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“I can help you.”
Go get volga!!!!!!
“You don’t even speak Nagal.” “Ja ig syn fal tanga,” I reply. He frowns. Sevro grins.
Icon
More important, I think Cassius will hate it even more than he hates the Thing. So. What do I say? I say give Truffle Pig her shot. She’s earned it.”
Darrow himself handed me off to the Owls. I will not let him down. I will win Volga back to the Republic.
The lift begins to slow. Cassius’s anxiety mounts. I grab his massive hand. He holds mine and together we wait for the lift doors to open.
We haven’t taken thirty paces when I see something—a shadow crawling on one of the gun installations looking out over the water. I tell Cassius but by the time he looks, the shadow is gone.
Oh god
“And that duty includes sacking cities? Enslaving people? That’s not the Volga I know.” “You do not know me either,” she says. “You never did.”
OOF
Human history is proof of one thing: violence builds empires. Violence is worshiped, respected, heeded. Why are we monsters for embracing this truth? Why am I a villain? Every great people has done it!
I am crestfallen. I see in her what I saw in Harmony. Bitterness breeding entitlement. It’s a bitterness I know. For years it filled my mouth with ashes.
“You think this a game? Are you not afraid? Look what my guards have done.” She walks to the table and retrieves the sacks. She returns and empties them. The heads of Gudmund and Fenrir fall into my lap.
WTF
“The hierarchy. It’s happening all over again,” I murmur. “Can’t they see it?” “If you are raised in a house that is square, what shape do you think you will build your house when you are grown?” Nicator asks.
It was not the wind moaning. Golds lie crushed beneath the massive table.
The leviathan wails so loudly even the carrion birds flee. It gives one last thrash and falls still. Its last sound is lonely and filled with three hundred years of sorrow.
Sevro told me Cyaxares was three centuries old and I thought it scary and horrible back in the ship, but part of me feels like Europa’s soul has died today. Fá
Firelight bathes Darrow’s face as he cocks back his head and howls.
ZADDDYYYY
Dripping with gastric acid and blood, I march toward the high table with Sevro and Cassius on my flanks. They are as heavily armed and armored as I am. In Godkiller, all.
Then the man’s eyes twinkle, and I know he hates Fá with all his cunning heart. He’s not done yet.
He roars in frustration. To me the sound is ambrosia. I am beyond him now, beyond this plane, submerged in the depths of a battle-flow unlike any I’ve ever felt.
When I die, whenever that day comes, I will hear the wind that howls like a wolf and know I am home.
The look of fear in his eyes is total. It’s a fear you can only know if there’s ever been a man who wants to kill you more than he wants anything else in all the worlds, a man relentless and without pity, a man you are too tired to stop.
howl goes up. Sevro. He slipped away during the fight to search for snipers and the like.
YES
I don’t answer. There is no point. My bloodlust is on, and what will be will be.
DARROW. YOURE SO SEXY LIKE THIS
Manmade thunder peals as Diomedes, three-dozen crack Peerless Golds of Europa, and several hundred Black Owls in mech-suits and power armor hit Fá’s reinforcements from beneath.
LFG
To buy himself time, he leaves behind the three Gorgons who accompanied him on his flight from the duel.
Crazy
But they are unsteady, unprepared, and I am the breath of stone.
“Ashvar?” he asks in a thick accent. I nod. He glances after Fá, snorts, and sits back down at the table where he brushes aside a disembodied limb and returns to his drinking. I return to the air and leave the second island in my wake.
LOL
I am no stranger here. For ten years I led these tribes and these men. On Luna, Earth, Mars, and Mercury. For ten years they trudged with me through the ruins of Gold cities. Through rain and sleet and mud and desert heat and mining tunnels, we marched together toward victory.
whittling away the warlord’s myth until he becomes a disgusting, limping grotesquerie so all can see the craven heart of the man who killed Queen Sefi just to call himself king.
Wow
I’m glad you didn’t tear out my heart and throw it in a fire. Really. Thanks. I’m glad you didn’t have that in you. But you killed thirteen people before me. Thirteen, woman! What the fuck?”
I find power in realizing I have convictions. Deep ones. My voice finds its edge.
“Then protect me from the giants, and I’ll protect you from the wolves,”
<3
“I give you my word. Confess your crimes and I will not kill you.”
Darrow.
He jerks as she plunges the gauntlet into his chest, up to the wrist, and gives a twist. Their faces draw close together. For the first time I see his features in her, hers in him, and Ragnar’s in both. Then Volga pulls out Fá’s heart and holds it before his eyes. “Unworthy.”
WOOOOSH
“Hello. Sorry!” He steps up onto Fá’s corpse. “That’s better. Can you hear me now? Good. Great to be back. Lots of favorite faces here. We’ve shared a lot of good times. And now, a few bad ones. Let’s not make it worse. You know it could get really shitty really fast. You know what you’re like…come on. You do.”
I love him so much
“As you have seen, he’s gotten a lot scarier since you last saw him. But. He. Will. Not. Be. Your. King. He is not on the ballot and will not interfere.”
“Now sober up! Wash your beards! You’ve campaigning to do. If you have any questions, I’m going to be on my wife’s ship testing out my new knives.”
<3
“Only if you don’t mention again how you don’t have a scratch on you.” Somehow he wasn’t injured at all in our fighting.
Lol
Maybe because Cassius is with me, I find its dereliction less tragic than I expected. Time marches on. Nothing we build lasts forever, not without others to keep it.
The lowColors cried and kissed Sevro afterward, and he fell to his knees with them when they heard they were going home. Not yet, though. There’s still more to do.
Rip
“Sevro said Lyria’s a Howler,” Volga says. “Counts as my escort.”
Stop itttt
“You’ve only seen your people fight for greed, Volga. I have seen them fight for hope. It is another thing entirely.
He seems more at peace than usual.
Great. Is he going to die?
Honestly, Darrow, atomics, warlord heads. I thought our honeymoon would be more romantic.” “Honeymoon.”
I meannnnn
“Like sees like, I think. She just wanted people.”
“He’d say I judged my own worth too much by the people I kept around me. I was poor in those days. I’m quite rich now, I think.”
We brought out a lot of the bad in each other, but a lot more good. I think it’s like that because we speak a common language, you know? We’ve always understood each other deep down.”
cry
“Without you on this journey I would have fallen apart. You’re my brother, Cassius.”
“Cassius. I wasn’t just talking about this trip. By journey, I meant my life.” He looks over at me, touched and more than a bit surprised. “You’re my brother. We let ten years slip past. Ten years we should have fought side by side. I won’t make that mistake again. Whether you like it or not, you’re with me to the end.”
“When we get back, I’ll take you down if you like. You can feel it for yourself.”
Genuinely pierce ifyou kill off cassius i will have your head
Intending to use my Rain as the centerpiece of my propaganda campaign for years to come, I’ve staged it for maximum visual and allegorical effect.
I hate this man. DARROW HAS YOU BEAT BITCH
