CHAPTER 12 #3
He heard Leander squawk in protest, but Adrian was already gone, leaving his body behind as he plunged himself into the embrace of his new forest.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bex was falling toward a city she’d never seen before.
She had no idea where she was or how the Prince of Envy had dropped them here, but she was picking up speed at a terrifying pace.
Whatever was happening, it would definitely end in a splat if she didn’t do something fast, so Bex kicked her confusion out of the way and called as much fire as she could.
The blast of flame lit up the entire cavern like a miniature sun, but at least it stopped her fall.
She was still adjusting the burn to a level that would keep her hovering without cooking everything else in the vicinity when two arms suddenly came out of nowhere to wrap around her neck.
The rest of Nemini followed immediately after, falling out of Bex’s shadow until the other queen was clinging to her back like a monkey.
“Where are we?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Bex said, turning up her fire again to compensate for the added weight. “Where’s Adrian?”
She was certain he’d been right beside her when the floor vanished, but Bex didn’t see Adrian or Leander anywhere up here or down in the strange city below. But while it was a huge relief not to see his body lying broken on the ground, Bex was now more confused than ever.
“What in the Hells is going on?”
“This isn’t the Hells,” Nemini replied unhelpfully. “It’s somewhere else.”
“I already figured out that much,” Bex grumbled, craning her neck as she tried to look in every direction at once. “What I want to know is where we are and how do we get back to Gilgamesh’s palace.”
Going up didn’t seem to be the answer. Thanks to her raging bonfire, Bex had a great view of the top of the cavern they’d been dropped into, which seemed to be one solid arch of sandstone.
There were no gaps or cracks that might lead to an exit, and definitely no spiral staircase back to Heaven.
The walls below appeared solid as well, which was annoying.
So far as she could tell, the Prince of Envy had dropped them into a completely sealed stone room that had an ancient city at the bottom for some reason.
Bex was no archaeologist, but if any of those buildings were less than a thousand years old, she’d eat her new horns.
They also looked oddly familiar, almost like she’d been to this city before, but Bex didn’t remember any—
I do, Drox said calmly in her head. That is the ancient capital of Uruk.
“Uruk?” Bex repeated, causing Nemini to glance up in surprise. “As in Gilgamesh’s Uruk?”
The very same, her sword replied. It’s even still got the fire damage you caused when you came down here to punish the king at Ishtar’s behest.
The stone and mud-brick buildings did look pretty torched now that Drox mentioned it, but Bex was getting a bad feeling.
“Why would Gilgamesh seal his ancient home city inside a cave?”
I don’t know, but there’s something moving down there.
So there was. Thanks to the light of her fire, Bex could see a dark shape moving along the city’s stone-paved streets.
It looked like a wandering building, but when it turned around, Bex saw that it was a bull.
A gigantic black bull with horns as wide as the road it was standing on.
Bex was still staring at it in confusion when Nemini’s arms tightened around her neck.
“That’s the Bull of Ishtar,” she whispered.
“No way,” Bex whispered back. “Ishtar’s bull is dead. Enkidu killed it, so I killed Enkidu. That’s why Gilgamesh went to war with us in the first place.”
“True,” her sister said. “But creations of Ishtar don’t tend to stay dead, do they?”
That was a good point.
“Gilgamesh must’ve made this place to contain it,” Bex muttered, squinting at the rummaging monster through the glare of her fire. “I can’t think of any other reason he’d bury his former—”
Her voice cut off like a switch as the bull’s giant head snapped up to look at them.
For three long breaths, it stared straight at her, its eyes gleaming like black glass in the light of Bex’s bonfire.
Then a wave of malice and judgement stronger than anything Bex had ever felt fell over her like a smothering blanket, and her fire went out.
She dropped like a stone, limbs wheeling uselessly in the suddenly pitch-black air. There’d been no warning, no sense of being attacked, but no matter how hard she tried, Bex couldn’t get her fire to ignite again.
They would’ve crashed to the ground right in front of the bull’s nose if Nemini hadn’t been so quick.
Just a few seconds after they started falling, her sister threw out her arm.
A wave of shadow snakes followed, flowing off of Nemini’s body like water to grab the top of an ancient dovecote.
