Page 36 of Tears of Tungsten
“Fine,” I said, although that couldn’t have been further from the truth. “Come on. I have a feeling we need to hurry.”
As it turned out, the spot I’d identified as the source of the problem was within a deep crag. For me, the precipice looked like a pool of overwhelming light, but for everyone else, everything was just darkness.
“In there,” I said, pointing at the crag and clutching my chest. I felt like I was suffocating. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“Selene!”Sphinx suddenly roared.“You need to leave. Get out of there! It’s dangerous.”
I shook my head, unable to answer, but knowing I absolutely needed to see this through.“These people need me as much as the women on Tartarus Base do.”
“Selene, you don’t understand. The whole place is going to—”
Sphinx never got the chance to finish the phrase. The sky lit up, but this time, the light I saw wasn’t the cool blue-green. It was crimson, like spilled blood. It was a flare of tachyons and it was coming from the direction of Gaia’s Haven.
“Oh, no!” Sister Anya cried, having obviously noticed it as well. “It’s The Grand Judiciary. They’ve found us.”
In the light coming from the crag, my mother’s face looked ominously greenish, like a corpse. “Impossible.”
She stole a glimpse at me, shock and betrayal flashing through her eyes. It didn’t take a genius to realize what she thought. But the mere idea was repugnant to me. I would’ve never sicced the forces of The Grand Judiciary on these innocent people.
“We need to go back to help them,” one of the men shouted, keeping me from making the slightest attempt to defend myself.
I agreed with him. Words were cheap. This wasn’t about me and my mother at all. Right now, my desire to prove my worth didn’t matter. We had to fight off The Grand Judiciary, long enough, at least, to allow the innocents in Gaia’s Haven to evacuate.
Who had those monsters sent? If it was the Harpy Squad, we’d be in trouble. That must’ve been what Sphinx had tried to warn me about earlier. I couldn’t hear her anymore, and I couldn’t risk reaching out. I was already in pain because of looking into the source of the light. Trying to communicate with her when she was still on Tartarus might very well cripple me.
The moment I reached the settlement, I almost wished I’d followed that first urge. I wished my strained connection with Sphinx had knocked me out or even killed me. It would have been less painful than the sight that greeted my eyes.
The Grand Judiciary hadn’t sent the Harpy Squad here. It was much worse. He’d sent my own unit, the Grand Chimeras.
The first mecha I saw was the Typhon. He was so massive he towered over every single building. I would’ve likely seen him much sooner had my eyes not still been sore because of our ill-fated investigation.
But bad vision or not, I had no trouble recognizing Brendan’s chimera. One of the snake heads had followed me around for the better part of my last semester, in an attempt to protect me. I’d seen the massive mecha play chess with Sphinx and we’d raced in the training areas of Chimera Academy. I’d spoken to him many times and he’d told me that he liked me. He’d struck me as cold, but kind, much like Brendan.
I could see no sign of that kindness now. Typhon was only a massive, rampaging beast. He demolished three houses with his tail, and I just stood there, frozen, unable to move a muscle. An aura of poisonous fumes surrounded him, and people were running and screaming, covering their faces and trying to avoid it.
I hadn’t known Typhon had that kind of skill. What a way to find out.
As a woman collapsed in front of me, still clutching her ten-year old in her arms, a loud, animalistic snarl echoed to my right. Dazed, I turned, only to see the Cerberus land on one of the buildings. It was Gaia’s temple and it crumbled beneath his paws. The gigantic mecha opened his four snouts and a stream of fire erupted from inside him, obliterating everything it touched.
“Selene!” I heard my mother scream. I couldn’t see her anymore, and I didn’t have the strength to go find her.
Beyond Cerberus’s shoulder, through the thick clouds of smoke, I spotted Scylla. My stomach turned as she grabbed a man with one of her tentacles, snapping his spine and instantly killing him. Once the stranger had stopped struggling, the tentacle dropped the man in the mouth of one of the wolf heads. At least she hadn’t eaten him alive, but that was a small mercy.
If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have thought this was all a horrible nightmare. But it was true. It had to be true, because my imagination could have never spawned something so horrific. The sharp scent of blood tinged the air, metallic and nauseating, mingling with the smoke and the fumes coming from Typhon. Screams echoed around me in a cacophonous symphony of grief and terror. At that moment, as I took in the horror of it all, I wanted to die.
The Grand Chimeras were killing people. This wasn’t a battle of any kind. It was a massacre, brutal and senseless violence, innocent families being trampled and destroyed by the overwhelming might of the monsters I loved.
I couldn’t see anymore. My vision was blurred with tears. How had I misjudged my lovers so badly? I’d been convinced that, despite their flaws, they had good intentions at heart. They’d been put in bad positions before, but they’d tried their best. Or so I’d thought.
I wanted to believe there was some kind of explanation, that some other force had taken over the Grand Chimeras. But in my heart, I knew it wasn’t true.
“Sphinx?”I tried anyway.“Tell me they’re not here, that the men I love aren’t the ones doing this.”
Trying to speak to her like this hurt, but it was worth it, because it got me my answer.“I wish I could say that, young Selene, but your males are inside the chimeras. They’re the ones piloting. But they have a good reason…”
I intended to hear her out, but that was when I saw her. That was when I saw Sphinx coming.
She was a little further away than the others, but she’d undoubtedly been present for the massacre too. She must have been in charge of a different part of the settlement.
