Pru crawled in next to Steven, kissed him, and then she too fell asleep. The women insisted they would take over all the watches while their Prime slept. Steven tried to argue his case but going up against the twins in an argument was like a pee-wee football team playing the Denver Broncos.

  Nefri stayed by the fire.

  Steven did his best to find sleep, but he was worried about the dark elf.

  He unzipped his way out and sat down next to her on a log. They watched the fires dance. Steven had more than enough Animus for a Divination spell.

  He cast it, reached out, and found the dark elf’s mind.

  Nefri threw an arm around him and hugged him. I was hoping you would come. We can talk.

  We can. You can tell me your thoughts on the underground city.

  Nefri stiffened. Those corpses. Those were Ohkreela. They gave up everything. Even in death. Even in death.

  Steven didn’t want to push her, so he kept quiet, letting her choose what she wanted to tell him.

  Can’t we talk more about the sex? Nefri asked.

  We can. If you want. Do you get Morta from sex?

  Some. She bent and tossed a branch in the fire. More squirrels winged their way through the night. Not as much as I need. I must use Leeze to turn the Animus into Morta. I lose a great deal. With you, though, it will be different. Purer.

  Nefri gazed into the fire. She was so beautiful, so alien, with her white hair, her pointed ears, her elegant features. After the Fall, I had a lover, Inneesia. We made love all the time. She didn’t like the Fall. I didn’t either. We were forced.

  Again, Steven waited. The dark elf knew that he needed information.

  Nefri closed her eyes. King Vandrus Dree, one of the seven, came from across the seas. Vandrus had the idea. He was a powerful sorcerer. He changed our souls. He poisoned our souls.

  With Morta? Steven chanced a question.

  She nodded. There was a lottery. Those that lost went to him. He had created his own Cruxis. He changed himself then he changed us. My family didn’t lose the lottery. I did. I was alone. Inneesia was the same. The same. We both lost. We both became Ohkreela.

  Where did your family go?

  Nefri opened her eyes. I grew up in Yonor to the east, an island on the Cold Sea, which I suppose is New York in other worlds. For us, it was Yonor. My family was Lyra. They went to hide. I don’t know where. Inneesia and I stayed in Yonor for as long as we could. The Fall changed us. Some of us more than others. Some turned evil.

  Nefri’s hand went to the scar on her throat. Inneesia and I went south, to the great mages of the Carrib. It was a mistake. We were exiles. There was little work we could do. And even then, the Ohkreela wanted out of the light. That was why they built the underground cities. They said it was to hide. I didn’t trust that. We were already hidden. No, the Under Cities were the work of mages, and they had their plans. Always, the mages planned. Like the twins’ plan. Schemes.

  A smile warmed her face. She patted his leg. So I’ve been with women before. Never a man. Perhaps you will be my first. I’ve watched couples make love a million times. I was curious. I still am.

  Steven was glad it was just the two of them. He could only imagine the virgin jokes that the Wayne Twins or Mouse would make.

  Steven felt his brow furrow. So the Fall changed you from Lyra to Ohkreela because of the Morta. You were hiding from the Zothoric.

  Nefri’s face turned into a snarl. Yes, the Zothoric. Quinnestri knew of the threat. She disagreed with Vandrus Dree. She never tried to stop him.

  Steven thought of the Alpheros. The three brothers—Rahaab, Mathaal, and Icharaam—had escaped to Earth. They hid among the humans, and it had worked, for the most part. Had the Zothoric found them because of the Dragonsouls? That Animus would’ve been powerful bait for the demons.

  He quoted what they’d heard in the Under City below Denver. The eyes are ever searching. The eyes are ever closed. The dream you seek is nothing but a dream. Chase away to other worlds and leave Aqualyra alone.

  Nefri sighed. Yes, the eyes, Quinnestri’s magic, looking for the Zothoric. And the eyes, closed, a spell to encircle the world, to hide us from the Zothoric. She doesn’t think we can kill the goddess Zothora. She will not be happy when we find her.

  So she’ll be grumpy? Steven asked with a smile. Mouse is grumpy in the morning, and we deal with her.

  Nefri took his hand. This will be different. And you know it.

  He did. He continued to work on the puzzle they’d been given. Could Vandrus Dree have come up with a spell to reanimate the Ohkreela corpses?

