Unwilling Souls - The Complete Series: Unwilling Souls

By Gregory D. Little

The gods are rightfully imprisoned, and Ses intends to keep them that way. But her rebel father has other plans.

Ses is the daughter of a business mogul and a terrorist, each trying their best to kill the other while pretending she doesn't exist. An apprentice jailer of the gods, Ses spends her days learning to forge the tools needed to maintain the gods' prison in the hollowed-out center of the planet.

When the prison is mysteriously attacked on her sixteenth birthday, Ses is forced to flee after the secret of her parentage is revealed. Suddenly on the wrong side of the law, Ses will embark on a journey that will expose long-hidden truths about her family and herself that will shatter her understanding of the world and risk the return of the gods themselves.

Gregory D. Little's Unwilling Souls series is a pulse-pounding adventure through an epic fantasy world of skull cities, fanatic conspiracy, and a magical industrial revolution fueled by harvested human souls. This collection includes the complete series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory D. Little Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Feb 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215945421

Gregory D. Little

Gregory D. Little is the author of the Unwilling Souls series, set in a world where technology is powered by the souls of the dead, the gods are locked away in the hollowed-out center of the planet, and what remains of humanity has rebuilt its cities out of the corpses of the great beasts that destroyed them. His short stories can be found in the A GAME OF HORNS, DRAGON WRITERS, UNDERCURRENTS, and ECLECTICALLY SCIENTIFIC anthologies. He writes the kind of stories he likes to read, fantasy and science fiction tales featuring vivid worlds, strong characters, and smart action where nothing is as it seems.

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Unwilling Souls - The Complete Series

UNWILLING SOULS - THE COMPLETE SERIES

GREGORY D. LITTLE

Unwilling Souls Series

Copyright © 2015, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 Gregory D. Little and Gregory D. Little Publishing, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Covers by Bookfly Design

Editing by Joshua Essoe

Additional Unwilling Souls and Ungrateful God editing by Kaitlyn Keller

Additional Unleashing Iron editing by Mia Kleve

Book Design work by Kind Compositions

Map and Chapter Icons by Jared Blando

Published by Gregory D. Little Publishing, LLC

Map of Calavaria

UNWILLING SOULS

UNWILLING SOULS: BOOK ONE

CONTENTS

1. Birthday Surprise

2. Expulsion

3. Crocodilius

4. Rude Awakening

5. The Coffee Clutch

6. The Long Way Out

7. The Little Dictator

8. Mother’s Milk

9. First Sighting

10. The Sly Boy

11. Into the Black

12. Factions of Factions

13. Unquiet City

14. The Rail Yard

15. Forest of Spiders

16. Hunted

17. Respite

18. Unsavory Acquaintances

19. Lens

20. Second Sighting

21. The Interstitials

22. Walkabout

23. Faces

24. Two Vast Eyes

25. Treachery’s Work

26. The Silent Partner

27. Conspiracies

28. Negotiations

29. Spiders’ Wrath

30. The Chase

31. Into the Blue

32. The Rockslide

33. Selestia and Singscreamer

34. Defiance

For Debbie. My mind may be full of fantastical worlds, but you are the reason I always come back to the real one.

1

BIRTHDAY SURPRISE

Slouched in a rigid chair in the open-air pavilion used for morning lessons, Ses Lucani stared idly up at the dome of roiling magma above her head. Of course, there was no true up in the Pit any more than there was a down . Aside from walkable surfaces that were specially maintained, gravity didn't work down here.

High enough that she could almost believe it was a sky of endless flame, Ses found the oozing play of the magma's light hypnotic. Sometimes the beauty of it could even keep her from imagining all that magma breaking through its invisible restraints and pouring down to bury them all in a molten avalanche.

Six months in the Pit and Ses still longed for the sky of the world above, the piercing blue of day and the glittering majesty of the Whirlpool at night. She even missed watching the clouds roll in over the marsh, gray and flat, as though mourning the coming rain. There was never rain in the Pit. There was never weather in the Pit, unless always-hot-and-dry counted.

The souls of the dead have to give themselves willingly to be part of a wrighting, Master Glinn was saying. Why some choose to let themselves be harvested, where others do not is a mystery, but many believe they desire a chance to influence the living world again. Soul energy can't interact with the physical world, not unless it's injected into properly shaped nife iron.

Being in charge of all operations in the Pit didn't mean Master Glinn stopped teaching initiates. Ses suspected he enjoyed teaching best. And since Ses seems so interested in the magma where all the nife iron is found, the big man continued, making Ses start, perhaps she can tell us—

What Ses could tell the rest of the class was never made clear, because just then the klaxon began blaring out an alert. Ses bolted upright in her seat, the beginnings of embarrassment giving way to fear. For an instant she was sure the magma really was raining down. Then she recognized the alarm and felt even worse.

Her sudden motion caused a curl of dirty-blonde hair to tumble in front of her face, obscuring one blue eye. Ses brushed the hair back, wincing as it snagged in one of her eyebrow studs. She focused on working it free, trying to ignore the knot of dread tightening in her stomach.

Master Glinn frowned up at the wall-mounted alarm in stoic confusion. Some of the blacksmith initiates started talking in excited tones.

Ses thought if she opened her mouth, she might throw up.

The alarm was coming from one of the temples. That meant a possible intruder in the Pit. Real intruders were hard to come by when one lived in the great, hollowed-out space in the center of the planet. But that was all the more reason to take the possibility of one seriously.

Not today. Ses mentally groaned. Why today?

Glinn's implacable eyes fixed on her. Singscreamer's temple by the sound of it, he said.

Each temple had its own distinct alarm pattern, though only Master Glinn bothered to memorize all of them.

You're up, birthday girl.

His words were gentle yet firm. They sounded to Ses like the iron door of a prison slamming shut. He knew how much she hated the temples, but that wouldn't get her off the hook. Master Glinn valued duty ahead of everything else.

Ses tried not to show her fear as she rose from her desk in the lecture pavilion. The squat, gray wall of the barracks loomed behind her, solid as a mountain save for the dots of tiny windows. The klaxon mounted to that wall still blared.

