Ch7.62 Revelations

The water seems bottomless, and instead of rising, Alma sinks toward a glimmering light. She sees it ahead of her, the dark, hard object, floating somehow despite being solid metal. She knows it, but how did it get here?

As she reaches for it, she sees for a moment an identical pale hand reaching for it. She looks and sees a pair of frightened eyes, eyes so familiar, eyes from a distant youth, a timorous, childish Alma she left behind so long ago.

But then she seizes the object, and breaks the surface. Her world spins as she reorients herself. Just as she is looking around, taking note of the chamber glowing with light from the water, noticing that the chamber is empty of anyone else, Sky surfaces behind her, putting an arm around her. “Are you all right, Lady…ehm, Inspector?”

She squirms in Sky’s arm, not struggling but turning, searching desperately for Dion. “Oh no….no, no, no…” Without thinking, she brings her fist down with considerable force on Sky’s shoulder multiple times. “Stupid, stupid, stupid – you are so stupid, Alma!” she roars in frustration and anger.

The water rises up, lifting her and Sky onto solid ground, before splashing away as the ocean-god releases his control of it. Sky sets her down, and she feels shame at hitting him, though she knows such pounding without some supernatural oomph behind it will do little harm to the big god. As she falls quiet, he murmurs, “I will get you home. I swear it. I won’t let them be without you.”

Alma takes a deep breath. “Thank you…does this mean…? I saw myself on the passage through. Was the other me, the Senator’s wife, going to the other side?”

Sky shakes his head. “You’re asking me? I think I caught a glimpse of myself as well. Perhaps your Sky is back home now. Perhaps we cannot exist in the same world at the same time.”

“Gods, I truly didn’t need this now.” Alma opens her hand, suddenly noticing that she is still holding the thing she grabbed. “The God Striker…”

Sky takes a look. “Fancy brass knuckles? A sort of lightweight cestus.”

He looks at Alma. “You punched an Archon to death?”

Alma shakes her head. “No. Gwydion punched him. He could have killed him with this but…he hesitated. He would have arrested him like the good Guardia officer he is. Instead, I ripped Nekh’s soul from his shattered body.” She gives Sky a look of defiance. “He was going to murder all my children in front of me.”

Sky’s expression carries no condemnation. “Sounds like you did what needed doing. Pity someone didn’t do that to him in this time-line.” He takes another look at the artifact, studying the fine script etched into the surface. “It seems inert at the moment. Still, I’m glad you weren’t wearing it when you were walloping me just now.”

“I’m sorry,” Alma says. “That was uncalled for. There wasn’t any convenient wall to punch…but I shouldn’t have punched you.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “I was confused and upset myself when I crossed over. But I will get you home, Alma. I promise it.” He sighs. “But it seems we will have to be back here in another twenty-four hours for that. We should go meet the others and find out what’s happened. Surely they won’t be far…”

“We need to find the Oracle, too,” Alma says. “If she is anything like the Nevieve I know, I would not be surprised if all of this is not just some elaborate cry for help.”

“At least Somrak will be glad to know the Fates are on our side.” He stretches a hand toward the pool. Water rises in a small hump, then pops free in a floating globule. Sky levitates it to float above his shoulder, and a swirl of glowing particles, like a tiny galaxy, spins into being from the center of it, suffusing the globule with bioluminescence, producing a watery glow reflected by the stone of the walls and floor in soft glimmers.

“This place,” Alma says and they start down the tunnel together. “It was Nevieve’s home. And Doria’s. They were our friends.”

“And now it is empty, violated.” Sky pauses, listening. “Though not entirely empty.”

Alma hears the faint echo of voices, too, as they approach the center of the Grotto. “I am not sure if I want to explain to these people what just happened,” she says in a low voice. 

“Do you want to hang back? Just wait by the pool? I could bring you some food.” 

She considers his thoughtful offer, but shakes her head. “It is better for them to know the truth than to think the other Alma is lost.”

He looks ahead and says, “Too late anyway.”

Before he’d even spoken, Alma had seen the two souls approaching. They had almost immediately been recognizable as Bunny souls, different from humans in their own subtle ways. Are they the same souls as her Bunnies, though? Before their faces appear in the watery light of Sky’s glowing globe, she thinks they indeed seem very similar to those of two of her daughters, Rosemary and Mayumi. If there are any differences, they are too subtle to detect without a more thorough examination.

And yes, there it is, Merri’s face entering the light, the ginger curls and freckles and russet fur on her ears so familiar. But her voice, when she asks, “Is that you, Mother?” is different. The timbre is the same, but carrying the accent and rhythms of a high-ring family, not the unique lilt and burr that matches no other accent on the Insula she knows of, the one her daughter emerged from the dreamworld with. 

“Almost,” Alma replies, keeping her voice calm, reassuring. “But not quite. Are you all right, Rosemary? You sound frightened.”

Rosemary slips past Sky and takes Alma’s hands. “You’re all wet! And wearing different clothes! You smell…different. And and and…”

“You’re taller,” May says, wonderingly, wide-eyed. This daughter, too, sounds a little different. Alma reminds herself that in this world, according to Sky, she goes by May rather than Mayumi, a shortening that her Mayumi once tried to explain was just incorrect for some strange reason. “And…you have a sword.”

“Let’s return to the others,” Sky says. “You shouldn’t be away from them. Is everyone well? Your father and sister and little brother?”

Alma feels a flash of appreciation toward this world’s Sky, for trying to distract them while she gathers herself back together. This is so very strange. There are Sky and May together, in her world so much in love, here meaning nothing more to each other than bodyguard and client. Yet she notices Sky looking at the Bunny with a little curiosity, perhaps wondering what his counterpart sees in her.

But she feels her equanimity shaken again, by anxiety and desire about seeing this godling babe. She takes Merri’s…no, Rosemary’s hand, and then May’s as she resumes walking toward the others. “I took an unexpected dip in the pool. I’ll explain everything when we’re all together.”

They find their way to the Oracle’s audience chamber. As they step in, she sees several people: Machado is there, and Cala and Aliyah, all three in uniform. Somrak, too, probably fueling the fire that burns on the stone floor, unfed by wood or anything else. She sees his scar, healed away by her mother weeks ago, returned to his otherwise beautiful face. And sitting at his feet–

“Saira…” she breathes. Her ally. Her patient. Her friend. 

Saira who lost her life in a quest for vengeance – and in the process saved them all. Here. Alive. And…a prisoner?

The Bunnies look up at her, feeling her tension.

Sky murmurs to Alma, “Not sure who that is. She must have joined us earlier today.”

Rosemary tilts her head, one ear flopping to the side. “But…what? You captured her.”

May wrinkles her brow. “You’re not the same Tuma-Sukai who was here a little while ago. You’re the one we first met, aren’t you?”

Rosemary shakes her head like a fly is trying to get into her ear. “What? There’s two of them?”

“Not only him,” May says, looking up at Alma, her eyes accusing and fearful. 

When Alma feels May let go of her hand, she feels a sharp, brief pain at the rejection. She and Mayumi had struggled to find their way to a strong connection – just before the girl had gone off to the Guardia Academy, Mayumi had become, in some ways, the one Alma felt closest to among all her children. The pain of the chasm she’d struggled to bridge returns. But she reminds herself that these are not her children. They are Lady Alma’s. And Senator Gwydion’s.

She wants to explain. These may not be her Bunnies, but they are mortals who are in a frightening situation. And more, she still feels a bond to them, even across the divide of universes.

She gives Rosemary’s hand a little squeeze of encouragement, then drops her hand. “You’re right,” she says to May. “But I–”

“Alma! But you are drenched!” Senator Gwydion, emerging from an alcove, hurries toward her, brushing aside Sky’s halfhearted attempt to stop him. “Oh, I knew this was a bad idea. You don’t even know how to swim. Are you well, my little lamb?”

Before she can think to bring her hands up to keep him back, the god, a rather well-fed, older-looking version of her Gwydion, embraces her. Alma stiffens at his touch. Her eyes widen at the treatment, then narrow at the pet name. Lamb? If for even a moment she had thought this soul was her beloved, that moment was past. She pats him awkwardly on the shoulder blade. “I am fine. For the moment.” She shares a look with Sky, who is trying to hide an amused smile, and tries to silently tell him, Man, you were not kidding. “But I am afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“Alma, what is wrong?” Senator Gwydion sounds worried as he releases her. She waits, watching him look her over, take in the differences. With the fire at his back, he can see her face more easily than she can see his in Sky’s aqueous globule’s glow, but still she sees him blanch. He turns to Sky. “What happened? What did you do to her?”

Sky takes a breath. “Do you know about the pool, Senator?”

Gwydion nods, impatient. “The pool that is supposed to be some sort of link to another world, yes! What…” He pauses, his eyes flickering over Sky’s uniform. “You’re no longer…half-naked.”

“Daddy!” Rosemary cries. “You knew?!”

Sky raises an eyebrow. “I was…? Never mind. I am the first Tuma-Sukai you met. The one that was…out of uniform was from the other world. I think he must have gone back at midnight, exchanging places with me once again.”

“Which would have set everything right,” Alma says. “But…” She opens her hands to indicate herself.

Senator Gwydion deflates, like someone has punched him in his slightly paunchy belly. “You mean to tell me that my wife is…gone?” The two Bunnies look horrified, and Alma catches sight of Cherry – no, Cherish – coming out of the alcove, holding a little baby in her arms. She has been overhearing this, and looks confused and afraid.

“Not gone,” Alma assures him. “She has crossed over to my world, where she will be perfectly safe, with good friends to take care of her.” She reaches out and pats his arm. “However, the same cannot be said about us, Gw– Senator.”

“On top of that, we now have someone with us who knows a thing or two about our enemy, and has beaten him before,” Sky adds. “The Inspector, here, has defeated Nekh in battle. It’s not a bad thing that she’s crossed over.”

“Why don’t you all come closer to the fire?” Somrak’s soul, like Sky’s, is much less scarred than that of the Somrak of her world, though not entirely free of the mark of old wounds, Alma can see even from here. His face, though, still bears the old scar that twists his pretty mouth into a slight sneer. But he has the same challenging, confident – even arrogant – stance. The same slender but muscular figure. 

He looks her over, skeptical but then smirking a little in satisfaction as he notes the way she bears her sword, like it belongs on her hip and is very comfortable there. “And, if you’ll allow me, I can do something about the wet clothes.”

“For as long as you are gentle with the fabric,” Alma replies, with a little smile. “I was told the blend is somewhat prone to shrinking.” She looks again at Gwydion and the two Bunnies, who have moved closer to him for comfort. They are still looking at her, confused. “I am sorry if I scared you. This is as strange and worrying for me as it is for you. I am Acting-Inspector Alma, of Three Rats Station.”

Rosemary asks, “So…our mother is a Guardia officer in another world? And… you have children there?”

As she’s speaking, Cherish, holding the infant comes closer. The Bunny’s big brown eyes are wider than usual. She asks, hesitant, “Are you sure our mother is well?”

Somrak takes Alma’s hand and sends warmth into her, and more specifically into her Guardia-indigo sari and her hair, heating them to the point that steam starts to come off them.

Alma almost wilts at how good that feels. She smiles thanks at Somrak, and says to the Bunnies, “Your mother has my closest friend and my world’s version of your father with her to protect her.” She looks at the one holding the baby – the same beautiful dark skin, the same full lips as her own daughter, but the wild kinky curls of her hair tamed and straightened into a glossy black ponytail similar to Somrak’s. “Tell me, Cherish, do you ever go by Cherry?”

Cherish says, “Oh…well sometimes Rose and May call me that. But nobody else, really.”

Rosemary adds, “And Shirtless Sky called May ‘My Yumi’ or something! And May said that it felt like something from a dream…now isn’t that curious?” She grins teasingly at May. 

“I rather imagine he would call her that,” Alma says with a smile. “He knows my daughters as Cherry, Rosemary, and Mayumi. Their names in my world. They look very similar to you but they are also different. And each has her own accent. Also, in my world, I have four other Bunnies: Sage, Kori, Chime, and Tulip. But no godlings.” She looks at the baby and her expression softens. “What is jys name?”

“His name is Nari.” The Senator’s tender pride pulls him briefly away from his fretting for his wife. Still, his eyes helplessly drift to Somrak’s brown hand holding Alma’s pale one. “Ahem, are you quite done with laundry, Sergeant? Perhaps you should help your partner dry off?” His attempts to keep jealousy from his voice are unsuccessful.

“Have to do this slowly and carefully, Senator, or this outfit might shrink,” Somrak says, trying to sound very serious. “As pretty as that might look, she might find it hard to move if another group of assassins asks us to dance. But…how does that feel, Inspector? Dry enough?”

Alma, used to Somrak’s flirtations, wriggles her shoulders and touches her choli, the bodice of her sari. It is dry and toasty warm. “I think so. Thank you, Sergeant. Now, what do you mean, another group of assassins?”

Gwydion replies, “We were attacked before. At the local Guardia station. Thankfully, no one was harmed in the process.” He is looking at Alma again in wonder and shock at the sound of her voice. “I didn’t really believe what the, um, other Tuma-Sukai said before. Not in my heart. But the way you are taking command with these sergeants…”

“Rather than demanding respect for your station,” Somrak adds, his sardonic grin more pronounced, as he steps back.

As much as she agrees with Somrak, Alma shoots him a narrowed glance. “Nor did I believe this Sergeant’s claims,” Alma says, pointing at Sky. “I am sorry. I did not mean to be harsh before. And…my condolences on your uncle’s demise. I know how attached Gwydion is to Math, I can only imagine what a loss it must be. In my world, Math has become dear to me, as well.”

The Senator’s grief is obvious. “He was like a father to us, a grandfather to the children. It all feels like a horrible nightmare.”

“The Commander regarded Archon Math with great respect,” Sky says. 

“They butted heads sometimes,” Somrak adds. “But what can you expect. The Archon was good for the Guardia. Great coffee, too.” His voice is not mocking at all. 

“The Commander will butt heads with a standing wall if he feels it’s in his way,” Alma says. “And where is he? The Commander? And my aunt, for that matter? I doubt they would allow all this to happen while they watch from the sidelines.”

Sky and Somrak share a look. “Your aunt?” Somrak asks.

Alma smiles a little, relishing the reveal. “Subcommander Varah, in my world. The Fencer.”

Gwydion shakes his head. “That dreadful goddess…”

Somrak’s eyes are wide. “Well…that explains a few things.”

Sky blinks, but merely says, “Since assassins have attacked here, this ward obviously isn’t the safe little hideaway the Commander thought. Somebody has intercepted the information.”

“Then we ought to be going random, throw them off the scent, go anywhere the mole in the Commander’s office won’t know about,” Somrak points out. 

“No,” says Sky. “This Alma has information the Commander needs now. And more than information.”

Somrak looks surprised and hopeful. “You found the God Striker thing?”

Alma reaches into a pocket and shows the weapon, weighty and solid in her palm. “Yes. It doesn’t look very threatening now but once it is recharged, it will be powerful enough to destroy even an Archon. And we need someone like the Commander to recharge it.”

Somrak sighs. “Fine, but…there is a mole. We need to go in, ready for that.”

“I…remember Somrak mentioning a traitor in the ranks of the ‘Off-Blues’,” Alma says. “But I am not sure who it is or who she works for. Only that she is female and has a partner. I am sorry but he could not disclose any more.”

“That he was even revealing that much – should this not be confidential information?” the Senator asks.

“It should be, yes,” Alma agrees. “He should not have told me. But he was being healed at the time. It is not uncommon for people to experience confusion in those moments.”

“I know this. My wife is a very talented healer.” He looks at Somrak as if he might amorously pounce on Alma at any moment, a look that Somrak receives with apparent amusement.

“Your wife has many talents, Senator,” Alma replies, hearing her aunt’s growl in her voice. “If she is allowed to shine, she might even outshine you before you know it.”

The tense moment is broken by a cry from the baby. Cherish says, “Um, he must be hungry. What about food? For him?”

Alma feels the beginnings of panic. “What do you mean…food for him? Did you not – oh…”

“The baby is still suckling,” Dion explains. “And…now he does not have his mother to feed him.” He looks sick with worry and goes to take the baby from Cherish’s arms.

“And he just polished off the last of the stored breast-milk,” the Bunny says as she hands him over. “We grabbed a few bottles on the way out when the Sergeants came to get us, but he’s a hungry little darling.” She nods toward their luggage not far from the fire. Alma can see an empty bottle with a preservation sigil on it, to keep the stored milk fresh.

“Why hasn’t his mother been feeding him directly? Or replenishing her stores?” Alma asks.

May says, “Well she was. But, uh, Sergeant Sky had her looking for the magical item. And so we fed Nari the last bottle not long ago.”

Gwydion’s attempts to cheer the baby are not working, and the cries are growing more demanding. Cherry says, “It was really only about a quarter of a bottle.” Her ears sag against the back of her head in worry.

“No dry formula?” Sky asks.

Cherish shakes her head. “You two were rushing us so much…”

“Oh dear,” Gwydion rocks the baby a little. “What are we going to do until your mother gets back, little Nari?”

Alma hesitates, then goes to the Senator. “Give him to me. I have an idea.” At Gwydion’s hesitant expression, she adds, “I am still a Life goddess. Besides, none of the Bunnies was born after a natural pregnancy, right? So the only way your Alma could have nursed them would have been to use magic to…activate lactation. She has to have done it before, and if she could do it, I’m sure I can. These things are not beyond a goddess’ control. Just…let me try. It is the easiest solution to this problem.”

The Senator looks alarmed. “But, um, here? With…” He tilts his head toward Sky and Somrak.

Alma smirks. “Somehow I think they’ve seen it before. But I will step away a little, beyond any curious looks that might never have seen a female breast before.” And she does, moving to a little hallway, turning away from them, bearing a breast and letting the baby suckle on it, her control over her own body urging her glands to produce milk in response, the milk to flow into the ducts, to the nipple. She grimaces and taps the baby’s lip. “I know you’re hungry but I am new at this. No biting.”

Will he accept her? Will he latch on? Any fears are quickly allayed as the hungry infant takes her nipple, peacefully, eagerly suckling, undisturbed by any possible differences in taste, while Alma enjoys the pleasant release of hormones, the sensation of peace and closeness to the little child. “You are truly adorable, did you know that?” she whispers to the baby, looking at him, studying his face. “So similar to him…”

She glances back to see Cherish standing quietly nearby, a little behind, holding a towel, waiting to be noticed – how very unlike her own brash daughter. Still, her smile is much the same, warm and broad and bright. “He burps up sometimes – you’d better have this.” She offers the towel, and arranges it on Alma’s shoulder. “Hey little Nari!” The baby’s eyes open and he looks up at his big sister. The corner of his mouth curls in a smile even as he suckles. Cherish giggles, then says to Alma, “This is pretty strange, isn’t it?”

“It is. And I don’t know what is stranger, really, looking at you three and seeing all the similarities and all the differences to my own children, or breastfeeding a godling child when I have none.” She shrugs, gently. “This part is not all that uncommon to gods. Your father could have breastfed him, too.”

Cherish laughs. “I would’ve paid to see that!” She becomes more still and quiet for a moment. “You must be missing them. But, you know…we’ll take care of you, while you’re here. Don’t worry.”

Alma reaches to stroke Cherish’s ears, then her cheek, which the Bunny responds to much as Cherry would have, by leaning into the touch, as sensual as a kitten. “Thank you,” Alma says. “I am missing them, yes. But I am here to take care of you and help you back to safety. We will find a way to do that and I will soon be on my way so that you can have your mother back.” She leans down conspiratorially and whispers. “I can tell your father can’t wait to be rid of me.”

Cherry looks a little sad at that. “We do want her back. But he’s just worried sick is all. And just because we want her back, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be making you feel welcome here!” She brightens. “I wish we could meet them! Especially the ones younger than us. Boy Bunnies…goodness!”

Alma shifts Nari in her arms a little, prompting an annoyed grunt from the babe, but she is only reaching for and then removing her elaborately asymmetrical Guardia badge. “No, don’t grab that, little Nari,” she admonishes. “There’s a pin that will prick you.” She hands it over to Cherish, sliding her finger over a little, inconspicuous bobble hanging from a loop on the pin, starting the projection of glowing images, sculptures in light, of special moments from her own memories, that appear for a short time, and are them replaced by another. She keeps a few dozen of her favorite moments there. “There. Their images will show up eventually.” Indeed, while the first image is one of Gwydion smiling rakishly, the second is of Merri and Cherry laughing helplessly together over some silly thing.

Cherish gasps, looking at the glowing picture in wonder. “Oh, can I show the others? They’ll love this!” Her voice is high and excited.

