Chapter Twenty-Nine: Behemoths

I pulled up to the burning wreckage of the tower that had once been Outpost 34-W. There was barely anything left – just charred rubble, smoldering wrecks of vehicles…and carbonized skeletons. Yeah, the outpost had been obliterated, and its inhabitants obviously hadn't been any luckier than their post.

The two Prospitian Humvees that we were accompanying rumbled to a stop alongside us, and the officer dismounted. Theo and I stepped out of Little Blue and joined him, though I left the engine running. It didn't run on gas, anymore; I could get away with leaving it running. We picked through the wreckage, trying to help the officer search for whatever it was he was looking for. As we looked through the rubble, the officer took a handheld radio off his belt and activated it—it seemed like a short range device, so it must have jumped its signal off the transmitters in one of the Humvees.

"Fort Terminus, this is Iron Lead; we have arrived at Outpost 34-W… There is nothing left but rubble and skeletons."

There was a pause on the other end as the Scarred Marshal received the message. Then, "Have you recovered the black box?"

"I do not believe the black box survived, sir," the officer said. "As I said, there is nothing left but rubble and skeletons."

Another pause. "Very well, Iron Lead, proceed with caution. Contact has been lost with the other two patrols. Terminus Actual out."

"What are we looking for, again?" I asked, trying to tip over a charred crossbeam with my foot, only to have the burnt wood crumble into ash and embers. There was a faint, distinct odor in the air and wind…ozone. I think it reminded me of ozone. I could still smell the energy discharge of the weapons that had reduced this place to wreckage.

"This outpost's black box," the officer replied. "It is a recording device, where all of the outpost's surveillance data is stored. However, judging by the state of things here, I highly doubt it survived…"

Before the officer could say anything more, he was interrupted by the ground suddenly shaking. That unnerved me, to say the least. Having the ground shaking never really spelled anything good, and I don't think this particular occasion would prove to be an exception.

"What the hell's goin' on?" to most people, Theo really didn't sound scared at all…but I knew him too well. He was nervous as shit, right now.

Then the impossible happened. I was expecting a large force of Dersite commandoes, or even a Dersite airstrike, or…well, I dunno. I certainly wasn't expecting a giant, thirty, forty-foot-tall behemoth to come climbing over the edge of the ridge. It didn't even look like a horribly oversized Dersite…it was something completely different. Dersite, yes…but not a standard carapacian. Almost like a Cyclops, as opposed to a giant human. The fact that it had three pointy legs and moved almost like a robot didn't exactly help.

It wore makeshift clothing of purple, red, and dark green—Dersite colors. It wore some kind of pointy helmet capped by a small symbol shaped like a cross. Oh, and it had a massive fucking cannon in the place of its right arm.

I've been dealing with bullshit on my planet for too long to just be able to stand around and stare at the giant fucking thing with my jaw hanging open. When something big and unexpected happened—and believe me, it's happened a lot—I fucking ran my ass off. I was halfway back to Little Blue by the time Theo exclaimed, "What the fuck is that thing?"

Two things saved our asses. First; the fact that I'd parked a distance away from the Humvees, and second; the fact that I'd left the engine running. Were it not for either of those things happening, I wouldn't be alive, right now. Or at least, my dream self wouldn't be alive right now. But still, who wants to lose a dream self?

The Prospitian soldier who'd been riding shotgun with the officer had been in the process of stepping out of his Humvee to confer with his superior, and that ended up saving his life. The Dersite behemoth fired its arm cannon, sending a bright red beam of crackling, roiling fuck-you straight at us. The energy barrage slammed into the Humvees, which had been parked next to each other. Both Prospitian vehicles brewed up in flames, vanishing in violent explosions of fire and pieces of molten golden metal.

The Prospitian soldier who'd just managed to step outside his vehicle went flying. He'd been knocked unconscious by the explosion, and also appeared to have shrapnel lodged in his chest.

