...
Ayika coughed as shift in the hot air carried more smoke into her mouth. She looked back once more to ensure that Mizumi was still there. Ever since Ma'er and the others disappeared Ayika was terrified that at any moment she would turn around and Mizumi would be gone too, taken, leaving Ayika alone in the hellish chaos of this nearly deserted neighborhood. The rising hordes of hungry ghosts were thick and grasping here and the flames of the burning buildings the two women passed behaved strangely. At least there were fewer physical obstacles to moving down these streets. The guards had never gotten the chance to raise the stone barricades here and the residents had fled quickly enough that no one had bothered to build their own. As long as Ayika concentrated on whatever ghost repelling aura her meager shaman powers could muster, she and Mizumi were safe.
At that moment, to prove her a liar, Ayika heard a woman cry out. Mizumi grasped Ayika's wrist but they soon both saw that there was no immediate danger. Well, no danger to them. As they wound their way through the half-seen specters in all their shapes, now visible to Mizumi as well, they saw a human woman in a torn dress leaning against a brick wall. Her face was in her hands and glowing blue spirit birds perched on her shoulders, plucking threads of memories from from her head while dim ghosts clutched at her legs. That woman was not the first person like this they'd seen. They were getting closer to the epicenter and the spiritual disturbances here were too much for any unprepared human to deal with. The girls left the woman and continued onward down the web of crowded deserted streets, lit by flickering orange light of wild fire through window-frames and doorways. The bright spirit birds watched them pass.
Mizumi was the first to speak. She looked around at the burning buildings rising up on each side of them. All the fires were dancing now. "I have seen many examples of firebending but these flames are still very unnerving to me."
Ayika agreed. This near Naruhama's mask, fire covered nearly every apartment and every shop yet it had lost its appetite. The all encompassing blaze flexed and pulsed in spreading waves but though the walls were black and pitted the fire had here gained a measure of unreality. It required no fuel to sustain its self. Those whipping sheets of fire seemed to simply dwell here now, poking through the charred wood and bamboo like a new type of grass waving in a hot wind, clinging to walls like climbing vines.
Ayika and Mizumi advanced forward and eventually came into a small square around a stone well made bright by fire on every side. The flagstones and the well were the only things here that were not now more blaze than substance as all the surrounding buildings were completely engulfed in fire. On the far side of the stone flagging several red spirit dogs trotted across the space from other streets, but they avoided the approaching humans and quickly disappeared to make mischief elsewhere.
"All right." Ayika turned around several times and tried to sense if they were still advancing towards the center of the disturbance. She thought that they must be. That aching below her brain felt hallow and drum-like. They walked out into the square towards the edge of the well that once watered the departed families who had lived here. "I think we're almost there. This is...Flowing Water Square? I think? So when we find Tian or Naruhama's mask I'll try and-"
Loud, inhuman laughter rang out across the square. "Child of the city! Why are you here?"
Mizumi was so tired. She no more profanity left in her as she turned to face the sound of the Mask calling to them. There were so many of them, leaping through fire and dropping down from the rooftops, their host bodies almost entirely concealed within the emerging spirit forms that now just barely conformed to the standards of humanoid shape. Ayika sagged and absently wiped some of the soot off her face with her sleeve. In the back of her mind some small voice commented that it was good that her opera-going outfit was made of such dark, stain-hiding cloth. They'd gotten so close to their goal, but they had no more allies to fight for them.
One of the Masks landed down on the stones of the square with a shuddering thud. He rose up, dressed like a prosperous middle ring shopkeeper but now those clothes were hidden behind the green glow that clung to his skin. Phantasmal tentacles wavered off his back; reaching, grasping like living vines.
"What do you want with that drifting, fractured human?" the hybrid creature growled. "The fire-souled is so very interesting left how he is! Come, two autumn flowers clutching and withering, play with us instead!"
Ayika looked up to meet Mask's attention. These were still spirits, no matter what twisted ritual had brought them here. So she stood as tall as she could and spoke with a confidence she did not feel. "I am Ayika of the Water Tribe here to complete the funeral rites of Aza Naruhama. His unquiet ghost has been upsetting your world as well as our own. Our task is proper and will suffer no interference! This is the ritual and the contract!"
