The Gilded Ones #3

Chapter 20

The pathways have changed since the last time I saw them. Instead of a misty road, I’m now in the middle of a forest—but not the one I saw before. This forest is made of what appears to be crystal, the trees surrounding me like ethereal figurines whose graceful trunks arch high into the night sky, as if to touch the shimmering, glass-like moon. Water rushes in the distance, a stream wending its way through the grove surrounding me. The rocks guiding it are the same sparkling crystal as the trees, a thousand rainbows shimmering inside them. I have no doubt that all of it—the trees, the rocks, even the water itself—is an extension of Bala’s power. But there’s something wrong. I feel it thrumming inside me, this wrongness I can’t quite put my finger on. And I know it has to do with the pathways. Pretty though it all is, the trees are too sparse, the water’s too thin. I don’t know how to explain it, precisely, but it’s as if everything around me is suddenly faded—a softer, lesser version of itself.

And where is Bala? When I whirl around, alarm growing, there’s no sign of the kind, quiet god, and he’s not the only one missing. All my friends are gone, as is everyone I was just in the grove with. Where are they? Did Bala leave them back in Maiwuri? Are they all right?

As my panic starts to surge, a familiar exuberant chirp sounds in my head. Deka! Ixa says, and I whirl just in time for him to launch into me.

I fall to the ground with a startled “oof.” “Ixa!” I gasp, embracing him. “You’re here!”

Deka,my companion says simply, giving me a lazy lick before he rolls off me to lick himself in the privates, his most unpleasant habit.

I shudder, but then the trees suddenly begin rustling around me. Their leaves tinkle like glass, as if something is moving past their lower branches. When I tense, preparing for battle, a familiar burly silhouette barrels toward me.

“Oh, Deka, thank creation!” Britta cries as she enters the grove, the others and their gryphs following her.

“We’re all together,” Keita says, taking in our new surroundings.

“Keita!” I gasp, yet more relief surging through me as I rush over to embrace him.

I was so worried about my companions. About everyone in that grove with me. To think, Etzli made it all the way into Maiwuri. I can only hope that the gods there ejected her and Melanis’s hunters the moment Bala brought me here and that all the godsworn in Maiwuri did not have to suffer any losses because of me.

I cling tighter to Keita, not even minding when the pressure causes the sores on my fingertips to sting. I may be injured again, but at least I can hold him now, touch him and all my other friends whenever I’m upset. And as long as I’m careful and don’t use my abilities as freely as I did back in Maiwuri, it’ll remain that way.

I understand now what Queen Ayo meant when she said not to use too much power. Attempting to use any power outside of my combat state, as I did back in that grove, will trigger the sores. As long as I don’t do what I did back then, I’ll be fine. Whole until I can reunite with my kelai.

“You’ve made your way to each other—wonderful.” We all whirl, startled, when Myter appears in the middle of the pathways.

How they managed to sneak up on us so silently, I can’t begin to understand. They’re the largest thing in the pathways, aside from the trees. By all rights, they should be crashing through the foliage, and yet they move with such delicacy. Or, rather, everything else moves out of their way. I watch, eyes narrowing, as a branch twists away from the godsworn’s path, the movement so smooth, it’s almost unnoticeable.

“But you had help, of course,” they continue. “My divine lord is nothing if not a considerate being.”

“And where is your divine lord?” I ask, glancing around. There’s no sign of Bala, but he’s supposed to be taking us to Irfut.

Myter’s eyes go white. “We are recovering,” the god says in that layered, gentle voice. “The corruption, it touched us when we sent our kindred back to their home.”

I incline my head. “Bala. My deepest thanks for bringing us here.” When Bala nods, calm as ever, I continue, apprehensive, “Will you and the others be all right?”

“As soon as we mend the rifts the Oteran’s presence has caused. Etzli’s appearance has destabilized pathways all across the realm. I must attend to them immediately or her corruption will infect us even more deeply.

“Thus, it is with deepest regret that I must leave you. Until we meet again.” The god gives me a small, polite bow of farewell.

Just seeing it sends me into a panic. “Wait!” I shout. “You’re still taking us to Irfut, right? We need to get there so we can find my mother’s body as soon as possible.” But Bala is already gone.

