Chapter 37
“NO!” I shriek, wrenching myself against Etzli’s grasp. She’s killed them. She’s killed my friends. “STOP IT! PLEASE STOP!” I scream, tears falling.
“And why should I?” The goddess is suddenly just in front of me, floating on a mass of golden vines. “What will you give me if I stop?”
“What do you want?” I ask, everything inside me suddenly dull and lifeless now.
There’s no point fighting anymore. Britta and Li are in the almost-death, and most of my other friends are effectively captured. Keita and Acalan are wrapped so tightly in vines, they can’t even move, much less speak. When Keita tries, the vines slither into his mouth, choking him more surely than any gag. Even the twins, who keep blasting back her vines with their wind, are now manacled by them, tied down to the chamber floor.
All I can do now is bargain with Etzli so she doesn’t hurt my friends any further. Britta and Li can heal from an almost-death—will heal soon, given their proximity to me: one of the gifts I gave my friends is the ability to heal swiftly from any injury. But I can’t risk Etzli killing them any more. She might find their final deaths. Take them from me forever.
The thought has desperation lining my voice when I ask Etzli again, “What do you want?”
The goddess doesn’t immediately answer. As my friends struggle against her grasp, she weaves her vines into a circle around us—a golden cage.
“Do you know what’s fascinating about a deity’s kelai, Deka?” she muses. “It changes the essence of everything around it. Everything—including this body.” She gestures at herself, at the changes she’s wrought over Mother’s body. “This hair. But it’s not hair any longer, is it?”
She clenches her fist, and the vines around me tighten, a serpent constricting me. I gasp out a breath when they slowly, surely begin digging into my armor.
DEKA!Ixa shouts, beginning to transform, but a negligent flick of the wrist is all Etzli needs.
Ixa is hurled across the room, an audible crack sounding as he lands.
“Ixa!” I shout. “Get as far from here as you can!”
Deka…is Ixa’s frail answer. He’s not leaving. Not even when his ribs are so badly cracked.
He doesn’t have to say anything more for me to understand that. He groans as a mass of vines slithers over him, removing the obsidian box from his claws.
The moment they return it to Etzli, she floats closer, offering it to me again.
“You know, I have waited for this moment since the last time I saw you in Abeya, looking down at my wounded body, Anok and Fatu by your side. My traitorous family….” She shakes her head, tsking. Then she smirks. “But all that doesn’t matter anymore. You see, you may not want to open this box, but it is inevitable. At the moment of your death, it will open, whether you wish it or not. And then, when your kelai tries to reach you, I will snatch it up.”
She floats closer. “As you know, this has always been a game of speed and proximity. And despite what our counterparts plotted, I have both. So I will consume your divinity for my sisters and myself. For the future of Otera.”
“For Otera?” I laugh weakly. “What do you care about Otera? No…all you care about is power. That’s all you’ve cared about for the past few centuries.” I stop, now shaking my head. “When did you stop being a god, Etzli? When did you stop serving the people who worshipped you and start preying on them instead?”
A snarl mottles Etzli’s face. “Foolish child! Gods are not meant to serve! We are meant to rule!”
She clenches her fist again, and the vines close even tighter around me. I gasp, my breath labored as cracking sounds fill the air. My armor. It’s breaking. It was only ever scales, after all. And now that it’s damaged, I’m aware of that emptiness inside me again. The emptiness that needs just one final push.
“No!” I shout, struggling against Etzli’s vines. I try to lift my atikas, try to fight back, but the vines wrench them to the floor with a loud clatter. I’m completely defenseless now.
And all the while the vines squeeze tighter and tighter, digging into me.
“Please,” I rasp when a section of armor cracks away, leaving the skin on my belly exposed. My ribs are bending slowly, painfully inward, moving toward my organs. I can feel them creaking, feel the agony sparking inside my belly. Stars shoot across my vision as my body turns into a quivering mass of pain.
And then the vines slither across my neck.
“Just die, Deka,” the goddess says, gesturing.
“NOOOOO!”
This piercing shriek comes from Katya, who somehow wrenches out of the vines entangling her, a powerful gust of wind blowing at her back. Both Adwapa and Asha are already rising from their restraints, their power blowing away the vines hurtling in Katya’s direction as she jumps from wall to wall to race toward me.
When Etzli sends another mass of vines flying—this time toward the twins—Asha blasts them away while Adwapa focuses on guarding Katya’s back, clearing a path for her to the golden cage.
“I’M COMING FOR YOU, DEKA!” Katya shouts, slicing through the vines making up the cage. “HOLD ON, I’M COM—”
A lance of vines stabs through her skull.
Blood trickles down Katya’s face. Bright blue, vivid against the red of her skin. Bright blue, the color of the final death. The end of any alaki and the deathshriek they become.
“KATYA!” This desperate cry explodes from Rian, who has been frozen, terrified, in the same place this entire time. As frozen as everyone now is, the shock of what happened rendering all our limbs useless.
