Page 8 of The Merciless Ones
That in mind, I rush towards the jatu, but they’re already almost gone, running into the temple’s hallways as fast as their legs can take them. Melanis’s assault has shaken them, it seems.
“Cowards!” Adwapa jeers, amused.
“Come back and face us, scum!” her sister adds.
Sighing, I nod for Nimita and the other deathshrieks to follow, then turn back to Melanis, who is now walking towards me, the blood disappearing into her feathers, absorbed like water.
The sight is so unnerving, I nearly take a step back. I’ve never seen anything like that before. The winged Firstborn doesn’t seem to notice as she nears me, a beatific smile on her face. “Well, then, honoured Nuru,” she says, seeming perfectly at ease, “shall we go now? I wish to look upon the faces of our divine mothers once more.”
“Yes,” I reply, swiftly moving towards Ixa.
I can’t wait to leave this oppressive chamber and all the horrors I’ve seen here.
As I stop to retrieve a breastplate with the symbol on it for further examination, however, a strange, scraping noise claims my attention. It’s so soft – almost a whisper – but something about it chills me to the core. I follow the sound towards the pile of jatu bodies scattered on the floor, then breathe when nothing seems amiss. I turn back to Ixa, relieved… Until a glimmer of gold catches my eye. It’s a large masculine hand, slowly digging its way out of the piles of blood and viscera. It’s been severed at the wrist.
Everything inside me stills.
I watch, a distant sort of horror creeping over me, as the hand inches towards a mass of other golden male body parts, which are slowly but surely reattaching to each other, muscle and flesh stretching and wriggling like stringy golden worms.
A horrified expression falls over Asha’s face and she exhales a reedy breath. “Is that…”
I don’t answer. There’s no need, not when a pair of golden legs are now reconnecting to a very large, very familiar male torso. A long, drawn-out gargle sounds, and then the corpse gasps awake, the gilded sleep receding from his body almost as quickly as it took it over.
The jatu leader turns to us and sneers, a wicked, malicious expression that will forever haunt my nightmares. “It is as they said,” he proclaims, eyes alight with unholy fanaticism. “Idugu has chosen us to rise, to deliver Otera from the abomination it has become. To exterminate your filth from the face of the One Kingdom. I pity you, false believers of false gods. Do you know what is coming? Do you have any idea? The true gods are waking. Idugu has sent His blessings onto His sons, and now we too are immor—”
The flash of claws is the only warning I get before his head separates from his body. Blood spurts into the air. Golden blood. Just like an alaki’s.
Katya’s massive red form is trembling as she looks down at that blood dripping from her claw, then back up at me. “How is this possible, Deka?” she gasps, staring down at the man she just killed. “How is this possible?”
That’s exactly what I want to know.
For as long as I have been the Nuru, I have known two truths: first, I can command any child of the Gilded Ones I choose, and second, true jatu, once killed, do not revive. Today, both truths have been shattered. The thought circles my mind as we fly away from the Oyomosin, now a smouldering husk atop its red cliff. Usually, we claim any place we conquer in the name of the Gilded Ones, but this time, we burned the Oyomosin to the ground. We had no choice, what with that jatu reviving the way he did. We beheaded any jatu corpses we could find as well – another precaution. Most alaki die from one of three deaths – burning, beheading, or drowning – but hopefully, two out of three will be good enough for these jatu, whatever they are.
“Wha happened back there, Deka?” Britta asks, the same question we’ve all been asking for the past hour. She’s riding behind me on Ixa, Melanis having commandeered Britta’s gryph, Praxis, for the rest of the journey.
All that killing has tired the Firstborn, though she doesn’t look it. She’s urging the winged white cat to breakneck speeds, anxious to return to the N’Oyo Mountains for the first time in a millennium.
“I don’t know,” I say. “You were there. You saw the same thing I did.”
“I saw a jatu die and revive in less time than it takes to blink an eye.” This comment comes from Belcalis, who flies on the gryph just beside us. “Even we can’t do that. How is that possible?”
That’s the exact question I have. True jatu may be stronger and faster than us, their alaki sisters, but they have only one death. They do not experience the gilded sleep. They do not come back as deathshrieks. And they certainly do not disobey my commands.
“He said it was Idugu.” Katya, on another gryph, still seems disturbed. “He said it was His blessings that did it.”
My muscles rope even tighter. Idugu is the current aspect of Oyomo – a warrior-like incarnation, born to destroy the Gilded Ones and all their daughters. We’ve been hearing rumours about him ever since our first victory against the jatu. Unlike all of Oyomo’s other aspects – Oyo, the sun god who nourishes crops and feeds worshippers; Omo, the wise god who teaches fractals, the hidden equations behind all things – Idugu is pure brutality, a deity of war and death so feared, most of his followers only ever utter his real name with their dying breath.
Every day now, more and more of his followers attack our mountain, hoping to sacrifice themselves in his name. To die in such a manner is the highest honour they can hope to achieve.
“Idugu is a myth, a magic story that the jatu tell to comfort themselves in the dead of night,” Adwapa scoffs.
“Or he is real.” I turn to the others, the memory of being watched at the Oyomosin suddenly rising again. I thought it was a jatu, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was something else? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past year, it’s to never disregard a possibility. “What if he does exist?” I say, finally voicing the question that’s been haunting me ever since the jatu leader resurrected right before my eyes.
“What – another god in Otera?” There’s a warning note in Nimita’s voice. What I’m suggesting is blasphemy. There are no other gods but the mothers.
“A creature masquerading as a god,” I quickly clarify.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. That symbol on those jatu’s breastplates was some sort of arcane object – just like the n’goma, Hemaira’s impregnable barrier.