As Cherry rushes away and gleeful exclamations echo in the chamber, Nari finishes his meal and Alma raises him to her shoulder, whispering encouragement to him and she pats his back gently. Tuma-Sukai approaches, a soft, faint smile on his stoic features that makes him resemble more strongly the Sky she knows. “Somrak and I have been talking. We’ve agreed on how to try to find the Commander. It involves a visit to the off-blues headquarters, though.”

“Do I need to be blindfolded?” Alma asks. “Or just promise I will not disclose the location in the future?”

“Oh, we’ll figure all that out later. He thinks he knows who the mole is. But he isn’t willing to bring the Senator and the mortals and a baby into the middle of what could erupt into a fight, and of course neither am I. So just briefly, they have to stay here, and we will come back for them. But we have a prisoner we can take along. Somrak says that your Sky told him you helped her, once.”

“Saira…yes. I helped her, and she helped me. She helped save the Bunnies’ lives. And then she saved all of us, and gave her own life in the process.” Alma sighs, feeling heavy despite the sweetness of nursing. “Well, can we at least leave the local Popula here to guard the tunnels? This place is a maze. It will make it difficult enough for anyone to locate them easily.” Alma says, then looks at the baby. “After I replenish this little one’s milk reserves, I guess. Hopefully, the good Senator won’t think it all too sour for his baby’s lips.” She shakes her head in disbelief at the whole thing, then turns to the baby. “Come on, baby. Let’s get you someone to hold you while I make sure you won’t go hungry again. Oh, you are a strong little fellow, gripping my fingers like that – not the hair. Not the hair…thank you.”

Ch7.60 Revelations

“Try to escape, try to hurt anybody in this group, and you will spend hours wishing I had cut your throat, nice and clean.”

Sky listens to Somrak’s warning to Saira and interrupts before Somrak is tempted to describe the effects of turning a mortal into a living torch. Not only would it be disturbing to everyone else, Sky fears it would wipe out any chance of Saira changing sides, especially considering how her gang, her adoptive family, died. 

The likelihood of her turning against Nekh is already near zero, but a slim chance is better than none.

“Let’s get going. Corporal Machado, I want you up front with me. I know the way but you were born and raised here. You might know how to get us out of a tight spot. Constables Lamore and Kaur, take the flanks and stick close to the Senator and his family. Somrak in the rear with Saira.”

“Sergeant,” Gwydion begins to say, “I do not see why we are bringing this–”

Somrak cuts him off. “It’s either bring her along or kill her. We can’t leave her behind because she’ll talk to the next crew that comes looking for us. And the big guy says she doesn’t die. So she doesn’t die. Until she gives us a reason to change that decision.”

Sky adds, making eye contact with Gwydion and Alma, and each of the Bunnies in turn. “There will be time for questions after we arrive, and I will give you answers. For now, Senator, Lady, we must move swift and silent. Keep your family close together and follow the orders of your Guardia protectors. Your lives depend on that.” His gaze lingers for a moment on Mayumi, who returns it, looking nervous but determined not to show it. So that her mother’s hands will be free for healing, May has Gwyeu nestled in a carrier sling against her belly and chest, and the sight of her holding a baby sends his mind places that it really should not be going right now. He closes his eyes and, on opening them, deliberately focuses on Saira. “Please, do not force Somrak to do something I would very much regret. Because no matter how much I regret, I will not question his judgement in this matter.”

Saira, for once, does not have a brash quip to demonstrate how very unimpressed she is. She just glowers at Sky, shackled and sullen, still in her bright-yellow prison garb. Her clothing and weapons are all being brought along, but she will have no access to them.

Sky looks up at the thickening clouds. He suspects it will rain soon. He wishes he could claim to be scouting ahead, go around a corner, and sprout wings. With no stars or moon, with the nearly abandoned ward lacking in lights to reflect off the low-lying clouds, he would be nearly impossible to spot from the ground. But with Saira along, he knows the best way to keep her in line is to make it obvious that escape is impossible. Splitting off their forces will not do that.

The stealthy move to the Grotto is tense but with little incident. Sky’s mind flashes back to the time he, Alma, Dion, and Machado were escorting the Bunnies through a cordon of Dukaine-subordinate gangs to try to get them to safety. That had not gone smoothly at all, but it had many of the same people involved. Now, though, Lady Alma and Senator Gwydion are all but useless, and Saira, rather than helping, is a danger to them. At least there are no younger Bunnies to worry about running off in panic. Though he would not want to see their reaction if they encountered an ambush. They are keeping themselves together now, but the Merri, Cherry, and Mayumi Sky knows had not grown up so coddled. They were ready to lay down their lives for their younger siblings if need be, and they had at least a vague idea of what that meant. Sky hopes that these three never have to find out how they will do in the same situation.

Fortunately, nothing of the sort arises. They reach the Grotto, finding that the enchantment that lets them into the caves without getting soaked and pounded by the waterfall is still active. Sky leads them deep into a chamber away from the entrance, and away from the Chamber of the Pearl, the one which Pak has been using for training back in Sky’s world. It is one that is unlikely to have been explored by the forces that killed Doria and took the Pearl, and therefore it could give them a little more time if the warning spells he and Somrak placed along the entrance tunnel are tripped.

Sky explains all this to them and helps get them started on settling in. But after a short while he approaches his primary charges. Gwydion and the Bunnies are unpacking their meager belongings, while Alma is sitting on one of the stone benches, burping the baby after nursing him. “Lady Alma, Senator Gwydion. I need to speak with you both. Away from other ears, I’m afraid.”

The Senator looks at him, worry etching his tired face. Then, keeping his eye on Sky, he says to the Bunnies, “Children, stay here, please. We will be right back.”

Alma hands Cherry the baby. “Take care of your brother, my little one. We will not be gone for long.”

Sky leads them through the twisty, tight passage, a glowing ball of water bobbing along with them to provide a blue-green light, speaking to them in a low voice. “We only have enough water for two days, and while I can create water, I am sorry to say it is sea water. The water of this ward is tainted. However, it is possible that this pool I am taking you to is not. At least, I did not feel the effects of the corruption brought on by the damaged Pearl when I passed through it.”

“Passed through?” Gwydion asks. But Alma nearly interrupts him, asking, “Do you mean the pool from my vision, Sergeant? Is that why I dreamt of it? Because it will allow us to hide here?”

“Possibly,” Sky says. “But there is more to it than that.” 

Gwydion starts to ask, “Pool? Vision?” but Sky holds up his hand. His eye is caught by a blue glow ahead. Alma gasps behind him, and Gwydion hisses, “What is that?”

A voice whispers in their minds, “Help her.”

“A memory,” Sky says, heavy with sorrow. “She was the Oracle’s priestess. And my friend. Those who took the Pearl also took the Oracle, and murdered Doria. At least that is my working theory.”

“The poor dear girl.” Alma lets go of Gwydion’s hand and moves past him and Sky to approach the barely visible phantom. The memory-ghost brightens as Alma nears her, becoming more solid as well, and when Alma reaches out a hand to her, what is left of Doria reaches out a hand and takes Alma’s.

At Alma’s touch, Doria briefly looks as real as if she were truly alive and standing before them. She smiles with relief and joy, and looks at all three of them in gratitude. Then she fades, dissipating into nothingness. Any sense of her existence is gone.

Alma sways a little, as if she has just woken from a dream. Sky breathes out, realizing he had been holding his breath, and steps forward, placing a hand on her back to steady her. But Gwydion, with a cry of “My lamb!” pushes past him and takes her in his arms. He glares accusingly at Sky. “Why did you let her do that? She could have been hurt!” He turns to shower her with words of comfort.

“Lady Alma?” Sky asks. “Are you all right?”

“Yes…yes I am fine.” Alma looks up at Gwydion. “It is all right, my prince. I have not drawn upon my Death sphere in a very long time, but I can still do it. And she was nothing more than a memory, as the Sergeant said. But I saw…what she saw.” She straightens and looks at Sky. “The Pearl, the Oracle…I saw them. I saw them taken. A man of great evil was there, directing them. Doria whispered his name to me: ‘Margrave’.”

Sky feels a chill wash over him, and sees Alma’s eyes widen at his expression. “You know that name, Sergeant?”

Sky nods. “It confirms my theory. Margrave is Archon Nekh’s lieutenant. He is a diabolist. His soul has been sold to a Prince of Hell in return for great power. And…he tortured me. Or I should say, a being he summoned from Hell did so.”

“How awful,” Gwydion says, pale. He puts his hands on Alma’s shoulders. “Then does this confirm that Nekh is behind all that has happened these past few days?”

“Not enough to hold up in court,” Sky says, “but enough for us to start planning. Before we can do that…I have more to tell you.” He gestures ahead of them and sends his light-globe hovering ahead down the passage. “The pool is just ahead. Let us proceed, and I will explain.”

He takes the lead again and they soon enter the chamber together. The pool, as when he left it about twenty hours before, is quiescent. He walks up to the edge and squats, touching the water to determine that, yes, it is not tainted. He looks over his shoulder at them. “This is what I found when I came here a few hours ago. I’m not sure what it is, but I believe it to be a gateway to another world. One almost identical to this one, but different in profound ways.”

Alma squeezes her husband’s arm a little, her hand resting on his forearm. The Senator says, “That is good news, if slightly disturbing. Are you proposing we flee to this other world, Sergeant?”

Sky rises and faces them, and shakes his head. “I do not think that is possible. It seems to function on an exchange basis. If you went through, your counterpart, say a Gwydion who had joined the Guardia and has become a well-respected Sergeant, would have to be ready, in this chamber on the other side. You would switch places. If he was not ready, I imagine you’d do nothing but get wet. And if he was and you did exchange places, then that Dion would be stuck here, confused and worried for his family back home.”

“If this is so, then why bring us here? Are you just trying to play charades while your…partner raises his voice to us at every perceived mistake we make?” The Senator keeps his voice level though it is clearly strained, trying to be dignified but too tired and frightened to succeed. 

Sky keeps his voice gentle. “Somrak’s only concern is keeping all of you alive, a job he is highly skilled at. But it would be easier if you both recognize the extraordinary circumstances we are in now. You must forget your stations and rights to respect. You are our most precious objects in this universe right now. Protecting you is of far more importance than your egos.” He lets that sink in a moment. Then when the Senator opens his mouth again, Sky cuts him off. “But this is no charade. I brought you here because I have gone through this pool, and I most likely will again, soon. And I have knowledge from that which I must impart to you.”

Alma gasps, gripping Gwydion’s arm tighter. “So that…that is what you found from my dream?”

Gwydion looks at her, confused. “What dream? My little lamb, you have mentioned this twice now, and each time something has preempted my questions, but please tell me, what are you talking about?”

Alma looks down, embarrassed and miserable, seeming almost to shrink before Sky’s eyes. “I…I had a very ominous dream about these caves and I asked the Sergeant to investigate. It said we would find what we need to be safe again here.”

“But…my dear, why did you not tell me about this?” Gwydion sounds stunned that she kept this to herself.

“Well, I…I did not want to add to your worries. You might think I was falling ill with some divinatory fever. And…” She pauses, something building up inside her, something that comes out in a near-squeak. “I feared you would just discard it!”

Sky can hear the frustration in her voice, built up not over the course of this night but for decades, the frustration of being ‘protected’, of being ‘shielded’, of being ‘cherished’ – but not being listened to. Gwydion, however, does not seem to notice it. “Oh, my delicate flower…” the Senator murmurs as he embraces her. “But are you feeling well?”

She nods, her voice a little muffled against his shoulder. “I am, my prince. Just frightened.”

“I am just worried,” Gwydion says, petting her hair. “And you have used your Death sphere…you know how dangerous that is for your fragile health.”

Sky does his best to keep his feelings from reaching his face. It is almost grotesque, seeing these two people who were, at some point in their lives, the same as his dearest friends. Surely they were born from the same parents as the Dion and Alma he knows, and at least for a short time grew up in the same way. But somewhere along the line, they took a turn in their development. To think that his Alma, his Dion, could become such milksops… And yet, he reminds himself, if the Dion and Alma of his world have the potential to become this, then this Senator and Lady have, somewhere deep within, the potential to find their strength. 

“She was right to tell me,” Sky says. “I think the knowledge I carry could help with your survival, and perhaps with rebuilding after this is all over. I believe you may be playing a large role in that.”

“And what knowledge is that?” Gwydion asks, still consoling Alma.

Sky takes a deep breath. Here we go, he thinks. “First, I must apologize for being…deceptive. You see, I am not the Tuma-Sukai you sent here, Lady Alma. I am the one from the other side, from that other world which, I surmise, diverged from this one decades ago. The Tuma-Sukai who was assigned to protect you has, I believe, changed places with me, and I assume he is there now, hopefully not causing too much trouble.”

The couple are both silent, staring at him, Gwydion blinking incredulously, Alma’s eyes wide with fascination over her husband’s bicep. Finally she whispers, “Another world…a copy of this one but with a divergence in history… Is that why you were acting strangely when we were attacked?” 

Sky nods. “Forgive my familiarity, but in my world, I know both of you. I have known you for nearly a year, now, and indeed, we are very close. It seems Fate brought us together there, and is once again doing so here. Over there, you both recently risked your lives, along with Somrak, to rescue me from a dire fate – the torture I mentioned, at the behest of this Margrave.”

“Oh my…” Alma breathes. “We risked our lives…for you? And with Somrak?”

“With all due respect, I do not see how this is possible. Was this situation something of a political nature?” Gwydion pulls Alma closer, as if to protect her from the clearly insane Sky. “I can barely imagine how we would have met if it were not for this horrible ordeal we are in.”

Sky, by force of will, does not sigh, at least not physically. “Our coming together was considerably less traumatic, in that world. We were all three transferred to the newly expanded Three Rats Guardia Station. My Dion and Alma were promoted to Sergeant to ease the sting of the hardship posting, while I was, for a time, Inspector.” He grins slightly. “We didn’t much like each other at first. But we’ve become a team. More than that – a family. We’ve been through a great deal together.”

“Sergeant? Of the Guardia?” Alma goes almost sheet-white – as pale as the complexion of the Alma that Sky knows. “Oh no, no, no. I abhor violence. I can barely stand the sight of blood.”

Gwydion’s expression drips with doubt. “With our standing in society, I truly do not see why either of us would ever become Guardia, of all fates.” 

Sky almost laughs, thinking that his Dion’s uncle, the Archon Math, must have said something similar when he learned that Dion had joined the Guardia. To Alma, he says, “Your counterpart told me of grueling training sessions with her aunt, known as the Fencer. That Alma very nearly gave up, but she stuck with it, and it gave her the strength to leave her father’s home and join the Guardia.”

“Fencer?” Alma blinks, then seems to understand. “Oh, Aunt Varah. I only took one or two classes before I gave up. They were really not for me. Besides, I had my gallant knight protecting me at all times.” She looks up adoringly at Gwydion.

“We left Senator Death’s house when we became engaged. My uncle took us in.” Gwydion looks down, thoughtful, holding Alma’s hands. “Do you mean that in this other reality, we both took those classes, then? And that is how we became Guardia?”

Realization blooms as pieces click into place. Sky breathes out, “Ah… How old were you when you were taken in by the Death Clan, Senator? Was it immediately after your parents’ disappearance?”

Now it is Gwydion’s turn to look pale, the mention of his parents unsettling him. “I assume so, yes. I was rather young. I do not remember those days very well.”

Sky nods in comprehension. “In my world, young Dion was taken in by his uncle Math and raised by him. Dion never knew Alma until less than a year ago. From what I understand, Dion’s relationship with his uncle was often fraught. In the end, Dion joined the Guardia to escape the political life.”

“That is so horrible…” Alma sighs. “I cannot imagine a life without my beloved Dion. He is my soulmate. Our counterparts…are they together now? Engaged, maybe?”

“Ah, well…perhaps eventually.” Sky cannot help but smile. “They are very much in love, though, but I think marriage is something of a ‘maybe someday’ possibility. But I would say that ‘soulmates’ is an accurate description of them. It seems the Fates want you two together, in whatever world you find yourselves, even if it takes many years to bring about.” He smiles to see the pleasure those words bring to both of them. They may be annoying, he thinks, but they are still Alma and Gwydion.

“And children?” Alma asks, her voice hopeful. “They want children, yes?”

Sky tries to be cautious, but can see no reason to lie. “Well, things are very unsettled just now. We averted a major civil war, but the situation is just calming down. And Alma has her hands full sometimes with her Bunnies.” He winces slightly at the obvious next question. 

Which comes immediately. “What do you mean, her Bunnies?” Gwydion asks. “She had them alone?”

“Not…exactly.” Maybe I should have just held that back after all. “She had them before she met Dion.”

The Senator looks at Alma as if expecting an explanation, but she looks back just as confused. “And you believe this knowledge is important to help keep us safe, Sergeant?”

“What is important is that, in that world, Nekh is dead, and your uncle is alive.” Sky’s voice assumes a sympathetic tone. “And please allow me to offer my sincere condolences. I know the Archon Math. He is well-loved by his nephew and a good many more people, and I am sure your uncle was as well, Senator.”

“He was so good to us.” Alma’s voice hitches and tears fill her eyes. “And he adored the children. He was so tender to them.”

“He certainly did not deserve this betrayal by Archon Nekh. My uncle was nothing but a good, decent old god.” Gwydion’s grief is heartfelt.

Sky’s keeps his general opinion about Archons – that whatever face an Archon might show to loved ones, no god can reach those lofty heights without being a ruthless, amoral player of the riskiest of games – to himself. “In my world, Archon Math arranged things so that Nekh would extend his hand too far, setting him up for a fall. The plan was, I think, to destroy Nekh’s power base and force him to become a secret scion of House Math, but…things went further. Nekh had his soul ripped from him, after being shattered by a weapon known as a God Striker. And this God Striker was found in these very same caves. And it was found by my Alma.”

“Your Alma?” Senator Gwydion looks at him quizzically.

Sky smirks and shakes his head at the jealousy. Just like my Dion, mistaking the love of friendship for romantic infatuation. “The God Striker is another thing I wanted to ask you about. It is also called the Deus Percussorem. Have you ever heard of any such thing?” They shake their heads. “Well, that would have been too easy, I suppose. But in my world, Nekh’s men also attacked the Oracle and stole the Pearl. In doing so, they left the God Striker behind, at the bottom of a pool, as if it wanted us to find it. It is possible that may have happened again, so it could be somewhere in here. So we need to start checking pools. There are quite a few, I’m afraid, but I don’t plan to sleep until it is time for me to attempt to exchange places with the other Tuma-Suka again, in less than twenty hours.”

“Excuse me…” Like a schoolgirl embarrassed to ask for permission to go to the bathroom, Alma raises her hand. “I believe you said someone ripped Archon Nekh’s soul out of his body? I may not have studied my Father’s Clan lore extensively but I know that what you are describing is an unspeakable crime. It would merit nothing short of being banished to Hell.”

Sky looks at her, quiet, for a moment. The more I tell them of what their counterparts are capable of, the more I risk sounding insane. But this could very well be important for them to know. It could save their lives. “It very nearly came to that. But an argument was put forth that, not only was it self defense and defense of others, but it was also a very convenient disposal of one of the vilest criminals the Insula has seen. And with Archon Math’s help, a bargain was struck.” He nods at Gwydion. “The wielder of the God Striker was set free, to serve the Guardia wherever he preferred,” and he nods at Alma, “while the one who had killed Nekh was sentenced to stay in Three Rats until further notice. With her family of Bunnies.”

“Bunnies? Then–” Dion looks at Alma, his mouth agape. “Impossible…”

“The dashing Sergeant who had wielded the God Striker decided to stay with her in the end,” Sky confirms for them. “I do not believe he regrets it one bit.”

“You mean…?” Alma’s eyes are wide in astonishment. “Oh, this is sounding like something out of a myth! Are you saying that we killed Nekh in this world of yours?”

“You did, together.” He remembers coming into the room just after it happened, Dion stunned but comforting Tulip, the youngest Bunny, the one who had fulfilled the prophecy by dropping the God Striker next to Dion at just the right moment. And Alma in a state of shock, Nekh’s burnt and smoking body before her. I held her, told her it would be all right. And I am grateful every day that that did not turn out to be a lie. 

“I hope this does not mean you intend us to play out their story, Sergeant.” Dion says. “Such a violent effort would surely mean my wife’s death. She has never harvested a soul in her life.” 

Sky nods. “I realize that the two of you have grown up along a different path. You have other strengths, and other skills that may well prove more useful than combat and magic. But the God Striker could turn the tide of battle. Perhaps this world’s Sky or Somrak are meant to wield it. Perhaps someone else. But you should know that anything the Alma and Dion of my world can do, it is something that exists within you as a potentiality. That strength, that ruthlessness – you can be capable of it, if you want it badly enough.”