The Mask cackled back beneath eyeholes filled with bubbling gold. "Yes, the worlds are upset here. And so we are thankful!" The mixture of spirit and man roared out, "For us there is no contract. We are the distant, the unwatched, the shadows of unremembered forests, the winds off leveled hills. Now we return, and take our place from those twisted spirits who allied with the humans from ages past. The fire ghost will remain."
Ayika quailed before their rage, but now it was Mizumi who yelled back, proud and defiant over her terrified heart. "Yes, this land has its own spirits, its own gods to watch over them. You are not welcome! We are here to quiet the soul of a great man and we will do so despite you!"
Even as her voice rang off the burning walls another Mask dropped down from high above to land beside his green fellow, taking up the conversation as if he had been party to it all along. The flagstones cracked under his feet. "The veil must remain weakened. What man has done we cannot yet permit you to undo." This one was dressed in the black and white robes of a university student, now consumed with shifting shadows like black fire.
Every occupant of the square, spirit and human, jerked slightly as Ayika let out a single loud laugh. Despite the weariness in her bones and heart a smile twitched at the edges of her lips.
"Not yet? Then you're not ready. Not ready to try and overthrow the Spirit Gods. You haven't won yet." She was surprised to find condescension in her voice mixed with a hint of pity. "You may call the gods of our land pitiful and weak, but you still fear them. You still fear this city!"
The Shadow Mask roared. "We who have crossed fear nothing! Those who dwell here are bound in chains of ritual and rule, and the people who empowered them have forgotten them! We are unrestrained, we are beholden to none, and we we are free!" Even the ground seemed to shudder as he raged.
Ayika tilted her head to the smile in goodnatured acceptance. There was a certain freedom in hopelessness. Nearby she could hear the sound of water flowing along within the depths of the stone well. A crazy, unlikely idea had occurred to her. The fires had been following the path of the canals. There was a place no spirit could find, because the spirit that ruled there was forgotten. The broken body of the Kuang River still flowed under this city.
She looked up at the spiritual army before her. She smirked and in her mind she imagined Grandma Aka laughing from her next life. "You know? You're right. We in the city like our rules. Well, then let's follow some." She kicked out with her toe to scrape a circle in the ash that covered the flagstones. "Mizumi, I-"
Mizumi interrupted her. "Do what you are doing." A cacophonous symphony of otherworldly growls rose from the semicircle of Masks at the edge of the square, drowning out the crackle of burning buildings. Mizumi turned half way, showing them her profile as her eyes stayed locked on her enemy. Then she flexed her shoulders and her black coat slid down her back, falling the ground with a flick of her arms.
"I will stand before you."
The same hopeless calm that had washed through Ayika could now be heard in Mizumi's voice. She was almost laughing, all out of things to fear.
"After everything that has happened to us, this is a very simple problem to face! Do what you will! I can fight!"
The Masks roared as Mizumi faced them alone. Ayika closed her eyes and felt her center. Despite the wincing anxiety of her heart she tried to shut out the sound of growls and screams that reached her ears. She felt the very core of this land reaching up through the soles of her feet but she didn't begin the mystic chants to water and life that she'd heard her Grandma Aka and Mama Mua both use. Instead she simply spoke in a low voice:
"Exchange is the rule. Well, I offer service for service. You spirit gods all live here too, and this mess is threatening to wipe you all away. I'm here to save your collective hides from a ghost god and these scavengers clinging to him so I think that buys me a bit of credit. And as for which of you I am calling, the names and titles, I'd have to say..." She took a breath. "Every. Damn. One"
A deep voice instantly spoke from beside her shoulder. "You are presumptuous, aren't you."
Ayika opened her eyes to see the huge shape of Gold Toad rising out of the square's sealed well. Before, on the night of the festival, his amphibian shape had been a pale yellow shadow, ethereal beneath the moon. Now, at the heart of the hole being torn from this world to the other, he shone like a molten fortune. His eyes were jade, his claws were ebony and his skin was glistening precious metal. He nodded down to Ayika and his wide mouth might have had a slight triumphant smile. Behind him more shapes and colors began to coalesce out of the night air.
"It is good to see you again, young priest. Are those fool things in the masks still trying to find what I have hidden? Ha! No spirit, not even I, could break that charm."