I know this because when Myter opens their eyes again, they’re the only one glancing back at me. They nod at my crestfallen expression. “My lord has returned to Maiwuri, but he commands me to tell you that this is a task you must complete on your own.”

“Complete on my own?” I echo, flabbergasted. “I don’t know how to create doors, and even if I did, I don’t have the power.” I hold up my hands, showing Myter the sores. “Pinning Etzli down for just a few moments did this to me.”

“And even if it weren’t for all that,” Belcalis adds, rushing over to Myter, “there’s the small matter of time. We don’t have any.”

“That is not entirely true,” Myter replies. When we stare at them, uncomprehending, they explain: “Time moves differently in the pathways. And being Lord Bala’s godsworn, I can hold or lengthen it as I like. Observe.” They snap their fingers, and suddenly, everything freezes. The wind, the leaves rustling in the trees, the water from the stream—everything just stops.

“Now, that’s a trick!” Li says with an admiring whistle.

But I don’t have the luxury of being amazed. “It’s all well and good that you can hold time here, but what does that have to do with my inability to make doors?” There’s a ring of hysteria in my voice now.

“What are doors but pathways by another name? I can teach you how to make them.” Myter sounds surprisingly certain as they place their helmet on the ground. It slowly sinks down, absorbed by the soil underneath it. “The question is, do you wish to learn?”

I blink. “Do I wish to learn? Of course I do, but I don’t have—”

Myter points to the perfect stillness around us. “Time? In here, you have plenty, for as long as I wish it. I can lengthen the moments into hours—days, if necessary.”

I glance down at my fingertips, at the sores there, then sigh. “I would like to learn, I’d give anything to, but I don’t have enough power anymore. I’d just injure myself.”

“And yet you want to run out into the world with no plan, no foresight.”

“The best-laid plans are the ones ye haven’t discovered yet,” Britta helpfully inserts.

“I assumed we’d create one along the way,” I explain with a sigh.

“Well, now you don’t have to,” Myter says. “I know how you can harness power without injury. I’ll teach you, if you’re willing to learn. All you have to do is say the word.”

I look at them, look at the certainty shining in those green eyes. Then I sigh. I could rush out there, or I could stay here, learn the one skill I’ve been trying to master for months now. “Yes,” I say. “I’d very much like to learn.”

Myter nods. “Then observe closely.” They lift both their hands, then slowly open one palm. As if summoned, a single leaf drops from the tree above them. It stops in midair, its crystalline edges shimmering in the moonlight.

My eyes round. It’s as if an invisible net has caught it. Like the one that caught me when Melanis dropped me when we were on that cliff on Gar Nasim.

Myter keeps their eyes on the leaf, which is still suspended. “In order to create miniature pathways or, as you call them, doors, you must first understand time and space. Both are malleable things, especially to the gods and those who serve them. If you can learn how to manipulate them”—they gesture and the leaf disappears—“you can control any pathway you wish.”

Another gesture and the leaf reappears, this time, above the other palm.

My heart leaps as I watch it shimmering there. “How did you do that?” I’ve seen sleight of hand before, but this isn’t a cheap trick done by a charlatan in a busy marketplace; this is a wonder performed by a being of near-divine stature. I know because I can feel the power they used as little sparks of lightning running up and down my body.

“Make the leaf move?” Myter closes both fists, and the leaf disappears. “It’s up to you to work that out. I’ll do it one more time. Observe.”

“Wait,” I say, hurrying to enter the combat state.

The world fades away as everyone becomes a glowing white shadow being. Their purest essence laid bare. And that includes Myter’s. Strangely, I can finally see it now, despite the armor they’re using. But perhaps that’s because they want me to see it.

I’m starting to realize that Myter is much more powerful than I thought.

“You can proceed now,” I announce, staring at them.

Myter nods, gestures with both hands. The air above their hands suddenly contracts. No, not the air. I squint closer, mouth slackening when I realize there are little pockets of stillness between the thousand shimmering strands of air flowing around me. They’re what contracts and what, once Myter opens their hands, releases.

Space.

So that’s what the colossal godsworn was talking about. It’s the space that moves. The space between things.

“I see it!” I gasp, excited. “I see the space.” Then I frown. “Why can I see it now but not before?” I’ve been in the combat state a thousand times prior to this and never seen what I just saw.

