59. The Resonance of Rage (Gadarien)¶
Gadarien was happy to let Vaye take point on the way out. Her enthusiasm buoyed him up, making up for his exhaustion. As he emerged on the other side, odd sensations rolled through his body, phantom fingernails brushing his scalp and fluttering muscle spasms sweeping across his abdomen. Every surface writhed and undulated like algae in a lake, the entire world breathing in synchronicity. With each wave that pulsed through the Gyre, the three of them locked gazes and grinned.
The touch of fabric on his skin was overstimulating. Wearing clothes at all felt somehow unnatural. He placed the coin under the torch as Jovadão had instructed and they ascended a set of narrow steps, emerging into a hillside thicket just above a road that ran beside the Sagradhão.
Gadarien’s amplified senses made the approaching Tementeira patrol even more obvious. They were sloppy, their movements so loud that even a layperson would have heard them coming. He waited until they’d gone past before leading Vaye and Adranaya out of the bushes.
He didn’t realize his mistake until a stone clipped the bridge of his nose, drawing blood and half-blinding him as his eyes reflexively watered. He whirled around to find a Silenced Feiçeira reloading her sling near the base of the hill. A second Silenced Feiçeira was charging, lancoãda whirling in his hands. The Tementeira patrol was far ahead and had already turned the corner, but the two Feiçeira, Silenced or not, would easily be a match for three exhausted novitiates.
It was too late to run. Gadarien drew his knife and charged, hoping to at least slow the Feiçeira down enough to give his companions a chance to escape. But before the Feiçeira could eviscerate him, a white streak shot past Gadarien’s shoulder, spiraling around the Feiçeira’s defenses to bury itself in his chest. Vaye flew past a moment later, pulling the unfortunate soldier toward her as she leapt into the air and smashed her knee into his face.
Gadarien gaped at the Anashi’s uncanny agility even as his enhanced senses prompted him to dodge, preventing the second Feiçeira’s stone from caving in his skull. Vaye ripped her tzash free and engaged the woman while Gadarien grabbed the downed Feiçeira’s lancoãda and ran toward the Tementeira, who had finally realized what was happening and returned to attack.
The lancoãda was an expensive and time-consuming weapon to make, begrudgingly granted to those who had mastered its use. Gadarien had wielded one in training a few times, but never in combat. His skill level was barely above novice. But it was still better than a knife, especially against a dozen well-rested and heavily-armed soldiers.
As the first of the Tementeira came within range, another shape flowed into their midst, moving between them like steam. Adranaya spun past a clumsy thrust, her knife a blur, and her opponent’s beard came away from his face, followed by his life.
Gadarien wrapped the lancoãda’s cable around a spear and yanked it out of a Tementeira’s grasp. He didn’t see Vaye finish off the remaining Feiçeira, but perceived it nonetheless. Her grace and precision were inhuman. His analysis of the situation had been deeply mistaken—even elite soldiers were no match for Vaye now.
As soon as her attention returned to the rest of the battle, Gadarien felt something shift, as though the air itself were crystallizing into a solid. Time stretched out like wet leather. The space around him felt like part of his body—every drop of sweat, every fold of fabric, every slow, predictable blade.
The three of them weren’t actually moving any faster than the Tementeira. Their bodies hadn’t fundamentally changed. But their shared perceptions guided their weapons, their movements as fluid and inescapable as a lava flow. Without conscious thought, every action they took fell into exactly the right shape, as though the steps had been rehearsed. Their opponents seemed to walk straight into the path of their blades. Gadarien dodged a powerful overhand blow and tripped his attacker into Adranaya, who neatly disarmed the woman and stabbed her with her own dagger. Vaye spun a back kick into a soldier’s solar plexus, then sliced through his neck, spraying the leaves nearby with a fine mist of blood. Adranaya sent a third soldier staggering Gadarien’s way, and his backstroke—which he’d begun before even registering the target—slashed upward through the man’s groin. No movement was wasted. Gadarien was hardly even out of breath.
The Gyre rolled down the hillside, chewing through the remaining Tementeira like a termite. There was never any doubt about who would be consuming whom, only which bite would be taken first. But as the battle raged, Gadarien felt something else along the flowstream. They weren’t just sharing physical perceptions of the world, but emotions as well, the three of them each contributing their own rage. Vaye’s generational resentment mingled with Gadarien’s thirst for vengeance and Adranaya’s volcanic spite, the echoes bouncing off each other and growing with each reflection. Each kill only served as fuel to stoke their bloodlust.
Finally, a single Tementeira remained standing, shaking so badly that he could barely hold his sword. He was big, but young, barely out of adolescence, and had held back, either smarter than the others or more of a coward or both. “This one’s mine,” Adranaya said, tossing her dagger to Gadarien.
The terrified youth, who was easily half again her size, swung wildly, but she sidestepped the blow and slid behind him like a snake. Her rage gushed through the flowstream as she seized the soldier’s wrist and spun, her preternaturally perfect timing squeezing every drop of energy out of their momentum. Effortlessly, she slung him into a tree and snapped his arm like a dry noodle. The boy screamed as a shard of bone popped out of his forearm, a sound that was cut off abruptly as Adranaya shoved the point upward through his jaw.
The dead youth slid down the tree trunk. Gadarien stared, Adranaya’s raw savagery reverberating in his veins. Moments before, he had reveled in it, but now that the battle was over, his rage and his strength both drained away, leaving him sick and shaky and even more spent than before. Adranaya sat down abruptly next to the dead Tementeira, as though she meant to converse with him. “What just happened?” Vaye said, looking dazedly at the bloody weapons in her hands.
“The Gyre is feeding everything back to us, amplifying it,” Gadarien said. “Including our emotions. Creating resonance.” He remembered what Jovadão had said about the Gyre, about the dangerous power of echoes. And he recalled what happened to singing bowls when they rang too loudly.
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