Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (29 page)

This time, I stood up faster, and ran toward her before she could sic her after-image on me again.
 

The room was already filled with music, but I was quick enough, and lead with a low kick to her ankle, and then a hard sideswipe to the side of her knee.
 

Her leg buckled, but she didn't go down, and with a flick of her fingers, an ephemeral copy shot from her and blew me backward with a lunge and two palms smashing into my chest.
 

My body caught on a twisting double helix and bounced to the floor, facedown. This time I didn't get back up right away. I couldn't. I hadn't gotten a good breath since the first hit, and stars sprinkled around in the darkness creeping through my vision.
 

But I had to move, I had to, or the next one would kill me. I crawled to my hands and knees and scuttled behind the helix, gripping it to hold myself off the ground.
 

She was unfazed by my little attack. Tears still streamed down her face into the water and music poured out of the strings in ripples, moving my way. They were more complex that time, and two different paths played intertwining melodies, coming from either side of me.
 

I regained some space in my lungs, but two copies split from her, moving toward me in a pincer formation.
 

I needed to stop her from making more of them, so we could fight one on one. I needed to get her away from the pedestal. I shot forward between the two copies, but they were already moving to intercept me. I skidded to a stop and backpedaled furiously, but one had only been feinting my interception, and had slipped around behind me faster than I could change my direction.
 

I was falling backward towards its waiting fists. I slipped out my claws, wondering why I hadn't done so sooner, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, plunged a hand into the strings of the floor, while pushing myself sideways with a foot.
 

My claws gave me the purchase I needed to twist my backward fall into crouching on my hands and knees. I tried to throw myself sideways between the two shadows, but a third one already waited for me to move toward it.
 

It grabbed me by the arm as I tried in vain to backpedal once again. With a twist, it threw me across the room like a stuffed doll.
 

My shoulder popped and crunched as the arm twisted, and I couldn't help my scream of agony, even though in truth my scream came from the horror of realizing I'd just been broken like a twig. The pain hadn't hit yet. No, it didn't hit till I smashed into the curve of the ceiling, bounced from it to a branching column, and smacked into the floor like a tenderized steak. The pain hit then, bursting outward from no specific point and flaring bright.
 

My eyes rolled back in my head, and I lost track of myself for a moment. When I found myself again, I allowed pure terror to take over. It overwhelmed the pain and stood me up, looked for the Oracle and her shadows through the blood in my eyes, and hobbled away from her to give me distance from my attacker, and maybe time to regroup.
 

The shadows had once again disappeared, but she was still playing more intertwining melodies, except with even more complex music.
 

I had no time, and no power to win against her. I took a quick inventory of my body. A definitely dislocated shoulder, possibly broken and screaming in pain from the weight of my pack’s strap over it. Twisted knee. Fractured ribs, I was pretty sure. Cut on the head bleeding a lot, maybe a concussion. And lots of other small hurts, too many to count. All in all, the worst shape I'd been in yet.
 

I might die there. The thought slipped into my mind to feed my terror. No, no, no. I wouldn't die. Would not. Would. Not. I just needed to figure out how to beat her. She seemed to literally anticipate my every move, but that didn't mean I couldn't win. There had to be a way.
 

"Ah," I puffed. The Oracle anticipated my movements? "Stupid, stupid," I mouthed venomously at myself. By name alone, I should have realized the clue she gave me toward her power. I'd been treating this like the other Trials I'd been in. But this one was based on the mental faculties, not my ability to kill monsters. Why had I forgotten that?

But even now that I understood, how could I beat her if she could predict the future? Already the strings around me played in complex interweaving patterns, and soon the shadows would echo through the music. I wouldn't make it through the round.
 

An arc close to me lit up with a final smash of light and sound, and instinctively I thrust my good arm toward it. I touched my blood-covered fingers to the strands before the sound faded away, and in front of my eyes I saw an ephemeral image of my body dodging one of the Oracle's shadows, only to be hit by a hammer-fist from another. The ragged-looking girl's neck broke downward with a grinding crunch, and her skull caved inward from the impact.
 

