Azure bonds - Kate Novak [139]
She wondered, though, whether there would be an afterlife for the likes of her. In the dark cocoon, she whispered, "Do I even have a soul?" She sighed. "What difference does it make?"
What difference does it make? she wondered. I'm alive. I enjoy being alive. She relished the satisfaction she'd felt when she'd defeated an enemy in combat, the contentment that settled about her when she sang, the camaraderie she'd shared with Dragonbait and the others. She'd made her own friends, real friends. She'd proven herself an adventuress, even if she was only a month old. And somehow, she had found the will to deny her would-be masters.
"Even if it isn't a natural one, I have a life of my own," she announced to the darkness-and to herself.
Heartened by her declaration, a new determination to live sprang up in Alias, coupled with an assurance that she would somehow defeat everyone who had branded her and reassert her free will.
"Moander!" she shouted uncertainly, not knowing if the god could hear her. "Moander!" she hollered louder. "You're killing me! I can't breathe! You have to let me out of here!"
Her prison made one more gut-wrenching turn. Her ears popped. Then the foul air in her lungs was driven out by a sudden impact against the bottom of her cocoon.
Her bindings were torn. She blinked in the sunlight. The air was fresh and warm. Half a dozen hands reached down to pull her from the moist, silky mass that entangled her. Despite her wooziness, Alias spotted the tattoos inscribed in all their palms: mouths full of jagged teeth.
Dizzy from her travel, her muscles atrophied from her imprisonment, and still weak from the effects of the gas, Alias could not resist as the people pulled her to her feet, no doubt prepared to transfer her to another prison, more conventional perhaps, yet equally inescapable.
Alias looked around. She stood by a bonfire in the center of a circle of giant, inwardly curved fangs carved of red stone. Around her were two dozen men and women, their faces hidden in the cowls of their robes. Their leader wore a mask of white with a single eye painted in the forehead and surrounded by teeth. A priest of Moander.
Alias gulped in deep breaths of air to fight her nausea and dizziness, though she did not know why she bothered. Even if she managed to escape from Meander's minions, she would still be a puppet. One of the minions snapped a band of metal around her sword arm. The band was attached to a long chain of cold iron.
Her legs gave way beneath her, and she sank to her knees on the dusty hilltop. They would drag her off to her other masters, and she hadn't the strength or the will to resist.
But instead, everyone ignored her. Their attention was fixed on the sky. Mutters passed through the crowd, then
cheers.
Alias looked up with everyone else. At first, she did not understand what she saw. Moander, the oozing god, bobbed in the sky, a great, swollen balloon with jaws. Trapped in its tendrils was a red dragon. The beast flapped its wings vainly, but could not resist being drawn into the god's maw. The pair of monsters twisted and turned in the sky above a great walled city. The sea lay beyond them. "Westgate," Alias whispered.
Suddenly, Alias knew that the red dragon was Mist. The Abomination had not killed her. As a matter of fact, she looked bigger than ever beside Moander.
Alias's captors began chanting a prayer for their god's victory, though some less pious or more excitable, continued cheering as though