This was bound to happen eventually.

Any apprentice smith could be sent to investigate possible intruders once they reached the age of sixteen. But tradition demanded the youngest of those eligible investigate first.

Maintaining the prison of the gods was the paramount duty in the Pit. The older and more experienced a smith was, the more important they were to that maintenance. Secondary duties, like keeping the temples free of fanatics or thrill-seekers, fell to the apprentices. Ses was sixteen today, so there was nothing to do but avoid making a fool out of herself as she left.

Birthdays are not supposed to be like this.

Ses made her way toward the curving causeway that led to the launch platform. The chatter from the other students had stopped. An eager silence filled the pavilion, and a cruel anticipation hung in the air.

As she walked, Ses caught a whisper from among the students. Look how terrified she is!

Ses didn't need to look. It had been Brea's voice, probably directed at her boyfriend, Cadmus, and purposefully pitched for Ses to hear.

I heard she hears voices at the temples, Brea continued in her not-whisper.

Ses felt her face flame red. Every apprentice, sixteen or not, had been to at least a few of the temples. Glinn occasionally performed lectures at a temple if he felt the setting was relevant to the subject matter, but Ses had never been to one alone. That Brea's little rumor was true made that feeling worse. How did that get out?

I'll bet they whisper dirty little secrets to her, Brea went on, around a throaty giggle.

No talking, Master Glinn said, his scowl evident in his tone. Everyone but Ses, eyes to me.

The other students turned their attention back to Glinn, and Ses's steps came a bit easier. The causeway bent as it descended. Eventually the lecture pavilion was out of sight and that made things easier still. Yet by the time Ses arrived at the launch platform, fear had knotted her stomach so tight she forgot to be overawed by the fiery backdrop of the Pit's distant dome of molten rock.

The platform was circular and, aside from a raised, studded lip that ran along the edge, totally without guardrail. Lacking gravity, if you lost your footing at an edge, you'd just drift lazily off until someone hooked you and reeled you back in.

It happened to everyone sooner or later. For Ses, it had been Cadmus's response to her shy attempt to talk to him on her second day. Bodily thrown from the nearest edge, Ses had shrieked, certain she was going to fall to her death while Brea and Cadmus had brayed like donkeys. Master Glinn had put an end to it, roaring for the pair to fetch a pole-hook.

Three of those hooks stood mounted in brackets, one in each of the three equipment racks spaced along the edge of the platform. At the far end, a wirework map of the Pit's spherical interior stood on a squat pedestal. Both pedestal and map were the same sooty gray as the platform, the barracks, and most everything else in the Pit.

A quick check of the map confirmed Singscreamer's temple was directly up relative to the barracks' position near the center of the Pit. Ses turned her eyes to the temple, miles above her head in the great, spherical emptiness. From this distance, the pervasive red-orange glare obscured most detail. The temple looked like a small black star in a roiling, fiery sky.

In truth, the temple was set into the inner surface of the spherical bubble of molten rock that marked the Pit's edge. Staring up from the great sphere's center, Ses let her eyes linger on the temple, as though they could pick out who or what might be tripping alarms there.

Stop stalling, and get on with it.

Sighing, she approached the racks of assorted wrightings. Each of the varied objects was made of Pit-mined nife iron, forged by full smiths or apprentices like her. The shape of the wrighting determined its purpose, but all wrightings had to be injected with soul energy in order to function. While Ses had become skilled enough to contribute her own forge work to the general stockpile for about a month, she didn't recognize any of her pieces in the racks.

She began by strapping wrighted clingers to her shoulders and forearms. Forged into a round, flat plate, a clinger's roughened side would grip fast to whatever solid surface it touched and could be locked in place so it wouldn't release.

Next, Ses pulled a well-worn agonizer from a row full of them. The slate gray shaft and wicked prongs at one end caught the Pit's red light, making the agonizer seem to glow with a baleful menace. It would dispense debilitating pain upon anyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with those prongs.

Hopefully I won't need it.

A pair of goggles with smoked crystal lenses came next. They weren't wrightings, just a way to help see through the Pit's glare. The repulsors were the last bit of equipment Ses needed, but those were already mounted to the soles of her boots. They looked like thick, triangular coins, slightly warped, and with curved edges.

Ses approached the platform's raised edge. Sets of repulsors were fixed all along it in pairs, each about a shoulder's width from its mate. Bending over to find a matching set, she blinked in irritation as her mop of hair fell over her eyes again. She pushed it back—gingerly this time—then pulled a string from one of her many pockets and tied the mess behind her ears.

Once she found a repulsor set with hash markings matching those in her boots, Ses squatted above them, balanced on the balls of her feet. And there she paused. Dread weighed her down, rooting her in place.

There's never been a real intruder in the six months I've been down here, or for years before that. The temple alarms were notoriously finicky. If Master Glinn thought this was for real, he would send more than just one apprentice. Just get this over with.

Sighing again, Ses gripped her agonizer in both hands, but ended up tucking it under one arm. After the second time, she nearly lost her balance. Though her arms and shoulders were well-muscled from six months of learning to work a forge, her legs had no such advantages, and they protested the squat.

Ses turned her eyes back upward, pressed her heels down to bring the boot repulsors into contact with their mates on the platform. She almost lost her agonizer and nearly bit through her tongue as the repulsors came to life, their overlapping repulsion fields driving them apart and launching Ses forcefully into the empty space of the Pit.

A few seconds up, the hot, dry wind pushing back at Ses, grew strong enough to steal her breath. The first time this had happened, she'd gasped like a fish. This time she patiently held it.

Soon she'd hurtled far enough away from the barracks that the spherical energy fields of the repulsors on her boots no longer overlapped with their mates' on the platform. Once freed of one another's influence, Ses's upward acceleration stopped and the wind lessened as she gradually slowed. Soon enough she could breathe again.

The vast, spherical chamber of the Pit crawled by as Ses shot toward the temple. Looking left and right, she could see other temples dotting the glowing wall of magma at regular intervals, like constellations arranged in precise, unchanging geometry.

