Effla and Gorlana were tearing their way through underbrush to join the attack. Fingit and Sakaj were half a minute away. Krak and Lutigan were nowhere in sight. The great monster feinted toward Trutch with his left hand and then snatched Harik with his right. Harik tried to stab the beast in the thumb with his lightning-javelin, but he electrocuted himself. Cheg-Cheg kicked Trutch, and she sailed halfway up the mountainside, a saffron missile. She slammed into the granite slope and sounded like a gong announcing the end of time. Her limp body slid down the slope.
Madimal had retrieved Casserak’s spear to charge the monster, with Gorlana screaming profanities at his side. Cheg-Cheg plucked Madimal up with his left hand. Since a squirming Harik filled his other hand, the monster dropped and smashed Gorlana under his horrific knee. He ground Gorlana into the earth as if she were a smoldering ember. When the beast rose, Gorlana did not emerge from the huge divot in which he had smashed her. Her dismembered, sparkly-blue leg did emerge, stuck to the monster’s knee. Cheg-Cheg shook his leg for a couple of seconds, and the dislodged limb fell to the mangled earth.
Cheg-Cheg stood, lifted Harik and Madimal to his face, and shook them like a child might shake two bugs. Fingit could see Harik’s arms flailing and Madimal’s feet kicking, but they’d be elevated in moments, on their way to the Dim Lands, and therefore out of the fight. He despised the idea of failing and having to try again tomorrow, and each day after that, over and over, until Cheg-Cheg was injured badly enough—or got bored enough—to leave them alone. Today didn’t look like the Day of Victory for the gods, though.
The air crackled above Fingit’s head, and every droplet of airborne water boiled away in an instant. The impossibly searing light of the sun streamed out from the mountainside, passed just between Trutch and Harik, and sizzled into Cheg-Cheg’s left eyeball. The monster bellowed. It assuredly did not roar. It closed its eyes and shuffled back a step, but it didn’t drop the two trapped gods.
The horrific ray of annihilation ceased. Fingit watched Cheg-Cheg’s eyelid, expecting to see awful damage, even a hole burned all the way to the monster’s brain. But when the eyelid opened, it revealed an intact eyeball, although it was smoking and a little discolored in one spot.
“Damn it!” Krak closed with Fingit and Sakaj as they sprinted. “I may not have killed it, but it knows I don’t like it very much.”
Now Cheg-Cheg sidestepped away from the remaining gods, produced a titanic grunt, and inscribed an arc on the ground with the longest talon of his right foot, ripping up trees and dislodging boulders as he went. A circle of earth seemed to dissolve within that arc. The monster stepped into the circle and began sinking into the ground, still holding Madimal and Harik.
Despite possessing divine speed and endurance, Fingit wasn’t sure he could reach the monster before he disappeared. He also wasn’t sure he’d be able to strike much of a blow when he got there. Perhaps it was just as well that Cheg-Cheg’s piglike, tufted ears had dropped below ground level when Fingit, Sakaj, Krak, and Effla reached the circle.
Looking down, Fingit saw the monster carrying Harik and Trutch, descending toward a landscape he recognized as Unicorn Town. They’re dead. Cheg-Cheg can destroy them for all time there. What idiot can I trick into going after them?
“We have to save them!” Fingit yelled. “Let’s jump in after them! All together… one… two… three!”
No idiots jumped into the hole. Effla at least had the courtesy to act a little embarrassed. Fingit put the doomed gods out of his thoughts and began considering how to improve the armor’s survivability.
A screaming Lutigan hurtled past them, almost knocking Fingit into the hole. Lutigan threw himself into the emptiness, swords upraised, angling for the top of Cheg-Cheg’s feather-crested skull. A moment later, the circle solidified back into the regular ground of the forested foothills.
All four gods stared at the spot into which Lutigan had leaped. Effla shuffled her feet a bit. Sakaj wound and unwound her strangling cord.
“Well, now I feel bad,” Fingit said, and the other gods nodded.
Actually, I don’t feel bad. I feel… useless. I didn’t do a damned thing. I didn’t even have to fool Lutigan into doing something stupid. He’s just stupid. Aw, no wonder they laugh at me and call me the Little Tinker of the Gods. I’m more like the Limp Dandelion of the Gods.
Fingit grabbed Krak’s arm. “Elevate me! Send me to Unicorn Town!”
Krak shook his head. Effla, the Goddess of Love, said, “The monster will kill you there, little boy, and you will be dead ever after. You’ve never been capable of rising to a challenge.”
Fingit blushed but said, “I can stop—” He ceased talking when Sakaj jammed a knife through his throat and dragged it to the side, slicing his jugular. Blood sprayed against his armor’s collar and into his eyes, blinding him.
“You cretin!” Krak yelled at Sakaj. “He’ll be asleep when he gets there! Helpless!”
Fingit ignored Krak. He clutched his hammer, and as his body collapsed, he focused on Unicorn Town.
Seventeen
(Sakaj)
Sakaj wiped Fingit’s blood off her face using the back of her hand. “Well?” she said, looking from Krak to Effla and back.
“If you try to stab me, I’ll cut you in two from your ratty hair down to your other ratty hair,” Effla said.
Sakaj lowered her knife. “We have to go after them.”
“No!” Effla said.
“Yes,”
