Chapter 30
Dastian
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?” Voren spits out. “Is that all you can say? Hmm?”
“It covers a lot of ground,” I reply, shrugging my shoulders as sparks of red energy dance across my knuckles. “For instance, ‘hmm, that’s a very big monster,’ or ‘hmm, we are definitely going to get blamed for this.’”
Voren doesn’t look amused. His jaw is tight enough to snap steel. “We failed.”
“Technicality,” I correct. “We succeeded. Then the realm decided to have an administrative temper tantrum and void the warranty.”
“Move,” Dreven commands, already surging forward.
I don’t need telling twice. I sprint after Nyssa, who tears across the obsidian floor like her heels are on fire. She wants to catch a cloud of sentient nothingness before it eats her world. Admirable, but stupid.
The air crackles with the residue of the Devourer’s passing. My skin prickles. It feels like static electricity and bad intentions.
“The seal didn’t hold because the Realm rejected her. The First Law cut the power cord.”
“Focus, Dastian!” Dreven roars from ahead.
“I am focused! I’m analysing the chaotic breakdown of our plan!”
We reach the fissure just as Nyssa throws herself at it. The rift is wide open, edges ragged where the void creature forced its way through.
“Hurry!” Nyssa yells, not breaking stride.
She jumps.
I dive through the rift after her. The sensation of travel hits me instantly—a cold, sharp yank behind the navel. No time for elegance. We land on the hard, dusty crypt floor. Nyssa is crawling towards the exit as Voren and Dreven land in heaps of complaint around me.
I’m on my feet in under a second and lunging for the crypt door.
Nyssa is already outside, on her knees in the wet grass, looking up at the sky above the village.
It is already turning a bruised, unnatural purple.
“What do we do?” she asks. The uncertainty in her voice is unnerving.
I hold my hand out to her, while still staring at the sky, as Dreven and Voren join us.
She grips my hand and uses it to help her to her feet.
No one answers her. No one has an answer.
“Well, this is awkward,” I mutter, breaking the quiet because someone has to. The silence is heavy, weighing on my shoulders.
Nyssa doesn’t even glare at me. She keeps staring at the horizon where the purple hue spreads across the clouds. It looks wrong. The physics are all off. Gravity seems to bend around the mass, pulling the clouds into long, unnatural streaks.
“It isn’t attacking,” Dreven says, his voice flat. He tracks the movement with eyes that reflect the dark. “It is observing.”
“It’s huge,” Nyssa whispers. Her hand trembles in mine. I squeeze it. The chaotic energy rolling off the entity makes my head hurt. It calls to the disorder in my blood, urging me to let go, to join the riot. I lock that urge down.
Voren steps away from the group. He looks toward the village lights flickering in the distance. “The dead are screaming,” he states. “Not at us. At it.”
“Where is Tabitha?” I ask, suddenly, looking around. She stuck around after the other gods slunk off when the First Law was enacted.
“Are you sure she wasn’t possessed?” Nyssa asks, still staring at the thing in the sky, which is drawing a crowd.
A crowd of mortals who have absolutely no idea what that thing is or how close they are to being non-existent.
“She didn’t come through the rift,” I say, scanning the dark perimeter of the crypt. “Or she chose not to.”
“Is that a good thing or not?”
“Let’s just go with, she isn’t here, annoying us.”
“Good point.”
I look toward the village. The mortals gather in the streets. I see the glow of phone screens lighting up their confused faces. They film the end of their world and probably plan to upload it with a catchy hashtag.
The purple bruise in the sky pulses. It doesn’t roar. It doesn’t strike. It simply exists.
“What is it doing?” Voren asks quietly.
“Waiting,” Nyssa replies.
“For?”
“The Judge.”
“Why, though? What difference does it make? Shouldn’t it be eating the world while you are on pause?”
“It didn’t recognise me,” she mutters. “It flew straight over me. The First Law took whatever power I had that it could see.”
“It’s looking for you,” Dreven says, connecting the dots faster. “Or rather the you with the powers.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It wants to eat me first.”
“Because it knows you will stop it,” I catch on.
“It buys us time, but how do I stop it without the powers? This is the ultimate catch-22.”
“Great,” I say. “So we have a stalemate. The monster waits for a signal that isn’t broadcasting, and we wait for a Judge who takes too long.”
Nyssa huffs out a frustrated breath. “We can’t just stand here. Not to mention everyone can see it.”
“Maybe they think it’s a big thundercloud,” I say.
Nyssa glares at me, but then a distant clap of thunder sounds across the village, and it starts to rain. Not just rain, but a torrential downpour that this village probably hasn’t witnessed in several hundred years.
We are soaked within seconds, but it drives the mortals back inside.
“Sentient,” she whispers. “This thing is growing more intelligent than we realised.”
I exchange a worried look with Dreven. His expression is grimmer than usual, and that, above all else, tells me how much shit we are in.