  Either him or Quinnestri, Nefri agreed. Quinnestri doesn’t want to be found. I think Vandrus Dree created the clues to find them sleeping. And I think Quinnestri did the death magic to stop his plans.

  What happened to Vandrus Dree and the Under Cities?

  His spell lapsed.

  Nefri squeezed his hand.

  He went to cast another Magica Divinatio, but the dark elf touched his lips. She shook her head, then yawned. Her teeth were white. Her mouth was red. She closed her eyes and leaned against him.

  “Are you tired?” Steven asked.

  She nodded. She leapt up, gathered her weapons, and disappeared into the forest, leaving Steven alone.

  Steven gazed up at the few stars he could see, since the moon was so bright. In his history class at Metro in Denver, he’d learned of the Vikings, and how they’d shaped European history. The Norsemen’s violence had driven peasants to lords and helped create European medieval feudalism. The common people needed knights to protect them and they needed walls to hide behind.

  The Zothoric had done the same thing on a galactic scale. The threat of the demons, shadows of teeth and talon, had altered the course of countless worlds. Fear was powerful. And yet, all those worlds were right to be afraid. The Zothoric had slaughtered the Alpheros, driving the three brothers into hiding.

  Steven wondered what he was doing. Could he really end the threat?

  All his battles came back to him, from Edgar Vale to Rhaegen Mulk to Rahaab to the Dragonknights. Over and over, he’d been the underdog.

  For a time, he fought for vengeance. Then he fought to conquer. Now? He was fighting for everyone and everything he’d ever loved. They were being careful. They were learning from the mistakes of the past. He wasn’t about to quit. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.

  He’d told Pru they wouldn’t lose. In his heart, he knew that to be true. That was in his nature. It could be a good thing, if he tempered it with realistic expectations.

  However, the irony wasn’t lost on him. Gaia Beta’s Stefan Drokharis had entered into his war with the Zothoric confidently and lost. Gaia Theta’s Steven Drokharis, also known as Spider Finger, had gone to the Battle World and lost.

  “I won’t be reckless,” Steven told the stars. “I have the best with me. We’ll be strong. And we’ll win.”

  And if Steven died destroying Zothora and her Myriad? It would be a sacrifice he’d gladly make.

  GIDEON SCARAMANGA SAT on the ground outside the staircase of the strange elven city. He couldn’t call it Denver, but it was in a similar place.

  Dawn colored the sky. They’d been on the strange world a little less than a day. It was long enough to walk from where the prison had been to the ruins of the elven city.

  That was where Ven Dro found the ornate marble stairs that descended into the darkness. The Dragonknight insisted that he go alone.

  That left Gideon with their Shaze army and Butcher, who’d relaxed into his caterpillar bear form. The Morphling had found an elk with a huge rack of antlers. He’d ripped the thing open and was noisily eating the elk’s flesh on the marble tiles. The elk wasn’t exactly like their animals back home. It didn’t have the long face of an ungulate, but something flatter, with four eyes, two on the front, and two on the side of its face underneath long donkey-like ears.

  They’d brought a hundred Shaze with them, some carrying Splackers, others with extended bellies full of Animus grubs. Speaking of Animus, the demons were devouring everything they could get their teeth into. They attacked trees, sucking the sap even as the branches withered, because the Shaze just didn’t eat the physical components of the plants; they ate the very souls of the things.

  Other Shaze buzzed through fields, sucking down grasses and sagebrush.

  Everything was eating except for Gideon. He sat, legs crossed, as he touched his Morta core. He went through the branches of the skill tree. He focused his mind on increasing his understanding of the dark energy inside of him. And when he couldn’t do that, he took his knife with the serrated edge and cut into his arm. He healed the damage using NecroMend. The wounds festered with dark energy, not healing well, since the spell corrupted his flesh. He liked that.

  The pain was lovely. The pain took his mind off the dreadful silence within him. He couldn’t reach the mind of the Utereich. Zothora was silent to him. She’d said that Aqualyra had already been devoured, and yet, that wasn’t the case. Life was here. Animus was here. Those fucking elves had cast some kind of magic to obscure the Horror Mother’s sight. It also cut Mother off from the Magician.

