Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (49 page)

Adam's Animus Skill must have gotten stronger, but I knew I didn't have much time until that tattoo disintegrated into the air, and she flattened him, crushing his bones and internal organs beyond repair.
 

This was the perfect chance, maybe the only chance, and I needed to stop her immediately, before it was too late and he died.
 

I sprang up, clawing frantically at her chest.
 

She felt me moving, I know, and tried to pull back to brush me off or crush me again, but Adam held her in place even as I felt her stones tremble under me in the effort to pull back. His control of her must have been difficult, because I heard another hoarse scream from him.
 

But she didn't move, and I reached her chest cavity and plunged myself into it with all the force I could muster. I shot through the water, grabbed the black, blob-like heart floating in the water, and held it to my chest with all my might. I burst out the other side, and was falling, falling, and then crashing hard into a platform.
 

I looked up and saw that she had started to tip backward, the direction she must have been pulling when Adam's tattoo disappeared.
 

That was wonderful, because she wouldn’t crush him out of sheer momentum now. It was horrible, because she would crush me instead if I couldn't get out of the way.
 

So I ran, leaping from stone to stone like a football player hurdling opponents, her heart tucked tightly to my chest. When the shadow from her back started to grow dark around me, I jumped into the water, slicing downward like an arrow.
 

The force of her impact still shook me hard enough I thought I might lose the air I held in my lungs, but I was safe, and able to swim under her and out to the surface.
 

--I MADE IT. MAKE SURE ADAM’S OKAY.--

-Eve-

I knew what it must have looked like when the creature fell onto the spot where I'd been, and I didn't want any of the team to worry about me. Adam was the main priority.
 

I spent a little while just breathing and cooling down, and then held up the heart I'd taken from her chest cavity.
 

It was a black, shimmering mass, sort of like what the Seeds looked like except for the color, and about the size of a basketball. It flowed around my hand like what I'd seen the water of the creature’s body do, and seemed to notice my inspection, because it started to ripple.
 

"Oh, wow," I whispered. "Treasure. I guess the Oracle was looking out for me, after all."
 

* * *

I stood up and started to limp across the basin of that huge bowl cut into the top of the mountain, skirting the fallen creature. The water had succumbed to the force of gravity and flowed away from the body, so it was only a few ginormous rocks lying still on the ground, but they were still somewhat terrifying
 

The substance around my hand, the woman’s heart, was so dark that my eyes seemed to fall into it, and yet it shimmered light back toward me. As it flowed and rippled around my hand, having attached itself to my fist, I couldn't help but think it both the most beautiful and terrifying thing I'd ever seen. Something about it gave off the feeling of a writhing sea of darkness, despite the points of light and energy that swarmed through it.
 

Jacky had helped Adam to a seat on the ground next to Sam's motionless body. The two conscious ones drew back noticeably from the substance on my fist as soon as they caught sight, and then looked at it closely for a few seconds, which didn't alleviate all of their hesitation toward it.
 

Jacky was pale, wet, and shivering despite the heat radiating from her surroundings.

"Is he...okay?" I asked, looking at Sam.
 

She pursed her lips. "He’s alive. For now. I dunno what to do for him. I really hope he can heal himself."

"Yeah. That's probably why he's sleeping. He needs to focus all his strength on healing himself." I laid my free hand on her shoulder. "You sit down. The fight's over. You did good."
 

She stared at me with an expression I couldn't decipher for a few moments, and then gave me a half smile. "Thank you."
 

Adam waved at me from his seat on the ground, looking pale. "I'm fine, too. Just a little worn out from saving you from a huge crazy rock monster. Who also happened to birth little elemental minions every other minute. No biggie. Thanks for asking." His eyes were red and bloodshot from straining so hard the tiny vessels broke under the pressure, and his voice was hoarse from screaming.
 

I smiled. "What, you mean that was hard for you? I think you should be asking me if
I'm
okay. I just defeated the monster that gave you so much trouble."
 

He chuckled, and then started to cough. "So glad you made it in time, though. Otherwise I'd be a pancake."
 

"But...what about your tattoos? I know how long you must have spent on them, how much effort. They're gone."
 

He held up his newly bare arms and looked them up and down. "It was pretty bad-ass that I did that, huh?" He pulled his knees to his chest and coughed again. "I'll draw another one. Even cooler, this time."
 

I bit the inside of my lip and nodded, then went to grab the packs from the rim of the caldera. I awkwardly fumbled the bedrolls and blankets from within the packs with the hand not covered in goo, and helped get camp set up in a smaller niche in the rock side, being careful not to jostle Sam when we moved him. I forced us all to eat something and did my best to feed Sam some broth made from meat and bone juices. It was kind of hard with only one hand free of the black substance, but the others were in no condition to help me. They'd really given their all in the fight. I thought I might have a couple broken ribs, and I’d definitely have full-body bruising from being swatted and tossed around, but I could still function.
 

When everything was as settled as I could get it, I looked over Sam's sleeping body for obvious injuries. They were everywhere, and told me nothing. So I sat down next to him and closed my eyes, laying my hands lightly on his body like he did whenever he was going to heal someone.
 

"Nucking futts," Jacky said. "Can you do that? Heal him like he does us?"

I opened one eye. How awesome did this girl think I was? "I'm not a healer. But I might be able to tell if there's anything wrong inside."

"Oh." She drew back and nodded, wrapping her blanket tightly around her shoulders.
 

I slipped into the hyper-aware state with a bit of a struggle. I was so tired, and my body hurt. It was hard. My mind struggled to focus so much Perception energy in one small place, but I was able to get a vague idea of his injuries. "He's healing himself," I said, opening my eyes and drawing my hands back. "It looks pretty bad in there, but I think, I
hope
, he can handle it. I don't know what to do to help him."
 