Looking back down, Ses could see the great silhouette of the Globe and the much smaller silhouette of the barracks complex that orbited it. They fell away beneath her as she flew. The Globe was the true core of the planet, a sphere of pure nife iron a mile in diameter. Its surface had been fashioned by human hands into a perfect miniature replica of the surface world above. It was the reason they were all down here.

The gods were imprisoned within it.

When Ses looked up again, Singscreamer's temple had grown alarmingly close. Her sense of orientation flipped, and it now seemed as if she was nose-diving from a great height. A familiar panic welled up in her.

I'm not falling. I am not falling.

It was no use. Her gut still told her she was falling every time. That was all right. With none of her fellow initiates around to see her do it, she could stick the landing gracefully for once.

The temple's landing platform seemed to rush up at her as she hurtled headfirst toward impact. Ses was about to orient herself for a safe landing when she noticed a dark shape on the platform, picked out in the Pit's fiery light. She squinted, but even with the help of her goggles, the glare this close to the magma wall made it hard to see. Whatever the strange object was, it sat directly in the center of the temple's landing platform. Uncharacteristically, this was also exactly where Ses had managed to aim when she'd launched herself from the barracks.

In a flash of fear, not just that she was going to hit the object, but also that it might be the intruder, Ses began whirling her arms. Clawing at the air while hurtling through the Pit wouldn't alter her course much, but a small change was all she needed. After a few seconds of frantic motion, she judged she'd done enough to miss the mystery object then realized she'd forgotten to orient herself for landing.

Most of her momentum had bled away, but without her feet facing the right direction, all Ses could do was twist in space to present her back, then go limp at the last possible second. Her right shoulder impacted the platform with a lance of pain.

Ses came to rest in a heap as one of her clingers took hold of the platform surface. Without the clinger's grip, she might have bounced high enough to escape the temple's local gravity field and drifted off.

Wincing, she pivoted about the clinger to the platform and found an angry, yellow face staring back at her. It took Ses a glimpse of LARIMAINE DUNSINAY in giant block lettering to realize she'd almost collided with one of her father's wanted placards. Made of yellow paper glued to the center of a freestanding, wooden frame, the placards were updated monthly. The sight of her father's unrecognizable face drawn in the center of the paper made her piercings itch.

You'd think I'd be used to it by now.

In truth, she mostly was, but as her birthday fell on the first of Tellin, the placards were a special cruelty once a year. The new duties brought by this particular birthday were just salt in the wound.

Ses groaned in pain as she released her clinger. She struggled to stand, her robes tangling around her feet. Glancing reflexively back the way she'd come, she felt her face flush, worried someone had seen her gracelessness. But it was a silly fear. The distance was too great, the light too poor.

She turned back to the placard, scowling. The Centrality officials weren't supposed to place the placards right in the center of a temple's landing platform.

No wonder I almost hit it.

The likeness drawn into the placards changed so much every month, it was often like looking at a different person. A part of her felt guilty for secretly rooting for her father's terrorist organization. But though the Centrality's presence in the Pit was minimal, she'd seen what the government was capable of back on the surface. In her secret heart, she was thrilled that they didn't know what her father looked like any more than Ses herself did.

But staring at the image of a burly, bearded face with a permanent sneer rendered in charcoal quickly soured her. She dragged the placard out of the platform's center and off toward one side so the next poor soul would not repeat her mistake.

The Globe hung miles above her head, now seemingly up where it had previously been down. The same would be true of every temple dotting the Pit's inner surface. Stand at any of them, and the Globe would look like it was still above you.

The Pit could really destroy a person's sense of direction.

Where the temples looked like black stars in a fiery sky, the Globe, when viewed from the temples, was like a lightless sun that never set, always in silhouette to the magma behind it. It was hard not to marvel at. But she was here for Singscreamer's temple, not to stare at the gods' prison. Ses turned and headed toward the temple entrance.

The trapezoidal opening yawned before her, rimmed in the same familiar slate gray and wider than it was tall. The term temple was unofficial and sarcastic, worship of the gods forbidden as it was. This structure, and the others like it, had two real purposes. Neither related to worship.

Hugging the spherical interior of the Pit, the temples were in fact huge wrightings. Each had been constructed from a single piece of nife iron, an incredible feat. The temples secured dangerous artifacts recovered from the gods at the end of the Immurement War. Collectively, the temples also formed the wrighted lattice that kept all the molten rock and metal from collapsing into the Pit.

All around the landing platform, that burning liquid rock seethed and bulged, fighting to push past the invisible net of soul energy holding it at bay. The same energy held back the heat and fumes. Without it, Ses would have already passed out and suffocated.

The last of the pain in her shoulder faded in proportion to the volume of the whispers. The breathy words were nonsense delivered in a hushed voice only Ses could hear. Most of the time she couldn't understand the whispers, but she could hear the emotion behind them, always strong and mostly negative.

She'd tried to make Master Glinn believe her while being careful not to mention it in front of the other initiates. Too many horror stories was the distinct message she'd gotten from his kindly, patient reply. She'd almost written Grandfather about it, but was certain he wouldn't understand.

The whispers always set Ses on edge, as though someone was speaking to her from just over her shoulder. Sometimes she even imagined she could feel breath puff lightly against the raised hairs of her neck. The sensation was extra strong today, and she clutched a little harder to her agonizer. Its worn, smooth grip felt alive in her hands, and she kept the wicked prongs at the end of the nife iron shaft facing carefully away. It would not discriminate in delivering its pain.

I won't need it, anyway.

The intruder detection wrightings malfunctioned frequently. Most likely, the alarm had been set off by whichever Centrality official had placed the wanted placard. None of this would be necessary if they could simply restrict access to the temples, but some trick of their function as wrightings required the inner chambers of each to remain open.

It's going to be nothing. I just have to prove it.

Ses entered the temple and began her sweep of its eight radial spokes at a brisk walk, head constantly swiveling as she sought for any sign of intrusion. The star-shaped temple's floor hugged the magma wall of the pit and therefore curved almost imperceptibly upward to her eyes.

