WITH THE INFIDELS dead and dismembered, scattered across snow and rock, Spear reverted back to that hollow stare. He peered, stone-still, up into the Shattered Gates, hanging like a massive swath of blood across the holo-projected sky. The less he spoke, the more Daggeira felt compelled to draw him out.
“Two against nine. Nothing from that warseer. Just us two.” Daggeira nodded toward Zika, who had waited by the double doors throughout the battle. “Conqueror sees us, Attendant. Warseers and Divine Masters too.”
Spear continued his silent vigil.
Nine of the hovering crystals splintered apart with ear-piercing cracks. Three caches of palukai sticks fell to the snow, variously configured as swords, halberds, and plasma rifles. The other six crystals released biomechs. They dropped to the cold ground as tightly balled clusters of legs and muscle.
Electric tingles raced up her arms. The same strange sensation she had felt during the transfiguration ritual . . .
The vaidu.
The six creatures slowly unfurled. Yellow and green spiny needles, with fringes of cobalt blue, bristled over their conical shapes. More than a meter from base to tip, their bodies were roughly divided into three segments, with three sharp legs extending from each tier. Three vertical eyes peered out from the tip of the cone. No mouth or other organs were visible.
Once all nine of their limbs were under them, the vaidu began cautiously skittering across the field. They hardly made a sound as their long, sharp legs pierced the snow. Cautiously, the six biomechs crept toward them. Though nearly identical, Daggeira intuitively recognized three of them. One by one, each of her three approached and touched a long pointed arm to her foot, before backing up so that another could come nearer.
“We’re only getting started.” Spear didn’t turn when he spoke. His voice remained flat. If he noticed the three vaidu stalking a perimeter around him, he didn’t show it.
The third heavy door opened. The grating noise finally pulled Spear’s attention away from the holographic sky. It wasn’t more vleez or biomechs. They were humans. Servants in combat tunics.
Daggeira headed toward the newcomers, her three vaidu trailing a few paces behind. She had the strange sensation of observing the newly arrived servants in other, uncanny ways, as if she could see their heat signatures.
“I know them,” Daggeira called over her shoulder to Spear, picking up her pace. “They’re the other crews in my task. Looks like we’ll have to share the glory for the next fight.” Finally, other servants to talk to. Servants who knew her, who had fought beside her.
Daggeira heard Spear say her name, that she should wait. He fell out of earshot, and she didn’t register the rest of what he said.
“First Drum Hook! Caller Shell!” She called to the two in front. A cache of palukai sticks lay in the snow between them and her. The blue radiance of several yarist gems created little glowing patches among the whiteness.
“Who is that?” Caller Shell asked. He slowed while the first drum continued toward the cache.
“It’s me.” She held out her arms to each side as if presenting herself for a better view. “Third Drum Daggeira.”
“Too big for Daggeira,” Shell said. Behind him, the rest of the servants watched from a distance.
“The High Godseer did this.” She pointed to her thicker frame. “I’ve been transfigured. It’s like holding onto a yarist gem for hours and hours without ever getting drained. They dropped some gems for your crews over there. Must have something big planned to impress the Masters.”
“You’ve been cursed,” said a voice from behind her.
“What?” Daggeira turned.
“You’re a traitor, Servant Daggeira. And you’ve been cursed.” First Drum Hook picked up a stick configured as a plasma rifle and brushed off the snow.
“Heard Trickster’s seed took root in your heart. You and the apostate,” Caller Shell said. “Turned infidel. Killed your crew. Sabotaged the Zol-Ori.”
“That is some crazy ass grankshit.” Am I going to have to beat some sense into them? “Sabira is the traitor, not me.”
“The apostate single-handedly killed your whole crew?” Shell asked dismissively.
“Who in all the hells told you that? The vermin killed our crew. Their new tech drilled our stealth veils. We were caught out in the—”
“The Godseers have already looked into your heart.” Hook brought the rifle to his shoulder, aiming it directly at her. “They looked into your heart and found you were nothing more than a traitorous beast. So they gave you the body of a beast.”
Daggeira’s heart thudded. Electricity burned in her hands, like holding an unshielded power cable. She could leap across the snow and tear Hook’s head from his neck. But not faster than he could pull a trigger.
“No.” She wanted to explain, but the words drowned beneath waves of anger.
“Look around you,” Hook said. “You stand before the Shattered Gates of Heaven, and you have been found unworthy.”
