Page 30 of Guardian of Exile

“No.”

The blood on Veritas turned black before the blade drank it down. “Wrong answer.” Nyx relaxed her mental grip on the Harvester, letting it consume all of the remaining shop items hovering around it. “Let’s try again,” she said, getting another drop of blood on Veritas’ blade. “What did you lie to me about?”

Mary shot her a look of pure hatred. “There is one other thing you should know. The flyer gets you the number to call, but you have to be careful with what you say. Your condition needs to be bad enough it can’t be solved by ordinary means, otherwise you’ll just get a referral to some free clinic.”

“What’s the clinic name?”

“I don’t know.” She was telling the truth, and she was clearly irritated by the fact. “And don’t try to pressure them. The people who work for this guy? They think he’s some kind of saint. Push them and they’ll blacklist you.”

Veritas confirmed the words before drinking the last of the blood on its blade down. Nyx sheathed the dagger. Her right hand still cupped the Harvester, invisible to Mary, but Nyx wasn’t quite ready to put it away yet. She held it off to the side while she undid Gleipnir with her free hand, Evra keeping a watchful eye for any sudden movements. Mary followed Gleipnir’s departure with covetous eyes.

“I’d say it’s been a pleasure,” Nyx said, “but I’ve been told I’m a terrible liar. I look forward to never seeing you again.”

Nyx jerked her head toward the door, but Evra hesitated. “We should not leave her with these things.”

Nyx didn’t plan on it, but she wanted to be a lot closer to the exit before following through. “We got what we came here for, and she isn’t subject to Council law. Ordinary methods don’t apply,” Nyx said, hoping Evra would get the message that she intended to use non-ordinary methods.

Evra’s gaze fell on the Harvester. “Very well.”

Nyx let Evra go first, down the narrow aisle from the shop counter to the door. Nyx followed slowly, spiraling into herself as she did, down the stairs of a tower and onto a barren, snow-covered cliffside. To a ledge, and what lay beyond. She had thought A-Queltr would be more difficult to reach here, in Dead Earth, the same way her Hidden and portal magics were blunted, but death was everywhere, and death was in her, and she made the descent with ease. She had been walking backwards as she spiraled, her gaze fixed on the shopkeeper. Once perched on death’s ledge, she deliberately turned her back on Mary, as if confident no harm could come to her. She heard what she was waiting for the second her back was turned—a slight rustle of fabric as Mary moved, no doubt a hand dipping into a pocket.

Evra stopped.

“Keep moving. I have it.” She spun back just as the shopkeeper’s hand flew, launching a small silver sphere at Nyx. It fell apart halfway to her as the magic within broke free. It was a small explosion of power, something dark and nasty and targeted. Something meant to end a life. Something that not so long ago would have ended Nyx’s.

That explosion surged toward her—and met the wall of A-Queltr Nyx pushed out before her. A merging of that place and this one, a liminal space where death was dragged into the land of the living. A place that guarded her because she was its child. A-Queltr took that magic and hastened it to its inevitable end before it ever had the chance to touch her.

“Wrong choice,” Nyx said softly.

The Harvester rose to hover an inch above her palm, taking the freedom she gave it and pulling. Every item in the shop levitated, streaking to answer its call. It took them in, one after another after another, so quickly they turned into a blur she found it difficult to separate. Difficult to anticipate the end. To prevent that end from continuing.

The shelves emptied. Larger items—vases, stands, paintings, things Nyx would not have immediately pegged as magical in origin—streaked forward, compacting in on themselves as they too were sucked into the Harvester’s maw. The last of the items vanished into it, but the Harvester continued to spin in her hand, pulsing, seeking. It hungered, and she understood that hunger because it was hers as well.

There was something freeing about destruction. Something in being able to take everything around her and end it that made her feel invincible. Between the fathomless depths of A-Queltr and the insatiability of the Harvester, Nyx stood between two seemingly limitless powers, and in that moment, she understood why people had created the idea of gods. Because what she wielded right now felt godlike. It felt like nothing could ever touch her again, hurt her again, scar her again.

Like she could never lose anything again. Like she didn’t ever have to lose anything, because if everything became part of the Harvester, and she held the Harvester, then she held everything.

She was vaguely aware that the shelving units bolted to the floor were beginning to rattle, straining at their anchors. The nearest ripped free, a six-foot-by-four-foot rack of metal hurtling toward her, its shape contorting as it neared, disappearing into the Harvester as if being turned to liquid and drunk down. Another followed. Then another.

Distantly, someone was shouting at her. The voice sounded panicked, which struck her as silly. There was nothing to panic over. Not when she was was enveloped in this cocoon of power, of safety. Not when that power whispering around her promised that everything was soon going to be made right. That when everything finally belonged to it, there would be no more confusion, no more difficult choices. No more hurt.

There would be nothing at all but it, and it would be everything.

“Nyx!” The voice screamed in Nyx’s ear. She placed the speaker just as the Harvester’s attention swung towards them: Evra.

Reality slammed into her, cold and hard. She clamped down on the Harvester with every mental muscle she had. It bucked against her, fighting the mental hold. When that failed, it tried to entice her, to lull her back into that place where destruction had felt like power and safety. But for all that the Harvester felt limitless, its limits were far too real.

It could not create. It could not save. It could only take, and it would take everything if she let it. This shop. Evra. This world. A single item or a planet full of people made no difference to it.

The difference lay in her. In the choices she made.

The Harvester’s spin finally halted, the sphere dropping back into her palm. Nyx’s fingers closed around it, her hand trembling. The Harvester didn’t weigh more now than it had before, but she had the sense of it being heavier—denser. As if it had grown, but that new weight—the new mass it possessed—was compacted and self-contained. Self-supported. As if it bore its own weight, rather than passing it to her to carry.

She wanted to be rid of it. If she knew of a place it could be portaled to and never found again, she would have sent it there in that moment. Instead, she tucked it back behind her shirt. “Are you okay?” she asked Evra, not quite able to bring herself to look at the Amazon.

“Are you?”

“I have it under control.”