“It was an accident!” Cort shouted at Leira. He looked around the bright green room they’d fallen into. “Fucking hell! Is all they have in this godsforsaken place strung-up corpses?”

  Gwil was too small to register any of the looming shapes in this new environment. They’d landed in soft sand, and he’d sank up to his waist. Pop.

  He grew back to normal size—phew—and looked around.

  In the center of the room was a massive, pale green sculpture of a quadrupedal eaglelike beast. Made of solid jade, it stood reared on its hind legs—almost like a horse—with its wings splayed out. Two human arms stuck out of its chest. One arm cradled a stone baby, and the other wielded a golden scepter.

  Carved into the wings were two protuberant—and very realistic—human faces. The surface of the statue was opaque and glossy. The light that shone from it, though blinding, seemed an impossibility. It did not glow from within—the jade simply was that bright.

  Though less captivating, the things that encircled the statue were far more troubling.

  Five of them. Wooden structures, X-shaped with a horizontal bar cutting across the middle. The ones on the far side faced Gwil.

  Crucified corpses, with their limbs splayed across the beams. The bodies were humanoid except that they all had extra pairs of arms, which were nailed to the horizontal bars.

  Shouting voices sounded through the hole in the ceiling, and shadows flickered across the opening. Several warriors peered down over the edge.

  Surrounding the sandy pit were rows upon rows of benches, as if this chamber were some sort of arena or auditorium. Do they come here to watch torture and executions?

  “Gah, alright,” Gwil said. “I’ve had it with this place. Let’s ruin everything.”

  “Oh, fuck!” Leira yelped. Three warriors had just jumped down the hole.

  Gwil ran up and punched two of them in the face. Both collapsed, unconscious. He snatched the club out of the hands of the third warrior and bashed him over the head with it.

  Two more had fallen during the scuffle. Gwil grabbed them both by the collars and smashed their faces together. Their noses crunched against each other, and blood dotted the sand.

  “Move, Gwil,” Leira said. “I’ll handle this. Go find a way out.”

  She unleashed a medley of spores—pink, red, yellow, brown. The cloud beneath the hole, engulfing the fallen warriors, and then rose upward as a pillar.

  Gwil watched in awe—he had not realized she could manipulate her spores like that. Then his eyes watered and his throat tightened, and he remembered he was supposed to be doing something.

  Cort had already moved to the far end of the auditorium, keeping to the outside of the crucifixion ring. Gwil decided to cut through the middle.

  At the center, there was a sixth crucifix. Gwil had not noticed it before—it stood side by side with the jade eagle statue, though the crucifix was dwarfed by the idol.

  The woman who hung from it… did not look so dead as the others. Their bodies were all in varying states of decay. However, this woman looked like she might’ve been sleeping. And she was breathing—the air shimmered as it fell from her mouth. And then she lifted her head.

  “You’re alive!”

  The woman stared at Gwil, blinked a couple times, then shook her head as if to clear it.

  Her headdress was like a crown. An array of jadestones—carved to resemble feathers—formed a fan atop her head. The stones crackled with lightning.

  Gwil guessed she was in her thirties. She had brown skin, brown eyes, and braided black hair that fell nearly to her waist. It was full of gold ringlets and multi-colored beads.

  For someone who was mid-crucifixion, she was well-groomed. And hale. Her eyes were not vacant, and her face was not twisted in agony. The woman looked both healthy and content.

  She wore a twinkling robe that matched her headdress. There were jadestones embedded in her skin, a ring of them surrounded her collarbone. There was another in the center of her forehead, and more that went down the lengths of each of her four arms.

  Where the spikes impaled her wrists, there were no wounds, nor any blood. Scar tissue had not formed around the metal—her flesh had healed perfectly.

  She inhaled deep, and then “Wawahuaaa!”

  She screamed and flailed as much as she could manage with all six of her limbs nailed to the crucifix.

  “Shhhh!” Gwil hissed. He thought about covering her mouth, but it felt too rude.

  “Demons! Demons in the Stormwomb! Help, help!” She whipped her head back and forth as if expecting someone to appear.

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  “I know!” Gwil said. “They’re killing you. Don’t worry. I’m gonna help.”

  “Wawahuaaa! Get away, get away!”

  “How do you like having four arms? Do they ever get in the way?”

  “You will not lull me with your sorcerous chit-chat, demon,” the woman squealed.

  Gwil knelt to look at the spikes in her ankles. They did not possess the burning gleam of Erithist, but Gwil’s breath caught as he prodded one with a cautious finger. He sighed in relief. Just normal metal.

  He used Mir to confirm what he’d already guessed from her lack of wounds. This woman was Hallowed. Her aura was a swirling storm of green and gray and black, and it exploded out of her, filling this space and beyond. The silhouettes of her arms blended together to form wings.

  “Do not touch me, demon!” she yelled. “Haven’t you taken enough? Leave us with our pitiful sliver, please!” Her legs spasmed against the spikes, but she still she showed no signs of physical discomfort.

  “Huh?” Gwil looked up at her. “What are you talking about? You’re gonna die like all these others.”

  “I am honored to die for this noble cause! It is my birthright.”

  “Born to die? That’s stupid. What’s your name, lady?”

  “I am Challe’Jade, Sixth Maker of the Malikau Gracestorm, First Sacrifice, and I will not let you destroy humanity’s final bastion.”

  “I’m Gwil, and I’m not a demon. I’m here with my friends. We’re gonna rescue you.” Gwil focused his Nirva into his arms and his fingers and began to work loose the spike that impaled the left leg of this Challe’Jade.

