From within what remained of her ship, Sekhmet eyed the devastation of the shield. It hung in tatters, its once-beautiful light no longer ephemeral, but molten, white-hot. Across its brutalized tapestry, huge sections slid from its tethers and tumbled end over end into the burning ruins of the city, slamming into its palaces, ziqqurati, and avenues already laid to waste, savaged by the violence of Marduk's weapon against the shield.

Marduk's black warship circled over Thoth's palace, where distortions in the air radiated outward from within the once-prime god of wisdom's residence. Sekhmet knew that weapon, it fired a burst of intense pressure, so powerful a direct hit could shatter an obelisk. She angled her ship as close as she dared, ignoring the blares coming from her console, the warning bleats of her proximity to Marduk's warship.

She flicked a look at the cloaking readout. Apart from her ion drive, it was the only thing which still remained intact. Everything else was done. No more fire power, no more shields. Even the atmosphere in the cabin would soon run out. Marduk might have brought her to her knees, but she was Sekhmet. It would take more than this to stop her. She kept her breathing thin, slow, saving the air.

Below, within Thoth's courtyard, a steady stream of warriors emerged from the brilliance of the mirror, clad in armor similar to Marduk's, fitted with enhanced capabilities, strength, and defenses. On their hips, and over their shoulders, silvered weapons, devices of devastation. They strode through the massive palace, arrogant, confident, disappearing under the roofs of the palace's vast colonnaded corridors and halls and out onto Thoth's scorched terrace, their armored bodies melding into a sea of black. At the forefront, the one who belonged to Marduk. Sethi stood at the edge of the terrace, the jihn in his hand, its blades' sickly light rippling with expectation. Despair slithered into her thoughts. She eased the ship back, withdrew from the jihn's poisonous reach.

Triumphant, Sethi regarded the ravaged, burning city, anticipation soaking him. Across the terrace, the bodies of the Elatians lay broken and bloody, mutilated by the power of the dislocation weapon. One must have survived. A warrior dragged the soldier to Sethi and threw him at the once-god of war's gold-sandaled feet.

Sethi turned. He eyed the suffering soldier with indifference and struck the man with the jihn, splitting his skull in two. The jihn shimmered as it consumed the soldier's soul. When it was done, Sethi jerked the curved blade free. Blood and brains splattered his chest and kilt. He turned back to the view, the jihn a living thing in his hand. He licked its blade, drank of its evil. Tendrils of darkness swept out from it onto his face and down his chest, they poured into the gold of his fractals. One by one, they turned black, and began to rotate, perfect, seamless.

Sekhmet had seen enough. She retreated to the perimeter of the city and hovered over a ziqquratu. One of the corners of its top tier were gone, its white marble sheared off by a fallen piece of the shield. Further down, the shield's fierce heat had left a deep trough along the side of the ziqquratu, a scar against its face, as though the structure itself had wept.

She looked back at the ziqquratu, then at the city. Caught her breath. She remembered this view. This was where she had confronted Urhi-Teshub and battled against him—where he had made love to her and made her his. Her heart clenched. The part of the wall where he had taken her was gone. She clenched her teeth and shoved her nostalgia aside. Her air was running out, fast. She eyed Marduk's ship, hovering over Thoth's palace, serene against the efforts of the gods' combined firepower. She locked onto its position, let her ship fix the co-ordinates, and allow for permutations. The screen beeped its readiness to her, faint under the riot of warnings, alarms, and notifications. She lifted her finger and held it over the ignition for the ion drive, allowed herself one final look at the ruined ziqquratu. She had been loved. It was enough. She punched the ignition and hurtled across the roof of the city, straight at her nemesis, her heart soaring with grief, vengeance, and violence, ready for the fall, for the pain, the suffering. For the end.

❃

Urhi-Teshub glared at Marduk's ship. The readout on his screen told him Marduk's shields were at half power, but the damage he and the other gods had rained onto the warship since Marduk had breached the shield had done almost nothing to change that. They needed another weapon like the one Set has used against Marduk. But Marduk was no fool. He would not risk that happening again. Set's presence, at least, granted them a small victory. So long as Set remained, the gods and their allies would be spared the deadliest of Marduk's weaponry. And yet it had led to this, a stalemate. Marduk would not use his weapons, and the gods could not get through his shields. So long as they were occupied with Marduk, none aided the allies.

