Page 105 of The Gilded Ones

“Alaki sisters,” I roar in a voice louder than a thousand drums.

The fighting immediately stops. Everyone looks up, shading their eyes when they see me hovering above them. I can only imagine the sight I present, an armoured figure standing on a similarly armoured, winged drakos, two women on gryphs flanking me, the sun at our backs. Even though Katya is a deathshriek now, I see her as female, because that’s what she is.

Even more impressive are the orderly lines of alaki behind us, each one shining in her infernal armour, each one ready to do battle. These are all the girls the deathshrieks have rescued, the girls that are ready to do battle for their mothers.

“Do not fight the deathshrieks. They are your sisters,” I shout. “The emperor and the priests have lied to you – they’re forcing you to kill your own kind. When alaki die, they are reborn as deathshrieks. Do not fight them!”

For a moment, the alaki glance at each other, unsure. I have to give them more reason to believe me than empty words and a glittering spectacle. I have to convince them to obey of their own volition, not force them using my voice, as I was doing before with the deathshrieks.

I remove my helmet and war mask, hand them over to Katya. Then I fly down until I’m just above the front ranks. I’m close enough now that I’m face-to-face with the generals, with Belcalis and the rest of the recruits. I try to find Keita, Adwapa and the others among the ranks, but I don’t see them.

“Deka,” Belcalis gasps, shocked. She ignores the sputters of the generals, the tense movements of the other soldiers, as she looks up at me. “Deka, is that you?”

I nod. “I haven’t forgotten, Belcalis,” I say. “I’ll never forget what happened to you – to all of us.” I turn to the gathered alaki, using my ability to amplify my voice: “NEVER FORGET HOW THE HUMANS TREATED US! NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY CALLED US!”

I stab my palm, holding it up when the blood begins to run.

“Demons!” I shout, pointing at the soldiers now turning around in confusion. “They called us demons, even though we are the daughters of goddesses! The Gilded Ones were never infernal beings. They were the goddesses who founded Otera – goddesses the jatu imprisoned in these very mountains. Today is the day we free ourselves from the jatu’s lies. Alaki, fight with the deathshrieks, your sisters! Free yourselves from the jatu!”

This time, the truth in my voice cannot be denied. A rustling begins as alaki break ranks, headed towards the deathshrieks. The alaki at my back begin marching down from the mountain, led by the elder alaki from before. There are hundreds and hundreds of them.

Panicked, the generals shout to their soldiers, “Destroy the alaki! Kill all the traitors! And kill her!”

They point at me, but I’m already flying back up before the archers can aim. “Deathshrieks, alaki!” I call out. “Do not harm the jatu recruits if you don’t have to. They knew nothing of this.”

As I soar higher, headed towards the mountains, Katya accompanying me on her gryph, White Hands bows to me. “This is where I leave you,” she says. “I must remain and oversee the battle.” My dismay must show on my face, because she adds, “Don’t worry, there’s a guide waiting for you when you get to the temple.”

“My thanks, White Hands.” I nod. “For everything.”

Now more than ever, I understand how cunning White Hands is, how meticulous she’s been in her planning. She used the emperor to free her kind from the Death Mandate by promising him we would slay the deathshrieks, and instead began moulding them into an army – an army that fights at our side, now that they understand the truth of their heritage.

Till our empire is free of the monsters… I understand now what she was talking about, understand who the true monsters are.

White Hands nods again. “I may have seemed cruel these months past, but I had cause,” she says. “I hope you can forgive me for all the things I failed to do, all the truths I didn’t tell you, the pain you suffered because of my silence.”

I nod. “I know now that you did all those things so I would learn,” I reply, accepting her apology.

She smiles, then turns back to the battle, blows a curved ivory horn. A distant thundering sounds in response. When I turn, it’s to the sight of hordes of equus pouring down from the dunes behind the human army, their talons moving with effortless precision. Yet more equus emerge on both flanks of the human army and smash into them, a timeless battle strategy.

“Conquer or die!” White Hands waves to me.

“We who are dead salute you,” I reply, pounding my hand over my heart.

White Hands nods, smiling. Then she dives from her gryph, toppling a human general from his mammut as she falls. She rips his throat open with her claws before they land, then whirls through the front lines, dancing an effortless ballet of death as blood rains over her.

I turn from the sight, my eyes fixed on the mountain peak above me. I have my own task to attend to. I can do this, I whisper firmly to myself. I will do this.

It’s cold and cloudy when Katya and I reach the peaks of the N’Oyo Mountains. Thankfully, I don’t feel the brunt of the chill. My celestial armour and war mask keep me warm and dissolve the ice crystals that form on my face.

“Are you ready, Deka?” Katya asks as we continue onward. She seems nervous, biting her lips the same way she did when she was an alaki.

“As I’ll ever be,” I say, staring at the glittering white peaks. Then I turn to her. “How does it feel? To be a deathshriek, I mean.” Now that I have the time to think, I’m curious – or perhaps I’m just trying to keep my mind from dwelling on the urgency of my task.

Katya shrugs. “Not as strange as it was at first.” When I frown, confused, she explains: “One moment, that deathshriek’s claws were slicing through my back, and the next moment, I’m waking up in this body. It happened like that.” She snaps her fingers. “There are these…eggs, you see. They’re all at the bottom of these ponds…”

I gasp, eyes widening, as I remember the pond Ixa came out of, the golden boulders at the bottom of it. It’s probably one of the places deathshrieks are born. Ixa must have been put there to protect the eggs as they matured.

I return my attention to Katya as she continues: “When an alaki dies, a new egg forms, and you wake up, a full-grown deathshriek.”

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