I was pretty sure this was the first time gods were actually in their presence, and it was going to get ugly. The moment they caught sight of the Abcurses, they started to scream. Tears poured down their cheeks as they pushed and fought to be first to reach us. Rome shot me a look, and I could see he was wondering what he was supposed to do.
Shame Cyrus wasn’t here to throw them off a cliff for us.
Yael grinned broadly, and I blinked at that odd sight. “I can handle the throwing, if you think it’s the best option.”
His eyes were begging me to say yes.
I had to think long and hard, and by the time I realised we couldn’t toss dwellers away like rubbish, they had reached us. The first one had carrot-red hair and so many sunspots that I knew she was someone who worked in the fields.
She dove at Rome, who was still standing out front like the hugest target in the world. I reacted before I could think about it, sliding myself between the two of them so I took the brunt of her body. She hugged me tightly for a click, until she realised I was way too small to be the god she’d aimed for. When she pulled back her face morphed into a scowl and she lifted her arm to take a swing at me.
Rome slammed his forearm down between us and his voice thundered louder than I’d ever heard before. “I would advise that you step back.” His chest was rumbling as he tried to contain his anger. “Touching Willa is an automatic death sentence.”
The redhead blinked at him, her anger at me dying away as tears filled her eyes. “I love you,” she said simply.
Siret laughed, and I tried to shoot him a glare, but I couldn’t see him from where Rome was wrapped around me.
The other two godsters joined their friend, stopping on either side of her. Both of them were brunette; both had very olive skin and green eyes, and I guessed they were sisters. “Who is your leader?” Rome asked, his voice softening slightly. “We need to speak with the leader of your village right now.”
The brunette on the right spoke up, her voice very high-pitched. “Leader Chet. He’s in that hut.”
She pointed toward the largest, although definitely not fancy, brown-walled hut. “Could someone please go and get him?” Rome was attempting to be polite for me.
The three girls appeared to be frozen to the spot, but luckily one of the guards was less mesmerised and he hurried off. We’d drawn quite a crowd of onlookers at this point, so there was probably no need for the leader, we might as well just tell the dwellers ourselves.
“I need everyone to please listen,” I started; lifting my voice. Rome reached down then and hauled me up higher so that everyone could see me. “We are here to warn you all about an impending attack…”
I continued on with the story, detailing what had happened and where they needed to head.
“Leader Graham is organising the seventh ring,” I finished. “They’ll be heading out soon. If you hurry, you can join them on the journey to Blesswood.”
Leader Chet turned out to be a small man, standing no more than five feet tall. He made up for this by having hair that was a large, bushy mass on his head—adding another half a foot to his height. He stood in his underwear, pot-belly hanging out over the shorts. “Are you seriously trying to say that every dweller who has been killed or died in Minatsol in the past hundreds of life-cycles has risen from the dead and is planning to kill us all?”
Gods, he made it sound so ridiculous when he said it like that.
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. If you choose not to believe me, you will die.”
I was done with this bullshit. I mean, I could have guessed they’d be hard to convince, but these dwellers seemed to be actively looking for death.
I gestured for the Abcurses then, leading them toward the ninth and final ring of Minatsol. The godsters cried and wailed as we moved away, but they didn’t follow us, which was a small blessing.
The ninth ring turned out a similar reception, with disbelief the key factor. There was one thing that turned them quicker than the others though, and that was the fact that from the ninth ring we could see out into the dead lands.
Only they weren’t completely dead anymore. The water was spreading across them. It was clear from the highest viewpoint of the village, especially when using one of their magnifying glass balls. When we directed the balls toward the desert lands and pressed our eyes to it, the dead could be seen clawing their way free from the muddy water.
“This can’t be happening,” Leader Julie said, her eyes wide as she breathed rapidly. “There are hundreds of them.”
“Thousands,” I told her. “The Creator has buried them everywhere. And he controls them all.”
I didn’t have to say one more thing; she had her village organised and on the road within fifteen clicks. She was the only female leader I knew of in the rings of Minatsol, and no doubt it was only because no man wanted to take on the worst, driest, most uninhabitable area. But from what I could see, this little village was doing pretty well—their huts were larger and better maintained than the seventh and eighth, and they also had more than a few gardens, which were hidden under rocks, reflective glass around to give them sunlight. And more importantly, the villagers looked happy.
Until, of course, we told them an undead army was about to kill them all.
“Everyone is gone from this village,” Siret told us, after he did a quick scout around. It was eerie standing in an empty town like this. “I don’t think there is any point in camping here tonight. We should head back to the seventh ring and see what’s happening there.”
I nodded, agreeing with him. Leader Julie had given us some provisions before she left: a few jugs of water, some bread, and a buttery spread that was made from crushed nuts they’d managed to grow in their village gardens.
Before we left, we ate and drank the food, sprawling out under one of the side awnings on the main schoolhouse. It was hot here still, but the ground didn’t look as parched as it had the last time I was here.
“Do you think the water is spreading under the ground?” I asked, poking my finger into the dirt.
Aros leaned over to examine the small hole I’d made. It was damp just underneath.
“Yes, it’s starting to move back into the underground artesian systems.”
This should be something worth rejoicing over, only Staviti had insured that there was no chance of that happening.
His war was coming for us, and maybe the lands were the only things that would survive the coming sun-cycles.
