I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Twenty-One

Light flew up the walls. For a second, the pattern on the floor flashed bright purple, encasing us in a box of violet energy. It sucked the silver away. Chal dove to cover Quet as a second arrow pierced the black window. This time, the block shattered. Arrows poured in. These ones weren't silver, but they still exploded, spraying us with splinter shrapnel with the speed at which they hit the walls.

I grabbed Jem, screaming, and we scrambled to the side of the room under the open window. Tezcat had his hands to the floor. Xolotl scampered onto the chair-back with sparks snapping between his fingers. Chal sent a flood out the window, then jumped back as Xolotl electrified it. I heard screams. Tlaloc stomped and clapped a rhythm, chanting in a roar that carried the foreboding of a coming thunderstorm. As it built to its peak, the house trembled. The whitewater rumble of a downpour rolled down outside.

"Get back!" roared Tlaloc to the rest of us.

Chal landed like a cat on the floor opposite Tezcat and copied his position. Blue-green threads doubled the faltering purple cage. Arrows that reached the window shattered on impact. We ran to the back of the room as Tlaloc lifted a staff that had materialized in his hands. It crackled with blinding white energy as he brought it down on the windowsill.

I had never seen lightning move like it did in that instant. The ground outside and everything above lit up with a sheet of pure electricity: a spider's web that spanned trees, plants, rocks, and the rain itself. When the storm died, it left silence behind. Tlaloc spun around and thumped his staff down upright in the middle of the room. Any gods who could stand grabbed hold of it. They lifted it together and slammed its end to the floor, and the room flashed white.

Like I had on my first teleportation experience, I fell over when the floor reappeared. Tezcat did, too, and didn't bother getting up again. We all stayed where we were until Chal had taken over the spell that guarded the room. A blue-green block replaced the shattered black one in the window. When that was in place, everyone except Tlaloc sank down on the rug or the couches. The rain god circled the room, grumbling as he waved nicks in the stone and small drifts of arrow wood out of existence.

Were we safe? Dear gods, if we weren't safe yet, I was going to scream at him for caring about something so trivial when mine and my friends' lives were in danger. I did a quick inventory of the other gods' reactions. They had all relaxed.

"Tlaloc, pillow?" said Chal.

He tossed them one. Chal and Xipe helped Tezcat to a couch. He rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head.

"Tlaloc, for gods' sake, you can clean up after. Come help."

Tlaloc switched the grumbles to his glaring sister, but he helped dry, mend and settle everyone before going back to inspecting couches. The room fell into silence save for his surprisingly quiet footsteps. Jem was still beside me and I was too shaken to care, so I leaned my head on his shoulder until my ears stopped ringing. He put his arm around me. Emma across from us was so pale, she looked ill.

"That was easier than last time," said Xipe, breaking the silence.

There was a muffled, "Speak for yourself," from Tezcat's pillow.

Gods, how often did they do this, that Xipe could brush it off so easily? Coyol was out to kill them. I'd thought I was going to die.

"No, Xipe's right," said Chal. "Tezcat, you just held an entire half-moon ward on your own for most of that battle. Last time that took both of us, and we still barely managed it. And we didn't even have Quet this time."

I recalled Tlaloc saying something about how he and Quet would be the last remaining gods as others succumbed to loss of power. Just what the scrawny, feather-haired god could do to rival what I'd just seen from Tlaloc was beyond me.