The stone she'd displaced two years before was still in the wrong position, some steps away from the line that delimited Vizena's territory. Saia picked it up and balanced it on her palm. The cold of the smooth surface gave her a moment of clarity in the vortex of fear she was battling with. She took some moments to breathe deeply, then slipped it inside a pocket of her tunic and stepped forward.
“So you're a monk now,” Vizena immediately said in her ears. “This explains a lot.”
No greetings, no preamble. At least she didn’t outright kill her, despite the monks not being able to watch the scene.
“Like what?” Saia asked. Her words came out breathy, not at all fierce as she had imagined.
“Like the fact that I've lost three years of my life because someone isn’t happy with how I administer my village. Letting you leave was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Saia knew she was looking inside her bag right as they spoke. Aili had layered the snakes over Zeles in a way that hid him completely from all sides. Since gods could also perceive any creature’s viss if they focused on it, she had also redistributed their energies along their sleeping bodies, creating clusters here and there, hiding Zeles’s core. The only way it could possibly work was because he was fading and asleep, and his viss was almost imperceptible. Provided Vizena didn’t look too closely.
“Since you're a monk, I guess I can't kick you out immediately,” Vizena added. “So why are you here?”
Saia relaxed a bit. Either she hadn't seen Zeles, or she had already notified the monks that the fugitive god was in her village. In any case, she could only keep going with the plan.
“I need to see your sphere.”
“It's in the temple, where it’s supposed to be.”
“I need to make sure of it.”
“Why are you here at night, then? Or have the rules changed so much that you don't fear gods controlling you anymore?”
The voice was derisive. Saia remembered Coram's words: monks could only enter or stay in a village during the night if the village's god had been put to sleep beforehand. Otherwise, the sentinels couldn't be sure they weren't being controlled or replaced by a god. She hadn't thought about that possible oversight in her plan.
Aili had.
“They're looking at me from Tilau.”
“At night?”
“Yes. I have to send specific signals at specific times to let them know everything's fine, and if I don't they'll know you did something.”
“I think you're lying.”
“Are you willing to risk it?” Saia snapped.
The goddess’s silence told her that no, she wasn't. She liked her power too much.
Saia walked on. The wind was blowing in her ears, annoying but not strong enough to stop her. She took her time observing the dark shapes of the houses, trying to spot the differences from the vague memories of the day she'd left. She was tempted to visit her house, but that would have lengthened her stay in the village. She needed to get everything over with before morning, even if it meant not seeing her family at all.
She walked up the stairs that led to the temple. She knew she had to go faster, but couldn't bring herself to. Her heart was already racing.
She got close enough to see the round shape of the building at the end of the road. The flames of the torches outside were flickering as usual. She was surprised to see that even the candles on the inside were lit. She held her breath when a shadow obscured them for an instant.
She stopped, waiting for it to happen again. When it didn't, she ran up the distance left from the temple and looked through a window, the same her brother Heilam had looked through two years before. The temple was empty, but she knew there were enough dark corners to hide in.
She took out her only glove from the bag and slipped it on. Snakes couldn't hurt Vizena, and she could easily stop them if she used them against her helpers, but they could be a decent distraction.
The doors of the temple were closed. Saia grabbed a handle and pulled, an empty threat already on the tip of her tongue. But she didn't need to say anything, because the door opened without a sound.
She looked around, expecting an ambush from the pious, but the movements she'd seen from the outside belonged to someone else: Vizena's entire dance crew. She saw Ceila dressed like all the others and stepped forward without thinking. The door closed behind her with a rumbling echo.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
Ceila opened her mouth, too surprised to answer. She then shook her head, spreading her arms at her sides, and Saia noticed how the costume included two long pieces of blue cloth tied to each dancer's forearms.
“I tried,” she said.
Saia guessed from her voice there was more to the story. She also realized she hadn't been surprised by her arrival, but by the question she'd asked. Which meant she knew she was coming there.
She looked at the other dancers: the ones at the back, closest to the walls, were still getting dressed. They looked tired and uncertain on their feet, as if they had just woken up.
She looked at Ceila again: there were many things she wanted to ask, but if Vizena had called her dancers to the temple as soon as she'd seen Saia, it meant she wanted to distract her. She focused on the statue of the goddess.
