Book 2 The Gods of Light and Liars

Chapter 31 Run

"Now!" Shouted the Archon, as the Gods all fell to war. Hawk did not need to be told twice. She stood up, collected her robes, waited half a heartbeat for Dyson and Em to start moving, and then pelted for the rear of the pavilion and the opening that would be there.

She hoped

The earth shook underfoot with a dreadful thumping crash, knocking Hawk to the ground before she'd gone more than twenty paces. She skidded across the soft moss, dragging through the thin layer of earth to the stone beneath. Her hands bled as she got back to her feet and continued running. The wind came up, blowing like the screams of every banshee that ever cleared its throat, and Em went spinning into one of the overdone, ornate flower columns. Hawk dropped to pick her up, and barely dodged a flying tree limb. She could still see the impression of fingers, the arch of wrist with embers burning where carpals once waited. Now it was wood, and it was on fire. The wind blew against her, filled with the ashes of people. She'd gotten Em to their feet, and they were almost through to the opening.

Crash! The sound brought her back around to the battle in the pavillion's center. The fire had spread to a primary support on the opposite end of the tent. It wasn't the main pole, but a side support, and it fell to earth like the Colossus of Rhodes. Wind blew like the throat of a hurricane, and now new, strange, lithe forms were taking shape in the smoke and the embers. New cat-like creatures only with eyes of fire and footsteps smoking, and teeth made of molten precious metals, flaming silver, burning gold. They pulled themselves out of the ground as out of a grave, shook themselves so that the charred substance of their manes fell into place, and then they were off and into the fray. And in it all came the terrible voice, the Alex-voice, laughing.

The number of bodies heading in the direction of the way out tripled. Hawk fell to the ground twice, knocked down by a panicked member of the crowd. Red robes, blue robes, gold robes, it all just amounted to frightened flesh being herded towards the cattle runs. Now flight wasn't a matter of choice but of inertia and physics. She was caught in the crowd and forced towards the one break in the fire.

Convenient, that?

Actually, it was. Very. It meant that her escape, and that of the others, wasn't being monitored by anyone. They were just another set of bodies fleeing through the crowd into the dark. But it happened so quickly, Hawk didn't have time to grab anyone's hands. She caught a brief glimpse of Em and the Light Archon's white robes ahead of her, and then they were gone, and it was just Hawk and the crowd and the light from the fire.

Alright. First up: Ditch the white. She stripped off the beautiful white robe, the samite silk that had been rapture to wear, and dropped it on the ground without a second thought. That was focused on a body in front of her. They were alive, fortunately, and curled on the ground in the middle of the main thoroughfare. Hawk managed, largely by using her legs and pushing, to get enough of the crowd to part around her that she could haul this person to safety. It wasn't the person she cared about—though getting them out of harm's way was a fun bonus—but their robe. In the flickering firelight it was either red or green, but both equaled not white. She got it on over the pale chemise and rejoined the screaming throng.

And now she had a big problem. The same problem she'd had the last time. She was alone, in the dark, with absolutely no idea where to go.

And then she heard, thin and bare beneath the screams, all the lifeline she'd ever need.

Em's voice.

Calling out "Marco!"

She paused for a moment, despite being on the edge of a burning pavilion dedicated to murderous gods, where said gods were apparently battling to the death, to acknowledge that she was about to be saved by a non-binary anarcho-communist by playing Marco-Polo. And then she shouted "Polo!" as loud as she could, and listened.