Page 57 of Merciless
I stared at the ceiling of the throne room. Reaper, his attackers, my pain—everything was gone.
Daughter, I can reach you again!Freyja cried victoriously before I felt her healing pulse of energy spread out from my chest to the room.
Harness the bonds now,another voice commanded. Quetzalcoatl!I'm shielding your minds, but you must end this now.
"What..." I rolled over and grabbed for my gun that was a few feet away. On either side of me, Jandro and Reaper came to and reached for their weapons as well.
You three are an unbreakable chain, the snake god said.The underworld, the sky, and the thread that binds them together. You are the natural order of existence, a trinity of which the pieces must always be interconnected to work.
"It's us," I realized, coming slowly to my feet. "It's always been us."
"No death without life," Hades said softly, black eyes trained on the Sha.
"No sky without earth." Horus raised Gunner's weapon.
"No love without loss." Freyja said the words, but pointing the gun and squeezing the trigger was all me.
The three of us hit the Sha in the abdomen.
Time seemed to stand still for a single beat, a single moment of nothingness as we waited to find out if this truly was the end of chaos' reign.
Or if the Sha had been right all along.
The creature that was never supposed to exist touched a clawed hand to his chest. His palm came away stained dark with blood. The Sha's eyes widened in genuine disbelief as he slumped back into his throne.
"This can't be...I can't be..." Those dark claws closed into fists as he snarled at us like a cornered animal. "Ibrokethe trinity! How can you three harness your bonds against me?"
"You shouldn't have stopped at Reaper and Shadow," I said, aiming right between those creepy eyes. "It never occurred to you that the gods would bond with my other men? And thatIwas the link you were missing?"
The Sha growled again, only it came out sounding more like a pained wheeze. The front of his robes were drenched in blood now, and instead of a dark gray, his complexion had paled to ash.
"I amnotdying...I cannot find your mind now, but when I do, I will rip each of your brain cells apart and ensure you feel every single one."
"You are dying," I informed him. "Because this form is flesh and blood, Set. Just like I told you. And you can't find any of our minds because, aside from the natural order, there's something else your senseless violence can't detect."
"And what would that be?" the Sha wheezed.
"Wisdom," I answered. "Knowledge and learning. That was the final piece we needed to beat you."
"You haven't beaten me yet, human." The Sha curled his bloodstained hands over the armrests of his throne and leaned forward. "And you'll never be rid of me for good. I am as eternal as violence itself."
"I know, but you'll be nothing more than an idea. A concept floating in the ether. For as long as I can help it, you'll never take a physical form again." I curled my finger around the trigger. "And you sure as fuck will never touch my family again."
I squeezed that trigger and didn't stop until my gun was empty. Jandro and Gunner joined me in the beautiful chorus of gunfire, making the Sha's corpse jerk with each shot long after its life was gone. The silence that followed after the clicks of our empty weapons was something I didn't know how to comprehend.
"We did it."
Whispering out loud didn't make it feel any more real.
The Sha's body shifted, and the three of us immediately scrambled for fresh magazines to reload.
But there was no need. The lifeless, physical embodiment of Set slumped out of the throne to the floor. Before our eyes, the Sha broke down into a dark, dust-like substance which seemed to sink or fade into the floor until it was gone.
"Never meant to exist means no body left behind when it dies," Jandro observed quietly.
Reality hit me all at once then. I dropped my gun and threw my arms around his neck in an exhausted, sagging hug.
"It's over," I whispered into his throat, a sob choking off my voice. "We did it."