“Thank you for your vote of confidence, Sergeant.” Gwydion seems shaken by the implications, however. “So what do you need us to do?”

“We need to search for the God Striker. It could be in a pool, or it could be elsewhere. If it is here at all. Fortunately, I know these caverns well, having lived in them for months. Somrak can keep watch over you while Alma and I search.” He looks at Alma. “She is the one who found it before. It is possible the Fates only want her to find it. And I hesitate to have everyone searching, in case someone were to fall into a pool or something.”

“But…but I do not even know what it looks like!” Alma squeaks.

“I have a feeling that you will know it when you see it,” Sky says. “In our world it looked a bit like a cestus…uh, a sort of large set of brass knuckles. It could be in a different form here, though.”

“Well…if you are certain…” Alma sounds unsure, but then her mouth firms up in determination. “I… I will try to help.”

“Are you sure, my dearest?” Dion looks worried. “Perhaps I should go along with you.”

Alma hesitates, looking as if her momentary resolve is about to evaporate, but then says, resolute, “No. It is all right. The children might worry if we were both to leave them for long. Sergeant Tuma-Sukai will look after me, will you not?”

“With my life,” he says. “You, all of you, are under my protection every bit as much as you are under that of this world’s Tuma-Sukai. Until such time that I am sent back to my home, I shall take on his task without reservation.”

“Very well, then.” Dion turns to Alma, taking her hands again. “Just…be careful, my flower. I do not know what would happen to me if I were ever to lose you.”

“I promise I will be careful.” Alma puts her arms around him and holds him tightly. “I never want that to happen. Never.”

Ch7.57 Revelations

“I am not listening to you. The Saira I know died a long time ago. She would never have become an assass– Sir.”

As he stands in the doorway, Sky can hear the sorrow that tries to hide behind the chill in Cala Lamore’s voice. The words cut off and the Guardia stands. She looks just as he remembers her from his world: a tough interior softened and rounded by a comfortably curvaceous body.

“Cor– Constable. Has the prisoner been behaving herself?”

“Nothing but talk, Sergeant.” Cala, dressed in her regular sky-blue Popula uniform topped by a brown reinforced-leather jacket for hazardous duty, holds a loaded crossbow across her torso. She has a short sword on one hip and on the other is a spray can of nonlethal irritant in a holster. She looks capable and ready for anything, but Sky fears what she’ll be forced to take on before all this is over.

He nods. “Go take a nap. I’ll watch her.”

Cala looks unsure, but though he is not part of her station, he does outrank everyone who is assigned to it. “Sir…” She gives Saira a warning look, and heads out of the cell room.

As she is leaving, her partner and friend Aliyah squeezes past her to enter. She is holding some folded clothing. “Hey, I found…” She trails off and looks at Saira, who is sitting in the middle cell, which is barely wide enough for the fold-up cot that serves as her seat. The assassin has, as Somrak says, been stripped of her leather outfit, which could have held any number of escape tools or tiny weapons they might have missed if they had allowed her to keep wearing it. But they have put her into a searing-yellow prisoner’s jumpsuit, and she does not look at all happy to be wearing it.

Aliyah stares at her, lost in memories, unable to speak until Sky snaps her out of it by saying, “Are those for me, Constable?”

Her head, with its frizzy hair bouncing, turns to look at him as if she’s just remembered his presence. “Yeah! I hope these fit!” She hands the clothes over to him. “Sir. Me and Cala…we know her.” She looks at Saira again, who glares at her. “She’s from here.”

“It’s all right, Constable Kaur.” Sky takes the clothes. “I know. You can go.”

Aliyah looks him up and down. “Sir…you don’t have any weapons.”

“If you have anything in stores, I’d appreciate the loan. But I need to speak with the prisoner now.” He waits a moment, while she doesn’t move, before adding, “Alone.”

“Right! Yeah…” Aliyah looks again at Saira, emotions warring for control of her face. Then she moves quickly from the room.

The door closes as Sky shakes out the clothes. A very large Popula shirt that might do, aside from the sleeve length, and a pair of trousers that he can tell at a glance he’ll never get into without a family-size tub of butter to assist. He tosses the pants aside.

“She’s a little snitch,” Saira says. “Big snitch, rather. But not as much as the other one.”

“They are Guardia,” Sky says. “It is their duty to share useful information. But if you’re talking about your shared past, it was not Cala who informed Machado of the job you were going to pull off in your troubled youth.” He does not look at her reaction, apparently focussed on putting on his shirt. The shoulders are barely wide enough, but the sleeves are far too short, cuffs ending just past his elbows. He sighs, looking down at how the open shirt looks with his black skintight trunks that extend just past the knees. At least top and bottom match in that respect.

“Without the trousers, you just look like a drunk in his long underpants. Better off with no shirt. At least then it looks like you’re planning to go for a swim.” Saira is quiet for a moment before she asks, “If you know about that, then who snitched on me?”

Accepting that she is right about the shirt, Sky begins to struggle out of it, grimacing as he finds that harder than donning it. “Aliyah. But not on purpose. She is too honest. She let it slip to someone on the street, and it found its way to Machado. She doesn’t even know it’s her fault.” Sky looks at her. “They care about you. Until tonight, they mourned you. I’m sure they wish they could welcome you home.”

“Machado told you,” Saira states. “Probably told you everything.”

The Machado of this world has not yet told him a thing about her, but Sky doesn’t mention that. “Not everything. He didn’t tell me who ordered the fire that killed your gang. Your family.” Sky sits on the bench, across from her, his elbows on his knees, watching her cold eyes as they narrow.

“I know who did it,” she says. “Blueshirt filth. Guardia!” She spits to the side, as if the word is poison in her mouth.

Sky shakes his head. “I’m sure that’s what the Dukaines told you. Maybe it was Margrave himself who said it? Bald guy, bit stocky, small beard, flashy dresser? Maybe you know him as a Mão Esquerda do Diabo. The Devil’s Left Hand?”

She stays quiet, staring at him with a face of stone, but Sky can tell that his guess hit home. “He sent you on this mission, didn’t he? Probably provided you with training, weapons. Turned you into a cop-killing weapon yourself.”

“Open this cell door,” Saira hisses. “Let me show you my training.”

Sky keeps looking into her eyes. His voice is compassionate. “All lies, Saira. The Guardia didn’t kill your family. It was the Dukaines. And Margrave gave the order.”

“And all Guardia lie,” Saira counters with an eyeroll. “The Guardia are just a gang like any other. Bunch of killers with badges. My gang was locked in one of our crash-places and then someone set fire to it. I watched them choke before I watched them burn. But see…all this, you could have learned simply by being there. Your friend with the ponytail. He set my man on fire with a touch.”

“You know you don’t need to be a fire god to start a fire,” Sky says. “But you’re right – I can’t prove it. All I can tell you is, if it’s Margrave that holds your dance card, I am certain he’s a blackhearted son of a bitch in every universe there is. He tortured me. Tortured others to torture me, to try to break my will and bind me to him, as a slave. Tricking you into working for him after you didn’t die with your family? That doesn’t surprise me in the least. And now he’s sending you to kill these people. Even Allie and Calli, your childhood friends, if they get in the way, right?”

Saira shrugs, though he sees her twitch at the nicknames. “It’s a job. And I never fail. I won’t this time, either.” She gives him the dead eyes again, acting as if the cell she’s in is nothing but a minor inconvenience.

“And those young girls, the Bunnies? Got any special orders about them?” Sky is wondering about the prophecy from his timeline, that a Bunny will bring death to an Archon. In his world, the Oracle told the Council that before she relocated to Three Rats, and Nekh tried to have the Bunnies murdered because he worried they would cause his death. In the end, they did play an indirect role, fulfilling the prophecy, and as often seems the case with prophecies, the prophecy came true mainly because Nekh tried to stop it. Did the Oracle make the same prophecy here? And where is she, and the Pearl?

“The whole family has to go,” Saira says. “That’s the way it has to be. The whole House of Math. Now the Uncle is gone, that self-satisfied Senator and his doe-eyed wet rag are next.” She grins at the disturbed look on Sky’s face. But her grin falters a little when she adds, “And all the kiddies.”

“Archon Math is dead?” he asks. 

Saira nods. “Don’t know who did it, but without their protector, it’s all-out war on the Guardia now. You Blueshirts are going down, and the Dukaines are gonna take their place.”

Sky shakes his head. “No. The tables will turn as soon as the Guardia leadership are dead or pledge loyalty to him. Nekh will call up the Sikari and put his most trusted lieutenants in charge of the Guardia, and they will victoriously wipe out crime across the Insula. You all will be too inconvenient to let live. And your bodies will be proof that he is the savior of the City.”

A shadow of uncertainty crosses Saira’s face. It does sound much too logical to reject out of hand. But he can see that she’s not ready yet. Subverting an agent takes time, and they do not have time. But he cannot simply kill her. Not after the Saira of his world gave her life in rescuing him.

He sighs. “I wish I could let you out of here. I want you on my side. But I’ll give you some time to think. Try to get some sleep, Saira. Or have a talk with Aliyah. She’s up next, keeping an eye on you.” He rises, picking up the ill-fitting clothes and folding them.

“Oh sure,” she says. “Me and her’ll catch up on old times, and I’ll turn into your little lapdog and switch sides.” She looks like she might spit again. “How was that demon ichor, by the way? Guess my supplier must’ve cheated me.”

“Works just fine, Saira.” He flexes the hand that had been slashed and poisoned. “Just fine.”

He opens the door and calls for Aliyah. Then he looks once more at Saira. “Rest now. You’ll need it.” And he leaves her to consider his words.

Ch7.55 Revelations

After leaving the Grotto, Sky notices how quiet Three Rats is. The ward has always had numerous empty buildings due to the twisted, fused nature of many of them, resulting from the merger of two chunks of Reality into one ward. But those buildings that were lived in were packed full of lively, boisterous people. Even now at, he would guess from the stars, two in the morning, there should be shady characters on street corners, partygoers on their way home, gangsters and cops patrolling and nodding to each other in uneasy detente as they pass. Even if the ward is sensing that something big is about to go down – the average Three Rats dweller having an amazing nose for the smell of trouble brewing – he should have been able to hear the small sounds of families hunkering down, plaintive children’s voices asking why they had to be quiet followed by shushes. 

But there is nothing but empty streets and empty homes. Quite a bit of vandalizing as well. Windows that look like the ragged-toothed jaws of beasts, and doors hanging from one hinge, discarded loot on the doorsteps. A few, very few homes look lived in.

Sky approaches Three Rats Station only to find it abandoned as well. In fact, there is no sign it has ever been used as a Guardia station. He enters by pulling aside a rusty corrugated-steel panel placed over the gaping doorway and discovers nothing but a shell of a warehouse with signs of someone having squatted there for a few days, leaving behind empty cans and water bottles. The squatter left three days ago, by Sky’s estimation of the stink in the corner, which the resident has used for a toilet. There is no sign that the interior walls of the station had been ripped out, either. Where Sky’s office had been, there are no scrapes or nail holes or anything to show that his office has ever been built.

Out back, the Burrow, Merri and Cherry’s bar and home to all the Bunnies, and to Alma and Dion as well, is also abandoned. The sign he gave them for Year’s End is missing. And the two screw hooks he put in himself to hang the sign from…gone. Never there, really. No holes. Inside he finds that yes, it is a bar, but that was the case before the Bunnies had arrived, an old former bar that they took over and made into a new one. There are no bottles to be found, no glasses, no dishes. Nothing left behind. No indication that these things had been taken away.

He does find something, though. A newspaper left behind, fallen behind the bar. He picks it up and sees the date of several months ago. From the yellowing of the paper he would say it was several months old, not years. A spark of hope begins to kindle as he starts to think that he has not disappeared for years after all. Yet the mystery of the empty ward remains. He leans against the bar, pondering.

This station was never a station, and the bar was never the Burrow. Bunnies have never lived here. He’s never been Inspector here. The Pearl has been stolen, but perhaps not twice. Perhaps only once, at the same time it was stolen in his memory. Only he and Alma and Gwydion had not been here to get it back and return it. And Doria, instead of being injured, had been killed.

Time travel to the past is forbidden by the Fates, powers greater than the greatest gods. Any being who attempts it meets a horrible end instead. And the newspaper shows he has not travelled into the past.

He forms a theory. He thinks it over again, then again, and can discover no flaws in his reasoning. It is still a mystery, what has happened, but the reality of the current situation is becoming clear.

And he remembers that Three Rats had, until just before his arrival, another Guardia station. A smaller one over near the border with Little Falls, back in the direction he’s just come from, not far from the Grotto. Machado and the other Guardia Popula had moved from there to here as the station was being expanded, when Sky had become the new Inspector. It seems that move never happened. Which means the old station could possibly still be occupied.

And thus he is now approaching the old station. He can see it at the end of an unusually straight stretch of road, and yes, there is a faint light within showing through the windows. It is only one story high, just a small block of brick and masonry. His heart beats faster. He wants to rush there, find someone he knows, perhaps Machado or Kaur or Lamore, someone who may never have met him but who can tell him something.

But he freezes. He is uncertain why at first. Then he sees something that does not belong. A bump at the top of a three-story building that looks down on the little station. He stands very still. The bump moves. And something else comes up from the shadow, a complex shape. A crossbow, being brought up and laid upon the edge of the rooftop. The head of the crossbowman – for the bump is a person’s head – shifts again, and Sky sees a shoulder to go with it. Whoever it is is taking aim at one of the windows of the station.

Sky slips into the shadows. Has he been seen? How many of them are there? Where are they. 

He transforms. His skin, naturally dark, is still too visible in his human form, and shirtless as he is, too exposed. He may be far larger as a devil, but he is made for night stealth, not only with red-black skin but with an ability to cloak himself in shadows that cannot be seen through even by most forms of magic. He considers the quietest way to gain the heights. Flight, he decides, it the best route.

He retreats a block back the way he came and turns down a cross street, and with a powerful leap of his long, hoofed legs launches into the air. He flaps heavily to rise above the buildings, mostly two to four stories tall in this neighborhood, then glides quietly on leathery wings, dark-adapted eyes piercing the night. He is careful of the light from the one crescent moon that hangs near the horizon, making sure not to occlude it from the direction of the station.

He spots the crossbowman first, crouched at a balustrade on the roof of the building. And there is another, on a balcony. Another at street level, at the corner of a building. All three are holding crossbows, all three tense, predatory, ready to go. A barely noticeable shadow slinks down and leaps onto a first floor balcony. It raises something to its mouth, and Sky hears a quiet, momentary whistle. Two more shadows detach themselves from nearby buildings and head for the back door of the Guardia station. The one at the corner and two others advance in a diagonal line from a nearby building, headed for the front door. One of them looks like a human battle ram, so bulky and tall is he.

Eight. He counts eight. Too many to take out without bloodshed. Too many to shout, “Guardia! You are under arrest! Drop your weapons!” Not when they’re about to launch their kill mission. He’ll have to attack full force, no warning. And with no weapons…he’ll have to use his natural ones. He flexes his talons. 

And there, they’re moving fast. He moves faster. 

First the rooftop crossbowman. Glide, then swoop. At the last moment the sniper senses something behind him. He starts to turn, trying to bring the bow around, but too late. Sky flies just above him, both arms hanging down, palms forward, talons curved. A horrible, brief tug of flesh and cloth tearing, and Sky’s target grunts, flipping off the rooftop in a gout of blood that arcs through the air. He hits the ground just before Sky, wings folded to dive then snapping out to decelerate, lands with a heavy thud just behind another of the assassins, whom he blinds with a cloud of darkness. The darkness dissipates just as a bolt flies through it from the sniper on the balcony, but Sky is gone, leaving only a twitching body in a rapidly growing pool of blood. But the big guy doesn’t stop – he’s hitting the door, smashing it in with a huge crash and shatter of glass. A shadow swells from darkness and leaps upon him, swallows him, then the huge attacker is flying through the air, all the way across the street to land like a sack of wet oatmeal, skidding a bodylength before stopping. A crossbow bolt, again from the balcony, goes through the moving, ink-in-water shadow and hits the brick of the station, sticking into it. 

The shadow fades in dissipating tendrils, and is gone, with no sign of Sky.

There is a smashing of a glass window. A scream, as a figure slips into the station through the opening. Three high-pitched voices, screaming almost in harmony. They sound familiar to Sky, but the circumstances bring no pleasure at the possible recognition. The screams suddenly increase in volume, another female voice adding to them, and at least one male scream of agony joining in. Impact, then again, and another lesser crash as a body enveloped in flame is knocked back out the window through which he entered. Sky palms his skull, greasy with boiling fat and flesh, and yanks him the rest of the way out, swinging the burning, struggling man and hurling him to impact the oversized thug who is trying to stand, knocking him down again and setting his shirt afire.

Sky hears an astonished curse and looks up to see the balcony sniper, frozen in the act of reloading across the street and two floors up. He is staring at Sky, who, having forgotten to wreathe himself in darkness, was illuminated by the flaming now-corpse. Sky knows what the sniper has seen: a creature the size of an aurochs, but long and bipedal, wolfish jaws, huge dragonish wings and a dragon’s tail. And an aura that just screams Hellspawn. Devil, demon, the sniper will not know or care. He sees Sky staring and drops his crossbow off the edge of the balcony and it clatters to the street. He turns, bashes into the frame of the balcony door, staggers, and runs into interior of the building.

Five, Sky counts. Two snipers, one dead one running. The three in front, two dead one struggling to put his clothes out. Got the two round back and the leader to deal with.

Another scream within. A cold female voice, telling them to shut up.

Sky slips around the back, rapidly reverting to human form. He is big for a human but he moves like a cat when he needs to, light and silent. He is glad for his bare feet, so heavily calloused from this stolen form’s shoeless childhood that even small pieces of glass do not bother him. He sees the rear door, forced open, a shape in the doorway. Another member of the strike team, left there to watch, but looking the wrong way at the moment. Sky is on him as he turns, no talons or teeth now but just a pair of big, strong hands. One seizes the man’s crossbow, clenching the foregrip and pinning the bolt against the flight groove so that it cannot be fired. The other hand is around the man’s throat. Sky looks into the man’s eyes as he squeezes both hands as hard as he can. The eyes bug out. Sky feel the larynx collapse, the vertebrae pop as they separate. There is a slight splintering of the crossbow. Sky lowers both to the ground man and weapon to the ground, silent.

He enters the station’s kitchen. Through the door to the main room, he can see the leader, cloaked, holding someone. Holding a knife to someone’s throat. Hostage. Beyond her, in the lit room…

Somrak is the first he makes out. Somrak standing crouched, ready, one of his long knives in one hand, the bunched up shirt of an attacker in the other. The attacker is dead or unconscious. Somrak took him down, so Sky assumes dead. The knife is red and slick with blood. 

Sky cannot see the whole room from here, but he sees Gwydion, looking terrified, his arms protectively around two frightened Bunnies, Mayumi and Rosemary. And just behind his shoulder is Cherry, holding a bundle that squirms. A sound like a cat’s scream suddenly erupts from it. No, not a cat. A baby.

“Lower that hand, Matchstick!” the cloaked figure demands. “I start feeling hot, the lady here is getting her throat slit with an ichor-laced blade.”

The voice freezes Sky in his tracks as he creeps closer. He knows the voice instantly. Only its owner is dead. 

Somrak lets the body fall to leave his other hand free, but he lowers both that hand and the one holding the blade. “You’ll never get out of here alive, assassin. Unless you give up now.” He is not looking at Sky. His eyes stay focused on the one he calls ‘assassin.’ But Sky knows that Somrak must be able to see his heat signature in the shadows of the kitchen.

Alma’s voice, choked by an arm across her throat, terrified, begs, “Please! What – what have I ever done to you?” Sky can now see her feet encased in tiny, delicate shoes, in front of the assassin’s flexible boots. The rest of both assassin and captive are still hidden by the cloak.

Alma’s voice but…different. Had he ever heard Alma beg? For anything?

“Nothing, hon, but I do need to make a living. Now stop squirming.” The hostage-taker takes a step back, keeping Alma off-balance, dragging her toward the kitchen and escape. “And you stop mumbling! If I hear one magic word, she’s dead.” This last makes Dion freeze, eyes wide, horrified.

Sky stays where he is, not breathing, willing himself to be unnoticeable. Not here, not here, there is nobody here. He learned the technique so very long ago from a native scout when Sky was training the mortal’s people how to use repeating firearms, and in return he was trained to be even sneakier than he was. He stands so she will be in the doorframe when her back touches his chest. But he knows who this is. Her voice is harsher than he’s ever heard it except when she was killing Margrave, and being killed in turn by minor demons biting and tearing her. He knows how deadly she is. He knows she could kill Alma if he is not very careful.