I leaped into Little Blue and wrenched the gear shift from park down to drive, not bothering with my seat belt. I was already pounding the accelerator before I even closed the door. Little Blue's wheels skidded furiously against the ground for a second before finding purchase and sending me hurtling forward.

The Prospitian officer and Theo had recovered the wounded soldier. They were still horribly exposed, but the Dersite behemoth had turned its attention to me—I guess its reasoning was the people on the ground could be dealt with once all the vehicles had been destroyed, so Little Blue was next on the menu.

Yeah. Over my dead body.

I didn't go straight for Theo and the officer because the behemoth's energy cannon would have vaporized them instantaneously if I'd drawn it over in their direction. The behemoth opened fire at me, and that's when I wrenched the wheel to the right, skidding over in Theo's direction. Something I'd always wanted to do since I got my driver's license, but unfortunately that would've earned me a trip to the police station. I unlocked the doors and reached over, pushing open the passenger door as I slammed the brakes, bringing me screeching to a halt.

"Get in!" I screamed. "Get in! Get in! GETTHEFUCKIN!"

Theo threw open one of the back doors, diving in headfirst. He helped the officer get the wounded soldier into the backseat before pulling the door closed behind him. The Prospitian officer climbed into the passenger seat, and the moment he was inside I pounded the accelerator so hard I was surprised my foot didn't punch through the bottom of the car.

We sped the fuck away from that behemoth faster than it could pursue…but we weren't out of the woods, yet. A shadow came over us as we roared back out onto the mountain road. A Dersite airship had descended from the clouds, nose cannons ablaze.

This was an incredibly bad place to be trying to avoid an enemy airship. A narrow mountain road…sheer cliff face on one side, sheer nothing on the other side. I couldn't help but wince every time I heard an energy slug strike the car – that was going to wreak havoc with the paint job. I remember the last time I got a scratch on Little Blue, Sis had gotten it repaired, but she then forced me to paint over the affected area with nothing but one of those tiny plastic paintbrushes. And she made me redo it again and again until it looked good. Getting new scratches and burns on the car… I mean, Sis wasn't exactly around to make me repaint it with a tiny paintbrush, but still… Old habits die hard.

Theo reached up and threw back the glass covering the gunner's nest, grabbing a small handle and sliding it back away into the roof. This allowed him to stand up in front of the back seat, sticking his upper body up through the circular opening, grabbing the handles of the turret mounted up top. He hit the triggers, and the turret roared to life, sending bolts of blinding yellow energy howling into the air.

The Prospitian officer riding shotgun with me seized the radio, shouting for the Scarred Marshal to respond to him. When he finally heard from Fort Terminus, he wasted no time in explaining the situation. "We encountered a bishop, sir!"

There was another pause. "Say again, Iron Lead?"

"A bishop!" The Officer clutched his chest, falling briefly into a fit of hoarse coughing before recovering and raising the radio back to his mouth. "We encountered a Dersite bishop! One of my men is wounded, but I have linked up with the Heroes-"

"Oh, give me that," I growled, reaching over and snatching the mic without taking my eyes off the mountain road. "Hey! Hello, Mister Marshal Dude? Knight of Force, here! Listen, we're driving back down the road that leads to 34-W and we got some kinda Dersite aircraft trying to roast us, and we'd really appreciate some kickass Prospitian Royal Air Force action before we all go up in flames!"

I'm not sure if the Scarred Marshal was stunned, or just straight-up ripshit angry, but either way we didn't get a response until the Prospitian officer recovered the radio. "Apologies, sir," the officer glared at me. "We are currently being pursued by a Dersite gunship, requesting aerial assistance-"

"The Knight summed it all up quite nicely, thank you," the Scarred Marshal's response was, his irritation as plainly obvious as the reason for his title. "A fighter has been scrambled; estimated time of arrival, three minutes. Hang in there. Terminus Actual out."

"Oh, hang in there, real helpful," I muttered.

"Just shut up and keep driving!" Theo hollered down at me from the gunner's nest.

