Chaos reigned.

Gidros behind him. Thimera in front. A swarm of Exalted in the air, an army of Faustines at his flank.

Metal storms, shining wings, dozens of claws.

Sadik and Amira had been tossed from the throne by Thimera. She stood above the mortals, her voice commanding, her foot raised for a stomp. His mind emptied. He could do nothing but lie on his back and wait to be crushed.

Xaeyr tackled the bovine goddess. They collided with the throne of dirt, shattering it into a thousand clods. As the two gods rolled on the floor, cursing and grappling, Sadik and Amira scrambled back to their feet, already bracing their weapons.

At the entrance, Gidros swung his warhammer, shattering two columns and five men in a single blow. Kavaia rushed for the rhinoceros, bellowing a war cry. The Faustines poured through the secret doorway, spilling and wild.

Confusion, mayhem. His men died like wheat before the sickle.

“Big cunt!” Amira yelled.

“Assassins!” Sadik replied.

They separated. Sadik dashed toward the horde of Faustines, a sunbeam bulging at the mouth of his sword, while Amira slammed the limb of her greatbow into the marble, nocking a wyrmkiller with ease. When she fired, the arrow flew like the bolt of a ballista, so strong that Gidros was barely able to parry with his hammer. When Sadik fired, his sunbeam disintegrated four Faustines at once, melting through the stone wall behind them. Vaporized flesh, leaves catching aflame.

There were many sounds. A man screaming, knocked from the radius of his countermeasure, devoured by the Exalted in a storm of glinting metal. Kavaia tackling Gidros into a column, their bodies flying with a cloud of broken stone. Dozens of Faustines beginning to hiss and roar.

“Traitor!” Sadik screamed.

They came for him. Jellied flesh, translucent skin, patches of fur, missing eyes, gurgling voices. They sprinted and crawled, tumbled and rushed. All of them were naked, and all of them still held the lattice of burn scars where she had purged the tattoos of the Luminous Path.

They all had her face. They would have her memories.

What did the memories matter now? Why cling to what was broken? Why remember when it would only cause him pain?

Better to cast it aside. Better to let go.

Sadik braced his sword. With all the room boiling into violence, he stood tall and centered. Serenity spread through his chest. A sense of relief.

They would overwhelm him. He was a single man against dozens. His only hope of survival was retreat.

He did not move.

His death came like a flood.

A sunbeam bulged at Dusksong’s mouth. He held it in wait. Three to his right, flashing claws. He slashed in a wide arc, the blade cutting through bone, the energy searing through flesh. Two to the side. He sidestepped, parried. Another slash, another tumble of organs. Three slammed into his armor, a fourth taking his leg. They were weak, barely breathing. With a twist of the haft, he unleashed the sunbeam, burning them all into ash and scarlet mist.

A dozen more. Endless faces. Bodies upon bodies.

Suddenly, Kavaia flew through the air, bouncing along the marble floor with the weight of a crashing carriage. A light grew on the ceiling, causing the shadows to leap. Gidros took flight, his glowing wings spreading beneath a canopy of vines, his rhinoceros hide flecked with slashes and sunbeam scores. The former god of penance held a savage grin on his face, as if he craved more agony.

He fell from the air, swinging his warhammer. Kavaia began to scramble. When Gidros struck the floor, the impact sent a quake through the marble tiles, shattering a wide circle into loose stone and clouding dust. Sadik couldn’t see whether Kavaia survived—the Faustines were rushing in, closing every gap.

Focus.

He was going to die.

He swung in wild arcs, cleaving and tearing. When he tried to fire another sunbeam, eight of her surrounded him, four on each side. He bashed them away with fist and elbow, breaking a dozen half-grown bones, enduring just as many scratches in return.

“Stop!” Thimera shouted.

Sadik stopped. His muscles went stiff, his mind smothered with her voice. When the Faustines closed in, bearing fangs and claws, Sadik tried to swing another cleave. It was not enough.

“Look at me!”

Sadik looked at her. She was limping away from the ruins of the throne, her dress covered in blood and dirt. Xaeyr scrambled up from the floor behind her. The cow continued to flee. The baboon raised his hand, concentrating. The vines on the wall began to shake. When Xaeyr threw his arm, a cloud of steam erupted from the foliage, all the water in their leaves boiling in seconds. Thimera screamed, disappearing into the white.

The world heaved. At least four Faustines slammed into Sadik’s waist, taking advantage of his distraction. He flew. Slammed. A dozen bodies landed atop him. He managed to twist onto his back, trying to swing Dusksong, but there were too many of her, too much weight, too many faces hissing at his own. They slashed with her claws, ripped with her fangs. Sadik’s world became nothing but fur, teeth, and white hot pain.

