Chapter 3
It’s still night where we are, but there are no longer any pink ruins, no longer any silver trees. Only the heat remains, pressing down on my chest like a hand, slicking my hair to my skin and my armor to my body. I look up at the stars, willing my breath to return. Every part of me is throbbing now, my body a mass so raw and inflamed, it’s almost too much for me to turn my neck when I hear my friends and their gryphs falling beside me.
“Oh, me belly,” Britta groans, but I still don’t move to fully face her.
The pain—it rolls over me in waves. Agony, constricting me. And it’s chased by another feeling, a nauseating certainty deep in my gut. There’s something wrong about this place. A constant, eerie echo seems to vibrate every time I so much as breathe.
Something is lurking in the distance. Some sort of creature. But it’s not ready to reveal itself yet. I have the awful feeling, however, that it will soon enough.
Then a cool, scaly body drapes over mine. Ixa’s. Ixa here, he says reassuringly in my head as the pain recedes.
That feeling—that unnerving wrongness—remains, however.
This place is unnatural, but of course it is. It was created by gods drunk on desperation and power. I can only imagine what abominations we’ll soon encounter.
Thank you,I reply quietly to Ixa before I sit up and take in my surroundings.
The first thing I see is sand, all of it as red as the blood that once proved girls’ so-called purity in the ritual we all endured once we turned sixteen. Entire dunes, as far as I can see. Everywhere I look, sand, sand, and more red sand. And enclosing it all, that strange new sky, which, upon closer inspection, looks nothing like the one I just left behind. Here, the stars are nearer, nebulas spinning so close, I could reach out and touch them if I wanted. And at their edge is absolute darkness, giving the strange impression that this place is a lifeless bubble—just sand, sky, and nothing else.
Except there’s life here. I still feel those creatures, their movements an ominous thrumming under my skin.
“Deka, are you all right?” Keita rushes over, only to stop just as quickly, an uncertain expression on his face.
He tentatively offers me a hand, the gesture hesitant. He knows, as well as I do, that even the slightest touch can be excruciating.
When I don’t move, Keita swiftly retracts his hand and glances away, but not before I see the hurt flickering over his face. It’s one thing to know that physical touch can hurt me, but another entirely to be confronted with the reality of that knowledge.
Awkwardness, that awful state I’m steadily becoming used to, sprouts its venomous thorns once more. Keita and I used to have a rhythm, a certainty in each other. Now we have lapsed silences and hands that don’t touch.
I swiftly rise, trying not to wince when waves of pain roll over me. “We should scout our surroundings,” I murmur, scanning the dunes, which ripple outward in an endless sea of red.
I squint, focusing on something protruding from the dune just beyond ours. It’s an immediately identifiable skeleton: human from head to midsection; hands reaching out in a soundless, eternal plea; equine forelegs uplifted as if to defend their owner. Talons cap them instead of hooves. An equus, an intelligent hybrid that wanders the deserts of the Southern provinces. More skeletons like it litter the dune behind it, all of them half hidden by the sand.
Nausea churns my stomach.
“So this is where the enticed go,” Britta says grimly as she comes to stand beside Keita and me. “How many otas ye wanna bet there are very few, if any, survivors of this place?”
“None,” I reply. I wouldn’t put any money on survivors. I turn to the others. “Feels like it’s some sort of holding cell from which the gods harvest their food.” Food, of course, being humans and other sentient beings.
“A hidden world dedicated to sacrifice…” Belcalis shakes her head, her lips curling in disgust as she mounts her white-striped gryph and rides over.
“Sacrifice is always the deepest desire and sustenance of the gods,” I agree.
That’s why the Idugu had those girls killed on that platform in Zhúshān, the Eastern city where we first encountered the Idugu; why the Gilded Ones kept all those male deathshrieks hidden underneath their chamber.
The gods of Otera can proclaim all they want that they desire only worship, but their purest nourishment comes from the deaths of their followers.
“They’re desperate now,” Britta observes, shaking her head.
“Which is why they’ve given all what power they have to create this place,” I reply, glancing around. This place—it’s like being in the end times. Like experiencing what it will be to exist if my premonition about the destruction of Otera comes true.
I shudder. All I can do is hope there aren’t more of these places…
“Not to mention all the proxies,” Belcalis adds.
