Chapter 41 Hakara
Hakara
Pizgonia – Gorina, City of a Hundred Moons, in the Godless hideout
There are a few statues that were reconstructed after the Shattering that depict mortals carrying strange weapons.
They generally consist of a long barrel, about the circumference and length of a person’s forearm.
At the base are several chambers into which jars are fitted.
One bas-relief, uncovered in the ruins of Albanore, shows something bright, with carved rays, being ejected from the end of the barrel.
This projectile, in the next frame, sends an entire building toppling to the ground.
The room we’d occupied earlier was empty, the door hanging open. Sounds of fighting emanated from beyond. “The entrance,” Velenor gasped out. “There are fewer godkillers here than on the northern continent, but they are still here.”
I let her run ahead of me and through the door, uncertain of the turns we’d taken to get to our current location. “If you’re not their leader, who is?” I called out. Lanterns and stone whipped past us.
“One of the council members.” She halted at a fork so quickly that I ran into her.
Her arm shot out, steadying me. “Help the Godless. There’s a back entrance to these ruins.
I need to leave and get to the palace. The council are here for their quarterly meeting.
This is likely a distraction, something to keep the Godless occupied while Lithuas goes after their leader.
I have to protect her. Go left, take the first left.
” And then she was gone, disappeared down the right-hand tunnel.
Cursing, I hesitated for only a moment before darting to the left. Dashu and Alifra were there, and Thassir as well, and I was their bruiser. They might have each been formidable on their own, but the four of us together were much more effective.
I took the first left and found myself in the midst of a nightmare.
The space beyond was wide and sloping, the ceiling high enough to give even Thassir clearance at my end, narrowing along the other end so that most people had to duck to fit.
Light streamed in from an open hole, the makeshift wooden stairs leading to the street already partially destroyed in the fight.
Several cohorts of godkillers pressed forward into the ruins, the flash of blades and glowing violet mixing with sprays of crimson.
I spotted Alifra trying to get a clear line of sight with her crossbow from behind the ranks of Godless, Thassir with a borrowed sword in his grip, Dashu sliding through the gaps like water through cracks, his sword leading the way.
“Thassir!” I called. He might not have been able to hear me, but I knew he could sense my presence, the bond between us loosening. I dipped into the pouches Velenor had given me, swallowed gems without looking, and drew my sword.
Thassir summoned the aether to meet me, and I sucked in as deep a breath as I could hold.
The Godless parted to let me through, another of them near the front of the line, her limbs clad in smoke.
I wondered, briefly, if we were the same everywhere.
Did they also have a pest, a vine, and an arbor, but by different names?
Or had they formed some other strategy? I didn’t have time to dwell on it.
I focused on the godkillers ahead of me, new strength flooding into my body.
For once, it was an advantage in a fight not to be tall.
I could stand free of the ceiling here, while my opponents were forced to keep their knees and necks bent.
Two of them focused on me – one with brown and black-barred wings, the other with red, stony skin.
I tracked the movement of their blades, parrying instead of jumping back.
Didn’t want to give them more space to work.
I pressed the winged godkiller back toward the entrance, and she hunched over, teeth bared.
The stone-skinned one took the opportunity to attack my right side.
A crossbow bolt landed in her left eye. She screamed, clawing at the bloody ruin it had made of her flesh. I leaned down and slid my blade across the back of her ankle. She collapsed to the ground, unable to hold her weight in the narrowed space.
One feathered wing shot out, battering my shoulder, trying to force me to give ground.
I thrust at the wing, but my head was starting to swim, my lungs burning.
I caught only feathers and not flesh. I could feel Thassir moving in the crowd behind me, trying to get to the front lines, to my side.
His size was a disadvantage in this enclosed space.
He’d practically be on his knees if he made it as far as the entrance.
I couldn’t breathe – not yet. I sidestepped a swipe from the godkilling blade, trying to put the groaning body of the fallen godkiller between me and the winged one.
Same gray robes, same embossed eyes on their armor.
It seemed I could travel half a world away, yet godkillers hadn’t changed a whit.
Velenor had said Kluehnn didn’t have as strong a hold on the southern continent.
I wondered if these were all the godkillers he had at his disposal here.
They’d have to have traveled from restored lands – a nearly impossible trek.
