Chapter 31
Chapter 31
I open my eyes to light. So many lights ...
Candles and lanterns around and above me, filling the room as though the sun has come down for a closer look. It’s too close, too hot. Burning, aching, a sharp contrast to the cold, swirling darkness in my core.
When I vomit, it comes up silver.
“Don’t touch her,” snaps a voice that sounds remarkably like Amlynn’s. It hurts. Her voice, the sound of footsteps, the rustling of clothes. Like they move inside my brain. A hand thumps against my back, and agony blasts shock waves through my ribs. I cough hard enough to vomit again. Less silver, this time.
“It will not kill me,” Heartwood protests, and some of the lights dim as he moves in front of them. His shadow mitigates the brightness and gives me a moment to orient myself. The tower, Ruin, sunset, silver. It hurt me, in those depths. I’m not sure how long we fought, but Ruin didn’t steal my memories this time. They emerge sluggishly, piecing themselves together like Ancient artifacts. My artifacts.
“After that? Are you so sure?”
I blink silver from my eyes. Cough again. Try to ask what’s happening, but when I try to speak, I choke on silver.
“Let her purge,” Amlynn insists.
Farther away, Salki asks, “Is she all right?”
I don’t hear a response, only a sigh of relief. And suddenly warm hands on my face, tilting it up, smoothing wet hair back.
“I said don’t touch!” Amlynn barks. “You want to lose a finger? Damn it, I need more water!”
“Nophe,” Heartwood whispers.
I blink, his features coming into focus before me. Shadowed from the lanterns. So much fire is making the room unbearably warm, but I feel a little more myself with each shaky breath. A little more present.
Cold water gushes over my head. I start, gasp, shake. “What—”
Droplets splash off the amaranthine beneath me.
I freeze, staring at the smooth, pink, translucent floor, and the silvery pool beneath it. Run my hand over it, smearing water and silver droplets. It hugs the west side of Machine Five, spanning from the machine to the wall before curving down to meet with the floor. The other half of the space has only a few inches of acetic silver in it; Machine Four’s been rolled back, spilling the precious liquid into floor four. Pulling my gaze back, I notice Heartwood’s hand beside me, red and angry and blistered. Burns from acetic silver.
He pulled me out.
The lights, they’re from the others. From Emgarden. The pool. I was holding Moseus in the pool—
I look up, meeting Heartwood’s gaze. His luminescence has faded entirely. He looks like himself again. At least, the self I know. The self that has been away from the garden too long and grows sick with it.
My gaze crawls upward, past the lights, past the machine, to the indigo night above. Serpent save me ... did we succeed?
“It will not hold forever,” he says, quiet, tired. “I cannot reach help as I am now. We will have to make a beacon to summon the others.”
“Gods?” Amlynn asks.
He nods.
Gods.I examine the pink crystal beneath me. Trapping Ruin as his first prison did.
“You gave up your godhood,” I croak, still coughing. “You made this.”
Heartwood touches my face. Hushed enough that only I can hear, he whispers, “It was an easy choice. Thank you, Nophe. For this, and for the chance to try again.”
I swallow. Amlynn offers me a nearly empty water bladder, but I ignore it. “Try again?”
He kisses the side of my forehead, avoiding the injury at its center. “To finish what my sister started.”
Understanding dawns on me slowly. A coward, he’d called himself. No longer.
“The light won’t hold forever,” he says to me, Amlynn. Through the doorway half-blocked by amaranthine, I see Salki standing on Machine Four. Others congregate below her. “We must keep the room lit at all times, even during the day.”
“Day?” Salki repeats, more to herself than anyone else.
After ensuring I’m mostly silver-free, Heartwood gets me down to the lift on the fourth floor. He’s injured, too, and without his godhood, he’ll heal slowly. How slowly, only time will tell.
The earth quakes as we step out of the tower; Heartwood grabs the door hard enough to splinter it. The tremor passes quickly. When I step out of the tower, I catch a writhing shadow against the night sky, winding away from our world. The Serpent, finally free.
I sob. Body-shaking, throat-wrenching sobs. It isn’t over—those lights, this prison, will hold for a month at best. But it’s finished for now. For now.
I drop to the cooling earth, mourning everything lost and celebrating everything saved, watering the feet of my creations, my tower, with tears. Heartwood stands sentinel, allowing me to grieve. Salki drops beside me, a steady and reassuring presence.
A minute passes before she asks, “Pell, what are they?”
Lifting my head and wiping my nose, I find her raised eyes and peer upward. A laugh wheedles its way past my lips.
“Oh, Salki. Those are stars.”
The gods had been many.
The Well of Creation brewed deity of all kinds, and they, in turn, created. Sometimes they formed other gods, like Heartwood and Cas’raneah, sometimes telluric creatures, like us. Many of these beings partook in the war to imprison Ruin. Several survived. And so, were we to call out to them, they should answer, or so Heartwood believes. He cannot do it himself. The divinity that once flowed through his veins, the strength stolen by Moseus—Ruin—was destroyed imprisoning it. Heartwood will never again be who he was. None of us will.
He accepts the sad fact too easily as we sit outside the tower, watching the first sunrise in many years. I never counted the years. Never thought to, thanks to the stupor that Ruin trapped us in. But Heartwood says it’s been nearly thirty since the first imprisonment. I was eighty-six when Cas’raneah brought the war to Tampere. It’s strange to think I passed my centennial mark and never realized it.
