Iggs’s growl was rumbling over the speaker by the time she finished. He obviously didn’t like that plan one bit, but he’d always been the most obedient of Bex’s soldiers, so all he actually said was “Yes, my queen.”
Bex smiled in relief. “Thanks, Iggs.”
“Just make sure you beat him, okay?” the demon grumbled. “I’d hate to have come all this way for nothing.”
“It definitely wasn’t for nothing,” Bex said. “We destroyed the Hells and freed our people. No matter what happens from here, nothing can ever take that victory from us. That’s why I need you to make sure everyone we saved makes it over the finish line.” She bowed her horns. “I’m trusting you to take care of our people, Iggerux.”
“I will,” he promised with a bow Adrian swore he could hear over the comm’s speaker. “I’ll protect them all until you return to us. May Ishtar guide your sword and grant you victory, my queen.”
Bex’s whole body stiffened at Ishtar’s name, but her voice was as steady as ever when she replied. “I pray for your success as well. We’re going silent now. Good luck.”
“Good luck,” he replied as the comm cut off, leaving them standing in silence around the dead prince and his dropped sword.
“Well,” Leander said when the quiet had stretched to an uncomfortable length. “I only heard half of that, but I assume we’re continuing the assault on our own.”
“That’s the plan,” Bex said, unzipping her poor tattered bomber jacket and dropping it on the ground so she was left in her short-sleeved—but still intact—T-shirt. “I realize neither of you take orders from me, so I’m asking this next part as a personal favor. Will you come with me to kill Gilgamesh and put an end to this forever?”
“Of course,” Adrian said at once. “Buthoware we doing it? Even if you succeed in convincing Gilgamesh that you’re retreating, we still don’t know where he’s hiding.”
“The Morrigan said to follow the chains,” Bex reminded him. “And this is the place where all the chains connect. It’s also the only room inside the palace that was being guarded by a prince, so I’m guessing the entrance to Gilgamesh’s bunker is somewhere around here.”
That struck Adrian as sound logic, but Leander was shaking his head.
“My father would never hide anywhere so accessible,” he informed them in a haughty voice. “Also, this is just where the general public enters the bridges to Earth. The chains themselves are hidden in yet another of Gilgamesh’s privateareas so that he doesn’t have to compromise the aesthetics of his palace with giant ugly chains that are constantly flaking sin iron. Fortunately for us, we’ve already secured the key.”
He pointed at the Prince of Envy’s sword, and Adrian’s eyes lit up.
“We might have done better than that,” he said excitedly, using his coat to protect his hand this time as he grabbed the white blade off the ground where he’d dropped it when Bex appeared. “Envy’s sword is connected to all of Gilgamesh’s secret places, right? Doesn’t that mean we can use it to cut straight to him?”
Leander scowled. “I can’t imagine that actually working, but I suppose it’s worth a try.”
It absolutely was. Adrian was already swinging the sword, actually, keeping his focus on the gnawing blade as he ordered, “Open the way to Gilgamesh.”
The command was simpler than the one he’d used to bring back Bex, except this time, nothing happened. The white sword just sliced through the air like any normal piece of metal. Adrian tried the order two more times with different wordings before dropping the blade with a disgusted huff.
“Useless hunk of junk.”
“Let’s not be so hasty,” Leander said. “Just because Gilgamesh took the extremely simple precaution of not leaving his door unlocked doesn’t mean he’s unreachable. I’ve never dealt with the Morrigan personally, but even I know she’s famous for not giving clues unless they’re important. If she said ‘follow the chains,’ that is likely the way, so why don’t you try asking the Blade of Envy for those instead?”
Adrian didn’t want to touch the bitey sword again if he could help it. His hands were already covered in enough cuts, but Leander looked dead serious about never using any sword other than Mara, so he sucked it up and bent down to grab thewhite hilt one more time, gritting his teeth against the pain as he ordered, “Take us to the chains.”
The moment the words left his mouth, the needle-shaped sword slashed the air open in front of him. The space beyond the cut looked as black as the void between worlds, but when Adrian leaned closer for a better look, he saw that was just an optical illusion. The other side of the cut was actually quite brightly lit. He was just staring directly into a rope made of twisted chains.
“Whoa,” Bex said, her already pale face turning the color of paper as she peered through the hole. “That’s high.”
She was right. The place Envy’s blade had cut into looked like what would happen if all of Heaven was invisible. If he looked down on this side, Adrian saw the cracked marble floor beneath his feet like always. When he looked through the hole, though, he could see all the way down to the bright-blue water of the living world far, far,faaaarbelow.
They were so high up that the islands of the Anchors looked like tiny specks. The Rivers of Death that rose from them were little more than blue flashes, while the chains were even smaller. They didn’t even look golden from this angle. They were more like black threads that followed the blue lines of the rivers to a point where the water suddenly vanished.
Even compared to Gilgamesh’s other artificial spaces like Limbo and the black desert, it was super weird. The raging Rivers of Death literally disappeared into thin air about a mile below. Adrian supposed that must be where they flowed into the Hells, but seeing all that rushing water simply cease to exist hurt his brain. The inner workings of the gods were famously beyond mortal comprehension, though, so he supposed that was what he got for poking his head behind the curtain.
He was far more concerned with the fact that he didn’t see anything above them but chains vanishing into blackness. That didn’t seem right, but the rest was exactly what he’d askedfor. The Morrigan had said “follow the chains,” and those were definitely chains. They were even twisted together in a way that made the giant links of smooth black metal actually climbable. Bex was already leaning through the hole to grab the closest one, sliding her fingers over the sin iron until she found a good handhold.
“This is it,” she said, turning around to grin at the others. “Come on! The sin iron’s corroded in places, so there are plenty of pits to dig your fingers into. Just be careful not to jostle the chains too much. We don’t want Gilgamesh to feel us coming.”
Adrian worried that was inevitable. He liked Bex’s idea of pretending to retreat, but he secretly suspected it was more about keeping her demons out of harm’s way than tricking Gilgamesh. From what he’d seen of Heaven so far, his father seemed aware of everything that happened here. Adrian was certain that Gilgamesh already knew they were coming, but he was also certain that Iggs would never have obeyed an order to retreat if Bex hadn’t phrased it as part of a military strategy.
Whether she’d been telling the whole truth or not, they were in the thick of it now. Nemini had already started scaling the chain after Bex, and even Leander was bracing his bare feet against the sin iron to haul himself up. That left Adrian as the last one through. He wasn’t leaving without his partner, though, so Adrian waited at the threshold until he heard the familiar patter of cat feet racing across the stone floor.