“Can’t forget those monsters,” Britta says with a sigh, referring to all the strange new creatures the gods have created to help them feed on the life force of humans. She turns to us. “I almost pity the gods, ye know. They used to be all-powerful, an’ now killin’ people is the only thing they can do to get their power back.”
Unless, of course, they discover I’m here. That their greatest enemy, and the key to regaining their power, is already in their grasp.
Just the thought terrifies me.
When I die, my kelai will somehow seek me out once more—that’s what Anok all but implied when last I spoke to her. And if there is a god or group of gods nearby, they can snatch that energy before it reaches me, steal enough raw power from it to rule Otera from now until infinity.
“All the more reason we have to get out of here,” Belcalis says, urging her gryph onward. “We have to find the way back to Gar Nasim. Preferably before we’re eaten by whatever monsters lurk in these sands.”
“Wait, there’s something here?” Britta looks startled as she surveys the area.
I sigh. Britta might be the physically strongest among us, but her senses have never been as sharply developed. They haven’t needed to be. Britta hasn’t experienced as much trauma, as much pain, as the rest of us. That’s why she isn’t as wary of her surroundings. It’s both a blessing and a curse, this lack of awareness. She can’t see threats coming the way Belcalis can, but she also doesn’t immediately suspect that everything is a threat—a failing Belcalis and I are guilty of, as is Keita, who’s held a sword since he was nine.
“Yes,” I reply, glancing at her. “More proxies.” Even now I can feel them, thrumming under the sand as they have been since the moment we arrived. “If they manage to eat any of us, it’ll give whatever group of gods who made this little pit of monstrosities the ability to materialize.”
“And capture you,” Belcalis mutters.
“And capture me,” I acknowledge.
“I mean, us they’ll probably torture, but you…” Belcalis’s eyes narrow as she considers the proposition.
“Best we get going, then,” Li says hurriedly. He’s finally shaken off his daze and made his way to Britta, as is his habit. Ever since they became sweethearts, the two can’t stand to be apart for too long. “Probably in that direction.”
When he points in the direction opposite of where I felt the presence, Belcalis nods approvingly at him. “Your combat senses are expanding, I see.”
“Combat senses?” Li frowns at her. “What combat senses?”
He looks bewildered, and I sigh. Perhaps he isn’t as alert as I thought.
I close my eyes, already sinking into the combat state. What I’m about to try is risky, but I won’t just wait helplessly and allow my companions and I to fall prey to the gods. I have to act. Holding on to this determination, I reach deep inside myself, trying to locate whatever remaining power I can. If I can just create a door out of here, we can be safe. We can find Mother, and then my kelai.
All I have to do is make a door and go through it, and though I’ve never done so successfully before, the knowledge is somewhere inside me.
If there’s a time to unlock it, it’s now. My abilities have always blossomed when I needed them most.
But even as I breathe in, the pain begins surging, an upwelling of agony that rises from the depths of my belly. It crashes over me, my entire body jolting under the force. Even Ixa’s presence isn’t enough to absorb it completely.
Deka all right?he asks, alarmed.
It takes me some time to reply, I’m so busy shaking.
Fine,I finally manage, my teeth clattering. I’m fine.
There are now three jagged lines of sores up and down my back, lightning bolts of pain digging their way deeper into my muscles. They’ll join the rest of my wounds, become part of the broken pottery that is my skin.
I slump against Ixa, suddenly unable to remain upright.
“Deka!” Britta sounds horrified as she hurries closer. She stops just short of me to look me over. “Wha happened? I look away for one moment an’ ye hurt yerself!”
“I was trying to find a way out of here,” I reply, weariness already taking hold, “preferably before we all get killed.”
And that’s looking more and more likely than ever. Because I’m weak now. A burden. I can’t do even the simplest things anymore.
The defeat must be apparent in my tone, because Britta stiffens. “Yer not gonna die, Deka,” she says quietly.
“Aren’t I?” I don’t even bother with my usual evasions as I stare back at her.
I can already feel it, the emptiness growing in my stomach that is a direct result of my attempt to use just a small fraction of my abilities.
So much of my kelai is gone now. So much. And once it’s completely finished…
Britta moves closer, forcing my attention back to her. She gazes into my eyes, her expression fierce. “I may not know wha we’ll find here in this mockery of a prison, but I do know this: I refuse to let it defeat us. Just as I refuse to let ye sink into whatever dark place yer wantin’ to sink into.”
