More Gods Than Stars Preview Chapter #3

Chapter 3: Get that Tablet!

Just a reminder: The City That Would Eat the World, Book 1 of More Gods Than Stars, is available for preorder now in ebook and audio, and will be out on February 11th!

------------------------------------------------

After landing in the middle of the battle, Thea only had a second to breathe before the fight pulled her in.

When a home-made polearm came at her from the side, a rusty butcher’s blade tied to a broomstick, Thea raised her combat fork to catch it by reflex, her trajectory boon and long hours of training kicking in automatically. Before she’d even got a good look at her attacker, she’d already twisted the combat fork around and trapped their weapon between the tines of her own. It only took a quick swing of her fork to tear the home-made polearm from its wielder’s hands.

Thea tossed the ramshackle weapon into the whirlwind of knives behind her, then in the same motion, she jabbed the butt of the combat fork into her attacker’s gut as she finished disarming them.

She only got a quick look at her attacker— younger and lighter-skinned than Thea, but her red headband and knife tattoos immediately marked her as a member of the Unclean Knives, one of the nastier regional gangs.

Which meant that the dying god had to be Faneras of the Unclean Knives. She still couldn’t remember his host’s name, though— after all, it’s not like anyone was going to be sending a lowly mimic exterminator after gangsters.

She was lucky— the wielder clearly lacked proper polearm or spear training, or they would have tried to stab her instead, which her weapon was less effective at intercepting. Not ineffective, by any means, but it was trickier.

As her disarmed attacker was pulled back into the crowd, Thea took an instant to adjust the three dials wrapped around the handle just below her combat fork’s twin tines.

Then her next opponent was on her, a big man swinging a shortsword.

She blocked with one of her fork’s tines, and it immediately began humming from the force of the impact. A second, a third, and then a fourth time she blocked, falling back each time, closer and closer to the whirlwind of blades. The attacker was freakishly strong, even for his size— he almost certainly had a strength boon. Or a temporary strength blessing, at the very least.

Each time she blocked, she didn’t just fall back farther— the humming of her combat fork grew louder and louder. As she swung the fork back and forth, the hum rose and fell as it drew closer and farther from her ear, sounding like some viciously huge mosquito. The fifth time she blocked her opponent’s blade, it practically sang— and the vibrations it fed back into the sword shook it right out of its wielder’s hands.

He only had a moment to look surprised at his empty hands before the tuning fork smashed into the side of his head, still singing a pure note.

Thea was just as surprised as he was. She’d been in brawls before, had fought in the Turoapt riots with shield and truncheon, but this was her first time using her big tuning fork in actual combat, instead of just practice— it was absolutely not an approved Wall Guard weapon, not for centuries now. The fact that it had worked just as well as it had during her years of practice was a bit of a shock.

She didn’t get the time to dwell on her surprise before someone else rushed her. The next minute or so was a blur of foes lashing out at Thea and each other. Few stuck close enough to fight her, and often she’d only have time to exchange one or two blows before the shoving of the brawl moved her opponents away. Those who fell were swiftly trampled by the crowd.

No one else seemed to want to get into the clear space around the dying god and the clay tablet with Thea. Their reluctance was the main reason she could hold her ground— her weapon and fighting style were meant to keep constantly moving, to dodge and weave between strikes, despite her heavy weapon. She couldn’t say she blamed her foes for their reluctance— the orbit of the knives was slowly but steadily widening, and the screaming of the dying god was incredibly painful.

Thea was only handling the screaming as well as she was thanks to two years of experience with Seno. The little god was good natured and demanded little in the way of ritual— he just screamed loudly in the back of her mind whenever she stepped on a crack between flagstones.

Honestly, Thea counted herself lucky— it was rare to host an indwelling god with only a single commandment and relatively harmless, if annoying, punishments.

Even as well as she was doing in the fight, it wouldn’t do to get overconfident. She was about the only person in the brawl who didn’t have to watch her back, and most people didn’t want to get close enough to the dying god to attack her.

