CHAPTER 22

  “Follow my exact footsteps,” Leace said. “Even a single puddle could expose you to Nerida.”

  We ran single file across the Second Tier, orange and teal light gleamed off thousands of still pools. It felt like we were sprinting on a massive cloud, avoiding the clear holes in the ground. Each pool was flat as glass, despite the multitude of fish beneath the surface.

  Over by one pool, a dragonfly skimmed low after a speck of prey. The instant it touched the water, a dark blur snapped up from below and dragged it under. There was hardly a splash or a disturbance of the water. The bug was just gone.

  I flinched and almost misstepped, but Nanda’s shoulder pressed my back forward, keeping me moving.

  Breath training was already paying off, though. My lungs hardly burned when they normally do. We had run almost three miles, yet I still felt as if I had only walked a few feet. I automatically breathed through my nose instead of my mouth, keeping me silent as we ran, and the amount of air I could inhale dwarfed what I could have before the training. Aer’s group, heading west, had shrunk to specks skimming along the horizon. Ahead, the central spire loomed, gray stone climbing upwards, supporting the Third Tier above.

  We closed in on the eastern face of the spire and a row of narrow windows circled the bottom. Leace said she had gone through these last time.

  She held up a hand and we dropped into a crouch beneath the sill.

  “Listen up,” the Head Crier said. “Mask erases sight, not sound. Stay three feet apart. No talking. If one of us is discovered, we do not engage. Do not risk you life, if someone else messes up, understoon?”

  “Yes Head Crier!” Sammi, Alexia, and Clover said softly together.

  The rest of us nodded. Leace checked each face, making sure we all understood, then gave a quick nod.

  The three masked women closed their eyes for a second and I saw them breathe in quickluy. A thin white cloud formed around their necks like floating scarves. Their bodies grew faint and semi-translucent.

  They had activated Mask.

  Ten minutes.

  They vaulted through an open window with catlike grace and vanished into the dim interior.

  “You know what to do,” Leace said to us.

  She closed her eyes, breathed in, and her own scarf of mist formed before her form blurred.

  I pulled my focus inward, drew Breath up from the base of my spine. The crystals set between my vertebrae tingled like fizzy soda. The Kutasha star flared white behind my eyes. I leaned into it without moving, stepping through into that in-between space.

  The world became distorted, and I sent energy rotating through the crown of my head, my heart, my waist, and up my spine. Then, a cool weight settled around my throat.

  I opened my eyes. My hands were nearly see-through. A white ring of cloud circled my neck.

  That was quick, Fern said. You picked up on it quick.

  We all did. I said looking at my friends, all activating Mask.

  Leace slipped through the window. Raine followed. Mel went next, then me, then Nanda.

  We dropped lightly onto stone in a long hallway lit by torches. Mosaic tiles climbed the walls, perfectly mirroring each other on either side. Everything was a mirror infact. Even the torch flame buckets that hung on the wall were spaced with military precision, and the wood that burned in them, had the same shape, the same flame, and the same amount of ashs.

  Nerida really likes her symmetry, Fern said.

  Nanda tapped my shoulder and held up nine fingers.

  Already one minute gone. I thought.

  Leace and the three Criers were already jogging down the hallway, feet lightly whispering over stone. Raine and Mel followed. I stood up and padded after them on the balls of my feet.

  We moved through turns and stairwells, always up and around, threading deeper into the Sibling’s home. The halls all matched—the same tiles, the same paired torches, the same cracks in the stone floors. It felt like running through a kaleidoscope.

  On one curve, I lost sight of Leace and the others. I sped up only to almost run into Mel’s thrown up hand.

  I slid to a stop a breath too late and the soft pad of my shoes turned wrong, and squeaked against stone. Every hair on my body stood on end.

  Shit.

  Mel pressed herself flat against the wall. Beyond her, Raine’s faint outline mirrored the motion. I looked behind me and Nanda leaned close enough to tap my shoulder and held up six fingers.

