I turn to go back to the main hall—if I can find the woman who let us in the secret entrance, it stands to reason I can force her to let me out again—and spot the Overseer.
The black-clad woman is distant, at least a hundred feet away, and I’d be little more than a silhouette against Ka’s Pyramid. But she’s running. A dead sprint, directly at me.
It takes only a breath to realise that even if I can make physical contact with her, it won’t be before she registers who I am. And that, in turn, will tell the Nomarch exactly what I can do.
I dive into the nearest passageway, and run.
Left. Right. Skidding around corners but I don’t know where I’m going, have no idea what this section of the Sanctum even is. I can hear the sound of pursuit. Not gaining, but not falling behind. My heart pounds through my chest. Reminding me of the Labyrinth, but at least there I had some façade of control. I simply can’t escape like this. Any turn now could reveal no path forward, and my end.
Another left, and there’s a window in the obsidian. Three feet wide, maybe. I slide to a halt. The Infernis flows below. About twenty feet to the sliver of riverbank that separates obsidian and poison.
Footsteps behind me, too loud.
I scramble up onto the ledge, squeeze through, and slide off the edge.
It’s an awkward, clumsy fall in my haste; my stomach is in my throat and then I’m hitting barren soil and stone, pain jolting through my body despite my best efforts to brace. I fling myself back, away from the green-tinted water, lungs immediately scalding from my proximity to it. Then I stumble to my feet, propping myself against the smooth surface of the temple wall. Inches from the acid that flows through Duat’s veins.
A thud, dull and heavy, behind me.
I turn to find the Overseer already stalking toward me. Ten paces away. The bank is too sloped and narrow to run.
Before I can fear enough to stop myself, I step into the river.
My breath is a hissing escape as fiery pain immediately consumes my legs. It’s like the skin is burning; I groan and risk a glance down, almost weeping, but there’s no blistering. The Vitaeria concealed around my upper thigh at work. They do not stop the agony.
And then the Overseer is upon me.
I fend off grasping, clawing hands as they try to haul me out of the poison. Resist the urge to command it, my ability even now far too great an advantage to expose. It is smaller than me but its eyes are completely black, and I can feel imbued strength behind each touch.
And yet my efforts in blocking it still, somehow, seem to be effective.
My mind clears enough to manoeuvre. I stagger forward, swat away a punch and get in one strike. Two. It’s dazed. Reeling. I get in a third before it can recover and then grab its shoulder. Swivel.Wrench.
It loses its footing.
The thundering splash peppers me with agonising droplets everywhere lower than my neck, but I ignore it, determined now. The Overseer’s eyes are wide with shock and pain as it struggles, flails. I lunge. Crouch in the water and, snarling at the agony coursing through me, force it beneath the surface.
The water excoriates my hands, the waves of the Overseer’s thrashing flicking it up almost to my neck. I moan but steel myself, keep exerting pressure on its shoulders. It kicks and slips on the slick surface beneath the poison. I weep and push harder. Through the fire, something changes beneath my fingers.
And then I’ve lost my grip. The Overseer has slipped away somehow. There is black clouding the clear green.
I barely stop myself from retching as I raise my hands to find masses of red, blistered flesh oozing between my fingers. What is left of the Overseer’s shoulders.
With a wordless wail the iunctus surfaces in a final, desperate shower of acid. Its face is drooping, suppurated and boil-covered. I can see bone where the flesh and muscle from my grasp came away.
And then it expires. Subsides and slumps and becomes an incoherent black shape beneath the surface.
I’m too pained to do anything but tremble and wipe my skin vainly against my sheer attire, watching the cloth flake away wherever I touch. I’m beyond lucky I didn’t go any deeper, I realise shakily; my Vitaeria may have survived, but the thin straps holding them against my thigh would have undoubtedly dissolved in short order.
I gather myself enough to glance around, then up at the window through which I came. No sign of anyone, not yet, but the Overseer would have communicated where we were. Would have communicated my face.
Distantly, the sounds of revelry continue.
I stagger in the green light of the Infernis, the golden glow of Ka’s pyramid a mocking sun above. I can see the bridge a little way away. I know where I am.
I take a breath. Two. Temporarily force back the disaster of the night; my anonymity is gone and my task harder than ever, but right now I just need to find refuge. There are plenty of ways to escape the riverbank, once I navigate around the temple walls. And there is a tunnel not too far. With some fortune, I may just be able to make it before the Overseers intercept me.
To the faint strains of joyful music, I stagger my way back into the heart of Duat.