That is why he does not wait for her to step on his foot, or for her back to touch his chest. He stops wondering why Alma is begging instead of casually disarming Saira, for thought Saira is deadly, she is no Guardia Dei who was trained by the Fencer. He just reaches a hand around Saira’s hood with the speed of a rattlesnake and grabs, intending to seize the assassin’s hand. But even he is not quite fast enough. Instead of her hand, he feels the sharp edge of the blade slicing the skin of his fingers. He does not hesitate, gripping the blade with all his strength. He ignores the sting of the razor edge cutting through muscle to the bones, instead happy his little finger has caught the handguard. She won’t be able to simply pull the blade out of his grasp. 

He holds on as she grunts and tries to pull it free. He holds on even though he feels that she was not lying about the highly illegal demon-ichor poison that is coating the blade. This much entering a god’s bloodstream would have brought the god to his knees, potentially with death to follow. For Sky is merely hurts, like fire burning through his veins and up his wrist and forearm. He is, after all, a being of Hell. His own bloodstream is, essentially, this very poison in a less-concentrated form.

His other hand grabs the back of Saira’s cloak, yanking her back, hard. As she was doing to Alma, keeping her off-balance so she could not easily try to fight back, Sky shakes Saira like a terrier with a rat, and steps back into the darkness of the kitchen. She lets go of Alma, who falls with a thud to the floor, landing on her derrière, undignified but free. 

Sky knows Saira will have another weapon in her free hand in a heartbeat. He makes no attempt to stop her, instead bringing his right arm around her throat. He is still holding her blade, but she lets go as she realizes she cannot extract it from his grasp, nor does she have the strength to stop him from applying a choke. She tries to slip free, but he has her, pulling her from the floor, holding his right forearm with his left hand. She kicks his legs, trying to break a knee. She tries to wriggle away. She pulls another blade and stabs it into his forearm.

None of it helps. While it is true that a highly trained smaller opponent can easily overcome brute strength, when the stronger opponent is almost as fast and is just as highly trained with ten times as many years of experience, and when sharp kicks to the knee and fingers slashed to the bone and demon-ichor poison and a dagger in the forearm all amount to little more than scratches and bites from a cat, the result is inevitable. Saira is one of the best, but she is mortal, and Sky is already constricting the flow of blood to her brain as his forearm and bicep press against her carotid arteries. She does considerable damage to him in the five seconds she has before she blacks out. But she goes limp nonetheless.

There is a moment of silence. Sky releases his choke hold and makes sure Saira is still breathing. But then as if a chip falls, screaming starts. Shockingly, it is not a Bunny, but Alma filling the station with terrified screams. Sky drops Saira faster than he should, regretting the thud of her unconscious body on the wooden floor, but nearly panicking. His first thought is that one of the Bunnies or Dion or someone was just killed by the sniper that ran away, but no…from the kitchen he can see that Alma, clutching at her chest, is scrambling to her feet and rushing into Dion’s arms, holding him like a stone in a raging stream, sobbing. Though they too look shaken, though they too have tears in their eyes, Merri and May are comforting her, as if she were the child and they the mothers. Sky catches Cherry looking at her weeping mother and sighing in mild exasperation. He thinks she almost rolls her eyes.

“It’s all right, my little lamb. It’s all right.” Dion, patting Alma’s back, looks up from where he sits to ask Somrak, “What-what happened, Sergeant?”

Somrak, who is keeping his eyes on the kitchen, watching Sky’s body heat in the shadows, says, “Well, my partner was on the job, after all.”

Sky looks at his right hand, the one that Saira’s knife cut deep into. The demon-ichor rages within, though he is metabolizing it. But the fingers are talons, the skin red-black up to his elbow. He cannot walk out there. His left forearm has a dagger still sticking out of it. He carefully extracts it and tosses it into the kitchen sink, wincing at the loud clatter that cuts off Alma’s screams, leaving only sniffles. 

Lovely. “There are two more. One has fled. Perhaps the other as well.” His voice is frighteningly deep, monstrous. He grimaces at how everyone in the main room leans away from the dark kitchen door, eyes widening. Everyone except Somrak, who narrows his eyes in concern. 

Sky squats and pushes Saira’s unconscious body from the kitchen into the light. “I will…” He clears his throat, struggling to get it to return to what he thinks of as normal. “I will hunt them. Stay here. Disarm this one and put her in a cell. Be careful – she’s very good. She will have many hidden weapons and tools. But do not kill her, whatever you do.”

And with that, Sky goes out the door, ignoring Somrak’s protest.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

About fifteen minutes later, Sky returns. He notes that five bodies, one of them burnt, are stacked neatly in the alley behind the station. Somrak or the Popula must have gone out and fetched them. Sky approves. A station surrounded by bodies is rather conspicuous. 

He does not have the other two with him. The big one was easy enough to catch up with. He turned out to be a minor demigod of strength of somesuch, and his blows could have been deadly to Sky if any had landed. Sky punched him hard in the side of his bullet-head and discovered that he did not have any special resistance to damage. The skull crushed, the unfortunate demigod collapsed like a cheap building in an earthquake, never to move again.

And the other had seen Sky’s true form. Sky found the sniper cowering in an alleyway and asked him a few questions, which the assassin begged to answer. What Sky learned fit logically with the hypothesis he had formed. He considered the possibilities of keeping the man prisoner, but he knew they would have to move quickly and that there would be no facilities for locking him up where they would go.

Death was quick and almost painless.

In the dark kitchen again, he watches the main room of the station. Machado is there, talking to Kaur. Dion is sitting on a sofa, his arm around Alma. Protective. Alma holds the baby, calmer, whispering and cooing. Merri is next to her, fussing with the baby’s blanket, and Cherry is leaning over the back of the sofa, making funny faces at the infant. 

Sky notices that Alma’s eyes are the beautiful blue that they were when he met her. They have not been transformed into strange pupil-less pearlescence. He shudders at the memory which flashes into his mind, of Nua the Necromancer torturing innocent mortals to death just to break his will, mortals she had reshaped to appear to be Alma, Dion, and Saira. Nua had not known that Alma had become the Spinner, and in so doing that her eyes had changed.

But here, now, this fits with everything else. This is Alma. It is no trick.

But she is not his Alma.

He looks past the little family, who look so much like his family, and he sees Somrak, looking at him in the shadows again, having sensed his return. Somrak with the scar across his handsome face, his mouth pulled into a slight permanent smirk by it. The scar not erased by Lyria’s healing. And next to Somrak is Mayumi, also watching him. Her ears are perked forward – naturally she heard him moving around in there. Her face is just as beautiful as his Mayumi’s. But…it is different. She looks younger, softer. She doesn’t look like someone who would ever be interested in joining the Guardia. More like Mayumi’s party-loving, beach-going twin.

He considers the blood on his arms and elsewhere. The Bunnies will be disturbed by the smell, and everyone else by the sight. He turns to the sink and begins washing himself off.

He hears the sound of a footstep behind him and most of the light from the station is blocked. Glancing back, Sky sees Somrak leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Lose your uniform?”

Sky continues wiping down his chest and limbs with a wet rag that is turning red with blood. “I had an…encounter. The threat is neutralized. How’s the prisoner?”

Somrak just watches him for a moment, but then says, “Locked up nice and tight, stripped down to her undies. I let the Popula woman, Lamore, do the cavity search. She’s watching her now. Prisoner was coming around when I left them a couple minutes ago.”

Sky drops the rag in the sink and walks to the door, pausing as Somrak does not move aside. The fire god looks Sky up and down. “That was some scouting jaunt,” he says with a low, accusatory voice. “You slaughter most of an assassination team and you seem to know the only surviving member personally. You show up here in nothing but a pair of tights. And…you’ve lost weight, partner. You’re thinner than I’ve ever seen you.”

Sky takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it out. “I’ll explain when I’m certain what’s happened.” He talks low but adds, “The Bunnies can hear every word we’re saying.”

Somrak rolls his eyes up toward the stars above. “Of course they can. Don’t take too long with that explanation, pal. You know I don’t like being kept in the dark.” He straightens and moves to let Sky through.

Sky looks around the room. Everyone is looking at him. Alma looks as if she wants to say something, while Gwydion looks…intimidated? And like Mayumi, he looks soft, more literally so. Alma as well. And despite the baby in her arms, Alma looks like she is barely out of her teens, while Dion seems almost patriarchal – a little heavier, a little more…dad-like. The way Cherry hangs over his shoulder carries not the slightest hint of flirtatiousness, and Dion reaches up to take her hand, to comfort her in the face of the looming, shirtless, barefoot, scary-voiced killing machine standing before them all. Mayumi moves to sit by Dion, leaning against him in a daughterly way that Sky could hardly imagine her doing with anyone except Alma.

Sky looks over at Machado and Kaur. The uniforms are the same. Sergeant – no, it’s Corporal Edison Machado, according to his pips, who looks no different, though he hasn’t shaved his head or cheeks in a couple of days, resulting in a shadow of black stubble peppered with grey on his pate and lower face, except for a large bald spot on the crown. With yet another shock, Sky notices that Aliyah has shorter hair, only to her mid-back. The Constable-sometimes-Corporal Aliyah Kaur he knows does not cut her hair, in keeping with her family’s Sikh faith, and it is braided in a queue the end of which taps against the backs of her knees as she walks. There is not much of her faith that she holds to, but apparently this Aliyah does not hold to that rule.

Alma, Gwydion, Machado, Kaur – these are all his officers. Well, not anymore, not since he was tortured. But depending on the Commander’s decisions, perhaps one day again. And all of them and the Bunnies and Somrak, they are all family. But no, only Somrak knows him here. All the rest are wary of him.

“Sergeant Machado, I’ll speak to the prisoner now,” Sky says. “And…I don’t know what kind of stores you have, but if you happen to have any clothing that might fit me, I would greatly appreciate it.”

Machado nods after a moment. “Sure, Sergeant. I think there might be a shirt, at least.”

Sky nods at him and Aliyah, then goes toward the holding cells. Alma, as if suddenly coming to a decision, a determined look on her face, abruptly stands, surprising everyone with her on the station sofa. She scurries over to Sky as he places his hand on the door to the cells. Partially obscured by a tall filing cabinet, she whispers to him, “Sergeant? I… May I have a word with you?”

He looks down at her, taking in her lace-trimmed silken blouse that manages to be demure and at the same time reveal the cleavage of her full, motherly breasts. He is not certain, but he thinks she is a little shorter than his Alma. His eyes focus for a moment on the baby, which smiles with plump cheeks at him. “Yes, of course. What is it, Alma?”

She looks a little scandalized at his words, not in the humorous way her mother Lyria pretends to be scandalized, but truly so. Then in a shaky voice that is trying to be brave, she whispers, “I know I asked you for a big favor, Sergeant, but I do not believe it merits such intimacy of speech between us.”

He blinks at her, his face still, to hide the surprising flash of hurt at her objection. “Forgive me…Lady Alma. The recent violence has shaken me. Are you all right, by the way? Were you at all hurt?”

She shakes her head, looking subdued now that their social boundaries have been reestablished. “No. I was just…shaken. It was the first time someone held me at knifepoint. But I am all right. Thank you. For saving my life.”

“I hope I shall never have to do it again,” he says, “but I will gladly do it a thousand times if necessity requires it. Now, this favor you asked of me…” He trails off, hoping she will fill in the blanks about some favor he has only just now heard of.

“Yes. I did not want to ask about it in front of my husband and your partner – forgive me but he has been so ill-tempered with us since you both were assigned to protect us. I was afraid you would somehow get in trouble for it.” She looks expectant, almost pleading. “Did you find it? The Grotto?”

He pauses, his mind racing with how best to reply. “Yes. Yes, I found it. And…a pool. A pool that glimmered, and was filled with swirling colors. Is that what you expected?”

She nods, her breath quickening. “That is what my dream showed me! Did you find the answers there for how we may be saved?”

He thinks furiously, his hypothesis further bolstered by this, and starting to see more implications that come crashing down on him like the Grotto’s waterfall. “Perhaps. I…I’m still trying to understand it all. You had a dream, you say? Was there anyone else in this dream?” He sees her look of confusion. “It’s just…I was hit, in the fighting. On the head. Things are a little muddled.”

Her eyes widen in concern. “Oh you poor soul! And your hand is wounded as well!” She shifts the baby to her left arm and takes his hand, pulling him to a desk chair. “Here, come and sit down for a moment. I will take care of those wounds before you go speak to that dreadful assassin character.”

Sky sits, glad that the chair has no arms. From the picture of a bearded father and smiling mother on the desk, he knows it is Constable Kaur’s. “Thank you. I…I could hold the baby,” he offers, realizing he wants to and hoping she will let him. “What is his name?”

“Gwyeu,” she says with a voice filled with love. She looks just a little nervous, but she leans forward and carefully hands him over, and Sky holds him with tenderness, his face overcome with an expression of bliss as he smiles at the child. He almost doesn’t hear her as she asks, “Is he not the sweetest, most adorable baby you have ever seen? Looks like a miniature version of his father.” She strokes the baby’s nose, looking as if her heart is melting before she perches on the edge of the desk and takes Sky’s hand. “Now, this may hurt a little before it starts feeling better.”

His hand closes around hers. The flesh has mostly knitted back together from his own healing. His ability to transform himself has come with an unexpected benefit: the divine self-healing that nearly all gods have seems faster than before, as if the newfound ability to control his body includes repairing it. But the muscles will still take time to regain full strength without help. He unconsciously squeezes her hand before noticing that he’s doing it, forgetting, as he makes amusing faces at the baby, that this is not the Alma he knows.

“You seem to have a way with children,” Alma notes, as she suffuses Sky with preliminary healing energy, scanning his whole body for wounds. “Do you have any of your own?”

“Long ago,” he says in a soft voice. “I haven’t held a godling this young in…years. A few years.” Not since a mission to retrieve an infant stolen by a malevolent fae. But she would not want to hear about that – it had been dark and bloody. “He is indeed adorable.”

Alma smiles at his words, but then frowns. “You were hurt in more places than just this hand. And…the scars.” Although actual scars, like that on Somrak’s face, are rare in gods, still traces can remain of healed wounds, recent or terrible, that leave shadows on the flesh and spirit. Alma starts healing him, her magic pouring into him, and he is surprised, for in this she is stronger and somehow more self-assured, more efficient at healing. Closer to her mother Lyria’s level of expertise. But this also makes the healing hit him harder and faster before the relief comes. He closes his eyes at the intensity of it, but he does not allow the baby to be disturbed at all.

“There. All done,” Alma says. “Such horrible poison… I wonder how they even find such terrible substances in nature.”

He opens his eyes, his breathing a little faster than before. The demon ichor, of course, was almost gone from his system. “Yes, well, that is something I will ask our prisoner about. Such poisons are very much prohibited.” He pauses. “Now, I don’t think you mentioned…was there anyone else in your dream?”

Her energies, softer, wash through his body again, checking for anything needing healing that she might have missed. “No, just a voice. Feminine. Pleasant. Old perhaps.” Alma looks at him, helpless. “I worry that I may have done nothing but waste your time and put you and ourselves in danger by asking you to go. But it felt so ominous… I had never had such dreams before.”

“Well, you mustn’t think it was useless,” he says, mulling over her words. The Oracle? Is that who she heard? He himself had been sent a message by Nevieve in the past, telling him where Alma, Dion, and the Bunnies were and that they needed help. “If I had not been sent out, I would not have noticed the team of assassins. They could have succeeded, otherwise. In a sense, your prophecy has already come true.”

Alma gasps in shock, which almost makes him laugh. In such dramatic gasping, she sounds distinctly like Merri. But before she can say more, Gwydion comes around the filing cabinet. He looks almost suspicious. It is an expression Sky has seen before, on the Gwydion he knows, who was, for a time, jealous of the friendship Sky and Alma shared, thinking it carried a romantic element. “My dear? I was looking all over for you. You mustn’t disappear like that. The children were worried.”

Sky knows it is Gwydion who is worried, and that ‘looking all over’ is ridiculous in this tiny station. “She was healing me…Lord Gwydion,” Sky says, assuming that if Alma goes by Lady then Gwydion must have an appropriately equal appellation. “And a most impressive healer she is.” He gently hands the baby back to Alma. “I thank you, Lady Alma. Now I had better interrogate our prisoner.”

“You will speak to this…mercenary? But she nearly killed my wife just now!” Dion looks confused an expression that seems comfortable on his face. “Why would she even bother to speak to you when she was obviously sent to kill us all?”

Sky stands up and shrugs. “People often open up to me,” he says. “I just have one of those faces, I suppose.” He nods toward both of them, then turns and opens the door to the holding cells, and ducks through, careful not to bash his skull on the doorframe.

Ch6.99 Trust

“Okay y’all, cookies are ready!”

The plate is heavy in Cherry’s hands, but the cookies – chocolate chip, almond, and peanut butter – smell heavenly. Serving baked goods out to everyone lends Cherry some slight distraction from the worries that plague her mind.

There has been no news. Not since hours ago when Grandmamma Lyria left them in the care of the Twins, Uncle Imset and Uncle Lum. All they know is that their mother, Alma, along with Dion, is out on a mission to rescue Sky. And that their enemies can send squads of demons. And that those demons were supposed to kill or capture the Bunnies, and they would’ve done it, too, if Grandmamma hadn’t shown up. They would’ve killed us all, she thinks. They would’ve done worse than that…

She stops where she is and shuts her eyes tight. Stop it! You’re gonna break down and scare the younger ones! Just…stop thinking about it.

She takes a breath and opens her eyes and, to her dismay, Chime is looking right at her. It doesn’t look like anyone else saw her freeze up, but sweet little Chime, with those long dirty-blonde bangs hanging half over his eyes, is staring at her. It can be hard to tell what Chime is feeling when he’s not playing music. He wakes up when playing with Kori, too – his big brother is a hero to him, even though Kori wins pretty much every race, every wrestling match, every whatever. But a lot of the time, Chime is sort of dreaming, “seeing music everywhere” he told her once. She’d been reading a novel on the bed in her and Merri’s room, and he’d just come in and lay down next to her. She’d put an arm around him, not even really thinking about it, and asked him what was on his mind. When he told her, she’d asked, “Don’t you mean hearin’ music everywhere, sweetie?” He’d shaken his head on her shoulder. “Seeing.” Then he’d fallen asleep.

But Cherry knows him well enough to know that he’s pretty scared too, and the sight of her just freezing like that is not helping, no way. So she puts a fragile smile on her face and makes sure everyone gets cookies. All the Bunnies, except of course May who is away, take at least one – Kori takes three, though rejecting the peanut butter as “gross,” and Merri insists on calling them “biscuits,” which is just silly – and Geryon, who loves chocolate chip, and the Twins, instant uncles, just add Bunnies. Aliyah has gone back to the station next door for a little while, even though she’s not technically on duty. They just got hit by demons, after all. Must be some form for reporting that.

Just as Imset is taking his cookie, he and his brother both look past everyone else. Cherry feels the fur on the back of her neck stand on end, and she turns, almost sagging in relief to see it’s Lyria, next to the huge, foreboding figure of Melinor. Melinor might be kind of scary, but he’s scary to other people, not to the Bunnies. He might not think of them as family, but they are Alma’s, and that’s good enough for him. At least that’s how it seems.

But in Melinor’s arms is a shrouded form, a human form, wrapped tight in a white sheet that covers it completely. The world seems to contract, going dark at the edges of her vision, and sound becomes muffled. There’s a part of her mind that just observes this, surprised that she hasn’t dropped the plate with the remaining cookies, but somehow she automatically sets it down on the table beside her. She watches as Sage and Merri approach Melinor, looking at that white-shrouded shape, and they turn to look at her as they catch the scent and realize who it is. Cherry is too far away for the smell to hit her yet, but they turn and look at her, right at Cherry, and she knows, from that.

It’s not Sky, of course. He’s about the same size as Melinor, which would make carrying the body a lot more awkward. And it’s not Mama. If it were, Lyria and Mel would both be shattered, and Merri and Sage too. Dion is bigger, more muscular than that shape, and Somrak, well, they wouldn’t be singling out Cherry to look at with concern and sorrow, now would they?

So she knows. She shakes her head, trying to refuse it, but she knows. She takes a step forward, then another. Then she passes into the scent as it wafts outward. Even though the body has been cleaned up, the smell of death is there along with some foul poison, but there it is. Saira. That’s definitely Saira.

Scent triggers memory so easily, and bam, it hits Cherry hard: massaging Saira’s back, the muscles twitching after an attack. In the bath together, Saira looking at her, smiling, all comfortable and happy, saying “I like you, Fluffy Ears.”

