{Enki | Depository}
The smug intonation of Abresson’s voice broke through Nox’s initial shock and apparently through Rayne’s because she asked, “Are they all like us?! Are they all Weapons?” With her voice breaking, she shouted at him, where he stood below with the most deadly army.
Abresson groaned and rolled his voids. “Contain your martyrdom, girl. They’re not real people. We programmed them only to obey orders without sentience. They are Weapons. You and Nox were merely stepping stones to our finest achievement.”
“Our.” “We.” Nox growled at the hubris. As if this toddler of a Tritan ever touched the technology or architecture that went into an endeavor of this magnitude. A true military genius devised this.
Celindria.
“She’ll flay you for taking credit for her work.” Nox’s words came out of Rayne’s mouth.
She shot him a wide-eyed glance, but returned her focus to Abresson. They’d deliberate on that later.
“Oh, she would, but I can claim some credit. After all, it was my idea to use your likeness.” Abresson reached out and brushed the cheek of one Rayne replica, gazing into her empty, unblinking eyes. There was something wrong with them. “My favorite contribution.” He dropped his hand and looked back at the authentic Rayne. “Your guardian can claim some credit as well. The Traitor Prince designed the prototype.” He pointed at her. “The one in you.”
Nox muttered so it wouldn’t release from Rayne’s mouth, “Even if he speaks truth, you know it isn’t in my brother to harm you.”
Without taking her eyes off Abresson, Rayne said, “I know.” Her voice was soft, consumed with some contemplation.
“Tell me.” It usually took some coaxing to draw out her concerns.
Rayne turned the full weight of her gaze on him, and Nox knew what was wrong with the copies. Her genuine eyes were the color of lightning in a velvet night sky, bright and electric. The artificial ones were dull and lifeless. He’d wager they couldn’t transform into Atramentous at all. Abresson lacked the imagination to think of that.
While staring into Nox’s eyes, Rayne asked outside of her mind, “Abresson, how many more continents in Enki are like this? Depositories?”
Nox and Rayne didn’t need to look at him to hear the smug smirk on his face. “All but one.”
A tear rolled down Rayne’s cheek.
This was it. This would be the reason.
“Rayne.” With his knuckle, Nox brushed the tear from her chin and the next one and the next.
She swallowed her decision, her responsibility—what she chose to take on herself. This martyr he loved. He loved her more presently.
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Understanding, Nox nodded, and Rayne nodded with him. They would see this through. With hard swipes, she cleaned her face of tears and straightened her shoulders. That fire was back in her eyes, and she shifted into Atramentous without warning.
Rayne opened her wings, gripped the rail, and jumped off the scaffold before Abresson could see her move. She slammed into him with a strangled cry as Nox split from her in time to catch the Tritan’s wrist, stopping his fist from freezing her in retaliation.
Abresson screamed in terror and frustration.
Rayne chewed into his neck with her fangs, while Nox broke the arm he held down—
The air shifted right before a blow sent Nox flying into the scaffolding hard enough to bring it down on top of him. Another Nox had delivered that blow. Abresson had activated the army. While Nox shifted his shadow form through the debris, Rayne cried out in pain.
No. No!
Beams and slabs kept Nox from her—
“Bitch, forget destroying Enki.” Abresson’s voice came from the opposite platform. He’d shifted from below, where Rayne last screamed. “You’ll die in this pit. Fuck Remorse’s orders. Good luck seeing daylight again.”
Nox threw an entire concrete pad off him to get to her.
The army swarmed Rayne. He ran, almost as fast as she, to her side in time for her blinding light to dissipate his form. The other Rayne’s and Nox’s responded by cowering, but made no pained sounds while their eyeballs melted in their sockets. It made sense the artificial Weapons couldn’t produce the magnesium field. It was Rayne’s Progeny gift. Not her nacre’s, and certainly none of the fakes had inherited a Gargantuan Primary nacre.
So Rayne still reigned.
Calibrated.
Optimized.
Stabilizing…
Unable to stabilize.
Warning: Fifty-four hours and fourteen minutes until maximum destabilization.
Once his shadow form reconstituted, Nox took up at her side. Rayne bled from many places, but the wounds had already healed as he checked her over. Several dozen kilometers away, a distance safe from her field, more ran toward them, slower than even Nox moved. Still quick enough to hurt—
Rayne nudged him, and he looked down at her. She was grinning with black blood staining her lips. Nox had to contain his reverence. Presumably without seeing his admiration on his face, Rayne said, “Remember when I told you I didn’t need saving?”
“Yes.”
A hint of mischief graced that grin as Rayne reached a hand over her nacre and pushed in through her sternum. She bit her lip to keep from screaming and scrunched her face in agony, but persisted all the while. Eventually, she touched the amber core and… and…
Pulled.
Rayne pulled at something from her nacre—
No…
Nox felt his eyes widen completely. Both brows went up with them.
This crazy, gorgeous, lethal woman retrieved the grip from Night Killer, her staff from their Volcano Day battle. With it withdrawn from her body, the wounds healed, and Rayne beamed at the weapon. The longer she stared at it, the more of it she constructed, like her clothes, until that Xelan-named staff finished forming. As long as her body, sharp at both ends, and made of nacre glass, it was a magnificent weapon. The swirled, ornate grip was equally sharp, and when unlinked, acted as gold-bladed batons.
“Never leave home without it.” Rayne kissed the weapon and grinned once more up at Nox while an army of them descended.
He refrained from professing his respect and admiration for her, and instead pressed his fist to his chest and bowed to his ruler. “Most impressive, your majesty.”
She twirled Night Killer and faced the army, now minutes away. “We can’t let Abresson get far, and we can’t leave these people to exist like this.”
No. Always half alive and poised to kill was an unpleasant fate all too familiar to Nox. “Agreed.”
Rayne swallowed and met his eyes full-on. She searched for something in them. Wetting her lips, she asked, “You understand? None of them can make it through this.”
“To the end, I will follow my King.”
Closer.
Closer.
One authentic Nox and one authentic Rayne versus twelve million deficient copies.
There was nowhere else he’d rather be.