PROBABLY THOUGHT YOUR fighting pit days were deep behind you.” Daggeira’s voice echoed off the high ceiling and drifted down the adjacent corridors. She watched the muscle twitch in the old man’s neck, before correcting herself and adding, “Attendant.”
“I’ll teach you the rhythms when we get back,” Attendant Spear said, his voice quiet enough that no echoes bounced from the hard, flat walls. He didn’t look at her when he spoke. She wasn’t clear if his blank stare looked at anything at all.
“Rhythms?”
“Your promotion to third drum. Each rank has their own rhythm to play for the drum rites. It’s the separate rhythms coming together that make the music. You need to learn your new part.”
“After we get back from the fighting pit, I’m drinking my tits off with diggers beer. But after that, sure, I’ll drum with you.”
“This is no fighting pit.” Spear faced the massive door. Hundreds of scratches and dents marred the super ceramic surface, an abstract writ large of the scars webbed across his head and face. “This is the Proving Ground.”
After the ritual in the Sanctum of Life, the biomech implanted in Daggeira’s neck and spine had itched incessantly, and her appetite was nearly unquenchable. They had been given quarters adjacent to the Chosen’s rectory. The suite of small cabins she shared with Spear was the most private space she’d ever had. Luckily, their rooms had been stocked with food. With every bite, she had felt her muscles grow thicker, and that nagging, unscratchable itch slowly ebb.
Over the next few weeks, neither of them had seen the High Godseer or Warseer Zikka Rab Izd. As their bodies grew more powerful, they saw only each other, a handful of medics and chosen, and occasionally the same three Akuhn-Lo Godseers. Since their return to the pyramid battleship, they hadn’t encountered other servants. Daggeira had no idea if the other crews of her former duty and task knew that she had survived both the target planet and the Zol-Ori.
A shift ago, the two of them had been shuttled over from the Ihvik-Ri. Though they never saw her, they could sense Warseer Rab Izd on the shuttle deck above them, as they could sense each other and the vaidu locked away in the cargo hold.
“Proving Ground? Heard of it, but never seen it before.” Daggeira paced in wide circles. They had plenty of space. The anteroom and passages leading off to either side of the door were large enough for three granks to march side by side and one atop the other. Dim, grayish lights barely illuminated the yawning corridors. The air smelled astringent, antiseptic.
“Few servants have,” Spear said. “This ship is for the Warseers to test the new weapons the Godseers make for them.”
Daggeira longed to be tested. The High Godseer’s ritual in the Sanctum of Life had transfigured them both. The biomech symbiote in her back was like a living yarist gem implanted into flesh. It strengthened every bone and muscle to inhuman capacity, without the energy-sapping side effects. She stood thicker, taller, mightier, and ready for combat. Craving combat.
Instead of armor, they had been given gray, sleeveless tunics, trousers, and boots. These same clothes would have draped loosely over her shoulders and hips weeks ago. Now they clung tightly to her frame, accentuating every muscle. The centers of their tunics bore High Godseer Atu Madzo’s glyph emblazoned in emerald green, the same glyph that Chosen Altaro had tattooed on their scalps.
“Then they should open this drilling door, and we’ll show every warseer in the fleet their two best new weapons.” Daggeira clenched and released her fists repeatedly.
“Our lives are their weapons,” Spear whispered. “They need us to prove more than just the strength of our bodies.”
“We’re not traitors,” Daggeira hissed through clenched teeth. “We’re not like Stargazer.”
“Apostate,” Spear corrected. He looked at his new prosthetic left hand. Instead of replacing the three severed fingers, the medics had given him a whole new hand. Biomech silver, just like his eye.
“Right. Apostate. We’re not like her. Maybe she lost her faith on that vermin-infested rock. But I found mine. The Gods see me. See us both.” She gripped his shoulder, his muscles like tightly coiled springs in her grip. He turned to look at her for the first time in their conversation, his mismatched eyes dull and pale, but didn’t say a word. Daggeira let go of his shoulder.
He’s not just broken. Something’s missing.
Daggeira felt her again—the warseer—like an itch between her shoulder blades she couldn’t scratch. Zika was near.
“I pray they give us the chance to show what we can do with this new strength.” Daggeira slapped the back of her hand on Spear’s chest. “You want it, too, Attendant. Don’t you? I know this: we don’t need to be leashed to a warseer to be the best they’ve ever seen.” She slammed the heel of her palm into the massive door. “No”—she slammed again—“we”—and again—“don’t.” She struck with all her might.
The super ceramic surface taunted her by not shattering to pieces. Not even a dimple. She and Spear were stronger than any human alive, but still human.
