Page 74 of Forged in Deception

“Mother?”

“Yes, my dear one?”

“Is it really time now?”

The woman knew that she sounded overeager–childish, even–but Mother’s voice had softened into kindness.

“There is one last ritual, and then, yes. We will be home.”

A sound like screaming wind filled the woman’s ears, and she felt the ground beginning to rumble beneath where she sat.

Mother was in front of her now, growing larger and larger, so big that the room could no longer contain her.

The woman could not see the room anymore. Somewhere, a great distance away, she could see a blanket of ink-black sky dotted with stars, but her eyes were trained firmly on Mother.

She had grown to a gargantuan size. Each one of her scales was now as big as the woman’s hand. Mother’s face was so high up now that she couldn’t see her mouth, her flicking tongue, or her fangs, but she was sure they had to be enormous.

“Listen well, dear child,” Mother continued, her voice booming, seeming to fill eternity with its volume. “There is no power without sacrifice, and there is no sacrifice without the spilling of blood. We have our chosen one. She will give up her life for the salvation of all, and she will do so willingly. We will not fail.”

Her final words rang in the woman’s ears.

She could hear the sound of blood pulsing through them. They ached from the noise, and her body trembled with terror. How awesome, how powerful Mother was!

The woman would not fail her. No matter what it would take, she would go home to the empire of light. She would share in Mother’s power, in her greatness.

She, too, would be unstoppable.

All she had to do was get away from this wretched, dying earth.

She closed her eyes and smiled, speaking in a loud, clear voice.

“I love you, Mother. I live, and die, and kill for you.”

And when she opened her eyes, she was in her simple room again, alone in the dark.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

ASHER

Asher took his place in the now familiar hut, trying to focus on not staring at Karlin while she tinkered with DX8 doses.

Yet again, Bajwa was giving one of his sermons about how revolutionary and amazing DX8 was. And as usual, Lily and Cora looked as though they were about to leap up from their mats and bow down to his brilliance, while Paul looked like he was considering thwacking him with a hot cattle brand.

“What happened with Destiny will not happen tonight,” Bajwa was saying. “You are going to experience a wonderful, joyful journey. You are going to do the work on yourselves that you came here to do. You are going to experience healing.”

He sounded so confident that Asher had no trouble believing that he really did believe all of this to be true. In the mind of Dr. Bajwa, DX8 was a miracle, and nothing was going to shake that faith.

Asher’s experience of this retreat had created an opposite unshakeable conviction.

Knowing what happened to Amira and to Destiny was enough to drive away any lingering curiosity of what it would be like to experience the high for himself.

DX8 and all other psychedelic drugs were undeniably dangerous, and the public’s recent embrace of them should have already been ringing warning bells in the minds of regulators, politicians, and the media.

And he was confident that those red flags would be noticed, especially if Karlin actually went to the authorities tomorrow as they had agreed.

This was about more than just Senera.

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