Page 76 of The Infinite Glade
“You once called me a traitor, for leaving after my cliff ceremony. But I returned. And when I did, I brought to you what even the Grief Bearers above couldn’t see. The one true Godhead, the one ultimate thing we’ve been taught to destroy. Well, there she is. You can call me whatever you want, but I’m still one of you.” He lowered the hood of his cloak with his right hand; his left arm hugged the gun under his cloak. Just in case.
An Orphan soldier—the one with ears too big for his face—held Alexandra by her long, luxurious hair. Or what had been. Now it was filthy and tangled.
Minho pointed at her. “She’s the Godhead. All that’s left of it, anyway. You have the honor to kill her if you’d like.” He knew every soldier there would have fought to be the one chosen to kill the Godhead. But if he could get Ears to do it, the one who’d led the charge against Minho and Orange as traitors, then he could get the rest of them to see the truth, too. But no one moved.
Minho sighed, as loudly as he could manage. “We’ve waited our whole lives to kill the Godhead, and now you want to wait? Sit here and wait for the Grief Bearers to tell you what to do?” He held in his immense urge to cough and pushed his lungs to speak louder. “You’re good soldiers. Sharp. Disciplined. Smart.” He looked as many in the face as possible, his vision still a bit blurry. “You’ve lost the ability to think for yourselves. You’ve killed thousands in the search for the Godhead, but now that she’s right in front of you . . . nothing. You can’t do it. Why?”
“He’s right . . .” a soldier nearby murmured.
Orange threw the last spark into the kindling. “We’ve fought for this moment. Kill the Godhead and we’d be free. Well, here we are.” Her voice boomed, echoed throughout the Glade. “Kill the Godhead!” She raised her weapon high above her head in a war cry. “Kill the Godhead!”
Others joined in. The chant returned. Confidence returned to the faces of the soldiers. Minho knew that this time around, they’d actually do it. They’d actually end Alexandra once and for all.
“Kill the Godhead!” All the soldiers chanted it as loudly as they could.
Minho simply nodded, setting the precedence of his command.
The soldiers swarmed like ants.
The Goddess Romanov couldn’t move as the blade—the first of many—slowly sank into her skin, cutting layer by layer. But she moved her eyes toward Roxy, who looked away. If Alexandra’s arms hadn’t been tied behind her, she might have reached for Sadina in the distance. Might have called her name. Might have said so many things that needed to be said.
Her vision buzzed into a static red, and then a bright flash of crimson light. A color so bright it looked like a sun flare, exploding in the sky, blinding her. Another knife stabbed her, the blade in her throat, piercing deep. All her muscles fell loose.
She pondered the Evolution amongst the pain and the light. The Flare virus, mutated and expanded within her mind, had almost changed the universe forever. Almost. Almost. She pondered an infinity of thought and knowledge; she pondered it all. And when it vanished, when her mind emptied, there was only peace.
The sacred site of the Maze, such a fitting place for a Goddess to die.
She had only one regret: dying in a lowly Pilgrim’s cloak. On some level, beyond the light and the darkness that waited, the pettiness of the regret brought her a final and wondrous joy.
She became weightless, a strange view of the Glade suddenly filling her vision, as if seen through a thick glass. The center of the Glade spun around her, the Maze in the background, all of it spinning and spinning and spinning. The world was a blur, a haunted smear of color.
She blinked three times, then entered the Infinite Glade of Death.
Soldiers were bred to fulfill orders, and the war against the Godhead had been won.
But the war to take control of the Remnant Nation had just begun.
Minho had once heard a rumor that decapitated heads could still hear, think, and feel for up to twenty seconds after being cut from their body. The odds were slim, yeah. But everyone knew about the proverbial chicken with its head cut off. Just in case, Minho placed his boot right in front of the Goddess’ head, just in case Alexandra’s brain still had firing neurons and synapses. He shouted to the surrounding soldiers, building his case for leadership with every single action and word. “May the Godhead’s death be long, and her name never mentioned again, for the Evolution . . . is ours now!”
He swore he saw one of Alexandra’s eyes blink before a Remnant lifted her decapitated head high in victory. He swung it around for all to see. Cheers erupted from both Remnants and Pilgrims, alike.
“We did it, Minho,” Orange whispered to him, placing her hand on his shoulder gently.
“Youdid it, Orange.” He owed her his life. “You definitely did it.” He took in the celebration going on all around him.
“I thought you were dead!” Roxy cried from below, still kneeling next to the bottom half of Alexandra’s body.
“Me too . . .” he replied, wishing so badly that she hadn’t experienced the Remnants’ heinous acts of war. Embarrassment for who he really was rushed to his face, but Roxy looked at Minho and gave him a loving smile.
“My boy, come here so I can hug you.”
For the first time in his life, Minho wanted to cry. She had watched him instigate a brutal murder, right in front of her eyes. She’d seen him bloodied and uglied by war, doing the evil means to reach an end he could just barely conceive—a new Nation of Remnants, under his control. All of this, and she still cared for him as much as ever. He cut her combat ties and gave her the longest hug of his life. An overwhelming sense of warmth rushed through his body, along with an overwhelming amount of pain.
He saw Kit nearby and hailed him to come over.
“Roxy . . . this is Kit, the strongest, bravest soldier in the whole Nation. My little brother, Kit.”
“Oh!” Roxy pulled Kit into another long hug. She looked at Minho like he’d just given her the gift of life. He’d taken more lives than he could count as a soldier, but introducing Kit to Roxy felt like he’d given them both something that no one could ever take away from either of them. Another son for a mother; a mother for another orphan.
