It was two more days before Ruth could walk, but once she could, she was out of the tent in a flash. She had the impression that all the Apollonians had been ordered by Hakim to stay away from her. Even Adâ, whom she considered herself close to, had not paid her a single visit. Hakim himself had returned the afternoon after their confrontation to add his alchemical ability to the healing effort, though he said not a word to her and left as quickly as he could afterward. Though his demeanor was still coldly righteous, Ruth got the impression he had been stung somewhat by Ezi and Okwu’s intervention. He was clearly not used to being spoken to that way but for whatever reason had decided to grudgingly accept their authority.
The zöpütan pair, however, were constant presences at her bedside, either separately or together. Not since she had been taken in by Ishmael had she felt so cared for, and it was only now that she realized how much she had missed it. Having known her parents so well, the two of them felt something like godparents or a close aunt and uncle; she felt almost as if they were guiltily making up for the time of their absence, either as a result of her memory loss or their imprisonment on Nexus. She obviously didn’t hold them accountable for either, but it was comforting to have them there nonetheless.
Anubis, as she had said, did not reappear in the tent after that night. It had been suggested that Ruth forewarn the others of her presence, but given that her credibility wasn’t exactly shining at present, she decided to wait until she was up and about. As agreed, as soon as she was given the all clear, she left the tent and made her shuffling but determined way out of the commune to the edge of the open plains.
The jackal was waiting for her, spindly shadow etched against the dust like a hieroglyph.
“I assume I haven’t been made known to everyone?”
Ruth shook her head sheepishly. “I’ll go and get Ezi and Okwu first. At the moment, at least, they’ll be the easiest to explain to.”
She located them and returned to the same spot a few minutes later. It took longer than she had thought it would to get across to them what was going on. Given how much they had been through, it was surprisingly difficult to communicate the comparatively simple fact of a glowing canine. Okwu kept peering around at Anubis from the side, as if she were made of cardboard and about to topple at any moment.
“Does Hakim know about this?” Ezi asked Ruth after everything had been reiterated for the third time, not taking her eyes off the jackal.
“Not yet . . .”
“Perhaps we could leave that for the time being,” Anubis cut in, with a tone both exasperated and perplexed. “Other-wise, we will be here all day, even with these long sun cycles. I think time would be better spent with what we agreed upon.”
What they had agreed upon was, in fact, something like a training program for Ruth. Anubis’s reasoning had been that since no travel via dimension ship was possible, nothing catastrophic was likely to happen in the very immediate future. There was, therefore, a good opportunity for Ruth to get her strength back and prepare for whatever might be on the horizon.
This, at least, seemed to make immediate sense to Ezi and Okwu. Naturally, given their background in espionage, they appreciated the value of a good contingency plan. Moreover, while it seemed they had both once been athletically and alchemically formidable, their time spent in the dungeons of Nexus left them, too, in need of brushing up. They threw themselves into the task with enthusiasm.
They began with basic speed, strength, and agility exercises, including sprints, throwing, and dodging the alchemical orbs that Anubis conjured in midair to try and sting them. Several days later, when Ruth had almost normal maneuverability back in her leg, they moved on to combat. Ishmael had given her a good standard of training in most weapons, the rod and the scimitar being her tools of choice, but she knew her alchemy was poor compared to the likes of Jack, Dannie, and Cire. Anubis brought the three of them up to speed with a set of basic enchantments, both offensive and defensive, before moving on to more complex elemental ones.
The Apollonians still kept well out of their way (and in turn, Ruth ventured into The Golden Turtle only for changes of clothing), but she found that she didn’t actually mind very much. The cold shoulder she had been given had initially hurt her, but the more time that went by, the more it seemed both petty and irrelevant. She found she was recognizing aspects of the group that, although they had always been there, had only become apparent since she had been effectively excluded: their purism, their haughtiness, and clearly now the power of a leader to curb the actions of the rest. Of course, she accepted she was partially responsible for the mess they all now were in, but at least she was doing something productive to deal with that, which was far better than excluding her on the grounds of some sort of perceived right of sanction.