  Gideon was alone in his mind, and it was terrible. He wanted conversation. He wanted connection. He wanted his goddess.

  Butcher had stopped shifting human.

  And Ven Dro had gone off alone. It didn’t make sense. And yet, Ven Dro’s Divination magic was powerful, far more powerful than Gideon’s had been, back when he’d had an Animus core. He’d seen something down the staircase, under the archway, below the rubble.

  Gideon was considering sawing off a finger when Ven Dro returned.

  He walked up out of the darkness, his ruined face glowing green, where the blood hadn’t dried black. A smile stretched his scabby lips. “Well, Gideon, I wasn’t wrong. If you’d have gone down there, the skeletons would’ve hacked you to pieces. I know where we need to go. They didn’t much care about me, since I have a shitload of Animus in me.”

  “Where do we need to go?” Gideon asked.

  “I don’t understand Lyra or Ohkreela, but a bit of Magica Divinatio worked wonders for me. We need to get to an island city to the west. If your Steven Drokharis has his way, he’ll wake up the elves. We can’t have that.”

  Gideon frowned. “He’s not my Steven Drokharis. He is another. Mine died in Denver, with an extra joint on his little finger.” Gideon worked his pinkie.

  Ven Dro laughed. “Then I’ll call him my Steven Drokharis, though that isn’t right either. All these worlds. All these games. It’s stupid. We’ll put an end to them. Or Mother will. Yes, Mother will make it all Morta in the end.”

  Ven Dro snapped his fingers. A single Shaze left the ruins of a black cottonwood and buzzed over, landing in front of the knight. He stroked its chitinous back. “We’ll find you a place to build a Cruxis. You will be enough. We’ll blacken the skies. Damn, but I’ve never seen a place that needs the Great Devouring like this deserted piece of shit.”

  Gideon shivered. “I would help him. I would stay in the Cruxis and bathe in the Morta with this one. Will you allow it?”

  More laughter rang out. “We’re partners, Gideon. We’re the fucking Terror Trio or some shit. If you want to stay, fine, and I’ll call you when I need you.”

  The Dragonknight shifted and breathed fire. In that fire, he swirled up another portal, which led to a lake near the mountains, northwest of where they stood.

  Gideon walked through. Butcher followed, dragging the flat-faced elk with him. The shores of the lake were familiar; he’d been there before. Standley Lake, or the Aqualyra version of it.

  The Shaze buzzed through the flaming circle. After them came the Dragonknight, in his human form. He walked through, stooping and holding his crown in place.

  The portal’s fire vanished.

  The chosen Shaze went to the water and emptied its grubs from its belly. It then drew in its arms and legs. Opening its mouth, it vomited black fluid into the pristine waters. A few fish floated belly up to the surface. Already, the Morta ichor was thickening around the creature, pulling from the world’s Animus and using it to build a rough wall.

  Other Shaze buzzed around the top of the Cruxis as it grew.

  Ven Dro watched. “It’s pretty cool. And we’ll have other Cruxi before the week is out. But first, I’ve got to eat.” He bent down, grabbed a squirming grub, and bit open its soft belly. He sucked down the fluid and added it to his Animus. He tossed a grub to Gideon. “You eat too.”

  The Magician tore into the insect. He could convert the Animus to Morta thanks to the Leeze ability. Ven Dro, however, wasn’t a creature of Morta. He was something else.

  Gideon glanced at the Cruxis being built. “Yes, I’ll stay. I’ll act as a midwife while we grow our army.”

  “Are you sure?” Ven Dro asked.

  “I am. I long for Mother’s voice. When the Cruxis is ready, I will try and use Connexra to once again feel her inside of me.”

  The Dragonknight coughed. “Poor choice of words. But I getcha.”

  Butcher went and brushed his spines against Gideon. They tore open his skin. Gideon mended himself, the gashes weeping Morta ichor. “You go, Karlos. You go with Ven Dro. I want to reach Zothora if I can. I miss her so. Perhaps with a Cruxis draining the land, I’ll have the power.”

  Ven Dro nodded. “That is not a bad plan. If we can contact the Horror Mother, then our work is done for us. She’ll bring in the Myriad, and we can go home.” The Dragonknight paused. “But I don’t think it will come to that. I think it will be me who ends my Steven Drokharis and his plans. I’d rather kill him and his Escort before they find the Lyra, but even after, it would be fine.” He saluted Gideon with two fingers. “I’ll be in contact.”