There was a furious howl and Ayika turned back, fearfully looking for Mizumi. Four of the Masks had advanced forward, their natural inability to cooperate overcome by the anticipation of easily overpowering the young Fire Nation woman who stood before them. But now they'd darted back and the shadow-draped Mask in the student robes was clutching at his arm. A stream of very human blood ran down it. Mizumi still stood in her place and the blade of her knife decorated with a thin smear of red. The thick drops landed on the stones with a curiously loud sound that somehow carried over the fire and anguished panting of the spirit monster.
The Shadow Mask threw up its twisted shifting face; now carved from wood, now living creature. "How?" it howled in confusion. "We've grown so strong! Your mortal tools cannot harm us! This is impossible!"
Mizumi laughed and that sweet sound echoed across the four walls of fire that surrounded them. "One day it will cease to amuse me when men-things underestimate us. My blade is shaman blessed! Ayika gave it the strength to rip any of you things apart and if you take a single step more I will do just that. I wield her power! So come. Try me." She shifted her foot forward and the knife crept through the air, causing some of the Masks to lean back still further, unwelcome fear creeping into their otherworldly mind.
Ayika was not as sure about that as Mizumi. In fact, she was just as surprised as the Masks.
In the well beside Ayika, Gold Toad grumbled deep from his expansive belly. His front claws gripped on the lip of the well as he pulled himself out and onto the stones beside it, his lone back leg twisted awkwardly to support him. He too took issue with Mizumi's explanation. "Grrm. That is not the way things actually work."
But another voice, deep and dark, came from behind him. It was a hissing inhalation in from the shadows. "On this night, in this place, it is. The barrier is thin, and she is filled with belief. Tonight, anything done with that much... strength, it is ritual. After all, that is the key."
The Masks all stepped backwards in horror as Ayika and Mizumi turned around to see Blind Dog Lord, rising up before the backdrop of fire in his dingy ancient glory. He was not alone. The spirit gods of this little corner of the city had responded to the call. Beside Blind Dog Lord were other spirits, a woman who glittered like an iridescent beetle, wooden people wrapped in bands of iron, two hooded shadows, and woman made of shadowed water. Others were still arriving, almost a hundred, birds and sackcloth men and cats with many eyes. Even a small shirtless man who's claws gleamed like burning embers.
Mizumi called out with a cheerful excitement alien to their current situation, "You, little fire spirit! I recognize you!"
In the midst of her relief Ayika managed to find some space for confusion as she frowned at the little spirit from Mua's fireplace. "You? Why are you with the city gods? I thought you were just trying to get a way to stay here." She and Mizumi might be struck down at any moment and yet Ayika was still bothered that this one spirit was out of place in her understanding of city cosmology.
The fire man laughed. "And I found the way! You'd be surprised how many people offer prayers to gods when they're afraid of burning themselves! Progress, always creating opportunities! You stand before the God of Matches!"
Ayika turned back to her enemies. The assembled Masks looked much less certain than they had a moment ago. They'd been drawn here to the disturbance between the worlds but now instead of two women alone they faced a small horde of minor gods. Even the puny humans had proved themselves capable of inflicting harm. But the wild spirits that responded to Huitzlan's masks had been brought over by Erliao's calls of anger and aggression so they couldn't keep themselves restrained for long. Indeed, in their frustration the ones at the edge of the square vented their rage with random destruction, turning around to further shred the flame-wreathed buildings with their bare hands. One of the carelessly flung wooden beams actually almost hit Ayika and Mizumi but they managed to duck out of the way.
Blind Dog Lord took a glacial step forward across the square. His green robes, dark almost to black and embroidered with strange designs, swept across the stones. As the jaws in his withered canine head opened with a hiss, all the strange dancing flames that surrounded this space seemed to sway towards him at the same moment. Around him, the other spirit gods lowered themselves in bows. However, the Masks showed no such respect. As Blind Dog Lord approached they rose up taller, wings, tentacles and spikes bristling like the fur on the backs of a wild beasts. The eyeless lord advanced until he was beside Ayika and Mizumi.
Blind Dog Lord spoke slowly, with a hissing inhalation that ended in an impact like the thud of falling granite slabs. "Unruly spirits, all those humans who planned for your crossing are gone to await their reincarnation. Those who remain are inhabited by you and thus in no fit state to constitute a willful calling. The ritual you are party to has reached its completion. Do not interfere any further or you shall face penalty of enforcement."
