Beyond the Gates Infernal by Bryan S. Glosemeyer

Author:Bryan S. Glosemeyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Void Forms Media

30

YOU CAN RAISE your head. There are no slaves here.” The words felt dry and coarse on Sabira’s tongue, like an old tunic stuffed in her mouth.

“I am a Servant of the Divine Masters and will be until my dying breath.” Spear’s head remained pressed to the airlock floor. His speech had a distant reverberating quality to it.

“You’re my blood-grandfather.”

“I am a Servant of—”

“Then what under the rocks are you doing here?” Raising her voice made Sabira’s head throb, even with the pain meds.

“Living in shame.”

I remember that shame. How it threatened to bury me only a few weeks ago. Shamed to even be alive when so many others were not. Daggeira mentioned living in shame, too, right before . . .

Is that who I am now? A cause for shame in everyone I care about?

“Living in shame is still living.”

Grandfather Spear didn’t answer.

“The others think this is a ruse. Getting onboard our ship is just the first part of your plan.”

“Such a plan would be bold.”

“And that taking a hostage would be your next step.”

“Here to offer yourself up?”

“I believe you told me the truth. You said you wanted them out of your head. Wanted that thing taken out.”

Spear shifted his weight across his squatting hips, but didn’t answer. He was big enough to cover most of the airlock floor. If he was planning to spring a trap on her, she had little room to get out of his way. And with these pain meds dulling her reflexes, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Once the psychotoxins were flushed out of his system, maybe she could persuade Orion to move him out of the personnel airlock. Somewhere she’d have more room to visit. But she was getting ahead of herself.

“What did the Warseers do to you and Daggeira?”

“It wasn’t the Warseers. We were selected by the High Godseer.”

“Selected for what?”

“Transfiguration.”

That much was obvious. “And?”

“And they drilled inside us. Inside our brains.” His trembling hands clenched into fists.

Sabira held her breath, watching him intently. Uncertain if she could reach the door before he made a move. Slowly, his fists unclenched and his palms pressed into the floor again.

“I have always given body and mind to the Holy Unity. Our bodies were never truly ours to begin with.”

She kept her eyes on his hands, drawn to his silvery prosthetic. When she had fought him in the ruins of the Zol-Ori, she cut off three of his fingers. Instead of giving him new digits, they had substituted his entire hand with a biomech replacement.

“But our minds—my mind, the only thing that was truly my own—I offered that to the Gods freely. No matter how many times I faced death or torture, I never lost faith. Trickster’s seed never took root. But they took that from me. The one thing I could truly offer the Gods. They took even that.”

“And what will your Gods think of you now, betraying the wisdom of Their High Godseer? Murdering the warseer you attended?”

“You know the ways of Divine Will.

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