When a Hummingbird Guard reports that a Grower named the Artist is responsible for most of the forbidden tattooing in the Wheat District, Akachi remembers the rectangle inked into the scarred woman’s wrist. In the desperate hope the Artist might know Akachi’s prey, the young nahualli decides to pay the man a visit.
After Nuru and Efra return to the Growers Ring with their stolen tools and paints, the gang huddles in a tenement basement. Under the influence of a massive dose of narcotics, Nuru works to complete the carving. After days of constant effort, she finishes only to discover the woman half of the spider looks terrifyingly like her. Realizing Omari is dying, the gang decides to visit the Artist, a mysteriously educated Grower. Ascending to the street, they find ash falling from a smoke-throttled sky. The fields are burning, and the Loa have risen in open rebellion.
Meeting at the Artist’s tenement, Nuru’s gang does battle with Akachi and his squad of Hummingbird Guard. Under the influence of a suicidally dangerous blend of narcotics, Akachi calls his allies through the veil separating realities. He becomes a monstrous creature with the speed of a puma, the strength of a bear, and the armour of a pangolin. Equally dosed, Nuru uses her carving as a focus. She is horrified to discover she has carved Mother Death, the banished Queen of Bastion.
Powerful as Akachi is, the young nahualli is no match for a god, even one as starved and weak as Mother Death. Akachi is defeated and left for dead. Captain Yejide, whom he believes he has fallen in love with, and her squad are dead. Yejide’s soul is now trapped inside Akachi’s obsidian dagger. After a procession of Growers carries him back to his church, Akachi is visited by his god as he lays dying on the altar. He learns that the gods play a game of manipulation, warring through their worshippers rather than coming into direct conflict. Each of the gods has chosen a Heart, someone to represent them in the coming war. The last Heart alive will ascend to become the new Heart’s Mirror, the previous one having been murdered by the Loa.
Cloud Serpent has chosen Akachi to be his Heart. Cleansed of his doubts, Akachi’s faith is born anew in the heat of divine light. He learns that Efra is the Heart of Smoking Mirror and that Nuru is Mother Death’s Heart. For Akachi to ascend and become the new Heart’s Mirror, he must stalk and kill the women.
Gutted by the loss of her friends, Nuru flees with Efra. Though ignorant of the roles they will play in the coming war, the two women swear to bring down the nahual, to free the Growers from oppression.
The gods are once again at war.
AKACHI – VENOMOUS PURPOSE
Obedience lies at the heart of faith.
—The Book of Bastion
Lying on the sacrificial altar, Akachi’s mangled left hand caught his attention. Appalled at the loss, unable to accept it as real, he wriggled the stumps of his fingers. They itched, the ghosts of ants on flesh.
His sacrificial dagger lay upon his chest. He lifted it with his undamaged hand. No longer could he feel its deep evil. The souls of Yejide, the woman he loved, and Nafari, his only friend, were trapped inside.
Levering himself to a sitting position, Akachi groaned in pain.
Mother Death.
Nuru, the filthy street-sorcerer who was the god’s Heart.
Violent little Efra, the Heart of Smoking Mirror, the Obsidian Lord.
They will pay.
They would all pay. As Cloud Serpent demanded.
The gods saved us. We owe them everything.
Jumoke, the acolyte Bishop Zalika assigned to Akachi when she sent him out to the Wheat District, entered the hall. Approaching the altar, he bowed low. “Are you hungry, Pastor?” he asked as if nothing had happened.
He wasn’t.
“Fetch me clean robes,” said Akachi. “I hunt a god.”
Swinging his legs off the altar, he sagged. Jumoke caught him, kept him upright. Cloud Serpent had closed Akachi’s wounds, but he was still weak from blood loss.
Betrayed by the weakness of flesh.
“You must rest, Pastor,” said the acolyte.
Nodding, Akachi allowed himself to be led to his chambers.
Jumoke helped him to bed, bowed again, and left.
Akachi slept.
Waking to discover a platter of bread and fruit, he ate and again slept.
Akachi woke to empty silence.
No distant chatter of Hummingbird Guard as they cared for their weapons and armour.
Dead. All dead.
Failure, and second chances.
He earned the first, and didn’t deserve the second. But the gods worked in mysterious ways, or so said the Book of Bastion. Perhaps this was all according to some divine plan beyond his understanding.
The desire to hunt, the itching hunger at the base of his skull, cut through Akachi’s thoughts. He needed to prowl the streets of the Growers’ Ring, stalk through the sad, empty dreams of the Dirts until he found the two women who killed him. He would open them wide, expose their sinner hearts to the light of the gods. For the Heart of Smoking Mirror, the scarred Dirt who murdered Captain Yejide, Akachi’s love, sacrifice upon the altar would suffice. For the achingly beautiful Heart of Mother Death, something altogether more terrible was required.
Much as that relentless hunger consumed Akachi, he remained weak.
The stumps of the fingers of his left hand tingled and itched, a reminder of his failure to banish Mother Death. Two pale scars in the dark oak flesh of his chest were all that remained of the grievous wounds the god inflicted when she impaled him on barbed spiders’ legs. He remembered hanging there, a helpless bug, writhing in agony. She broke him, tore everything he was. Two matching scars adorned his back, where he couldn’t see them.
Rising gingerly from bed, Akachi flipped the long knot of tangled braids over his shoulder. The bones of rats and snakes, tied into his hair, clacked and rattled. Many were broken, pale fragments trapped in the chaos. Long past time to replace them, he couldn’t remember when he’d last undone the braids, had his hair brushed out and cleaned.
Still wearing the robes he died in, Akachi stank.
Everything stank.
Blood and smoke and death.
Hands on the walls for support, Akachi staggered to the church’s kitchen. The stone, still cold from the night’s chill, felt rough and raw, far from the perfection the Book of Bastion proclaimed it to be.
Hearing Akachi’s entrance, Jumoke turned from the meal he was preparing and studied the nahual with a critical eye.
Reaching forward, the acolyte poked a finger through the tattered, blood-stained hole where Mother Death impaled Akachi. “I don’t think these are worth mending.”
After torturing the Artist, warring in the street with the Dirt gang, being maimed and killed by Mother Death, and finally visited by a manifestation of Cloud Serpent, little remained of Akachi’s banded red, white, and black robes.
Collapsing into a chair, Akachi sat in silence as Jumoke set a plate of sunken fruit and stale hardbread before him. The food held no appeal. Then again, the acolyte could have laid out the finest feast, and Akachi still wouldn’t have been interested.
He remembered the dry weight of scales, the viper rearing back, foot-long fangs dropping into place. The stabbing agony as Cloud Serpent sank those fangs into Akachi’s torn flesh, pumped venomous purpose into his blood.
What was sustenance in the face of obedience and service?
Nothing. A distraction.
“I need to go,” said Akachi, rising from the table. He leaned against it, eyes closed, waiting for the dizziness to pass.