THE GIRL DIDN’T mean to kill her brood-brother. She only wanted to win the game of obezya.
The first to make it from one end of the cug pens to the other without touching the floor won. With nothing above to hang from, she and her two brood-brothers raced across the top of the pens, bare and calloused nine-year-old feet gripping the narrow rails. The fat beasts confined in their narrow pens warbled and stomped their hooves at the mine rats darting overhead.
The girl always won these games.
Except this time, her taller brood-brother was winning. He’d cut her off, almost making her fall. She kept her balance but lost her temper. Caught up and pushed him into a pen. The girl needed to show him that she shouldn’t be messed with, that she would always win. Afterward, she and her other brother would laugh at him, all covered in cug shit.
But the cug started screaming, frantic and warbling. Her fallen brood-brother screamed in return. Then the boy abruptly silenced. Her other brother wailed, even louder than the screeching beast.
He was only supposed to fall . . . to lose so she could win. The cug wasn’t supposed to panic. It wasn’t supposed to buck and stomp and crush his throat.
Overseers didn’t hear excuses. Didn’t see tears. Didn’t see her. They bound the girl’s wrists and ankles and left her in an empty cug pen. For hours. For shifts. For days. Her hands and feet bulged and turned mean shades of purple. When aggies came into the pens, feeding the cugs and clearing the mess, she called to them. Pleaded through choked, wracking sobs for help. For Mother of Life’s mercy and a drink of water.
The girl was unseen.
When the overseers finally let her go, she couldn’t walk on burning legs and feet bloated from lack of circulation. She cried out for her brood-brother. Cried out that she was sorry.
But he didn’t come. No one did.
Alone, the girl crawled over the filthy floor of the aggie caverns back to Warrens Dree. Tucked away in an isolated corner, she fed herself with shaking hands. Her numb, swollen fingers scooped bits of loaf and sips of water into her mouth. Crumbs dribbled down her arms; caked to her disgusting tunic. With cracked lips, she pecked at every stray nibble. She cried until she slept.
Then she never cried again.
When the girl was eighteen, like all Humans, she was given one chance to decide her fate. No way in all the hells she’d spend her life as an aggie. She knew that if she fought, she would win. She’d be seen. She’d have a name. The girl chose the pit.
While the others in her pitter discipline trembled before each fight, she went to the pit with eager anticipation. Each victory was one step closer to leaving the tunnels of the Labyrinth behind. Even if blood was on her hands. Even if their dying wails haunted her dreams.
It wasn’t until Trickster’s pit, the ninth and final match before earning her name and a place in the Servants, that she ever hesitated. When she saw who stood across the fighting pit’s bright expanse, doubt finally found its way into her heart. Pitters weren’t supposed to fight other khvazol from the same Labyrinth. And definitely weren’t supposed to face their own brood. Her surviving brood-brother wasn’t supposed to hate her for the last nine years.
But she did face her brood-brother.
But he did hate her.
Loathing in his eyes, fueled by pitters brew and years of resentment, he raged. Hostility fumed from his pores when he pinned her to the rocky floor. Ire burned hot in his hands gripped around her throat.
The girl didn’t hate her brood-brother when she summoned the last of her strength to buck him off and roll atop him.
She didn’t hate him when she brought the rock down on his jaw. On his nose. On his temple. Again. And again.
She didn’t hate. She won.
Because of course she did.
She earned her name.
Daggeira would never be unseen again.
Daggeira didn’t hate Sabira, either. She found Sabira’s focus and intensity thrilling. During the drum rites, when she tackled Daggeira to the floor, Sabira’s ferocity was pure, instinctual—intoxicating. Her passion drew Daggeira in, and she wanted it for herself, to drink it all until she smoldered from the inside with Sabira’s flame. When Daggeira bucked free of Sabira’s grapple, it wasn’t to go for the kill, but for the win. Always for the win. And until the words invoking Dancer slipped from Daggeira’s lips, she hadn’t truly realized what sort of victory she wanted.
Bloody and sweaty and entranced by the drums, Daggeira and Sabira drilled for servants and warseers to see. And then again, sweaty and entwined, brutal and soft, they drilled before the holo-projected beauty of the Shattered Gates, before all the Gods and the cold, glaring stars. Sabira saw her like no one had before. Ecstatic, Daggeira gasped, breathing in the scents of Sabira’s taut skin over firm, warm muscle.
Panicked, Daggeira gasped, breathing in the useless, alien air, thick with pollen, humidity, and odors of a vermin-filled world. Acid rounds had pocked and melted her flesh. Her lungs ached, desperate for breathable air.