"Hey!" I shouted right back at him, sending us into a light swerve to avoid a hail of energyfire from the Dersite gunship. "Hey, do you see me critiquing your turret-shooting skills? No, you don't!"

Okay, now I have no idea how we managed to get off the mountain road in one piece. Luck of the Irish, maybe? I'm not Irish, but…well, come to think of it, I have no idea what I am. My Sis was the only member of my family I've ever known, and she never spoke of our parents, or grandparents, or aunts and uncles—let alone our ancestry. But maybe there was some tiny bit of Irish luck involved in our escape from the mountain road, passed down genetically from ancestors I know nothing about.

Truth be told, we wouldn't have made it out at all were it not for the timely arrival of the Prospitian Royal Air Force in the form of a lone, fast-moving jet. It was made of golden metal, like most things Prospitian, and it glinted in the daylight as it screamed past overhead. In the brief moment I could spare to glance up at the sky, I saw a dark object drop from underneath the passing fighter jet. Then before I knew it, the dark object vanished, leaving only a thin trail of smoke behind it as it slammed into the pursuing Dersite gunship, reducing the purple aircraft to ashes and sunshine, and a few small fragments of debris.

"Hostile bandit neutralized," the Prospitian fighter pilot reported back to Fort Terminus. I'm not sure whether or not we were supposed to pick up his transmission, because it was fuzzy and full of static, almost like a pirated radio station. "Returning to base."

"Woo, yeah!" Theo cheered, pumping one of his fists into the air like he was at a rave. "Royal Air Force!"

I watched the sad remnants of the Dersite gunship fall to the earth by glancing up at the rearview mirror every few seconds. After it fell from the sky, there really wasn't anything else of interest worth taking my attention off the road for. Theo withdrew from the gunner's nest, ducking back down into the car, shutting the glass hatch over his head.

The drive back to Fort Terminus was pretty uneventful. It was definitely fast… I mean, the soldier who'd nearly gotten blown up with his Humvee was bleeding out in my backseat. If I didn't get us all back to Fort Terminus sharpish, then the poor guy wouldn't make it. And I don't know… I kinda wanted him to survive. I'm not cool with having people dying in my backseat.

Within the hour, we'd made it back to Fort Terminus. The wounded Prospitian soldier was taken away by medics. The officer, Theo, and I climbed out of Little Blue. Theo captchalogued the car, storing it on one of those small, harmless-looking captchalogue cards. They had been the most reality-defying item ever developed by Skaianet—until Sburb, that is. I mean…just having the ability to store items on a card like that…it was impossible. It should've been impossible. I still had trouble wrapping my mind around them.

Theo held the captchalogue card containing Little Blue out to me, but I didn't take it. "You keep it for now," I said to my best friend. "You're here fulltime—I just dream here. You might need it sometime when I'm not asleep."

"I'll take good care of her," Theo grinned, stowing the captchalogue card inside his wallet sylladex.

"Him," I corrected my friend.

"Huh?"

"Him," I repeated myself. "Little Blue is a dude."

Soldiers emerged from the citadel of Fort Terminus to escort us inside. We accompanied them through the heavy double doors that formed the building's entrance, down the series of corridors and into the command center, where the Scarred Marshal coordinated the goings-on of his division, the Alabaster Rifles. The White King stood alongside the Scarred Marshal, and I could see a bit of an Abe Lincoln - Ulysses Grant dynamic going on there. The analogy isn't completely accurate, of course, because the White King took a much larger role in actual combat than Abe Lincoln did, but still. You get the idea.

When the guards escorted us into the command center, the White King and Scarred Marshal both gestured for us to accompany them into a small briefing room located behind all the frenzy and activity. The door snicked shut, and all the hubbub of the command center was suddenly suppressed, as if someone had hit the universal mute button.

There was a small rectangular table in this room. There was also a counter that ran along one of the walls—an old-fashioned coffee machine rested in one corner, with containers of milk and sugar right next to it. The Scarred Marshal must really enjoy his coffee, judging by the dozens of light brown stains on the counter, evidence of years of past spills.