“Show your sphere,” she said.
The woman of blue and gold smiled.
“In front of the inhabitants? Bold, for a monk.”
“I won't repeat myself.”
The statue returned serious, the shadows changing on its face.
“Quit the act. Nobody is waiting for you, you came here because you thought that being a monk was enough to come back without consequences. But they didn't give you their permission, right? So you came here at night. A very dangerous decision.”
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Saia stepped back toward the door and pulled. As expected, it didn't budge.
“Show me the sphere,” she shouted to give herself courage.
She started to cross the room, walking fast. She wasn't even halfway through, when a sudden wind blew strong enough to contrast her every movement. She tried again to walk, but she had to use all of her energies to stand in place without stepping back.
“What are you doing?” Ceila shouted, stepping forward. Her clothes flew back against the front of her body as the goddess stopped her too.
“The monks will see you,” Saia said, glancing at the closest window and the torches beyond. “Permission or not, if you hurt someone in the temple they will punish you.”
She could sense Ceila’s confusion from the way her head tilted, but she kept her eyes on the statue.
Vizena nodded in the dancers' direction.
“Why do you think they're here? Dance, my children.”
Soft music started resonating in the temple, as if coming from far away. The dancers started moving along the walls. Ceila didn’t budge.
“Do you want me to hurt her?” Vizena asked, and Saia felt herself getting raised in the air, just enough for her feet not to touch the floor.
Ceila hesitated, tried to step forward again, then shook her head and joined the other dancers. They all started to move in a circle, making complicated somersaults to cover the windows with the huge wings of blue cloth tied to their arms.
Saia realized the monks couldn't see Vizena kill her. She put her ungloved hand inside the bag, wiggling her fingers among the snakes to find Zeles's glass. Her arm was blocked before she could touch the sphere, along with the rest of her body. The wind raised her some more, until she was at eye level with Vizena. She hoped the goddess would have got her closer, but she kept her there instead, suspended in the middle of the room.
Then, she started to feel pressure. On the top of her head, the sides of her face, her chest, belly and even legs, were being slowly crushed by what felt like walls of air.
Vizena was showing her blue teeth striped with gold.
“It feels so good, you have no idea,” she said, and the pressure intensified. “Being constantly disrespected and not being able to do anything about it. Oh, I'm going to enjoy this. I just wish I could show it to everyone.”
Saia gritted her teeth. She felt the blood pulsing in her ears, each breath more difficult than the previous one. She looked around the room, searching for a way out, trying to wiggle her unmoving fingers. She saw Ceila. She had taken a chandelier in her hands and was advancing toward the statue.
“I suggest you don't do it,” Vizena said. “You won't accomplish anything and you'll die too. I appreciate your talent, but I remember every single time you disrespected me.”
Ceila hesitated. She looked at Saia and hinted at a gesture with her hand.
‘What…’
“ ... should I do?” she completed with her voice.
“Gossip,” Saia managed to say before the pressure forced her jaw shut. She hoped Ceila had understood.
“Keep dancing. This is my last warning,” Vizena said.
Ceila looked at Saia with a confused face as she slowly walked back toward the dancers. Then, her expression became harder. Saia could only hope she remembered all the times they went to the Turviavin to eat, and the only way to distract Vizena once her attention had been captured was...
“Did you know that your cousin Kaia got married?” Ceila said with a twirl that sent her veils flying to cover the window next to her.
Saia redoubled her efforts to move her fingers, even if they were tingling because of the increasing pressure.
“And that the florist’s daughter became your mom's apprentice at the observatory?” Ceila continued, balancing the chandelier over her head.
“You're disturbing the performance,” Vizena said. “Shut up and dance.”
“One last thing, my goddess, then I won't say anything else,” Ceila said, stepping forward. “Do you know what happened to the Turviavin’s plates?”
She caught the chandelier in her hand, throwing her body in a backward somersault, and smashed it against the window behind her.
The goddess screamed when the glass shattered. The shards stopped mid-fall and started recomposing as Vizena used all of her focus to fix the window before the sentinels could realize that something was wrong.
Saia felt the pressure vanish and her body fall. She shoved her hand all the way inside the bag and touched Zeles’s sphere.
