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That, more than anything else, is what convinces me. I sheathe my atikas, then turn to the others. “I want to go,” I say. “But I don’t want to make any decisions without the group.”
After all, I’m not the one who’ll do the bulk of the fighting should things go sour. I may be healed now, but that emptiness is still inside me, which means I will eventually develop more sores, more wounds. The healing I received was only a temporary reprieve.
But it’s one I’ll savor while I have it.
For a moment, there’s only silence. Then Britta steps forward. Sighs. “If there’s one thing I know, Deka,” she says, “it’s that the world is shit wherever we go. If there’s a chance we can save ye, or even a chance we can see a paradise before it all ends, I’ll take it.”
Belcalis nods beside her. “This is what we came here for,” she says, before continuing under her breath, “New gods. Why does it always have to be more gods?”
“I can still hear you,” Myter reminds her.
As Belcalis rolls her eyes, Keita turns to me, his gaze intent. He’s been touching me this entire time—a hold on my back, little wondering grazes of his fingers. I don’t think he even notices how much he’s doing it.
He nods at me. “No matter what, I’m here. You know that, Deka, right?”
All I can do is embrace him, put my forehead against his. “I do,” I whisper.
Then I return my attention to Myter. “All right, then,” I agree. “Let’s go see my mother.”
“Finally,” Myter huffs. She turns to Bala and bows. “My Lord, the pathways.”
Bala surges up into the air, darkness melding with a thousand rainbows. His coils explode across the temple, shimmering and shining, until a bright, fragmented light flashes.
And then we’re in the pathways.
8
The pathways are thick with fog, and yet I see them perfectly: they appear as a black road, rainbow lights sparkling brilliantly inside its stones. There’s a forest in the distance or, rather, the suggestion of one. The fog wreathes around the silhouettes of trees, which, like the road, sparkle with the light of a thousand rainbows—as does the fog itself. It’s the oddest thing: even though it’s dark here, everything is bright with light and color. This space itself is a contradiction. And that isn’t even what I find strangest about the pathways: Except for the fog, everything seems to be made of strands of hair. Bala’s hair. I peer more closely at a strand in one of the stones, but doing so hurts my head. The more I stare, the more those rainbow lights glitter and swirl. I reach out to hold tighter to Ixa and Keita, only to find they’re no longer there.
They’re both silhouettes in the distance, each standing on his own stone road, each one wreathed in fog. Alarm surges through me. “Keita? Ixa?” I call out.
“They walk their own paths.” When I turn, Myter is walking beside me. Or, rather, she’s standing and the path under her is moving. It’s clear she’s a part of it, as much a creature of this realm as the stones and the trees. “Every individual must take their own path the first time they walk the pathways,” she says. “Even you, Angoro Deka.”
Her tone rankles me. “Bring me back my friends!” I demand, angered.
“Why? Do you no longer know how to walk alone?” She seems genuinely curious, so I stop, breathe, remind myself:
Not everything is a threat, even things that sometimes seem like it.
“I know how to walk alone,” I finally reply.
“I had begun to wonder,” Myter says. She glances at me, those brilliant green eyes unblinking from behind her armor. “There are those persons who cling to companionship even to their last, binding their loved ones to them with desperation and all the force of the strongest manacles. Those, I find, tend to be the most insidious of villains, trapping their victims in chains they call love.”
At this not-so-subtle accusation, my hackles rise. Every muscle tenses. “I’m not like that,” I grind out. “I’m not like the Gilded Ones.”
“That’s good to know,” Myter says, removing her helmet.
And all my other thoughts fall away.
Myter is massive. I had expected this, given the size of her armor, but expecting and experiencing are vastly different things. Her feline-green eyes are three times the size of mine, and the rest of her features are similarly immense, though at the same time relatively delicate and humanlike. Her skin is a gold-dusted brown, her nose an upturned button, and her eyes tilt up at the sides. While her curly hair is nearly as black as Belcalis’s, each curl that bounces against her cheeks is the size of a priest’s wristlet. Each of her hands is as big as my face, and her legs are almost as tall as my entire body.
“What are you?” I manage to ask past my slackened jaw.
“I am a godsworn, as I said before.”
“A godsworn?”
The look Myter gives me is one of pure disdain. I was so in awe of her, I forgot she could be like this, snotty and condescending. “You do not know what a godsworn is?”