Theo and I sat with the Prospitian officer on one side of the table, the White King and Scarred Marshal sitting opposite to us. Without any further prompting, the officer gave a moderately-lengthed synopsis of what had happened after our final contact with Fort Terminus before the arrival of the Dersite whatever-the-fuck. Bishop, I think the officer had said.

And when the officer was finished, the Scarred Marshal gave a single nod and dismissed him.

"Okay, I kept my mouth shut so the dude could give you the full details," I explained the reasons for my not interrupting the officer's briefing even once, "but I really can't go any longer without asking the question I should've been shouting at the top of my lungs for the past twenty minutes… What the everlasting fuck was that giant fucking thing that almost roasted us, back there?"

The Scarred Marshal glared at me for a second, before completely ignoring me and turning to the White King. "With your permission, I would return to my post. If the Dersites are massing to attack, I will need to coordinate the defenses."

"Yes, yes, you may go," the White King traded a brief salute with the Marshal, allowing him to duck out of the room and escape from little old me. The King gave a quiet sigh and reached into one of his inner pockets, pulling out another pack of Cowboy Killers, lighting up and taking a long, blissful drag.

"You can smoke that in here?" Theo sounded a little surprised.

The White King gave a shrug. "It's good to be the King," he chuckled. He took another drag, exhaling towards the ceiling, before turning his full attention back to us. "Are either of you familiar with chess? It is a strategy game involving a variety of different-"

I held up a hand, briefly interrupting the King. "Yeah, we know what chess is."

"Ah! Wonderful! Well, I'm sure you have noticed by now, but everything that is happening on the Battlefield—this entire war…it is like a giant game of chess. Two Kings, two Queens…and in the old days, the soldiers were referred to as pawns."

Theo was starting to get it. "So then the bishop…that's like a supersoldier, 'cuz the bishops in chess are much more powerful than pawns."

"Exactly right," the White King nodded. "Long ago, when this war first broke out, before we unlocked the secrets of energy weapons, battles were determined by the behemoths. The bishops, the rooks, and the knights…terrifying in battle, they all were. But they were dangerous. Hard to control, at times…they were not fully sentient, you see. Animalistic. They were created in gene splicing facilities, bred and engineered to become the strongest creatures on the Battlefield. For some reason, my scientists were never able to perfect the behemoths quite as well as their Dersite counterparts…our behemoths had problems with obedience. I was forced to shut the entire program down, after several disasters."

"But then…" I frowned. "But then, that would unbalance the stalemate between you and the Black King, if he had behemoths and you didn't."

"Which is why I poured all my resources into improving my air force beforehand," the White King gave an approving nod, happy that we were catching on fast. "When I shut down our splicing facilities and decommissioned our behemoths, I ordered my air force to obliterate the Dersites' own splicing facilities, removing their ability to continue producing behemoths."

"And that created the Badlands," Theo finished for the King.

The White King took another drag of his cigarette, nodding solemnly. "The Badlands used to be quite beautiful… Reducing that region to its current state was regrettable, but necessary. However, the presence of a Dersite bishop at Outpost 34-W…well, it is quite disturbing, to say the least. The Dersites have obviously rebuilt their splicing facilities. The stalemate is slipping."

I fidgeted uncomfortably, thinking back to something the White Queen had said to me, an eternity ago on Prospit. I have always known that my King is destined to lose this fight. The Black King will kill my husband, and he will begin the Reckoning. Prospit was destined to lose the war with Derse—the White Queen had told me that herself… I wondered if the White King knew this, as well.

I decided to keep my mouth shut.

I woke up feeling a bit more refreshed than I usually did after a good night's rest. Normally it didn't matter how long I slept—seven hours, nine hours, ten hours; I felt equally tired for all these lengths. I couldn't really tell you what made today so special.