Wrighted sconces, like slender urns, stood at intervals near the bases of the slanted inner walls. They emitted pale, pure light, but the passage was still gloomy. The slight flicker of older sconces gave the shadows a queasy, unbalanced look as they flickered against metal walls pitted like old, damp stone.

In contrast to the heat outside, the air within the temple felt cool and almost humid, as though to resist the Pit's natural order. The whispers grew more insistent with each step inward, but Ses was as thorough in her sweep as her fear allowed. Each hallway ran straight to the temple's heart with no side passages or adjoining rooms. There weren't many places an intruder could hide.

She reached the temple's center without incident. A hooded, leather apron and tall, wide-brimmed hat stood behind a ring-shaped wall of wrighted nifeglass. Perched upon a thick, ornate stand of nife iron, they looked as if they were on display for sale at a leatherworker's shop.

Though the artifacts had once belonged to Singscreamer himself, they looked curiously human-sized for a god. Ses moved on quickly, having no wish to linger near the heart of such a creepy place. The whispers were loudest near the display, almost intelligible. Today the voice behind them sounded eager.

Eight times she passed the display, twice for each opposing pair of spokes of the star-shaped temple. Eight times she skirted the edge of the central chamber to avoid the artifacts, wondering why they were displayed at all. The knot in her stomach swelled with every passing and each surge of the whispers.

At last, Ses was satisfied the temple was empty of trespassers. So relieved her knees shook, she walked briskly back along the entrance corridor.

I did it. She allowed herself a warm flash of pride as she crossed the threshold back out onto the landing platform. All that worry, and there was nothing here after all. Her thoughts trailed off as a light flared brilliant and cold above her.

Above her, the Globe was bathed in light. Ses frowned. Normally the detail of its surface was invisible from this far away. Now, however, Ses could see its miniature ocean, a replica of the single great ocean that dominated most of the surface world, limned in harsh, blue radiance.

A line of rotating rings glowing with the sapphire light had appeared in the air near the Globe. Each of the rings was made up of many separate shapes, massive wrightings outlining a bulky mass that was not yet visible. A hellship was returning with its latest haul of soul energy harvested from either Heaven or Hell. This was not normally a noteworthy event, but Ses had never seen one arrive so close to the Globe.

Because it's forbidden.

The realization sent a bolt of shock through her body. It faded to a chill as she understood what was about to happen. She was staring at the face of the Globe opposite the barracks, the active forges, and the lone continent of Calavaria, so there probably wouldn't be any people nearby. But this side of the Globe was where the spare forges were kept, arranged in neat, cubical grids in the air above the Globe's unbroken expanse of ocean.

The hellship was appearing in the spare forges' midst.

From this far away, it was impossible to tell exactly where the reaction began. Somewhere along those fading rings of blue light, one of the hellship's wrightings materialized inside one of the spare forges. The hellship's wrighting and the forge's wrightings merged into a single, malformed one.

The resultant flare of light dwarfed that of the hellship's arrival. It was the brightest light Ses had ever seen, scouring away the fiery glare of the Pit. Impossibly white, impossibly brilliant.

Even with her goggles, Ses was forced to shield her eyes, twisting her head away just as a rushing swell of air roared over her. This far away, it did little more than make her jump, but near the Globe it would have been a powerful shockwave.

Master Glinn, she thought, even mustering some worry for the other initiates. The light above her dimmed enough to hazard a glance. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a dark smudge appear in the direction of the explosion. Haloed by the fading glow, it grew larger by the instant.

Ses frowned, trying to decipher what sort of phenomenon she was seeing. The study of wrightings merging and interfering with one another was an abstract, arcane subject, and no one really understood how such interactions would manifest—

Ses hurled herself to one side, her instinct recognizing what her conscious mind hadn't. She curled up, covering her head just as a scorched, smoking chunk of hellship smashed down directly where she'd been standing and gaping like an idiot.

The temple rang like a gong from the force of the impact. Ses's teeth rattled in her head, and her body bounced free of the temple platform's local gravity field. Small bits of debris pelted her from above and behind, leaving a pattern of stinging burns even through the thick leather of her robes.

Clawing her way back down into the gravity, Ses planted her boots and stood. Glowing with strange hybrid colors, silver-blue and red-black in turns, the hellship chunk spat smoke from the deep dent it had gouged into the platform. Large cracks fanned outward like a spider web from the point of impact.

Ses bolted to the platform's edge, frantically searching for matching repulsors to vault away. But a deep, groaning rumble staggered her. All around the temple, the magma rose and bucked against the field restraining it.

The crash weakened the field holding back the pressure.

One swell of magma lifted higher than the temple roof. Ses knelt there, waiting for the molten rock to come pouring in as the world quaked around her. But the end did not come, and the turmoil within the magma gradually subsided.

When she dared take her eyes away from the debris, Ses looked up. The part of the Globe she could see was a ruin, much of the replica world's ocean blasted away in gouts of steam. Raw nife iron glowing with heat was visible underneath as more water rushed in from the edges to fill in the gap. Oh sweet Immurement. If the explosion had breached the prison…

But for the second time in as many moments, the end did not come. The gods did not come roaring out to exact two-hundred-year-old vengeance. The prison remained whole.

After a time, Ses breathed, her muscles and bones unlocking themselves. Above her, lamps swarmed toward the damaged section of the Globe from the direction of the barracks around the far side. Those would be smiths rushing to inspect the damage. She also saw tiny black shapes launching themselves from other temples along the curvature of the inner wall to the left and right of her. Who those people were, Ses didn't know, but the sight spurred her to action.

What if this wasn't an accident? What if we're under attack? Whatever was happening, she had to get back and help. Clutching her agonizer, Ses found matching repulsors and launched herself toward the disaster unfolding above her.

2

EXPULSION

Only one of the figures vaulting from the temples and converging on the wounded Globe was near, rising from another temple and closing with Ses from the left. She spared a moment considering whether to try and attack the intruder, but before she could overcome her own anxiety, she recognized Brea.

