DRILL ME AND drop me down a shaft. Not again,” Daggeira said. “I hate this place.”
After rampaging through the heart cavity, slaughtering warseers with abandon, Abomination Zika’s body couldn’t withstand any more damage and crumpled under its own weight. Daggeira found herself back in the place that was no place. The world of liquid crystal. The world of minds. Where she was most exposed. Most vulnerable.
Gods, it had been thrilling to let loose on the Gohnzol-Lo without concern for her body. Without fear of reprisals by the prod or the sacrificial altar. Inside Abomination Zika, the presence of Warseers no longer filled her with dread. No longer sent spikes of hot electricity into her face and scalp. Living with that dread all her life, Daggeira could have never let herself admit how much she hated them. How much secret vengeance broiled in every heartbeat. But once the green blood started flowing and the warseer bones started cracking, she couldn’t deny the truth of it. Couldn’t deny her frenzied bloodlust. She was a traitor like Sabira now. But she was no apostate. The vision of Mother of Life remained with her, etched by fire into her soul. So what did that make her?
In the distance, a bitter, ancient heat grew closer. The Final Masters came for her once more. Whatever immunity the abomination body had given her to Warseers’ presence, she had no resistance to the Final Masters in this place. Nothing she could do to stop them. Not on her own.
“Old man. Where are you?”
I’m still here with you, Subaru whispered in the back of her mind.
Gales of heat rippled through the liquid crystal. In the shadowy depths, long, withered limbs scuttled toward her from every direction. Daggeira’s face itched. The encroaching heat pressed like a wall, constricting from all sides. So many arms, so many eyes, lurking in the deep currents.
“I can’t fight them. Not here. Not alone.”
“Good thing you’re not alone, then.”
A stalk grew quickly beside her, twisting up from the amethystine abyss. A bud swelled from its tip and bloomed into a wide blue flower. In the center of the blossom stood a man cloaked in white, observing her with dark, thin eyes. Black hair spiked out of his head in all directions, wreathed in crackling electricity.
“What’s crunchy?” Orion swiveled his head back and forth. “Not a bad construct you have here. A little one note, but plenty of room to work.”
“You can come in here?”
“Of course. That’s why my father needed my help. Where is he, by the way?”
Daggeira pointed to her chest.
“Glitchy, but understandable. And the other one?”
Daggeira pointed to the wave of heat and uncanny alien minds. Cresting the wave floated Subaru Hanada, arms outstretched, haloed by the desiccated, multi-jointed limbs of the Old Nahg.
“Good, good, you’ve come back to us,” Subaru Hanada’s first iteration said. “Only by joining your will to ours can we overcome the usurper. Submit and we shall all be free. Submit and join with Godsfall.”
Orion held up the palm of his hand, gesturing to his father to halt. The sound of a great, invisible gong shivered through the sea of crystal, halting Subaru’s advance.
“Usurping the usurper is already being taken care of, Father. We’re here for you.”
“And I want my body back,” Daggeira added.
“No! The power is ours. Godsfall is ours!” Hanada’s body spasmed, blurred, and sprouted dozens of obscenely long limbs, prickling with spikes and stingers. As one with the seven Final Masters and their intense, blazing will, he surged forward, attacking from all directions.
Daggeira’s mind seared, her very essence boiled. There was nothing transcendent about this pain, not like when she had beheld the Goddess. This hurt was pure. Relentless. She couldn’t even scream.
So she prayed.
Oh Gods, make it stop. Mother of Life! I’ll do anything! Submit to the Final Masters. Death. Anything. Make it stop! Make it stop!
Her Subaru whispered through the conflagration of agony, Let me take that for you.
The veil of torment drew aside. Not entirely, but enough that it no longer incinerated the entirety of her awareness. Enough that she could see a new blue stalk sprouting and flowering in front of her. And another bulb opening beside that. And another rising up from behind. Within each, another Orion. With the arrival of each Orion, a gong resounded, and the fierce hot pressure retreated more and more.
The Orions shimmered. From out of their bodies burst a flurry of long, thin protuberances. Not arms and spikes like Hanada, but squirming tendrils of shiny gold. Outside the ring of the Final Masters, many more Orions blossomed, unfurling countless waves of squirming golden coils.
Worming through the realm, the coils entangled the Final Masters and their many limbs. Penetrated their conical bodies, interweaving in, and out, and through. The Old Nahg roared with utterly inhuman rage, and the golden coils slithered into their howling maws.
“How could you?” Hanada shouted. “Gestalt is forbidden by the central edict. It’s wrong! It’s—” Coils snaked over his lips and down his throat, burrowed into his neck and ears and many cruel limbs.
Golden coils writhed through all the world. Penetrated the essence of this place. Infused the flows of liquid crystal. Daggeira turned to run, but in every direction the coils writhed, golden and shimmering.
“Get me out. I don’t want this.”
I’m sorry, dear Daggeira. This is the only way. We can’t exist as separate but entwined minds much longer. Eventually, madness would devour us. We must merge. Truly merge. Though it is forbidden, we must amalgamate into one mind. One gestalt being.
The realm erupted with light and power. Great branches of sapphire blue lightning ripped through the world—sparking and crackling through coil and crystal and mind.
“Ah, that must be Jiddu’s amplified feedback trick,” said hundreds of Orions. “Crunchy.”
“But the High Godseer . . .” Daggeira whispered.
“Is dead,” spoke hundreds of voices in response.
The tremendous bolts of electricity spun and spiraled, forming two whirling funnels of blue lightning overhead. In the center of those funnels, instead of the liquid crystal realm and squirming golden coils, she saw thin familiar light. Light that beckoned to her, drew her as irresistible as gravity.
Daggeira, no . . .
She dove upwards into the electricity, into the light. The funnels merged into a single widening aperture. Transformed into an exit from this reality and an entrance to another. Transformed into her senses. Into her sight.
Into her body. Her body. Her flesh, her blood, her bone. Her own damn mind. At last. Thank Mother of Life, at last. Back in her own body. Alive and whole.
Face to face with Sabira, her blade held high, slashing toward Daggeira’s bare throat.
Coming to furious life, Daggeira drowned the heart cavity in the sulfurous light of her power.