Well, that had certainly been an interesting dream… I crawled out from under my fur blanket, rubbing the blurriness out of my eyes. I looked over to the other side of the room, where Glimmering Scales slept, but there was no one there. Scales must have woken up super early.

Aztlán was…it was a very interesting city. It confuzzled me. It was built on a giant stone plateau out in the middle of the desert—the only real way to find it without dying of exposure in the sand dunes was to already know where it was…which then made me wonder how the clans of the Desert Fires had managed to find their way back to their ancestral homes, after the Great Liberation. That must've really sucked…

The buildings were all made of some kind bricks, as well as sandstone. There were actually several freshwater springs that emerged at various points throughout the city from deep underground, which explained how the inhabitants of the city made their bricks…as well as, you know, how they didn't die of thirst. I really dunno how those springs could exist the way they did. My gut instinct was that it had something to do with the Force Aspect…probably the same forces that allowed this planet to have floating sky rivers.

The city itself was quite larger than I expected, home to members of all seven of the Desert clans. The population of the city numbered in the thousands, in sharp contrast to villages of the Western Fires, which were home to hundreds. The Desert Fires seemed to exist as eight cities, as opposed to a smattering of different villages for each different clan.

In some places of the city, the consorts had managed to introduce soil and plantlife, breaking the whole…sand, sand, more sand pattern. Many of the larger streets even had palm trees growing along either side, irrigated by small canal-like troughs of water that flowed along the paths of the roads. There were also a few major canals that flowed through the city, fed by the freshwater springs, allowing the inhabitants of Aztlán to get their water.

I pulled on my jeans and debated whether or not I should bother with my shirt. It got pretty hot during the day, and the wind felt really good against bare skin…but I ended up putting my shirt on, anyway. I can't just stroll down the streets shirtless—even I'm not that much of a douche. And besides, my shirt was more rips and tears than actual shirt, at this point. It occurred to me that I hadn't changed clothes or even showered since before all this shit started happening…a month ago.

Fuck, I smelled terrible. My dream self never seemed to suffer from body odor, but I wasn't so lucky. I was able to ignore it most of the time, but when I started thinking about it…whew! It was almost unbearable! It didn't seem to bother my consorts, though. I've never actually seen any of my consorts bathing—maybe they didn't bathe like we did. Snakes shed their skin, don't they? I think that's what they did…

Bleh, now I'm going off on one of my tangents, again…time to reel it back in.

I stepped outside, relishing the feel of the smooth stones that made up the streets of Aztlán under my feet – the gentle, radiating heat already contained in the flagstones from the sunlight. I've noted while dreaming how very different the light of Skaia is compared to normal sunlight, how it is gentle on the eyes and actually sends a calm, soothing feeling through my body. Of course, that's while I was on Prospit, right where Skaia's light was the strongest. It didn't have the same effect out here, on my planet…but I could kind of feel something similar to that soothing feeling in my feet, from the flagstones, warmed by that very same light. Yeah, this was probably the one place on my planet where it didn't rain twenty-four/seven.

I walked down the street, heading towards the center of the city. No matter where I stood in Aztlán, I could always see the Skaian Temple that stood in the center of the city. That was that big-ass Aztec-style pyramid that I was nearly sacrificed on yesterday, in case you were confused.

Yesterday. Still kinda hard to believe I'd only just arrived here yesterday morning…after my fuck of a journey through time with Anna, it felt like I'd been with the Desert Fires for an eternity. I wasn't quite sure what to think of them, to be honest. The clans of the Western Fires seemed to be the most adept with using the Force Aspect, yet the clans of the Desert Fires definitely seemed to be much more militaristic. Much more of a warrior culture, if that makes sense.

There were no guards or anything in this city. Most of the inhabitants were warriors in one way or another. If the city was ever attacked, the entire population would be the city's defense. The people I passed on the streets weren't standing guard, or anything. They were simply going about their daily lives – gathering water, heading to the markets…whatever it was that these consorts did every day. They stared at me as I walked past, whispering to one another. At least they weren't trying to crowd me, or anything, like the Prospitians on the Golden Moon would.