The sound faded away, and with it, the glimpse into my future. "Hell, no." I wouldn’t let that happen.
 

The shadows came at me, five strong. I dodged them as best I could with my body not working at full capacity. Each movement had my blood flowing faster and my focus deepening. No more panic, only a goal I would achieve, or literally die trying.
 

I felt Deja-vu in my next twisting dodge and knew my death swung down from above. But then I slipped, tilting backward as my legs shot out from underneath me.
 

My back smashed hard into the ground, but I received no broken neck or collapsed skull. I bucked and arched, bringing my feet right back under me, and slipped through the already-fading shadow's legs. I headed straight for the other birdbath, ignoring the Oracle, and her bell-tone laugh of surprise.
 

I reached it before her shadows could stop me, and plunged both my good hand and the one hanging limply from my ruined shoulder into the water. Blood mixed with the crystal-clear liquid in silky tendrils, and then my mind exploded like a crackling firework.
 

I understood how the cocoon-room worked, what each string signified, and exactly how to play them to get the melodies I needed. Even so, my brain wasn't equipped to hold all the information, and pieces of the puzzle slipped into and out of focus as it strained to hold everything.
 

I breathed deep and focused on the blood in my veins, and then outward to the blood swirling in the water, and then the water itself. The focus helped, and I twitched my fingers, sending out an experimental thread of sound and tumbling light to meet one of the melodies she'd sent my way.
 

I knew what would happen even before the shadow actually followed my instructions, so I focused my energy on stopping the Oracle’s other shadows from coming to remove me from my place of power and kill me.
 

In the water I saw all the moves she could have made, and all the ways I could respond and counterattack. At first, I played out only the strands of my future that would stop her from killing me. My waves met hers in just the right way to cancel out both sides, silence resounding where they met. But as I focused harder my brain bent with more dexterity to the task, and I began to send out preemptive strikes of my own.
 

We matched each other through a myriad of possible futures for a long time, long enough that I began to lose concentration. Each time I slipped up, I stopped her from killing me later and later. Soon I would be too late, and I would die.
 

I started to tremble with the effort of sustaining so many different fights, even if I was only thinking through them while standing still. I couldn't go on for much longer and she showed no signs of wearying. I needed a way to stop her from attacking.
 

The next strand she sent toward me was a simple, lilting thing.
 

I split a larger portion of energy than I could truly spare away from my other futures and played one strand of my own in an exact match. The sounds and lights playing on that thread synced to each other so exactly that they meshed, and as she tried to finish it, I pushed in another direction, continuing the music in an unexpected tumble, then let it fall into a soft silence.
 

She let out another laugh. "That's it, tiny one. Show me your worth."
 

I'd let the other futures slip too far from my control, so I pushed extra hard against them for a moment to buy myself some time. She pushed back, but not overwhelmingly, and strand by strand, piece by piece, I matched her melodies, taking them over and changing their course.
 

Finally, I wrested them from her control even as she began to play them, laying each violent attempt to rest. From there, it wasn’t so difficult to play her as she was at that very moment, and draw her hands from the water in gentle contentment. I played docility into her as hard as I could, straining to my breaking point. The last notes were little more than a squeak.
 

I slumped over the water, shuddering and gasping. If there was more, I could not fight it. I had pushed for life with everything I owned, and nothing remained. Even as I thought that, I defied my own exhaustion, already gathering strength to match her next attack.
 

But she didn’t attack. Her strange, stone mouth stretched in a soft smile, and the lines down her cheeks no longer flowed with tears. She walked to the middle of the room and knelt on one knee, bowing her crowned head to me. She raised her head, and her chest opened strangely, folding in on itself, creating a twisting slot. She was still, then, her eyes focused unwaveringly on me.
 

