I decided not to push it as we all turned toward Blesswood together. The door had dropped us right before the line of trees alongside the back of the arena, so there was a short distance to walk.
“So what’s the plan now?” I asked as we walked. “I mean, Rau isn’t going to give up. He’s going to try and break the soul-link again.”
I didn’t add that I would die before I let that happen, but I was sure they’d get the general idea of how I felt based on my tone of revulsion.
“He can’t touch you for a while, dweller-baby,” Coen assured me. “We’re at full power now, and Rau has very few friends and alliances.”
“When he kidnapped me, he used Razi … the Envy Beta to help.”
None of them seemed surprised to hear that. Coen even added, “Yeah, Envy and her Beta are probably the only two he has any sort of decent connection to. Not to worry though, they’re not Original Gods, and they mostly spend their time looking at what everyone else has, while rarely developing their own powers.”
We were past the temple now, and a low humming noise in the background finally caught my attention. It had been there for some time, but it was too loud to ignore now.
“What is that?” I finally breathed out, fearing what the gods might have dropped onto Minatsol. “Is there a battle going on?”
Our pace picked up and the Abcurses looked grim as we sprinted across the green grass.
“It can’t be a god-war.” Siret sounded semi-serious as he spoke and ran at the same time. “There would be destruction everywhere, and the energy would be rocking this place.”
I shook my head, my nose wrinkling up as I thought about his words. “If it’s not a god-war though, then what sort of … holy freaking shit!”
I gasped, and it wasn’t because the run had left me breathless. Okay, the run had left me a little breathless, but the gasp was still mostly because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“Not a god-war.” Siret laughed.
Nope, not a god-war. We were witnessing a sol-dweller war. Somehow, in the time since I’d been forcibly removed from Minatsol, all manner of chaos had broken out.
“Is this because of Rau?” I asked, before letting out a low shriek and ducking as a sink flew over my head. A sink? How the hell were the dwellers throwing sinks?
“Dwellers are physically strong.” Aros answered the question in my head before the one I asked out loud. “Sols underestimate them because they don’t have gifts, but it’s the sols who actually need the dwellers, not the other way around.”
He made a fair point—dwellers grew the food, cooked the food, kept all the industries running, and mined the stones. Sols took care of some of the energy, and policed the criminals, but that was pretty much just about them controlling all citizens.
“This is definitely because of Rau,” Yael mused. “This is a little gift he left behind.”
A flaming fireball shot up into the sky and smashed into the side of the building. Shrieks erupted and dwellers scattered away from the flames. From where we stood, one side of the open space was filled with sols, and the other side were dwellers. They were taunting each other. Throwing objects, using their gifts. Each side was trying to force the other side to break first.
“Don’t burn the building down, you idiot!” was the shouted command from the sol side, and soon after, a spray of water extinguished the flames. “You’ll make the gods angry!”
I remained with the Abcurses, off to the side, watching the chaos unravel, until …
“Emmy!” I half-shouted as I caught sight of my friend. She was front and centre. “Why is Emmy holding a bottle and how is that bottle on fire?” By the end of my question, my voice had reached a high-pitched decibel completely alien to me. Shock was flooring me … until the panic began to kick in. “She’s going to get herself killed! She’s not allowed to do that! She’s supposed to be the responsible one!”
I took off before any of the guys could stop me, but I knew that they would follow. They always followed. It was something I loved about them—about our team. We had each other’s backs. Something smacked into the side of my head as I ran, but since it didn’t hurt too badly, I figured it wasn’t a sink.
Still, it stung, and it was getting worse. Something was running down into my ear, but I had no time to stop and figure out what it was. I had to get to Emmy. When I reached the dweller side, the mass of bodies was too tightly-packed for me to keep running, forcing me to start pushing my way through the crowd instead. Lots of cursing and flung elbows followed me, but then the Abcurses must have been right on my tail and somehow the crowds were parting for us. Wide eyes and gasps followed our progression. I ignored all of them, my focus for Emmy alone.
Her eyes swung to me as I stormed up. When we were only a few feet apart, a familiar face popped out from behind her. Atti.
“Willa!” Emmy let out a hoarse cry and threw herself into my arms. The flaming bottle had disappeared, which must have meant that she had thrown it. At. A. Sol. “I saw them take you away,” she continued in a rush. “But none of us could move or stop him. I never thought I’d see you again.”
Realisation hit me then, something about the desperate anger in her tone, and my jaw felt like it was a foot wide as it hung open and I stared at Emmy. “You …” My voice broke and I had to clear my throat to start again. “You started this rebellion?”
My rule-loving, dweller-proud, sol-worshipping, best friend had started a war. I couldn’t believe it.
“I went to the sols and asked for their help with you,” she said, hands on hips, her stubborn face showing proudly. “I begged them to help, I told them what had happened and that we shouldn’t just be pawns to the will of the gods.”
A single tear trailed down her cheek as chaos continued to reign around us. I caught Siret deflecting a few of the gifts being shot in our direction from the corner of my eye: he was protecting us from flame and earth, wind and plant life as it tried to creep across our feet.
Meanwhile Emmy and I continued to stare at each other, both astonished for different reasons.
“They laughed at her.” Atti tried to help. “When she begged for assistance, the dweller relations committee laughed right in her face and shoved her out the door.”
Seemed like Jade and her band of assholes were stepping comfortably into Elowin’s shoes. “We already had the beginning of a rebellion,” Emmy added in a low voice. “All they needed was a little push. A little fan to the embers which were burning below.”
“To what end though?” I asked, waving my hands to indicate everything around us. “What are you hoping to achieve here?”