FINALLY CUTTING ME out of this cursed thing?” Daggeira struggled again to lift her arms out of the pulpy leaves, without success. A tight ball of panic had burrowed inside her sternum since awakening confined within the omoloz pod. It wouldn’t be extinguished until she was out and moving freely. It had been a full day since High Godseer Atu Madzo’s visit—three shifts spent squirming, trembling, restrained by the pod, and taking every ounce of will not to devolve into screaming fits.
“Not yet, Servant Daggeira.” First Tier Medic Three detached her pod from the network of vines, and slid the platform it rested on forward. It hovered smoothly above the deck.
“Then drop down a shaft,” she said.
“I’m to deliver you and the omoloz pod to Chosen Altaro first. Then I’m going to drop down a bottle of diggers beer.”
Daggeira squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her trapped fists. It won’t be deep longer, and you’ll be out. It won’t be deep longer . . .
She heard the doors swish open and felt the platform glide forward. Then the whine of a lift informed her they went up several decks. She didn’t open her eyes until she heard the chosen’s nasally voice. “Very good, medic. You may go.”
“She’s all yours now,” First Tier Medic Three said. “Thank Ohkdirus Reborn, she’s all yours.”
Daggeira looked up at Altaro. She hadn’t remembered ahn before in Pod Station One, but now she recalled the last time she had seen this chosen. It had been during the rites of Conqueror and Dancer, three days before the invasion of Target Planet Thirteen-Nine-Seven-dash-Four. Altaro wore the same green ceremonial robes with the name glyphs of the Gods emblazoned in white and bordered in silver across ahns chest. She had never spent much time around ahno before she’d been stationed to the pyramid. And even on the Ihvik-Ri, chosen and servants seldom mixed outside of the drum rites. Most of the ahno in Warrens Dree had been snatched up by the Godseers at an early age. All she had known at the time was that they were to be disciplined as candidates for the Chosen. Along with a few other boys and girls, if they passed the nine trials, they would no longer be khvazol, the nameless unseen.
Altaro pulled a white glove from ahns hand, revealing a silvery biomech implant had replaced ahns thumbnail. Its razor-sharp edge glinted beneath the light strips.
Daggeira squirmed against the pulpy leaves. “Alright, driller, let’s go. Cut me out of this plant already.”
“Patience and piety, little servant. You belong to the Ihvkuhn-Lo now. Which means you must learn patience.” Altaro slashed the thumbnail blade across Daggeira’s forehead.
She willed herself not to flinch at its sting. Blood dripped into her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Altaro wiped her eyes clear, then used the blood to draw on her face with ahns fingertip.
“Drohdil Mother of Life’s glyph. Remember Human, you are a Servant of the Nahgak-Ri and an enforcer of Divine Will. Your blood is their creation. Your life is their weapon.”
When finished, Altaro pulled out a membrane from ahns robes and wiped ahns hands clean. Ahn tossed the used membrane into a mulcher hatch, then came around behind the pod. Altaro whispered into her ear.
“See me now, little servant. Be patient, be pious, and be quiet. You are to be admitted into Mother of Life’s Sanctum. This is a holy place. Ahns Holiness sees you.”
Without Altaro blocking her view, Daggeira saw they waited outside two huge, ornately filigreed doors. A bar of red laser light scanned Altaro’s face, and the heavy doors slowly opened. Within, glaring red light strips shaded the sanctum with a bloody glow. The bitter tang of biomech oils permeated the air. Chosen Altaro escorted Daggeira inside and closed the entrance behind. Another chosen with the name glyph Chanto was busy arranging biotubing and checking reflexors beside a small table of strange devices, all while chanting endless praises to Drohdil Mother of Life. Upon entering the sanctum, Altaro joined the prayers.
Daggeira had visited the shrines of Conqueror, Dancer, and Keeper of Hidden Fire on the drummers deck of the Ihvik-Ri before. But she had never been granted access to the pyramid’s upper decks and their sanctums. Those levels were usually restricted to warseers, godseers, and the chosen who ministered to them. Perhaps first drums and attendants were given such privileges, but not unranked servants. If the High Godseer hadn’t selected her for this ritual, she would never have beheld such a holy chamber.
