“Yes or no,” Challe spat. “Is the Progenitor alive?”

  “That’s a tricky thing,” Tezca said, his voice stilted, probably on account of how his nose was being ripped off his face. He squealed as Challe wrenched it. “Yes.”

  With blazing green eyes, Challe looked at her fellow Malikauans. “See how he’s lied to us?” She turned back to Tezca. “Why?” she asked with a crack.

  “Fear. Control. Scarcity. Revenge,” Tezca whimpered. He flailed and a quick flash of lightning burst from Challe’s palm, scalding his face. “No matter what I did, you all deserved this. Your ancestors betrayed me!”

  Challe adjusted one of her hands to plunge her pinky finger into Tezca’s other eye; both were being perpetually gouged out. His face was smushed against the stairs, blood streaming down the charred patch in the middle, and his nose hung by a sliver.

  “Eh, you’re kind of torturing him, Challe,” Gwil said. “I dunno if that’s…”

  Challe ignored him. “Answer my questions,” she hissed. “Nothing else.”

  The surrounding Malikauans were recovering themselves. Gwil jumped up and spanned the two walls with his legs so that he could simultaneously fend people off from above and below.

  “Hundreds of my brothers and sisters were sacrificed to maintain the Gracestorm. What did it protect us from?”

  “I made you into a god,” Tezca cried. “Look how many arms you have.”

  “What did it protect us from?”

  “Help me, you fools!” Tezca pleaded. “Stop this madness. The demons have driven the Vessel to insanity.”

  “What did it protect us from?”

  “None of you understand anything. I kept you safe from the cruel World.”

  Challe ripped Tezca’s nose off and smashed a rock into the gaping cavity.

  “Nothing!” Tezca said, sobbing. “I protected you from nothing. You worship nothing but lies and a dead goddess.”

  “Do you hear him?” Challe said. “The World has not ended. There are no demons. Is this the truth?”

  “Yes, yes, gods-fucking-pissing-shit, yes!”

  She twisted the rock. “Say the words. Say that it’s the truth.”

  “It’s the truth. It’s the truth.”

  Gwil looked over his shoulder to see Challe burying her fingers in the flaps of Tezca’s ruined face. She was ripping it apart. Tezca flailed like a dying beetle.

  She’d caught on quick about fighting a Hallow, but Gwil wasn’t sure this was the best way to convince her people of her cause. They were freaking out about the face-ripping.

  “Who were those red-eyed soldiers? Where did all our food come from? Who built this temple?”

  “I saved our people from the Leviathan!” Tezca said. “I made a deal with those who rule this World. I only kept a portion for myself. Arghhhh! It’s called taxes, you lunatic bitch! There’s nothing wrong with taxes. Arghhh! They’re the foundation of a functioning society.”

  Gwil got hit in the groin by a candelabra wielded by a feral-looking green-haired woman. He lost his footing on the wall. He fell onto the mass of bodies that had surged forward at his lapse. More Malikauans piled on top of him.

  “Challe!” Gwil yelled as he extracted himself. “It’s not working. They’re not listening. You shouldn’t have ripped his fa—” A shimmering cloud of white-silver vapor drifted past Gwil’s face. It smelled like pork.

  “Bullshit!” Tezca said. “All bullshit and driveling lies. I ripped half of it from an Old World pulp novel. I wrote the other half while I was on the shitter, you crazy—”

  Tezca’s body absorbed the ethereal substance. His skin glowed and the flaps of his face slapped back together like elastic. His nose regrew in an instant.

  “Wiggling Sausage Technique!” Tezca’s dislocated arm flopped backward, smacking Challe in the face with a clapping crunch.

  “YOU KILLED MY LEGS!” Tezca roared. He rolled over and buried Challe beneath his body. “Fuck all of you!” Strings of slobber dangled from his mouth. “Beloved Malikauans my ass! Look what you let happen to me! Three of my clones are dead and my nose got ripped off. You are all worthless trash, fit for nothing but enslav—I mean servitude. I spared your sorry lives, gave you the gift of security for centuries, and this is how you repay me? You wanna know why I imprisoned you?”

  Blood thumped in Gwil’s ears. This had spiraled out of control in an eyeblink. Flashing green light peeked out from beneath Tezca’s belly, but he seemed wholly unbothered.

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  Gwil threw his arms wide and, with a wave of Nirva, shoved the crowd back, sending them up the stairs.

  He whipped around and hit Tezca in the face with a flying kick. Tezca caught Gwil’s boot with a shark-like snap of his jaws. Gwil was glad he hadn’t kicked with his bare foot. He flared Nirva and twisted himself free.

  Tezca picked up chunks of rubble and threw them at the Malikauans. “Because I am strong, and you all are weak! That’s why! Because I am an intellectual, and you all are idiots. I did it because I can. That is the way of this World. No one can hide from her cruelty.”

  Gwil caught a long hunk of stone that Tezca had thrown like a javelin—a piece of the banister that had lined the landing. He held it upright and faked a swing. When Tezca raised his arms to block, Gwil flipped the thing around and stuffed it under Tezca’s belly like a shovel.

  He Nirva-stomped the raised end and then threw his shoulder against Tezca’s leveraged girth, excavating an opening for Challe to crawl out.

  As he held that position, Tezca grabbed Gwil’s ankle and pulled his leg out. Gwil dangled as Tezca brought his foot to his mouth and opened wide.

  “Fucking cannibal!” Gwil screamed.

  And then his foot and Tezca’s hand were both incinerated by a bolt of lightning. The strike collapsed the base of the stairs and three of them tumbled to the bottom where they were buried by debris.

