Chapter 186

Miralis’ spear burst through the chest of one of the men from Earth in a spray of blood and shattered ribs. Before the man even understood he was dead, she had already torn the spear free and slit the throat of the one beside him in the same smooth motion.

She despised helping Seth in this manner.

Part of her wanted to see him suffer. The man was arrogant. Obnoxious. Reckless. Powerful beyond reason. And perhaps most irritating of all, he carried himself with the confidence of someone too stupid to fully comprehend how dangerous he truly was.

Knocking him down a few pegs would have been therapeutic for everyone involved.

Aurelion would likely achieve near-orgasmic bliss if she allowed it to happen.

But this was neither the time nor the place for petty satisfaction.

If serious harm came to Seth’s family, the consequences would be catastrophic.

The man was fragile already. Not physically. Spiritually. Emotionally.

And if he finally broke beneath the weight he carried -

- the world would not survive it.

She knew because she had seen such things before.

Miralis was the oldest of the living gods. Old enough to remember the death of the last world. Old enough to remember what happened when the worst possible outcome was allowed to unfold unchecked.

As weary as she had become with both gods and mortals alike, the world itself still held a special place within the eternal forge burning where her heart should have been.

The people inhabiting it were often disappointing. But the world itself? That was still worth saving.

Another man raised one of the strange Earth-weapons toward her.

A burst of fire erupted from the barrel.

Something slammed into her head hard enough to stagger her backward.

Molten bronze ran down the side of her face where the projectile had struck.

She thrust her spear directly into the mouth of the weapon.

Another deafening crack echoed through the chamber. The spear vibrated violently in her hands.

Then the weapon exploded into a cloud of jagged metal shards that tore through the man holding it.

A fourth attacker swung his rifle toward her.

Miralis slapped the weapon aside and drove her spear through his throat with enough force to lift him from the ground. She shoved the dying body into the fifth man behind him, sending both sprawling backward.

The sixth dropped something at her feet and ran.

She killed the fifth before the object even registered in her mind.

Then the ground detonated beneath her. The blast hurled her bodily through the air. Pain lanced through her lower body as she crashed into trees and stone.

One leg had been severed cleanly below the knee. The other was little more than mangled bronze.

For a brief moment she simply stared at the ruin with profound irritation. Then she silently cursed her own carelessness.

The mortals of Earth had invented far more efficient ways to maim things than most gods appreciated.

With a pulse of divine will, Miralis retreated into her demesne. Regardless of the injuries, she had accomplished what she came to do.

The worst outcome had been prevented.

* * *

I didn’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.

Sure, I understood the soldiers, the workers, the glow rocks, even to some extent the Mercy Engine itself. But it was the others that unsettled me.

It wasn’t just unarmed civilians.

It was mothers holding infants close to their chests. Fathers gripping their children’s hands. Elderly couples wrapped together beneath blankets in cheap lawn chairs. People lying in medical beds hooked to oxygen tanks. The wounded. The dying. The desperate.

And the praying.

Hundreds of them waiting for the moment they believed would save their lives.

Some wore white robes, but most looked painfully ordinary. Flannels. Winter coats. Cheap sneakers. Old jeans. People who had bought into whatever salvation the Shepherd had promised them.

And despite their faith in him, they were terrified. Terrified of us. Terrified this would descend into violence before they reached whatever promised land they thought waited on the other side of this.

The cocoon overhead pulsed brighter. Roots peeled apart, revealing vague humanoid shapes suspended within the crystalline weave.

“Do you understand now?” the Shepherd asked. His voice came from everywhere at once. “I am no longer confined to flesh.”

Thae moved instantly. Her dragonspear came to her shoulder in one fluid motion and fired with a sharp metallic buzz like an angry hornet passing too close to my ear.

The projectile slammed into one of the silhouettes inside the cocoon.

The entire chamber screamed.

Not one voice. Thousands.

The gallowborn shrieked in unison.

The civilians panicked immediately. Some dropped to the ground praying, others huddled together, while even more scattered blindly through the chamber.

The weave of roots overhead convulsed violently. A section of catwalk tore free with a deafening shriek of twisting metal. Workers screamed as they plunged downward. The steel frame crashed into the crowd below, crushing anyone too slow or too trapped to escape.