Encased within the omoloz pod, Daggeira could move only her head and neck. If she craned her neck enough, she could see the High Overseer observing from an overhead terrace. Atu Madzo wore a tall mitre. Resting on ahns sloped brow amid ahns ring of stubby horns, the mitre looked like long, bony fingers reaching up from the Ihvkuhn-Lo’s skull. Cobalt blue glowed from within its skeletal frame. Three more godseers joined Atu Madzo on the terrace and busied themselves over intricate control panels. Daggeira recognized the godseers but didn’t know their names.
From another high terrace, Attendant Bolta and the three holo-projected eyes of Pinnacle Bohru Jerik gazed down upon her. Even from here, she sensed Bolta’s suspicions. Would Daggeira ever cleanse the stigma of Sabira’s—the apostate’s—association? The entire pyramid had seen them invoke the Dancer during the drum rites. Even if it satisfied the High Godseer, her confession of faith wasn’t enough for the attendant. Servants cared about actions, not words.
Across the sanctum, another entrance opened. Chosen Scripturo escorted an omoloz pod inside and joined the other two chosen in their chanting. Attendant Spear’s head and shoulders protruded from the top of the pod’s many leaves. The horrendous swelling and angry bruises were gone. Spear’s head was already crossed with so many scars, Daggeira doubted if she would recognize if he’d acquired any new ones.
He met her stare with mismatched eyes, one cold blue, one biomech silver. Though he looked completely healed physically, there was something in his stare that she had never seen in him before. His manner had always been strong and assured, and she had always felt inspired in his presence. But not now. Now his eyes were blank, empty.
Sabira’s betrayal broke him. I mustn’t let it break me, too.
“We are enforcers of Divine Will,” she whispered to him.
“Our lives are their weapons,” he whispered back, his voice flat and dry.
“The Gods see us, Attendant.”
He made no response.
“To Pyramid Ihvik-Ri’s Sanctum of Life, I bid you welcome, Servants Spear and Daggeira,” the High Godseer announced in Ihziz-Ri, ahns amplified voice filling the sanctum. Atu Madzo spread ahns arms in a dramatic sweep. “With the blessing of the Divine Masters, who own your lives and crafted your bloodlines, oversight of your services has transferred from the Warseers directly to me. Isn’t it wonderful, to know your service to Divine Will has been so elevated?”
At their previous meeting, Atu Madzo had said that transferring her service from the Warseers would be a new beginning for Daggeira. She wasn’t looking for a new beginning. Only wanted everything back the way it was before the infiltration mission. But that wasn’t her choice to make. Perhaps a new beginning was what she needed? Perhaps that was why the Gods had seen her, heard her prayers, bestowed Their mercy? Before her mission to the target planet, she wanted nothing more than a few glyphs, some action, and a promotion to rank. Since her return, she started to suspect the Gods had something grander in mind for her. And this is where it would begin.
But wasn’t that exactly what Sabira had offered? A new beginning?
“I asked you, servants, is it not wonderful?”
“Yes, High Godseer,” they answered in unison.
“Yes.” The amplified wet smack of Atu Madzo’s lips filled the sanctum. “Yes, wonderful. Chosen, give these servants my glyph. Young Servant Daggeira, you’ll be pleased to know, I am raising you to the rank of third drum.”
“Yes, High Godseer. Thank you, High Godseer.” Third drum! She was seen. She’d made rank. Though, without a crew, she had no unranked skins to command.
Chosen Altaro tattooed Atu Madzo’s glyph on their faces, all the while chanting praises to Mother of Life. Altaro also marked Daggeira with a new rank glyph between her eyes. Daggeira’s face throbbed where the ink stingers marked her flesh. When finished, the chosen took ahns station behind the omoloz pod once again.
A metallic clang reverberated through the sanctum. The floor dilated, contracting itself into a triangle connecting their two pods to Chanto’s workstation. An unusually harsh stench of biomech organs wafted up from below.