  Six minutes left?! Panic rushed through my blood but thankfully, the training with Leace kept my heartrate slow, and my body didn’t show any signs.

  I pressed my back against the wall, making my breath even quieter, when four large men marched past.

  They wore nothing but leather and metal crotch guards and heavy boots. Everything else was muscle and scar. Each carried a spear with golden threads, all the same exact length, dangling from the blade and a small round shield emblazoned with a fishtail.

  They looked like they slept on a weight floor and ate a diet of pure protein powder.

  When they passed, their backs made me pause.

  The three shared a similar scare. One single deep cut running straight down the left side of their back. It was weird to see that even the people here in Nerida’s hall were made to be so… similar.

  The guards’ eyes stayed straight ahead, they turned a corner behind us, and were gone.

  Nanda flashed five fingers.

  Half of our Mask time was gone. My lips already felt slightly numb and cold.

  Mel took off again and we followed.

  The hallway opened suddenly into a vast ballroom.

  Six massive pillars divided the space, three on each side. Ivory and marble tiles gleamed under a painted ceiling. A huge mural of Paradize sprawled above us—all five tiers stacked perfectly along the central spire in mirrored halves. Halfway up the mural, I looked at the Third Tier, a black diamond sat just above it hanging from the top of it like a tumor.

  The Soul Nexus, Fern thought.

  Our ultimate goal, I answered—

  And bumped into Mel’s back.

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  She held a hand up, fingers spread.

  Ahead, the three Criers kept jogging. They did not stop to see that Leace had signaled a pause.

  Leace’s head snapped around at us. Panic flickered across her face, something I hadn’t seen before.

  She dug into her pocket, yanked out a small stone, and hurled it. It sailed down the center of the room and smacked into the back of the furthest woman, Sammi with the orange hair.

  The woman stopped and looked back. The other two masked Criers failed to see this too and kept running. Leace flashed a flurry of hand signs.

  What’s happening? I asked Fern.

  I do not—oh no, Erik. Look at the floor near the doorway, Fern said.

  I squinted past the two oblivious Criers toward the far exit. A faint reflection, like a dropped mirror glinted on the tile in front of the doors, different from the shine of clean stone.

  Water, Fern said grimly.

  I drew on the Chimera, hopeing I could still use its powers when in Mask. I could. With the Chimera’s sigh, I telescoped my vision and saw a thin line of water lay across the ground, barely bigger than a golfball.

  The Crier who’d been hit with the pebble spun around and sprinted toward her friends. She ran fast, stretched out her hand, but the Clover never saw it coming.

  Her foot stepped into the puddle.

  And terror erupted into the room.

  A black hand shot up from the water like a demon bursting out of a portal. It clamped around the Crier Clover’s ankle.

  She screamed as she was pulled into the air.

  The hand bulged into an arm and then a shoulder. A massive dark shape burst out of the tiny puddle like a whale breaching from a manhole. All I saw, for those three seconds was black, oil iridescence, shifting itself into a dark monsterous form.

  Then the light finally caught up to the nightmare, and the colors of its skin settled.

  A fifteen-foot-tall mermaid-like craeture landed on the ballroom floor with a wet, heavy, thud. The impact made the columns shiver and chips of paint drift down from the mural like snow.

  Leace snapped her hand to the side, and we listened. We scattered to the walls. Nanda, Mel, and I slipped left. Leace and Raine dove right.

  The two other Criers stood frozen in the middle of the floor, trembling. More dust and paint chips rained down and caught onto their body, revealing their positions. Their scarves of mist flickered and blew away.

  The creature turned toward them, holding Clover by the ankle light a caught fish.

  Her tail was long, covered in rainbow-green scales that shimmered like wet oil. The scales climbed up her tail to a wide waist and stopped just below a small, exposed navel. Above that, pearl-white skin gleamed in the torchlight. Her chest was covered by a bralette made of jagged, interlocking bones and teeth. Her long hair hung like wet seaweed, and around her neck was a chain of human skulls.