Behind the outward conviviality, she was also seeing for the first time the tension between the Apollonians and the zöpüta that had bubbled over with Ezi’s outburst against Hakim. The latter group clearly owed the former their freedom to some degree yet understandably were none too pleased by the constant reminders of this debt. Personally, she found it quite fitting that the dimension ships had stopped working. The Apollonian presence at Nduino had so far been maintained on the understanding that they were helping a community adjust to free life and, by implication, that they could fly off to another world anytime they liked. The loss of this capability had leveled the field. They were now all just mortals who happened to inhabit the same bit of land.
Ruth trained every day for around six hours, and the remaining time she spent mingling with the zöpüta, eating and sleeping. It was physically tough—she certainly had no trouble getting to sleep immediately whenever she lay down—but she was glad of it. The initial shock of the events on Chthonia had given way to a lurking anxiety about what had befallen the others, particularly Jack, whom she had not seen disappear in a similar flash of light to the rest of them. Training kept this at bay to some extent, and she could comfort herself that she was at least doing something to aid them.
This was all brought to an abrupt halt a week and a half after she first began training. It was midmorning and she was out on the savannah, battering energy shrurikens away with an alchemically infused sword, when she noticed a disturbance by The Golden Turtle. People were running about and shouting, and she could make out the figures of Hakim and Charles, distinguishable by their robes and wheelchair, respectively, hurrying toward the ship.
One of the shrurikens clipped her ear, but she ignored it. Waving distractedly at Anubis to make them disappear, she sheathed her sword, and the two of them bounded to the site of the commotion.
They slowed as she got closer, but none of the Apollonians or, for that matter, zöpüta, paid any attention to their arrival. A crowd of them were assembled in a wide semicircle, and Ruth immediately saw why. In front of the ramp leading to the ship’s hatch, swirling silently with indigo energy in midair, a Dark portal hung.
Three shapes became decipherable within—two humanoid, one something else. An obsidian leg, looking as if it had been coated in oil, made a tentative step into the dust.
Hakim launched a blast of white energy at the portal. It had reached within a hair’s breadth of the Darkness when an arm, similarly obsidian, flashed out of the whirlpool. There was a crack, and the blast was deflected, ricocheting into the savannah like a comet.
“Lovely welcome, guys,” said a familiar voice from within.
Slowly and purposefully, as if walking under the weight of water in ocean shallows, the humanoid pair extricated themselves from the portal. The oily obsidian drained away, drawn elastically back into the mass behind, to reveal them.
“Good job,” Alex remarked, dusting himself off and gazing around with interest. “Getting here was all thanks to you; I’ve never been here before.”
Lucy nodded and glanced over her shoulder. “Have we got—?”
“Don’t worry. I’m here,” the serpent said, slithering between their legs and raising itself up for a better look around. “I’ve been doing this the longest, remember?”
No one in the circle moved. This, at least, was something that united the Apollonians and zöpüta: utter incomprehension.
“Come on. It’s been a hell of a trip,” Lucy said eventually. The serpent’s disapproving look silenced her giggles. “All right, sorry. Bad joke. But seriously, I could do with a drink.”
“Is that . . . a demon?” Charles exclaimed, his eyes fixed upon the snake.
“Yes, yes, we’ll explain all that soon enough,” Lucy replied. “I’m actually really thirsty.”
“Alex?” Hakim said hoarsely. “What on earth?”
“Is no one listening to—?”
But Alex silenced her with a wave. “I think they need an explanation first.”
Ruth’s eyes darted between the two pairs: Lucy and Alex, and Hakim and Charles. She could see how this situation might deteriorate very quickly. The last they had seen of Alex had been his abduction on Earth, and the last they had heard of him was that he had gone renegade and attacked a group of Apollonians with Dark alchemy. And now he showed up in what were unmistakably Cultist robes—though even more tattered and worn—out of a Dark portal with another ex-Apollonian and, worst of all, an actual demon in tow.
She suddenly regretted not relaying what Anubis had told her to the Apollonians. Right now, they were still in strike-on-sight mode when it came to the Darkness, so it was only slightly surprising when a second bolt of alchemy arched out from Vince’s general direction toward the serpent. Alex raised a fist at lightning speed, and the bolt was absorbed into a shield of ebony hexagons.
“Do you mind?” the snake said, so indignantly that Vince actually looked profoundly embarrassed.
“That’s enough,” Alex said. “We can explain every-thing. Call a meeting—no, not in the Turtle, a general meeting. Everyone needs to hear this.”