I walked at my own pace, enjoying the city as it slowly woke up. Eventually, I found myself walking up the steps of the Skaian Temple, climbing to the top of the great square pyramid. I probably would have been out of breath if I'd climbed to the Temple a month ago, before all this crap started happening. But since my arrival in this strange dimension, I've been doing quite a bit of physical activity. No, my overall appearance hadn't really changed like Theo's did—minus the sideburns, which I hadn't quite gotten around to shaving off—but there was definitely a difference in my endurance.

I lingered at the top of the steps for a few moments, looking out over the city and into the red sand dunes beyond. In the far distance, I could just barely make out the twisting, turning shape of a sky river flowing across the horizon. It was probably the only sky river that flowed over the desert.

I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the gentle breeze cool me down before turning round and wandering into the temple. I headed past the bronze brazier where the council fire burned during…well, events that required a council fire. I ambled over to the south wall, which was the only solid wall in the temple—the eastern, northern, and western walls comprised of columns that stretched from ceiling to floor. That way, the light of Skaia was always shining into the temple—the desert was in the southern hemisphere of the Land of Rain and Rivers, so Skaia would never shine into the temple from the south.

The wall was covered in pictures. Not inscriptions or any kind of writing—the written form of my consorts' language had been lost during Hyperion's conquest. Instead, there were thousands of small symbols, pictographs, mural-like depictions of what I could only assume were historical events pertaining to the Desert Fires. But I paid them no mind. I only paid attention to the largest and most recent symbol on the southern wall.

Three semi-circular arcs sprouting from a common point, each one larger than the one below it. Together, they formed a symbol resembling a crude crashing wave. Yeah, it was the symbol of the Force Aspect. My symbol. Matlal, the shaman who dwelled in this temple, had drawn that symbol on the wall after he 'read' me, or whatever. I hadn't gotten the chance to see it at first because Anna had dropped by and yanked me three or four centuries into my planet's past.

But when I came back… When I came back, there had been a lot of commotion about Anna's unexplained arrival and subsequent disappearance…but the main reason why everyone was freaking the fuck out was because of Xolotl. He had been in his prime, the First Warrior of Aztlán, maybe the equivalent of a man in his late twenties, early thirties. And when Anna returned him, he was middle aged. He had lived a lifetime in captivity, in the past…had a wife, a son…

But to the consorts of the present day, he had been gone for less than a minute. Having someone disappear and then return significantly aged like that… I really don't know how I could have talked my way out of that one. But I didn't have to, because Matlal finished drawing my symbol on the wall, which was more or less all the confirmation the leaders of the Desert Fires needed to recognize me as the Knight. He'd read me and recognized me as a Hero of Force.

So… Yay for that. If Anna hadn't shown up and fucked my day up, it would have been the easiest 'I'm the Knight of Force' sales pitch ever. All I had to do was let an old dude dance around me and taste my blood, draw a picture on the wall, and I was golden. No fucking sword ladders.

"I thought you were dead," a familiar voice spoke from behind me. I didn't need to turn around to know that it was Xolotl who had spoken. "Your friend wass killed, and I never ssaw you again. Then she bringss me back…and here you are."

I turned to face the white-scaled consort, trying not to fidget. "Are you okay?" I asked him.

He returned my gaze and answered, quite simply, "No."

"I said I knew what you went through, not that I knew how it felt," I sighed, really not in the mood to talk to this guy.

For a few moments, I was deathly afraid Xolotl would continue questioning me. Yeah, I felt like shit for everything that had happened to him…not to mention my role in ensuring the death of his family.

I had good reason for doing what I did, back in the quarries, but something told me Xolotl would not accept any kind of explanation I had to offer. Doomed timelines, stable timeloops, maintaining the alpha timeline, fulfilling destiny…none of that would mean shit to him in front of a dead family. Thankfully, he didn't ask me anything else.

