The Gilded Ones #3

Chapter 6

The last time I saw Melanis, she was falling into the abyss underneath the Temple of the Gilded Ones, her legendary glow overshadowed by the fires exploding around her, her gold-tipped wings broken and torn. She was defeated, utterly and completely.

That was then.

Now, Melanis is suddenly here, and she’s changed so drastically, she barely looks like the glowing, beautiful alaki I once knew. Her wings, once lush with pure white feathers tipped with gold, are now leathery, bat-like monstrosities. Her skin has paled from a healthy golden brown to a sickly whitish-gray that evokes dark, musky places—places like caverns and tunnels and all the other hidden realms where light has lost its way. Most alarming of all are her eyes, once a warm, welcoming brown but now almost completely white, except for the tiny black pinpricks of her pupils.

Melanis the Light is gone, and in her place is a frightening creature I scarcely recognize, a monstrosity of the gods that’s not quite an alaki and not quite a deathshriek but something squarely in between. It’s the same with the twenty or so women following her, who surround the cliff completely, their wings flapping in unison in the warm, dark night. Once, I would have called them Firstborn alaki, the ancient daughters of the Gilded Ones, but they’re all as wizened as Melanis now, their leathery, gaunt bodies bleached of color. Their eyes have turned white as well, and some of them have transformed even further: noses so completely flattened, they’re barely slits; ears enlarged and pointed at the tips.

Hunters, I name them immediately.

High-pitched shrieks echo between them, a sound similar to those of deathshrieks, except it’s higher, almost inaudible at times.

As the children scuttle together, trying to find safety in numbers, I remain where I am, mentally preparing for battle once again.

“Deka,” Melanis calls out in that unnerving voice, which somehow manages to be both low and high-pitched at the same time. “How fortunate I am to find you here today.”

“Fortunate?” I huff out a bitter laugh. “That’s not a word I’d ever use with you. Especially not now. Corrupted, perhaps. Evil? Certainly. But fortunate…?” I tsk, all the while glancing to my side, where both Belcalis and Keita remain, their eyes watchful.

Be ready to move,I tell them silently.

Neither makes an overt response, but I can see Keita’s eyes, as well as Belcalis’s, surveying the cliff, searching out any escape routes, any weaknesses. They’re the other tacticians in our group, always searching for the best way to approach a battle. If I don’t find something, they will. I just have to have faith in them. In us.

Melanis doesn’t seem to notice our silent exchange, or perhaps she’s just pretending not to. Either way, she flaps closer, seeming amused. “There’s that spirit I so enjoyed from you, Nuru.”

I stiffen. Twice in one day now, I’ve been assaulted by that word.

I heft my atikas, breathing when I feel the long swords’ reassuring weight in my palms. “If you value your life, you will never again call me that.”

“If I value my life?” Melanis laughs as she slowly lands on the grass. “How presumptuous you are, Bringer of Chaos.” She leans conspiratorially closer. “Did you know that’s what the humans are calling you now, the Bringer of Chaos? They blame you for everything that’s happening. Well, they blame the gods as well, but mainly you.”

When she nears me, her gait lurching and unsteady, my eyes dart to her legs, then back up. Melanis’s legs are now strangely bowed, and her toes, which are now exposed since she no longer wears the golden sandals she once used to, are more like claws.

“You’ve changed,” I observe dryly.

“This from the girl who looks like a poorly pieced-together mosaic.”

“I’m told that’s beautiful in some cultures.”

“Deka,” Britta whispers from beside me—a warning. Melanis is too close now. She’ll be within striking distance soon.

The winged Firstborn’s eyes snap toward her. “You will shut your mouth, Britta of Golma, else I will slice your lips from your face and hand them to you while your skull still bleeds.”

Britta takes a step back, intimidated despite herself. Even when Melanis was beautiful, she was frightening, but now, a strange, evil sort of frenzy animates her every movement.

I breathe, trying to still my racing thoughts, trying to get myself to a place of calm. Think, Deka, think, I command myself.

I glance at Belcalis and Keita, but both shake their heads: they have nothing yet. No way for us to escape this cliff, much less Melanis and her minions, who are all still circling.

“There’s no way out, Deka,” the Firstborn confirms, wagging a bony, claw-tipped finger at me when I glance back at her. “I know you’re trying to find one, but there is none. My hunters are spread out all across the jungle. Listen.” She opens her mouth as if to shriek, except no sound comes out.

A tingle rushes over me, one that’s amplified when shrieks suddenly ring out from the trees behind us. The muscles in my body string even tighter: Melanis is now capable of making sounds inaudible to even alaki ears. I absorb this information swiftly as I return my attention to her.

