The general staggered to his feet, took one lopsided step forward and then another. His helmet was gone. When he turned toward them, Rin’s breath caught. Half of his face had been scraped away in the explosion, revealing an awful skeletal smile underneath peeling skin.
“Nikara
Nezha gave a low moan of terror.
Rin’s arms were finally responding to her commands. She tried to haul Nezha up, but her own legs were weak with fear and she could not stand.
The general loomed over them. He raised his halberd.
Half-crazed with panic, Rin swung her sword upward in a great, wild arc. Her blade clattered uselessly against the general’s armored torso.
The general closed his gauntleted fingers around her thin blade and wrenched it out of her hands. His fingers bent grooves into the steel.
Trembling, she let go of her sword. He dragged her up by the collar and flung her at what was left of the wall. Her head cracked against stone; her vision erupted in black, then spots of light, then a fuzzy nothing. She blinked slowly, and whatever vision was restored showed the general raising his halberd slowly over Nezha’s limp form.
Rin opened her mouth to scream just as the general jammed the bladed tip into Nezha’s stomach. Nezha made a high, keening noise. A second thrust silenced him.
Sobbing with fear, Rin scrabbled in her pocket for the poppy seeds. She seized a handful and brought them to her mouth, choked them down just as the general noticed she was still moving.
“No, you don’t,” he snarled, hauling her back up by the front of her robes. He dragged her close to his face, leering down at her with his horrific half-smile. “No more of that Nikara witchcraft. Even the gods won’t inhabit dead vessels.”
Rin shook madly in his grasp, tears leaking down her face as she choked for air. Her head throbbed where he’d slammed it against the stone. She felt as if she were floating, swimming in darkness, whether from the poppy seeds or her head injury, she didn’t know. She was either dying or going to see the gods. Maybe both.
Then she tipped forward into the void; she was in that tunnel to the heavens again, spirited upward, hurtling at a tremendous speed to a place unknown. The edges of her vision turned black and then a familiar red, a sheet of crimson that spread across her entire field of vision like a glass lens.
In her mind’s eye she saw the Woman appear before her. The Woman reached a hand toward her, but—
“
To her shock, the Woman obeyed.
And then she was through the barrier, she was hurtling upward again, and she was in the throne room of the gods, the Pantheon.
All the plinths were empty except one.
She saw it then in all of its glorious fire. A great and terrible voice echoed in her mind. It echoed throughout the universe.
She struggled wildly to breathe, but the general’s grip only tightened around her neck.
“Anything,” Rin whispered. “Anything at all.”
Something like a gust of wind blew through the chamber. She thought she heard something cackling.
Rin opened her eyes. She was not light-headed anymore. She reached up and clasped the general’s wrists. She was deathly weak; her grasp should have been like a feather’s touch. But the general howled. He dropped her, and when he raised his arms to strike her, she saw that both his wrists were a mottled, bubbling red.
She crouched, raised her elbows over her head to form a pathetic shield.
And a great sheet of flame erupted before her. The heat of it hit her in the face. The general stumbled backward.
“No . . .” His mouth opened wide in disbelief. He looked at her like he was seeing someone else. “Not you.”
Rin struggled to her feet. Flames continued to pour out before her, flames she had no control over.
“You’re