  Then, the creature laughed. It was elegant and horrible at the same time, like a wonderful symphony number conducted by a dying devil.

  Nerida, The Second Tier Sibling.

  “Oh my, oh my!” the Sibling said. Her voice was so smooth and melodic that the hairs on my arms rose. The back of my skull tingled like I had just heard a perfect note.

  “Clover!” Crier Sammi shouted. She yanked a cruved sword from her sash, and a new pattern of white smoke snapped into place across her chest and back like a cross. Her muscles bulked up, veins popped, and her body tensed.

  Crier Sammi exploded into motion, skating across the marble with hurricane speed, circling Nerida.

  Crier Alexia mirrored her, activating her own cross around her chest and back, giving her that boost of strength and speed, before skating to the other side of Nerida, curved blade drawn.

  Nerida only smiled. “How delightfully symetrical!”

  “Shut up!” Crier Sammi yelled, lunging low for the Sibling’s tail.

  Nerida slid back effortlessly, the attack missing her as if the Crier were moving in slow motion. In the same breath, Nerida’s body twisted. Her spine corkscrewed in ways more similar to an owls head, than a human’s spine. All the while, she was still holding Clover by the ankle.

  Nerida then uncoiled, like a loaded spring, and slammed Clover’s body into Sammi.

  Their bones collided. Marble tiles shattered. Blood exlpoded into a cloud of red mist, stinging the air with the acid smell of death.

  What the—

  No, Fern whispered.

  When the red cloud settled and fell to the ground, nothing remained of Clover but a torn leg. Sammi, who’d tried to save her, lay crumpled in a crater of broken marble. Her limbs lay at wrong angles, and her neck was bent too far back. She was lifeless.

  “No!” Crier Alexia screamed.

  She sprinted around Nerida, her cross-shaped scarf spun around her chest like a tornado. She ran circles around the Sibling, creating afterimages of herself. Half a dozen copies of Alexia attacked from all angles. Their blades flashed and struck at the Sibling. Their feet moved so fast, they barely touched the ground.

  Nerida’s face did not move. The cuts were like raindrops against stone.

  “Are you done yet?” Nerida asked the circling Crier, sounding bored.

  Alexia roared, twisting herself into a tornado and throwing everything into a final blow. She brought the sword down at Nerida’s chest.

  But the blade shattered on impact. Not a single cut was made.

  Crier Alexia froze, and then dropped the broken hilt. She turned and tried to retreat back towards the hallway we came in, but Nerida’s hand moved faster. She snatched the woman by the throat.

  “I think you’re done,” Nerida sighed. “You Criers always make it seem like your ‘Breath’ is something to be afraid of. But with such frail bodies and such weak weapons, how can you ever be anything but just an annoyance? Mortals always disappoint me. How sad.”

  Alexia gagged and clawed at Nerida’s wrist. Her legs kicked desperately, and she kept opening her mouth, choking for air.

  “Oh, please. You struggle more than a fish,” Nerida said. “At least they know when they are caught.”

  She dropped Clover’s shredded leg, and with her free hand, she seized Alexia’s arm and pulled.

  It ripped free from the socket with a wet, crunching tear.

  Her scream tore through the hall, and through my bones. I closed my eyes and turned my head.

  “You love me…” Nerida cooed.

  The sound of a wet thud fell to the floor.

  I heard Alexia crying for mercy.

  “P…please,” She begged.

  “You love me not…” Nerida sighed.

  Another horrible noise echoed through the hall, followed by another wet thud hitting the floor.

  I am going to be sick, I thought. I prayed the torture would end. Kael was right. Nerida was worse than Igi-igi.

  “You love me…” Nerida sang. I kept my eyes shut, and tried to distract myself from Alexia’s choking sobs. Another rip, and another broken moan.

  My stomach twisted. I forced the nausea down but it kept crawling up my throat.

