AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She nudges the girls she was holding back toward me, and they quickly scurry over, as all the rest are doing. Given the chaos that’s brewing, I’m the safest spot in the entire area.
Grow, Ixa, I silently command when they approach. He needs to be large enough to carry them all to safety.
When he obligingly kneels, his bones already lengthening, I turn back to Britta, who’s still waiting. “Their hearts,” I say, pointing at the vale wraiths. “Aim for their hearts. And the glowing scales on their sides. That’s where they’re vulnerable. Just buy us time! I’ll get the girls to the columns.”
“Understood!” Britta says as she gestures to the others.
The floor beneath her immediately cracks, pieces of the obsidian crawling up her feet and over her armor to form a secondary skin. Britta’s ability is controlling all forms of earth, and her newest trick, which she learned from Belcalis, is using what materials she can to make a secondary armor. Never again will she be caught unawares by a stray arrow to the gut, as she was when she first became an alaki. Belcalis too has covered herself in armor—hers made of her own golden blood, only, unlike infernal armor, it’s still alive, still pulsing around her.
Britta and Belcalis are not the only ones shielding themselves. Li seems almost shocked as he gestures and sand swirls around him. He turns to Belcalis, exhilarated. “I’m doing it! I’m actually doing it!”
“Don’t use too much energy and exhaust yourself,” Belcalis cautions as she goes bounding forward. “Head in the game, Li!”
The only people who don’t immediately cloak themselves in their gifts are Keita and Lamin. But Lamin doesn’t seem to have a divine gift yet, and Keita’s fire always simmers just under the surface, waiting to ignite. His eyes are already burning, little flickers of orange in the darkness.
Which means it’s time for us to go. I call to the girls, who have not yet made their way onto Ixa. “Hurry!”
Everyone begins moving, except for Palitz, who’s still staring at the wraith, despair written across her face. She may not be able to see the creature in its entirety, given the darkness, but she can see the glowing scales on its sides, the ominously slithering way they move in the gloom. Her friends have to drag her toward Ixa before she finally moves on her own. I nod, understanding: It’s one thing to believe blindly in the gods. It’s another to see them in the full, terrifying flesh.
As she mounts, a pair of small flames light Ixa’s horns—a gift, courtesy of Keita. “My thanks!” I shout, nodding his way.
Keita nods back as he returns his attention to the nearest vale wraith, the one that’s slowly muscling forward, as if it’s stalking prey—which, of course, it is. Everyone here is prey to the colossal, lizard-like creature with its black skin gleaming in the darkness, that blue reverberating in its chest.
Keita beckons to it. “Come, then, wraith,” he says. “Let’s have at it.”
But the wraith just stops where it is, and a grating sound filters into the air. I watch, puzzled, until the glowing blue in its chest suddenly snaps open, revealing a giant gaping maw of a mouth, row upon row of jagged teeth surrounding what look like…eyes? One pupil slides toward me and I stop, then stare back, caught. There’s intelligence in that gaze. Calculation.
And then that suffocatingly oily feeling slithers over me.
“Idugu,” I say, grim. “How kind of you to honor us with your presence.”
“Deka of Irfut,” the voices of the four male gods echo smoothly and eerily as one through that vile mouth.
Just like that, I’m back in their temple, learning how they and the Gilded Ones used to be the same entities—four gods who once descended to Otera to bring the fledgling human race peace and wisdom. That is, until they made the fateful decision to cleave themselves into two—the masculine Idugu and the feminine Gilded Ones.
Gods modeling themselves after lesser beings—especially using a flawed understanding of those beings—always ends in world-shattering consequences.
“How fortunate to find you here,” the Idugu say, slithering closer, but I don’t look at them as I glance down at Ixa, subtly digging my heels into his sides.
Go, I command silently, and Ixa bolts, racing across the obsidian floor.
Now that the vale wraiths are here, we have to take the long route to the monoliths, since they’re blocking the direct path. I keep my attention on the wraiths the entire time, watching them for any sudden movement.
“It’s almost like you wanted us to find you here in the nest of our beloved children,” the Idugu sneer through the wraith’s mouth.
“Children?” Disgust roils through me as I consider the vale wraiths. “These are your children?”
“The most useful of all the ones we have recently spawned,” the Idugu reply with a cruel laugh. “Proxies, I believe you call them. They soothe our hunger in every province of Otera. And the moment they consume a single one of you, we will be able to materialize in this realm.”
Their eyes slide toward the girls, who are holding on to Ixa for dear life behind me. “Won’t you do that for us, children? Won’t you sacrifice yourselves to us?”
I don’t bother to glance back at the children. I can already predict their expressions: devastation, betrayal. It’s not every day you see the face of your god in a monster.
I urge Ixa onward. “Faster!” I say.
This command enrages the Idugu. “Prepare, Deka of Irfut. Your death is ours for the taking. As is your divinity.” Then the wraith rears up, chest-mouth opening again.
A column of fire immediately blasts it away. Keita leads the others as they leap into the fray, swords and abilities at the ready. They’ve instinctively separated into pairs, two fighters to each wraith, except for Keita, who’s alone. But he has his fire and is using it with abandon now, sending pillars of flame the wraith’s way.