They exploded. Four flew backwards, a dozen more stumbling back. Distantly, he heard the sound of an arrow striking stone.

“Sir!” Amira shouted.

She was standing on the dais, rallying the squads of Sons that still survived. Her greatbow already held another wyrmkiller.

“Get the fuck back!”

Sadik leaped to his feet, ignoring the dozens of shallow wounds across his flesh. He raced for the mobs of his former protégé, his scream lost beneath the roars of battle. He tried not to think of Amira, or the men he still held beneath his command.

What would they do without him?

Focus.

He was going to die.

Images flashed.

The marble tiles, cracked and shattered. So much flesh and viscera stained the floor that it piled above his ankles. Severed limbs, cleaved torsos, faces locked in their final breath. A dripping sea of organs.

The Exalted swarmed around his countermeasure like hungry buzzards, like thousands of flies buzzing against invisible glass. Around the dome of the room, his sunbeams had set the vines alight. Fire roared across the walls, devouring the ceiling beneath a furious orange, spreading with a ravenous speed. Smoke and ash, heat and flame. He might’ve heard Aldunya scream in pain.

Ahead, the radiant form of Gidros flew through the air. Instead of his wings, he was being thrown by Kavaia, tilted head over heels by a suplex. He crashed headfirst into the marble, quaking the floor, his warhammer flying from his hands. Kavaia gave him no time to recover—she threw herself upon him, punching with savage speed. When he blocked with his arms, she opened her maw and clamped her teeth around his skull, biting down with all her strength. The rhino bellowed in pain.

Sadik crashed into the Faustines. He swung and cleaved, striking as many that dared to face him. Instead, the Faustines began to circle away, spreading apart, trying to catch him at the flanks. Their blind fury was over—now, they were using tactics. He had taught her everything he knew.

Another wyrmkiller flew through the crowd, impaling two of the Faustines. Sunbeam volleys began to pick off stragglers, the easy targets. The Sons behind him were being careful with their shots. They didn’t want to hurt him. He was only getting in their way.

“Sir!” Amira screamed.

Kavaia flew again. She smashed through a statue of an ancient Vizier, tumbled on the floor, crashed into another column. Gidros took flight once more, his radiant wings flapping through the air, his gray hide dripping with blood. His horn was broken, and his grin was wide. Without his warhammer, the rhino began to fire sunbeams from the flat of his palms, aiming right for Amira and the Sons.

The Faustines attacked, coming from all sides. Sadik barely swung in reply. His attention was split. He looked toward his men.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

He was going to—

He turned from Faustine, watching the battle.

His men were dying. They had run from cover to achieve a better firing angle, and Gidros took full advantage. With one hand, he stabbed with single lances of sunlight, choosing targets with ease. In the other, he swept the ground with long searing beams, taking many in a single stroke. The Sons burned and fell, dismembered. Flesh foamed through armor, bone vaporized into clouds. Amira ducked and weaved, sprinting for cover.  

When one of the sergeants tried to block a beam with his spear, it melted the metal into slag, and the countermeasure was destroyed along with the man. Immediately, the Exalted began to swarm. Like a storm of sand, like a gray metal plague of locusts, they rushed for the now defenseless squad, engulfing them in seconds. Nothing escaped the tornado of dust. Men were broken down into flesh, reduced to their base components. The Exalted absorbed every shred.

Another sergeant tripped and fell as he ran, his spear skidding along the floor. The second it flew far enough, the Exalted rained upon his squad as well. Another ten men dead, just in the blink of an eye.

They were going to die. Everyone.

Could he—

With his back turned, the Faustines slashed at his leg. Claws raked across his armor, swiped at his face and neck. Sadik did his best to step back, avoid the worst of the blows, but his injuries were mounting. He stumbled. Tried to swing Dusksong. The sword grew heavy. His body was exhausted.

A roar pierced the battle.

Kavaia was sprinting toward Gidros. She carried his warhammer in her hands, and she held it like a barbarian, like one of the Kesunae berserkers tearing their way across the steppes. She roared louder than the mortals, louder than the flames and death. With savage grace, she leaped onto the plinth where a statue had been destroyed, jumped onto the back of another statue, and, as it crumbled beneath her weight, threw herself into the air, right toward the spot where the new god of the sun was flying.

Armor in tatters. Weapon in hand. The roar of a warrior.

For a moment, Sadik felt as if he stared at a painting. A god with radiant wings and glowing skin, a demon rising from a shattered world, a flaming sky surrounding them. All the friezes and reliefs he had ever seen, all the myths he had been taught.