  Then Crier Alexia finally went silent.

  I cracked one eye open.

  Nerida held both her hands on the woman’s neck, fingers sunk into flesh.

  “You… love me!” she shouted, laughing, and dropped the body. It fell with a smack into the pile of ripped limbs at her tail.

  My mouth stung with the urge to vomit. My nose burned from the stench of death. I glanced at Nanda, who was pale and horrified. Beside him, Mel’s face flickered between rage and terror like a radio cycling channels. Her foot slid a fraction forward.

  She looked at me.

  I shook my head no, hard.

  Please don’t, I mouthed.

  Thankfully, Mel stayed put.

  “Hmm,” Nerida said, inspecting Alexia’s corpse. “Shame.” She flipped it over. “Not perfect enough. You rebels have such disgusting, unequal bones. Why can I never find a beautiful set in any of you?”

  She dipped a finger into the blood and drew it up to her nose, inhaled deeply.

  “Are there more of you?” she murmured, and turned.

  My heart felt like it was trying to claw out of my chest as her gaze swept the room.

  “Oh, my precious men!” she called suddenly, voice turning sing-songy. “Come out, come out.”

  Two guards ran into the ballroom carrying buckets and mops. Different men, but same style as before—massive, scarred, nearly naked—but these two carried cleaning tools instead of spears. They sprinted to Nerida and bowed so low their heads almost touched their shins.

  “Ah, my lovelies,” she said. “Clean this up. I must inspect the rest of the Hall. I believe we have intruders. My blasted brothers were right.”

  She turned toward the small, now bloody, puddle she had risen from, then stopped.

  “Wait,” she said. “Only two of you came? That is… unbalanced.”

  Her voice lost its lilting quality. The color drained from her expression.

  One guard panicked, fumbling at his belt. He grabbed a metal baton and tapped it rapidly on a tile. A third guard sprinted in with more cleaning supplies and bowed.

  Nerida smiled again. The darkness in her eyes fled. “Good boys. Now you remember the rules, yes? Three bodies means three cleaners. We must always have balance here. I did not build the purest Tier of Paradize on chaos. You think I am Mammon? Or Igi? Or damned Astri—”

  She cut herself off and slithered behind them.

  “Whatever. Turn around,” she said.

  All three men drooped their heads and turned. Each had a single scar down the left of his back, like the others we’d seen. One opened his mouth, but only strained gasps came out.

  I squinted. His tongue was cut out.

  “Uh-uh,” Nerida said. “No protests.”

  Her fingernail grew, elongating into a thin blade. She dragged it slowly down the right side of each man’s spine parallel to the first scar. Blood spilled slowly down their legs and rolled into their boots.

  “There we go,” she said, admiring the twin scars. “You know what happens if you earn a third, do you not, my lovelies?”

  One man nodded.

  “Good. When you finish here, clean yourselves, then wait for me in my chamber. I will hunt the other rats who have crawled into my Hall.”

  She smoothed her hair, smiled at them, then turned back to the bloody puddle. As soon as her tail touched it, her body collapsed inward like water down a drain. The surface went flat, and the water disappeared. Only the red stain remained.

  The men turned back to the work without a word.

  I looked across the hall. Leace stood half-hidden by a pillar, her face empty. The usual fire in her eyes was gone, burned out by the violent deaths of three of her Criers.

  She met my gaze and jerked her chin toward the exit.

  Move.

  Raine followed her, stepping around the blood. I nudged Mel’s arm. She blinked, broke free from whatever loop had her frozen, and we all slipped along the wall, keeping as far from the bodies as possible.

  Nanda tapped my shoulder when we reached the far doors.

  Two fingers.

  Two minutes of Mask left.

  My lips felt numb from the cold, and my heart wanted to race from the slaughter, but I pulled in a quiet breath through my nose and calmed it down.

  We had seen what Nerida did when she caught you.

  We were not getting caught.

  Leace took off in a full sprint. Two minutes left.