In the back of her mind, Daggeira felt shocked by her own behavior. She had a temper, sure, but she usually stood back and let others reveal their weak spots. She had never been hot-headed enough to hit walls and doors. That was more like Sabira.
Godsdammit. Not Sabira. The apostate.
“As terrified of you as the door must be,” said a voice from behind them, “you might find something more sporting if you truly want to prove to the Gohnzol-Lo you’re the best weapon they’ve ever seen.”
They turned to find Warseer Zika Rab Izd emerging from a personnel door at the back of the anteroom. Zika had spoken to them in Khvaziz, the non-language of Humans. Strange for a warseer. They both started to kneel, but Zika waved them off, telling them it wasn’t necessary. The blade-like horns encircling Zika’s sloped brow caught the dull light as she approached.
A memory flashed through Daggeira’s mind, viciously clear. At the end of the transfiguration ritual, moments before she had blacked out, with her nervous system burning white-hot, words in Ihziz-Ri had bubbled out of her like a subconscious twitch, a reflex she could observe but not control. Daggeira’s lips had spoken, but with this warseer’s name, with this warseer’s words, while her own selfhood watched, trapped somewhere deep within.
At well over two-and-a-half meters, Zika loomed over both servants. The biomech implant had transfigured her as well, making her bigger, stronger. She studied them silently with her three yellow eyes, bloodshot-green around their edges. The typical, hot prickling across Daggeira’s face and scalp that always accompanied a warseer’s presence was noticeably absent. But the itch between her shoulder blades grew worse with each moment.
“I can hear exactly what Lonno would say.” Zika cupped a hand behind a conical sense mound, as if she strained to hear the imagined words. “Aren’t we all so very blessed to be granted Mother of Life’s grace?”
“We are blessed,” Spear and Daggeira answered in unison. His tone was flat, while she nearly shouted the words. Something sounded off about the warseer’s tone. It lacked reverence. If Daggeira hadn’t known better, she would have thought Zika was being sardonic.
“Did you know, in addition to having the honor of Pinnacles and High Godseers throughout the fleet watching us with great interest, Divine Masters from every world in the Unity will be observing as well? Even the Master of Masters, the Pinnacle of the World, the Ihvnahg-Ra dra Nahgohn-Za himself?”
Hearing the Divine Masters would soon see her in action sent a chill into Daggeira’s chest. She’d heard rumors that the Nahgak-Ri sometimes deigned to watch pit fights. But knowing she’d be seen by the Ihvnahg-Ra, the ruler of the Divine Masters’ homeworld, redoubled the anxious, violent energy pulsing through her.
Zika laid her hand on Spear’s scarred and tattooed scalp, tracing her thumb over the glyphs of the High Godseer and the Pinnacle of the World. He gazed blankly through her fingers. “But you are his property, after all. I’m sure the Master of Masters is quite curious to see if his favorite old man has anything new to show him.”
After an awkward silence, Zika opened a large pouch on her uniform belt and pulled out a canister of briny liquid. She unscrewed the lid and extracted a limply squirming amphibian. White-dotted lumps covered the creature’s pink skin. One had grown into an orangish tumor, swelling to nearly half the animal’s size. With a precise, graceful motion, Zika placed the tumor between her teeth and bit. It popped, squelching a dark orange liquid into her mouth. A few viscous drops trailed from her silvery lips. Carelessly, she dropped the canister. It clanged off the floor and spilled out the briny water. She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them—one, two, three. Each pupil shrank to small dark specks in glistening yellow orbs.
Zika looked down at them with a smirk on her gory lips. She tossed the dead amphibian aside, then flicked her wrist toward the massive door. “Go now, show Warseers, Masters, and maybe even the Gods who you really are.”
The heavy ceramic door split vertically down the middle; each half ponderously sliding into the walls with loud grating noises. A cold gust of air smacked Daggeira in the face, accompanied by a glare of reflected light. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a vast field of snow and ice on the other side of the door. Here and there, ridges of black stone and rubble rose sharply out of the stark white. Bioluminescent light strips reflected harshly off the snow. The terrain sparkled like a great vein of diamonds laid bare.
Daggeira looked to Spear, and he returned with the slightest of nods. Together, they walked into the frigid Proving Ground. The snow squeaked and crackled beneath their boots. Her cheeks felt raw and tight. Her bare arms tingled. To her surprise, Warseer Zika followed a few steps behind.
Five-meter-high walls enclosed the triangle-shaped Proving Ground. Their door formed one of the vertices, and each wall stretched from their left and right for at least a hundred meters before ending at another vertex and a massive double door. Large pink crystals hung suspended in the air about two or three meters above the ground, scattered randomly throughout the arena.