Nice. Why hadn’t I gone straight for the second birdbath in the beginning? But I knew it wouldn’t have worked in the beginning, because there had been no blood to mix with the water. It was something I understood in the way you remember understanding a complicated concept in a dream, and it slipped from me as I withdrew my hands from the small pool and lost its connection to understanding.
 

I shuffled to her, keeping a wary eye out for any sudden movements. “What now?” I wondered aloud.
 

She flicked her eyes downward, leading my own to the hole in her chest.
 

I pulled the puzzle from my pocket, placed it at the opening in her chest, and pushed. It slid in, but met resistance, so I twisted slightly, and it slid further, continuing until the last bit lay flush with the surface of her body.
 

With a small click, her chest folded inward once again, opening up to a large cavity about a foot wide. Inside were three piles of what looked to be silver loops. Small, medium, and large.
 

She whispered to me with a voice made from the splashing of spring water and wind across the tops of glass bottles. “You are worthy. These are my three gifts to you, that they may guide your path. May you walk through the midst of tribulation, and not waver from the way.”
 

I frowned, said, “Umm, thank you… I guess.” and reached into the space within her chest. I pulled out the smallest set of loops first. Each was bent strangely, and connected to the others in a chain. I placed the small and medium pile in my pockets, and the large loop in my pack of crushed and broken supplies, as it was too big to fit anywhere else.
 

I felt the Boneshaker begin to hammer into me without warning, and stared into her sad stone eyes as it carried me away.

Chapter 20

People often believed they were safer in the light, thinking monsters only came out at night.
 

— C.J. Roberts

I crumpled to the floor of the base, surrounded by my team, and ignored the level up window that appeared.
 

"You're alive!" China screamed, smashing into me and wrapping her arms around me. "Oh, we thought maybe you were dead, but you're alive."
 

She squeezed, and I let out a gurgling scream as my shoulder moved under the pressure.
 

Jacky grabbed China by the forearms and yanked her arms open and away from me. "She’s hurt," she snapped. "Sam, come now. Fix her." Her finger pointed at me imperiously.
 

Sam sat beside me, stony faced, and placed his hands on my shoulder.
 

"I'm so sorry, Eve. I shouldn't have hugged you. I was just so excited," China whispered.

Blaine saw me and went pale. "Oh, my god. What happened?"

I laughed. "Got in a bit of a tussle. No big deal. Tell me what happened to you guys."
 

Jacky crouched in front of me and grabbed the hand of my uninjured arm. "The spider egg thing swallowed you up, and you were inside for a long time. We tried to cut through it and get to you, but nothing worked. Then the cube said congratulations on surviving, but you were still inside. We all pressed the button to return from the Trial, but nothing happened. Honestly, we were starting to panic a little, but then all of a sudden the song started and we were back here, and you were with us."
 

"Right before that, the cube popped up with one last message," Adam said. "No one else was paying attention."
 

"What—” I broke off and bit my tongue to stifle a scream as Sam did something with my shoulder that caused it to pop and grind. I went lightheaded for a moment, and had to take several deep breaths before I could think again. "Ouch. What did it say?"

"Eve Redding has been found worthy, and granted the blessing of the Oracle," Adam said. “It seems similar to the message when someone gets a new Skill, but worded differently.”

"Interesting."
 

"What happened in there, Eve?" he said.
 

"I met...something. A huge, huge woman made of stone crawled out of the ground. She called herself the Oracle, and said she was there to test me. She could see everything I was going to do, and I couldn't win. But then I figured out how to play the same game as her, and beat her. She said I'd proven myself worthy and gave me these little silver chains. Then the Boneshaker started playing, and I was back here." What an extremely simplified version of events. It felt like everything in my life was spinning around in a tornado of pain and fear and the illusion of strength I'd tried to wrap around myself. I needed to grab hold of things before I could talk about what had just happened in more depth.