But that got a lot harder when the flames intensified to a brilliant, retina-searing white, and I started to think I’d do anything just to stop the pain.
I focused on the memory of my friends lying in the dirt of the Heartchamber arena, Warcry without his prosthetic, a weighted sword still wedged in his shoulder, and Rali’s guts spilling out of his stomach.
There was no telling what Hungry Ghost would do if he got back in the driver’s seat. I had enough on my conscience already. I wasn’t going to let him out so he could add to the list.
The ancient khan was right about one thing, though: I didn’t have enough Miasma to keep going like this. With every scrap of energy I had left, I forced my blackened lungs to start Swallowing the Universe. The little bit of Miasma I got back was like trying to run a marathon while breathing through one of those coffee-stirring straws. There wasn’t anywhere near enough Death Spirit here.
If only there was some way to reclaim all the Miasma my body was losing to the fire, keep it cycling in and out of my Spirit sea, like a mass version of what I used for internal alchemy...
I switched my focus to the turquoise ice flash-boiling into steam throughout my body. I grabbed at it with an internal version of Death Grip, thousands of ghostly hands grasping wildly.
The spent Miasma slipped through the spectral fingers like smoke. It was infuriating. Desperation and anger built up at the edge of my consciousness as the Spirit tried to flit away.
You’re mine, I thought, dragging that necrotizing cold back in. I am Death, I have the final say, always, and I say that you belong to me.
A deep black hole opened up in my sea, dragging the escaping Miasma in like a spiral galaxy of Death Spirit. There was less of it, but it was more concentrated, as dense as tungsten at the center.
Reclaiming the Dead. The name echoed in my brain.
Concentrating, I reversed the spiral, sending the reclaimed Spirit cycling through my Spirit rivers and to every part of my body to fight the blaze.
The renewed effort to survive stirred the fire up again, and the flames shifted from the visible spectrum to an invisible, overpowering violet. The pain was so much worse than any that had come before it. The kind of thing you hear about people dying of heart attacks from. I had to get myself away from it or I would lose focus on the Reclaiming the Dead breathing and run empty.
With one part of my brain, I kept Reclaiming the Dead going and the Miasma cycling, and with the other, I dropped into Last Light, Last Breath. Oblivion surrounded me, blanking out all emotion.
It’s amazing how much of pain is fear. The feeling that you can’t keep going because there must not be another side to get to, no end in sight. With oblivion muting the dread that this might never end, I could separate myself from the pain.
I couldn’t open my eyes, but I sensed Warcry and Sushi nearby, along with other life points I didn’t recognize moving around us. A little farther out lay the dead vacuum of space.
There was something to that, something I could almost understand. Death and void. The soulless, ageless, empty cold.
On the other side of my mind-split, the inferno hit its highest point, a firestorm of those invisible world-melting flames. My muscles ashed, and my skin evaporated. Fissures formed in my skeleton as the marrow inside boiled.
It was the gleaming black layer of Lunar Scythe around everything that saved me. It clamped down, preventing my bones from exploding, holding everything in while I poured on a final, kamikaze flood of Miasma, every drop I could get my hands on.
Steam erupted like a volcano, blowing the cremains of my old body away. In its place new ligaments, tendons, and tissue grew. Not the fragile muscle fibers I’d had before, but strands like carbon steel cable. The skin that filled in overtop felt like it was made out of Kevlar.
For a split second, I caught sight of the angel of death. She stood in an empty red desert, surrounded by acres of nothingness, blue and white suns beating down on her. As if she felt my presence, she whirled around, angry mirror-silver eyes catching mine. Her white marble lips soundlessly mouthed my name, and she took a step toward me.
I stuck out my right arm, summoning the Lunar Scythe to defend myself.
“Oi, go easy, ya clown!” Calloused hands clamped around the wrist bones of my scythe-hand like shackles.
I pulled away before they could lock both of my hands up. I’d been handcuffed before, at the Heartchamber, and it almost got everybody I cared about killed.
A fist rocketed into my jaw, and my head bounced off metal grating.
The punch and the secondary impact didn’t hurt as much as they should have, but I didn’t have long to wonder about that new development. Everything around me was shaking.
“Put that bleedin’ scythe away before you kill someone!”
My eyes snapped open. Warcry was leaning over me, hands clutching my skeletal wrist like a pneumatic vise.
I stopped fighting.
“Grady’s awake!” Sushi bumped her scaly forehead against my cheek.
“What’s going on?” I croaked, blinking at the weird metal room we were in. Fold-down seats lined the walls, their buckles banging around and making noise.
“Ya back with us, grav?” Warcry scowled down at me. “Got your head on straight?”
“Yeah.” I opened my hand, letting the scythe rip back into my skeleton. Just like the punch, the pain wasn’t as bad as I remembered it being. “Where are we?”
He let me go and stood up, bracing against a sudden lurch with one hand on the wall.
“Shuttle to Sarca,” he said. “We’re about to land. Strap in before you get yourself killed, yeah?”
First Impressions
I FOLLOWED WARCRY’S lead, strapping into