Cherry starts to tremble, and as Merri wraps her arms around her, Cherry sags and moans into her embrace. She just lets Merri take over. That little part of her mind that’s observing all this says, Yeah, that’s heartbreak, all right.

The following few minutes are just a blur to her. Sage asking after Mama, and the others. “They are safe,” Lyria says immediately. “Alive. But little ones, I need you to listen and understand. They cannot return tonight.”

“What happened to Mom? And Dion and Sky? Uncle Som? Why’s Saira…?” Tulip’s voice trails off, shaken by tears. “What’s going on? Where’s our Mom?” Kori demands. Imset talking with Melinor in a strange language, their voices low but heavy. Merri’s loving voice whispering to her, telling her it’ll be all right.

But it won’t.

Yeah, but what are you gonna do, huh? There’s that voice again, Cherry’s own. Gonna just be a sack of potatoes in Merri’s arms? There’s Tulip cryin’. They’re scared. Pull it together!

Cherry grips Merri’s shoulder and literally pulls herself upright, standing up on her own two feet. She takes a long glance into Merri’s eyes, marveling at that deep, amazing green, then lets her go and turns to see to the kids. She still feels as if the floor has disappeared, as if she’s falling through the air, but she can’t ignore the younger ones. Tulip is already in Lyria’s arms, but Kori is standing, fists clenched, looking frightened and furious at once. She puts her arms around him, gently, and though he’s stiff and resistant at first, he can tell how much she’s hurting, and he lets go of his anger and holds her, affected as much by her pain as by his own need for comfort.

Past Kori’s shoulder, she sees Chime still sitting on the sofa, all alone. Cherry holds out and arm to him, and he comes, pale and scared, and just grabs onto both her and Kori, holding them tightly.

All she can offer for the moment is physical contact. The words just won’t come.

But Merri is telling them, “She’ll be home soon.” Then to Lyria, she asks, “Won’t she?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Lyria says after a moment. “She asked me to tell you she will be back by tomorrow and not to leave your side until then.”

“How bad is it?” Geryon asks. Cherry lifts her head from her embrace of the two younger boys and sees that he is near Melinor, who is laying Saira’s body on the bar with Merri’s help, the only place other than the floor or the sofa that is long enough to lay her out.

Lyria exhales deeply. “Not as bad as it could be but…” She looks back at the Bunnies, “Children, your mother and her friends went against a necromancer and a dangerous demon summoner to rescue Tuma-Sukai. They have defeated the criminals and found Sky but they have all been injured. Deeply.” She raises a hand at their alarmed expressions. “None of them is at risk and their bodies have been healed. But there are deeper wounds. And those will take a long time to heal. They will require your patience and understanding.”

“We’ll be strong for them,” Merri says. “But…can we not go see them? Or…” She trails off.

“They need peace, little ones. Time to regain some of their strength,” Lyria explains. She touches Merri’s head. “And you must know… Tuma-Sukai cannot return tomorrow. His wounds require the most care and he will need to stay confined to his healer’s home for a long while. Most likely without visitors.” Her voice is gentle but pained.

Cherry clenches her jaw shut, shuts her eyes tight, and holds onto Kori, grateful for his strong arms. She just knows if she were to start asking the questions she wants to ask, What do you mean, we can’t see him? He needs us! What the Hell is goin’ on?! she will end up screaming. So she just stays silent.

“Can they heal, Lady?” Geryon asks quietly.

Lyria nods. “I believe so. Though… I have no way of knowing how long that will take. Their bodies are healed. The rest…”

“And how much trouble are they in?” the gryphon insists. Trouble? Cherry thinks. Oh no…no no no, not again…

Lyria sighs. “That remains to be seen. But I will see to it that not too much comes to pass.”

Imset moves closer to Lyria, whispering to her in that other language. They exchange a swift but somewhat heated argument, then Lyria nods in defeat. Imset kneels by Cherry. “She is alive, all right? I can sense her soul. We’ll drop by and see her before we return home. Don’t worry about anything.” He smiles reassuringly.

Cherry lets go of Kori and puts her hands on Imset’s shoulders. They’ve just met these new uncles, one silent, one talkative. She looks him in his strange, shadowy face and feels an almost overwhelming gratitude at his acceptance of her, of all of Alma’s children “Thank you…” she whispers. “Tell her…tell her we all love her, and, and all of ‘em, and…”

Then words fail her, and she puts her arms around Imset’s neck and holds on tight. All of it, blows coming one after another – almost losing their mother, and Dion, and Sky, and now Saira’s death, which she just cannot bear to think about – combined with all of these Death Clan gods here, most of them showing so much kindness when they’re in the middle of their own crisis, and even Melinor taking this time to be here, this is really something, no matter how much he might seem not to care, all of this is just clashing in pain and healing that she can’t speak.

Imset holds her and strokes her hair. Merri soon comes and gently pulls her away, kissing Imset’s cheek and murmuring her thanks, telling the Twins to go with grace and to return soon. Imset replies quietly, then rises and, with a look at Luminus, both gods vanish.

As Cherry walks to the bar, she hears Melinor ask, “Do you require me to stay?”

“No, little one,” Lyria says. “All the enemies are defeated. I don’t expect any counterattacks tonight. Go. Tell your father I will be busy awhile.”

Cherry feels Melinor vanish. There’s no need for special senses for that. The god of violent death radiates an aura of dread that is hard to ignore sometimes. But though that aura is gone, dread remains, brought in other ways. Cherry touches the sheet where it covers Saira’s face, and carefully pulls it back.

So pale. So still. All life gone. That life that Mama nurtured and healed, that Cherry helped in her own way, lesser but more constant, fled forever. Cherry touches the cool cheek. Saira was so beautiful, so deadly. Frightening, really, but full of life at the same time.

And now there is nothing but a corpse.

“Oh baby,” Cherry whispers, running her finger along the soft, short hair of Saira’s eyebrow.

Behind her, Cherry hears Lyria whispering to the younger Bunnies, “It will be all right. I am here to take care of you.” The door of the bar opens, and footsteps approach. A gasp. Aliyah is on one side of Cherry, staring at Saira’s face, and Cala is on the other, silent and somber. Aliyah puts her hands to her face and sobs.

Cherry steps back. She knows a little of the history there. Aliyah and Cala were childhood friends with Saira, a friendship ruptured and only repaired recently and partially. Cala reaches a hand out to rub Aliyah’s back.

In stepping back, Cherry nearly steps on Sage, who holds her hand, looking at her, his beautiful dark features so empathetic. But at the sound of Tulip’s plaintive voice, they turn.

“Mom can come home!” Tulip insists. “We’ll let her sleep. We’ll just hug her and let her sleep. You can go get her.”

“You can hug her tomorrow, little Tulip,” Lyria insists. “She will need all of your hugs tomorrow. But she is probably already asleep and I cannot go disturb her now.”

“Let us hope she is asleep,” Sage says, stroking Tulip’s white hair. “We will welcome her home soon enough.”

Cherry asks, her voice low, “Grandmama, what about… Is Saira…her…soul? Is it okay?”

“She is at peace,” Lyria explains, her eyes on Cherry’s, compassionate. “Her soul has been released by Varah, the goddess you met earlier. It will return to the Wheel.”

“So she’ll be reborn.” Cherry nods to herself. “What…what now?” Cherry asks. “Do we…bury her?”

“Is that her custom? I am not sure about burial rites…” Lyria seems genuinely unsure what to do. “I could join her body with the Insula, of course. Return it to the great cycle of things so it can feed new life.”

The tall Guardia cop Aliyah, her face wet but recovered, approaches and puts her hands on Sage’s shoulders. She clears her throat. “Saira didn’t have religious feelings one way or the other. Just always said her body would be worm food soon enough. I guess…makin’ that comes true, in a nice way, that’d be somethin’ she could get behind.” Cala, coming to stand beside her friend and colleague, nods.

“Well, maybe we can consider a little patch of garden? A tree to remember her by?” Lyria suggests.

Cherry considers this. “Out back? There’s that tree in the corner, sickly little thing. Maybe she can give it some strength if she was under that.” She smiles, just a little. “I know it ain’t her no more but it’d be like havin’ her nearby.”

Lyria nods. “I will let you say your goodbyes tonight, and tomorrow morning, as early as possible, we will take care of that. All right? The little ones should get to bed for now.”

It takes some time, but soon everyone has gone away. Lyria and the others are in Alma’s sanctum, preparing for bed, all planning to sleep together in safety and warmth. Aliyah and Cala have both said quiet prayers over the body to their faraway god, and after a little while Cala returns to work while Aliyah, off-shift, returns to her family.

In the quiet of the bar, most of the lights extinguished, Cherry once more goes to Saira’s body. She smooths the hair back from the corpse’s forehead, and stares at that settled expression. Is that the slightest hint of a smile on Saira’s face? Did she finally achieve what she wanted?

“You never knew peace in your life, baby,” Cherry whispers to her. “Wish you coulda found it with us. I will never, ever forget you.” She leans over and presses her lips to the cool skin of Saira’s forehead.

Then straightening, she carefully rearranges the sheet to cover Saira’s face, and turns to descend the stairs, toward her family, and life, and love.

Ch6.97 Trust

In a shadowy chamber, water running down one wall, phosphorescent lichen and albino geckos on the rough stone, Somrak sits, his back to a table. Table – well, formerly a thick stalagmite that had broken off and was then cut and smoothed to a useful surface. The bench on which Somrak sits is a natural ridge of stone as well, shaped dexterously into a comfortable seat. Somrak does not make use of its legroom between the table and itself, instead stretching his legs away from the table, resting his back against the edge of it, his arms crossed over his bare chest, staring at nothing. Thinking, over and over, of what he could have done differently.

The mission had been a success. Technically. They got Sky out alive. None of the gods had died. But Saira… Saira died. For a moment he rages at her, in his mind. You weren’t even on our mission, were you? You were on your personal vendetta. I told you! Alma told you! Fates, I knocked you unconscious to keep you from meeting your death! Still you came…

None of this shows on his face. It remains impassive, as calm as the drops of water, as the slow breathing of a huge, dangerous beast in the deeper shadows further into the chamber.

But you kept your target immobilized, Somrak tells the dead woman he holds in his mind. He had to devote every trick he had to trying to survive, and still he failed at that. You did it, girl. You got him. You killed him. You laid your ghosts to rest, and yourself as well.

And in response, he hears her voice – no ghost, unless a desire to speak again just one more time can be called a ghost. Still as dumb as ever, Ponytail. Thinkin’ you have me figured out. Gods, but you gods are stupid.

He twists and brings his legs around, facing the table. On it, laid out like the main guest at a wake, is a body. The filthy cloth he had wrapped her in has been replaced by a clean white winding-cloth of soft cotton, the same material as these white trousers he is wearing, a magical gift from the Oracle. Much of the damage to the body has been repaired, as well. At least, with the face visible, Somrak can see no sign of trauma on Saira’s calm, cool mien.

He brushes a lock of her brown hair with his fingertips. “You got him,” he whispers.

Beyond him, where no lichen illuminates, a pair of eyes, glowing blue-green, open. They look at Somrak and Saira, then the head bearing them turns, ponderous, to the doorway. The illumination behind Somrak increases, throwing a shadow across Saira’s face. He turns to see Lyria at the doorway, a soft verdant light surrounding her, the aura of her Life sphere highlighting her maternal beauty. Behind her is a dark, hulking shape – Melinor, Alma’s brother. And passing her to enter the chamber is Alma herself, followed closely by Gwydion, bare-chested and white-breeched like Somrak.

Alma goes directly to Somrak, her eyes on his face. He can see the pain and anguish from the ordeal she has been through. Forcibly possessed by a twisted, evil soul. Trapped in a desperate fight for control of her own body. Made to witness Gwydion’s torture at the hands that same body. And Somrak’s own torture as well, let’s not forget that. And what else? What else did Nua put Alma through in there? He is certain it was far worse that the scourging Somrak himself suffered.

But before she speaks to him, her eyes – those strangely beautiful pearlescent eyes – move to Saira. She puts a hand on the corpse’s forehead for a moment, a stoic sorrow passing across Alma’s face. It lasts but a moment. Alma is a goddess of the House of Death. Cold lifeless bodies are not the focus of her sorrow. Or so Somrak assumes.

Then she lays that same hand on his cheek, turning his face up to hers. “Somrak?” Her voice is a plea for reassurance that he has come out of that little slice of Hell, not left himself behind somehow.

He looks into her eyes. Her touch is not as cool as it normally is. He suspects it is because his own fire is nothing but ashes, his body no warmer than a mortal’s. He opens his mouth, and out of it comes a voice barely above a whisper, but on the verge of becoming a wail. “I am sorry… Alma, I am so sorry…”

She puts her arms around his neck, pulling his head to her shoulder as she sits on the bench next to him. “Shh,” she whispers in his ear. “We all knew. And we’re safe now.”

After a brief hesitation, he holds her tightly, his hands on her lower back and shoulder blade. “I thought we were all lost. I almost–” He cuts himself off. He can’t. He just can’t tell her that at the moment before they were rescued, he was on the verge of killing her unconscious body in the hope that at least her soul might escape being pulled into Hell. Instead he asks, “Saira? Her soul?”

“Varah saw to it,” Melinor replies from the doorway, his voice low. “Personally.”

Over Alma’s shoulder, Somrak looks at him through locks of the goddess’ snowy white hair. He nods at Melinor. “Thank you.”

From the shadows comes a rumble of agreement, a sound like misshapen lava stones grinding in the stygian trenches of the ocean. “You pulled us from Hell, Melinor,” Sky says, pitching his voice as close to human as he can. “You saved us.” The glowing blue-green eyes blink.

“It was necessary,” Melinor says simply. He seems unused to being regarded with such gratitude.

Alma looks at Melinor, the edges of her mouth twitching into a tentative smile. She speaks as if just for Somrak, “Melinor has always been my protector. I learned much of my strength from him.” Then she rises, swaying as she tries to stand, hand reaching for the edge of the table.

Somrak puts a hand on her elbow and shifts to catch her, but Gwydion is at her side, his hand on her waist and the other clasping hers. “You should sit,” he says. His voice is gentle, but also strained from pain.

Somrak surprises himself with the flare of jealousy he feels. And in his memory he hears Saira’s derisive laughter. Still? he castigates himself. After you and Dion have saved each other’s lives, after all both he and she have been through with you, you’re still envious? You all nearly died, you were tortured together, you saw the face of a Prince of Hell, and still the teenage boy in you cannot resist crashing into the middle of everything. He lets go of Alma’s arm and sinks back onto the bench.

Seeming not to have noticed Somrak’s assistance, Alma looks at Gwydion with empathy and sadness and reaches to stroke his cheek, as she did Somrak’s but with, perhaps, more tenderness. Or maybe that is Somrak’s imagination. “I just wanted to see Sky before I do so.” She looks toward the darkness.

The glowing eyes dip, and the darkness intensifies, becoming palpable. “Stop trying to hide,” Somrak mutters in Sky’s direction. “She’s already seen your ugly mug. Fates know it’s looking better now that it was then.”

Sky narrows his eyes as Somrak. Then, slowly, the darkness fades to become merely the natural dim light of the cavern chamber. Sky’s true form, hulking and winged, becomes more and more visible, though its red-black coloration still fades into the shadows where he huddles. The diabolic aura of fear suppressed, he is merely ugly, dangerous in appearance, but not radiating a terror-inducing cloak of gloom.

He raises his vulpine head slightly as Alma approaches, the heavy horns that sweep back from his skull looking as if he is straining to against them to meet her gaze. His blinded eye is healed, scars removed from his face.

For a long moment, the two simply look at each other. Dion stands less than an arm’s length behind Alma, looking ready to snatch her away if Sky makes any sudden moves. Somrak aches for them. He has an inkling of how attached Sky is to the goddess, and how much she has come to trust and rely upon Sky.

Then Alma hesitantly reaches to touch Sky’s muzzle, stopping a few inches from it. Waiting. Hoping.

But Sky does not move toward her, instead pulling back slightly, cringing away. “I was going…to tell you,” he croaks softly. His voice is deeper, rumbling, but it is recognizably Sky’s. Somrak, who has heard the devil’s voice before when Sky was in this form, realizes that it lacks the disturbing abyssal, grinding quality that it normally carries. “You fell asleep. I was ready. And then you had to leave and I…I decided to wait. Alma…” He closes his eyes and turns his head away, ashamed. “If I had only told you then…”

In a whisper that Somrak barely catches, Alma says, “I know what she did to you. She showed me.”

He looks back at her, eyes wide. He does not speak, but pulls into himself, moving his wings to cover his head.

And after a moment, she sighs and drops her hand, her head hanging. “I am too tired,” she says, her voice louder but softened by sorrow and exhaustion, “in too much pain to be angry, Sky. I have risked too much to turn my back now. We will…find a way somehow.” There is no coldness or resentment in her words. She turns.

Somrak cannot stop himself from shouting at Sky, “Stop being such an idiot! She knows what you are! Dion knows!” He stomps to Sky’s side, not sure if he is going to strike the devil or not. “We have been through all that, together! Saira died! And now we’re all here! We’re alive! You are alive! And you are not hiding away anymore! I won’t have it!”

“Somrak…” Alma’s voice is quiet and soft but it cuts through the echoes of his shouts like a knife. “Please, be kind.”

Somrak falls silent, feeling embarrassed and sick to his stomach. Dion speaks up in the moment of silence. “Sky? Can you…change back?”

A leathery rustle of wings precedes Sky’s bestial face once again revealing itself. He shakes his ponderous head. “I cannot.” His voice is a whisper, and tracks of moisture lend the skin below his eyes, trailing down the sides of his muzzle, glisten in the dim light.

Somrak feels even more ill at this news. He turns away from Sky, clenching his teeth, then leans against the wall. Long tasked with the job of being Sky’s keeper and, potentially, executioner, he knows what orders may come from up high if Sky can no longer assume a divine form. Somrak takes a moment to find his voice without shouting. “You’ll have to,” he says. “It’s good that we all know, but you can’t go out of here until you can change.”

Then he hears a soft, wondering comment from Dion. “I thought…devils could not weep. That’s what all the accounts say.”

Somrak and Alma both turn back to see Sky looking shocked. He raises a taloned hand to touch the tears on his face. “I…cannot,” he whispers. “There are those who can, but…in this form, I cannot.”

“Well you’re doing it now,” Somrak says. “Maybe you just never had reason to?”

Sky shakes his head. “I would have given much to have been able to weep in that torture chamber. How…how can I be doing it now?”

Alma steps toward him, both hands out, and cups his face. Her pale hands are so small where the palms curve against the massive jaw muscles. Her thumbs slide gently across the tracks of tears. Her lips curved in a wavering smile, she says, “Perhaps you can change forms after all. When I look at you, my friend, it’s not a devil’s soul I see. And though I am not sure what it is, I know it is no hellish thing. Have you pretended to be a god so long that you have become one? Or are you something in between?”

Though he would tower over her at his full height, he must look up at her from his crouched position. “I didn’t want to…to do what she made me…”

“Shh.” Alma strokes his muzzle. “I know. I know you never would. Now rest. You must heal.”

“Luckily, we are in no hurry to cast him out,” Nevieve says from the door, standing next to Lyria. “You can stay here, Tuma-Sukai, for as long as you take to recover.”

“And you should all stay here tonight,” Lyria says, beside her. Her voice is subdued, but she sounds confident in her opinion. “Your physical wounds are healed. But you all have deeper wounds. Tonight, at least, you need peace. And each other.”

“No…Mother,” Alma argues, who has released Sky and moved again closer to Dion. “The Bunnies will already be worried sick. They’ll be frightened after being attacked by demons like you said. And they’ll have to know about Saira and mourn her. And we’ll have to tell them…something about Sky and…” As she speaks, she sounds more and more overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

Lyria looks sad, but her green eyes carry a hint of amusement. “You make my case for me, little one. It is all too much for now. Was this Saira important to them?”

“She was,” Alma says. “To Cherry, particularly, but to all of them in some way. They nursed her back to health once…” She glances at the body. “They will be crushed to see her dead.”

“Then let me take Saira’s body to them so that they may mourn her,” Lyria says, walking closer and laying a hand on the corpse, “and I shall tell them as much as they need to know for now. They can get past the initial shock with me and begin their mourning. When you return, they will be ready to give and take comfort without burdening you with excessive emotion. Please, my dear one, let me do this for you.”

Alma looks uncertain, and she touches Dion’s hand for comfort. He takes it, and Somrak, watching them, rests a hand on one of Sky’s horns.