What is she doing out here?

Suspicion gripped Ses, but then she considered all the other people launching themselves toward the Globe. Were all of them initiates as well?

Brea's river of long, dark hair streamed back from a face even paler than usual. She noticed Ses and threw a haggard look her way. For once there was no cruelty in Brea's dark eyes. She looked as scared and lost as Ses felt.

Something black and fast flitted into Ses's peripheral vision. She spoke without thought. Brea, behind you!

Brea turned reflexively to look, twisting her whole body and fiercely brandishing her agonizer. The motion saved her life. A piece of ricocheted hellship debris shot past her back, opening up a tear in her robes and leaving a gleaming red line in the skin beneath. Brea hissed and clenched her teeth, but there wasn't a great deal of bleeding. It looked to Ses like a flesh wound.

When she met Ses's eye, Brea's face was a mixture of pain, wide-eyed fear, and gratitude. She looked about to speak, but her words faltered. Wincing with the motion as she visibly fought through the pain of her wound, she raised her agonizer in a salute instead. Ses felt her first flash of admiration for Brea, and a little gratitude of her own. Whatever this was, they were going to face it together.

They were within touching distance as they reached the barracks. The closest platform didn't happen to be facing in the right direction for a graceful landing, so they were forced to grab one of the many handholds that lined its bottom edge. Brea's aim had been better, but she caught Ses's arm as they drew close, and managed to snag a catch-rung for the both of them.

Ses winced in sympathy as she got a good look at Brea's wound. A shifting ribbon of blood pooled along it, held together by its own surface tension in the lack of gravity. It didn't look life-threatening, but was obviously painful.

What happened? Ses asked, daring Brea's always sarcastic retorts.

Don't know, Brea said tightly. After you left, Master Glinn had barely started class back up when more alarms went off from the other temples. Glinn started sending us out, one for each alarm, but they just kept coming. By the time I went, I think he was afraid this was something real. I checked Blessbite's temple but didn't find anything. Then I looked up and saw the crash. The skin around Brea's eyes was pinched with worry.

For Cadmus, Ses realized.

Brea saw her looking. He hadn't been sent out when I left, she said. She looked embarrassed to be worried. Even the small miracle of a sincere human emotion from Brea fled Ses's mind as they reached the top of their ladder and emerged into utter pandemonium.

They'd only been standing a few seconds, when a man cried out behind them, making them both jump. Master Glinn rushed over and grabbed both of them up in a bone-creaking hug. Held so close, Ses heard Brea whimper softly at the inadvertent pressure on her back.

Thank Immurement! Glinn said. You were the last two. Everyone made it back alive. He put them both down, so out of sorts he didn't even notice Brea was injured.

Cadmus! Brea blurted around a sob of what sounded like relief, rushing away the second Glinn freed them.

Ses felt a spike of envy. Nobody had ever shown her that kind of fervor. Then Glinn gripped her shoulders.

I can't talk long, Ses, the big man said, drawing her off to an alcove away from the din. The prison hasn't failed yet, which means we should be all right, but now that you're all back, I have to inspect the damage. Never had a hellship accident before this. Not one. He seemed to be talking to himself. He looked tired, like he'd aged a year in a morning. Several nasty scratches cut across the grain of his seamed face.

Tell me what I can do to help, Ses said with an eagerness that surprised her.

You can leave the Pit, he said with his characteristic bluntness.

Ses blinked in surprise. I—what?

Master Glinn pinched his eyes shut and shook his head, swearing softly. "I'm sorry, Ses. I put that badly. Listen, it's a miracle this happened on the far side of the Globe where nobody was working. That's the only reason no one but the pilots died. We're not even sure which pilots, yet. We don't know anything." His sigh was so weary that Ses wanted to comfort him with a hug.

But the fact it happened so close to the prison following a whole spate of alarms at the temples, Glinn said, looks very suspicious. And for all I know, it's just the beginning of something worse. I have to consider the possibility, he said, his dark, implacable eyes on her, that this may have been your father's doing.

What? No! Why? Ses's response was defensive, automatic. "Why would he attack here? It's my mother he wants to take down, and her company is all on the surface!"

It's not just your mother and Fulenthe, Master Glinn said softly. "You know that. We're a Centrality operation down here. Your father hates the government every bit as much as he hates your mother's corporation.

Ever since the Goddamned seized power, at least. Ses chastised herself for the thought. Goddamned was an old slur for any who possessed the glowing eyes that marked their ancestors as having served the gods during the Immurement War. When the war had gone against the gods and their human servants, the descendants of those servants had become the underclass of society, a status that had lasted until just a few years before Ses was born.

People called that switch the Upheaval.

Now the Goddamned ran the Centrality and styled themselves Blazings. But the former ruling class, now called Dims by those they once repressed, still used the slur where they thought no Blazing could hear. Ses had gotten into the same bad habits in the Pit.

In truth, whichever names one used, the words were just labels to describe the divide that had existed since the Immurement War. These days everyone was either a Blazing or a Dim. In the old days, before the Upheaval had swapped the oppressed and the oppressors, everyone was either Goddamned or not.

Except me.

It came in a rush just exactly what Master Glinn was implying, bringing a hot surge of shame and anger with it. Wait. Are you saying you think I had something to do with this? Is that why I have to go?

The shock on Master Glinn's face was an instant balm, and he enfolded her in another hug. As he squeezed the breath from her, Ses worried over her ribs. No, child, never. Never. I can't even really think your father did. I knew him once, you know.

She did. Master Glinn was forever reminding her where no one could hear. But I've already reported this to Requis Leonis, Glinn said. I couldn't put off contacting the capital. They are sending polistraat squads to help and to ferret out what happened. They are going to turn a very large magnifying glass onto my operation here, and I don't know if your cover story can stand that.

He's only trying to protect me. The pain of rejection had eased, but the wound was still open.

