Page 53 of Damned and Broken Gods (Labyrinth of Gods #2)

Yoohoo, Weapon!

LEELA

T he light swallowed me and spat me out on a wasteland of cracked earth. The sky was a swirling miasma of purple and blue, distant stars winking down at me, as if in acknowledgment.

I glanced back, expecting to see the glowing doorway I’d just walked through and find the others following, but there was nothing but more wasteland and no sign of my friends.

I was alone. What now?

There was nothing but flat lands as far as the eye could see.

How did I call a weapon?

I put my hands up to bracket my mouth. “Hello! Anyone here? Yoohoo, weapon!”

My voice sounded small in the vastness around me. I felt small. Insignificant. I set off at a brisk stride. Maybe I had to find the weapon.

Time slipped by. The landscape never changed. No mountains. No trees.

Emptiness echoed inside me like a warning of the vacuum to come once Araz was gone.

When had he become the thing that fulfilled me?

When had I become a vessel aching for his love? I drifted deeper into my thoughts, one foot in front of the other.

This journey couldn’t be about him. About us. It was bigger than that.

It was about the greater good. About freeing trapped souls. And yet it circled back to Araz. Again and again.

My gut told me he was important. Vital. But I wasn’t sure if that was the bond speaking. A bond that amplified.

I wouldn’t know the truth until I ascended. Until he was free.

I needed to rise.

I needed my weapon.

I stopped. Boots on grass. Toes at the edge of a moonlit pool.

How had I gotten here?

The water was as smooth as glass. I crouched to touch it and found it hard.

Not glass.

Not ice.

A mirror.

My face looked back at me. Eyes darker than I remembered.

And as I studied my reflection, my face changed.

Subtly at first—the cheeks fuller, eyes slightly slanted.

Then more evident—a sharper nose, a thinner mouth.

Until my face was no longer mine at all.

It morphed into different faces. One after the other.

I wanted to pull away, to remove my hand from the mirror, but an invisible force held me firmly.

The spot between my eyebrows began to throb, faster and faster, and purple light tinged my vision.

The faces blurred and finally melted, only to coalesce into a female visage that I didn’t know yet recognized in a visceral way that made my eyes burn with the threat of tears.

Dark eyes, a full mouth that I knew would smile or bare its teeth, and angular cheekbones, regal in their slant. She glared at me, as if challenging me to do something. To say something, and that challenge unlocked something deep inside me.

Sound vibrated up my throat, unbidden and unformed until it reached my lips. “I see you…” The words fell in a whisper.

My breath misted the mirror, and hairline cracks formed at its touch, radiating outward across the lake. The reflection smiled, and a voice filled my head.

I see you too.

A splintering sound ripped open the silence, and the mirror lake shattered.

I fell back, raising an arm to shield my eyes.

Light bloomed, and I slowly lowered my hand and looked across the shimmering lake—now rippling water alive with luminescent colors.

And hovering in air, in the center of it, were two double-headed axes made of steel and obsidian.

Mine.

The word echoed in my head—the voice mine and yet not mine.

The weapons waited.

There was nothing to do but wade into the water and fetch them. But as I stepped into the lake, the water parted, revealing the lakebed.

It wasn’t too deep. The path wasn’t too long. I reached the weapons in seconds. They gleamed in the moonlight, out of reach.

Crap.

How did I get them to come down?

My palms throbbed. I reached up, on impulse as if I could touch the axe hilts, and a voice filled my head.

Daughter of flame, sovereign heart, hand of justice. We find you now. We claim you now. As it was. As it is. As it should be.

The weapons shot down to meet my hands, the handles settling, warm against my skin as if they belonged there. I swung the axes, the motion easy, as if I’d done it many times before, when in fact I hadn’t had much time with dual weapons. It seemed like I had some muscle memory from somewhere.

Weird.

I walked out of the lake with my weapons. I had nowhere to store them. No holster. I guessed I’d have to keep hold of them.

The water rushed back in to cover the path behind me, and the lake froze into mirror once more.

O-kay…what now?

Silence greeted me.

Um… “Hello? I got the weapons. What happens now?”

The world fractured, and darkness folded in on me. For a moment, I was floating in inky blackness—no body, no matter to tether me. But in the next, a weighted force latched on to me, dragging me down and pulling me back together.

My boots landed on gray, dusty earth, and the world materialized around me like the mainframe of a game world.

“Leela!” A hand gripped my arm and helped me up.

I hadn’t registered that I’d been crouching. I looked up into an angular female face, dark hair whipping at her high cheekbones. Her brows pinched in a frown. “Leela? It’s me, Dharma.”

Dharma. Shit. Memory came rushing back, and I gasped, staggering to my feet.

“It’s okay, it takes a moment,” she said. “We were all a little confused at first.”

Joe, Bina, and Alia pressed close.

Joe carried a gleaming silver Shula—a spear with wicked sharp prongs.

Bina had a Khadga strapped to her back, the hilt of the sword visible over her shoulder making it easy for her to reach back and draw it.

Alia also had a sword, but Dharma carried a gada.

The mace looked heavy, the bulbous head trailing on the ground where she held it loosely at her sides.

Wait…where were my axes?

I looked down at my empty hands. “Shit, my axes.” As soon as I said it, I felt them at my waist. They sat snug in a holster that had materialized there. I lightly touched the grips, and a sense of assurance shot through me.

“Looks like we all got our weapons,” Bina said.

We stood in a desolate landscape made of shades of gray, as if the architect had given up on the concept of color. The sky was heavy with dark clouds, and the threat of a storm hummed in my bones. “Now what?”

Dharma pressed her lips together and looked away. “Now we go inside.”

I tracked her gaze to the epic doorway looming several meters in front of us. The frame was made of stone pillars, ten feet wide and twenty feet tall, and the space between was pitch-black. It stood alone. Not part of any building or structure. Just a stone door.

A gateway.

“Slightly ominous, don’t you think?” Bina said.

“Let’s get it done.” Dharma hoisted her gada onto her shoulder and strode forward. I followed, and the others fell in behind me.

The air crackled and pricked at my skin the closer we got, and the scent of ozone spiked, burning my nose.

“Yep, this is definitely not a simulation,” Joe said.

I glanced at him. “You thought that too?”

“Yeah, felt like I’d been plopped into a digital avatar and thrown into a game world when I landed.”

“What are you talking about?” Bina asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dharma said. “Mortal world things.”

The doorway had looked like it was close, but it took a minute or so to reach it, and yep, it was much bigger than it seemed. We were ants standing in front of a void.

“I say we go in together,” Dharma said. “Hand in hand.”

“It doesn’t guarantee we won’t be separated,” Alia said, her voice small and unsure.

She had a point. “Maybe not, but it sure would make me feel better.”

Bina let out a bark of laughter. “Me too.”

Dharma hooked her gada into the holster at her back and held her hand out to me.

I took it, and Joe’s to my right.

“Ready?” Bina said once we were linked.

“Ready,” we echoed.

We walked into the void. Together.