“There are more of us hidden in the trees beneath this cliff,” she explains. “You’re surrounded, as are the humans.” She smirks pointedly at the children, who hurriedly step back, frightened, at the sight of her new needle-sharp white teeth. “Delightful little sacrifices, all of you,” she finishes.

The children shrink even closer together, huddling at the edge of the trees now.

Satisfied, Melanis turns back to me and my friends. “I’d rather not kill them just yet, but understand this, Deka: all you have to do is make one false move, and they all die. And as for you…” Her milky-white eyes gleam eerily in the moonlight as she says this.

I shudder.

One or more of the Gilded Ones is watching me through them. I can feel it, a frenetic energy in the air. Melanis has always been their preferred instrument for spying.

“You,” the Firstborn continues, her voice layered with the power of the goddesses, “I will bring back to the mothers, so that they can drain your kelai one drop at a time.”

By now my heart is pounding so hard, it’s like a drum in my chest. I force myself to meet her gaze. “And how do they intend to do that?” I ask—a desperate attempt to buy more time. I’m completely out of escape ideas, but Belcalis and Keita are still there, still thinking…. “I’m not connected to my kelai anymore. I’m just a shell now, an empty vessel.”

“Stalling for time, Deka?” The goddesses immediately see through my ruse. They tsk. “Must be the children’s presence. Humans always do that—make you forget yourself.”

“Is that what happened to you lot? Forgot everything you are as you transformed into hateful caricatures of yourselves?” I reply, my eyes surreptitiously sliding to the others. Get ready, I say silently. Then I turn back to Melanis and the goddesses, my body already slipping into the combat state. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to remind you of just who you are and where you belong.”

“And how will you do that?”

My thighs squeeze Ixa’s midsection in response. All right, Ixa, let’s go—

All I hear is a flapping sound, then Melanis is on me, her clawed hands ripping brutally into my throat. Gold pours out—so much of it, it splashes all over me and Ixa, turning everything slick and liquid. I can’t breathe now, can’t even scream, there’s so much of it. My throat is on fire, every movement I make searing the burning deeper into me.

The more desperately I try to pull away, the deeper Melanis’s claws go. The aura of power has disappeared from her, the goddesses having retreated so she can fight me with all her raw ferocity. “You won’t die from this, Deka,” she snarls. “Not quite yet. There’s life in you still.”

Ixa wriggles out from under me to snap at her, his teeth biting through her arm, but she hurls him away with such force, he smashes into a nearby tree with an audible crack.

The moment he’s gone, pain slams into me like a hammer, all the injuries I’ve acquired bearing down on me with full force. I’m in so much agony now, everything is a blur. Distantly, I hear screams, the sound of fighting, but I can’t move, can’t even so much as turn my neck, which is still bleeding profusely.

All the while, Melanis flaps over me, her face contorted in a mask of fury.

“Do not play games with me, Nuru,” she hisses. “I know everything about you, pawn to the goddesses. Everything that the mothers know, I know. Even the fact that you and that beast are forever conniving with each other.”

Her words no longer reach me.

I’ve passed to the other side of pain now, a place where everything is just instinct and sheer, desperate survival. Somehow, I manage to grasp one of my atikas, but when I stab up, Melanis is prepared, the clawed tips of her wings snapping together to protect her vulnerable belly. My sword clangs against them and she flaps them back open, sending it flying. More pain jolts through my arms. More wounds open, gold already welling there. I gurgle, trying to buck her off me, but she holds fast, claws digging in.

Until a massive blue body rams into her.

As she goes flying back, Ixa takes advantage of her momentary shock to roll himself in my blood, his wounds healing the moment it touches them. My blood heals Ixa’s wounds the same way his touch makes my pain go away. It’s part of how he and I are mystically intertwined, although I still don’t know the true reason for it. All the explanations the Gilded Ones gave me were lies.

Melanis comes flying back, and I can only watch, body shuddering as she picks Ixa up and hurls him away from her before rushing me again.

She snatches me by the throat once more, those white eyes blazing with fury. “This is not the same match it was three months ago, Nuru,” she roars as she launches into the air with me. The other hunters immediately join her, their bodies circling her like a malevolent cloud, their shrieks piercing into my ears.

Then a column of fire blasts through them. Keita is trying to clear the space around us, but it’s too late now—much too late…. Melanis has me in her grasp, and we’re so high up in the air, a blistering wind is rushing past my ears.

All the while, Melanis glares down at me, her eyes white with malice. “I’m stronger now,” she says. “Invincible. And you are weaker. Broken.” She pulls me up close, so close, we’re almost nose to nose. “You threw me into the abyss once,” she snarls. “Hurled me down but didn’t finish me. Now I will return the favor.”

“What about the mothers?” I manage to ask past the blood gurgling in my throat. “I thought you were bringing me to them.”

“The mothers can wait. After all, it will take much more than this to kill you.”

She unclasps her fingers.