Plenty of people in the brawl were throwing stuff at her— stones from the broken prison wall, trash, and godstuff knives from members of the Unclean Knives— but the spinning blades behind her protected her back, and she could dodge or deflect any projectiles from the front. Nothing was moving fast enough that her trajectory boon couldn’t handle it.

It felt like an hour before she got a breather, though in reality, it probably hadn’t been more than a minute or two. While there were plenty of gang members among the dozens of escaping prisoners, most were just doing their best to escape the battle and the dying god. They pushed aside many of the battling gang members and largely ignored her.

Seno was still exhausted, but her soul had refilled with enough soulstuff to produce another of his flagstones. She manifested it a couple feet off the ground, then hopped onto it to get a better view.

None of the other Wall Guards in the battle were anywhere near her— they were by far the smallest force in the brawl, and both gangs were doing their best to keep the Guard away from the dying god and the clay tablet.

Thankfully, none of the Saints in the battle were near either. Even if it was hypothetically possible for a layperson to stand up to a Saint, at least for a short time, it was still a terrible idea.

Thea dropped back to the ground and dismissed the flagstone, ready to hold her position until the other Wall Guards… the real Wall Guards… reached her.

It was just her luck that Faneras decided that was the exact moment to finally die.

----------------------------------------------------------

The instant Faneras died, three things happened.

First, the god screams all just cut off at once, the sudden silence in the Firmament sending most of the combatants staggering.

Second, the Saints fighting on the edge of the battlefield started charging through or leaping over the crowd to get to the clay tablet.

And third, Thea did something incredibly stupid.

She whirled and charged right into the knifestorm.

The blades were already beginning to dissolve into ugly red motes of godstuff, but they could still cut her, still tear her into ribbons if she moved wrong even once.

Thea pushed her soul to its limit, blowing soulstuff into her trajectory boon. She dodged, ducked, and leapt over spinning knives, smashing a couple into colorful motes with her combat fork.

Before she’d even had a chance to think about what she was doing, she was inside the eye of the knifestorm, and had her hand on the clay tablet.

The world seemed to fade away, to slow to a pause, as the god inside the tablet gazed at her. She felt an overwhelming impression of exhaustion and cynicism from the god, felt it run its senses over her— and then dismiss her entirely.

The moment ended, the clay tablet’s script stopped glowing, and the world snapped back into clarity around her.

The corpse of Faneras’ host crumpled to the ground, and the knifestorm’s dissolution began accelerating, though not evenly.

Thea quickly shoved the clay tablet into a belt pouch, where it just barely fit, and started looking for a way to join up with the fighting guardsmen.

Only to find that one of the Saints— the one belonging to the Unclean Knives— was standing just outside the knifestorm, ready to charge the instant it subsided.

Just behind him, a Guardsman Saint brawled with the Saint from the gang Thea didn’t recognize. Both women were striking each other with far more than normal human force, and the criminal Saint kept trying to bind the Guard Saint with chains of godstuff.

“Get the godslayer out of here!” the Guard Saint yelled at her. “Don’t let these criminals get their hands on it again!”

“I’ve got a counter-proposal,” the Saint from the Unclean Knives said. “Give me the tablet, and I’ll let you live.”

“Don’t be a fool!” the other criminal Saint yelled. “The Unclean Knives are done for, with Faneras dead! Give the tablet to…”

She was interrupted by the Guard Saint’s fist.

The Unclean Knives Saint began to say something else, but Thea didn’t get a chance to hear what it would have been, because the moment she’d been waiting for finally happened.

Faneras’ last working finally ran out of power, and the bulk of the godstuff knives finished dissolving into ugly red light.

A couple dozen knives hadn’t finished dissolving, though. They kept every drop of momentum the storm had imparted to them, and went flying out at high speeds.

Thea took off at another dead sprint the moment the knifestorm failed, and manifested more of Seno’s hovering flagstones to climb up, until she was sprinting over the heads of the brawling crowd, each flagstone only lasting long enough for her to push off it before dissolving into yellow light. She heard a shouted command to ‘get that tablet,’ but didn’t look back.

