Hawk nodded, and began slowly making her way to Kaiser, who was staring open-mouthed at the warring gods before him. The Shadow was there, clearly homicidal, and she wasn’t about to run and gain his attention. Not right now. Not with that rage, and not if she were unknown to him.
“Aye. My beasts don’t trespass your fair ground, for the hope of the lives still in it. Strange how you cared aught for what was there. Your procession will need a few new baggage trains. What next, Nasheth of the Gods?”
The fire raged ,licking up the walls of the pavilion, catching each panel of silk and burning through it like the petals of a flower. Here were the rose reds of Argon, spring-breath blues and greens, sunflower yellows, all swallowed by hotter, wilder, more passionate flame. And Hawk could only think of all those people outside, and what had the Shadow done? Had he killed them? Or were they alive to be burned by Argon’s flame.
The Shadow’s stance had shifted, and the fire had reached the topmost vent of the pavilion.
“One more chance. Give me the outlanders.”
“Give us the path to the Nexus. Let us have the God-World once more.” Nasheth said. And then her voice turned sly. “Or is there, perhaps, one of these Outlanders you want more than the others? Oh, my, Kaiser. Does some nascent loyalty still breed in the heart of your creature?”
The Shadow didn’t respond. But Kaiser did. He stepped forward and—and was it just Hawk? Or did he seem to look in her direction? As if he were wondering…Do I use my trump card now? But he didn’t expose the link between Hawk and the Shadowmaster—untested, he didn’t even know for sure this Alex-faced being would care—and instead just shrugged. “How am I supposed to know? You see one fresh faced boy-scout, you’ve seen them all.”
This was supposed to be a barb. Hawk felt it in the weight of the conversation. This was supposed to draw breath through teeth, to cause listeners to react like a blow. But no one here even knew what a boyscout was. And the Shadowmaster let the barb fall without reaction.
“You can keep that one.” He said, pointing at Kaiser. “I’m not sure I like his conversation.”
All this time, the pavilion burned. The barrier of trees burned. The moss underfoot was still damp, but that coolness was starting to ebb. Embers fell in scarlet rain, lashing skin, languishing in hair. People began screaming now because they were burning. What hadn’t been punctured by flame above now held the smoke, great dark breaths of it like dragon fire.
“Stop it!” the Earth Archon screamed. “Let them go! Let us go!”
“Let your Gods save you. They are living and breathing beside you. Let your God of the Fire reach his hand out and stop my flame. Let your Water-Queen quench the thirst of embers. Let the air blow it out. Show me what you can do.”
He walked forward as he spoke, arms out and head back. His radiant hair spread like some forgotten night nebula, his robes swirled as with the wings of ravens. And he watched them all with hungry eyes.
“Oh, Fuck yes.” Breathed Argon, and before anyone dared speak his hammer was out and he had fallen upon the Shadowmaster like an avalanche.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
***
“Now!” Shouted the Archon, as the Gods all fell to war. Hawk did not need to be told twice. She stood up, collected her robes, waited half a heartbeat for Dyson and Em to start moving, and then raced for the rear of the pavilion and the opening that would be there.
She hoped
The earth shook underfoot with a dreadful thumping crash, knocking Hawk to the ground before she’d gone more than twenty paces. She skidded across the soft moss, dragging through the thin layer of earth to the stone beneath. Her hands bled as she got back to her feet and continued running. The wind came up, blowing like the screams of every banshee that ever cleared its throat, and Em went spinning into one of the overdone, ornate flower columns. Hawk dropped to pick her up, and barely dodged a flying tree limb. She could still see the impression of fingers, the arch of wrist with embers burning where carpals once waited. Now it was wood, and it was on fire. The wind blew against her, filled with the ashes of people. She’d gotten Em to their feet, and they were almost through to the opening.
Crash! The sound brought her back around to the battle in the pavilion’s center. The fire had spread to the support structure on the opposite end of the tent. It wasn’t the main pole, but a side support, and it fell to earth like the Colossus of Rhodes. Wind blew like the throat of a hurricane, and now new, strange, lithe forms were taking shape in the smoke and the embers. New cat-like creatures only with eyes of fire and footsteps smoking, and teeth made of molten precious metals, flaming silver, burning gold. They pulled themselves out of the ground as out of a grave, shook themselves so that the charred substance of their manes fell into place, and then they were off and into the fray. And in it all came the terrible voice, the Alex-voice, laughing.
The number of bodies heading in the direction of the way out tripled. Hawk fell to the ground twice, knocked down by a panicked member of the crowd. Red robes, blue robes, gold robes, it all just amounted to frightened flesh being herded towards the cattle runs. Now flight wasn’t a matter of choice but of inertia and physics. She was caught in the crowd and forced towards the one break in the fire.
Convenient, that?
Actually, it was. Very. It meant that her escape, and that of the others, wasn’t being monitored by anyone. They were just another set of bodies fleeing through the crowd into the dark. But it happened so quickly, Hawk didn’t have time to grab anyone’s hands. She caught a brief glimpse of Em and the Light Archon’s white robes ahead of her, and then they were gone, and it was just Hawk and the crowd and the light from the fire.
Alright. First up: Ditch the white. She stripped off the beautiful white robe, the samite silk that had been rapture to wear, and dropped it on the ground without a second thought. That was focused on a body in front of her. They were alive, fortunately, and curled on the ground in the middle of the main thoroughfare. Hawk managed, largely by using her legs and pushing, to get enough of the crowd to part around her that she could haul this person to safety. It wasn’t the person she cared about—though getting them out of harm’s way was a fun bonus—but their robe. In the flickering firelight it was either red or green, but both equaled not white. She got it on over the pale chemise and rejoined the screaming throng.
And now she had a big problem. The same problem she’d had the last time. She was alone, in the dark, with absolutely no idea where to go.
And then she heard, thin and bare beneath the screams, all the lifeline she’d ever need.
Em’s voice.
Calling out “Marco!”
She paused for a moment, despite being on the edge of a burning pavilion dedicated to murderous gods, where said gods were apparently battling to the death, to acknowledge that she was about to be saved by a non-binary anarcho-communist by playing Marco-Polo. And then she shouted “Polo!” as loud as she could, and listened.
There. The reply came a bit up and to the left. Call and response. Call and response. And soon they were in the woods, deep in the woods, call and response, and the noise and storm of the pavilion was behind them. Hawk saw light ahead, a dim and warm white light, nothing as cold and unfeelingly whole as the light the Shadow had made in the pavilion. And how was that? The Master of Shadows not only making light, but making the cleanest, clearest light Hawk had seen short of sunlight. She filed this away for later, but not too much later.