She flinched.
He pulled the trigger. Terrible heat sizzled past her.
He screamed.
Daggeira wasn’t dead. Hook was. One of her vaidu had leaped from behind him and punctured his neck. Sprays of red gushed from his throat and steamed in the glittery frost.
Crunching footfalls caught her attention. Caller Shell ran for the nearest glow of a yarist gem. A second vaidu launched through the air, scissoring off his outstretched arm with its sharp limbs. Blood splattered over the snow, his tunic, his anguished face. Plasma bolts sizzled past, instantly disintegrating his head into ash and vapor. He collapsed and lay twitching in the snow.
The remaining servants scattered, running low and fast for the other weapons caches. Through the tingling in her hands, Daggeira felt her three vaidu give swift and silent chase.
She turned to the source of the plasma bolt. Spear knelt on one knee, a palukai rifle tucked into his shoulder. His three vaidu waited, hunkered and ready to pounce, forming a triangle around him. Spear’s next shot took down Third Drum Bulleita. She and Daggeira had drilled once, both of them drunk on diggers beer, shortly after Daggeira had joined crew and task.
With methodical, deadly precision Spear fired plasma bolts burning through the trunks of two more servants. Daggeira recognized their shocked faces. Faces she had fought and attended rituals beside. Faces of people with whom she’d shared a life, a common cause. Shared hardship and ecstasy.
Faces of those who believed she was a traitor.
Drill them all.
Old instincts awakened, smothering any reticence to fight other humans. Like them, she had killed in the pits to earn her name, to earn her place in the Servants, to be where she was now. Then, it had been khvazol and infidels. Now, it was fellow servants, named and seen. Either way, if they had the gall to think she was a traitor, then it would be her life or theirs. And she would win.
“Grab a stick,” Spear said. “Cover my back.”
On the far side of the Proving Ground, more servants ran across the snow and ice in search of weapons.
“Too easy to just grab the sticks lying around here. I’ll take one of theirs.”
The long-building wave of fury crashed over her, blissful and perfect. Every sense crystallized. Every movement flowed with spontaneous grace. The implant did more than strengthen and harden her body, it ceaselessly fueled her rage. And godsdamn, did it feel good.
Daggeira flexed her fingers toward five servants behind Spear, and her vaidu honed in. Grinding her teeth into a mad grin, she joined the chase. The vaidu severed the legs out from under two more servants. The other three made it to the cache and grabbed weapons as Daggeira charged toward them. The first servant swung a halberd with curved blades at either end. Her strike was dead-on at Daggeira’s head, expertly timed.
Daggeira watched the blade arc toward her with such clarity it felt as if time had slowed for everyone but her. Twisting to match the flow of the attack, she took the staff in her left hand and crushed her opponent’s skull with her right elbow. The servant dropped. Silently, except for the whispering gargle of blood, a vaidu finished her off.
With halberd in hand, Daggeira brought the attack to the other two. She spun the palukai around herself, scything its blades in a deadly whirlwind, her every step across ice and snow balanced and sure.
The next servant was ready for her. He held a saber in his left hand, a glowing yarist gem in his right. He parried Daggeira’s spinning attack on the flat of his blade, and with the gem’s help, he didn’t crumble under her powerful attack. Simultaneously, he punched her square in the sternum, crushing the air from her lungs. She stumbled back, her momentum lost with her breath. If the other servant had been worth his glyphs, he would have been on top of her then, ready for the kill. But the sword-wielding servant pressed the attack on his own.
His sword blurred. She blocked his vertical strike on her staff and dropped to one knee. His blade glinted harsh light into her eyes, blinding her. She pushed off and pivoted away. Again, his crewmate should have been ready for her, but wasn’t ready.
The two of them squared off, each taking a moment to step back and size the other up. Daggeira finally got a look at his name and rank glyphs. Third Drum Nuke. She didn’t know him well, only his reputation as one of the best close-quarter fighters in their task. The other servant stood about six meters behind Nuke, frozen still.
Vaguely, as if from kilometers away, the sizzling whine of plasma bolts told her Spear was in the middle of a firefight. Hopefully, he’d keep the others pinned down so she didn’t get shot in the back.
Her hands bristled with surges of electricity as Nuke launched into an onslaught of slashing strikes. Daggeira went high. Two vaidu went low, one for each leg. Biomech blades extruded from their limbs and severed his flesh and bone, just below the knees. He didn’t scream when he dropped face-first. He casually rolled over and sat up. The sword lay forgotten, though he still held the gem in his grip. He looked calmly at the gouts of dark blood pouring from each leg.
