Page 101 of Inkpot Gods

Courage

TIMELINE: AUGUST 23, 2018.

“Judy, can you hear me?” Artemis rushes to the other Lunar, dropping her bow on the fleshy floor. Judy makes a terrible, guttural sound deep in her throat, and Artemis knows the screaming will come next: if she’s recovered enough to react, she must be in pain. “Drop down. Descend, and let Chang’e come forth.”

Judy can’t blink, but her eyes roll back in her head as a peach-colored glitter begins to consume the air around her, filling it with a divine brightness. She sags, then straightens, turning her face to Artemis. Her eyes, now peachy-gold, roll back into their normal position, and she looks at Artemis, gaze clear and steady.

“Can you finish your peach tree?”

“Why?” croaks Chang’e, the word rendered odd by her lack of lips.

“The peaches heal. They restore. They grant us immortality, for a time. Judy needs one now, or she’s going to die of the shock as soon as you let her come back to the surface. This version of you will die, and every other version of you will have to contend with the Doctrine of Ethos realizing that you couldn’t save the woman he loved. Please.”

Chang’e nods. “Good enough,” she says, and lays a skinless palm flat against the trunk of the half-grown tree. It shudders and straightens, growing rapidly toward maturity. Its limbs put out branches, which put out flowers that swell and ripen into fruit.

Chang’e plucks the ripest peach within reach and brings it to her mouth, biting delicately down. With each nibble, a bit more of Judy’s skin regrows, thin as rice paper and equally as fragile, and Chang’e continues to bite and swallow, consuming the peach a fragment at a time.

Artemis grabs another of the peaches and whirls, dropping to her knees beside Kelpie. She presses the peach to Kelpie’s mouth with one hand and recovers her knife with the other, cutting the flesh, which is no longer actively growing, away. Kelpie takes a bite of the peach, automatically, and chews, swallowing before she opens her eyes.

When she does, she squeaks and scrambles to her hooves, unsteady as she rarely is. “Asphodel!” she gasps. “She’s going to— She can— Where is she?”

“Gone,” says Artemis grimly. “Are you all right?”

“My head hurts, and it feels like there’s a hollow where something’s meant to be, but I think I’m okay,” says Kelpie. “Where did she go?”

“The Impossible City, I assume,” says Artemis. She moves back to Chang’e and the two human women, kneeling to begin cutting their feet free of the floor. Smita and Lilianne remain sprawled insensate on the floor. “It’s a big place. I don’t know how much damage she can do there.”

“So let’s not find out,” says Kelpie.

Chang’e’s skin is mostly back where it belongs, if still thin and half-translucent. It looks less like rice paper and more like she’s stitched an entire human skin out of peach-blossom petals, impossibly delicate, impossibly easy to destroy. She takes another dainty bite of peach, then exhales, slowly. “They were walking deeper into this mess of a maze when the walls attacked. They threw out strands of flesh and nothing could be done about it. Roger commanded them to stop; they disobeyed. Erin tried to weave between the ropes, and they continued to reach for her. In very little time, they were all caught, and then the floor split open and Asphodel emerged.” She sighs. “What an unpleasant woman. We were better served when she was dead.”

“None of us authorized her coming back,” says Artemis.

“But she did.” Chang’e looks at her. “I am not safe here. Neither are you.” The glitter fades out of the air around her, and Judy staggers. The transition is rarely so clear.

“We need to get the others down,” says Artemis, and turns away from her. This isn’t the time for hysterics, and Judy just had her skin stolen and regrown. She’s earned a few.

If Judy wants to break down as badly as Artemis suspects she does, she doesn’t allow herself the pleasure. Instead, she brushes past Artemis, heading for the wall, where she leans up and begins yanking on the sheets of skin holding Roger in place. Her own skin splits with every yank, too fragile for this sort of treatment. Artemis is there a moment later, cutting him free, and Judy catches him before he can fall. He sags against her, but there’s tension in him: he’s awake, just oddly limp, wrung-out and weakened.

“Judy?” he asks. “Where are we? Where’s my sister?”

“We’re still in the lab. And she’s right behind you. Artemis is helping her down,” says Judy. “It’s all right, Roger. We’re all here.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t think we are.”

Artemis cuts the others down. Erin falls without a sound. Artemis is able to catch Dodger, if only barely, and lets go of the gawky redhead when she pushes her away, allowing Dodger to huddle against the wall.

All of them look terribly traumatized, like they’ve just been subjected to something beyond imagining. Lilianne and Smita are still unconscious. Erin lifts Smita, while Judy and Artemis together hoist Lilianne, holding her under the arms.

“We have to get out of here,” says Erin, looking around them. The flesh on the walls is starting to sag, softening and dripping down like candle wax. “I don’t like the way this looks.”

“Neither do I,” says Artemis. “Come on.”

She leads them back the way they came, moving as fast as she can while not outpacing the others. Kelpie is still walking unsteadily, like she doesn’t quite understand her own legs, while Erin is burdened with Smita. Judy is doing an admirable job of keeping up with Artemis despite her strained and splitting skin, although part of that may be being pulled along by their shared custody of Lilianne.

Nothing rises up to stop them as they flee the fleshy chambers for the stairwell. There, they’re faced with a new horror: cracks are forming in the walls, spreading rapidly.

“Do we go up?” demands Judy.