She highly doubted any of the Saints would have been taken down by the knives— given how much more common defensive and health enhancement boons and blessings were over offensive ones, taking down a Saint usually turned into an endurance battle.

It would definitely slow them, though.

Only a couple of gangsters tried pursuing her up onto the rooftops— one who could jump like a frog, another who could apparently fall up walls.

She ignored them, and sprinted along the rooftops.

Her muscles and lungs were burning now, after minutes of running and fighting. Even as good of shape as she was in, she’d pushed herself harder than ever since the gods started screaming.

The gangster who could fall up walls swiftly dropped behind them— his godgifts didn’t let him fall horizontally, it seemed. That, or he’d only just used a blessing. Profoundly wasteful, if so.

Though, if anything was worth wasting a blessing for, it was the clay tablet.

Thea dodged past chimneys, ducked under clotheslines, and leapt over a startled drunk who’d fallen asleep on a rooftop balcony, and was just waking to the sounds of battle.

Even though it would slow her a little, she ascended to the broad ridgeline of the current tiled roof, to get a view ahead of her.

There was a three-way intersection coming up, with two potential roofs she could jump to.

She veered left, aiming towards a temple with a roof studded with grotesque statues. Thea had no idea what god or gods it belonged to, but hopefully they wouldn’t object too strongly to her running on their roof.

Mostly, she chose the temple because it was a much farther distance than the other option, and she was hoping that her frog-hopping pursuer couldn’t make the jump.

She had to manifest two of Seno’s flagstones mid-air to step on as she crossed the street and landed on the temple roof. She rarely pushed the little flagstone god so hard, and she could feel his exhaustion, even worse than her own— she needed to end this chase soon.

The instant she touched down on the roof, half a dozen stone grotesques started growling and moving towards her.

Of course the statues were proper gargoyles, divinely animated relics, not just imitations meant to scare off thieves. She just had to have chosen a temple of a god whose gifts could bring stone to life.

Thea’s life was great like that.

She dodged around the gargoyles, which were either slow to warm up or just slow, but she lost momentum in the process.

She still didn’t even have a chance to look before she threw herself off the temple roof.

She caught a brief glimpse of a tiny churchyard with a couple trees and some sort of monument between her feet as she descended another flagstone staircase.

Seno gave out completely at head height above the dead-end alley past the churchyard, the last construct flagstone never even reaching solidity, but Thea managed to land in a successful roll without doing worse than bruising herself. Her combat fork struck the wall on one side of the claustrophobic alley as she rolled and rang out a clear tone.

She winced as she rose to her feet, hoping none of her pursuers had heard the weapon.

No such luck, because a heartbeat later, the Unclean Knives Saint appeared in the mouth of the alley.

“You should have given me the tablet when you had the chance,” the Saint said, manifesting rusty construct knives into his hands out of sky blue godstuff. “Now I’m going to take it the hard way.”

Thea’s eyes darted around desperately, looking for any advantage. Looking for any way to get past the Saint and out of the alley.

Which, of course, was when someone else dropped down off one of the adjacent roofs into the alley’s dead end behind her.

Before Thea could glance back, the Unclean Knives’ Saint lunged straight at her.

She managed to deflect the first couple of knife strikes, but the Saint was faster and stronger than anyone she’d fought today, and his knives weren’t constrained by the narrow alley like her combat fork was. When she managed to knock one of his knives out of his hand on their third exchange, he immediately manifested a new one into that hand. Her blow had broken at least two fingers on his hand, but even as the new blade manifested, his fingers were already visibly healing.

And then the person behind her flared their godgifts, and Thea realized she was stuck between not one but two Saints.

The Unclean Knives Saint used her moment of distraction to hook one of her legs with his foot and pull it out from under her.

As she fell to the ground, she caught a glimpse of someone leaping over her, and the Unclean Knives Saint went flying.

The new Saint reached down, offering Thea a hand. She only hesitated for a moment before taking it, letting herself be pulled to her feet.

She had to duck her head as she stood, because the woman she found herself standing next to had, of all things, a small pair of deer antlers rising from her head. She was otherwise normal looking enough— short, stocky, and muscular, with ochre skin. Her hair was just as black as Thea’s but much curlier.

