Challe hung limp as Gwil lifted her out of the water. Her skin was pruny and her limbs dangled. Water streamed from her hair and spewed from her mouth. He threw her over his shoulder and tramped through the floodwater. Her body was icy to the touch.

  His stomach twisting in knots, Gwil clambered onto some rubble and laid Challe down on the heap. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”

  She wasn’t breathing, but a low gargling sound came from within her chest. Gwil slammed the heel of his palm down on her sternum a couple times. “Challe!”

  As water rushed over the collapsed wall, a spattering of windswept rain and hail funneled down into the hallway. Octavia plopped herself down beside Challe’s head and a few of the snakes nuzzled her.

  Hands shaking, Gwil smacked her cheeks a bit, then pried open her eyelids, revealing bloodshot whites. As he touched her face, a radiant warmth tickled his fingers.

  Gwil cupped Challe’s forehead with his hand and found it burning with Nirva. He exhaled, tilting his head back in giddy relief as tension rushed out of his body. She had to be fine if all that Nirva was working in her brain.

  “She’s okay,” he told Octavia, who, being a snaketopus, might not have understood the situation.

  He sat back and looked Challe over, then laughed. In his panic, he had not noticed how her belly had ballooned to an epic proportion. It looked like she’d swallowed a watermelon.

  Gwil jabbed the bulbous tension with his finger, and a bit of water gurgled out of her mouth. He pressed down with his palm, drawing a fountainlike stream.

  Octavia twirled her tentacles around, hissing excitedly.

  Gwil grinned at the creature and then lifted Challe upright and sat himself behind her. He reached around her engorged abdomen and clasped his hands. Then he squeezed, squishing the bloated, jiggly balloon.

  An absurd quantity of water gushed out of Challe’s mouth as she deflated, gagging and retching. There was some blood and other slop mixed in, but no organs came out, at least. Holding her this way, Gwil felt blossoming heat as Challe’s Nirva flowed into the rest of her body.

  As the stream dwindled to a trickle, Gwil shifted his hands around to get at the last pockets of water. He moved out from behind her and eased her back down.

  He crouched, leaning over her, staring with wide eyes. Challe whimpered as her gags eased into wheezing breaths.

  Gwil raised his arms and screamed, “Ahaha, yes!”

  “Wagghh!” Challe came up swinging and wild-eyed.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Gwil said, catching two of her wrists. “It’s okay. Breathe. You’re good.”

  Challe’s gaze settled on his face and she relaxed her arms. Her breath steadied. “What happened?”

  “You must have drunk more water than anyone ever,” Gwil said. “Do you feel okay?”

  “I meant, what’s going on? Where’s Tezca? Gwil, the goddess. She is going to—” Challe cut herself off with a blood-curdling shriek. “What happened? There’s a huge hole in the ceiling. The Gracestorm!”

  Gwil winced as Challe started hyperventilating and squealing. Shit. He’d hoped to ease her into this. “Uh, Tezca said to tell you he’s sorry!”

  Head tilted toward the storm and the ruin, Challe knotted her fists in her hair and tugged. “She did this. She did this to my people! How many dead? How many dead, Gwil?” She screamed like she had a knife in her gut. “She killed the people who loved her with all their hearts. I hate her!”

  “Challe—”

  She screeched and crawled off their little island of rubble, falling into the water. A corpse floated next to her, wedged in some debris. Challe took the dead man’s hand and held it to her cheek. “Who was he? I did this to him.”

  Octavia tried to wrap herself around Challe’s shoulders, but she swatted away the tentacles with her extra arms.

  “Challe, listen!” Gwil said. “I saw a lot of people getting away. And it wasn’t the storm. It—”

  “Where is Tezca?” she snarled, teeth bared, like a wild animal.

  Gwil jumped into the water, landing in front of her. He held up his hands but didn’t touch her. “He got away. I fucked up.”

  Challe froze with fury on her face. Growls tinged her stunted breaths. “Your head is facing the right way.”

  Gwil nodded.

  “That’s good. I-I-I—” Challe fell into a wail and her body gave out. Her face splashed into the water.