He punched the weapons relay and launched another volley of explosives at the front of the warship, aiming for the flight deck's windows. The shields rippled against the impacts, as though the might of the prime god Horakhti's weapons were nothing more than pebbles tossed into a pool.

Urhi-Teshub punched the console and roared a string of oaths. Was there nothing he could do to stop this nightmare? Below, the armies of the allies streamed back through ruins of the city toward the burning plaza, the commanders of the kingdoms valiant despite the insurmountable odds, even as Sethi and his army pursued the armies of the gods, relentless, brutal. One Imarian could take out ten of the gods' allies at once. And still, more arrived. They poured out from Imaru through the blistering light of the mirror. Black as cockroaches. Pestilent. Evil. Their armor drinking in the light of the sun.

Sethi made his way down the central avenue, using the jihn against those caught in his path. Its blades flared, streaming trails of brilliant blue-white light, verdant with the weight of the slain. With each feeding, its oppressive reach spread, loaded with hate. It called to Urhi-Teshub. Its presence assaulted his mind, blinded his senses: It is over. Today I will feast on Sekhmet's light, and then yours. Istara will be last. Her suffering will be exquisite. You have failed.

Urhi-Teshub bellowed, his anger drowning out the poison seeking to take root in his mind. He would not succumb. He forced himself to focus on the console's weapons display, to prepare to fire again—this time at Sethi, even if it meant Marduk would take him out. His fall would be worth it to slow Istara's consort down, to buy the allies time.

An alarm blared, fat with warning. He cut a look at the screen, suspecting Marduk had locked onto him. No. The warning was not coming from Marduk's ship. He stared at the red streaming over the screen, the message made no sense. Proximity alert. Collision of ion drives imminent.

Marduk's ship roared to life, its ion drive flared, a blinding explosion of liquid heat. Urhi-Teshub grabbed onto the controls, fired the thrusters, and tore up into the heavens, his mind reeling. He eyed the message again. No. He hadn't read it wrong. Ion drives. His heart tight, he pulled up. The alarm quieted. Within the silence of the ship, he gripped the armrests of the seat. The only other ship which possessed an ion drive was Sekhmet's. His brave, beautiful goddess would stop at nothing to bring down their oppressor, and all he could do was watch. No. He would not watch. He punched the thrusters and plummeted back down from the skies. He would be there, waiting for her, when she fell.

❃

Amidst a flurry of deafening wails blaring from the console, Marduk hit the ion drive. Meresamun's skull slammed against the head rest, her chest compressed and her lungs screaming in protest. Blind to her suffering, her consort worked the controls, protected against the ion drive's brutal onslaught within the dark sheath of his armor.

The gods had proven more resourceful than she expected her consort had anticipated. From behind the console's reflection against his helmet, Marduk's cold silence spoke volumes. The weapon the gods had turned against them had left scorch marks across the console and along the inner walls of the flight deck. Suffocating heat, hot as a baker's oven still ravaged the space, although compared to the nightmare temperatures of the missile's detonation, it could be the chill of a desert night. As the devastation meant to destroy a city swept over the warship, the heat of an inferno had consumed the air, burned her skin, and ignited the fabric of her gown. Aiya's hair had caught fire. The acrid stink of it still filled the cabin. Meresamun clung to the armrests so hard, her fingers ached. Please. Not again. Not the blistering, punishing, drowning heat. Not the flames.

Against the intense pressure of the ion drive, Marduk veered toward the pillar of unutterable darkness, where an endless tower had once reared into the heavens. She quailed against the inexpressible magnitude of it, of the rank evil emanating from its heart. Marduk ignored it, his attention focused on the console, his fingers moving, deft, against the weapons console, preparing to unleash another series of weapons.

During their brief interlude hovering over the city, she had examined the pillar, her hopes in shreds, and her heart vanquished. Defeat had swept through her. It still clogged her throat. Hopelessness slaughtered her. She had thought what had been housed within the tower was good—if it was called the Well of Life, it would have to be—but the pillar of abyssal dark which speared the center of the city bled malevolence, destruction, oppression. Zherei's information had to be wrong, that thing could not be Zarpanitu's Well of Life.