Myter smirks. “You’re in the pathways,” they say, gesturing grandly. “Everything here is purified to its simplest, deepest essence. Observe.” They pull a glasslike piece of bark from the tree beside them and extend it to me. It shimmers with all the lights of the rainbow, but, as with everything else in the pathways, there’s that strange, faded feeling to it.

“Outside, this would be a thousand things.”

“Like real wood, for instance,” Belcalis snorts.

Myter throws them a glance. “Not just wood but the mites that live on it, the smaller organisms that live on them, and so on. Here, it is simply bark—well, crystalline bark but bark nonetheless—as re-created by Lord Bala. This is the nature of the pathways. It is the essence of things purified, distilled, and re-created in Bala’s image.”

They raise their hand again and their body begins glowing once more. I watch through the combat state as energy seems to abruptly coalesce inside their stomach. Where it came from, I’m not certain—I didn’t see them drawing it from anywhere else inside their body. Before I can ask them about it, they gesture again. Just like that, the energy explodes, forcing the bark into the air in front of me. It’s a scramble to grasp it quickly before it falls, but I manage, and then the bark is in my hand, a thing of strange lightness. So light as to be nonexistent.

As I turn it over again, marveling at this fact, Myter nods at me. “It lacks matter.”

I frown. “Matter?” Another word I’m unfamiliar with.

“Matter is, roughly speaking, substance. Space is a where, but matter is a what. The piece of bark before you has only the slightest amount of matter. Which is why I can move it so easily. But you can move it too. Just as I moved it to the space in front of you, you can move it to the space in front of me. That is what it means to create a pathway. Just a little push of energy, just as I demonstrated.”

I nod, keeping the image of the gesture Myter used to move the bark in my mind as I gather energy deep inside me. Then I breathe out a small, slow breath. “Space is a where…,” I remind myself as I reach out and pinch a tiny bit of the stillness between air currents. Then I try to imagine squeezing it enough that it narrows the space between myself and Myter. “Just a pinch,” I say to myself, breathing energy into the movement. “Just a pinch….”

And then I contract the air.

An outraged gasp is my only warning before Myter suddenly comes barreling straight toward me.

“I said move the bark, not me!” they snap, irritated, when they stop just in front of me.

I can barely hear them.

Welts are rising all across my body, a response to the power I just used. There’s so much pain now, it’s as if my skin is on fire, as if the very blood is boiling in my veins. Gold drips down my nose. I try to wipe it, but my hands are suddenly heavy, so very heavy.

“I thought you said you could stop the pain,” I say, stunned.

Then I slump to the ground, unconscious.

“Is she quite serious?” Myter’s voice is disdainful as their enormous booted toe nudges into my side.

I tense, readying myself for pain to explode, but the only thing I feel is a mild discomfort.

“Yer the one who promised her you could make it so she wouldn’t injure herself.” Britta’s voice is loud in my ear as I blink groggily, trying to force my eyes open.

It’s a failing effort. My body feels heavy as a woolen cloak soaked with water. But that’s all I feel. Where’s the pain? Where’s all the bleeding? And where are the welts on my skin?

I stretch, searching for sores, for any remnants of the injuries I just incurred, but there’s nothing there, nothing but that boot, nudging me awake.

“I said I knew how to do it, didn’t mean I’d teach her immediately.”

“So you just wanted to be pointlessly cruel,” Keita says, his hand pushing the boot away. “Good to know.”

“No, I wanted to teach her the difference so she knows. Up, Deka.” When Myter nudges me with their boot again, I hear the scrape of a sword being unsheathed.

“Godsworn or no, you do that one more time and you will lose that leg, understood?” Keita’s voice is cold with conviction.

Myter humphs. “Understood, if you’ll tell Deka to stop pretending to sleep.”

I sigh. “I’m up, I’m up,” I say, rising blearily. When I open my eyes, it’s to find my friends huddled in a circle around me, their expressions worried. Even Ixa is perched on the tree roots beside me, his body pressed to mine. He licks me with a rough pink tongue. I push it away.

“Why are you all staring at me? It’s not like you’ve never seen me faint before.”

“I haven’t,” Myter sniffs. “It was quite instructive. Now then, let’s try again—”

“Again?” I interject, all sarcasm. “When I just finished healing from the injuries you promised wouldn’t happen?”

