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Keita blasts a column of flame at her, but it dies the moment it nears her body.
The goddess smirks. “You can’t burn what’s been blessed by the celestial.”
“At a high enough temperature, I can,” Keita replies grimly, the fire burning in his eyes again.
I cheer him on as I again try to rush for the door. “Burn her to a crisp, Keita!” I shout. “Let this place be her pyr—”
A belt of vines snaps around my waist, yet more golden strands threading up my feet and hands. They’re impenetrable, refusing to bend no matter how much I pull. “Oh, Deka…,” Etzli tuts as if amused. “Ever so sentimental, planning a funeral for your mother’s body. But not while I’m inhabiting it.”
“Then we just have to get you out, don’t we,” I shout back, ripping at the golden vines, which slither and lash around the room like snakes, seeking out my friends.
Britta screams as she’s lifted into the air, and so do the twins and Li beside her. Only Katya, Rian, Belcalis, and Acalan remain unencumbered—Katya because she’s too fast as she runs across the walls, dodging the vines, and Rian because he just stands there, frozen in fear. Belcalis, on the other hand, tries to continue running but is swiftly caught, as is Acalan, who’s tossed halfway across the room when he tries to help her.
All the while, the vines continue growing over my friends. Coiling tighter and tighter.
“Deka,” Britta shouts, pulling at them. “Wha do we do?” For every vine she rips out, another replaces it.
“Anything you can!” I shout to her. “Don’t hold back!”
“GOT IT!” Britta says, both she and Li inhaling at the same time.
I immediately feel the power gathering. The ground suddenly erupts with a boom, gigantic metal spires ramming toward Etzli. Except, the goddess is no longer there. She’s up in the air, her vines slithering so seamlessly underneath her, it’s as if she’s floating. When another metal spire thrusts her way, she pivots to face Britta and Li.
“Sleep now,” she says, snapping her vines at them. They immediately slither up Britta’s and Li’s mouths and nostrils. And as I watch, terror rising inside me, yet more vines thread out through their eye sockets.
Then their bodies start turning gold.
37
“NO!” I shriek, wrenching myself against Etzli’s grasp. She’s killed them. She’s killed my friends. “STOP IT! PLEASE STOP!” I scream, tears falling.
“And why should I?” The goddess is suddenly just in front of me, floating on a mass of golden vines. “What will you give me if I stop?”
“What do you want?” I ask, everything inside me suddenly dull and lifeless now.
There’s no point fighting anymore. Britta and Li are in the almost-death, and most of my other friends are effectively captured. Keita and Acalan are wrapped so tightly in vines, they can’t even move, much less speak. When Keita tries, the vines slither into his mouth, choking him more surely than any gag. Even the twins, who keep blasting back her vines with their wind, are now manacled by them, tied down to the chamber floor.
All I can do now is bargain with Etzli so she doesn’t hurt my friends any further. Britta and Li can heal from an almost-death—will heal soon, given their proximity to me: one of the gifts I gave my friends is the ability to heal swiftly from any injury. But I can’t risk Etzli killing them any more. She might find their final deaths. Take them from me forever.
The thought has desperation lining my voice when I ask Etzli again, “What do you want?”
The goddess doesn’t immediately answer. As my friends struggle against her grasp, she weaves her vines into a circle around us—a golden cage.
“Do you know what’s fascinating about a deity’s kelai, Deka?” she muses. “It changes the essence of everything around it. Everything—including this body.” She gestures at herself, at the changes she’s wrought over Mother’s body. “This hair. But it’s not hair any longer, is it?”
She clenches her fist, and the vines around me tighten, a serpent constricting me. I gasp out a breath when they slowly, surely begin digging into my armor.
DEKA! Ixa shouts, beginning to transform, but a negligent flick of the wrist is all Etzli needs.
Ixa is hurled across the room, an audible crack sounding as he lands.
“Ixa!” I shout. “Get as far from here as you can!”
Deka…is Ixa’s frail answer. He’s not leaving. Not even when his ribs are so badly cracked.
He doesn’t have to say anything more for me to understand that. He groans as a mass of vines slithers over him, removing the obsidian box from his claws.
The moment they return it to Etzli, she floats closer, offering it to me again.
