Page 109 of The Merciless Ones

As I run, I try to reason with her. “You shouldn’t do this, Melanis,” I gasp, dodging her strikes. “The mothers lied to you – they lied to all of us. They’re not our sole parents; there are other gods as well – the Idugu, their male counterparts. The Gilded Ones have been manipulating us all this while as they fight against them for power. Even this battle, they’re using it to feed on the jatu army. To eat them using blood-eaters.”

“Marvellous!” Melanis crows. “I am even more impressed by our mothers.”

She dives, wings flashing towards me, and I block them with one atika, then counter her sword with the other. I’m getting used to her fighting style now. Thrust and parry with a wing, thrust and parry with a sword. I easily duck and weave, both my swords flashing so fast, they’re a blur of wind and steel. The entire time, I talk to her.

“They’ve been eating their own children, Melanis! Do you not see anything wrong with that?”

“Only the males.” Melanis shrugs. “Which is more than I can say for your other gods, who prey on those of our kind.”

I stumble back, eyes widening. “You know about the Idugu?” I thought she’d have lost those memories by now.

Melanis slices a wing at me. “Mother Etzli graciously returned my memories to me. I know all about the Idugu, the reasons our brothers rebelled.”

“And you’re all right with that? With the mothers lying to us, preying on us? Preying on innocents?” I stare into her eyes, hoping to see any sort of emotion or compassion there.

She was in the Oyomosin all those years, dying and reviving on those flames. Surely, she can empathize with what it is to be manipulated, abused… An emotion surfaces in Melanis’s eyes, and I lean closer, only for my eyes to widen as I discover what’s there. There’s no compassion in her gaze, as I had hoped; instead, there’s something else – something deep, dark and gleeful.

“Don’t you understand it yet, Nuru Deka?” she crows. “I care nothing for our brothers. They are less than cattle. They are beneath us. I seek one world and one world only: a return to the times when our mothers and our sisters ruled. A world where the humans and men return to their rightful place – beneath our heels.”

Melanis’s wings rise again as she sneers down at me. “Any other world is unacceptable, honoured Nuru.”

She dives down, but I’m prepared for her this time. My sword goes up just as her nearest wing flaps down, and I slice clean through its joints, severing it in half. She falls to the floor, screaming, wind and blood gusting as she flaps uselessly there. Her movements are so extreme now, I almost don’t see the others rushing back into the chamber, having shepherded the wounded deathshrieks to safety.

Britta’s eyes widen when she glimpses Melanis, but she runs towards me, carefully avoiding the reach of the Firstborn’s wings. “We’ve taken the deathshrieks out. They’re fleeing the mountain as we speak.”

I nod, then point to Melanis, whose wing has already begun sprouting a new bone. “Keep her occupied,” I say, palming my atikas. “I have another task to do.”

I continue back towards Etzli, who has remained sitting on her throne, watching me. She doesn’t move when I approach her, doesn’t even lift a finger, and now, caution is prickling down my spine. Why isn’t she moving? This is how it was the other times I attacked her. She never moved far from her throne if she even moved at all. I frown, unnerved. If I truly pose a threat to Etzli, why hasn’t she just disappeared from this chamber and taken her sisters to a safer location? Why hasn’t she fled? Now that I think about it, the same thing must have happened when the jatu imprisoned her and her sisters. The Gilded Ones didn’t flee, even when they could easily have done so.

The realization spurs other memories – the haze that coated the hallway, Etzli’s surprise when I opened the door. You weren’t supposed to be able to penetrate our cloak, she said. How did you open the door?

Yet more memories filter through my mind – all the times the goddesses locked the doors, barred this hallway from their children, telling us that they were resting, that they didn’t want to be disturbed. Suspicion rises inside me: what if there’s something in this chamber that requires the goddesses to remain in place? To sometimes root themselves so thoroughly, they can’t even escape when they’re under threat?

The Idugu must have known about it, must have noticed this very pattern themselves. That’s how they helped the jatu imprison the goddesses here…and that’s how I will trap the goddesses as well.

I point my atikas at Etzli. “What’s here?” I ask her. “What is it that keeps you and the others tied to this chamber?”

A sinister smile curls Etzli’s lips. “Clever Deka. You always were a clever child. You’re the first in a millennium to notice.”

I’m immediately on edge. “Notice what?”

“This.”

She gestures, and the ground crumbles beneath my feet.

My fight with Melanis has primed me for surprises, so I react the moment the ground rumbles, jumping onto the stairs just below the dais. I do so just in time: all the ground in the centre of the room is falling away, the collapse so sudden, Asha nearly goes tumbling in. Britta swiftly gestures, extending a slab of rock underneath her, but, to my shock, Asha bounces off it, a sudden wind propelling her upwards. She jumps over the edge of the abyss, then floats back onto firm ground using that very same wind while Adwapa waits for her, eyes narrowed in concentration. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle in response to this new power the pair are suddenly displaying. It must be their divine gift, the one they’ve been hinting at. And it’s not the only one in action. Melanis’s one uninjured wing flaps hurriedly when the ground under her collapses. She uses it to leapfrog out of the abyss, then she swiftly falls back onto the chamber’s floor, winded from the effort.

I turn back to the hole at the centre of the chamber, unease growing. The pit tunnels down to the very core of the mountain, dark and endless.

But not empty.

A cacophony of anguished hisses and growls rises into the air, the sound so wretched, it takes me only moments to understand what it is: the wails of the damned. I look down, horror clogging my throat when I see Etzli’s vines binding thousands of distinctive purple figures to the abyss’s walls, hissing blood-eaters wriggling over them. My body is weak now, it’s all I can do to remain standing. How many times did I wonder why there were never any male deathshrieks – why only females emerged from the eggs in the breeding lakes? Even when I saw the Forsworn accompanying the jatu, I wondered why they were so few, so rare.

Now I know the truth. Male deathshrieks aren’t rare at all, they aren’t some infrequent occurrence – they’re just as numerous as the females, and they’ve been here this entire time, imprisoned under the Gilded Ones’ feet.

The evil of it shatters me. No wonder the goddesses rarely leave this chamber, rarely leave their thrones. Worship may feed them, but it’s suffering that truly gives them power. The suffering of their own children – the ones they’ve condemned to an eternity of misery.

My body is trembling now, every inch of me thrumming with fury, horror.

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