The antlers were unusual— Thea was far more used to gods giving out horns or scales— but far from the most startling thing about the woman.

She was dressed in the greys of an escaped prisoner.

“Want to try and arrest me, wait until after we keep the horrible god-killing weapon out of the hands of murderous gangsters, yeah?”

Thea just nodded, and turned to face the mouth of the alley, where the Knife Saint was just climbing to his own feet, blood dripping from his already-healing lip.

“Got him by surprise, and I’m pretty sure I’m physically stronger, but he’s definitely got a more powerful soul,” the antlered stranger said. “I’m pretty new to the whole Sainthood thing. We’re going to have to work together to handle him.”

Thea didn’t bother responding, because she had finally spotted her advantage.

As the enemy Saint wiped the blood from his mouth onto his sleeve and created new knives in his hands, Thea was already yanking the second smallest tuning fork out of her bandolier. The bandolier’s straps and magnets had miraculously kept them in place even through the chaos.

With practiced motions that blurred together, Thea rang the little tuning fork against the handle of her combat fork, then threw it.

Not at the enemy Saint, but at the ground under his feet.

He didn’t even bother deflecting the little tuning fork, his attention fully fixed on the new Saint.

More fool him.

The instant the tuning fork struck the ground, the flagstones in a six foot radius around the Saint erupted into motion. Spiny limbs and sticky tendrils shot up and flailed, graceful but strong lattices folded up around the Saint, and flapping membranes undulated wildly, different colors and textures racing across their surfaces.

“Did you just feed that jerk to a mimic?” the antlered stranger demanded, as the enemy Saint was sucked down into the flailing mess. “Holy hells, that’s cold.”

Thea shook her head. “That species of street skeuomorph doesn’t eat anything larger than a cockroach, this is strictly a defensive reaction. It’ll sting him a bunch, but won’t cause more than an itch. And it’s not going to last long, so we need to get out of here before he escapes.”

She took her own advice and sprinted down the alley towards the flailing mess. A few feet short, she switched from running along the ground to running along the alley wall, going completely over the flailing mimic and its temporary prisoner, then leaping to the street beyond.

Thea couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that she could wall-run a foot and a half farther than the entry requirements for the Wall Guards’ elite striker teams.

Not that Thea was bitter or anything.

Behind her, the criminal didn’t bother wall-running past the panicked mimic, simply jumped directly over it. Must be nice having inhuman strength.

There wasn’t anyone in the streets, thankfully— everyone had long since fled away from the still-audible battle in the distance. If there’d been bystanders, the street mimic absolutely would have been reported as a menace, and would have to be exterminated.

Which was stupid, since they kept down pests— especially bluemidges— ate bits of trash, and posed no real danger to anyone. Hells, you could find one every fifty feet or so on your average street atop the Wall.

“We need to get moving,” the antlered stranger said. “There were already plenty of others heading this way when I left the battle.”

“What’s this we?” Thea said. “I appreciate the aid, but why should I trust a criminal not to try to steal this reliquary?”

The other woman shook her antlered head. “I don’t want the reliquary, I’ve got more than enough problems already. No, I’m going to help you— and then you’re going to help me. We get that tablet to safety, then you help me get a pardon.”

Thea looked at her hesitantly. She briefly considered demanding to know the Saint’s crime, but if it had been anything too serious, she would have been in a proper prison on the ground below, not in one of the short-term jails up here.

Well, unless she was just being held there temporarily before trial and sentencing, but…

Thea made up her mind and stuck out her hand. “Agreed. I’m Thea, by the way.”

“Aven,” the Saint said, clasping her hand briefly but firmly.

As the two touched, Seno exchanged greetings with Aven’s own indwelling god, and the God of Counting Flagstones’ intimidation at the power of the other god was immediately obvious.

Then they were down the street at a run, the sounds of battle fading behind them.

One thing, at least, had gone back to normal, with the godscreams fading away.

Seno was living up to his name again as she ran across the flagstones.

<fortyfourfortyfivefortysixfortysevenforty…>