It made him remember the past. The old triumphs, the ancient heroes.

Kavaia swung. Gidros tried to dodge. The blunt head of the warhammer missed the god of the sun, but the haft took him in the chest, and it sent him spiraling. His wings curled, the flames around them quivered in response, and the two deities fell from the air—Gidros limp and heavy, Kavaia slowing her fall with the flaming wall of vines.

Sadik did not see the rest.

A claw slashed his face. Fangs sank into his thigh. Half a dozen Faustines rushed him at once, and he was slammed into the pile of organs and corpses littering the floor. They surrounded him again, going for the vitals. Fists at his face, teeth at his throat, claws searching for arteries and veins.

He found himself trying to block. Trying to survive. His death was right in front of him, coming from every direction, and his only instinct was to live.

The old feeling returned. A lighted soul, a roaring core of bronze.

He couldn’t do this.

Amira. Yasmin. Haakon. The hundreds of soldiers under his command, the thousands of refugees begging for aid.

Kavaia.

He was not going to die.

Focus.

Live.

Be an example.

Too late. Too many. The Faustines pinned his sword arm, ripping Dusksong from his hand. His armor was pierced. His flesh was raked. One of the clones, almost fully grown into the woman he had known, leered above him. Her feline eyes were filled with hate.

“Oh, my star,” she said, mimicking Hisana’s voice. “Run. Please.”

Sadik began to roar.

A body flew nearby. Thimera. The ground quaked beneath her landing, forcing many of the Faustines to regain their balance. Many slipped on the pool of organs. And, as the cow crashed through a column, Xaeyr raced ahead, holding his hand in front of him. The ocean of blood began to quiver. In the blink of an eye, it bubbled and hissed, rising into a cloud of acrid red steam. Nearly two dozen caracals flailed in pain.

Sadik tried to crawl away. His body was a ruin of flesh, his every muscle screaming in pain and weakness. From the dizziness in his mind, he knew that he had already bled more than he could possibly survive.

“Sadik!”

Kavaia ran for him, still holding Gidros’ hammer. The rhinoceros himself rose from the floor, trying to flap his wings, but Amira fired a wyrmkiller from the side, forcing him to dodge. Just as Sadik managed to rise to his hands and knees, Kavaia grabbed his waist with one arm and hoisted him on her shoulder, as if he was no more than a child. He just barely managed to grab Dusksong before he was torn from the floor.

“Retreat!” Amira shouted, nocking another arrow. “Make a hole!”

She fired at the curving wall of the dome, cracking the stone with her massive arrow. A dozen Sons—all who had survived from a hundred—began to fire sunbeams at the same spot. The wall melted, but held firm. At the same time, Kavaia was racing toward their position. She ducked low, braced the shoulder Sadik was not resting on, and smashed into the wall at a full, sprinting tilt.

Nearly a foot of stone exploded outward. Dust and debris rained in a cloud. The goddess of death was barely slowed, still racing ahead.

And Sadik found himself being carried through the cool night air. Outside, the garden was still the same—burned soil, fields of ash, the slim poles of blackened trees. Any hint of the stars had been buried beneath clouds of smoke.

To his left, the cerulean walls stretched high into the night, shimmering with an ethereal glow. The armies of the Metal Plague watched from the other side. They crawled and slithered, bashing metal stumps, undulating through the pustules of their bodies. They were running. Following Kavaia as she sprinted through the garden.

Through his blood-starved mind, Sadik realized they were following him, just as they had earlier. They watched with hundreds of eyes and thousands of limbs. Even through the light of the wall, he could see the eagerness in their movements. It seemed as if they had waited for him to return.

The barrier had thinned even further. It seemed little thicker than a curtain. The slightest stroke might’ve caused it to shatter.

“Sadik!”

A large hand slapped his back. Energy flooded his veins—he could feel a new stream of blood growing through his body, his muscles thickening with the volume of liquid. Sadik drew a deep breath, revitalized, while Kavaia grew breathless from her healing, her arms slacking as she carried him. If she was not twice his volume, the draining would have killed her.

The battle returned to focus.

The cactus dome was engulfed in flame. Fire licked from the windows, belching smoke into the night. In hours, the entire room would be nothing but a blackened shell of stone.

His men raced behind. Only a dozen souls remained of the invasion force. With one countermeasure among them, they had been forced to band together, rushing in a tight circle around their sergeant. Amira and Xaeyr were attempting to provide a rearguard—arrows from a shortbow, gusts of steam ripped from the moisture in the air.