Third Drum Nuke slumped back, gazed up into the Shattered Gates of Heaven, and died.
Daggeira turned to the last servant. He trembled where he stood. The plasma rifle quivered in his shaky grip. When his eyes, wide with shock, met Daggeira’s, he threw down the gun.
“P-p-please . . .” he stammered.
Daggeira spun the double-bladed halberd nonchalantly at her side. The three vaidu surrounded him and crouched, their sharp, segmented legs ready.
“I . . . I heard the f-first drum,” he said, jaw quivering, “I don’t—”
Daggeira grabbed him by the neck with her left hand. Felt his jugular pulsing beneath her thumb. His pale eyes looked ready to pop, more from fear than her grip on his throat. He bore no rank glyphs. She didn’t bother to notice the name tattooed on his left cheek.
“You survived nine pits?”
“The vleez in the pits,” he squeaked, “all sick. Easy k-kill.”
“That’s something you have in common.”
“Please. S-see me. I don’t believe f-first drum.”
Though Daggeira still held him by the throat, her grip lessened, allowing him to speak.
“You’re not cursed. You’re blessed. Seen by the Gods!” His voice grew louder, less shaky. “I want to be like you. I don’t want to be afraid.” He twisted his head within her grip, looking to the nearest holo-projected eyes looming over the arena wall. “Please Warseers, Godseers, see me! Make me like her!”
“You see me,” Daggeira commanded. He obeyed.
What should she do with this one? Let him go and let warseers decide his fate?
But her grip wouldn’t release his throat.
“Coward,” she said, not in her language, but Ihziz-Ri. “No one sees you.” Then, as if it was the most natural thing to do in that moment, even though she didn’t intend to, Daggeira closed her fist tighter around his neck. She squeezed until she felt vertebrae, slippery with gore in her palm.
She let go, and the body collapsed at her feet. Silently the vaidu approached. From under their cone-shaped bodies, fang-like appendages extended, sinking into the gushing wreckage of his throat. Daggeira stared at her hand, dripping with viscera, and wondered whose hand it was.
Beyond her fingers, Spear approached, palukai rifle held loose and ready. Three vaidu skittered around him, trailing bright red across the dazzling white frost. Though he walked straight toward Daggeira, he didn’t seem to be looking at her, or anything at all. She felt the urge to let go, let another will guide her actions, reduce her own will to nothing more than a passive rider strapped to a charging beast, going where it led, not responsible for whomever it trampled and gored on its way.
No . . .
She mentally thrashed at the undertow dragging at her will. How could she earn glory in victory if the intent driving her hand was not her own? How could the Gods see her, if she was just an empty shell? And the Gods did see her.
And yet . . .
The constant itch between her shoulder blades expanded, wrapping over her head and around her chest. She wanted to claw away her flesh, scratch the scalp from her skull, but couldn’t even twitch a finger.
Warseer Zika Rab Izd stood between her and Spear. Her nine, scythe-like horns gleamed in the harsh light. Her three eyes, bright as yellow fire.
Daggeira wanted to fall to her knees in worship.
Daggeira wanted to scream and slam her fist into the warseer’s face.
Daggeira stood, silent and trembling.
“I win,” Zika said, speaking in Khvaziz.
The warseer raised both hands, one to Spear, one to Daggeira, and clenched them into fists.
She found herself on one knee, head bowed. Her vaidu crouched beside her. Spear and his vaidu knelt as well.
The echoing grind of the heavy doors sliding open wailed louder than before. All three doors to the Proving Ground opened at once. Massive shapes filled each entrance. The frozen ground beneath her trembled as the huge biomech war beasts stamped their wide, flat hooves. A chorus of bellows resonated through the frigid air. A sound Daggeira knew all too well. Three agitated granks stomped into the arena.
Warseer Zika made a gesture, and Daggeira and Spear rose to their feet, along with their vaidu.
“High Godseer Atu Madzo wishes to give our Divine Masters an exciting spectacle,” Zika said. “Shall we show all the Holy Unity what weapons they’ve made of us in order to redeem our souls?”
Even as the granks bellowed and charged, like old man Spear beside her, Daggeira gazed up at the eternal night and the thousands of stars encircling the Shattered Gates of Heaven.
All those stars, and none of them for her.