The Green Mask of spectral vines laughed mockingly. "You feeble grandiose thing," it spat. It moved across the square to crouch below Blind Dog Lord's looming shadow. "What have humans done that has earned you adopting their chains? You were once a mortal. How could you actually remember any fondness for those creatures? They left you starving, mutilated, wandering on bleeding paws through this barren stone forest they created. You were abandoned. Yet you still tried to help them! You gave food to some misbegotten priest and in return you died. You are still a slave to them."
The Masks roared together, "Bow before us for we are free!"
Blind Dog Lord didn't change his posture at all. Only his grey notched ears over empty sockets moved in the slightest. "None of us are free. But some of us choose our chains. It is those bonds that give us strength. Now depart and leave this priest to her work." The robed figure seemed to grow still taller. "If you do not, I will expend every sliver of power I yet have to rip you apart even if it takes me three thousand years to recover." He gestured to the assembled gods behind him. "We all will. We will burn our souls to defeat you. Are your compatriots willing to sacrifice that much?"
For a moment there was the sensation of incredible pressure and force wavering through the air. All around them in the burning buildings the flames all slowly halted and fell to motionlessness. Ayika found that she had forgotten to breath. Then the tension broke and the Green Mask stepped back. His black and white robed companion with the bleeding arm turned his head in growling frustration. That Mask then looked up at Blind Dog Lord through a face made of wood and shadow and somewhere inside, a human being.
"Slave," it hissed. But it made no move to challenge him. "Accepted. We will not harm your shaman."
The shadow-spirit Mask turned to leave as the rest of its kind made similar frustrated motions. It took a single step away and Ayika breathed out. Then the Shadow Mask shot out a clawed arm and grabbed Mizumi by her face. Ayika blinked at Mizumi's muffled scream and then that thing flung her through the air with a single thrust of its palm. Mizumi slammed back into the side of the well with a heavy crack. She didn't make a sound as she rebounded onto the ground. Her knife clattered as it rattled loose over the cobbles.
The spirit gods and the Masks erupted into an earth shattering screech as they leapt together in battle. The fire that surrounded them roared as it resumed its tortured dance. Ayika heard none of it. Her ears were filled with a strange dim ringing. For two everlasting, unforgivable seconds she stood there thinking about the strangely sharp taste of smoke in her mouth. Then the nature of time changed again and she was on her knees beside Mizumi. Ayika reached out to stroke Mizumi's face and get her attention. Then she pulled back her hand. Her fingers were wet and red where they'd touched the back of that hair. Mizumi didn't move.
All around Ayika a spiritual battle raged. Monsters that acted like men fought men that acted like monsters in a shifting, amorphous cacophony of slicing claws and tearing teeth that rent the border of the worlds. Ayika saw none of this. She knelt on the smooth, weathered cobble stones beside Mizumi's gently resting form. Everything was still. Then a black foot stepped into the edge of her sight.
She looked up to see a figure of shadow standing before her, a human shape carved out of pure and seamless black. The void it had above its shoulders met Ayika's gaze. Then the spirit bowed deeply and respectfully to the still girl lying beside her. Its duty was done, its omen delivered, its journey complete. The Nine-Step-Shadow rose again and turned to face the battle that was ripping the streets and buildings to shreds. Soft black ribbons unfolded from where it would have arms if it were truly human, spreading out like flexing wings. Then it stepped forward towards another target. It was, after all, only a messenger of death.
Ayika slowly pulled herself up onto her feet, numb and unfeeling. Then, as she stood she stumbled slightly and her foot slid forward to bump into Mizumi's side. In that small, pointless instant all her paralyzing shock transformed into rage. The warm blood on her fingers now burned like molten metal; burned like the fire in Mizumi's soul. The world vibrated as Ayika's anger, anguish, and fury came bursting forth. Every fiber of her body held itself stiff with painful tension. She looked up at the battle. There was no thought, no plan. She just clapped her hands together and the blood on one spread to both.
Sound vanished and spirits and the Masks both froze, victor and defeated, whole and mangled all together. They were held, restrained by a magic too powerful to be party to any rules, by ritual older than memory. At the heart of the merging worlds Ayika pressed the blood of the woman she loved between her fingers into a single talisman. It was her clay disk, her brittle stick, her piece of straw. It was a symbol. And then she pulled her hands apart, breaking that sign in half.
"Get out."
