SABIRA’S HEAD RANG like a pit gong.
After the glaring yellow light receded, her mind no longer disassociated from her body, and her muscles no longer spasmed. She could move again. Everything hurt. Each breath launched spiky showers through her skull.
Daggeira knelt over her—naked, hugely muscular, a fleet killer in the flesh. Though she had been transfigured through agony in body and mind, Sabira knew her better now than when they were lovers.
“Alright, Stargazer. You win.” Daggeira tilted back her head, baring her throat and chest. The nihkazza blade, still coated in Atu Madzo’s green blood, lay on the platform between them.
Sabira didn’t understand what had happened. Like the mystery of the eon, it didn’t need explanation, only experience. She pushed herself to her knees and took hold of the ritual dagger.
When she looked at Daggeira’s vulnerable throat, there for the slitting, her exposed chest, ready to take the same curved blade through the heart as the High Godseer, Sabira saw the nameless girl. Bound and frightened, alone and helpless in the grank pens. The unseen girl who had crawled back to her warrens, quivering, to have every back turned to her. The pitter girl who’d been fed all the same lies and promises. The servant who’d been trapped in a coma while Sabira had been liberated. Whose faith and loyalty had been twisted against her, to torment her, reshape her, and supplant her will. The woman who’d spent a lifetime trying to validate a terrible mistake made as a child—trying to prove to everyone, even the Gods, that she deserved to win. Because then all the pain and isolation would have meant something.
Sabira also saw Zonte, skewered and bleeding out. Saw Playa’s face contort; heard her soft voice turn brittle and sharp. Then Sabira remembered Daggeira’s answer when she’d asked her to leave the Unity together.
The Gods demand Their sacrifice.
She lifted the nihkazza in her aching hand and pressed its tip to Daggeira’s muscled chest, felt the heart beating within, and finally, she saw herself. Saw who she was. Saw who she would be . . . who she could be . . . balanced on the edge of a blade at this moment of retribution. Of sacrifice.
Of vengeance.
What was Godsfall but a shrine to festering vengeance? The withered, ancient bodies of the Old Nahg circled them in their glowing sarcophagi, teetering on the precipice of death for thousands of years. So they could have their vengeance on the Gods that had annihilated their people and devastated their world, they had subsumed themselves into a monstrous machine of terror and destruction.
For vengeance.
“There are no winners here.” Sabira slid the blade into Daggeira’s belly, low, between the hips. She wrapped her free hand around Daggeira’s waist and pulled her closer, driving the nihkazza deeper.
Face to face, Daggeira’s stuttering breath whispered over Sabira’s lips. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
“That . . . won’t . . .”
Sabira withdrew the blade and pushed to her feet, pain grinding her skull, her ribs, her guts. Red and green blood coated her armor and dripped over the edges of the platform. She pushed Daggeira away. Her body hung limply from the cables, swaying in the air.
Crystalline tendrils crackled from the ceiling. They squirmed down the cables, slithered over Daggeira’s flesh, and infused her wound. More and more tendrils extruded forth, reaching down to wrap her in multilayered strands of crystal lattice until they enveloped her completely. The lattice swelled, bulging into a translucent eggshell. Daggeira’s purplish silhouette curled fetus-like within.
The yarist gem and headband lay at Sabira’s feet. She picked it up by the strap but didn’t put it on. Even if it helped push down the terrible hurt, the gem would take too much in return. She had no spark of energy left to spare.
Two sets of fingers curled around the rim of the platform, followed by Orion-lem pulling himself up. He looked exactly the same as before the battle, except for a belt of clear cylinders around his waist. Inside the cylinders were viscous fluids and slices of wilted flesh.
“My mess is cleaned up,” he said. “How about you?”
Sabira swiped the nihkazza in a downward arc, flinging the remaining blood free of the blade, and sheathed it. She felt weak, dizzy. But she could stand, for now.
“Cleaned? No. But finished.” She pointed vaguely at his cylinders. “What’s that?”
“Tissue samples from some of these old bastards. Should come in handy, eventually.”
Daggeira’s, Subaru’s, and Orion’s voices emanated from the cavity walls, speaking as one. “I’m sending the Ihvik-Ri back to the Gates. Once you leave, I’ll return them to the Holy Unity.”
“You’re going back to the Divine Masters?” Sabira asked. After all this, was she really returning to a life of property and servitude? Had she learned nothing?
“That’s for me to decide,” the voices answered.