Vizena screamed again, her chest bursting open. Her sphere fell out of the cavity and onto the ground as the powers of the two gods clashed. It rolled forward a bit and then stopped, apparently still intact.
Saia’s fall became a gentle floating. She touched the ground and started running, eyes fixed on the sphere, but the floor in front of her split open with a sound of thunder. The stones were slashed in half, a crack forming where the air swirled and crackled. Lamps of golden light appeared for an instant where the viss of the two gods collided.
Saia tried to run past the crack, but found a wall of wind her body couldn't trespass. She pressed her hands flat against it and started to push.
“One last effort,” she whispered, “I have to reach her.”
“My forces are equal to hers,” Zeles answered. “But she can last longer. You need to distract her.”
“Again?” Saia said, looking around. Most of the dancing crew had run away, but some, Ceila amongst them, were pushing against the wall of air. Saia doubted it could make a difference. She thought about smashing more windows, but the goddess must have been expecting it.
Then, she heard voices coming from the doors. She turned just as the first person entered: Vara, a torch in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other, still wearing a nightgown. More pious filed in behind her, each holding an improvised weapon.
“Kill them!” Vizena screamed. “Kill them and break the sphere. It's in the traitor's bag.”
She didn't need to specify who the traitor was, because everyone's eyes turned to Saia.
“Don't you dare protect me,” she told Zeles.
“There's thirty of them.”
“Focus on Vizena. If we lose against her, we lose everything.”
The crowd was spreading in a half-circle along the walls. They advanced, closing in from the sides. The dancers realized what was happening and stepped back, clustering around Saia.
“Mom, stop right now,” Ceila said, still wielding the chandelier. “She hasn't done anything but ruin our lives.”
“Don't kill my daughter,” Vara said to the pious, then she charged forward with a scream.
Saia took a snake from her bag, awakened it and threw it at her. She stopped with a yell as it bit her arm, letting both knife and torch clatter to the ground. Saia took out another snake. The other pious stopped advancing.
An invisible force tore the snake away from Vara’s arm and closed the wound.
“Attack!” Vizena yelled.
“Do that again,” Zeles said in Saia’s ears. “Her barrier faltered for an instant.”
She took the bag with both hands. She felt the pressure of the dancers all around her, but kept her eyes on the pious as they advanced again. When they were close enough, she threw the content of the bag toward them like water on a fire. The snakes fell at the feet of the crowd, stopping them again. Saia clutched her gloved hand with the free one, scales scraping against skin. She pushed her viss forward, and all the snakes awakened.
The screams cut the silence in the temple one after the other. Vizena shouted something in frustration.
“I can focus my power to create a breach,” Zeles said. “Get ready to run.”
Saia looked at the pious collapsing, at the sea snakes being torn apart by invisible forces.
“How much viss will you…?”
“Behind you,” Zeles said. “Run!”
Saia sprinted, pushing the dancers aside. She resisted the urge to brace herself for the impact with the wall of air, running faster instead. She jumped over the crack and kept going, eyes on the sphere on the ground. The wind started to condense around her, but she gritted her teeth and trusted Zeles to protect her. She fell to her knees, hand reaching out.
“You are…” Vizena began.
The cold of the glass was like a gulp of fresh water.
Saia put her hands on the ground and leaned forward with a groan, drops of sweat falling from her brow to the broken stones of the floor. She smiled, picking the sphere up with the gloved hand. The blue light within was disturbingly identical to Zeles's.
She remembered his words and turned around: most of the pious had run away, while the ones on the ground were slowly standing. They didn't have wounds, which meant that Zeles was still alive, even if lost amid the snakes. She put them to sleep again.
She stood, wavering a bit. Ceila ran at her side and clutched her arm to prevent her from falling. They were alone in the temple, now; the dancers had left too.
“I don't understand a single thing of what just happened,” Ceila said.
Saia smiled.
“I fear I don't have it in me to explain, right now.”
“Just tell me that she's gone.”
Saia glanced at the sphere in her palm and nodded.
“She won't hurt us anymore.”
Ceila smiled and hugged her. Saia held her close, breathing deeply like she hadn't done for a long, long time.