I am tired. We are all tired. The recapture of Ruin resulted in only one death, but it’s a death felt heavily by all of us. Heavier, I dare say, than Ramdinee’s, Entisa’s, and Hagthor’s, though only I remain to remember the last. Maglon was a gatherer, a friend of all, a connector of neighbors and balm to the mourning. Ruin consumed him so completely ... we have nothing left to bury except a gray streak on the red-tinted earth, but I will dig a grave for him regardless. It’s the very least I can do to honor him, for without his efforts, I don’t think Salki or I would have reached Moseus in time.
Heartwood is a casualty, but he will live. He is burnt and sick and bandaged, but he’s alive, and he will heal. We watch the stars crawl across the heavens, and the rebirth of the sun chases them away with blue, pink, and orange light.
I drift off at some point, leaning back against the tower. When I open my eyes again, the sun beams full and yellow, the sky an easy cerulean. “A beacon, then. To call them.”
Heartwood picks up the threads of our previous conversation. “It will have to be large. Powerful. Tampere resides on the outskirts of our universe.”
It will have to be built quickly, too. We cannot risk Ruin freeing himself. But we built great machines before, with little time to spare. We can do it again. I wonder if any of the gods remember us.
I reach for Heartwood’s hand and knit my fingers with his. A bandage pokes out from his sleeve. He squeezes, then murmurs, “Nophe.”
“Hm?”
“Take me to my sister.”
Rising, I pull him up. Our height difference makes me an awkward crutch. We shuffle our way into Emgarden, but we make it, and once within its unassuming, incomplete walls, others step up to help me.
Salki should be resting, but when we arrive at her door, she sits beside Cas’raneah’s cot, caressing her hair like a mother over a child. I will tell her stories of the goddess who saved us. I will share everything I know. I will remember what others cannot.
Cas’raneah has yet to awaken. I don’t know if she will. She diminished herself so much already, making the amaranthine wall that still stands, locking us away from the rest of the world. She, too, lost much that she will never be able to reclaim, and I realize our casualties are far higher than I originally counted. Our war never truly ended.
Salki vacates her chair, and we help Heartwood into it, the others excusing themselves in a gift of privacy. Salki moves to the far side of the room, busying herself, her movements awkward and weary.
Bracing himself against the cot with one arm, Heartwood leans forward and traces a thumb across his sister’s brow. “It is her,” he says, “but it is not.”
“She tied her spirit to Tampere. To the amaranthine wall.” I grasp his shoulder, offering what little comfort I can give. “She is here, Heartwood. She is wired through every millimeter of this world. She is everywhere.”
He sits silently, watching Cas’raneah’s still face. Her breaths are deep and even, but weak. I don’t speak. After a minute, Salki finds a reason to leave and does so without a sound.
“I didn’t realize,” he says at last, “how much destruction I had caused.”
“Heartwood—”
“Perhaps, had I heeded her call and joined the war, she would not have had to do this,” he adds. “Perhaps, had I investigated more carefully, I would not have fallen into Ruin’s clutches. If I had searched more diligently and feared less, I would have found her before it was too late.”
“Tell me your name again.”
He glances up, shadows forming half moons beneath his eyes, confusion weighing his brow. “Ytton’allanejrou.”
I carefully repeat it, syllable by syllable. The word tastes like power on my lips. “You have strived for peace. You journeyed between the stars in search of her. You suffered a mortal world, a mortal life, in pursuit of her. You let your heart break, to choose her.” My voice drifts as my throat squeezes. “You hurt yourself, and lost your divinity, to end the war she fought. You could blame yourself. You could blame the gods for not doing more, or my people for not fulfilling our part. You can blame Ruin, or the Well of Creation itself. And yet none of it will change our sacrifices and our truths. We can only move forward and find joy in what’s left. And there is so much left, Heartwood.”
I run a knuckle over his ear. He leans into my touch, letting out a long, hollow breath. “You are right. But it will take some time for me to believe it.”
“We have time.” Outside, the sun climbs steadily higher, marking the hours on our behalf. “A little time, at least. I might suggest you spend it recovering.”
I brace his arm. Taking the cue, he allows me to help him stand. “The alehouse is near.” An empty pang hits my chest at the thought. “As is Ramdinee’s home, if you want a private place to convalesce. Or we can drag your sorry body back to my bed.”
He groans, one hand pressed to his raw abdomen. “You know which I’d prefer.”
I smirk at him and secure his arm around my shoulder, though my own legs are drained of strength. I want to lie down and sleep for ten cycles ... then again, we don’t tell time that way anymore. I’ll settle for five days. How utterly bizarre a thought.
But alas, Ruin has not left us with a plethora of time. My work is far from over.
“We’ll build the beacon,” I say as I pull open the door. “And then we’ll climb that wall and return to our city.”
“City?” he asks.
“Where we started. What we left.” On the other side of the planet sprawls a city that has sat in the frigid dark for thirty years. A metropolis cut off, sentenced to die before it could truly live.
“You can’t pass the amaranthine wall,” Heartwood says. “I’ve tried.”
I allow myself to smile. “There’s nothing yet that a god has built that our technology can’t demolish. I’ll find a way.”
Heartwood grunts his agreement. As we pass through the door, into a bright and east-leaning sun, I glance one more time at Cas’raneah’s resting form. Perhaps it’s an illusion of the slowly moving shadows, but I swear on the Serpent I see her finger twitch.