“Behold, the vaidu. Our Master’s newest weapon crafted for the war with the infidel Monarchy,” the High Godseer intoned.
Though she couldn’t look directly beneath herself, Daggeira could see below Spear. His pod and the constricted floor around it rested atop a bonelike pillar. Webs of biotubing had been wrapped in long helices down the pillar and connected to a large, translucent organ: a biomech egg sac, with three meter-and-a-half tall eggs within. The sac throbbed with a blood-red pulse. Chanto started inserting the top ends of the biotubes into orifices around Spear’s pod, then did the same with hers.
Above her, portals on the three inner walls of the sanctum dilated open with a squelching sigh. Three trigonal pyramids floated on hover pods through the openings. They were made of aku-vayk, holy ore the color of rusted iron. On each pyramid, a glyph of burning green indicated the God it represented—Star Father, Mother of Life, Allseer.
Three biotubes snaked down the slanted walls of the sanctum. Pulsing and throbbing, the biotubes lifted away from the walls, writhed through the air above her, and connected themselves to the three floating tetrahedrons.
Once all the biotubes connected, a complex holo projected into the space between and above the two servants. Detailed representations of her and Spear’s nervous systems, each intertwined within the omoloz pods, hung in the air. Below that, more holos depicted six biomech nervous systems, all coiled tightly within their eggs. Statistical readouts streamed in color-coded columns beside each projection.
The High Godseer’s voice filled the sanctum. “After Their conquest of the Old Masters, in Their great wisdom, the Akuh-Ori, the Gods beyond the Gates, saw that the new society of the Divine Masters should reflect the sacred geometry of Heaven, with power flowing down from Them and through the Masters, like a pyramid.
“The Nahgak-Ri, our Divine Masters, gathered living beings, both the great beasts and plants, as well as the smallest microbes, from nearby worlds, and unified them under Divine Will. Next, they crafted khvazol, nameless and unseen humans, to tend to the unified.”
The High Overseer licked ahns lips before continuing. “Between the Divine Masters and their creations, a vital tier was missing. Allseer gazed across the many stars surrounding the Gates of Heaven and found the world to claim for Ahns own, Dreenahv-Za. With Ahns sister, Mother of Life, They crafted the first Zohlun-Lo Overseers to be the eyes and hands of the Masters, and to ensure that Divine Will is done. Then Allseer brought the Overseers unto the Divine Masters and said, ‘Take two hundred twenty-three of the fiercest Zohlun-Lo and craft the Gohnzol-Lo Warseers. Take another two hundred twenty-three of the most pious Zohlun-Lo and craft the Akuhn-Lo Godseers. And thus Overseer, Warseer, and Godseer shall be the Three Eyes of Allseer.’ Is Divine Will not glorious?”
“Yes, High Godseer,” they answered in unison.
The apex of the sanctum dilated open. From out of the light strips’ red glare, a female warseer emerged. Hanging from three biotube cables, she descended to a point below the hovering pyramids and above the servants. The light strips tinged the gray skin of her bare body with an otherworldly pinkish glow. Her limbs bulged with thicker muscles than Daggeira’d ever seen on a warseer. Something strange protruded along the back of her shoulders and neck to the base of her rearmost horns.
“Warseer Zika of House Rab of Clan Izd,” the High Godseer announced, “you enter this Sanctum of Life, your house disgraced by defeat to infidels from without and by the treachery of the apostate from within. Does not Mother of Life in Her mercy see you still? When you leave this sanctum, the path to redeeming your house begins.”
Rab Izd. The same house and clan the Pinnacle of Zol-Ori had been.
Biotubes from the floating pyramids snaked down toward Zika and socketed into her strange implant. A new holo of the warseer’s nervous system hovered above the two human projections.
The High Godseer continued. “Allseer’s World of Dreenahv-Za unified with Nahgohn-Za, homeworld of the Divine Masters, and the Holy Unity was born. So, too, on this day, the great work of unification leaps forward. Are the nine of you, Warseer, Human, and vaidu, devoted to Divine Will, warriors of the Holy Unity?”