  Pop. Pop. Gwil shrank, flared Nirva, and unshrank to blast himself out of the rubble. Beside him, Challe dug herself out. She looked vicious with her extra arms spread like wings, her eyes and jadestones glowing, her braids all coming apart as her hair fanned out from the static charge. A gash on her cheek closed itself up.

  Gwil grinned at her and then he heard a lot of screaming.

  He turned in time to see two fountains of blood spew out from amidst the crowded Malikauans. They’d packed themselves all the way to the precipice of the broken staircase, and a few were falling down as their comrades pushed against them. More blood sprayed and people started jumping off the stairs on purpose, pouring down and scrambling over the rubble.

  What the hell? Gwil glanced at Tezca, who was just shouting nonsense and throwing rocks, then went to see about this sudden butchery.

  A shadow flickered through the mob. Challe cried out. The moment Gwil processed it, three blades punched through his stomach. Gwil threw his arms around Claws and held tight to mitigate the man’s attempts at slashing up his organs.

  Face-to-face with Claws, Gwil grinned upon seeing that the man’s skin was all messed up—red and shiny and bubbly.

  With a burst of Nirva, Claws ripped one arm free and stabbed Gwil straight through the adam’s apple. That was something that hadn’t happened to him yet, and the sensation was terribly unpleasant.

  Gwil sent Nirva into his arms and raised them to block the next attack, but it didn’t come. Instead, Claws threw him down and ran past.

  “Self! Self! Are you okay?”

  “Claws, you imbecile,” Tezca groaned as he rolled himself onto his feet. “You’re late and you let Legs die.”

  Getting berated by Tezca and murdered by Claws was enough to finally break the spirits of the gathered Malikauans. They all fled, screaming and crying, running back up the stairs and scattering into the various hallways.

  As Gwil lay there poking at his adam’s apple, which felt weirdly similar to a walnut, Challe jumped over him. An eruption of thunder shook the entire temple as she went charging after Claws.

  Green lightning gathered in her four hands. Claws whipped around and dipped behind her, lopping off both her right hands as he passed. Then he plunged his other blades, which Gwil noticed were all fucked up and broken, into her abdomen and circled around her back, slashing all the way.

  “Challe!” Gwil garbled out. “Oh, shit.” Pop. He shrank and his neck promptly sealed up. He really needed to stop forgetting about that trick.

  “I’ll kill you, traitor Vessel,” Claws spat.

  As he reached down to stab her in the face, Gwil slammed into his wrist, diverting the attack. Clinging to the silk sleeve of Claws’s robe, Gwil embiggened, pulling Claws to the ground.

  Gwil somersaulted backward, flipping Claws over with him. He pumped his legs full of Nirva and drilled both feet into Claws’s stomach, flinging him upward.

  “Excuse me, Claws,” Tezca said. “You owe me an explanation. I’d appreciate if you told me why my Legs is dead while you are alive.”

  Gwil crawled over to Challe. “You’re okay, you’re okay. Just breathe. You’re gonna heal. I know it’s scary.”

  She looked at him, her face broken by anguish. “What is happening to me?” she whimpered. “I feel so angry. What am I…?”

  Gwil shook his head. “You’ll be fine once we fix this.”

  Claws was on all fours, gagging as he tried to speak. “Le-Legs sacrificed himself for you, Self. He stayed behind so we could escape.”

  Tezca held the back of his hand to his forehead and wailed, “Everything is being taken away from me. It’s not fair. Oh, Legs! His first death. He really was the best of you. Except for Body. Oh, Body! But Legs will be reborn, better than ever. Taller than ever.”

  Tezca wiped his nose with his hand and flicked the snot off. It landed with a splatter. “I’ve just about had it with you little demons!” He drew himself fully upright. “Claws—I want them dead. They’re both Hallowed. Let’s turn their brains into applesauce.”

  Kneeling beside Challe, Gwil’s eyes darted between the two bastards as they closed in. “Cort and Leira killed Legs, yeah?”

  Claws sneered. “If that’s the big redhead and the flower bitch, then yes. It was them.”

  “Ha! Get fucked. And you ran away from them after they killed your friend?”

  Claws snarled and rushed forward. Gwil waited… then shrank at the last second, aiming his tininess upward into his head as Claws dove beneath him.

  Pop. Big again, Gwil stomped Claws’s face into the floor. He dropped to a crouch, locking Claws’s head between his knees, and then reached into his pocket for his extra-sharp rock, intending to bash Claws’s head in with it.

  He came out with a shrunken pebble and laughed as he grabbed Claws by his single stuck-up peak of hair and wrenched his head around. With his other hand, Gwil stuffed the little rock into the man’s ear and drove it deep with his thumb.

  Gwil thought the pounding sound was thunder, but he learned that it was Tezca’s footsteps when the man rocked him across the face, launching him into the wall.

  “Ahhhh!” Gwil screamed as he tried to get up. His head was facing the wrong way! Tezca’s punch had twisted his head around a full one-hundred and eighty degrees.

  “I call that one the Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Technique,” Tezca said. He held his fist to his mouth and blew on it like it was a pistol.

  Gwil gingerly attempted to twist his neck back, but whenever he moved it, his body spasmed. It wasn’t so bad, anyway. It could even be handy, being able to see behind himself. Though he couldn’t see frontwards now, so… Six of one, half a dozen of the other, he figured. Caris was always saying that.

  He turned to face Challe, then turned again the right way—this would take some getting used to—and gave her a backwards wave. Her fingers had grown back to the first knuckle, and her abdominal wounds were healing up nicely. There’d be a bit of scarring, but that was to be expected when she was new to it.

  She was curled up in a ball with her eyes squeezed shut, shaking and clawing at the stone floor.