I parried two more blows, thrust my blade at the winged godkiller. He easily flowed around the edge of my sword. I had my enhanced strength and speed, but the need to breathe was becoming all I could think about.
A warmth at my side, the touch of a hand. “I’m here.” Thassir’s voice in my ear.
I let the aether out in gasping breath, taking a moment to hang my head as he stepped between me and the godkillers.
It felt natural, letting my guard down completely, trusting him to be there for me no matter the danger.
I caught glimpses of the fight, saw two Godless getting cut down by godkillers.
They hadn’t expected this ambush and it wasn’t going well for them.
How many times had they faced godkillers?
Velenor couldn’t have prepared them the way Lithuas would; she wouldn’t know their strengths and weaknesses as well, their style of fighting. And she wasn’t leading them.
The Godless who’d swallowed the gems lay on the floor, shadowed by the fight still occurring over her body, blood from a gaping wound on her neck seeping into dusty stone.
The corestone. He must have done something to it. What exactly had he done? I didn’t feel much different, except when I fought, when I breathed in the aether and felt the vastness of the corestone just beyond my reach.
The god gems used up that aether before it could reach the corestone.
I couldn’t put things together, one after another, the way Mull seemed to do so easily, following suppositions like strings tied together through a forest. But I had the strength of my instincts, and I could follow those, even if I wasn’t sure where they were leading me.
Could they be leading me into a bear’s den? Certainly seemed to do that more often than not, but at least I knew the bear was there.
I reached into the pouches at my side, scooping out nothing but air, cupping it to my mouth. And Thassir – reliable Thassir, who always seemed to anticipate my movements and my needs – summoned the aether to me.
I breathed in the smell of mussels in a bucket, the scrape of a knife against the inside of an abalone shell, the cold of water seeping past my hair to my scalp. The aether dissolved into my blood, became a part of me, and found the corestone in my belly.
It was an oil-soaked torch catching fire in a darkened room.
The burning I remembered feeling in the Kashani den returned, my veins pulsing with heat.
But it felt contained, safely observable from behind glass.
And when I reached toward that stone, that vastness of power, I felt myself falling into it, becoming part of it.
My fingers tightened on the leather hilt of my sword. I stepped around Thassir’s protective wings and into the fray.
Was this what it felt like to be him? I moved with ruthless precision, my body two steps ahead of my mind.
Every flinch, every twitch the godkillers made seemed magnified by my gaze, slowed down.
How easily they gave away each movement, each attack!
I swept their blades aside, barely noticing the strength of the impact.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears – slow, steady, inexorable.
Dashu would have despaired of my footwork, but that didn’t matter. I gutted one godkiller straight through her leather breastplate, took another’s head clean off. I felt filled with molten metal, my skin sensitive to the slightest shift in the movement of the air.
My blade gave way before I did, the metal shattering on the stone behind a godkiller as I cleaved him in half. I whirled and killed another with the sharpened stump, piercing her heart. She stared at me as she died, and I wasn’t sure what she feared more – me or the death that swiftly took her.
I slayed another, and another. And then warm hands were on my shoulders, wings surrounding me. “Breathe. Hakara, you have to breathe.”
Thassir, his gaze filled with worry and regret and loss.
He hadn’t lost me. He shook me, teeth bared. “Breathe. Damn it, Hakara!”
I sucked in a breath and felt, suddenly, how close I’d come to the edge. The fire in my veins drained out. My knees shook just before my legs collapsed beneath me. Every part of me felt weak and useless.
Thassir caught me before I hit the ground. His voice shook. “You pretended to take the gems. You didn’t. You used the corestone.”
I’d wanted to be sure, to know whether that feeling I’d had in earlier fights was a fluke or something real. We’d been losing – what was I supposed to do? Just let us die? If I had a power in me that I could access, then I would do it, no matter the consequences.
“What did you do to it? How am I still alive?” I could barely hear my own voice.
He opened his mouth and said nothing. Not meeting my eyes, he reached out and brushed the hair from my forehead, tucking a loose strand behind my ear.
There was something devastatingly gentle in his touch, and it made me remember what I’d said to Velenor – that he was kind.
Dashu and Alifra hovered nearby, though they did not approach.
The fight must have been over. We’d won. I’d won.
Slowly, strength returned to me. “Fine. You may not be able to tell me what you did to it, or what I did when I swallowed that stone. But Thassir, you also cannot stop me from using it.”