They swung the queens through the window next, moving like a rope to toss them onto the wooden floor at the dovecote’s base.
“Nice catch,” Bex gasped as she pushed herself up. “But why didn’t you move us through the shadows? That probably would’ve been safer. And cleaner.” She glanced down at the centuries’ worth of calcified dove droppings under their feet, but Nemini shook her head.
“I can’t carry you that way anymore now that you’ve got a name again,” she explained as the snakes returned to her horned head. “You’d be torn off of me and vanish into the void.”
“Oh,” Bex said with a wince. “Snakes are fine in that case, but why are your powers working when my fire isn’t?”
She’d been talking to Nemini, but it was Drox who answered.
Because only you were judged, her sword said, his deep voice tight with worry.
I don’t know how Gilgamesh got it in here, but that is absolutely the Bull of Ishtar, a monster crafted by the goddess’s own hands just like she made you.
Unlike her queens, though, who were built to rule, the bull was created only to destroy.
“If it’s Ishtar’s creation, why is it targeting me?” Bex demanded. “Haven’t I got a big enough crown?”
She pointed up at her new horns, but Drox’s ring trembled on her finger.
I think your horns are the problem, he said. You’re wielding powers no queen should have, and Ishtar’s Bull was built with a simple mind. It probably thinks you’re a traitor.
That made sense, but the real kicker came from Nemini.
“Your fire is still tainted with the death of Enki,” the other queen reminded her. “That’s as good a reason as any for a weapon of the gods to turn on you.”
“Fair enough,” Bex said with a sigh. “Do you think the Bull of Ishtar would listen to my side of the story if I talked to it?”
No, Drox replied immediately.
“Then we do this the hard way,” she muttered, peering through the dovecote’s window at the dim outline of the city beyond.
If her night vision hadn’t been so good, she wouldn’t have been able to see even that much.
Now that her fire was out, the sealed cavern was pitch-black.
Fortunately, Bex’s eyes had always been excellent in the dark.
Even with nothing but her own ember glow to work with, she could still make out the bull’s giant shoulders poking over the flat tops of the single-story buildings one street over.
It was weaving from side to side, methodically shoving its giant horns through each building as it searched for her.
“Looks like the bull has no problem seeing in the dark, either,” Bex whispered as she called the Blade of Wrath to her hand.
“It doesn’t seem to know where we are, though, so now’s our chance to catch it by surprise.
Nemini, you stay here and grab me if I get into trouble.
I’ll run along the rooftops and hit it from the… ”
Her voice trailed off as she looked down at her empty hand. The one she knew she’d just called her sword into, but Drox was still in his ring on her finger.
I’m so sorry, my queen, he said before she could ask. I’m trying to obey, but something’s—
His voice cut off as the ring started shaking harder against her skin. It’s no use, Drox said in a furious voice. I can’t get out! There’s an edict blocking me that I never realized was there, a sacred command that forbids me from being drawn against Ishtar’s personal weapon.
“Well, that’s just great,” Bex muttered as she curled her empty hand into a fist. “No fire, no sword. What am I supposed to do? Punch it to death?”
“Maybe it will pass us by,” Nemini said calmly from her crouch on the dovecote’s dropping-covered crossbeam. “If it can’t find us when your fire’s out, maybe we can just sit here and wait for—”
The rest of Nemini’s reasonable advice was drowned out by a deep animal bellow. The noise roared through the cavern, shaking the buildings like an earthquake. The sound had no variation, nothing that could possibly be labeled as words, but the message it caried was clear nonetheless.
Reveal yourself, Godslayer!
Bex flinched as the command vibrated through her bones. She’d done her best not to make a sound, but one slipped out anyway. The moment the squeak of surprise left her lips, she felt the bull’s gaze land on her despite the wall that should’ve been in the way.
There you are.
“Run!” Bex shouted, grabbing Nemini and leaping out of the dovecote seconds before the bull’s giant horns smashed through it.
The two queens landed on the road below in a shatter of smashed mud bricks, but while Bex could no longer see Nemini’s snakes in the dark, they must’ve been already busy.
She barely had time to crash into the ground before something giant yanked Bex back to her feet and shoved her after her sister, who was already running down the narrow alley.