Page 120 of Damned and Broken Gods
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 Dharmacarried 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?”