The roots pulsed wildly overhead.

“I told you that interfering would hurt people!” the Shepherd roared from somewhere to my left.

“I told you your actions would jeopardize innocent lives!” His voice erupted from the right this time.

“And yet you persist!” His fury rolled around the chamber from every direction at once.

Behind us, the massive doors hissed shut. Thick locks slammed into place with heavy metallic thunks.

People screamed at us, begged us to stop.

“Look at them,” the Shepherd said, his voice full of disdain. “They came here seeking salvation. And now they are trapped between your fear… and my mercy.”

Then the room lit up. White light bloomed from within the pylons, the walls, the concrete platforms themselves. The glow rocks embedded throughout the structure flared to life beneath the surface like veins of trapped sunlight.

The carpet of roots overhead twitched in anticipation.

Cracks spread through the stone with sounds like ice breaking across a frozen lake. Harsh white light poured from the fractures as the chamber trembled violently. Catwalks shook. Machinery screamed. Loose bolts rattled across the floor.

The glow rock burned itself empty. Concrete burst apart as the crystal aggregate inside it disintegrated into chalky powder. The walls shed chunks of stone and debris as the structure weakened all at once.

Iolite vanished into the floor. A heartbeat later stone erupted upward around a cluster of civilians, forming a rough shelter just before twisted metal and shattered concrete crashed down atop it.

Mirri swept her wand sideways. Large slabs of falling debris jerked violently off course and exploded against the walls instead of crushing the terrified family beneath them.

“DISINTEGRATE!”

The word never sounded. Only the absence where it should have been. Elise’s spell swallowed an avalanche of concrete less than a foot above a small bald girl in a hospital bed. The debris vanished into nothingness before it could touch her.

Ashlara charged forward with her shield raised, throwing herself between falling rubble and a cluster of civilians while Nim did the same with his own body. Concrete and steel slammed into him hard enough to crack the floor beneath his feet.

Clo became a blur of afterimages as she darted through the chaos, forcibly grabbing people and hurling them out of danger seconds before debris crushed where they’d been standing.

Vel tried organizing the panicked crowd, but it became nearly impossible once Serah’s body twisted and expanded into her draconic form. Her wings spread wide as she crouched protectively over dozens of civilians while rubble hammered against her armored scales like artillery fire.

Thae planted herself near the center of the chamber beneath a web of collapsing catwalks. Her dragonspear whirled through the air in brutal, precise arcs - shattering falling beams, batting aside chunks of concrete, and splitting apart unstable scaffolding before it could collapse into the crowd.

Every few seconds the weapon barked thunderously as she fired spikes into failing support structures overhead. Metal screamed as entire sections of catwalk tore loose and crashed safely away from the civilians below.

Tansy vanished into the chaos completely.

One moment she was beside me. The next she was darting through dust clouds and falling debris with impossible speed. Her upper hands grabbed people and dragged them clear while the lower pair flashed constantly with her blades.

Not killing.

Cutting belts. Harnesses. Tangled cables. Structural bolts.

She severed a collapsing stairwell from its supports before it could drag an entire section of catwalk down onto the crowd beneath it. A heartbeat later she slid beneath a falling beam, planted both feet against the floor, and shoved it sideways hard enough to alter its trajectory.

The beam smashed through machinery instead of civilians.

The gallowborn wailed in rage and agony from the impact, tearing more debris loose from the chamber.

Blood streamed from cuts along Tansy’s arms and shoulders where falling rubble clipped her, but she barely seemed to notice. Her movements were becoming sharper now. Faster. More focused.

The panic around her had finally reduced the world into something simple enough for her instincts to grasp - protect the pack.

And through all of it, I saw lights igniting in my Faith-scape.

Hundreds of tiny sparks. Then thousands. Millions. Billions.

Faith awakening all across Earth. Weak individually, but together so numerous they overwhelmed everything else. What had begun as scattered stars became a hazy white blur too dense to separate into individual lights.

My Faith-scape turned white.

“Do you feel them, Seth?” the Shepherd’s voice boomed through the chamber. “Humanity is waking up!”