  Gwil hooked his arms under hers and lifted her up. “I’m sorry, Challe. But it’s not over. We gotta stop things from getting worse.” He hugged her as her fists pounded on his back.

  “My people are dying!” she sobbed. “I killed them. I destroyed our home.”

  Gwil squeezed her tighter. “Challe, it wasn’t you. It wasn’t even the storm. It was Yuma. He’s here. We need to get up there and stop him.”

  “No, no, no.” Challe buried her face in Gwil’s shoulder. “It was me, it was me, it was me.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “It wasn’t! Even Tezca said it wasn’t.” Gwil pulled away and gripped her shoulders as Octavia reiterated his point with some furious hissing. “The king is gonna ruin everything if we let him. You stay down here if you want, but I gotta go.”

  “No!” Challe spat. “No. I wanna fight.” She huffed for breath as if willing herself to stay on her feet. “The flower-witch said we’d try to lead Yuma away from Malikau?”

  “Yeah. Better to get him out of here first. Then we’ll see what happens.”

  Challe knuckled her eyes and nodded.

  “I flew up there and saw a whole shit-ton of your people crossing the atrium. They were getting away. I know it’s still really bad, but…”

  “But it’s not over,” Challe said.

  Gwil nodded and looked up into the atrium. Being nestled down in this hallway was like sheltering from a storm in a cave.

  The flashing lightning painted everything with a surreal cast. The wind gusted but could not be heard—the thunder drowned it. Sharp, whiplike claps echoed and re-echoed off the stone walls, creating a maddening song with the clattering hailstones. The torrential rain reached them as only a misting drizzle.

  That would all change when they went above. Gwil had gotten a taste earlier. The storm was waiting for them. And the king, too.

  “Ready?”

  “No,” Challe said. “There’s something I have to do.”

  “Eh?”

  She went wading through the water, heading back down the hallway.

  “Uh, Challe, we should hurry,” Gwil said. He let Octavia climb onto his back before following after Challe.

  She ignored him, letting her twenty fingers skim along the surface of the floodwater. Whenever she passed a corpse, she’d make a sign with her hand and then touch the dead body.

  “Oh!” Gwil said as realization struck. “I meant to ask you about this.” She was making for the jade statue. Gwil caught up to her as she reached it.

  “You wanna smash it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He tilted his head to get a better look at the hulking green bird. The statue was half-submerged in the water. “It’s already pretty broken, though.”

  Both wings had broken off. One lay in pieces beneath the main body. The two human arms were gone too.

  “She is still alive,” Challe said.

  “Ooh! Challe, could this stop the storm?”

  The woman closed her eyes. “No. I don’t think it will do anything. But I still want to do it. I want to knock her head off for what she did.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Gwil said. He surged Nirva and hoisted a broken stone pillar over his head, its length about half his height. “Try this.”

  “I can’t lift that!” Challe said.

  “You can,” Gwil said. “But I’ll help you.” He shifted his hold on the pillar so Challe could get her hands on it. “Just put all the juice into your arms.”

  “What does that mean?” Challe said.

  “We’ll throw it right at her face, like a spear,” Gwil said. Challe stood in front of him, her four hands supporting the underside of the pillar. Nirva radiated from her body—she was doing more than she thought. “Three, two, one—”

  With a burst of Nirva, they hurled the pillar. It speared into the water; the splash showered them. But nothing else happened.

  When the murky water settled, the goddess was revealed as headless. Her stone body still glowed, albeit fainter, but the humanlike eagle-head had sunk to the bottom and gone dun.

  “Ha!” Gwil said. “Perfect!”

  Beside him, Challe sighed, her shoulders slumping. “That didn’t feel as good as I’d hoped.”

  Gwil shrugged. “Might never get another chance to decapitate a god.”

  “Gwil,” Challe said, gripping his arm. “She took control of my mind earlier. It’s terrifying. I wasn’t- I didn’t-”

  He laughed. “Challe, I’ve been telling you this whole time, none of this is your fault. You’re probably the only one in this whole temple who doesn’t deserve any blame.”