  “I’m begging you!” she shrieked as if Gwil’s touch was like hot iron against her skin. Her head lolled back to look upward. “Please, no.”

  “Why not?” Gwil asked, but he did stop tugging at the spike.

  “I forbid it!” Challe’Jade spat. “If you un-crucify me, you will be the eradicator of a species. Your kind has already destroyed the entire World. Please, demon, allow us to wither away in our haven. We are no threat! Forget you ever found us. Lie to your masters if you must. Even a monster like you can have a heart.”

  Gwil stood up to look at her, though the woman’s face was still elevated above him. “What are you talking about? You’re acting crazy.”

  “The Gracestorm is our meager salvation!” Challe’Jade said, eyes crazed, spittle flying from her mouth. “I carry all that weight upon my shoulders. I am the Vessel of the Jade Goddess of the Storm and the sole protectorate of humanity. I am our only hope of survival. If you kill me, you are dooming me to an eternity in hell, an eternity of lamenting how I doomed my people. Have mercy, demon.”

  Gwil scrunched his face up and scratched the top of his head. “I told you, I’m just a person. And I’m pretty sure that’s all completely wrong. The World’s not destroyed. I’m just gonna remove the spikes, okay?”

  She flailed, and her crucifix shook and creaked. “Brother! Quez, save me!”

  Gwil looked around as she continued screaming. He noticed an order to the arrangement of the other crucifixes. The corpse furthest to his right was little more than a skeleton. Going around the circle, the bodies were less and less decayed. The leftmost one still had skin and hair.

  “You’re causing these storms with your powers?” Gwil asked her. “Just stop doing that. Everything outside is all messed up because of you.”

  “Lies! Lies! Lies!” Her thrashing was such that Gwil reached out, thinking the crucifix might topple over.

  He laughed. “Lady, I’m sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. The World is fine. There’s like a billion people or more. There’s a city with robots like fifty kilometers away. And I flew here on a flying ship. Things are bad, but the World’s not ruined.”

  “My storm will rage until my death and then it will imbue my successor! It won’t end here, demon. We are survivors.”

  Gwil waved her off and went back to work on the spikes in her legs. Maybe she was under a spell or something. Either way, Gwil wasn’t gonna let her die like this.

  “Where did you come from, invader?” Challe’Jade asked. “Please, just tell me if my brother lives.”

  “I dunno,” Gwil said. “Your warriors crushed a bunch of themselves with some stone trap.”

  “Gwil! What the fuck are you doing?” Leira shouted from outside the circle. She stood next to a pile of unconscious feather-garbed warriors. “Is that person alive?”

  “Yeah,” Gwil said. “She’s crazy, though. We gotta free her.”

  “I am not crazy!” She twisted her head around to look up at the big green statue. “Merciful Eagle, I refuse to believe you let us suffer for this fate.”

  “You’re gonna be fine, lady,” Gwil said. He braced his foot against the wooden post and then, with a surge of Nirva, he ripped the first spike out.

  “Nooohoho!” the woman sobbed, weakly, as if defeated by her despair.

  Gwil threw the spike down and frowned. “Challe’Jade, listen to me. I swear, the World is not gonna end just because you stop getting tortured. Everything will be fine, and you will get to live. The Apocalypse was like nine hundred years ago.”

  Leira came running over. “I think they gave up on trying to come down through the hole. Woah! Four arms? That’s fun. Where’s Cort?”

  Gwil shrugged and then yanked the other spike out of Challe’Jade’s leg. The two gaping wounds started filling themselves in with raw flesh.

  “What’s her deal?” Leira asked, nodding at the crucifix.

  “Uh, I think she makes the storms, and she thinks the people here are the only humans left in the World,” Gwil said.

  “Oof,” Leira said. “Sounds messy. But that’s one mystery solved. Did you ask her about the spiked person in the temple?”

  Challe’Jade raised her freed legs to aim a flurry of kicks at Gwil. Gwil fended her attacks as he wiggled out another spike, the first from her arms. “No,” Gwil said to Leira. “She’s not being cooperative.”

  “How dare you keep up this fa?ade as if I’m some sort of idiot,” Challe’Jade snapped. “Have some honor, demons.”

  “We’re not demons!” Gwil said.

  “Yo!" It was Cort, calling from the far end of the auditorium.

  “I blocked the door, but there’s a hell of a lot of warriors about to break through.” He stood in a tunnel that went through the rows of seating.

  “You deal with this loon, Gwil,” Leira said, raising her voice over Challe’Jade’s howling. “I’ll help Cort—these warriors are weak. Just try to get some information out of her.”

  Challe’Jade cackled. “You will wish we were weak, demon woman. The warriors of Malikau possess devotion that cannot be fathomed by debased beings such as yourselves. Every single one of them would joyfully give their life for the mere chance to keep humanity’s last ember of hope alive. They have sworn themselves to the cause, and that vow will not be broken.”

  Gwil ripped out the last two spikes from Challe’Jade’s third and fourth arms. The glowing eagle statue sparked and flickered, and the light of Challe’Jade’s headdress was extinguished.

  She made no effort to catch herself as she fell from the crucifix, but Gwil caught her under the arms and threw her over his shoulder. He thought she might be unconscious but…

  “Stop that!” Gwil shouted as Challe’Jade pounded on his back with her four fists and drove her knees into his gut. “Good luck, Leira. I’ll have a look around and see what happens. Find me if you need anything.”

  Leira blew a kiss and went skipping off to help Cort.

  Gwil looked down at Challe’Jade. “You look like you could use some ketchup.”