Dion looks from Alma to Lyria and back again. “If we are welcome to stay…” He looks at Sky, still partially huddled, and at Somrak. Their eyes lock for a moment, and Somrak nods to Dion, lending his vote to the ‘stay’ camp. “It might be well for those of us who understand what we have been through to stay here for a little longer.”

Nevieve favors them with her detached, ancient smile. “Doria is preparing your rooms as we speak. All close by. Sky will need some time for private rest soon enough, I imagine. And so will you three.”

Alma looks at her, at Dion, at Lyria, then looks down and nods in defeat. “Very well. Thank you, Oracle. Thank you, Mother.”

Lyria puts both her hands on Alma’s upper arms. “I will do what I can to comfort them.” She looks at her daughter with sad contrition, then slowly, giving Alma the chance to push her away, embraces her in relief. Lyria looks around at the others. “Do not despair. But do not imagine that your healing will be swift. Lean on each other. As Gwydion says, only you understand what you have been through.”

She releases Alma, then goes to Sky. “Oh, little soul.” Lyria caresses his face. “You have yet a great part to play in the lives of those you love. Do not think for a moment that this is the end of all that. Have I ever shrunk from you?” She strokes the wetness on his face in wonder. “A crying devil. To think I should have seen this.” Then she looks at Somrak and pats his chest affectionately. She turns to leave, signaling a request for Melinor to pick up Saira’s body.

“Tell my children…” Alma says, “that we’ll be back tomorrow. Please.”

Lyria pauses to say, “I will. And I will not leave them until your return. They will be safe under my watch.” She leaves, Melinor following her.

Alma embraces Dion, holding him tightly, hiding her face against his shoulder. She shivers with silent sobs. He holds her, whispering, “We are safe now. We are all safe.”

Somrak, his chest still tingling from Lyria’s touch, listens to Dion’s comforting words. He hopes Alma believes them. He hopes Dion does as well. But as he looks at Sky, trapped in a form that would get him killed the moment he shows himself in public, a form that could cause a scandal to bring down the Council itself, he knows they are anything but safe.

Still, no point in mentioning that now.

Ch6.93 Trust

“No, no, no, come on, hold on, hold on!”

The blood is pumping from Saira. Somrak tries to heal one wound, but healing does not come naturally to him. He is a god of fire, and fire destroys. Unable to draw upon his sphere for healing, he makes do with the same sort of magic that mortal wizards learn. And the abyssal poison in Saira’s wounds defeats such pitiful effort. He cannot even slow the bleeding.

Multiple punctures, deep and ragged, make him want to scream just from looking at what Margrave’s bound demons have done to her. And there is nothing he can do. He sees her eyes barely open, unfocused, but flicking toward him. Instead of screaming, he whispers, “Saira, please, stay with me… Alma’s gonna wake up, she’s going to be all right, she’s going to heal you.”

Saira’s body convulses in what is probably intended to be a laugh. “Quit it, Ponytail… I said…I wouldn’t–” She coughs up a gout of blood that runs down her chin, blood that stinks of demonic venom. “Wouldn’t survive. Stupid gods… Look after them.”

Som holds her tighter and whispers to her, “You got him. You got him. The Devil’s Right Hand. You got him.”

Somrak sets her down, then leans over Dion, grabbing his forearm and pulling him closer. “Come on, Prettyboy! Wake up! We need magic. You can put her in stasis or something, right?” He smacks Dion’s cheeks, but the god, his mana spent, remains unconscious. Somrak raises a hand to give him a good slap.

A huge hoof plants itself near Somrak’s knee, spreading out slightly to bear Sky’s massive weight, and a big taloned hand grasps Somrak’s arm. The devil squats, balancing easily with his tail and outspread wings. He looks at Saira. His face seems sad, pained – really, there’s no telling. That hairless canine muzzle is ripped from the whipping he has received, one eye put out. And it’s not as if Somrak has seen this face of Sky’s more than a handful of times in forty years. Sky has no desire to show it.

The room groans. The walls begin to bleed some kind of sap. Sky releases Somrak, who takes hold of Saira’s limp body and, with effort, stands. He is wounded himself. The whiplashes are nothing to scoff at. The damage to flesh is survivable for a god – at the worst, the wounds across his chest are only bone-deep. But the pain to his soul goes on and on, weakening him. He looks at Margrave – dead, his head wrenched backwards, the black-bone whip wrapped around his neck, buried in his throat. At Alma – unconscious, whatever is happening there unknown to the outside world. At Dion – unconscious as well.

And the woman that Alma was put into for a time, the girl really, is gone. In all the confusion of unbound demons, she disappeared. Slipped out. Glancing at the pile of weapons, spilled from a cart, Somrak notes that Saira’s crossbow is missing. Clever girl. Grabbed the best weapon.

Though how she got out… The door is hanging open, but beyond it is puckered flesh, pulsating. It looks for all the world like a tight-shut sphincter.

“The sword,” Somrak says to Sky. “Might need it. If Nua managed to bind Alma’s soul to it even a little…” He hopes Sky can understand.

The devil looks, spots the fine weapon, and hands it over to Somrak, who hooks two fingers around the guard to hold it while still carrying Saira. Then Sky looks at the blocked door. He flexes his claws, as if intending to rip his way through, but then he looks down at Margrave. The summoner is a corpse, or nearly so, and Sky brings one leg back and kicks him at the doorway, sliding his body across the floor.

The sphincter opens. To Somrak’s relief, nothing comes out. It simply reveals a passageway that looks distinctly intestinal.

There is a dull boom in the distance, behind the wall opposite the passage. Then another, closer. Somrak feels chilled. It sounds like the steps of a giant, walking. Another boom, closer.

We are come, to claim our soul…

It is a moan of doom, triumphant and dolorous, issuing from the world itself, this tiny pocket universe. Sky grunts at Somrak. He seizes Margrave’s body and tosses it onto his back, pinning it there by folding his wings up tight. Then he lifts Alma and Dion with great care.

“Come on!” Somrak urges him. “Let’s go!” Sky grunts at Somrak again, jerking his horned head at the corridor. Somrak looks to make sure the two unconscious gods are being held securely, then he rushes into the pulsating passage.

It is not open very far ahead, only a few strides, but as Sky follows from behind, bearing Margrave’s corpse, the passage keeps opening before them. And those world-shaking footsteps keep following from behind.

Sky is a devil, Somrak knows. And what is coming is, in all likelihood, a devil as well. It certainly feels more powerful than any demon, of another category entirely, as of a god compared to a mortal. And more powerful than Sky. Vastly so. A rot emanates from that direction, racing along the corridor, putrefying as fast as they can run. Faster. Somrak pushes harder. Saira… For a moment Somrak allows the thought to exist, that she is already dead, that it’s too late. He thrusts that away. Too late or not, she’s not remaining behind here. Hell itself is devouring this miniature world. Hell is claiming it as territory. Alive or dead, her soul may still be attached to her body. He’s not sure how that works, but he knows that no death goddess has sent it on its way. He will not let her be stuck here in any form.

And there it is: the portal. Well, the blank wall that held the portal. At the moment, it holds nothing. Somrak nearly crashes into it. He shifts Saira and slaps a hand against it, giving the wall a jolt of mana and sending the mental command for it to open.

Nothing.

Somrak realizes how terrified he is. He is never frightened in battle. Never! It is only in repose, after or before, or captured or otherwise unable to fight, that he feels fear. Battle? He’s too busy fighting to be afraid. And usually too busy laughing.

But not now. Now he is afraid that Sky and Dion and Saira and…Alma, afraid that they will all end up in Hell. That he’s led them to this. And he must admit that he is nearly paralyzed with fear at the thought of himself in Hell. Eternity of endless torture, ever-renewed, never numbed to it, always and ever screaming for mercy, in utter abjection. No dignity, no hope, no love. With every thought he feels more beaten down. Is this the approaching devil infecting his mind with despair? Or is he simply falling prey to his own cowardice at last?

With a thud, Margrave’s body falls to the floor. Sky has laid down Alma and Dion, carefully, and roughly dumped Margrave. He jerks his head at the corpse, then holds out a hand toward the door. It takes Somrak a moment of wondering why Sky isn’t speaking to catch his meaning. Somrak lays down Saira, grabs Margrave’s hand, and places it against the portal wall. He channels mana through it.

And nothing happens. The portal makes not the slightest hint of appearing.

Somrak feels his guts clench. He does what he has been avoiding: he turns to look behind them. He nearly vomits at the sight. The entire pocket universe, Margrave’s little sanctum, has been flayed open. It looks like exploded strips of flesh, gangrenous and full of tumors, undulating in some cosmic wind. The only spot of stability is where they stand now. The rest is claimed by Hell.

And beyond it? Only a vague shape in the darkness, something squatting, waiting to spring, something larger than any living creature Somrak has ever seen. That he cannot see it clearly is a mercy, the final mercy. For he knows that when it does show itself, all is over. All happiness, that is, all joy.

Once again, kneeling, he tries to wake Dion, shaking him in desperation. Still nothing, the Sergeant knocked cold by his earlier efforts. Not even a flicker of an eyelid.

Somrak stands and readies Alma’s sword. He will strike at it. He tells himself this, though he is not sure he believes it. But he cannot look at it. Instead he looks down, at Alma’s face. He will take that with him, into Hell. He will cling to that memory for as long as he can.

Beside him, Sky roars defiance. He spreads arms and wings wide. In one hand he holds the vertebral whip, the soul-shredding godbound weapon that was used to torture him and Somrak and Dion. He recognizes the feel of it, that of a god’s soul torn from its body and forced to commit evils. Unending pain, a miniature of Hell, driving the soul insane quickly.

In the other hand, Sky holds Margrave’s limp, broken, ragdoll body by one leg. He draws his arm back and hurls it at the devil, sending it spinning, cartwheeling at its master. Sky’s roar this time is of rage, hate, and unending refusal to submit. Somrak takes heart. At least he and Sky, partners for so long, are together at the end. But the guilt at having brought the others to this nearly consumes the fire god.

This is worse than death. All of them will find their souls in Hell. All of them will suffer, forever. But perhaps their souls can escape to the Wheel if their bodies die now. Somrak holds the sword, pointed toward Alma’s breast. Freed of her flesh, can Alma lead Dion’s and Saira’s souls to safety? Can he kill her, then Dion, in time?

And then two large, hard hands grab him from behind by the shoulders and pull him through the portal. Somrak flies through the air and lands on the floor of the basement in Little Falls, the sword clanging away into darkness, the world blessedly normal, the Insula, home, a place where gods belong. The air is knocked out of him, but tears of relief spring to his eyes.

As he pushes himself up onto his elbows, he sees other figures in the dark room. “Give her to me!” cries a voice more suited to songs of life and love than to fear, and yes, he did recognize it, for there is Lyria, Alma’s mother, cradling her daughter. Then the hulking shape that must have pulled Somrak through is now tossing Gwydion toward Fencer, who quickly sets him down.

And now the big one – ah, it must be Melinor, a god Somrak has heard about and has even seen striding a battlefield more than once, harvesting those slain in combat – Melinor is struggling, pulling a shape too big to fit easily through the human-sized portal. And yet, with a crack of bone, the god manages, hurling Sky behind him with a twist of his hips, forcing Somrak to roll out of the way to avoid being crushed. Sky falls heavily against a wall, one wing limp, and the devil starts to his feet, snarling at Alma’s brother.

“You two can solve your differences later!” Fencer snaps. “All right, girl, seal that portal!”

Somrak sees Trocia then, the formerly unconscious vessel for Alma’s soul, doing her best to stay unnoticed as long as possible. Pale, traumatized, she moves to obey.

“Wait!” Somrak cries. He springs to his feet and dashes for the portal, pushing past the girl. Fencer’s objection is cut off as he pushes his head and one arm through. His hand grasps Saira’s ankle, and he looks –

Oh, he shouldn’t have looked.

That face. That… He has seen Sky in his devil form. He has fought numerous demons. Undead. Other horrors, too many to count. He has seen the worst that anyone with sufficient lust for power and too little empathy can do to fellow creatures, things he feels ashamed even to know about.

All that is nothing compared to this, the face of a true Prince of Hell.

It is the end of all hope. It is the death of the heart.

And then he is pulled back through. And with him, hand locked on her ankle, comes Saira.

“NOW!” cries Fencer. Somrak could swear she has fear in her voice.

She should.

Trocia places her palms on the portal. It bulges. Something is pushing from the other side. But then it is gone. It disappears. But could it be reactivated from the other side?

Sky snarls again, leaning forward, muscles bunching. Is he preparing to launch himself at Melinor, or at the surface through which the more powerful devil can come? Somrak slaps Sky’s shoulder, trying to bring him to his senses.

Melinor ignores Sky. He brushes the girl aside and places his fingertips on the wall. It turns to dust in a great circle, dust that slides to the floor in a soft avalanche. With the destruction of the surface it was created on, the portal is forever gone.

Somrak pulls Saira to him. He tries to drive away memory of that face, and indeed it fades like a nightmare. Though it will return, he knows, in the dark, in sleep. He will not escape it so easily.

But for now he touches Saira’s slack face. Her skin is cold. He knows death.

A boot beside his face. He looks up. Fencer, glaring down at him.

“Now give me a good reason to let you live,” she growls.

Ch6.91 Trust

Sky watches, unable to act. He roared when Somrak tried to choke Alma. No, not Alma. Alma’s body. He roared then, and again when Somrak was whipped.

But more than that he cannot compel himself to do. He is Nua’s. He has given himself over to her. She has broken and bound him.

Hasn’t she?

His talons scrape against the concrete floor, dust erupting. Margrave is here, clapping. The Lieutenant. Nekh’s right hand. Such a small man. Margrave and Nua, in the same room. If he could act, Sky could kill them both. He is not even chained.

But Nua is in Alma’s body. And Nua’s body – no, Nua has no body. Trocia’s body is lying on the gurney. And is Alma in there? He cannot kill her, in case Alma is in there.

He cannot kill Trocia anyway. Because he cannot do anything without Nua’s say? No… Because he has hurt Trocia. Nua has hurt her, so much. And because Nua made him, he has hurt her. She forced him – Nua forced him…

The shame makes him fight the urge to vomit. Even in this form, with its devil’s brain and body, what he did to poor Trocia makes him want to die.

Nua allowed Trocia to regain control of her body, just for a moment. While Sky was thrusting away, holding her down as Nua had commanded him, Nua let Trocia speak, beg, scream. She struggled. She wept.

And she told Sky that she forgave him.

He broke then. He shattered. He forgot any possibility but submission to Nua’s rule. Because anything else was just too painful to accept.

And so now, Sky does not move. He does not act.

Nua uses Alma’s face to grin. She produces two curved daggers, made of an enamelled, organic material. Sky recognizes them. The gift from Somrak to Alma, for Year’s End. “I found these fun little toys too,” she says to Margrave, her master. “The males could go in them, since they want to stay with their little friend so much.” She turns her beautiful face, marred by the twisted, insane evil that hides within the perfect divine flesh, and looks at Gwydion and Somrak, looking their hanging, bleeding bodies up and down as if appraising meat. “Make a nice matching set.”

Margrave takes one of the daggers, considering. “Dragon’s tooth. These would make deadly weapons, with these gods’ souls in them.” He looks at the captives. “What do you think, Sergeants? An eternity as a weapon, slaying gods, or an eternity in Hell? Which is more appealing?”

Croaking, weak, Somrak sneers. “Come one step closer and let me show you what I think, Tragas scum…”

Nua lashes out with the vertebral whip, all that remains of Little Falls’ resident Death Goddess. It rips across Somrak’s bare chest again, opening a new, ragged wound, making a lopsided bloody X across his torso. Having endured that whip and its soul-scoring damage himself, Sky cringes in on himself, reliving that pain through Somrak’s agonized howl. “That was not very polite of you,” Nua purrs. “But that sharp tongue will surely give a good edge to any blade.”

She spins on her toe and sways over to the gurney. Sky is dismayed at how quickly she has taken to Alma’s body. Many species of possessor-demons exist in the legions of Hell, and most of them cannot so quickly master a new body. Somehow Nua has gone from Trocia’s awkward mortal form to Alma’s taller divine one without missing a beat. No stumbling, no hesitation. She seems ready to stay in there for an eternity.

He remembers, when the others fell unconscious, before Gwydion and Somrak were disarmed, all their clothing but their pants stripped off, chained by the wrists and raised off the floor, how Alma struggled, screamed, as she was attacked by something he could not see. But Nua, in Trocia’s body then, gloated at how the shredded, violated souls were weakening Alma. She had had her assistants chain Trocia’s body down, and Alma’s as well, and then effected the soul transfer. All while Sky was frozen, helpless.

This all could, after all, have been another trick.

They stripped Saira, too, divesting her of her many blades and nearly all her clothes, leaving her in nothing but her leather pants and a pair of handcuffs. Mortal that she is, they didn’t bother to hang her up, just leaving her behind the others.

Nua picks up Alma’s sword, sighting along the length of the blade, and rests the tip on Trocia’s chest. “Shall I start?”

Margrave sighs in impatience. “You know that your mind must be calm for this.”

Nua grins, that seductive but utterly mad grin that blossoms on her face so easily, that makes Alma look hateful and diseased. “What do you suggest to calm me…master?”

The absurd sexual charge in her voice prompts only a withering glare. “Why don’t you try taking a deep breath and counting down from ten?” Margrave’s contempt would whip her bloody if it could take physical form.

Coughing laughter that ends on a gurgle and expectoration of thick blood. “You two make such a great couple!” Somrak’s teeth are crimson and ivory as he smiles at them like a predator ready to bite at its first chance.

Nua sets down the sword beside Trocia’s body. She turns, tossing her pure-white hair, and takes a few steps to Somrak, careful not to approach close enough that he can attack her again. Her tone is frighteningly sweet, all the more disturbing for being Alma’s voice. “You know, hurting you would be sure to calm me down but…if I damage your soul too much it’ll become useless.” She smiles. “Tell you what, I’ll hit your friend instead, this time.” Somrak’s wordless shout is drowned out by Gwydion’s scream as a mere flick of Nua’s wrist sends the sinuous living whip cutting through Dion’s flesh, opening a wound along his side and tearing again at his soul. The whip seems to take pleasure in its enslavement, full of mad hatred.

“And I will lash him again, any time you open that dirty little mouth to speak,” Nua adds before she turns away.

Somrak glares at her, his compact muscles straining against the chains, so obviously wanting to burn her, but keeping his jaw clenched shut.

As she takes position next to Trocia’s body again, Nua smiles, deranged, at Margrave. “I’m calm now.”

The sleeping body stirs. Trocia’s mouth opens and struggles to make a sound, like someone who has endured a stroke and is relearning to use her body. “Sssss… Sssssss…”

Margrave paces around the gurney, his hands clasped behind him, holding his silver-headed cane horizontally. His clothes are so consummate, so carefully chosen to create the perfect ensemble. The tailored wool suit, charcoal grey, the wine-colored silk tie, trinity-knotted, the soft-cotton white shirt. He rounds the table, not far from Gwydion and Somrak. “Yes, we’ll have things all set to right soon enough. That’ll show you not to open boxes from demons, silly girl,” he murmurs to Trocia.

Nua lifts the sword again and begins to whisper in a language that will leave her throat raw for days. It is one of the numerous languages of Hell, one of those that has never been used for conversation. It is purely a language of spellcasting, one that taps right into the underlying grammar of Creation itself, but one of an earlier Reality, with a vocabulary more alien and evil.

The edges of the sword begin to glow with a black light. A similar light begins to flicker along the edges of Trocia’s body, stabbing into it, reaching deep, hooking and drawing out a soul. Trocia stirs, arching her back, writhing against the chains that bind her. But the voice that issues from her mouth has a familiar timbre.

“Sssssskyyy! Hhhhelllp!!” It is weak, but Sky can hear Alma in it, despite the mortal’s throat and mouth. Then she screams, almost roars.

And then a great many things happen at once.

Margrave lurches upright, leaning back, his face twisted into extreme annoyance, silently asking, ‘What now?’ as he releases his cane and claws at his throat. Sky sees what has appeared around it: a short length of chain, attached to the handcuffs around Saira’s wrists. She is behind him, her hair wild, a knee dug into his back. Sky can see half of her face, and the fury written there could frighten a god.

“I finally have you, you son of a bitch! You’re DEAD!” Saira’s voice rings off the stone walls.

Margrave’s perfectly tailored suit begins to shiver, awaken, and transform. The necktie expands, becoming scaly and clawed, pushing under the chains to serve as a cushion. His jacket flies open like a pair of stunted wings, then curves, sprouting long, back-curved spikes, impaling Saira’s vulnerable body in several places. His pants slither off his legs, turning into two centipedes, their sharp-tipped legs latching onto Saira’s leather-clad ones, their mandibles biting deep.