"Sso, I ssuppose I wass the White Warrior," Xolotl changed tack, surprising me with his bid to find some common ground between us. "I thought thiss wass true, in the beginning…then I believed I wass wrong, right up until the end. I do not feel like a figure of legend…do you feel any different?"

"Most figures of legend are just normal people who can do cool shit," I shrugged. "Only reason they're considered legendary is 'cuz people build them up and tell stories about them for years and years."

"When you claimed to be the Knight, I knew you were lying. I was sso certain of it…" Xolotl turned away, slithering out of the temple. I followed him outside. "I was sso certain of it… But then, if ssomeone had told me that I wass the White Warrior, I would have been equally certain of their disshonessty. You are the Knight, without a doubt."

"Glad we're on the same page," I nodded. "And no hard feelings for the whole, you know…sacrificing me thing."

I remained on top of the pyramid, patiently waiting for the arrival of the chiefs of the seven clans. Though I hadn't timed my arrival in Aztlán, I'd been lucky that I made it here when the seven clan chiefs were meeting in the City-In-The-Center, which really saved me the trouble of having to travel to each of the seven cities to convince the individual clans that I was the Knight.

A council had been called for this morning, which was why I'd come to the temple in the first place. Within half an hour, the seven clan chiefs and the elders ascended the steps and took their places around the council fire, which was lit by an attendant. Xolotl, who seemed to have retained his position as First Warrior despite his increase in age, stood behind and to the left of the elders. Last to arrive was Scales, who quietly slipped inside after the council fire was lit, slithering up next to me. We exchanged furtive nods.

"Ready to leave?" I asked the red-scaled consort.

Scales gave a quiet hiss. "I do not like these desert folk," he murmured. "Too narrow-minded. I am certainly ready to leave thiss place."

I decided not to point out how funny I found it that Scales would dislike someone for being narrow-minded. It was quite the pot calling the proverbial tribe of kettles black. But I could somewhat sympathize – I personally much preferred living with the Treefolk clans of the Western Fires. Aztlán was a pretty cool place, and all, but I really wasn't a desert person. Too hot, too dry…too full of people who were ready to sacrifice me just a day ago.

Theo was right; my consorts were assholes. The Western Fires made me climb a sword ladder, the Desert Fires nearly sacrificed me in front of their temple… I could only imagine what the Northern Fires had in store for me.

This council fire did not seem to be quite so formal as most usually were. The elders of Aztlán conferred with the clan chiefs and their retainers for a few moments before turning their attention to me and Scales.

"I believe I sspeak for everyone assembled here when I ssay that today wass likely the mosst…eventful day in our livess," the slate gray-scaled elder in the middle opened with. "We have made preparationss over the passt day for you to continue your journey, Knight."

"Oh, good!" I nodded and smiled, playing the grateful figure of legend. "Preparations are good. I like preparations."

"Word will be ssent to the sseven citiess," the slate-scaled elder continued. "It will take uss ssome time to mobilize our sstrength… The clanss have not been united in thiss way ssince the time of the Great Liberation."

"Hyperion and the Dark Oness ensslaved uss for centuriess," the yellowish gray-scaled elder on the far left continued. "We will have our vengeance."

"Vengeance is good, too."

"Shut your mouth, I beg you," Scales whispered to me under his breath, clearly tired of hearing me be a smartass. Yeah, maybe I was pushing the envelope a bit further than necessary… I'm sorry, okay? I don't mean to do it, I've just been through a lot over the past twenty-four hours.

"You will go to the easstern gate of our city," the slate-scaled elder instructed us. "There, we have a canoe waiting for you. It will take you to the North."

"A…canoe?" I arched an eyebrow, unsure of whether or not I'd heard the elder correctly. "How are we gonna reach the North with a canoe?"

The slate-scaled elder did not give much of an expression in response, but I could've sworn I saw a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You will travel easst of here and ride the ssky river."