“Yes, High Godseer.”
Altaro and Scripturo each held out ahns right hands. Chanto delivered a nihkazza, long sacrificial daggers, into their grasps. Exquisitely filigreed glyphs decorated the swooping blades. The nihkazza flashed under the ruddy lights as though burning with flames. Altaro circled behind her and cut through the pod’s leaves. Daggeira felt the sliced-open lips peel back from her skin, and the sticky, warm air of the sanctum breathe over her spine.
At last, yes! Get me out of this drilling thing! The ball of panic lurking in her sternum finally began dissolving. She wasn’t free yet, but getting closer.
Across from Daggeira, Scripturo handed the nihkazza back to Chanto and was given something else. It resembled the thing attached to Warseer Zika’s back. Silver and black with glowing blue stripes. One side was covered in plates. The other side wriggled. Then Chanto brought the same to Altaro. Daggeira tried to twist her head around to get a better look at it, but her movement was still too restricted. She could only make out cobalt blue flashes, the same color as yarist gems.
What in Trickster’s hell is ahn doing with that thing?
A tickling sensation started along her upper spine, prickling the base of her neck to the back of her smooth scalp. She remembered the inquisitive brush of a baby cug’s whiskers, when she was just a nameless mine rat in the aggie caverns. The faintest hint of a smile curved her lips.
Until the pain began.
What had been a tentative caress turned needle-sharp. The pain grew worse with every heartbeat, until cruel agony devoured and a familiar rage blossomed within—the transformative surge of the yarist gems. Bone, muscle, and sinew grew denser, stronger, as pain and anger became the totality of her being.
But she was not alone. As the needles penetrated deeper into her spine, a new animalistic fury screamed in her brain. Instincts awakened. She felt the three vaidu in their egg sac the same way she felt her own clenched fists trapped within the pod. She flexed her spasming fingers into the pulpy lips, and the vaidu’s many spiky legs twitched against their eggs. She arched her back into the ecstatic throes of suffering, and three exoskeletal bodies shivered and squirmed.
Unity. True unity. The ultimate manifestation of Divine Will. As horrible as it was sublime.
The sanctum dissolved from her consciousness. Red lights dimmed from her eyes. The chanting of the chosen receded. Pulpy leaves no longer pressed her flesh. All sensation disappeared, leaving only . . .
. . . only pain, only rage, unity, and awestruck terror. Each synergized the other—one feeding into, propelling the next—until her mind, her very being, burst open into a new reality of pure, screeching, white-hot light. Agony beyond agony. Light beyond light. And within . . . something . . . someone . . . transcendent . . .
. . . The Goddess . . .
. . . arms and wombs and legs and leaves and seeds and eggs and eyes and eyes and eyes . . .
. . . Mother of Life . . .
. . . reached out . . . embraced Daggeira’s heart . . .
In that pure light of anguish, Daggeira passed beyond flesh. Beyond mind. She ascended to the Shattered Gates of Heaven and was found worthy.
BE
Seen by the Goddess.
Touched by Her grace.
MY
Infused.
Transfigured into a vessel of Her Will in the terrible light of Heaven.
HAND.
Something changed. The pure, screeching light faded. Mother receded. Something else—someone else—took form where the Goddess had been.
No! She wanted to scream. No! She desperately fought to hold on to Heaven’s agonizing transcendence. But flesh stole her back. And within her flesh, a will not her own. Another mind weighed upon her. And beyond that . . . yet another presence?
Subjugated by pain, her thoughts broke apart. Sense of being shattered. Didn’t know if she was one mind, or many, or none at all. Drowning in a whirlpool of misery, she couldn’t even scream. Couldn’t wail or cry out. Instead, Daggeira spoke—in words not of her intent, in a language she could understand but not speak.
“I am Zika Rab Izd, Warseer of the Holy Unity,” Daggeira said in Ihziz-Ri, then cackled. Her eyes bulged with fear and helplessness, even as her own mouth uttered another’s words, someone else speaking through her lips. “Allseer see me! See me now! By my hand, the glory of House Rab of Clan Izd shall be rekindled!”