When can I come back? Ses's own question shocked her. An hour ago, she would have said she didn't like it in the Pit, that she wanted to leave. But up on the surface she had no one. Her mother and father were fighting their private war with weapons of commerce and terror. There was Grandfather of course, but he was nearly as absent as her parents.

At least Master Glinn cared about what happened to her.

Soon, child, he said, once the pressure eases. Until then, I'll think of something. Maybe I'll tell everyone you were injured and I sent you topside to recover. I don't know. Whatever it is, I'll make sure Brea sings the same tune. He released her. Now, gather your things quickly and quietly. We're evacuating a group of nonessential personnel in an hour, and you need to be in it. I'll stop by to say goodbye if I can, but I really have to be off. Go now.

Glinn dashed back into the chaos of smiths preparing for damage control operations and shepherding initiates to the medical wing, leaving Ses alone with her mouth open to form words she could not think of fast enough.

And to think, I thought this was a bad day when it was only my birthday. Ses danced a strange dance in her room. Standing and staring, she lost herself in dazed shock, only to wake up to the passage of time and spring into frantic movement.

She walked the three steps across her tiny, stone sleeping chamber to her cracked basin. Studying her newly grimy face in the mirror, she unscrewed both eyebrow studs.

The right one was simple silver, shaped like a gently curving barbell. Ses unscrewed it and plucked it out without much care. The left one looked nearly identical, but only to a casual glance. She treated it with far more reverence. The color was duller and darker, the slate gray of nife iron. It was a wrighting, the most intricate she'd ever seen and the only gift her father had ever given her.

As she gently pulled the two halves of the wrighted stud from her brow, her left eye flared alight with Blazing blue, no longer matching her Dim blue right eye. She cast a nervous glance to her door even though she'd remembered to lock it.

She couldn't be too careful. While Blazing eyes were technically permitted in the Pit since the Upheaval, they would really stand out. In her entire six months, Ses had yet to see a single Blazing. She could only imagine how much worse people like Brea and Cadmus would treat her if they believed she was a Blazing.

But Ses was neither Blazing nor Dim. So far as she knew, she was the only person in the world who had one of each kind of eye. Letting someone, anyone, see her eyes as they truly were would be far beyond bad. Even Master Glinn didn't know that secret.

Her face free of hardware, Ses washed the sweat and grime away with lukewarm, stale water. Then she sluggishly swapped her clothing, letting the gray, layered robe of her apprenticeship flop limply onto her bed. It would stay here.

She pulled her threadbare street clothes from her dresser. The canvas shirt and pants had begun life forest green and a sandy tan. Drab and faded after years of wear, they fit as poorly as she feared. She had grown over the six months they'd been folded in her drawer. At least she could keep the sturdy leather boots she'd been given. No one wanted anyone's used boots.

Tugging the shirt's fabric about her shoulders to straighten it, Ses turned to regard herself in her mirror, and the sight of her left eye's glowing blue iris made her blink. Forget about that and you'll make a bad day even worse.

Once her wrighted stud was firmly in place, Ses watched in satisfaction as the fiery, blue glow of her left iris faded until her left eye again matched the Dim, natural blue of her right. Running a calloused hand ineffectually through the shoulder-length shrub of her hair, she gave one final sigh and began packing the few wrightings she'd made and been permitted to keep.

Ses was no more than ten paces up the causeway's incline when she was confronted by Brea and Cadmus. Brea had changed to a loose-fitting, linen shirt, and Cadmus was grimy enough that Ses wondered if he'd had a near miss of his own.

Before Ses could shy away—awkward with her pack slung over one shoulder—Brea took one of her hands. Ses braced herself, waiting to be hurled from the causeway as she had been on her second day. Then she caught sight of the white edge of a bandage peeking out from the collar of Brea's shirt on the left side.

Maybe things had changed.

What? Ses asked, trying not to sound defensive or afraid.

Brea's face flamed red at Ses's tone but her smile looked genuine. Her Dim brown eyes were warm for the first time Ses could remember. We're really sorry about everything, Brea said in a rushed voice. Aren't we? she added, throwing a glare at Cadmus, who looked far less sorry. Master Glinn told me you have to leave. I'm sorry that's true, even if he won't tell us why. Curiosity, rabid and insatiable, flashed across her face.

Fantastic, Ses thought, still reeling from what she was hearing. Brea's curiosity was all she needed.

I wanted to thank you for earlier, Brea said, then moved in for a hug.

Thank me? Brea? Ses was so stunned she couldn't breathe, so the hug was awkward and stilted at first. But after a moment, she relaxed and gripped Brea more sincerely in return. She felt the tight white linen of Brea's bandage and was careful not to press too hard.

You saved my life, Brea whispered. Even though I never gave you a reason to. Thank you. I'll see you again, all right?

I… all right, Ses said, numb. Cadmus gave a little half-wave. It looked strange coupled with his still-scowling face. Then the pair turned and walked away, leaving Ses alone and flabbergasted. Figures I would have to leave now.

Master Glinn met her just after and hugged her again. Ses was getting pretty hugged out, but the embrace turned out to be the high point of the conversation. The next thing he handed her was her expulsion paperwork.

I thought on it, he said, his face miserable, and this is the only way. Injury reports will be checked for corroboration. But I can expel any apprentice for any reason. The stated reason is that you refused to investigate an alarm despite a direct order. He paused, breaking eye contact and swiping a palm over his bald head in a nervous gesture. I alleged it was the latest incident in a history of insubordination, so it wouldn't seem as odd. He trailed off, looking sheepish.

Ses eyed him, unsure whether her frank disbelief showed in her expression. A history of mild-mannered behavior was her only distinguishing characteristic in the Pit.

In any case, Glinn said, attempting to power through the awkwardness, they'll never suspect one disgruntled student for an attack this complex.

I hope you're right about that.

I'll make sure no one tells any investigator otherwise, Glinn went on, sounding more confident. I'm sorry, Ses, but we can reverse this. Your grandfather will sign whatever he has to when we can safely readmit you.