  “Who are you?” Gideon asked. “What world did you come from?”

  “I came from the same place you did,” Ven Dro replied. “Pain and failure. Pain and failure.”

  Gideon didn’t know what that meant, but he closed his eyes. He reached out with his senses, and he felt the Animus draining away from the Dragonknight. That is what kept him alive. He’d somehow managed to keep a Magica Cura spell going, continuously, but altered in some way.

  The power that would take was enormous.

  Gideon would have to ponder that power. He would do so in the depths of the Cruxis, begging the universe for a word from Mother, his goddess, his life.

  Ven Dro cast another portal spell and left Gideon with the single Shaze, its body slowly becoming the engine that created the Cruxis. A single soldier could create the hive that could birth millions.

  Gideon so wanted to see such a creation.

  Butcher gave the Magician one last gaze before lumbering through the fiery circle. The rest of the Shaze and Splackers ran through.

  When the fire ended, Gideon sat down on the riverbank, the cold water touching him, and he waited there, watching as the land around the lake slowly withered, as life itself was used to fashion the dome that would birth so much death.

  Chapter Eighteen

  STEVEN LANDED ON THE beach and Nefri slid off his back. They’d taken the day to cross from the Rocky Mountains to the western side of the island of Coronado, or Keereeneeda, as the dark elf called it. She said it was on the Warm Sea, otherwise known as the Pacific.

  The trip had been long. Steven had cast shield spells on Nefri to keep her warm and protected as he rode the winds, imbuing his body with SerpentGrace at critical times to keep his speed up.

  Mouse took care of Uchiko, since the Wayne Sisters were loaded down with their gear. Breaking camp had gone a lot smoother than the set up. However, the moods of the Dragonsouls hadn’t improved with the long travel. None of them liked the breakneck pace and discomfort of dragon flight.

  Flying over the continent showed them a lush landscape; most of the deserts had been underwater, covered by a huge inland sea, broken by gorgeous cliffs and hoodoos. Steven had seen pictures of Lake Powell, and now most of Arizona looked like that. As for Nevada, instead of dry scrub and wasteland, it was a paradise of tall flowers in a variety of colors spread about in green clumps of grasses. Like the ice flowers they’d seen on the plains, the flowers here seemed to thrive despite the lack of rain. Or maybe the inland sea helped keep the foliage watered.

  Among the flowers were the ruins of more Lyra cities. Steven wondered what kind of crypts and tombs lay underneath. Would there be more Ohkreela specters in more Under Cities? Probably.

  They’d crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains and seen more of the yellow pollen hanging in the air. The pollen was another biological oddity. It was fall. The pines should be getting ready for winter, and they shouldn’t have flowers. Steven had taken an Intro to Botany class at Metro. Pines were gymnosperms, who used cones to reproduce, not like flowering trees, which were angiosperms.

  Steven saw a herd of animals, huge elk, but with faces that were almost human, if you didn’t consider the extra pair of eyes on the sides of their heads under their long ears. A herd of thousands filled one mountain meadow—males, females, and the young. Steven had seen pictures of Canadian caribous blackening the land. It was like that.

  Once again, he was struck by how vibrant the world was, so different than the Battle World. If the Zothoric found Aqualyra, the paradise would soon be sucked dry of life. He couldn’t let that happen.

  Mouse did well keeping Uchiko safe, but using the Animus wore her out. Steven wished Tessa were there, with her almost infinite stores of energy. And Sabina, if she had come with them, her constant Divination magic would’ve helped them with much needed information. However, he wouldn’t risk the Latina Magician or the new life inside her. And Tessa had important work, studying Icharaam’s Orb, which would be key in their fight.

  Crossing the central valley of California brought them more strange landscapes, more Lyra cities, until they reached the coastline.

  The Lyra version of San Diego was almost too amazing to believe. The spires and skybridges stretched from streams inland all the way to the bay. Aqueducts drew fresh water to the buildings and courtyards near the calm saltwater. The architectural wonders didn’t stop there. Three bridges spanned the bay, long elegant structures made of gleaming white stone.