Blade of Glass: Chapter 40

Geneve felt sick. It wasn’t just the poison. It felt like her soul needed care, a little time out, to just put its feet up and relax. She knew it’d only been days, but Geneve felt she’d run north for what felt like forever. Cut off from her fellow Knights, Geneve had done the best she could. She’d brought the sinner north, and during their time together, she’d learned he wasn’t a sinner. Meri wasn’t evil, any more than Sight of Day was, or even the monster, Armitage. She’d met evil people before, and none traveled with her.

Iz and Tilly arriving felt like a condemnation of her choices. Israel’s voice held such pain when he called her name, and then she’d left his storm to die against the rock of Nicolette.

That’s a little dramatic. I was poisoned, dying, and had no choice.

She’d woken as Armitage put her down in a strange room. Sight of Day stood next to the monster, avoiding looking at him. Geneve felt cold, right into her bones, but one thing made her feel warm. When Meri got under her arm, helping her up, it felt like a tiny fragment of her tattered soul started to heal. The Vhemin and Feybrind avoided the dais, but Meri stepped with her into the unknown.

Then the chambers behind them cracked open, viscous fluid spilling onto the ground. The Vhemin inside fell out. She tried to spin about, trying to be ready for whether the monsters would be friend or foe, but only managed a wobble. She wasn’t in any condition to fight.

Neither were the monsters.

There were twenty tanks in total. The one furthest from her opened, spilling its contents to the floor. The Vhemin inside sloughed apart like rotted meat, its body disintegrating as it slopped to the floor. The next three were much the same. The fifth was still intact enough to scream its agony as it stumbled free. One leg gave way with a wet snap as it stood, and it fell. The wet crunch-pop of its bones breaking as it hit the ground made her sick.

“By the Three,” Meri whispered.

Geneve put her hand to her mouth. There were no words for this horror. Vhemin might be monsters, but they’d been … eaten by something. A rot got to them in the short days it took Armitage to get help. “Meri … what did they doto them?”

“Wait here.” He made sure she was steady on her own, then ran to the Vhemin’s chambers. Armitage stood, stock still, glancing about with desperation. His shark eyes weren’t vile and terrible. They held raw agony. “Armitage! Come on.” Meri snared the monster’s arm, pulling him toward the dying Vhemin.

Armitage backed up a step. “I … I came as fast as I could.”

Sight of Day’s quick steps took him from the dais and past Meriwether to arrive next to a fallen creature. The Vhemin’s face was like wax, a malformed dough ready for kneading. The cat’s golden eyes looked on, helpless, as the Vhemin sagged on itself, chest collapsing, fluid leaking from its mouth. Sight of Day turned to Geneve. {I can’t help them. I don’t know what to do.}

Geneve spun to the glass panels and their lines of words. “Stop it!”

The floor beneath her vibrated. The room hummed. “Geothermal source at four percent. Biofuel alternatives emptied at your directive.”

She screwed up her eyes. Think. Think! Meri would know what to do. But Meriwether was fifty meters away, trying to save dying Vhemin from collapsing on themselves. “Heal them!”

“Vehement Systems architecture unknown.” The voice hissed and clicked as it spoke, pronunciation strange, as if the ancient thing forgot how words worked.

“What can I do?” she whispered.

“Sky Forge ready. Activate?”

Geneve looked at the dying Vhemin. “What’s a Sky Forge?”

“Sky Forge ready. Activate?”

She closed her eyes. A risk either way, but the sky held the Three. Moons of the gods, watching their people below. She opened her eyes. “By Cophine, Ikmae, and Khiton, yes. Unleash the gods’ forge.”

A handful of seconds passed. It couldn’t have been more than five, but the sounds of dying Vhemin made her think it was much longer. “Lunar alignment confirmed. Attitude retrieved. Ready for binding essence.”

Her eyes searched the glyph-filled glass in front of her. They gave no clue as to what the ancient temple meant, but the panels lay before her. They hadn’t retracted into the floor. Ready. Waiting for someone just like her. Human and whole, the first here in eight hundred years. Geneve put her hand on one. “Here. Take what you need.”

The room was quiet for a moment longer. “Both essence types are required.”

“Meri!” Geneve turned, feeling panic grab her by the throat. “What do I do?”

He looked to her, then got to his feet. His clothes were foul with sloughed off remains of Vhemin, and he wiped his hands on his shirt. He jogged to her, stepping on the dais, eyes everywhere at once. “It needs us both, Red.”

“Will it eat us?” She shuddered. “Like them?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was soft. “Let me try, first.” Before she could stop him, Meriwether put his hand on a disc. 

The room shuddered as if hit by a massive hammer. “Both essence types are required.”

“Fuck!” he yelled. He knuckled his forehead. “Okay. Okay, we can do this.” He shouldered her aside, but not unkindly, then stretched his arms wide.

“Meri, what are you doing?”

He didn’t look at her as he put his hands on both discs. Meriwether’s body went rigid, jaw locked open wide, eyes staring. A boom came from above, and the ceiling thirty meters above cracked, a line widening along its length.

The whole ceiling is opening. The entire temple is unfolding like a flower. Through the gap, Geneve saw Cophine’s pale face above, the single eye of the moon staring like judgment. She wanted to scream, I don’t know what to do! But the goddess was too far away to hear.

Meriwether jerked, then collapsed. Smoke peeled away from his clothes. She bent, shook him, then slapped his face. He didn’t respond. His palms were burned, the skin red and raw. Geneve lurched to her feet. “What more do you want from us?” She cast her voice to the heavens, hoping Cophine would hear her. “What did we do wrong?”

The room rumbled around them. “Insufficient essence. Both types are required.”

Oh. You need it all. She glanced at Sight of Day, and his wide, haunted eyes. Armitage, shifting from foot to foot, fist in his mouth, blood trickling from where he bit down. The dead and dying Vhemin on the floor. She thought about Israel and Vertiline, fighting for her mistakes on the desert sand.

She dragged off her remaining gauntlet, letting it fall to the dais. The temple wanted her and Meri both. Two corrupted, broken people, and it needs both of us to make something whole. Three gods, and they do nothing for us but take and take. “I hope you choke on me,” she snarled, and grabbed both discs.

Her back arched. Her eyes locked on the night sky above. Cophine’s pale face blazed to brilliance, and Geneve screamed as she felt the razing, burning fury of the Three.

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