I drop so abruptly, I can’t even scream. All I can do is tense my body. Rage against the unfairness of it. After everything I’ve done, all the battles and trials I’ve endured, this is how I’m defeated? By being thrown to the ground by the ancient horror who once called herself my sister? Fury is the endless scream in the back of my torn-out throat. It carries on and on until finally, I land.

Only, I’m not shattered. My bones aren’t broken by the ground. More to the point, I’m not even on it. I’m an inch above, floating on what appears to be a cushion of air.

Beneath me now are the remnants of a stone ruin similar to what we left behind in the abandoned city, except instead of pink, this stone is black, rainbow lights shimmering in its depths. As I weakly push off it, attempting to stand, a tingle races through me. A very familiar one. Divine energy.

Whatever caught me—prevented me from breaking…it was the work of the gods.

But it doesn’t feel like the Gilded Ones or the Idugu. There’s something strange about it, something…new.

And when I stagger up, still in a stupor, I’m startled to see more of that rainbow-tinted black stone is somehow rapidly growing, building itself around me, a temple rising from the ruins.

“Treachery!” Melanis shrieks as she descends, the temple taking shape around her as well. “There is treachery at work here!” She points down at me and my companions. “End them!” she commands her hunters.

They swoop down toward us, those white eyes gleaming malevolently in the dark.

But as they near, claws extended, another tingle races through me, this one almost immediately followed by a low whoosh. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the outline of a gigantic war hammer swinging; that’s all I glimpse before Melanis’s hunters are suddenly flying backward. I watch, awed, as their bodies crash into the trees and then past them to the forest beyond. Melanis herself is blasted so far into the darkness, I can’t even sense her anymore, only hear the impact as she hurtles across the forest.

Yet my friends and I are strangely unscathed. Untouched by whatever it was that attacked Melanis and her hunters.

We all look at each other in shock. Then a voice booms through the air.

“Bow your heads, mortals!” it commands, shattering the stunned silence. “Bala arrives.”

A massive person in a suit of armor made completely of that black rainbow stone plummets to the temple floor, their landing so powerful, the newly built temple floor shakes.

And yet, it does not give way.

Instead, the black stone reaches up to create a platform to hold them, the person contained in that strange suit of armor. The person who is a colossus. That’s the first word that comes to mind when I see our new rescuer, who is at least twice as tall as Lamin, the tallest person here, and so burly, even Britta’s muscles seem inferior by comparison. Even stranger, they almost seem like part of the temple that now encloses us. The rainbow-tinted black stone that makes up their armor is the same that adorns the sprawling, triangular structure that has somehow built itself around my entire group and the surrounding trees in the space of minutes.

I’m so stunned, I can only ask one question. “Who are you?”

That’s all I manage before pain explodes all over my body, all my injuries returning to the forefront now that I’m no longer in active danger.

Deka!Ixa gasps, running over as I fall to my knees, my entire body trembling.

I’ve been so caught up in the shock of what just happened, I forgot how injured I was, how much blood I’ve lost. And now, I’m paying for it.

Ixa swiftly wraps his body around me, chasing the pain away, but it doesn’t matter—I’m still growing colder, still gurgling for air. My extremities have all turned numb, a warning. If I lose any more blood, I will die.

I watch distantly as Britta and the others rush over, the armored stranger forgotten. “Wha do we do?” she gasps when she kneels beside me. “She’s still bleedin’!”

“Move aside,” Keita says, hurriedly wrapping a cloth around my neck. “Deka, hold on,” he says, pressing down. “Just hold on!”

But I’m slipping away, the pain receding as a strange peacefulness pervades me. A stillness. The stars are so bright, so very bright…. And the night feels wonderful, everything in harmony, everything connected. I could just slip into it, just disappear forever.

But then a rhythmic thumping returns my attention to the present. Our rescuer is walking over to me.

“Deka of Irfut?” they ask in that booming yet strangely indeterminate voice. When I don’t reply, they sigh in a distinctly impatient way. “Well, this is untenable.” They extend an armored hand toward me and then close their eyes, mumbling a few words under their breath in a language I cannot understand. “May the blessings of Entimon fall upon you, child of Otera,” they finish in Hemairan, the language of the capital, and then they gesture over me.

My entire body jolts as a strange warmth sears through it. Then my wounded skin begins knitting itself together—and not just my new wounds either. All my sores are swiftly stitching together as if they were never there. In mere moments, my body is completely smooth, as unblemished as it was before the first sore erupted on my skin.

Everything is as it was before, everything except the hollowness. That I still feel deep inside me, only it’s muted now that my body’s whole again.

It’s like whatever timekeeper is in charge of my body has started again, added more time to the balance.