Moss barreled forward. Civilians screamed and scattered out of her path as she charged through the chaos. A steel I-beam tore loose overhead, spinning downward toward a mother curled protectively around her children.

Moss caught it one-handed hard enough to crater the floor beneath her feet.

Then she hurled it at the Gallows.

The beam slammed into the trunk like a ballista bolt. Bark exploded outward in a spray of splinters and blood-red sap. The Shepherd screamed - not one voice, but hundreds layered together from every corner of the chamber.

Moss grinned.

Then she leapt at the wall. Her jaw unhinged far wider than any mortal mouth should have been capable of opening.

She bit into the wall.

Concrete crunched between her teeth alongside glowing roots and rusted steel. Gallowborn shrieked as she tore away an enormous mouthful of crumbling stone and writhing vines alike. Dust and pale spellstone residue exploded around her face while sparks showered from severed electrical conduits.

And she chewed.

The sound was hideous. Wet roots. Cracking stone. Snapping rebar. Then she swallowed.

“Keep her away from the lattice!” the Shepherd cried, genuine panic breaking through his composure for the first time. His voice erupted from every direction at once. “Do not let her feed!”

The Mercy Engine flickered once like a failing bulb. Then it ignited fully.

Faith surged through the gallowborn in branching flashes that spread across the cavern faster than thought. The tangled roots overhead blazed white - not evenly, but in violent fractal patterns that split and branched again and again like slow moving lightning.

The glow spread through the entire complex in endless branching paths. Every vine became a luminous nerve fiber. Every root another tributary feeding something vast and hungry at the center of the chamber.

The cavern no longer looked like a machine - it looked like the inside of a living brain moments before seizure.

White light raced through the tangled lattice overhead, branching into finer and finer strands until the entire chamber resembled an impossibly complex nervous system suspended beneath the earth.

The roots pulsed in synchronized waves. Not random. Deliberate.

The gallowborn weren’t merely conducting the Faith - they were regulating it. Filtering it. Refining it. Reshaping it before it reached him.

The Shepherd wasn’t trying to become a god. He was trying to become something specific. And the gallowborn were the key. Their imprinting gave them singular purpose so absolute it overrode fear, doubt, even self-preservation.

They screamed as Faith tore through them.

Some burst into flame. Others ruptured like overloaded capacitors. But many endured, clinging to purpose even while the power seared through their bodies.

And somewhere above us was Naevira.

I could feel her agony as she moved across the ceiling. Swinging. Climbing. Leaping between the others as she approached the cocoon.

My chest tightened as realization hit me.

She wasn’t trying to escape it.

She had a plan. She was going to sacrifice herself. She was going to plug herself into the central hub and disrupt the flow of Faith.

And there was nothing I could do to stop her.

* * *

A thunderous crack split the night, echoing through the mountains hard enough to rattle the windows.

“What was that?” I asked sharply.

Lilae’s face went pale. “A gun.”

Then her expression hardened into fury. “Tib!” she shouted. “Get Briva and Morien to the demesne!”

Another deafening bang rolled through the night.

Lilae surged to her feet immediately.

“Where are you going?” I called after her.

“I’m gonna beat the piss out of those worm-yarded, gall-mouthed gutterspawn,” she snarled.

I grabbed her shoulder before she could bolt for the door. “Wait a second, we don’t even know-”

An explosion cut me off.

A bright flash lit the darkness beyond the second-story window. It looked close - maybe a hundred yards beyond the wall - but the night outside was too black to make out what was happening.

There was a flash of green light.

I barely had time to react.

I shoved Lilae downward and threw myself over her just as something shattered through the glass behind us.

Fragments sprayed across the room.

“That one was different,” I said quickly. “What was it?”

I saw genuine fear in Lilae’s eyes. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Come on,” I said, pulling her back to her feet. “Brinja! Issa! Get to the demesne now!”

“Torvek…” Lilae’s voice suddenly sounded distant. “You’re bleeding.”

I looked down. My shirt was soaked red across the side.

“To the demesne,” I snapped. “We’ll deal with that la-”

Another flash of green.

Something slammed into my neck. Pain exploded through me.

I tried to speak, but blood poured from my mouth instead of words.

My knees gave out beneath me.

Lilae screamed my name, then the world went black.