“I promised you wouldn’t remain injured. And look at you. You’re completely healed.”

Which is the truth, I’m aggravated to acknowledge. My eyes squint. “Even so, why would I trust you again?”

“Because this time, I’ll show you how to harness the Greater Divinity.”

“The Greater Divinity,” I sniff dismissively. “The natural order you Maiwurians keep harping on about. If there even is such—”

“Shut your mouth and listen for once, Deka!” Myter’s roar is as sudden as it is unexpected, and it shakes every tree in the vicinity. As I stop, startled, they continue in a lower, very tired voice. “Whatever doubts you may have, I am here. And I am here because the fate of my existence lies in you. You—a child with no understanding of her power, much less that of the Greater Divinity. A girl who stumbles through every obstacle with very little awareness and even less common sense.

“Look around.” They point to the trees, which now seem even fainter than they were when I last saw them, their crystalline edges dim, as if they’re fading into the twilight. “Does this look like the pathways you first entered?”

“No.” My eyebrows gather as I examine the grove around me. “They look…faint.”

“That’s because Lord Bala is fading. His power is being drained by everything he now has to manage. Shadow vales are everywhere, not to mention an Oteran god actually breached the Great Barrier, bringing with her corruption.” Suddenly, Myter seems very much the world-weary, immortal godsworn they are, massive shoulders hunched over, eyes hooded with exhaustion, as they continue: “I should be at his side, helping him, but you and your friends are the only thing standing between this world and disaster. Between him and dispersal. So I will hold time for as long as I can here, and I will teach you until you have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the pathways and the Greater Divinity, so you have enough power inside yourself to fight the Oteran gods.”

They walk closer to me, eyes determined. “So I ask you again, do you wish to learn?”

“Yes, I do,” I reply, firm.

I thought Myter was toying with me before, so I didn’t understand. They’re under just as much pressure as I am, and my doubt and resentfulness has only added to their burden.

“Very well.” Myter must see the sincerity in my eyes, because they walk closer, brusquely point to my hands. “When you pulled me to you earlier, your energy was concentrated in your fingertips. That’s why your sores always start there—because that’s where you concentrate your power. It’s also the reason you got so exhausted. Instead of absorbing power from the Greater Divinity, you used your own energy.”

They glance at the others. “I hope you haven’t all been doing that.”

“And what if we have?” Keita steps forward, arms folded.

“Then you have been hindering yourselves. Stifling your growth instead of enhancing it.” Myter makes their way to the center of the grove. “I don’t know what they tell you in Otera, but in Maiwuri, they tell us that the Greater Divinity is like water, or the air. It is all around us.”

They gesture and suddenly, the forest appears to be underwater. Only, the sea around us is a sea of stars. It looks so similar to the river of stars in the Gilded Ones’ chamber, nostalgia pangs my heart—but only for the briefest moment. I’m no longer that girl who is seduced by the reassuring chains of familiarity, I remind myself. I am the girl who breaks the chains and doesn’t look back.

Myter continues: “Most mortals are only barely aware of the Greater Divinity. But that is why there are gods. Gods are the physical manifestation of the natural order. Since the Greater Divinity is too vast, too all-encompassing, to comprehend, we give each facet of it a name. A face. We breathe life into it.”

The air punches out of my lungs. “Wait,” I gasp, trying to understand what they’re saying. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think I am. “Are you saying we create the gods? Us, the lesser beings?”

“Indeed. Gods are the dreams of the sentient. It is our longing, our desire, that brings them forth into this realm.”

“But they came before us,” sputters Keita, who’s just as flabbergasted as I am. “They were here before we were.”

“Is that what they tell you in Otera?” Myter tsks. “Lies, all lies. Deities exist because we need them. That is why we are not lesser to them, why we do not serve them. We are all of us dependent on each other. All parts of one whole.”

Suddenly, I remember how solicitous of Myter Bala is. How he is always calm and loving with them—a doting and supportive presence, not just to them, but to everyone. Could it be because he needs Myter as much as they need him? That all the gods need us as much as we need them?

I try to remember Anok’s memories, the ones I experienced when I touched a sample of her blood. Did she remember a time before humans? It’s hard to say. The gods have such a strange understanding of time.

“But what about before? Before mortals were created?” Keita’s brow is furrowed as he asks this insistent question.