All right, Ses said, dazed. She couldn't manage much else, simply struggling to keep it together. She wasn't really expelled, but false though it may be, the sense of rejection stung. Though she'd never been expelled from anything in her life, she had plenty of experience with rejection.

Go now, Master Glinn said. I'll be seeing you.

Yeah, Ses said. Then, still numb with shock, she turned and vaulted to the exit platform.

The barge that would ferry Ses topside underwent some final preparation behind her as she stood upon a landing platform at the lip of one of the many tunnels to the surface. She stared into the vast emptiness of the Pit, ringed by the molten rock of the outer core with the silhouetted sphere of the Globe spinning, wounded but sedate, at its center.

Ses watched as kettles the size of mansions—looking like dollhouse tea cups at this distance—were pushed laboriously across empty space toward the Globe's wound. Normally the kettles stored molten nife iron during mining operations. Now the smiths working repair details applied their superheated, liquid cargo directly to the Globe's wounded side.

The damage from the hellship's destruction had left a great crater in the Globe, spraying molten shards of nife iron out from the point of the explosion. The loss of mass and damage to the Globe's spherical shape weakened both the physical and wrighted barriers behind which the gods were held imprisoned.

Human loyalists had used wrightings to lock the gods away and end the Immurement War two hundred years prior. The planet's inner core had been transformed into that prison. The outer core had been pressed out and away from the inner, opening up the great space known as the Pit so that prison could be maintained and the outer core could be mined.

It took a great deal of energy to maintain a prison against the combined strength of such powerful inmates. The Globe was charged with more soul energy than any other object on the planet. It was the world's most powerful wrighting.

And the Globe's creation had another purpose. Gods required worshipers from which to derive their strength. The outside of their prison had been fashioned into a near-perfect replica of the surface world above.

Provided that similarity was constantly maintained, the Globe could be used like a living map to identify such illegal worship. From there, punishment could be dispensed upon the guilty parties without ever leaving the Pit. The Godbane it was called, but with so much damage Ses doubted the Globe could even detect any such activity now.

Below, scrambling shapes equipped with propulsor wrightings pulled one of the great kettles into position. Soon they would pour and direct the molten nife iron to fill in the crater formed by the disintegrating hellship.

Ses was curious to see how the smiths handled dumping the kettle's contents into the almost nonexistent gravity of the Globe, but someone tapped her on the shoulder.

Nevis, the barge's operator, nodded solemnly at her. Time to go, he said.

Feeling an unexpected, sharp pang, Ses turned for her last look at the Pit. Hellish decor and all, it had been her home. She only now realized how much she was going to miss it. Then she thought about Centrality officials arriving and asking uncomfortable questions.

Nevis was right. It was time to go.

3

CROCODILIUS

After months of an unchanging, fiery glow, the stark, white sunlight of the surface pierced Ses's eyes like a blade.

Did I actually think I missed the sky?

She raised a shading hand and turned away, fixing her gaze back on the barge, visible now only through a glare. With huge threading spiraling around its stabilized cabin area, the barge was a massive screw that twisted its way into and out of the planet's crust.

The barges were a recent invention. In years past, the only way to and from the Pit had been through heavily wrighted labyrinths. These mazes had been designed to speed authorized users across enormous distances and steer any unauthorized persons back to the surface or, if they were stubborn, send them to wander aimlessly until they died of thirst.

Legend had it that Ses's mother and father—before Ses had been in the picture—had somehow penetrated one of those labyrinths to the Pit itself. There they'd allegedly spoken to one of the imprisoned gods. A more unlikely story Ses could not imagine, but even if true, it had happened nearly two decades ago, before her parents had become bitter enemies.

The labyrinths were ten years gone now, closed and blocked off. Only the Wound, a tunnel which twisted its way from the northern tip of the Viper's Casket mountain range down through the crust, allowing air ventilation with the surface, remained. But the Wound was much too long and perilous to travel. People who had reason to venture into the Pit used the barges, which were powered in turn by Ses's mother's new Bottled Shock.

Bottled Shock was the mass production of easily forged shock wrightings. When these were inserted into ordinary, non-wrighted machinery, the combination could perform the same tasks as far more complex—and hard to produce—wrightings which had to be hand-forged by smiths.

The logo embossed on the center of the barge's face, a stylized bottle discharging a zigzag bolt of lightning from its open top, was her mother's. Cassia Lucani was the head of Fulenthe Wrightingworks, the sole provider of Bottled Shock.

Nevis noticed Ses's stare and mistook her focus. He waved briefly, awkwardly. Ses knew he was eager to get back and do his part in the Pit. Nonetheless, the square-faced young man cranked his nifeglass porthole open and hailed her.

You be careful up here, he said, his frown filling his face with unnatural lines. Don't let any Goddamned catch you in an alley alone before you get to the friendlier parts of town. Nevis was a Dim, his guileless eyes as lacking in inner fire as Ses's own appeared to be. He had no way of knowing she was going to duck into the first alley she could and swap her studs, transforming into one of the very Goddamned he warned her away from.

Ses smiled reassuringly and waved back at him. I'll be careful, Nev. Thanks. They hadn't had much reason to interact, but he'd always been kind to her.

See you around, kid, he said with a lopsided grin. Then he swung the porthole closed and began pulling levers and twisting dials. The threading twisted to life around him as he made a shooing motion to her to be on her way.

The world around her dimmed, and at first Ses thought her eyes were growing used to the light. But it was just the sun, risen high enough to pass behind the upper jaw of the city skull.

Of all the great beasts created by the gods in the last days of the Immurement War, Crocodilius had been the first humankind had successfully killed. That hadn't happened fast enough for the old city of Sobeck, which had stood roughly upon this exact spot before Crocodilius had finished with it.

The wrightings used to slay the beast had shattered the ground beneath the great reptile even as they delivered its death, leaving the soil and rock split and spongy. The river coming down from the mountains had done the rest, transforming the entire region into a vast, freshwater marsh.

All but the creature's head had eventually slipped beneath the loamy waters. Fortunately, the skull of the beast had proven large enough to house a city to replace Sobeck. It was hardly an ideal outcome, but it had proven adequate to build on.

