgarden.
My people panic and run, some not quickly enough. I watch Hagthor fall to it. Watch his body gray in an instant, his eyes dissolve in their sockets, his hair fall from his head. He never screams, only shrivels and wanes until there’s nothing left of him.
We are not gods. We retreat.
I desperately seek out Salki, Arthen, but there’s no time to search, only to sprint for our lives. I don’t know how long it will take for the gods to strip Ruin enough to imprison it; I only know that it will consume everything within its reach while they try. Maybe even the Serpent itself.
The tower.
My lungs burn. The garage has fallen; there’s no time to free the off-world transports. I have only the legs the gods gave me, and if they’re not enough, then we all fail.
I bolt for the tower, sprinting on my toes, pumping my arms with the silent plea to move faster, faster, faster. The heavens thunder and darken as I reach the heavy doors and haul them open, slipping into the darkness of the tower.
My long legs take the stairs three at a time. To the open door of the power source. I trace the hidden runes at its base, and the rose-colored crystal burns to life. Backtracking, I push the door seamlessly flush with the wall, then cover it with the second part of the machine. Only Entisa will be able to open it now, if the universe wills that she survives.
Up, up, up to the top of the tower, to the master engine I created with my own hands. Through the acetic silver that harmlessly cascades over me. I drop the turbine into position and throw my weight into the lever. The tower rumbles and spits, venting hissing steam through its windows. My body vibrates as the drill surges through the crust, and I grip the machine with golden knuckles blanched white to keep my balance. When the claw hits, the machine bucks me off, throwing me back through the acetic silver and into the wall. My vision blackens for a moment, but my mind stays alert, and I push onto my feet as the tower jerks north, then east, as the Serpent tries to free itself.
We did it.The movements still. The claw struck true.
The machine settles, steam dissipating. With the clamp released, the Serpent within the planet will be unable to turn. We’ve locked Ruin’s prison in perpetual day.
But I have to guarantee it.
Pinching my lips together, for it pains me to destroy what I’ve created, I drop to the fourth floor and start pulling parts free, dislodging gears, cutting wires. Down through the tower, I destroy the mechanisms that brought us hope, each a little more than the last. I crush, dislodge, tear, scatter. Cut and tear out the cording that links its parts. The machine will hold, but it will never again release.
I stumble out of the tower, the sun frozen two hours from its zenith, but a brighter light bursts beneath it, a star exploding outward with the power only a goddess can possess, and I know instantly that it’s Cas’raneah, come to initiate the machine herself if she has to. But I’m still here. We’re still here.
Should it escape by some chance, it would need only reach the dark side to regain its strength.
Realizing what she’s doing, I stumble at the blaze of light, my strength gone. “Oh, Cas.” Not this. Not you, too.
Her power bursts from her in a cascade of amaranthine. It sweeps the land, growing and burning and hardening into a wall that seems to stretch on forever, that surely encircles the continent in its entirety, an impenetrable guard to keep any from climbing it and reaching to the cold abandon on the planet’s other side.
And then she falls, lifeless, toward the earth.
“Cas!” I shout. I try to run, but my weary body falters. I fall to palms and knees, scraping them on the rough soil. Pushing up, I limp forward, desperate to reach her—
Ruin’s black tendrils fade to little more than a shadow of gray. I’m so desperate to reach Cas that I don’t even notice when I cross one. But I feel it. Immediately, I feel it.
It doesn’t devour me, as it did Hagthor. Ruin is too weak. But even as it sinks into its prison, the Devourer consumes. My dwindling strength leaches out through the soles of my feet. The golden glow seeps from my hair and skin. My bones shrink. As the sun-bright sky blots to darkness in my vision, I collapse.
And I forget.
Lids scrape over my dry eyes, and mist-strewn sunlight fills my vision. With a groan, I push myself up. My blood feels made of grit, and my skin, cracked leather. I take a moment to gain my bearings. Where am I? Why do I feel like this? Ugh ... my head feels like the clapper of a giant bell.
Someone is crying.
Picking myself up—it takes a few tries—I teeter toward the sound. I think it’s a child at first, but when I find the source in the hazy fog, it’s a small woman, curled up on herself, her dark hair falling over naked back and shoulders.
I crouch in front of her. “Are you okay?”
She blubbers a little longer. “No,” she wails. “No, no, no ...”
“What’s your name?”
She doesn’t seem to understand me. She squirms from my touch, sobbing and muttering choppy nonsense. I stay with her a long while. I have so little energy. But eventually I hear other voices, more clear and precise, more intelligible, elsewhere in the fog. Voices I know, somehow, but can’t quite place. I try, and ... lose my train of thought.
“Here.” Standing, I offer my hand. “Let’s find you some clothes.” My own hang off my frame; my trousers barely stay up. “Better to cry where it’s safe than out here.” Wherever here is.
It takes some goading, but I convince the naked woman to take my hand. Her body spasms a few times, then allows me to lead her toward the others. She drags her feet and mumbles under her breath, but I catch part of it.
“Cas ... neeee.” She shudders and tries again. “Casss ... neeee!”
“Is that your name?” I ask, but she doesn’t reply. Doesn’t seem like she’s able to, like her mind is elsewhere, connected to her body by only a thin string. After a few more attempts, she says, “Nia!”
“Casnia,” I supply for her, and she doesn’t object. “I’m ...” It takes a moment for me, too. “Pell. Pelnophe. I’ll help you, okay?”
She stumbles then, dropping into the dirt as though her strength has left her entirely. I have a little left, so I carry her the rest of the way.