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I swallowed thickly. This was always so awkward. I knew from my time at the Lorica that the only way to truly kill an entity was within their own domicile. I didn’t want to have to do that. But the last time I killed a goddess it turned out to be a ruse, anyway. Hecate was just playing a game. Still, something about the flare of fire in Amaterasu’s eyes told me she wasn’t kidding around. Also, the alternative to defending myself was death, which was never one of those options I liked very much. I looked at the tattoo on my wrist. Hmm. Die now, or die later.
I set my jaw. As if. I still had a chance to get out of this. I raised my chin, defiant, daring the goddess with my bravado.
“Then I’ll fight,” I said. “Come at me.”
With all the sweetness of a summer flower, Amaterasu smiled. “With pleasure.”
She rushed at me, but I was ready this time. I sidestepped with ease, undoing the clasp on my backpack, and lifting the flap. If Vanitas didn’t even the odds, I didn’t know what would.
“Hah!” I shouted, prepared for the clash of tarnished, enchanted bronze against the goddess’s flaming steel. But Vanitas didn’t come shooting out of my backpack the way I’d expected. He slipped from the bag’s mouth and, with a clang, fell onto the chamber’s marble floor.
“Vanitas? V? You okay there?”
“My home, my rules. Your toy is of no use here.”
“Hey. He’s a friend. Also my roommate.” I nudged my roommate with my toe. He stayed motionless on the floor.
Amaterasu tutted softly. “When I told you to stand and fight, I meant to do so by your own power. Surely you can find some way of defending yourself?”
There she went again. That phrasing was all too familiar. I watched as she approached menacingly, my eyes narrowing with suspicion, and a fair dose of annoyance.
“Is Carver putting you up to this?”
Amaterasu faltered mid-stride. She raised a hand to her mouth and tittered. “Why – I have no idea what you mean.”
“Only that he keeps talking about how I need to find some way to defend myself. Those are his words.” I bent over and picked Vanitas up. “His exact words.”
“The very nerve of you to suggest that I would pay your master a favor in this respect fills me with a great desire to sever your head from your shoulders.”
“That’s something he would say,” I bluffed.
Amaterasu sneered, then launched herself at me. I raised Vanitas to meet her sword, the clang of metal ringing through the chamber, the goddess’s supernatural strength causing my arms, my bones, my teeth to vibrate with the force of her blow.
Her face was bent too close to mine, her scent like sweet woodsmoke, her breath inhumanly hot on my skin. I shuddered, calling on every ounce of my strength to resist as she pressed the full weight of her blade and her body against me.
“He also says it wouldn’t kill you to do the dishes a little more often.” Her sword scraped against Vanitas as she slid aside and kicked me squa
re in the chest, her cheeks flushed with triumph.
I scrambled to my feet, Vanitas’s heaviness dragging me down. I was strong enough to carry him, sure, but it took a different kind of muscle to wield a sword in battle. I had to handle him in both hands, and I’d already sapped my strength just parrying Amaterasu’s blows. I hadn’t even attacked yet, not that I had anything to show in a swordfight.
Damn it, I should have worked out, paid more attention to my body. I should have borrowed Gil’s weights when he offered and started some kind of routine. But what the hell, man. I didn’t know I was ever going to have to wield Vanitas myself. And it wasn’t my fault that Amaterasu was straight up cheating by nullifying every trick I could throw at her.
I knew what Carver wanted out of me, but it was clear that we hadn’t come all this way just for him to have me tested by a bloodthirsty sun goddess.
“The dishes? That’s just prejudiced. Easy for him to say because he doesn’t eat. See, this is the kind of shit I have to put up with.”
“Put up with? Pah. Know this, shadow beast.” When the hell had I been downgraded to beast? “If it hadn’t been for your master I would have slain you just as soon as you’d entered my home.”
I twisted again, narrowly escaping as her sword plunged past my body in a flaming arc. I hefted Vanitas in both hands, preparing to fend off her next attack. “Why the hell do you even hate me so much?”
That gave her pause, but not for long. The light in the chamber flickered. Somehow, I knew I’d made her even angrier. Uh-oh.
“Your corruption runs deep, mage,” she hissed. “Perhaps your awakening was stimulated by an introduction of a seed of the taint, from the dagger that was thrust into you. But you have always been tied to the Old Ones.”
She knew about the sacrifice? Wow. Gods really did gossip. “Me? The Eldest? What are you even talking about?”
“So you claim not to know of your parentage? Don’t make me laugh.”