Crocodilius's jaws canted open at an angle as though sunning itself, the immense skull stretched more than a mile straight up from the base to the tip of the nose. Aside from actual buildings constructed on the floor of the skull's mouth, most of the city's livable space was carved into the bone itself, leaving it riddled with man-made caves serving as homes and places of business. Ses peered far above to the roof of that bleached bone mouth. People even lived in the teeth which hung above her.

She picked out stomach-twisting details amid those teeth, muslin-wrapped shapes dangling from ropes tied to their ankles or necks, some from the tips of the skull's teeth, others from its massive eye sockets.

Crocodile tears.

The shapes were certainly Dims, members of the former aristocracy, hanged if they were lucky, dangled by their ankles and left to die of thirst if they weren't. Maybe they'd committed some crime. Maybe they'd angered some Centrality official. Maybe they'd simply been caught out in the open alone, the wrong place at the wrong time.

They might even have once lived in the same teeth they now dangled from. Bottled Shock had completely overthrown the economic order. The social and political orders had quickly followed suit, culminating in the Upheaval.

As Ses watched, the disappearing rim of the sun caught the shapes just right, and bursts of red, blue, and green light flashed from the figures' heads. She winced. The cruelest of the Centrality's dispensers of justice liked to stab colored chunks of glass through the muslin near their victim's eyes, as though making them into honorary Blazings before they died.

The Pit was the last place Dims had any real authority. Even though the Blazings were in charge of everything else, they feared what hold the gods might still hold over them too much to risk close proximity with the gods' prison. Or so Master Glinn said. Very few people really wanted the gods back, he'd assured his students.

Still, much resentment lingered from the time after the Immurement War. The Blazings had been oppressed by the Dims for nearly two centuries. Without Bottled Shock, they would still be oppressed. These days the streets of Crocodilius were no place for Dims to linger alone.

Ses was a race of one, her eyes balanced between the factions. And if anyone ever saw that, being wrapped in muslin and dangled from the city skull would be the best she could hope for. She set off to find an alley and swap her Dim eyes for Blazing ones. She might belong to neither side, but at least her father had left her the means to move between them.

Ses's old neighborhood looked even more desolate than when she'd left it. Carved like coarse honeycomb into a thick column of bone, the little cluster of homes wasn't a place people stumbled into by accident. With only intermittent windows and doors giving hints as to the extent of the bone's hollowed innards, it was difficult to see where one home ended and another began. She and Grandfather hadn't always lived here, but caring for the child of a terrorist had turned Grandfather paranoid.

Ses peered at the windows, hoping for some proof her first impression was wrong. But aside from Grandfather's home, she saw no signs of life. There were no curtains in the windows, no shadows of movement, no Mrs. Wella bellowing down at her youngest, Wellis, from the home above theirs. Wellis would be almost six, Ses realized with a little jolt of surprise.

Where is everyone? Did Grandfather finally drive them all away?

The sight of her front door brought a warm feeling of… not exactly comfort, but it was still welcome after a very bad morning. The varnish on the thick-timbered wood was in even worse shape than she remembered, but to all outward appearances, it was as unassuming as a door could be. Ses knew better.

She reached a practiced hand into a small hollow subtly carved into the bone to the left of the door. Her fingers closed around the teeth of a gear, worn with the oil of skin and years. She manipulated the gear in the sequence she remembered, suddenly fearful Grandfather might have changed the combination and not told her. He had no reason to expect her back, after all.

But a satisfying and familiar clunk told her the house's wrighted alarm was now disabled. Only then did she relax, produce her key and turn it in the door's mundane lock.

The door opened to gloom, and as her eyes adjusted, Ses saw the peeling varnish had been a prophecy. The house's interior was quite a bit shabbier than when she'd left. Wooden furniture was scuffed. Bone benches, tabletops, and counters carved from the skull were chipped and badly in need of patching putty. Every piece of fabric or upholstery was threadbare to the point of disintegrating.

Clutter had invaded and occupied every room, waging total war upon cleanliness, emerging victorious and exterminating its fallen foe. The warren was piled high with papers, books, and scraps of nife iron. Only a single, safe footpath wound through the tall, assorted stacks in each room. Since Ses had always done most of the cleaning, this wasn't terribly surprising. She shut the door before braving the path, resetting both the lock and the alarm out of habit.

Ses remembered her grandfather's messiness well, but she could also remember a time when he wasn't quite so fearful. He'd been a happier man before her father had shown up at the house unexpectedly one evening when Ses was perhaps four.

She hadn't understood what little of their conversation she'd overheard—her father's lone visit was just a stressful blur in her mind—but afterward, her grandfather's paranoia had grown rapidly. They had moved from a bustling neighborhood to this place, buried so deep in the skull you had to already know where you were going to find it.

Helloooo, Ses called half-heartedly. The many mismatched wrighted lamps were dark despite the sun's occlusion by the skull. Hello? she tried again. No response. Grandfather was obviously out. Also expected, but a knot in Ses's chest still relaxed a little.

Curiosity seized her next, and she made her way into Grandfather's outdoor workshop. Despite his Blazing heritage, Grandfather had a fierce interest in all things wrighted, and a decent talent.

She'd watched him work in the cramped courtyard space out back for years as a child, always amazed and hypnotized at the ringing of metal and the splashes of orange sparks. He didn't have the money or the space to construct anything particularly large, but he was never more at peace than when he was working at his small forge.

Such times were Ses's most peaceful as well.

The forge was bare and cold now. The only times Grandfather cleaned it were when he planned on being away for a long while. Hope warred with despair at this notion. Ses loved her grandfather, but she could barely remember a time when he'd been easy to live with.

Yet if he was gone on one of his many peddling trips to the outer marsh towns, Ses wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to do. She'd been released from all the responsibilities she'd ever known, and she had no one to talk to about anything that had happened.

As if to finish souring her sense of relief, Ses recalled Master Glinn's fear that she would be a suspect in the attack on the Pit. She dreaded the idea of being here alone, for