Except for Rian. He picks up a sword from one of the fallen jatu and rushes Etzli, his attack so unexpected, the goddess is, for a moment, taken aback. He slices through the golden cage with a strength I never realized he possessed. But before he can near the goddess, a single vine lashes out. A garrote.
Rian’s head falls with a splatter to the floor.
“Rian…” The devastated whisper reverberates through my body, and it’s echoed by the screaming of my remaining friends, who struggle against the bonds Etzli has now swiftly retied.
Belcalis is the first to rip her way out, her body now completely covered in the golden armor that is her divine gift—even her fingers, which she’s extended into sharpened claws. She rips Acalan, Kweku, and Asha free as she runs toward the goddess, Ixa at her side. Just as she nears, however, Kweku rushes past her, Ixa keeping pace with him.
“YOU KILLED THEM!” he shouts, his eyes mad with grief as he aims his sword at the goddess. “YOU KILLED MY FRIENDS!”
“KWEKU, NO!” I shout, but before the words even leave my mouth, vines lash around both his and Ixa’s feet, pulling them to the edge of the shallow water in the pool surrounding the throne.
When Asha does the same, Etzli’s vines take her too. Then the bloodthirsty goddess floats over to where Kweku and Ixa are still thrashing against their bonds.
“LEAVE THEM ALONE!” This shout comes from Belcalis, but the goddess simply wraps her in a cocoon of vines, the tendrils twisting tighter and tighter until Belcalis is nothing but a golden bundle on the floor.
She does the same with both Acalan’s and Adwapa’s feet and hands, keeping them firmly in place. That done, she turns back to Kweku and Asha. “Now here’s something you don’t see often,” she muses as she leans over the pair. “Both of your final deaths are drowning. It is your fate to die in the water and give me the power that I need for my task.”
My eyes widen. “No, please!” I cry out.
But Etzli just gestures. The vines pull both Asha and Kweku under with little more than a whisper. Kweku thrashes, bubbles forming, but Asha’s drowning is quieter. She doesn’t so much thrash as she wriggles, even now trying to free herself.
“ASHA!” Adwapa screams from across the chamber. “NO! LEAVE HER ALONE! LEAVE HER ALONE!” She turns to me, her eyes pleading. “DEKA, DO SOMETHING! SAVE HER!”
But I can’t. Now that the armor is cracked, my body is deteriorating fast. I can’t even pull myself out of these vines. But I have to try something—anything. I enter the combat state, trying to find the edges of space, but they’re not there. There’s nothing there but the white outlines of my friends, all of them in pain, dying.
I gasp out of the combat state and turn back to Etzli, despair filling me. “Stop!” I shout. “Please stop!”
Kweku’s entire body is seizing as the water enters his lungs, fills up his organs. But Asha is as silent as before. That’s the thing that horrifies me the most: Asha is silent, barely twitching, as she takes on more and more water until finally, there’s too much for her to survive.
She falls motionless, just like Kweku.
And then they both turn blue.
I’m shaking now. Every part of me is weak, every part of me is useless. I can’t move, I can’t think—all I can do is watch as the bubbles surrounding them grow weaker and weaker.
Around me, my friends scream. Adwapa tries to rush to her sister, but the vines binding her hold tight, not even budging when she summons a column of air to lift herself out of them. She’s pulling so hard now, the vines rip into her skin.
Even then, Adwapa keeps pulling, calling out her sister’s name.
Then the bubbles finally vanish. And the water goes completely still.
It’s like all the air has left the chamber. Everyone is silent now, hanging limp against their bonds. In all the years we’ve been fighting, all the years we’ve been struggling, we’ve never experienced loss like this.
I can barely move anymore, I’m so destroyed.
But Etzli is shimmering with excitement as she turns back to me. Her body is engorged with power now. Flowers are blossoming in her hair, their golden petals so similar to the black ones I know, I almost vomit.
Blood-eaters.
She’s made blood-eaters from the deaths of my friends.
“Is that all?” she asks, practically bouncing. “Or does anyone else wish to test their mettle against me?” She whirls, smirking as she sees all the dark blue corpses, and even those of Britta and Li, which have only the slightest sheen of gold over them, indicating they’ll soon wake. When no one responds—not even Keita and Belcalis, who are still bound and gagged—she turns back to me, seeming almost disappointed. “Now then, Deka,” she says, “shall we continue?”
She gestures again, and all the vines constricting me tighten all at once. The pressure is too much for the ebiki armor. It shatters; then pain slams into me like a hammer.
I begin screaming.
“DEKA!” I distantly hear Britta cry out, but I can no longer move, can no longer speak. All I can do is scream.
Now that I’m no longer protected by Ayo’s armor, I’m completely alone in my body. And all my friends are gone. There’s nothing I can do anymore. I have no one to call on. Except…. The thought abruptly filters past the pain, niggling at the deepest part of me.
Ixa,I say, reaching out, I need you.
And Ixa rises from the water.