“Indeed,” Orion said.
I guess that’s what freedom is, Sabira thought, the right to make your own bad choices.
“Sabira?” Orion interrupted her musing.
“Let’s go.”
The platform carried them over to a balcony, and Sabira and Orion left the heart cavity behind. The floating nodes followed. Inside the winding downward passage, Sabira’s vision wavered, and she dropped to one knee.
Orion wrapped his arm under hers and lifted Sabira to her feet. “Going to make it?”
“Always do.” She leaned her weight against him until her vision stopped swerving. “What happened back there?”
“Something forbidden, but necessary.” Orion led the way, step by step. “The minds that made up Godsfall were all synchronized to work together, yet were still separate, individuated. Like all minds, while the individual parts worked together, they also worked against each other.”
“But now?”
“But now they’ve been amalgamated. Sublimated into one being. A gestalt. Daggeira, my father, the Final Masters, copies of myself—and even a little bit of you—are Godsfall now, and Godsfall is them. Do me a favor, though. Keep that part our secret. Very, very secret. What I did . . . that was the greatest offense among the Muyama.”
“Not a word.” Orion’s explanation didn’t actually make any sense. But before she could ask more questions, her vision darkened, and her knees buckled again.
“Be faster if I just carry you. Glitchy as you look, faster is better.”
Sabira grabbed his arm and pulled herself up “Came in on my feet. That’s how I go out.”
“Crunchy.”
“I sure manage to get my ass kicked a lot, don’t I?”
“You’re just noticing that now?”
She let out a long painful sigh and resumed walking. “Guts are still on the inside, so that’s gold.”
“Don’t worry. The Shishiguchi is on the way. We’ll get you patched up. Won’t even leave a scar.”
“Yes, it will.”
She didn’t remember much after that. They must have rendezvoused and boarded the Shishiguchi because suddenly Commander Arkrider had joined them. He and Orion supported her on each side, drifting through murky corridors. Then she was on a cot in the medbay, where she had really spent way too much time already.
Eventually, reality came back into focus. The pit gong ringing in her head had faded to a buzzing whisper. Her armor was gone, replaced by white bandages wrapped around her midsection and head. She watched fluids drip through a tube and into her veins for a while, before noticing the bedside monitor. It was tuned to the ship’s sensors, displaying stars clustered behind a bright planet. The world was beautiful. An orb of swirling blue and green and brown and white, full of life and color amid the black.
The medbay door swooshed open to reveal Tauro and Orion.
The commander made a gesture. “—May we?”
Sabira grunted something affirmative. “Suppose you want your debriefing?”
“—It’ll wait until you get your feet back under you,” Arkrider said. “Meanwhile, Adept Hanada’s been good enough to fill me in.”
“He understands more of what happened than I do, anyway.” She looked at the monitor. “And the others?”
“—The survivors of the Freehold have been rescued from their lifeboats and are en route to Nu’esef.” Tauro pointed to the planet. “My home, my family, you’re family, too, they’re all safe and sound. Thank you.”
“Gabriel, Persia, and the Freebrood were picked up by an Embassy cruiser,” Orion said. “They’re headed our way as we speak.”
“Daggeira?”
“She kept her promise, so far. The Slaver pyramid is stationed outside the Old Portal. Godsfall, though, is still in orbit above Nu’esef.” Orion indicated the monitor, and the view zoomed in to show the obliteration angel hanging above the planet. Snare satellites circled in a fiery halo, but auroras no longer blazed along its outstretched wings. A fleet of warships formed a blockade between it and Nu’esef.
“We’ve asked the CDF to hold fire,” Orion said. “So far, they’re listening.”
Sabira pointed. “Look.”
Godsfall’s wings bent and folded. Its angular head, crowned with the Hizashi, bowed forward. Limbs twisted. The obliteration angel enfolded itself once again into a six-sided diamond intersected by a sphere.
Then it shimmered. Then it was gone.
“She kept her word,” Sabira said. “She left.”
“—But where did she go?” Arkrider asked.
“Wherever she chooses.”
“We’re being hailed,” Orion said. “It’s Gabriel. I’ll bring him up on the monitor.”
The stars swiped away, replaced by the Emissary’s handsome face. Surprised joy pulled at the corners of his mouth. “You all made it!”
“—All present and accounted for,” Commander Arkrider said.
“How did you do it? How did you stop the High Godseer?”
“The way you said I should,” Sabira answered. “With an open heart.”