Saira screams her pain but in her determination and hatred she does not let go of Margrave as the demons attack her, merely shifting the chain to get it past his reptilian protector and get it around his bare throat again.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

The pain is immense, indescribable, expanding, contracting. Consuming. There is a whole universe of it. Alma’s whole universe is made of pain. Arms of darkness reach into her and pull her into…something. Something that is not her. A lifeless body, cold and motionless. Restraining. A prison of senselessness. She tried. She tried to call for help. But it is too late.

She can feel it as the invisible force sucks her out of Trocia’s unresisting form and drags her, stretching her soul almost to the point of breaking, into her new prison.

Her own sword.

Discorporate, without a solid hold on Trocia’s body as it is not her own, Alma tries to fight it, resisting in any way she can, clutching at what little she can grab of Trocia’s flesh in the most desperate of attempts to avoid this binding. And the more she resists, the more she is stretched to infinity, the more her soul is frayed, strands of it torn and flailing free. She wants to scream. Tries to scream. But she cannot. She calls on her powers but for the strength they give, she needs to remain whole. And she tries to escape to the Wheel but the pain is maddening. The gateway remains closed to her. She calls, whimpers, begs in thought to the Shan’doír, asking their help. Their protection.

But no one comes.

The binding strengthens. Her hold falters. No! No! No!

Images of her family, of her children, of her friends, of Gwydion fill her conscience. The soul is shaped by memories. Of one’s body, of one’s life, of one’s emotions. And there is pain…so much grief in hers. So much regret. And there was so much hope…

Loss. Failure. She will fail them all. The Bunnies for never again returning to them. Her friends for becoming an instrument of their doom. Sky…for not saving him. Sky… Tortured into submission, forced to rape a young girl, to abandon all hope, even his godly shape.

I am so sorry, Sky…

As her powers waver, as the maddening agony swarms and overwhelms her, she finally screams, a single memory filling her like the demented spark of salvation. The Vow…

The Vow…

She lets go, drawing what is left of her powers around her, projecting them like an explosion. All of her thinking that one thought, calling that one call.

Sky! Azzageddi! Remember your vow….

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

Is it a trick? Is it Nua, trying to get Sky to reveal himself as a traitor? Sky bunches his shoulders. Trocia, with Alma inside. Somrak and Gwydion, bloodied but struggling uselessly now to get free of their chains. Margrave is being strangled, but Saira is hurt, hurt so badly – I must…I must ACT! he rages within his own mind, jaws clenched.

As Saira screams in pain and rage, Nua proceeds with the magic, grinning in glee. She seems all too happy to let the assassin kill Margrave if she is able. Trocia’s back arches as her body starts to glow, the chains pressing into her flesh, the sheer power of Alma’s divine soul making it visible even to Sky, with his lack of specialized senses. Suddenly Trocia’s body collapses and a ball of light hovers in the air, sprouting tendrils that move toward the sword as if they were being sucked into it. But the tendrils stop halfway there, dangerously close but somehow seeming to resist the call of the metal. The air feels electrified, alive with soundless screams. The mind more than the ears registers unspeakable pain and the strained words,

Sky! Azzageddi! Remember your vow…

The words penetrate past Sky’s paralyzed surface, down into the hidden recesses where he has kept a secret even from himself: that he is not bound, not entirely broken. He has endured so much, thought his friends tortured to death, been forced to commit unspeakable acts, been blinded in one eye, had his tongue cut out, had his bones broken and his very soul whipped again and again, but all along he has kept one tiny spark of rebellion ready for the right moment. Hidden behind a stone, inside a dream, so deep even he could not see it.

The pieces are in place. He is free to move. Margrave and Nua are both here, unmindful of him. The time is here, right now.

There is a crash that shakes the entire chamber as Sky’s shoulders slam into the ceiling as he rises. His wings spread to cover half the room, shadow within them. His arms are spread wide, talons ready to grasp, his tail lashing, upsetting a cart of restraints and torture instruments and the stripped-away clothes and equipment of the captives. There are a surprising number of knives and swords there.

He roars.

The roars before were shocking, stunning, sudden attempts to stop Somrak from killing Alma’s body, or to try to stop the torture. This is something else entirely. The bones and organs of everyone in the room vibrate with this basso-profundo bellow. The stones of the walls and ceiling release dust and mortar, and begin to shake free, falling here and there. It goes on and on, making everyone cringe, panicking the demons that swarm around Saira and Margrave, making Nua drop the sword.

Then it becomes even louder, and deeper. Nearly beyond endurance. And that is when every link of every chain in the room pops, shattering. Tuma-Sukai, Breaker of Chains, lives up to his name. Even the enchanted, sphere-suppressing chains holding Somrak and Dion cannot withstand him. Even the metaphorical chains that bind the demons into Margrave’s service cannot survive.

And the half-forged binding that would have turned Alma into a living sword is swept away like a cobweb before a gale. Alma’s soul, unnaturally outside of any body, flies instantly to its natural home, and her body staggers as the alien presence within loses control, for Nua’s bonding of Alma’s body has been broken as well.

All happening at once…

Somrak falls to the floor as the chains give way, but having seen Sky do this before he recovers quickly and is launching himself at Margrave, only to smack right into a screaming unbound demon, all thrashing arachnoid limbs and spikes and leathery wings. It shrieks and attacks him, but Somrak grapples, and white flames hot enough to melt steel are bursting out from deep within it. In moments, its body is nothing but ash, and whatever soul it has is on its way back to Hell.

The demons are scattering, released from their slavery. One of the centipedes folds in on itself and disappears, while the other continues attacking Saira, biting her thigh and injecting venom as she screams and pounds at it with her fist.

The chains binding her wrists now broken, Saira rips the centipede demon from her rapidly swelling leg and hurls it away. She seizes the closest thing at hand, the fallen bone-whip, twisting it around Margrave’s throat and using it as a strangling cord, pressing her last chance at revenge. Margrave’s face turns purple, a wheezing gurgle issuing from his wide-open mouth, and a soft but terrible buckling sound as his trachea collapses.

Saira, of course, knows the feel of a throat going. She releases him, falling back into Somrak’s arms, as Margrave falls forward onto one palm, still trying to pull the whip free with the other, his eyes bugging out, a look of astonishment on his purple-black face.

Beside Somrak and Saira, Dion has fallen to the floor in a heap. He shakes his head to clear it, ears ringing and stunned by Sky’s roar. He focuses on Nua, on Alma, staggering. Alma’s soul, drawn toward the sword, snaps back into her true body as if pulled by a stretched length of rubber.

A golden aura filled with serpentine, draconic forms, begins to take shape around Dion’s head.

All this Sky witnesses as his roar falls silent. He has time to think, What is this? And then to answer himself: Hammer of Devils!

Gwydion launches himself against Nua in Alma’s body, tackling her against the makeshift altar where Trocia’s body lies and making her cry out in surprise and pain. The necromancer turns just in time to bury her nails deep in the muscle of his neck.

Sky moves, easily reaching across Trocia’s still body to grasp Nua’s forearm with a huge clawed hand, pulling her off Dion roughly, making her rip five tracks of flesh off Dion’s neck. Sky pushes in between them, his long wolfish face near hers, growling.

To Dion it must seem as if Sky intends to bite her head off. To Dion, he must seem to be nothing but a devil, the greatest of enemies. For Dion, Sky can sense, is indeed the Hammer of Devils. How this can be, what kind of change must have been wrought, Sky cannot imagine now. All he knows is that the golden light in Dion’s eyes, blindingly bright, holds only hatred for Sky’s horrid countenance: a long lupine muzzle full of fangs, one eye blinded and scarred, heavy ram-like horns, skin the red-black of congealed blood, the color derived from constantly moving scripts of blasphemy.

For Dion, his friend, instinct takes over, exiling logic to the darkness of endless war. Every pulse of energy in Dion’s body surges in outrage and natural hatred for the devil in front of him, demanding it be exterminated, not just sent back to Hell. Amid the golden glow, blackness pours from his pupils and up through the furrows of green and brown pigment in the irises, to draw curly, spiky sigils with edges made sharper from the light around them. Sky is captivated, for he can read them. They are the language that was once shared by both Heaven and Hell. They are beyond holy, beyond profane. He feels a momentary urge to fall to his knees in willing, joyful submission.

The power rising within Gwydion, pouring through the gateways opening deep in his divine sphere, are so similar to Sky’s own powers of Hellish origin that he recognizes the approach of his own potential demise. Dion pulls his arm back, wrapped and shielded in light that courses with patterns of scaly, vicious, implacable, sinuous dragons. Gwydion opens his mouth and challenges Sky with a roar of his own.

And he strikes the devil, making Sky hunch with pain. Sky keens like a wounded orca, dropping Nua, or perhaps Alma, and staggers back one step, his hoof stomping the ground hard enough to make the gurney bounce, so that Trocia’s body falls to the floor.

But Sky recovers, surprisingly agile, raising a claw which must, to Dion, be aimed at the god’s head – instead snatching the remaining centipede demon out of the air as it leaps from where Saira threw it, ready to latch onto and bite and tear and envenom anything in its path.

Sky brings the writhing creature to his mouth, fixing Dion’s golden-glowing eyes with his own single blue-green one, and bites down, tearing the arthropod’s head off with his teeth. Sky feels the sting of its venom wash over his mouth, burning the stump of his tongue, but he ignores that. He stares into Gwydion’s eyes as gore drips from his muzzle.

The shock on Gwydion’s face seems to revive reason. He stares at Sky for two, three breaths, then a cry makes him turn to his right, where Alma-or-Nua is flailing and staggering, one of the dragon-tooth daggers in her hand, stabbing herself in her own thigh.

It is not the first wound. She must have been stabbing herself while the two of them – once, in a sense, rivals for her affection, though each desiring a different kind of affection from her – were facing off. Sky interposes his huge hand between the weapon and her vulnerable body. The dagger stabs deep, chipping a metacarpal bone, making him grunt. He twists his hand, pulling the blade from her grasp, then lets her fall into Gwydion’s arms. Sky leaves the dagger impaled in him as he looks around for other enemies.

And he has no trouble finding them. Clawing their way out of the walls and floor and ceiling, demons are arriving by the dozen. Some are multijointed and chitinous, some are furred and covered in seeping wounds. Some are partly mechanical; some are partly immaterial. All are foul, of an attunement opposed to anything natural to the Insula.

Sky looks at Margrave. The sorcerer, asphyxiating from his collapsed throat, is tracing sigils in his own blood on the floor. He is summoning demons randomly, unbound, as dangerous to himself as to anyone else in the room. He is drawing upon his own ebbing life energy to do so. Caring nothing for his own safety, he only hopes to bring down his killers with him.

Sky raises a fist and brings it down on Margrave’s back in a hammerblow. Ribs crack, and with them Margrave’s spine. The summoner collapses entirely and becomes still. Then Sky turns to fight.

And he sees a projectile made of pure mana shoot out from Gwydion’s hand to hit a demon that is leaping for him and Alma, burning a hole in it. It falls back and strives but fails to get up, contorting as the hole in its belly grows larger and larger until the demon shrieks one last time before it is completely consumed. Dion stares at his hand in amazement, as if wondering how he did that, the turns toward the other demons in the room. The berserker rage that he nearly unleashed on Sky, Dion now allows it to flow free upon the other demons, magic moving through him unbidden.

All around the room, the demons shriek in pain and panic, staggering and clutching at their heads, their chests, at whatever hides their core, buckling and falling to the floor. They scream until the world seems like it will break from the sheer intensity of it. And suddenly, they explode, from the inside out, disintegrating as their flesh is shot across the room.

Even Sky feels it. He is surprised, though, by how little he feels it. The demons are torn apart, but within his guts is a force trying to do the same to him, a force easily resisted though intensely uncomfortable.

The world goes quiet. Dion breathes in the silence and then his knees buckle. As he drops Alma, as he falls to the floor, a broad, taloned hand catches them and lowers them gently.

Ch6.89 Trust

“Shut up,” Dion mumbles as his eyes open slowly, heavy with the weight of his exhaustion. Of his grief. Of his regret and loneliness.

He looks down, expecting to find dark floor covered in blood, covered in muck. Expecting the empty half-light of Hell. The corpses of his beloved family around him, in his arms. But he finds none of that. The floor here is grey. Just plain, stone grey. The light is the flickering yellow of torches. No corpses to hold. No hands to hold them with.

No free hands, that is.

He tries to move his arms and legs only to find himself immobile, to hear the rattle of the chains that hold him, hanging by the wrists, feet hovering a hand’s breadth above the floor.

Oh Fates…what now?

He does not raises his head. He is so tired. And what reason would he have to expect anything? To fear anything? His reasons to live are gone, slaughtered because of his obsessive search for his past, for his parents. A need he did not even know he had until the mere knowledge of a couple of names awakened it. Until the gift of such measly things offered a path and a hope to his origins. To his search of himself. A gift from his lover’s lips…

From the one who brought to him the family that accepted him and loved him when he believed family was not something he desired or deserved. Loving friends, supporting and kind. Ready to dive with him into Hell to save people they knew nothing about. That he knows nothing about.

And now they are gone…all gone. And he is nothing again.

Weakling! We are not made for weakness

That voice again, inside him. The one of his sphere. He wonders for a moment if all gods hear something similar coming from their core.

Shut up. I am tired. My friends are gone.

Lies! Lies! Listen! See!

With great effort, he obeys. His head feels too heavy to raise but he listens. The dripping of water somewhere behind him. Soft steps on the floor, back and forth. Something dragging on the stone. A dry, solid sound. The rumbling, fitful aspiration of difficult breathing. Of a large something’s difficult breathing. A feeling of coolness to his chest and arms, and of dampness to his feet. His jacket and shirt are gone and so are his boots. The familiar weight of his sword gone from his left hip.

We are trapped inside

Inside what?

 

Ourselves

Yes. True. He feels his mana’s flow limited to his own body, trapped there. The chains holding him were made for gods. Enchanted. In this state, he is no more powerful than a mortal. He sighs. Just a short, deep exhalation, all he has the strength to make. A prisoner of Hell. How fitting.

He deserves it for his sins.

No! Listen!

The steps have paused. They start again, now walking his way. He raises his head slowly, though his interest in what comes next is very little.

And his eyes widen at the sight. His chest swells with relief. With sheer joy. A nightmare. It must have been. All a nightmare. Or this is the dream. For here is Alma, alive and well, walking toward him, smiling softly. Seeing her returns his hope, stirs his memories. No, they weren’t in Hell. They did not go out looking for Dion’s parents. And they did not bring the Bunnies with them. No, they brought Saira and Somrak. And they were looking for Sky.

He turns his head to see the mortal lying unconscious on the floor beside him, her hands bound behind her back. Somrak is kneeling on the floor a couple of steps away, wrists shackled with mana-suppressing chains, held high above his head, which hangs low. Breathing. Probably unconscious as well.

“Sweetheart!” Alma calls to him as she stands now before him, at arm’s reach. “Did the demons hurt you?”

“Alma… Oh Alma, I’m so relieved,” he breathes before the thought strikes him that she cannot possibly know about his dream. “I thought–”

STOP!

What? No! She’s alive! She’s alive…

Not ours

What…?

Not ours. Not the same. Look. Listen

He looks at Alma, feeling his heart sink even as his mind struggles to make sense of what he sees. This is Alma. It is. But… It’s not. The soft smile curling her lips is mocking, not loving. Not relieved at the sight of him awake. Her eyes are full of the sharp wit he is used to but the light of their swirling colors is somehow duller than normal. In fact, the colors don’t swirl at all. They are mere blotches.

“Alma…?” he asks, wondering what exactly is going on. “What happened? Why are we chained?”

And why are you free?

Now standing very close to him, so close that he can feel her scent in his nostrils, she caresses his chest, curling against him. “We were attacked. They locked us in here with that…thing.” She nearly spits the last word as she turns a little and points to a far corner. “You were all knocked out and I… He watches us. We can’t leave for as long as he watches.”

Her voice is childlike, so pleading. He feels the urge to hold her even as he thinks how strange it sounds, how alien it sounds coming from Alma’s lips. And her scent…it feels stale, lacking the gentle vibrancy of her life. Could it be? Are his senses telling him she is not real? Or is he just imagining these things?

He looks at the hand with which she points to the corner, to see her holding a…whip? One made of black-leather-covered vertebrae. In the corner – his eyes open more fully as he sees a devil, crouched but huge, watching him with its glowing blue-green eyes. It is partially cloaked in darkness, but what he can see is horrifying, a sight that triggers again the memories of his parents being dragged away from him.

Enemy! Scum!

He wants nothing more than to attack the creature, destroy it, send it back to Hell, but the chains holding him prevent his powers from activating, prevent his body from any useful movement even as his muscles tense and instinctively try to lunge at the thing.

And then something in it, something in its resigned crouch, in the way the eerie light of its eyes dims at the sight of him, rings familiar. Very familiar.

Sky.

“Sky,” Dion breathes, swallowing the innate hatred and disgust he feels to even see in the creature the soul of his friend. “Isn’t that Sky?”

“They made a soul bomb go off before we came in,” Alma goes on, completely oblivious to his question. “So many souls screaming for help. It was painful.”

She wraps her arms around him, lays her head against his chest, stroking his skin with her cheek. “I screamed but you didn’t help me. No one helped me. It felt like it would last forever. Like I was going to die. I was so alone…”

She straightens a little, looks up at his face, their similar heights offset by the fact that he is hanging from the ceiling. With a sudden movement, like a snake’s head thrusting forward for a kill, she kisses him. And though he kisses her back, hoping against his instincts that she is merely confused by the attack or damaged somehow by the shattered souls she mentioned, his dread only rises, heavy and cold in his stomach. For kissing her is like kissing a stranger, the movements of their lips completely out of their familiar, pleasant rhythm, her tongue that should move like silk in a breeze thrust into his mouth like a battle ram.

Not ours

No…not ours.

But then, where is she? His whole body stiffens at the dawning realization his findings imply. The images from before might have been a nightmare but this is no better. He is bound and so are the others. And Alma…

Her beautiful face looks at him with an evil grin, her body pulled away from the intimate touch at the notice of his tense frame. That lovely face, distorted by the taint of the dark soul behind it. Nua. “Have you found out, yet? Or should I kiss you again, sweetheart?”

Dion’s own face contorts in rage. “Whoever you are, whatever you are, get out of her!”

He lunges forward but the force of the movement is lost without a floor under his feet to use for support. To gather momentum. He merely dangles forward and back, struggling against his chains. Making them rattle.

Nua snorts at him. “Why? Would you rather watch her body collapse like the empty shell it is?” She touches Alma’s chest with Alma’s hand, looking down at her black-clad bosom and turning this way and that as if trying on a new outfit. “She’s not in here anymore. I snatched this delightful piece of flesh while she was screaming in pain and going mad at being attacked by a half dozen shredded souls. Not even a sample of what I went through in Hell but it’s a start.”

“Where is she?” he demands, straining against the chains. “WHERE IS SHE?! What did you do with her?!”

GIVE HER BACK!

“Oh, she’s somewhere safe, for now. I’ll have so much fun with this body! I’ll make it my new plaything.” Nua sounds like a child given a new pet. She runs Alma’s hands all over her body, never releasing the whip, rubbing the blackened thing against her skin with erotic intent. Dion has to force himself not to look away. “Show it pleasure and pain and corrupt it until it can’t hold me anymore. And the best thing is, I can ride it right into the heart of her hateful, despicable little clan and destroy them from the inside.” She glances toward the corner where Sky’s devilish, silent form crouches. “Maybe I’ll give it to my pet to play with for a night. I know he likes her…” She moves closer to Dion again, cupping his cheek in Alma’s palm. “But you like her more, don’t you?”

Dion cannot help but glance past her at Sky, his gut tied in a knot with the horror Nua is suggesting. He remembers the conversation he had with Alma, his Alma, in the pool of her sanctum about the love spell that nearly… She had been so uncomfortable with the mere prospect of laying with Sky. He swallows though his throat feels dry with terror and cringes away from Nua’s words, seeing Sky cringe as well in his corner. Yes, he is sure now that it’s Sky.

“Do you tell her you love her when she slips into your bed at night?” Nua goes on, her voice smooth and poisonous. “Her and all her precious little Bunnies? Do you lie to her as she squirms under you? Tell her she is the love of your life as you thrust into her?”

“I don’t lie to her,” Dion growls. “I never lied to her. I never told her–”

I love her.

His voice trails off, his eyes widening as he suddenly becomes aware of that one truth. In all this time, through the good and the bad, the fear of losing her, the joy of holding her, he has never spoken those words to Alma. Never. For so many reasons… It was her, always her to speak of love. To call him her love. And he never told her – not in those words at least – of his love. Of how his heart breaks now at the thought of her gone.

