They Sold Me to the Ruined General, Now His Ghost Won't Let Go novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Bite
The gold had no edges.
Idris hung in it with the harness gone and the cockpit gone.
Across from him, far off and very bright, hung something else.
It was a cracked bowl.
It was grey and enormous and burning, with a seam down its middle.
Every pulse of the Queen's scream drove the seam wider.
He knew its shape.
He had worn the hollow of it for five weeks, and the other half of it for two years more.
*There you are,* Idris thought, quite calmly.
He reached out with both hands.
He did not push.
You did not push.
He opened his palms as he had over a boy with a black dressing, and let the one flow toward the other.
The cracked bowl leaned, and took him in.
It was very quiet.
There was no pain, only a sweetness like cold water.
In the middle of it was a voice he would have known in any dark.
*Idris.*
*I'm here,* Idris said. *Hold still. This will only hurt a bit.*
The seam closed.
It closed from both sides at once, with a sound he felt in his bones.
A single clean note rose from the floor of the world.
The gold went out.
The cockpit came back around him in the glare of the screens.
He was hanging forward in the harness with blood on his lip.
The frame stood.
The blade was in Dain's hand, and the blade was burning gold.
"Idris," Dain said, in a voice that shook all the way through.
"Go," said Idris.
Dain went.
The Queen's second scream broke on the frame without leaving a mark.
He drove the blade into the cracked joint of her shell, to the hilt, and let go of everything he had.
The light that came out of her was white and very long.
When it faded, the great grey bulk of the Skarn Queen drifted against the dead moon with her limbs folded in.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of They Sold Me to the Ruined General, Now His Ghost Won't Let Go are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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