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“To see spirits and hear gods.”
“Literally?” He’s threading his hands through his beard in worry. It’s some sort of hallucinogen. That’s about all I know. I look at my hands. Are they vibrating? The roof of my mouth tastes like chalk and asparagus and ice cream. “Will I die?”
He shrugs. “We will see!”
* * *
—
The walls turn to pulsing jelly as Ozgard leads me through them like a drunk puppy. Sefi’s war council was a blurry dream. All the orders fragmented in my head. If I focus on anything longer than a moment, the world pulses between reality and into some peculiar hidden fourth-dimensional plane. Keep the eyes moving. Stay lucid, oldboy. Stay atop the high.
You love drugs. You love drugs.
We enter the mouth of a beast. No, just a hangar, empty of helium crates and filled with warriors. They vibrate like dark teeth. My head is spinning. Whole body flushed with electricity. I’ve never liked psychedelics. Too little control.
Ozgard jerks me out of the way as a column of Valdir’s Stormbreakers jog past us in gray heavy armor painted with blue runes to load into the assault transports. A goddess with a luminous headdress of white feathers floats before a pack of Valkyrie in sky-blue armor. “Who is that!” I cry.
“Sefi.”
“She looks fantastic!”
“Yes.”
“She’s going down herself? But there are killer robots!” He looks at me and I almost scream. The shaman has become a demon. His face is bright blue and his beard smokes. Fire leaks out his eyes and his mouth rumbles an orchestral thunder that is made of semisolid mutating colors. “What if she dies?” I hear myself weeping. “What happens if Sefi dies?”
“A queen that does not ride at the vanguard is no queen!” he bellows as Valdir stomps past, looking as big as a thunderhead. His hydra skull bubbles cruel laughter. “This is not her death! I have seen the griffin ascend on Red wings!”
“I mean what happens to me!” I cry.
“You are high, my friend! Have courage and ride the tumult!”
His laugh is cruel and mocking, and when he looks at me, lightning flashes in the veins of his black eyes. The whole world goes dark behind him and begins to tremble and distort. I fall down. The hard steel jars me out of the reverie. It’s just turbulence, you fool! Ozgard picks me up like a toy and wraps my hand around a rung. “Stay and witness the griffin rise!” He bats my arms away and runs off toward Valdir and Sefi.
“Don’t leave me!” I moan. “Oh gods. Oh gods.” I curl up on the floor as the monsters trample past. Stay atop the high. Stay atop the high. I dive for safety into a pack of crates. Armor. I try to strap it on. Too big. GravBoots. I don’t want to fall into the ceiling. Lightning crackles there. I strap the boots on. They’re huge, but the ankles manage to lock high up on my calves. That’ll keep me safe. I grab an insidious weapon from the wall. A rifle of unknown and horrible power.
Oh Jove, what’s that?
Iridescent sea creatures from the depths of the ocean swim through my eyes, mingling with the wa
rriors. The creatures disappear inside the metal bodies and entwine their souls with the savages the world thought to tame. A dark torrent streams from their mouths and forms a crackling cloud of lightning and unruly thunder over their snowy heads. The song! The death chant of the Obsidians! I’ve heard it before in the ruins of Luna, but not like this. Not ever like this.
I don’t just hear it.
I feel it. The vibrations grip my bones with their terrible beauty.
Before the soldiers of the gods, Ozgard takes a creature from a pouch and lets it bite his tongue before devouring it whole. The chanting thickens. The clouds swirl. Suddenly he throws off his cloak. He is naked beneath, his whole body painted blue, manhood swinging between his legs like a pendulum of power. He roars a horrible creed as he walks through the Obsidians, his arms uplifted, stomping his gravBoots. The Obsidians join him in stomping so that it feels like the heartbeat of a dead world awakening.
“Baga duna!!!!” he screams, and throws down his arms.
“Duna fiel!” Valdir and Sefi scream at him.
The hangar doors retract. Freezing wind pours in like the breath of a cold god, and Sefi is baptized in moonlight ahead of her bloodguard Valkyrie. Valdir and his worldbreakers slam their heads together. I close my eyes, praying for it to end. Knowing it isn’t real. Am I real? Am I real? The darkness seeks to swallow me. “Witness!” It rumbles to me in Ozgard’s voice. Terrified, I open my eyes, squinting into the maelstrom of wind.
“Njar la tagag, syn tjr rjyka!” Ozgard shouts.
The Obsidians echo him.
He points at Sefi and Valdir and flails his face, summoning the demon from the Queen and her mate.
