CHAPTER

31

The warrior queen stood proud upon the ramparts, watching the burning world vanish into chaos and ruin. Beside her Nemi of the Bitter Sighs cracked her final egg, but Indsorith only had eyes for the all-seeing orb that filled the void where West Othean had fallen. Would that Sister Portolés had lived to see this, what would that poor conflicted wretch have made of this miracle? It was a funny thing to flit through her fraying mind, but there it went and Indsorith almost laughed as she felt her heart flood with an unspeakable emotion. After all that, Y’Homa had actually been right. The Fallen Mother was real, she loved her children, and now she had returned.

Indsorith stepped forward to join her, when she felt her whole being submerged in a bath of sulfurous ice water.

“Resist the devil, and stay yourself to the very end.”

She didn’t know where the words came from but she spoke them in tandem with Nemi, and as the final syllable left Indsorith’s lips the two women leaned into each other, both exhausted by whatever had passed between them. All around them soldiers were clawing their eyes out or diving over the side of the wall or both, and Indsorith felt that familiar mixture of melancholy and relief at being above and apart from the delusions of the faithful. Instead of staring down into the maddening scope of the golden eye Indsorith looked up into the heavens, and saw that even the rain clouds had been sucked down into that titanic rift in the First Dark.

The pressure in the air swelled around them, and Nemi cried out, but Indsorith kept her eyes fixed on the cobalt sky until the very end.

Choi tightened her headlock around Maroto’s neck but she couldn’t cut off his howls, and he raged against her, desperate to fling himself out over the corpses of the demons they’d killed, down the mountain of rubble. She must think he’d gone as crazy as the soldiers who were leaping into the Gate from the intact sections of the wall to the north and south, but Maroto could tell from their euphoric laughter that the poor broken souls wished to welcome their conqueror, their god. Maroto had other motivations. He recognized a devil when he saw one, and while this titan of the First Dark might be just a little too big to skin, he could damn sure give it the old Cobalt try.

Maroto might not be the sharpest mace on the rack, as Kang-ho used to joke, but he’d finally figured out what had happened here, and the combination of heinous enlightenment and grievous guilt made him howl louder than ever. The Tothans must’ve found out about the Immaculate trap and perverted it to their advantage, stuffing as many of their troops into Othean as they could before the Court of the Dreaming Priests blew the whole place up. If a humble rat had been sufficient offering for Maroto to summon and bind Crumbsnatcher, what would an entire army of their own soldiers and all their mortal victims call up for the Vex Assembly? The thought-swapping monsters had shown him visions of every corner of the Star besieged by their legions, had ordered him to go and spread the bad word about how doomed everyone was, but now he had to wonder if that had all just been one big ruse designed to draw as many people up here as possible, to really pack in the crowds for Jex Toth’s first and final offensive … and to make sure whatever they enticed up to the rim of their colossal Gate saw that it would be well fed on the other side.

And however might the Vex Assembly have hit on such an artful ploy as this, provoking their enemies into an epic battle for the sole purpose of killing off as many of their own loyal soldiers as possible, as quickly as possible, to complete some diabolical ritual? Sad to say but Maroto had a pretty good idea on that score, too—those Tothan freaks had been positively obsessed with extracting every detail they could from him about the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue. At the time he hadn’t had the foggiest idea what the Burnished Chain had actually pulled out there on the Witchfinder Plains, but the brain-raiding Vex Assembly must have read between the lines, picking up on all the clues his dumb arse had soaked up but overlooked. Did that make this his fault? Like, more than it already was? Should he have somehow seen this coming?

Yes. Of course. What a fool he’d been. All that time caged in with the kooky Vex Assembly it had been sacrifice this and blood offering that, but instead of hanging on their every screeched word or projected thought he had dismissed them as pure nutters, devil-ridden deviants who wanted to murder the Star for no greater end than evil itself. Maroto of all people should have known that evil is never so simple, and you don’t make a sacrifice unless you expect something valuable in return … and the bigger the offering, the greater the reward. The Vex Assembly were priests, for fuck’s sake, and while he had never figured out exactly what it was they venerated he had a pretty good guess that whatever it was the dread fiend was looking at him right fucking now.

But not for long, because as soon as he got free of Choi he was going to drive his black steel spear straight into that great golden eye. Whatever it was attached to would still rise from the Gate to take this world, his world, he knew that … but the fucker would do so blinded, an eye for a fucking eye just like the Chain always said.

Elbowing Choi’s ribs and finally slipping out from her grasp, he rolled to his feet and charged down the rubble they had fought so hard to defend. She grabbed at his hair … and grabbed only air, the freshly shorn barbarian howling as he raced out along a spit of broken stone and dove off the side of the ruined wall. The Mighty Maroto rather fancied the eye was focused on him as he fell into it, leading with his spear.

For a dyed-in-the-wig drama queen who had spent countless hours imagining his own death, even he had never imagined going out on such a high note.