RACING TO THE pyramid’s entrance, Daggeira felt the vaidu’s death as if she’d been ripped open and gutted herself. She didn’t stop. Didn’t falter. She was the first one in.
Daggeira won.
Because of course she did.
She expected to see the old man or some acknowledgement of her victory. But nothing. Must have farther to go. And the apostate was coming for her.
Daggeira ran down the passageway until it dead-ended into a cross corridor, curving away to her right and left. Little blisters dotted the walls in both directions, emitting a thin, pissy glow. The corridors bent out of her line of sight—no way to know which was the right choice. Without hesitation, she turned left and kept running as fast as she could on her screaming leg. The floor changed beneath her boots, growing softer, almost fleshy, then turned crystalline hard again, as if Godsfall’s insides couldn’t decide what they wanted to be. The passage curved sharply to the left, and the blisters glowed brighter. The apostate’s furious screams echoed from behind as Daggeira sprinted for the brighter light. She was going to win. She deserved to win.
The corridor abruptly ended in a tall archway. Daggeira braced her hands against the walls to keep herself from skidding into open air. She teetered at the lip of sheer drop-off.
Her jaw fell open.
She stood on a small balcony, halfway up the curved side of an expansive spherical cavity. At its heart floated a huge geometrical shape. One trigonal pyramid pointed up, the other pointed down, forming a six-sided diamond with a sphere interpenetrating its center. At each vertex of the floating geometry hung twelve-sided shapes, suspended in midair. Three of the dodecahedrons emitted golden light. The one below the nadir gave off a dimmer glow. A completely dark one hovered above the apex.
Three rings of reddish-brown spheres orbited the geometry. The gods bones from the hover trains—some of them at least. Each ring orbited the floating diamond shape at a different angle, but at the same distance. Their perfectly timed orbits allowed the spheres from each ring to pass through the paths of the others without pause or collision.
The voice of their captor reverberated through the cavity, speaking Khvazol again. “You’ve come this far, to the heart of Godsfall. Will you go all the way? Would you have the weapon, against which, no power in the galaxy can stand?”
“I would.”
“Then step forward.”
Angry sounds of the apostate charging through the pyramid grew louder, more frenzied.
Daggeira stepped off the ledge.
One of many flying drones swooped over her head. It projected a shimmer of blues and greens that wrapped around her, holding her aloft. The shimmer carried her closer to the diamond-shaped geometry suspended at the center of the cavity. As she neared, she saw that the golden dodecahedrons were actually containers. More like sarcophagi. Two desiccated bodies hung within each. Their overall shape was strangely similar to the vaidu, though much larger. They had three conical body segments and an elliptical head. Gray skin hung, shriveled and pallid, from their many arms.
A cylindrical vat stood at the very bottom of the cavity, near the dimmer sarcophagus. A human floated inside, suspended within a bright pink gel. Part of a human, at least. One arm, most of the torso, and a head. She couldn’t see the face. A mess of odd cables and tech ran from the cylinder and socketed into the floor.
“What now?” Daggeira yelled down to the head in the vat. “What now?”
Harsh yellow light blinded her.
Consumed her.
Before she could see again, Daggeira could feel them. Their collective presence was palpable, a hot dry wind searing her face. Their voices were a distant, hollow murmur.
Color seeped back into Daggeira’s awareness. A blurry amethyst filled her vision. Its ebbs and flows slowly came into focus, until she found herself in an entirely new reality, immersed in a sea of liquid crystal. Quartz hues of purple and pink undulated in and out of each other. She felt weightless and ungrounded, like in the null gravity of space.
Eight forms lurked in the depths, the source of the constant, hot wind. Seven were the same alien bodies from the glowing, twelve-sided sarcophagi. The other was an old man.
Beside her, just out of reach, colors swirled. Someone else appeared next to her, drifting weightlessly in the liquid crystal. Sabira.
“Congratulations.” The old man drifted closer. She recognized their captor from his transmissions. “You both have proved yourselves worthy of our great weapon. However, only one is needed.”
“I was first, give the weapon to me,” Daggeira said.
“The simple contest was only a means to an end, to find who is the most compatible for our needs. If two have made it to the Hara and then to the heart of Godsfall, before the weapon has been bequeathed, then we shall be the ones to choose.”
“We have waited so long we grew desperate. Now that we have the unexpected pleasure of two worthy candidates, we will take advantage of this rare opportunity.”
“Who are they?” Daggeira asked.
Sabira answered first. “All that’s left of the original Nahg, the Old Masters of Nahgohn-Za. And he is Subaru Hanada va Atara’han.”
“She is correct.” He pointed to the alien forms gathered around them. “These seven are all that remain the Nahg. The Final Masters. Ages ago, the Gates of Heaven opened, and a great host issued forth. At first, the Nahg thought that it was the Gate Makers’ long-awaited return. The Makers returned to Nahgohn every twenty-three hundred years, but were more than a century late for their expected arrival.
“The Nahg soon discovered that a corruption had spread among the Makers since their last visitation. They returned not as guides bearing gifts, but as gods demanding subjugation and worship from all that lived.
“The Nahg revolted against these self-proclaimed gods. And they were devastated. Nine survivors fled the massacre and came here to Loshan, a mining facility, where they established the last Bastion of the Final Masters. Determined to avenge their fallen world, the Final Masters set about creating such a vastly powerful weapon that even gods could not stand against it.
“As the superweapon neared completion, the Gates suddenly shattered. The shockwave of destruction took the life of two Masters. Because all nine were needed to operate the superweapon, they feared their vendetta would go unfilled forever. Yet they refused to die, not until they destroyed the gods that took everything from them. For long ages they waited, alone with only themselves and their machines. Then, after millennia had passed in solitude, for a brief instant the Shattered Gates opened, and I burst through.
“Unfortunately, my transit of the Old Portal was less than a complete success. My ship barely made it through intact. The same could not be said for me. The Final Masters hoped I would be the missing piece they had so long awaited. That my Muyama technology could replace both dead Masters with a single sentient mind. But I was far too injured. Only a few pieces of me remained viable. Still, after many trials, I serve how I can.
“We still needed one more sentient being to complete Godsfall. We hoped to refine my insight into traveling the Shattered Gates and go in search of the last piece of our grand weapon. Except my knowledge was too incomplete. We would have destroyed ourselves if we attempted the Gates.
“So we continued to wait—decades this time, not millennia—until the two of you arrived. Now we have two candidates to choose from. And with the data taken from the Shishiguchi, the Gates can finally be opened. They call us to our great vengeance. With Godsfall complete, we will hunt the galaxy through the Shattered Gates until we find the false gods, wherever they lay hidden. And we shall slay them all.
“But first, we need to pick the one best suited to our needs.”
The alien forms had slowly drifted closer to them during Subaru’s speech. After he finished, the seven Final Masters raised their many hands toward Sabira. She crumbled beneath the onslaught of their attention and wailed.
“I promised no one else would . . .” She gasped, a wet choking sound, and pressed her fists to her temples. “I promised . . .”
So weak, thought Daggeira. Heresy has made her soft.
The Final Masters turned to her next. Waves of heat slammed into her, burning through transfigured muscle and bone. Her body was so powerful, yet rendered so pathetically helpless. The vehemence of their will seared her mind and torched her heart.
“No,” Daggeira shouted, even as her body burned beneath their gaze. “I will never be a traitor. I’m not like her. I will not . . . I will not be your weapon! I am the weapon of the Gods!”
“No longer. Now you are the weapon of the Final Masters. The choice is made. You win, Daggeira. You win.
“We shall make you the bane of Heaven. We shall make you Godsfall.”