The square was quiet. The spirit gods were gone. The human forms of the Masks collapsed down onto the ground; still, blackened things, pitted and ruined forever by the spirit possessors who had never planned to leave. One of the wooden masks rocked slightly as it slid off its former wearer onto the ground. Ayika recognized the motionless, scarred face of Chonglong in those black and white university robes, but there was nothing more to be felt there. Anger had departed with all the life around her. Sorrow had yet to arrive.
Ayika stood alone in the empty square. Distantly, the city roared from every direction with the sounds of fire and screams and conflict. But here the fire made no sound other than a faint fluttering as it continued to burn without consuming. That subtle noise mixed with the muffled sound of running water that filtered up from the open mouth of the square's well. Distant memories of the city chimed themselves to Ayika's attention. She knew what to look for now. There was always a path.
It was just around the corner from the square. There was a small narrow staircase leading down to the dark under the street pavement. Down to the fresh-water aqueduct that here within the walls of the city had been built over by the perpetual waves of construction. It was somewhere that a scared young man might hide from monsters who were searching for him, enough water to hide the spiritual fire. But the spirits and the Masks had been following the canals, drawn to the traces of power washed down through the sewers to the harbor outside the walls. Even shredded and chained, the Kuang River was still the lifeblood of the city, for spirits as well as humans.
It was a heavy burden to lift but Ayika held Mizumi in her arms as she walked to the mouth of those stairs. At some point there'd been a door but that had burnt away sometime earlier tonight. Ayika looked straight ahead, never down at her burden. She wasn't sure why she was doing this, but she also knew that she had no choice. The muscles in her arms already hurt from carrying the weight. She ignored them.
Then there was another black shadow standing beside her. She didn't look at it.
"I told you all to leave."
The male voice that answered was kindly even as it clicked with the faint sound of metal sliding over metal. "By my nature I have a loophole, Ayika."
She turned her head by the smallest degree possible. This spirit was dressed in black as well, but by the light of the fires she could finally see under his hood. His face was made of ten thousand metal blades, all fluctuated as if they moved on hidden hinges. His knife-edge lips clicked as they moved.
Ayika looked away again. At least she recognized him now. "Scissors-man," She said, flatly. "I didn't think you were real."
The terror of her childhood shrugged, the bladed body beneath those manifested clothes making more metal noises. "There was a time when I was not, despite my existence. The frightened belief of a young shaman is a powerful thing."
Ayika didn't bother to think about that. She couldn't bring herself to wonder or to fear. It was all irrelevant. "You've spoken to me before. The school, the funeral, the party."
"Yes. But I do not mind that you didn't recognize me. It was my honor to provide welcome and warning to one at the center of everything."
Ayika's arms were beginning to shake under their limp burden. "Stay out of my way."
The spirit bowed his head of points, edges and hinges. "I would dream of nothing else. You gave me form and place. You have done so very much."
Ayika just breathed heavily and stepped down into the dark staircase to the underground aqueduct.
The vaulted tunnel should have been dark but here and there small clusters of flames magically sprouted into existence, licking at bare stone before melting away again. Even the surface of the flowing water supported those same brief fires. They seemed to be pulsing outward in expanding rings. A little way down the tunnel, on the thin walkway beside the shadowed watercourse a young man sat huddled, knees against his chest, pressed against the stone wall in anguished fear.
Then he saw Ayika step into view and he gasped in panic. He scrabbled to hide some object behind him.
"Get back! You're not with them are you?! I can't let them find me!" His voice was weak and erratic, worn down by weeks of fear.
Ayika didn't answer. She gently lowered Mizumi down onto the cool stones beside the running water, managing to be careful even as her arms almost gave out from weariness. Distantly, Ayika noticed that one of her sleeves and the side of her dress were now covered in blood. Bits of flame licked across the flowing water. Faintly, a thick red droplet fell from Ayika's hand into that current. Then she stood up and looked at the young man hiding underground.
"None of the Masks can find you. Gold Toad honors his deals well, and you asked to make sure they could not. No spirit can find you, Tian."
The young man froze. "You know who I am?" Ma'er's missing assistant was a pitiful sight. He cheeks were sunken and from the drooping under his eyes he hadn't slept in days. He yelled out horsily, "How do you know my name?! And who's that?"
The sound of clicking metal feet told her that Scissors-Man had followed her down. Apparently spirits could still be shown where Tian was. As always, there was a loophole. But that still didn't matter. None of it did. She still had things she needed to say. Tian continued to cower before her.
