Not for the first time, Jarah thanked her own blood for the headwrap. It kept most of her hair from blowing into her face as Kinn took them across the city. Riding in the palm of a goddess' hand, while the veins of the city pulsed with people reacting--usually by running away from the goddess--to their passage proved a greater thrill than she had anticipated. While she was able to tamp down the positive emotions, thus keeping her control over Kinn, Jarah quietly exulted at the feeling. To be above everyone, to see Gallhin in such a different light, was an incredible feeling. As they passed the pagoda near the center of the city, she marveled at what she saw. Who else could claim the same?
For his part, Rihn held onto Kinn's thumb with both arms, his face a mask of fear. His beard flapped in the wind, sometimes flying into his eyes. He didn't seem to care. The trip was brief--the plumage of white feathers that made up Kinn's legs coasted over the buildings with an easy smoothness that belied the goddess' domain--and the compound came into view more rapidly than Jarah had expected. Seeing Tenhaim's home again made her stomach tighten with fear and anger. The latter she pumped into the goddess, while the former went into her memories, to be tapped at a later time. She would never have gone back, but Kimhan had wormed her way into Jarah's heart. The girl deserved to be freed from the slumlord…that and Jarah had no problem with killing off Tenhaim. Not that she would have made it a point to do so had he left them alone, but now that he seemed intent on pursuing her, well…Jarah would rather be dead than hunted; if it meant some peace, killing him was what she was going to do. She still felt reluctant to do so: After all, the guard she'd slashed upon bursting into the city had only taken a superficial cut across the chest. Assuming he got some help, he would be fine. Probably. Jarah set the sense of worry about what it meant that she had abandoned her desires to limit death, focusing on the moment. They would have to move quickly--easier for her now, as the ride not only gave her some time to catch her breath, but the elation also wiped away the vestigial exhaustion--because soaring into the compound on the hand of a goddess was not the most subtle of approaches. Jarah turned to Rihn, some words of command ready on her lips… …only to have them drop, unsaid, as her mind registered what she saw. "Hold on!" she screamed, dropping flat on Kinn's palm. "I am!" shouted back Rihn. Then the collision happened. Hot tendrils of writhing heat whipped through the air as Orgos, God of Rage crashed into the floating form of Kinn, Goddess of Anger. The large, mechanical structures that Kinn used to keep herself airborne melted beneath the onslaught of Orgos. Made from undulating ropes of heat around an ever-shifting core that looked like a human skull, then a mouth, then a skull again, the God of Rage was a force of emotional energy that few people could maintain. It was hot, fast, and ephemeral. Yet Tenhaim controlled the god with a single-minded intensity that took Jarah by surprise. Also a surprise: That Orgos managed to leap onto Kinn with enough height that his teeth could reach her forearm. A massive burst of black ichor erupted from the sudden wound as the hand on which she and Rihn rode was abruptly severed from the rest of the goddess' body. Kinn's keening was high-pitched and omnipresent, it seemed, though Jarah was more worried about what would happen when they hit the ground to really notice it. Ichor dropped in massive puddles, the ichor burning and hissing as it struck the ground. A couple of people screamed as they dissolved beneath the goddess' blood. The goddess' hand fell from too far above the earth for Jarah to be comfortable. At the last moment, in an accidental spasm, the large feathers of Kinn's legs flicked out. The hand landed in them, the momentum shifting from a downward plummet to a sideways skid. Instead of splattering on the ground, they slid down the white plumage, stained black by the bleeding stump, and bumped their way across the street closest to the compound. The walls loomed in front of her. Jarah, unsure of what else she could do, curled more tightly into a ball. They crashed into the wall, breaking down the mortar and stones with a bone-rattling smash. The force of the collision curled Kinn's fingers into a kind of shelter, protecting her and Rihn from most of the falling detritus. Their impromptu sled shuddered to a stop. Dust drifted down, as well as bloody ichor. One drop landed on Jarah's already-injured shoulder, making her his and, despite being more than a little out of sorts, push herself and Rihn out from the tangled mess of pulverized divinity and ruined rock. "Let's never," said Rihn, his hands on his knees and his expression one of utter nausea, "do that again." "Um, Rihn?" "What?" "They know we're here." Rihn looked up to see some of his former comrades rushing toward them, qiang glinting in the moonlight. Behind them, Orgos took another massive bite out of Kinn, who wailed in pain. Jarah dismissed the deity. Orgos roared in fury at being cheated of his prey. "This is why we should have planned," Jarah said, unsheathing her butterfly swords and lowering herself into a fighting position, her shoulder screaming its own pain. "Where's the fun in that?" "Where's the fun in dying?" "You can come back as someone else?" Jarah clucked her tongue. "Not when the world's broken." "You gotta tell me about that," said Rihn, rearing back and throwing a vial--which one, Jarah couldn't tell--at the feet of the approaching fighters. "You know. When you remember." Jarah grunted as the dark swirls of an Invoked deity began to congeal in between them and the Tenhaim guards. Mechanical pillars burst out of the ground, their sundry cogs and wheels spinning furiously as the god grew. And grew. And grew. Jarah, like the guards themselves, stared in open mouthed awe. "Who is that?" she asked as the enormous head--easily the size of a person--rose from the puddle of spilled ichor. The head was shaped like a bronze helmet, save it was empty inside. The broad shoulders, their crenelated shape only adding to the sense that an entire building was somehow erupting, like an exhalation, from the ground, shifted as the god straightened on his multitudinous feet on the bottom of his shaft-like trunk. The guards turned and ran. "That's Vellit," said Rihn, as if it should have been obvious. And, on one hand, Vellit was obvious. "The God of Trust?" asked Jarah, incredulous. "You've never Invoked him?" "No!" "Can't say I'm surprised." Rihn grinned at her, then put a hand to his mouth. Spinning away, he promptly vomited into the rubble they had just extricated themselves from. A moment later, he said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, "The guards are gone. What should we do now?" As if in response to the question, Orgos flung himself over the wall and crashed against Vellit. The God of Fury took the God of Trust by such surprise that they both tumbled to the ground, their enormous bodies crashing in the large space between the outer wall and the compound proper, though their landing was forceful enough to send shockwaves into Jarah's feet. Plumes of ichor, dirt, and dusty grass arched into the air before drifting back down like a lazy rainfall of filth. "Holy blood of my fathers!" swore Jarah. "Go find Kimhan!" shouted Rihn. "I'll handle this!" "Rihn…" He shot her a furious look. "We won't go anywhere if I can't beat Orgos, and if Tenhaim wants to win, he'll have to focus on me." He waved a hand. "Go! Find Kimhan!" "But--" "How do you think I Invoked Vellit, huh?" She stared at him uncomprehendingly. The two gods writhed on the ground, the metal of Vellit's body heating in white-hot streaks as Orgos struggled to get a grip on the God of Trust. The ground trembled again. Rihn waved his hands. "It's because I realized I had to trust you to fix this. To fix what you broke." He shook his head. "I don't always understand things, but I understand this much: If anyone can fix the world, it's you." He smiled as he began to run toward the combatting gods, reducing the distance between him and the deity so that he could better control Vellit. "I trust you, Jarah. Don't let me down." Then he was gone and Jarah found herself sprinting for all her battered body was worth, back into the compound. Back toward what very well might prove her death.
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