“Deka, you’re healed!” When Keita kneels before me, his eyes round with shock, I immediately enfold him in my arms. For a moment, he’s completely still. Then he embraces me as well. I gasp, tears stinging my eyes. His touch is warm…and painless.

“I can touch you,” I whisper. “You can touch me!”

I squeeze tighter, trying to embrace him even more, but then the blood rushes from my head. I sway, lean against him to prevent myself from falling. As I do so, I catch a whiff of his scent, that wonderful tang of fire and steel.

Then a dry humph sounds across from me. “Healing doesn’t reverse blood loss,” my rescuer explains dryly when I look up at them, bright green eyes rolling from behind their helmet. The sight jolts me. Whoever my rescuer is, their eyes seem unnaturally large, as if they go on forever.

They’re certainly not human, or anything close to it; if I wasn’t certain of that before, I am now.

“You’ll need to get some food in you, Angoro, preferably swiftly or you’ll swoon again,” they continue as I gape at them.

“Here.” Britta all but shoves a piece of jerky into my hand.

I snatch hers, elated to feel its calloused roughness once more.

All the while, I continue embracing Keita with my other hand, while he squeezes me so hard, I feel slightly faint. “Careful, careful,” I say. “This is temporary. I haven’t reconnected to my kelai.”

“Oh.” Keita pulls back. But then he stares down at me, uncertainty shining in his eyes. The uncertainty that, I know, is a silent plea for permission.

But he should know better than to ask for permission right now. Not when I’m looking at him the way I am in this moment.

“Just hurry and kiss me,” I urge, impatient.

He grins as he swiftly does so, the warmth of his lips so wonderful as they move over mine, my knees wobble from the sheer joy of it. I wrap my hands around his neck, squeezing him tighter against me.

“Deka,” I hear him breathing against my lips. Not a protest, but a plea to continue.

“Ahem! AHEM!” Keita and I reluctantly separate as my rescuer clears their throat. “If you’re quite done pawing each other…”

I sigh, reluctantly untangling myself from Keita. I’m not concerned our rescuer will attack us. If they wanted to do that, they would have done so already. “We are,” I say finally, glaring at our interrupter. “But who are you? You never said.”

“More to the point, how do you have the power to heal her?” Keita subtly places his body in front of mine.

If there’s one thing we’ve all learned, it’s to be suspicious of anyone displaying new, terrifying abilities. And this person, whoever they are, has those in the multitudes.

“I don’t have the power,” my rescuer sniffs, their voice abruptly changing. Suddenly, it’s not the thunderous boom of a mighty warrior but a more youthful high pitch, like that of the girls we just rescued, who are still huddled in a corner under Li’s and Belcalis’s watchful eyes.

“Entimon, god of healing, does,” they continue. “They lent it to me, even though I am not their godsworn, but Bala’s.”

“Entimon, god of healing? Godsworn?” I echo. Every one of my senses is on the alert now. I’ve never heard of a god named Entimon, much less a godsworn, whatever that is. Who is this person, this…girl? And why is she speaking of a deity I’ve never heard of before? “Who are you?” I ask again. “Why did you heal me?”

“You are Deka of Irfut, correct?” When I warily nod, she walks closer, imperiously demands: “Present the key as proof.”

“The key? What key?”

When I still don’t move, she growls under her breath. “The key, Deka—the one your mother gave you.”

My heart leaps into my throat. “My mother? You were sent by Mother?”

“Of course I was,” the girl huffs, annoyed now. “I’ve been waiting for a month now. All you had to do was present the key and it would have summoned me. Thank the gods I heard your fighting, or I never would have found you in time. Then Umu would have had my head.”

Umu. Everything in me stills. That’s Mother’s name, the name only her dearest friends and family know.

I swiftly fumble under my armor, taking out the necklace that’s been hidden here all this while, the one Mother gave me all those years ago. It’s a tiny gold chain, the orb dangling from it engraved with an eclipsed sun whose rays have been curved into wickedly sharp daggers. An umbra, the symbol of the Shadows, the secretive group of assassins to which both Mother and White Hands once belonged.

“You mean this?” I say, raising it. The moment it catches the moonlight, a beam of light erupts from it, one that swiftly splinters into a rainbow. Shock erupts from me in a gasp. “What is that?”

“The signal I’ve been waiting for,” the girl says with a huff. “A month spent waiting in this uncivilized realm. An entire month, and all you had to do was expose it to the light!”

By now, my friends and I are all looking at each other. This was it? The way we summoned Mother? All this time spent looking and we could have just done this?

The irony is almost too much to bear, so I turn back to the girl. “Who are you?” I ask once more.

To my surprise, the armored girl kneels begrudgingly, then says: “Most honorable greetings, Angoro Deka of Otera. I am Myter, godsworn of Bala, deity of the pathways. The gods of Maiwuri humbly await your presence. As does your mother.”