She turns back to me, her eyes determined. “We’re gonna find our way out of here, Deka, an’ the moment we do, we’re gonna find yer mother, find yer kelai, an’ make ye a god.”
“But how?” My replying whisper is tinged with pain and frustration. “How do we find our way out? And even if we manage to do so, how do I become a god?” It’s a question I still haven’t answered, a problem I haven’t even come close to solving yet. “Do I just touch my kelai? Do I have to do a ritual? What are the basics of the process?”
“We’ll figure it out, Deka.”
“How? We’re trapped, Britta. We’re trapped here, and there’s no way out. And I can’t, I can’t—” I lower my head, defeat weighing down my entire body.
“No!” Britta’s sudden snarl forces my head back up. She rounds her gryph in front of me. “Ye will not fall to despair, Deka. I will not allow it!” As I stare at her, shocked, she continues, “I’m here with ye—we all are. So we’re all going to find our way out of here, an’ when we do, we take one step at a time, an’ we figure out how to reunite ye with yer kelai an’ then we make ye a god. Do ye understand, Deka? We will make ye a god!”
There’s absolute belief in her eyes now, a sureness even all my uncertainties can’t pierce. I let her words flow through me. Strengthen me. Finally, my spine straightens. “I understand.”
“Good. Now ye remember this, Deka: No matter wha it takes, I’m not lettin’ ye cross into infinity. I’m not lettin’ ye die.”
“I hear you,” I say quietly.
“But do ye believe me?” Britta’s eyes peer into mine as she waits for my answer.
I nod. “I believe you.” I may not believe in myself, but I believe in her.
My words seem to satisfy her. “Good,” she huffs. “Now let’s find our way out of this gods-forsaken place.”
She urges her gryph on, her face bright red with emotion.
I’m just about to breathe out the lump in my throat when another person falls in beside me: Keita, now on his hulking dark gray gryph.
I turn to him. Nod. “You heard everything.”
He taps his ears. “Sharp hearing.”
I’d almost forgotten about that. Almost forgotten that most of the boys now have senses as sharp as the girls’.
I keep my attention on Keita as he continues: “Also, Britta is very loud when she’s emotional.” He says this almost wistfully. “I’m the exact opposite.”
Which, of course, is one of the main reasons for the awkwardness that’s grown between us. It’s not just the lack of touch; it’s the lack of truths, of saying the things we need to say out loud.
Keita and I both know that sooner, rather than later, I’ll be either gone completely—dead and dispersed back into the universe—if I fail at my mission or, if I succeed, transformed into a god, a being so out of reach, he and I will never be together again.
But neither of us has said it. Neither has even broached the topic.
So the silence just continues growing, a gulf we don’t want to bridge.
“Except for now.” I return my attention to Keita as he continues, those golden eyes shimmering in the low light. “Britta is right: We will overcome this, Deka. We will make our way out. And then you will end the gods. Of that, I have no doubt.”
There’s so much certainty in his eyes, my heart pounds. I’d forgotten that Keita could be like this—so firm in his convictions, he leaves no room for doubt. “My thanks,” I reply.
But Keita shakes his head, the simple movement layered with a thousand meanings. “I’m always here for you, Deka. Always,” he says.
Just like that, he’s gone—riding to the front of the group, where Li and Belcalis are back to bickering again, as is their habit.
Ixa and I watch him go, Ixa considering, me trying to hold back the tears now stinging at the corners of my eyes.
Keita love Deka,my shape-shifting companion observes, glancing at me. Friends all love too.
They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t,I reply, thinking of how much my friends have sacrificed just to be with me. Safety. Family. The love—however conditional—of goddesses.
But I can’t dwell on that, can’t dwell on how much they’ve sacrificed—especially not now, with that thrumming growing ever louder.
I sigh. I love them too…almost as much as I love you. I pinch Ixa’s scaly blue ears, attempting some small amount of levity, even in this dire situation.
I can almost feel him smiling—well, giving me the Ixa version of a smile, when he wriggles in pleasure. Don’t die, Deka, he says simply.
I’ll try not to, Ixa,I reply, and then we continue on, the thrumming rising ever more menacingly in the distance.