The Exalted poured from the hole in the throne room. They rose like the smoke of a fire, spreading like a storm, covering the sky with such a spread of metal that it seemed like thousands of glittering stars were flowing through the clouds. Among them, Gidros had taken flight once more, his radiant wings like a falling comet through the night. He did not have his hammer any longer, but his rhinoceros hide glowed with the power of the sun—he had only to raise his hand.

Sadik braced Dusksong against Kavaia’s shoulder. “Firing!”

He loosed a sunbeam toward the sky. Gidros dodged the lance, his wings flapping through a swirl of Exalted, and returned fire with the palm of his hand. Half a dozen Sons were severed into smoking pieces—with how tightly they were grouped, it was an easy shot. Gidros swept the beam across the burned garden, aiming for Amira.

She tried to dodge. It did not work.

Her scream split the night.

For a moment, Sadik did not see further. Kavaia began to weave through the blackened trees, attempting to break line of sight, and, without any warning, a herd of destriers filled the space behind them. The quill-covered beasts looked as if they had been kicked from their stables—they ran panicked through the garden, startled by the lights and motion. Some held the jewels, braids and decorated quills of Kesunae riders.

Rushan had mentioned pinning the death of the Vizier on the Kesunae. The destriers were to be evidence of this.

It could be their means of escape.

Xaeyr appeared through a thicket of burned trees. On his furry shoulder, he carried Amira, whose legs had been severed with a diagonal slash—her right leg ended at the thigh, her left at the shin. The flesh was blackened, still smoking. She did not move.

The Exalted filled his vision, descending from the sky above. Xaeyr barely managed to throw himself within the range of Sadik’s countermeasure before the swirl of metal blanketed the garden, obscuring their view of the surrounding area. The metal swarm undulated in a sphere around them, almost forming a solid, bristling wall.

Through the metal cloud, a light appeared directly above. Gidros. He had closed the distance. From the sky, he could fire with impunity.

Sadik braced his sword. A duel of sunbeams. The rhino was not Ilios—did not have the centuries of experience as god of the sun—but, all the same, his body coursed with the same energy, the same resistance to radiant fire.

This would not end well.

And, just as all escape seemed lost, the cerulean walls vanished.

There was no sound of their disappearance. No bricks toppled to the floor, no men spilled from the ramparts. At one moment, the walls stood tall, and, the next, they were gone, as if it had taken little more than a blink to wipe them from existence. The walls had remained for millennia, as eternal a fixture in Acheron’s sky as the stars in the heavens. Now, where once had been solid light, only darkness remained.

The army of the Metal Plague stood on the other side. Their bodies glistened with the same energy that forged the barriers. It circled through veins, shined through eyes, pulsed with heartbeats and glowed through the stretched remnants of flesh. The plague had consumed the wall, and now, with nothing standing between them, they were filled with a powerful energy.

The horde rushed ahead. Inhuman screams filled the air.

Attention shifted. From the sky, Gidros fired sunbeams at the raging army, while the Exalted threw themselves across the burned soil, spreading like a mist. The infected moved with the grace of a cookpot boiling over—lurching, heaving, rising in waves that seemed more liquid than object. Many of the victims were little more than walking sacs of pustules, and they began to explode in rapid order, releasing clouds of spores. A battle of millions began. The metal dust of the Exalted, the black pollen of the plague. Storms devoured each other.

The infected leaped for Gidros. There were wings made of sinew, tentacles leaping from a spool of intestines. The rhinoceros tried to dodge. Slowly, his wings were shot with wads of rotten flesh. Tentacles lashed his feet. When he had been brought low to the ground, a dozen bodies jumped at him, their forms melting into his flesh the moment contact was made. Gidros roared and fell, his glowing wings disappearing into a squirming sea of bodies.

“Ride!” Kavaia shouted.

While Sadik watched the battle, the goddess of death had grabbed one of the destriers. Pulling by the quills, she climbed onto its back, managing to toss Sadik into a seated position behind her. There was no saddle, no reins to control the beast—instead, she grabbed the chains of jewelry along its neck and began to yank. The destrier whinnied and bucked.

“Ride!” she shouted again. “Through the gap!”

The cerulean walls were gone. Ahead of the rushing plague, a district of Acheron spread before them, overgrown and misshapen.

They would have to ride through the quarantine zone.

The Sons scrambled to capture a mount. Xaeyr threw himself onto the back of a destrier, struggling to climb into a seated position. From his shoulder, Amira sagged into position at his lap, her legless body still hanging limp.

“Miri!” Sadik shouted.

“She’s alive!” Xaeyr yelled in return. “Go!”

The infected came for them, rushing and pouring.