"You broke into the school. You wore the white mask. You killed Professor Lizhen." These were no longer questions, she'd pieced it together long ago but it was necessary that some things be spoken; they needed to be said to be real.
Tian let out a single sob, sinking further into his bony knees. "No! Yes! I didn't...I got in the office and suddenly there was something else controlling me. I was...I was undercover with the nationalists. They'd asked me to steal it back, what Master Ma'er had taken, so they could destroy it, stop anyone from purifying it. I didn't get a chance to tell Ma'er before they sent me and then...Then I...That mask...I... They didn't tell me it was going to get stronger!"
"I doubt they even knew." It was an accident. The consequence of three forces all trying to control a power they didn't fully understand for aims that didn't take the others' plans into account. Huitzlan, Erliao, and Tailang; they'd all destroyed themselves. Chen Lizhen had just been collateral damage.
Tian frowned, recognition finally flitting across his face. "Wait, I know you. At Lizhen's school, and then at the meeting in the harbor. You were there!"
"Where's the mask, Tian?"
He shook his head, muttering to himself. "I got rid of the other. The white one. The one they gave me. It was...It was watching me. But this one...I, I thought it might be important. Important to stopping it all. But it just made things worse! I tried to take it down here, to the dark and the water, to protect Master Ma'er, protect my family, but something went wrong. It went crazy and, I think bad stuff happened up there. Outside this tunnel." Tears were in his eyes. "I didn't mean to... I tried to stop it. I really did." He was broken; a lost young man trying to fight spiritual influences beyond his understanding. It looked as if he hadn't slept in days.
Ayika breathed out. "I know you did."
Tian reached to his side and now held a large, thick, wooden mask clutched in his hands. It was unpainted, carved of a deep dark material from the bones of some tropical tree. Ayika had seen it on the body of the Ambassador paraded in his funeral procession. Or, she supposed, she'd seen a duplicate, another one of Huitzlan's tricks. The mask was heavy; the anchor of a hungry ghost empowered to godhood by sacrifices of gold and iron and blood. To Ayika's eyes it warped the world even in this boy's hands.
Ayika felt the pounding in her head. She remembered her dreams; the giant made of fire. This artifact ached to be burned, for the funeral ritual to be complete and the ghost to be pacified. It called out to the fire that the living once wielded control over. Naruhama stood across the worlds, torn apart into soul and ghost, unable to continue on to reincarnation. Ayika imagined she could hear those anguished, silent cries. She now realized that Lizhen's Fire Nation funeral burning charm had been left up in the square in the pocket of Mizumi's coat. But she also knew it wasn't worth going back for. Not tonight.
Ayika held out her hand towards Tian and the death mask.
"Give it to me. I'll get rid of it."
Tian looked away from it, back up at Ayika. "No. It...I have dreams. There has to be something special. If it's destroyed before..."
"Give it to me."
To Ayika's ears she repeated those words in the same flat, weary tone, but Tian flinched and looked at her with widening eyes. It was not the Scissors-Man spirit who brought on this fear, he was still far behind her at the entrance. This boy was afraid of her. But that didn't matter.
After a long moment, Tian slowly, shakily rose to his feet. He was much taller than Ayika but he was still huddled and wretched as if she towered over him. He held forth Naruhama's mask.
She grabbed it. It felt like heavy wood. It felt normal.
"Thank you. Ma'er is out there somewhere looking for you. I think your family thinks you're dead." Her mouth was making these sounds without her thought, but Tian heard something in there.
Then she blinked and he was gone. Time had raced forward again. Ayika was alone in the tunnel beside the dark flowing water. The spirit of her childhood belief watched her with quiet, amused attention. Mizumi lay silently on the damp stones.
Ayika held the heavy mask in her hands. She was so tired. Professor Lizhen had been an expert on funeral rituals from many different lands. He would have recognized this mask for what it was instantly and he would have known the precise forms to compleat the ritual, pacifying the ghost and reuniting it with the soul of his dead friend, the ambassador. He'd waited until after the setting sun, he'd arranged authentic charms and instruments, and he'd said the right words. Ayika knew none of those. But tonight, when the worlds were pulled together on their screaming path, anything was ritual. Anything was possible.
Even something new.
Ayika pressed the mask to her face and her heart reached out to drag the burning god into her soul.
...