Page 107 of The Merciless Ones

“You are not my mothers!” I shout, viciously cutting through another vine. “Never again call yourselves that! I saw the truth! I chose to fall from behind the veil – chose to stop you! And I will stop you!”

Etzli frantically shakes her head. “What you saw is an illusion.” Her eyes catch mine, the white flashing there. “I command you to believe me – forget everything you saw. Give me your power!”

I swiftly close my eyes, trying to keep the command from piercing them, but, as it turns out, they’re not Etzli’s target this time. The ansetha necklace, which is still in my pocket, violently wriggles, constricting like a snake around my belly as its links form roots that pierce white-hot points of pain through my skin. I hurry to rip it off, but it digs even further into me, a horrifically familiar wriggling starting. The stars in the necklace are sprouting into miniature blood-eaters. They’re extensions of Etzli, just like the vines wriggling across the chamber, and they’re feeding from me the way the others have been feeding on deathshrieks.

The necklace constricts more and more tightly, the flowers digging ever deeper, until finally, something cracks inside me and my knees give out. I fall to the floor, black spots floating in front of my eyes. There’s so much pain – so much of it. It’s as if the air has become so dense, I can’t breathe. Ragged gasps erupt from my lips. Little points of agony explode wherever on my body the blood-eaters have taken root. And they’re still digging, shifting something inside me, something I never even thought was present. I can feel it now, some sort of power deep in my belly, and the blood-eaters are swarming towards it.

Etzli staggers back to her throne, the wound in her side knitting fast, although the silver still covers her skin. Triumph sounds in her voice when she speaks: “Did you think we would not take precautions for this very eventuality? We know you, Deka. We have always known you, even before you took this form. All you are is an instrument, a food source to power us and a vessel to use as we desire. That is why we were so careful in cultivating you.” Etzli snickers, an evilly human sound. “The Nuru.” She laughs. “How easily you believed our lies. Do you know what the word means in the first human tongue? ‘Pawn’, that’s what it means.”

I’m in such pain now, the cruelty of her words barely registers, but somehow, I’m not surprised by them. The past few weeks have been priming me for this, readying me for the betrayal I’m now experiencing.

Slurping sounds rise into the air, the necklace’s blood-eaters making a feast of my body. “Yes, that’s it, pawn,” Etzli croons. “Feed us, give us your power.”

She gestures, and something rustles inside my stomach – yet another new blood-eater taking shape. It bristles as it moves up, those roots threading up into my chest, my throat. All my airways are blocked now, my ragged breaths futile. Is this what that deathshriek boy felt when he died? This fear, this pain? Despair overwhelms me. As does the irony: the mothers were supposed to be our saviours, our protectors, but they’re worse than Oyomo, worse than even the Idugu who created his mythology. They called me their daughter, yet all this time, they viewed me as a pawn, have been feeding on me, draining me of my strength. This whole time, the Gilded Ones have been using me in every way they could.

A tear slips down the corner of my eye. I’ve been so stupid. Why didn’t I see the Gilded Ones for what they were when they created entire jungles of bloodthirsty vines to kill their enemies, an entire lake of monsters to destroy them? Why didn’t I suspect it when they sent me out time and again to destroy their enemies while they remained here, in the comfort of their temple? The entire time I loved them, worshipped them, they were false – monsters, just as Emperor Gezo warned – and I never saw it. Never even considered it. I thought I’d learned from my mistakes with Emperor Gezo, but I didn’t learn anything at all. Now the Gilded Ones are going to destroy me here in the very chamber where I once freed them. I’m going to die here, and they’re going to kill thousands more afterwards. Perhaps even millions.

I’ve seen it in Etzli’s eyes – the madness, the vengeance. Once she’s done with me, she’s going to go after my friends, all the people I love. She’s going to murder them with the same relish she did that poor jatu boy.

NOOOOO! I shriek silently. I refuse to die here like this. I refuse to let Etzli get away with what she’s done, what she’s going to do.

DEKA! The door splinters as Ixa crashes into the chamber, Keita and Britta on his back, the others just behind them.

“Deka, wha’s happened?” Britta gasps, jumping off him and running over.

A wall of vines drops, slithery as a mass of serpents as they constrict around her and the others.

“What is this?” Keita struggles against his new restraints, furious. “Mother Etzli, what are you doing?”

He inhales, and the blood tingles under my skin as I feel him trying to summon his flames. They die before they reach the surface of his skin, leaving only red glows.

“Why can’t I use my fire?” He struggles to face me, but the vines creeping over his body keep him in place.

“As if I would allow you to use such an obscenity in my presence,” Etzli sneers. “A mockery of the gifts we bestowed only on our daughters.” She whirls to me. “And you, our faithless, foolish child, dared to bestow it upon our sons as well!”

“I am not your child!” I shriek back.

She gives a look of such loathing, the vines in my body dig even deeper, roots sprouting, grey rot growing. I scream, pain blazing white over me. “Please, it hurts, it hurts!”

Deka! Ixa shouts, bursting into a larger size as he rips out of the vines covering him.

More of them arc towards him as he runs my way, but he dodges them, slides to a stop in front of me.

“The necklace,” I rasp, tears falling from my eyes. “You have to root it out of me.”

To my relief, Ixa doesn’t hesitate. Deka, he says, and then he bites into my stomach and pulls.

White-hot pain explodes across my brain, and I scream as Ixa tugs even harder at those roots while the blood-eaters struggle against his efforts. As before, Etzli shrieks, her body pained by the damage Ixa is doing to the necklace. It’s just as I suspected; the necklace is an extension of her too – an extension of all the Gilded Ones.

“Stop!” she roars, desperate. She gestures, and a mass of her vines slither around Ixa’s neck, pulling so tight, his throat rattles.

But Ixa just digs in, pulling harder, and the vines shriek as they wriggle out from inside my skin, my bones.

“Ixa!” I gasp, golden flecks of blood in my tears now, but he pulls one last time, using all his strength.

The necklace is ripped out of my body, chunks of my flesh following with it. It immediately slithers back, a serpent trying to wriggle its way back towards me, but I roll away, power returning to my body in a rush. Power I breathe out almost unconsciously, desperate to get away from that loathsome necklace. As it snaps at me, lunging ever closer, flames abruptly burst through it, all the vines in the room exploding as Keita’s powers return to him as well. While he and the others quickly free themselves, I swiftly, painfully force myself to stand, to turn to the burning necklace still slithering determinedly towards me. The moment it rears up, ready to entangle me again, I stomp down, relief surging through me when the tiny flowers on it explode into little blobs of golden white blood.

As Etzli shrieks from the pain, slumping on her throne, my friends run over to me, their eyes wide with shock and worry. Keita glances worriedly at the goddess. She’s just sitting there, her eyes seeming dazed and far away. But I’m not relieved by her sudden silence – in fact, it concerns me even more than actions. Because if she’s silent, she’s plotting something, doing something awful that I can’t yet see.

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