Above it all, a vast holo projection loomed from end to end. The black of deep space, packed with the milky swath of the local cluster’s thousands of stars, filled the horizon in every direction. Directly above, the blood-red nebula of the Shattered Gates of Heaven dominated the holographic sky. The holiest site in the galaxy, its luminous gasses swirled in unfathomable gravitational eddies, hundreds of thousands of kilometers across.
“Just like I said, Attendant, the Gods see us.” Daggeira’s breath fogged and dissipated into the holographic night. She held her muscular arms out to her sides, relishing the cold air and stark beauty of the Proving Ground. Spear stood silent and unmoving, head tilted back, narrowed eyes peering into the Shattered Gates.
“Something is missing,” Daggeira said, unable to quite place what it was.
New holo projections appeared above each vertex and twice more above each wall: disembodied yellow and orange eyes. Then Lonno Atu Madzo’s voice filled the arena, carrying on with the typical stories of Divine Masters, Warseers, and Godseers, about glory and honor, and the Divine Will of the Gods. Daggeira ignored ahn. If the Gods were truly watching now, only deeds mattered. When the High Godseer finished ahns oration, one of the other great doors slid open with a low, grinding screech.
Daggeira lifted her face to the Shattered Gates and cried, “See me!” She turned back to Zika, standing before the slowly closing door, and cried out for the warseer to see her as well. Next, she looked to Spear a few paces behind her. His gaze locked on the door opening across the arena.
“See me do what I do best,” she said, more to herself than the old man.
Nine vleez entered the Proving Ground. The respirators grafted to their faces distorted their voices into buzzing drones that carried crisp and clear over the frozen terrain. A few of them leaped up and struck the floating pink crystals nearest them. Sounds like shattering glass pierced the air, and caches of bladed weapons and clubs spilled down to the snow. Once every vleez had a weapon clutched in one of their four claw-hands, they emitted a shrill, buzzing chant.
Daggeira’s heartbeat quickened. Her hands repeatedly flexed and clenched. She hunched forward, readying to charge into the enemy infidels.
“Wait,” Spear cautioned. “These vermin are soldiers, not untrained drones.” He pointed to a ridge of black stone—stepped on one side, sheer vertical ice on the other—that was closer to them than the vleez, but not by much. “Take the high ground first, and let them come to us.”
The nine vleez charged, buzzing and screeching, sense tendrils high and splayed above their heads, crude weapons held aloft in six-fingered claws. Daggeira sped toward the ridge. Snow crunched rhythmically beneath her boots, but a patch of ice almost sent her sprawling. A few of the vleez stumbled and slipped on ice patches as well. When she reached the base of the ridge, one of them was only a few meters away. A handful more rushed forward, a few seconds behind the leader.
Daggeira scrambled up the first steps of slippery black rock. Spear had planted himself at the base of the ridge, crouched and ready. The first vleez came at him, swinging a crude machete at his head. He caught his opponent and spun, redirecting the attacker’s force. Spear twisted the machete free while throwing the hapless vleez into those charging behind.
“Catch!” Spear tossed the machete up to Daggeira, and she snatched it from the air.
By the time the vleez regained their bearings, Spear and Daggeira had climbed to just below the top ridgeline. The vleez, though armed and outnumbering the servants, lost their momentum. Those who made it up the rocky steps first only served as a means of delivering weapons before their arms were broken and skulls smashed. After they skillfully repelled the first wave of vermin, Spear and Daggeira held bladed and blunt weapons in both hands, each dripping with black infidel blood. Their breaths frosted in the air. Daggeira’s heartbeat was steady and strong in her chest, barely faster than if she had been resting.
“Come and get us!” Daggeira shouted, urging them forward with her weapons. She almost laughed as much as shouted. Exhilaration pumped through her veins, something more than adrenaline. More than a thrill. A sense of rightness. Coated in the blood of infidels, fighting beside a fellow servant, reveling in the strength and reflexes of her transfigured body, seen—actually seen—expressing her truest self in glorious, unmitigated violence. This was who she was always meant to be. This was exactly where she belonged.
The other vleez tried to rush them at once, but one slipped and blocked several others. Their cohesion lost, they attacked the ridge by ones and twos. Any vleez who made it within weapon’s reach were crushed and slashed. In the end, Daggeira and Spear came down from the ridge and finished off the last of them too terrified to come up. When it was over, pools of thick black blood steamed amid the melting snow. Silence settled over the field, punctuated only by their panting breaths.
“Just realized what’s missing.” A gore-covered smile spread across Daggeira’s face. “Where’re the drums?”