They were dying, Sabira and her both. No one was coming for them. Everyone else was already dead.
And Sabira gave her the last air tank.
Daggeira was in agony. She was helpless. But she wasn’t dead yet.
Because of Sabira, Daggeira lived.
Because of Sabira, Daggeira was alone—terribly alone.
After she finally returned home, after being chosen by the High Godseer and transfigured by the Goddess, Daggeira would never be alone again. Not even in her own skull.
Slowly, biomech cilia wriggled like worms into the raw dirt of her spine, excavating dark labyrinths in her brain. Connecting her, ensnaring her, submitting her.
The vaidu—animalistic, instinctual, biomechanical—tore free of oily egg sacs to reach for mother.
Warseer Zika Rab Izd, sickly sweet as an overripe fruit cloying with rot, oozed through Daggeira’s awareness. Claimed dominion over body and will.
And behind them all, sinking deeper than implants, deeper than vaidu, deeper even than Zika, loomed the High Godseer. Ahns terrible will claimed dominion upon dominion in the unseen depths of Daggeira’s psyche.
“There it is.” A new voice, but familiar. The shell of a man at the center of the maze. The hunter who laid traps around forgotten stars. “Our way in.”
No.
NO!
Daggeira’s eyes snapped open. Her heart slammed against her chest. Cold, bracing air filled her lungs.
An orb of rusty browns and oranges floated past. Then another, and another, and another arced by in weightless precision. In the wake of each orb, chilly air brushed over her bare, feverish skin. Beyond their orbital path, a distant surface of crystalline purple and marbled black came into focus. Directly below Daggeira’s naked feet, a dark sarcophagus held a strange, alien husk. And farther below, the summit of the trigonal pyramid pointed straight up at her. The huge geometric form slowly turned, emanating an odd, deep sound with each rotation. Wwaawuum. Wwaawuum.
Sabira. Where the hell was Sabira?
Daggeira tried looking around to find her, struggling to get a better view of her surroundings, but barely managed to move her head. Her body hung from the concave apex of a wide, spherical cavity. Something held her by the back of her neck, rooted into the base of her skull and implant.
From what little she could see, Sabira wasn’t in the cavity. Daggeira wasn’t sure if her absence was a relief or disappointment. What had she expected? Rescue? A knife in the guts?
Reaching behind her head, Daggeira felt a mass of cables, thick and resilient as snakes. She gripped and pulled. The cables didn’t budge. Locking her jaw and tensing her neck, she pulled harder. Pulled with all the strength her transformed arms could muster. Her skull felt like it would crack and splinter out from the back of her head. Electrical shocks knifed through her nervous system. Still, the cables wouldn’t budge.
Something floated above her. A small drone. Daggeira couldn’t see it, but she could feel it, similar to how she had sensed her vaidu’s scuttling presence. Sudden, harsh yellow light blinded; her frayed nervous system roared. Every muscle spasmed and convulsed. The light and its agony consumed her completely.
When Daggeira could open her eyes again, the pain was gone. Her reality had transformed back into the sea of liquid crystal, tinted myriad shades of purple and pink quartz. Once again, she felt the Final Masters before she saw them. The terrible heat, like the backwash of a ship’s exhaust blasting her face, threatened to sear the flesh from her bones.
The old man approached, emerging from the liquid crystal currents. Subaru, the apostate had called him. The same man whose remaining scraps of a body floated in a vat of pink goo on the cavity floor. But here, as he had in the talon’s holo projection, he appeared whole and complete. He wore featureless white robes that wrapped around him in complex folds and creases.
“Let me go,” she said. “I don’t want this. I don’t want the weapon.”
“It’s no use lying to us. Not here. We know this is what you wanted. What you always wanted. You have other positive considerations, of course. A certain susceptibility to flow states. A ready-made interface to the nervous system. Your deep desire, however, is what drew the Final Masters. The striving, the craving for power, for victory. In that, you are like them. Godsfall is power. Godsfall is victory. Final victory.
“You’ve shown us exactly who you are. Exactly what you wanted. You fought our machines. You fought your fellow humans. You killed that boy so you could be here. So you could win. You’ve made your choice. And so have we.”
The Final Masters surrounded her. The nearness of their presence blazed against her skin. Their many long, multi-jointed arms formed complex angular shapes, entwining her in odd geometries. The heat of their terrible presence scorched her flesh and bones, rose up her spine, and set her brain on fire.