Jacky rested her forehead on her knees. "He better make it. He…is such a trier. He tries harder than anyone I've ever met. Cares so much."

"He doesn't deserve to die," Adam said.
 

I sighed, and then gave myself a mental slap on the cheeks. Sighing didn't fix anything. I looked at the mass of strange goop still attached to my right hand and had an idea. "Guys, I want you all to stay tucked away in here, hidden. I'm going to do something potentially very stupid, and I'd like you all at a safe distance when I do."
 

Adam's wet hair had plastered itself to his head and all down his face, he looked half flushed and half pale, and altogether like crap, but he forced himself to his feet. "You need backup if you're doing something stupid."

"You're in no shape to be my backup," I said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder to push him back down.
 

"True! Better yet, how about you just don't do anything stupid? That would be awesome." He read my expression and muttered, "Guess that would be too much to ask for."
 

I turned away, looking back toward the still form at the center, and all around at the water that had ceased to flow. "I'm either crazy, or I'm a freaking lionhearted genius," I said to myself. I moved towards the she-mountain corpse. "Why not both?"

Chapter 34

…
a dark

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension; where length, breadth, and height,

And time, and place are lost.

— John Milton

I walked over the stone chest of the fallen boulders and stopped at the now empty cavity within it. With my free left hand I reached for the substance on my right. It reached out part of itself as if to meet my hand, which made me pause. I made a pinching motion in the air, and the smaller glob formed into a separate mass, connected to the whole of itself with only a thin string. I grabbed the smaller portion and pulled, and it separated easily, and then started to flow around my left hand.
 

I hesitated a bit, and then put some of the baseball-sized globe on my left hand back into the bigger mass surrounding my right. I then dropped my left hand into the empty air of the chest cavity and shook a bit, making it clear that I wanted the substance to detach and thinking hard about it doing so.
 

It slipped off the end of my fingers and hung in the air for a bit. Then the shallow water beneath the cavity began to flow upward to it, surrounding the small ball with an ever-thickening layer of clear water.
 

“I’m giving you back some of you heart,” I murmured. “Be good and don’t attack me when you wake up.”
 

After a while, the chest cavity was filled, and the she-mountain stirred, seeming to take a deep breath, though I doubted whether a rock could even need to breathe.
 

I chose that time to retreat to a suitably safe distance and waited for enough water to gather in and around the creature so that it could move once again. I sat down and waited, hoping desperately that I hadn't just done the stupidest thing since my birth...besides stopping to help that traitorous guy who allowed NIX to give me the Seed in the first place.
 

The rock and water woman sat up and looked around in bewilderment, then down at me, sitting cross-legged on the stone below her with the majority of her heart flowing happily around my right hand. "You..." her voice came out weaker than before, but still a crashing rumble.
 

"Hi," I said.

"You have restored my physical form?"

I swallowed down the lump in my throat and tried to sound confident. "I've got a few questions. I hope you can be friendly, otherwise I'll have to take it back."
 

She threw her head back and her chest shook up and down with a roaring, breaking, booming sound.
 

It made me tense up for a moment before I realized it was a laugh. Then I had to wonder if her being amused at my threat was really a good thing.
 

She lowered her gaze to me. "Confident, for such a puny little thing. All right. I have decided not to kill you. You have gained my interest. Who are you?"

"My name is Eve. Who are you?" I decided I didn’t need to remind her again that we’d just beaten her. I didn’t know that we could do it again, so I didn’t want to start a fight.

"I am the Goddess. The one that came before, and was formed."

"I don't understand. What does that mean?"

"I am the formless mass, the void," she tilted her head, as if I should get what she meant.
 

I shook my head. "Also, you're a volcano." Time for another line of questioning.
 

She boomed again. "I have taken many forms, and I carry many now. This form is one of my branches, constrained to physical form. It pleases me, for now, though the order of it changes my power as it must channel through those constraints. But it allows me to easily cleanse some of the land."

"Cleanse it from what?"

"The sickness that is not my child. The abhorrent."

Yeah. Still not understanding. "What is this place?" I gestured around me. "I mean, obviously this is a mountain. But the whole thing? What is this planet?"

"The small ones call it Estreyer. Or they did, the last time I was among them."

"So it's not Earth, then." I'd suspected. I mean, two moons in the sky was kind of a dead giveaway.

"There is earth." She nodded. "Also sky and water and wood and much else."
 

"Right…" Was this the language barrier? I thought I could understand her words, the way you know what someone's saying in a dream by instinct even when they're making an unintelligible jumble of it, but something seemed to be getting lost in translation. "Okay, then. Are there other living beings, ones like me?"

"Yes, though they disappear along with the rest."
 

Perhaps she meant they disappeared when they teleported back to the real world. "Have you heard of NIX?"

"The night was born of me." She made a fist at my confused look. "You do not understand, even though you are the one asking me. And your deficient communication method confuses me, as well. What use have I for speech? Be done with your questions, tiny one, for I grow impatient with this."

"Do you know that the Trials are?" I tried.
 

"Your kind supplicates before us in hopes of gaining power. Most fail. Many die. You are the first to gain my interest in a long time. To come after me when I am weakened, you are bold."

"This power you speak of, it's the Seeds, right? I've never seen this black type before, but I've got something similar." I pulled out a Seed I'd reserved for an emergency and showed her.
 

She drew backward and sniffed in pointed offense, hard enough to make my hair flutter around my face. "My power is nothing like that flesh-power. Do you know nothing? Why is one so ignorant even here!" Heat started to radiate from her, and the water swirled faster along her body.