“Of course you lie,” Nua replies sweetly. “All men lie to get what they want. And we both know what they really want.”

“Listen to me,” he says, desperate for even the smallest shred of hope that Alma is still somewhere she can be reached. “Your plan will never work. They’ll detect you in a second. The Death Clan will have you out of her body and what they will do to you… Your best bet is get back in your own body and run.”

Nua waves him off. “Oh, I know they could detect my soul. And that’s why I’m bringing hers along. In this.” She turns back and walks to a far corner of the room, opposite to where Sky is crouching. The squeaking of rickety wheels against the stone floor announces the approach of an old metal gurney being pushed to the center of the room by the necromancer in Alma’s body. On the gurney, a young girl lies unconscious, bound in chains just like Dion’s, her black hair splayed, and close-fitting, skin-revealing black clothing in a mess. He vaguely remembers seeing her in the room just before he collapsed into the nightmare. And on top of the girl, a sword in its sheath. Nua picks it up and brings it closer to Dion, drawing it in a mad pleasure at the soft sound it makes as it leaves the scabbard, at the way the light of the torches reflects off the silver blade engraved with simple words in the language of Death.

On the way

Alma’s sword.

“It’s a beautiful little thing, isn’t it?” Nua asks, her voice more revolting for being Alma’s. “Such a pretty vessel for your girlfriend’s soul. Oh, she will go mad from the pain of being bound to an object but she won’t have to endure it too long until I get all my soul bombs placed and armed. Unless…” She grins and grabs the sword around the sharp blade, barely reacting as it cuts into the skin, a shy trickle of blood sliding slowly down the blade. “I grow attached to her. She seems easy to grow attached to, wouldn’t you say?”

Kill it! KILL IT!

A soul bound to an item– No, no, the simple process of attempting it requires pain beyond description. Not a single account of successful binding exists where the soul was anywhere near recoverable after reversing the process. And god’s souls are so much more powerful than mortal souls, so much more rebellious against such things. How could a god be trapped in something so lifeless as a simple weapon? But if Alma is bound she’d be no better than the God Striker, maddened by pain and anger. To hold her in his hands but never again in his arms…

KILL IT! We want her back!

I can’t kill it! I can barely move.

And even if he could attack, that is Alma’s body and she is bound to be somewhere in it, still. Locked away. Trapped, maybe. Or dormant, stuck in a dream like he was. He can’t destroy her vessel.

We want her back

We do.

So very much. “You can’t bind gods’ souls to objects,” he tells Nua, though the conviction in his voice falters even to his own ears. “Only demons’ souls, or elementals–”

Nua simply snorts. How he hates that snort. “What makes you think you’re so special, god-boy? Allow me to demonstrate.” She raises the whip she is holding, making it sway with a movement of her wrist. “This one was a death goddess too. If I whip you with it, I can guarantee it’ll leave a mark.”

If he could only wake her up, get her to manifest somehow and take control of this body. If only…

“She will never allow you to harm me or any of her loved ones,” Dion says. “You may have caught her off-guard with the bomb but that is her body and she is much more powerful than you can ever be! So whip me! Go ahead! She’ll stop you before you even raise your arm!”

She harrumphs, lips curling in a sneer. “Do you really think she could stand in my way after all I learned in Hell for two hundred years of torture and hopelessness? With all I knew even before she was born? A weakling half-something goddess who can’t even deal with a tiny soul bomb and eight blown-up humans?”

“You know nothing of her strength!” he roars. “You know nothing of her!”

KILL IT!

Nua smiles, twirling the whip with a movement of her wrist. “I know one thing about her. I told you,” she raises her arm, “she’s not in here anymore!”

The whip comes down and lashes at Dion, striking him across the chest, making him shriek with a pain unlike any he has ever felt before. The leather-covered bones bite deep into his bare skin, into the muscle, but that is nothing. The soul trapped in the weapon goes straight for his soul. He feels it tear at his essence, split through the first layers of his being, making him forget for a moment who or even what he is. Light fades from his eyes for an instant, sounds become dull and faraway. All there is is pain. Sharp, complete, all-consuming pain.

And in the aftertaste of it, in the wake of the roars and recoiling of his sphere, heartbreaking grief. There is only pleasure in Nua’s eyes, only wild glee at his suffering. No confusion, no shaking of her whip hand to indicate an inner struggle. And no sign of Alma. Where is she? Where is Nua keeping her if she truly plans on binding his beloved to her own sword?

Nua laughs.

As his divine body immediately starts to heal the physical wounds, for no shackles entirely suppress such a basic function of godhood, Dion is stunned by pain and despair.

Suddenly, there is a rattling of chains. Unnoticed by Nua in her sadistic mirth, Somrak yanks himself up using his chains for support, and lashes out with one of his legs. In her distraction and eagerness to have the best angle to strike Dion, she moved too close to the fire god and Somrak’s leg swiftly catches her across the neck, the other catching her behind, trapping her in a scissorhold. Choking her.

Dion watches, numb, as Somrak tightens his grip, face contorted in grim determination, stealing the air from Nua’s lungs as he growls out. “Tragas!”

The word means nothing to Dion and he doesn’t even call out to Somrak as Nua flails, trying to fight him, nails digging at the fire god’s thighs. And then she stops fighting altogether, the horrible smile returns to her lips.

And she laughs again, wheezing amidst laughter and poisonous words, “Oh yes! Yes! Hurt this body! Hurt it until she has nothing to return to! Destroy your friend.”

From his corner, Sky roars, a loud, earth-shaking cry. It stuns Somrak just long enough to allow Nua to slip free of his hold. And she spares no time to regain her breath before whipping him with vicious force, grinning as she clutches at her neck. “Pathetic… All of you… So weak…”

Somrak’s cry of pain has not even died in his throat before she whips him again. A twist of her arm and the whip is cutting Dion’s side and belly, making him scream though he tries not to. He hates her and fears her, her and that whip which seems to be animated by an anger all of its own, screaming its hatred at him as it cuts into his soul.

And in his corner, Sky roars again, helplessly, pointlessly, achieving no more than a bone-shaking, ear-ringing strike at Dion’s eardrums. A roar followed by a soft, dry, lazy clapping. Applause, slow and ironic.

“Oh yes, pathetic indeed. Pathetic all round.”

Dion looks toward the source of the sound. A short, thin man, with very short hair and a beard, has walked into the room. Or maybe he has been here all along, hiding unnoticed in a dark corner. His dark grey suit and black cane would allow for it. And the way he speaks, Dion knows it must be Margrave.

“Nua, these souls are meant to be sold to Hell, and here you are, damaging them.” The man tuts at the necromancer possessing Alma’s body.

The look she gives him is a promise that she will tear him apart at the first opportunity, her maniacal smile an indication of how much she would truly enjoy it. “They can have whatever is left after I’m done with them.” She moves toward him, leaning to place a hand on his shoulder and speak into his ear, obviously pleased with finding herself taller than him. “Do you come to gloat about the good job you left for me to do? Or do you want one of them to yourself?”

Margrave does not even look at her as he sighs. “Slave, remember – they are all mine. I only allow you to have them as much as I wish, and I will take them away the moment it pleases me.” He reaches to touch the forehead of the girl lying on the gurney. “Let us get this Death Clan goddess’ soul out of my niece and into that sword.”

Ch6.88 Trust

Anguish. Suffocating anguish. Screams of shredded souls deafening her ears, running down her throat. Invisible claws tearing at her, desperately, hungrily.

Pain.

Endless pain. Senseless, hopeless. All-consuming. And she is naked before it, so vulnerable to it. No flesh to hold her, to sacrifice to these panicked, howling wrecks of what used to be people. They go for her soul. And she cannot hide from them. No…

No! This same pain again. This agony! Just like before, like that other time in the cells. But greater now. Stronger now. There are more of them. Or of what is left of them. They are so broken…nothing left that she can use to repair them. Nothing but her core.

And that is what they seek.

“Please, please…” she whimpers though she finds no lips to whimper with. “I can’t save your souls… You can’t take mine.”

A voice. Quiet. Kind. “Enough, now… Let her go.”

Why should they listen? The words sound like a gentle request. No order. No threat. Why should the wailing stop? The digging of corrosive talons pause? Why should they obey?

But they do. The shredded souls quiet down, their screaming trailing off with a questioning tone. She can feel them backing away, slowly. Hesitantly. And hover around her. Awaiting their chance.

Relief. Such welcome relief. Such wonderful silence. Magnificent emptiness of emotion. Of pain.

A stray thought finds its way to her conscience, poking at it softly like a parent gently awakening a slumbering child. “Who is there?” she asks. “How did you do that?”

“Even the most desperate soul listens if spoken to in the right tone,” the voice replies with a soft, beatific smile. Alma cannot see its source but she has learned long ago that voices can smile and cry and laugh and rage. And this one sounds so peaceful… so ancient. “And all of them can be saved, no matter how torn they are.”

A light begins to glow gently in the dim twilight that her eyes are becoming used to seeing. Her scrying eyes, so recently transformed into the standard of her vision. She looks around as the soft glimmer of her surroundings gains rhyme and reason. Up, down, left, right…directions are meaningless here. Is she standing up? Or lying down? It does not matter. For either a body is required and hers is far behind. Bodies cannot enter the ultimate sanctum, the very threshold of existence.

“The Wheel…” she breathes, amusing herself with the way concepts like breath remain attached to her even here. Matter shaping mind. “We are in the Wheel. It is you who I’ve felt watching me before.”

“Not just I,” the voice says. Male? Female? Who could possibly tell? “But yes, we have watched you come and go. It has been a long time since one of us has visited from the material realms. And we wondered if you would notice us.”

“One of you?” How many are there?, she wonders. “Do you mean Spinners? Gods of the Wheel?”

“Gods?” The voice sounds positively confused. “What are gods?”

The simple question hits her with unexpected weight. For so many reasons. How to explain the concept of a god to a being dwelling at the edge of all beings. There are no fears here. No desires. Nothing in the way of the matter that brings most gods to life. A challenge not much different from explaining the sound of birdsong to a deaf person. But if these beings have no concept of a god…what are they? And why are they here?

She decides to use the one example she reasons they will understand: souls. “Gods are beings with complex souls like my own. In basic shape. Eight layers around a stable core. No frail parts to be eaten away by time.”

“Ah… We never called ourselves gods. Still, many have lived and died since we have been here.” The voice sounds almost amused though its tone carries an empty contemplation suggestive of many centuries passed in this place.

“Who are you, then?” Alma asks, feeling her own thoughts drift away from emotion, sharing in the peace of her strange companion.

“We are Shan’doír,” is the answer. “Like you. Shape to core to purpose. Serving the heart of the Wheel.”

Shan’doír… There is a name she has never heard before. “Is this where all the people who serve the Wheel go when they ascend, then?”

“All souls come through here sooner or later. But none like ours since the great war.” A pause in speech. Was that sadness in those words? “And these souls are waiting for you to save them.”

Around her, the lingering, watchful residues of shattered souls begin to move again, encircling her, not screaming anymore but pouring threateningly like acid eating its way through a tabletop. She panics again, feeling them closer and closer. “I…I don’t know how. I have done it before but those souls were not quite as shattered as this.”

“You are the heart of the Wheel, the cleansing filter through which all souls are undone and rebuilt,” the voice says calmly. “Open yourself to them and let them through. Your core is with the Wheel. It cannot be destroyed by the simple touch of a soul. Now do not fight that touch, or all you will achieve is pain.”

Alma hesitates but the voice sounds so serene, so certain. And she has nowhere to go, no way to escape these approaching specters. There are moments of epiphany in life, people say. Moments when the stars align or the sun shines through the clouds in inspiring ways just as a word is spoken, just as a thought strikes a nerve. The answers will come, people say, when we are ready to listen.

This is not the time for epiphanies, it seems. As Alma forces herself to relax, fearfully opening herself to the shattered souls, no enlightenment comes to her. No spell, no mental pathway to shift her mana into a new shape. At the first touch, she flinches in pain before reclaiming control and relaxing again. One by one, the souls trickle into her and she feels them homing in on her core, advancing hungrily. She feels them reach for it, grab it, penetrate it without pause, curl within it like a caterpillar in a silk cocoon…and leave. Simply leave instead of claiming her essence to themselves. Leave… Emerge like butterflies spreading wings to the sun, changed, whole. Two brand new souls made of the vestiges of eight, singing in glee at their rebirth as they fade into the matrix of the spectral realm. Through the heart of the Wheel.

Alma herself.

If she had lungs to breathe with, the goddess would be breathing out deeply in relief. ““Thank you,” she says. “This sphere–” She catches herself, thinking that if these entities don’t know about gods, they will probably have no concept of spheres either. “This ability of mine has only recently awakened and I don’t quite know how to control it yet.”

“You will learn,” the Shan’doír voice assures her. “We have much to teach you. But now is not the time for that. You should not stay here too long while you are still learning. And the material realms must await your return.”

And suddenly, the memory hits her. Of the eerie corridor and the necromancer’s lair. Of being attacked. “Fates… Sky…the others! The demons! Yes, I have to return!” She looks around but there is nothing to see. No path she can discern. “But how?”

“Relax, listen to the Wheel,” the voice instructs her. “The paths in and out of it can be felt, not seen. There will be a difference. And there your gateway will be.”

“Will you be here, should I find my way back?” she asks.

“Of course, little soul. There is nowhere else for us to be.”

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

The moons glow bright on the rooftops tonight, not another soul to be seen. A kingdom of desolation and it looks like she’s the queen. The heat is haunting like the growing fear inside. Couldn’t make it there, heavens know she tried.

Rush! Rush, Saira!

The air feels dead and wrong. A faint scent of smoke wafts in the breeze.

She rushes.

The scent is stronger now, the air thicker. Smoke and fire.

Fire!

Fire.

Not fire again. Not this same nightmare again. She runs into the growing smoke, sees the old abandoned building aflame.

And stops. Watching. How many times has it burnt down now? Twenty? Two hundred? A thousand times? Every night in her dreams. Most nights, at least. She never makes it on time. She never has.

Because she didn’t make it the first time. The one time it really mattered.

“Why?” she hears her friends voices rise in the air in tandem with the crackling flames.

 Why?

 Why?

 Why?

The echoes surround her, screaming. Accusing. And she sits.

Watching.

Her feet dangle over the edge of a rooftop just opposite the building’s. She cries from the smoke, from the suffering of years. How many times has she made that jump to the balcony so that she could look inside and watch her friends, her adopted family die all over again?

“Saira!” the voices beckon.

Saira!

 Saira?

 Why?

And just like clockwork, the shadows appear. Dark figures blurred by the smoke, moving on the rooftops not far away from her. She could chase them. She could catch them.

Maybe. Maybe. She never has. Not in her dreams. It took her years to catch them in the real world. And she hasn’t caught them all. Not yet. There is one missing. One still out there.

She swings her legs back onto the rooftop, stands up. Her crossbow is strapped across her back and she reaches for it, arms it with a fresh bolt.

And walks away.

“Why, Saira?” the voices ask.

 Why?

 Why?

 Why?

She doesn’t answer. They aren’t real. They never were. Her friends are at peace and she is on her way to join them, she knows. But first, she has to find him. The one who keeps getting away.

She has one more target to kill.

And another family to save.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

Darkness again. Then a whimper. Long, drawn out. Weak. The low cry of someone who has been sobbing for far too long. Alma opens her eyes, wondering if it is her who is whimpering. No, not her eyes. She has no eyes here. She feels the living shell wrapped around her. A heart beating. Lungs breathing. A fully functioning unit.

That is not hers. She cannot command it to open eyes or sample scents. Or move. She feels imprisoned, though not completely uncomfortable. Not completely bound. There is such a frail connection between her soul and this flesh. But what is this flesh? Whose flesh is it? And are they here with her?

She stretches her senses through it in scouting spectral tendrils, but their path is barred, their efforts restricted by an invisible barrier. Within her reach there is mostly darkness, mostly cold. Everything so undefined. So empty. Echoing like a dome. Surrounding her. And though she hovers about, she cannot touch anything, extend her will to a single muscle, a single organ. Such a strange thing.

“Where am I?” she wonders.

The sobbing stops. “No, no, no, no, nooooo, who are you?” a frightened voice asks, its tones stretched with the strain of terror. “Please, don’t hurt me. Please, please, please…”

Alma searches the voidness in vain, hovering in every direction. Seeing nothing. “Unless you are a necromancer, you have nothing to fear,” she assures the trembling, almost childlike voice. “Who are you? I can’t see you from here.”

“Y-you…you’re the one she tortured to death,” the stuttering voice whimpers.

Tortured? To death? When? By whom? “It hurt to deal with those souls but I am quite certain that I am not dead,” the goddess replies. “My name is Alma. What is yours?”

The voice speaks again, small and hesitant at first but then pouring out in a rush of terror, like a flood escaping a broken dam. “I’m Trocia. She didn’t torture you. She took a woman off the street, and changed her to look like you. The woman had a little boy… And then she tortured the woman to death in front of Azzageddi.”

Pain. Anguish. They fill Alma’s surroundings, so palpable that the goddess can almost put a taste to them. She tries to reach Trocia, to empathize with her and reassure her but to no avail. The girl – she sounds to Alma like a young girl just in the brink of physical maturity – hides still from Alma’s reach.

“Monster,” the goddess growls. “I will see her rot in torment for eternity.”

The image of a face, pale, hollow-eyed and timid appears at the edge of Alma’s awareness. Dark hair, young features still round with the residues of childhood marred by grief. Trocia’s image of herself. “She wants to hurt you,” the girl says, a colder, bitter edge now sharpening her tone. “She wants to hurt everyone. But she really wants to hurt you. And Azzageddi. And Margrave.”

“Do you know why?” Alma asks.

And does it even matter? When has reason been important to the mad, the deranged, the immoral and amoral?

“She…sometimes she screams about the people who hurt her,” Trocia replies, her figure now clearer to Alma’s vision. Contracted, flimsy. Almost as if trying to hide within herself. “The Death Clan. Azzageddi k-killed her. Sent her to Hell. She…she sometimes forgets I’m here.” A pause. “Those are the best times.”

“Where is here, exactly?” Alma asks softly, hating Nua for what she has done to this distraught soul and wishing she could somehow spare Trocia all this pain. “And why isn’t she with us?”

For a moment, Trocia’s soul is revealed to her completely, its shape and its bonds to the living body around them both becoming clear. “This is me. My body! She left, oh she left, I thought…and then she put you in here.” The girl fades into the darkness again, just her voice left, quiet and morose. “Now…now she won’t need me anymore.”

“You mean she…” Alma feels as chill – no, not a chill. A surge of energy and dread – rush through her entire spectral being. If this is Trocia’s body and Nua is no longer in it–

Terrifying realization dawns. The soul bomb, the escape into the Wheel. Nua must have used those things to rob Alma of her own body. To take it for herself? But what can Nua do in a divine body? Alma’s power lies in her soul!

But…a divine body is ageless. It heals quickly. And it looks exactly like Alma.

The goddess struggles desperately against her bindings, horrible imagination filling her thoughts with images of her loved ones being attacked by her own body, hesitating to attack it and dying as a result of it.

No, no. They would fight her. They would kill her if they had to! They would do it if it meant saving themselves and all the others.

Wouldn’t they?

“Demons, I can’t move!” she cries as the wall built around her holds in spite of her efforts. “I can’t touch this body! I can’t control it! I need to see! I need to know what she is doing with my body!”

“No please I don’t want to open my eyes!” Trocia begs. “I don’t want to see what she’s doing to them! She makes me watch! She made me hold still while she made Azzageddi…”

The words make Alma stop struggling. Her rage simmers, cold in her voice as she demands, “While she made him what?”

“She made him…” Trocia’s voice chokes with a sob, a whimper. Pain and disgust and shame and helplessness fill Alma’s world. “Made him have sex with my body. And then she let me take control again. She told him she’d hurt me if he stopped.”

How to react to that? What to feel first? What to say? What to think? Alma is reduced to silence and stillness for a long, heartbroken moment. And she feels all of the sorrow in the world for this girl.

And she feels it for Sky.

“Oh little soul…” she whispers in dismay. “Please, help me defeat that monster. Let me at least see what she is doing to the people I love so that I can help them. Please…”

Trocia’s crying becomes a distant whimper and Alma fears for awhile that the girl has decided to leave the goddess here to rot in oblivion. But then, physical senses return. Sight and hearing and touch. Cold metal beneath her back and wrapped around her wrists and ankles. Voices. A ceiling. Weak, barely allowed sensations. Barely tolerated awareness.

Terrible things going on out there.