Jacen squinted, trying to suss out a trick of the light. Ogden’s left foot was indeed pointed backward. It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest.
“Grateful as I am, Semira, I will not say this again. Keep your hands to yourself.” Ogden eased himself back down and lifted the hem of his robes, revealing?—
They were legs. Weren’t they? Ogden’s legs appeared to be metal, anatomically perfect replicas of muscle and bone. Without fanfare, he unlocked the lower leg from the stump of his left knee, turned it around, and pounded it back into place with his fist. Sparks darted down delicate silver threads with a whirring noise, twining around the limb like veins.
Jacen and Nines stared, as Seth said, “Fuck. Gods above. What thefuck.”He swallowed, and finished rather inarticulately, “What are you?” “This is a prosthetic.” Ogden removed a glove, showing them his right hand—another perfect metal replica. “I have four.” He waved
them onward, heedless of their stupefaction.
They followed him down a winding path through the ruins, to a riverside cove. It appeared empty, but Nines gasped. She’d sensed the presence seconds before Jacen.
“It’s safe,” Ogden said. “You can come out.”
The air flickered like a thousand tiny windows opening to let in the torchlight—and there stood the thing from the clinic basement.
The man—the god?—whatever he was, had traded his robes for sleek, seamless armor that encased every inch of his body. Browless blue eyes, deep-set in a pale, weary face, peered out from behind a glass pane.
Seth staggered back with an undignified yell.
Relief struck Jacen first, that this had not been a hallucination, that Ogdenhadin fact lied to him. Next camepanic, because from a sober perspective, this sight proved far more unsettling.
“I remember you,” the being said to Jacen. His voice was muffled, with a slight mechanical quality—possibly a result of the helmet.
He turned to Ogden. “I triggered the incinerator in the clinic. They won’t find anything, even if they send someone who knows what to look for. Bugs have all been recalled.”
“Bugs?” Seth repeated.
“My spies,” Ogden said impatiently. “Inorganic. Undetectable to telepaths.”
But Nines addressed the being, as blunt as Jacen had ever heard her speak. “You look like the gods, but you don’t feel anything like them.”
“This is my dear friend,” said Ogden. “He is not a god, and he would appreciate it if you stopped gawking at him.”
“It’s quite all right.” The being inclined his head, an awkward gesture in his armor. “My name is Urien.”
Though Jacen wanted to say a million things, he started with the most obvious: “I’m sorry I startled you the other night. I . . . was not thinking clearly.”
“No need to apologize,” said Urien. “I’m only glad you’ve recovered.”
He seemed so sincere, Jacen couldn’t muster a response. Seth and Nines, too, were taken aback.
Ogden gestured around the camp. “If one of you would help him finish packing, I’ll need assistance with the boat.” When no one moved, he sighed. “The universe is much vaster than you’ve been taught. Urien was born on another world, far from Celes Lor.”
Jacen struggled to grasp that last sentence. “And you live in Ogden’s basement?”
Urien blinked. “It’s a bit difficult for me to walk freely around Zivora.” “He is of the same baseline species as the gods,” Ogden clarified.
“Without the archdemons that possess the Six.”
“The host bodies,” Nines murmured. “You’re the ones the gods use.” Urien’s expression turned grim. “Correct.”
Seth looked sideways at Jacen, as though expecting him to contradict the statement. Jacen shrugged. A halfhearted apology.
For many, such revelations would have proven too much. Too unbelievable. But Seth took it much as Nines had—in shock but not in crisis. It shouldn’t have surprised Jacen. Seth had always followed no creed but his own sense of love and duty, unbothered about the context in which they existed.
As for Jacen . . . He considered Ogden’s words, and Akkani’s before, turning them over in his head. He prodded at his feelings like he might a sore muscle, stretching them out, testing their limits. He found it surprisingly painless, his mind more flexible than he had imagined, capable of accommodating a larger world.
It was not the empty nihilism he feared he’d find once he let his faith go. It even felt strangely like hope.