“Before, after, now,” Myter says. “It’s all the same thing, really. To the gods, time is a circle, never-ending. And they have the gift to understand how it all fits together. That’s another reason they exist. To caretake. To shepherd mortals. That is what the Greater Divinity seeks.”

“And how does it all relate to us here? Now?” Belcalis asks, impatient.

Trust her to bring the conversation back to the practical.

“You and others from Otera have been taught that you are beneath the gods, and you were never even taught about the Greater Divinity. That is why you approach your abilities as clumsily as you do. Because you think you have to rely on your own power. But the Greater Divinity is a part of you as much as you are a part of it. Think of it this way: If the Divinity is like air, you can breathe it. You can imbue yourself with it.” Suddenly, I remember how energy coalesced inside Myter, almost as if they’d breathed it in instead of creating it themselves.

Myter seems to notice my realization, because they nod. “Next time you use your gifts, instead of reaching for the energy inside yourself, breathe in the Divinity. Connect with that which is already a part of you. And then use that to power your gifts. You are not alone in this world; you never were. And the sooner you understand that, the more powerful you will be.

“Now then, Deka, try to create a pathway.”

Nodding, I close my eyes. And almost immediately, the combat state surges, allowing me to take in the streams of air moving around me. If I concentrate, I can imagine them as currents. Currents of power through which the Greater Divinity, presumably, travels.

I inhale, eyes flying open when I feel the power flowing into me. It doesn’t feel that much different from mine, truth be told. In fact, it feels like it’s a part of me, like it’s always been there, an old friend waiting to welcome me. And that’s precisely why it’s so insidious.

Anything this simple, this easy, comes with a cost. I know this very well, which is why I stop. I let the breath settle just enough to fill my belly but not so much that it takes me over. I can feel it inside me now, a power suffusing the emptiness there, pushing back at it.

I cling to that feeling, let it build as I concentrate on one of the trees across the grove, an elegant silver sapling whose crystalline leaves are slowly fading around the edges.

“All right,” I say, readying myself. “Let’s do this.”

I pinch the space between the air. Even before I can blink, I’m there, and I have to hold my hand out to keep from crashing into the trunk.

“Deka!” Britta’s excited gasp fills the air. “Deka, ye did it!”

Heart pounding, I pivot to face my friends, who are still on the other side of the grove. Even stranger, my head doesn’t hurt from the movement, and neither does my body. Nothing hurts at all, not even my muscles, which were exhausted just moments ago.

It’s like I’m filled now, my entire body calm with the feeling that came after I breathed in that air. The Greater Divinity…So that’s what it feels like, the force the Maiwurian gods spoke of. It’s not harsh, or demanding, the way I expected it to be. It just is.

And yet, I still don’t trust it.

I turn as Myter makes their way to me. “I did it,” I say to them. “I created a pathway.”

“And yet?” The godsworn seems to sense my hesitance.

“It felt…too easy.” I struggle to put my feelings into words. “Every time I’ve used a new ability before, I’ve had to struggle for it, bleed for it. But this…”

Myter steps forward, placing their hands on my shoulders. Their green eyes bore into mine as they say, “Remember always, Deka, the Greater Divinity is as much a part of you as you are a part of it. That’s why it’s so easy for you to use. Because it’s always been there with you.”

“But that can’t be right,” I rebut, skeptical.

“Why not?”

“Because if this has always been a part of me, why haven’t I ever been able to use it before? Why have I struggled doing every other thing?”

Myter smiles. “Because you weren’t taught to. No one in Otera was. And when you’ve been led down the wrong path, when you’re focused on it, you fail to see what’s in front of your very eyes. Don’t continue resisting the Greater Divinity, Deka. It’ll only be to your detriment if you do.”

With those unnerving last few words, the massive godsworn walks off, beckoning to my friends. “You four—with me. Deka needs to train. As do you.”

Li frowns. “But we don’t—”

“Go with them,” I interject. “And do as they say. All of you.”

Sighing, Li follows Myter, as do the rest of my friends. And I turn my focus back to what Myter just taught me. After all, we have only a short amount of time before we return to Otera—back to our enemies and near-constant danger.

Until then, my friends and I will train, get our abilities as powerful as we can. Because if we don’t, it’ll mean the ascension of the Oteran gods and the end of us all.