Page 112 of The Merciless Ones

Once I’m certain her gift is fully awakened, I step away, turn towards the abyss. “The vines,” I say, pointing. “Can you destroy them?”

White Hands nods, then kneels next to the pit and places her hand on a blood-eater vine. Her hands seem to flash as the power arcs out from them. Her gift, taking shape. “Heed my command,” she whispers. “Become ash.”

Almost immediately, the vine disintegrates, but it’s not the only one. As I watch, astounded, White Hands’s ash travels from vine to vine until all the blood-eaters in the pit are curling into grey and floating away.

“What are you doing?” Etzli rages from the dais, trying to wrest Anok off her. “You can’t do this! No! No!”

But it’s too late. The vines are all dying now, every single one of them faded to grey, which means there’s only one thing left to do. As I mount Ixa, I turn to the others, ignoring the blood dripping from my fingertips. The sores that formed when I awakened White Hands’s power haven’t healed yet, but I didn’t expect them to. The ansetha necklace shifted something deep inside me, a power I wasn’t even aware I had. And now, I must deal with the consequences of it. I may be deathless, but perhaps this body isn’t.

And that’s if it is indeed my true body. After everything I’ve experienced, I can’t discount the possibility that this body isn’t my own, but that’s a worry for another day.

I breathe back the pain as I speak to the others. “We have to destroy the temple. We have to bring it down, so they’ll never use it to feed again.”

“How?” Britta asks, glancing around. “The mothers—”

“Don’t call them that,” I say, shaking my head. “They are not our mothers any longer.”

She absorbs this statement, then nods. “The Gilded Ones raised the temple from the earth itself. How do we destroy it?”

It takes me mere seconds to formulate an answer. “I’ll share my power with you, make you stronger. You do the rest. We can’t leave those deathshrieks here to suffer. We can’t leave anyone here to suffer.”

Keita nods, his eyes already filling with flames. “I’ll burn this place to the ground,” he says. He turns to Adwapa and Asha. “Can you fan my flames?”

They nod.

Britta glances around again, thinking. “Perhaps I can collapse the temple into itself,” Britta says. “Ensure that it’ll never rise again.”

“Do that,” I say, extending my hands.

The moment Britta, Keita, Belcalis and the twins place their hands on me, I sink into the combat state, calling my power up again. That same heat rises, sparking and building against their own. Calling to the power that’s hidden inside them, and amplifying it to its greatest potential.

“Deka, your hand!” Britta gasps when more sores form, but I shake my head.

“They don’t matter,” I say. “Just a little bit more.”

I fan and fan the power deep inside them until finally, I feel it. The potential that’s there. The capacity for destruction. I breathe into it, glorying when it becomes an obliterating white light.

I step back. “You’re ready now,” I say, then walk over to Ixa.

As Ixa launches into the air, carrying us on his back, Keita gestures, and a pillar of flame tunnels into the abyss, scorching through the deathshrieks there. Adwapa’s wind guides it, the force so powerful, it blasts the flame against the abyss’s walls, turning everything there to ash, just as White Hands did the vines. The deathshrieks’ cries rise up, but for once, they’re not screams of pain but sighs of gratitude – relief.

“Thank you,” I hear one deathshriek say as the flame scorches it. It smiles as its body burns to dust.

I watch it, tears running down my cheeks. Sadness, rage – a thousand broken emotions. All the love and hope I once felt for the Gilded Ones, for the Firstborn. All the hope I felt that I would make Otera a better place, a place where everyone was equal. When Britta’s body vibrates beside me, the earth rumbling in response, I continue watching, numb. Power gathers, the earth bucking and twisting, and then the ground surges up like a wave, shattering through the Chamber of the Goddesses, sending a shrieking Melanis tumbling into the abyss below. Pieces of the ceiling are raining down on us, its wonders lost for ever, but I don’t care about them as we shoot up into the sky, where the haze has begun to dissipate under the light of early morning stars.

Abeya lies deserted below us, the children and humans long fled, most of the alaki and equus following behind them. The only people who remain are the mothers’ most loyal children, the ones who attempted to come when Etzli sent out her call. They watch us with murder in their eyes, but we’re too far up to reach.

As for the Idugu and their armies, they’ve disappeared, retreated back to their temple, where they no doubt fled the minute I stabbed Etzli and, in doing so, stabbed them all. But they’ll return soon. Of that I am certain. The gods of Otera will not end their war until one group has supremacy and the other is reduced to dust, even if they have to destroy the entire empire.

But I won’t let them.

The determination surges through me, steely grey in its resolve. I will no longer sit back and watch as the gods rip Otera from its foundations. I will no longer let them play with mortals as though we’re wooden pieces in a cosmic board game.

Anok said I had the power to kill the gods, and I know this to be true. Somewhere deep inside me, the ember of the Singular lies, and I will seek it out, discover enough about it to make myself whole again; to protect the people I love, as well as the powerless, the weak. No longer will the gods trample Otera underneath their feet. No longer will I sit back, content to be only their emissary – their pawn. The time has come for me to fulfil my purpose. The time has come for me to kill the gods.

And I’ll endure whatever I must to ensure that I do so.

Later, as we’re flying over the desert on the first leg of what will undoubtedly be our months-long journey to Gar Nasim, now that we no longer have access to doors, I rest my head on Keita’s shoulder. Snores rise around us, everyone else so exhausted by the day’s events, they can no longer keep awake. Only White Hands, Britta, Keita, and I are still alert, our eyes scanning the horizon for threats. The Temple of the Gilded Ones is far behind us, but who knows what lies ahead? Who knows what terrors, what wonders, this new journey will bring? The only certainty I have is that somewhere at the end of it, Mother is waiting with answers. I can’t wait to find her; I can’t wait to see her again.

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