She closed her eyes, hauled herself away from the chaos of alarms and warnings pouring from the ship's console and beyond the barrier of the ion drive's bone-searing roar to search her mind for what she could recall of the sage's vague descriptions. A fragment pierced the turmoil of her mind, a distant flicker of light glimpsed from the dark waves of a storm. She surged after it, desperate, sensing it was important. There. As they had sat at the table in the quiet of the library in Perev and gazed at the map of Elati, Zherei had said the Well was comprised of a contradictory combination of both light and dark. She opened her eyes and forced herself to face the pillar's bottomless dark, her existence reeling with revulsion. Nothing. The monstrosity possessed no light at all. It could not be the Well. She had failed. It was too late. Marduk would never be stopped. The darkness had won. Soon, he would reign supreme, and she would stand by his side, a creature of the dark, a perpetrator of torment. Tears scoured her heart.

Marduk rotated the ship onto its side. The restraints bit into Meresamun's flesh. Pain sliced through her blistered skin, blade-thin, exquisite. She hung, limp, within the brutal cradle of her seat, exhausted, defeated, broken. Oblivious to her suffering, Marduk hauled the ship around the curve of the pillar, the ship's roof just beyond the pillar's obsidian reach. They tore free and leveled off, heading toward the largest pyramid. Its golden capstone glinted in the sun's light. A new alarm blared, high pitched, drowning out the lesser cries of the ship. The flight deck's interior lights turned blood red.

Within the space of a heartbeat, Marduk cut the ion drive, let go of the controls, yanked his restraints away and did the same to Meresamun's, the speed of his work startling her. He kicked away a panel under the console and pushed her into the hidden, padded space, rough, his metal clad hands harsh with haste. He came in after her, clad in silent black, his face lost to her. She caught her reflection in the red glow his visor, her eyes hollow and raw with despair, her cosmetics smeared from weeping, the singed tangles of her hair. He pulled her against him, a warrior, hot with rage. His armor wrapped around her, a cocoon. She huddled against the cold sheath of him, her heart thundering. At the edge of her hearing, the terrified screams of Aiya, thin with dread. The final alarm escalated, its tempo increasing, urgent, desperate, loaded with warning. The red light deepened, soaked Meresamun's senses. Marduk pressed the symbols on the screen against his wrist and a blister of energy snapped out from his armor, surrounding them in a field of dark light.

"I have you," Marduk cried, his voice metallic and harsh in the ship's dying light. "I will not let you go."

Caught within his savage embrace, Meresamun closed her eyes. Red-black light drenched the backs of her eyes, dragged her into a sea of blood. One heartbeat. Two. A brutal thundering tore into the rear of the ship. The alarms died. A breath of silence.

Marduk's grip tightened, his gloved hand wrapped around her skull, braced her against the unforgiving wall of his armored chest.

A wall of blue flames slammed over his back, and streamed over his shield, the heat of it scorching her anew, blinding, furious. A blistering, solid field of white radiance surrounded them, melted the console above them, twisting its metal frame. Sections of the console blew outward, exposing the sunlit world outside the dying light of the ship. Marduk grabbed onto one of the glowing metal struts of the console just as the floor caved in beneath them. With brutal efficiency, he hauled her up onto the floor of the flight deck, his grip so violent her ribs screamed against the crush of his hold.

Another explosion ripped through the fuselage of the stricken ship. A wall of raging, boiling fire roiled over Marduk's shield. He wrapped himself around her, cradling her against the death throes of his ship. A shearing, heated, hiss tore through her senses, deafened her. Terror stalked her spine as the wall of the flight deck sundered itself from the ship's cabin, slow, stately. The cabin fell away, an ugly, distorted twist of metal soaked in blue fire. Through the aching heat of her vision, Meresamun searched for Aiya, but of the other woman, there was nothing, the section where she had sat was gone, only a gaping, burning hole remained.

A vicious jolt rammed into her. Her stomach slammed into her throat, yanked away her breath. Brutal dislocation stormed through her. Marduk pulled her legs up, gathered her against him, tight as a ball, his armor surrounding her. Outside the empty space where the cabin had once been, the pillar rotated to its side. Vertigo rammed into her as they slid from the sky, tumbling within the flaming wreckage toward the sheer, golden walls of the pyramid.

Locked in Marduk's fierce embrace, surrounded by the ephemeral dark wall of his shield, Meresamun plummeted with him, lost within a well of flames toward the ruined plaza of the gods. She had believed reaching Anki would mark the culmination of her existence, would define her path, her purpose, and would grant her the chance to do what Zarpanitu could not. But, as the pyramid's girth raced toward them, beautiful and cruel, Meresamun knew there would never be a reprieve, not for her, or for the one who loved her.