  Octavia nodded with eight-fold sympathy.

  “I don’t know if I can…” She flapped her hands. “Do my storm stuff anymore. How will I fight?”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Gwil said. “Let’s go say hello to this king.”

  “Wait,” Challe said with a shiver. “I really have to pee.”

  Gwil laughed. “You drank too much water.”

  ***

  “This is so demeaning,” Leira groaned. “I was a princess.”

  “You were rolling me around like a barrel earlier,” Cort said through clenched teeth. Wind and hail slashed at his face.

  Cort carried Leira in his arms as they marched into the heart of the storm. Leira was too willowy to stand on her own against the wind and she’d been slowing them down trying to pull herself along the wall, so Cort had scooped her up.

  He was damn close to getting blown over himself. The backpacks—the heavy-ass jetpack most of all—were dragging him down. And the square shape of the collapsible refrigerator caught the wind like a kite. Not to mention the weight of his hammer.

  They were one pavilion away from the center of the atrium, where the king’s forces had built some sort of floating base of operations. From their main vehicle above, they’d lowered down a bunch of equipment—including an array of industrial flood lights—and efficiently constructed this shelter.

  Resting on an assemblage of buoys, the floating station was octagonal and composed of many robust metal panels. Its roof was umbrella shaped; rainwater streamed off the sides. Through the narrow gaps between the wall panels, Cort could see people moving around within.

  They didn’t look like soldiers, not Leviathan stormtroopers at least. Strangely, they wore khaki shorts and tropical shirts.

  Leira twisted in his arms. “Go over there, please!” she screamed over the thunder. She pointed toward a semi-enclosed hallway that ran along the edge of the main pavilion.

  Cort grunted. This would be a fucking hairy situation. He’d hoped the Levis might leave the cables hanging, but they’d drawn them back up—probably because they were swinging around like wrecking balls.

  But Cort didn’t see any way out besides going through Yuma and his forces.

  Cort hiked Leira up and bent low as he moved out of line-of-sight and crossed the pavilion, splashing through puddles as he went. The flooding was spreading beyond the central area.

  He climbed over the railing to enter the enclosed hallway. Leira scrambled out of his arms and grabbed hold of the railing as her hair lashed at her face.

  Cort knelt beside her. This was a good spot. The flooding had piled a bunch of torn-up trees and other debris in front of the structure, providing decent cover from the wind and hail while allowing them to see out through the cracks.

  “I said it like three times,” Leira said. “You must not’ve heard me. What is this beach party bullshit?”

  “Huh?” The constant thunder had his ears all fucked up, and his throat hurt from constantly having to yell over the din.

  “Don’t you think their outfits are stupid?” Leira said.

  “Yeah, I do, but who cares? I’m more interested in what the hell they’re doing.”

  “Yeah…” she said, twiddling with the petals of her eyeflower. “I don’t see any weapons. Is that a wheelbarrow?”

  Cort squinted at the octagonal station as it bobbed on the green-lit water—they’d tied it down with some ropes. Through one of the gaps, he could see a bespectacled old woman reading a book. “I don’t see anyone acting like a king.” He shook his head. “Not to judge off looks, but they don’t seem like fighters.”

  “I think one of them’s Blueborn,” Leira said, craning her neck to get a different perspective.

  “Aye, like Buzzard.”

  Leira turned to look at Cort. “What should we do?”

  “When do ya think Gwil’s gonna show up?” Cort asked.

  Leira shrugged. “We’re about out of time, so, any minute, I guess. Maybe he got wrapped up trying to do something about the storm.”

  Cort puffed up his cheeks and exhaled. “I think we should cause a distraction to give Gwil an opening. It doesn’t seem like the king’s here yet, so we might have a window.”

  “What sort of distraction?”

  Cort pointed toward a towering pile of ruins that teetered on the edge of a half-collapsed balcony. It seemed a miracle that the whole heap was still standing. If it fell the right way, it would bury the floating station.

  He unlimbered his hammer. “Let’s make a bigger mess.”