Kavaia kicked the destrier, pulling on the mare’s jewelry braid. With a loud chuff, the beast broke into a gallop. She angled her around the edge of the horde, trying to clear a path through the remnants of the burned garden. Black trees flew like missiles, and the night boiled with screams that almost seemed human.

Kavaia rode with skill. She had moved into half-seat position—buttocks raised, calves clamped, her entire body loose and flowing with the actions of her mount. Nimbly, she dodged around the trees and infected, racing toward the spot where the walls had once stood.

For a moment, he remembered what she had told him of her history. Centuries ago, her tribe of Kesunae had rode against the city of Acheron, breached the walls, and defeated a divine champion. That was how she earned the right to godhood.

She still held the soul of her past. It was an example. One he needed to follow. If, after centuries, she could still—

Kavaia elbowed him in the gut.

“Fire your sword, gichii!”

The plague was sprinting for him. Hundreds of bodies. If Sadik had any doubt that he had become a target, he had only to look at the thousands of eyes focusing upon him.

He braced Dusksong, firing her with one arm while the other wrapped around Kavaia’s waist. Sunbeams tore through the infected. Spore sacs exploded, popping like grapes beneath a heel, while many torsos split open with a geyser of evaporating flesh. Behind them, Xaeyr was struggling to follow Kavaia’s pace, his own mount not nearly as well controlled. Only two more destriers followed behind the god of cataracts—two Sons on one mount, three on another.

Five men out of a hundred. So many souls wasted.

Sadik grit his teeth, focusing on what he could save.

Some of the infected were fast. The mutations had given them the gait of animals, rushing on four limbs. Dusksong fired too slowly for Sadik to take them all. But, just as they drew close, an invisible force seemed to slap them away. Leagues of flesh began to quiver, and bones leapt from their forms, blown back into the garden, as if thrown like so many darts.

The countermeasure. The same invisible signal that repelled the Exalted. It was something that had been theorized before the Demokrats shattered the city—the Metal Plague was a rampant form of Glimmer. If the countermeasure worked against the plague, the theory must be true.

Of course, it was not perfect. The infected were struggling through the force repelling them—the less mutated they were, the closer they were able to breach. Some might still reach them. The stronger masses, the ones built from several bodies combined into one, were able to push through with hideous strength alone.

But it would be enough. With their mounts, Sadik and his men could outrun the horde. With the countermeasure, they could ride straight through the plague zone without being infected.

Hope blossomed in his heart.

He raised Dusksong above his head, the sword’s yellow light shining through a night clouded with smoke, joining with the tattoos burning along his face and neck.

He was alive.

“For the stars!”

Kavaia pulled the jeweled braid, and the destrier leaped over the edge of the palace, dodging a river of rotten flesh. Kohav Yaran had been built upon a hill—when the destrier landed, her hooves met a slope of rock and dirt, and she was quickly forced to fight for balance. The mare began a wild descent down to the city below. Kavaia guided the destrier as well as she could, but there were many obstacles in her path.

Boulders. Outcroppings. Loose hills of dirt and scree, spraying a cloud of debris when struck. In normal times, the slope would be as dangerous as a cliff.

Ahead, the plague had taken hold. Blisters of flesh grew like shrubs, reinforced with bone and dripping metal, and a sea of tongues swayed through the dirt like a field of grass, squirming in an effort to speak. In the dark, it seemed as if the Metal Plague had built a wilderness out of people. Arms for branches, fingers for stems, eyes for fruits and berries. Everything breathed.

It was a nightmare. With the destrier sprinting through it all, threatening to lose her balance at any moment, it seemed as if it might be their end.

But, somehow, despite all the misfortune Sadik had witnessed over the last several weeks, the worst did not happen. The mount did not falter, and the countermeasure did not fail. Obstacles were leaped. The flesh peeled from their path, causing an orchestra of moans. When they reached the bottom of the hill, there was one final push, one last netting of bone and muscle acting as a fence. Kavaia clamped her calves, the destrier jumped, and then they were clear.

Instead of dirt, the destrier’s hooves landed upon stone. A paved street. It was one of the finest sights Sadik had ever seen.

They had escaped the palace.

He looked back. The others had followed. Xaeyr carried Amira in his lap, and the last of the Sons were firing their sunspears as they descended, blasting the infected that poured down the hill in pursuit.

There were hundreds at their back, flowing through the growths. There would be thousands more ahead. Even now, dozens were spilling from the overgrown buildings, tumbling from the roofs, rushing from the alleys. If the Metal Plague was as intelligent as it seemed, it would attempt to cut off their escape.

They were in the middle of the quarantine zone. To most, survival would be impossible.

Let them come, Sadik thought. He would meet any challenge.

He swung his sword, fighting for life.