Chapter 47
Snow tried to catch Element before she hit the ground, but the Contegon slapped wetly against the floor, blood gently leaking from her. He placed pressure on her wound as he checked for other damage: there was none, only the deep gash across her stomach. Element stared, her mouth tight from pain. She coughed, was about to speak, but a surge of pain rolled over her. She gritted her teeth and hissed instead.
No one knew they were buried deep beneath the ground, miles from the Front. There would be no relief cadre, no Field Doctor with expertise to help him: there was just him.
“Element, I don't know what to do...”
“Go,” she whispered. “Go.”
“No, I'm not leaving you, and I'm not letting you die. There has to be something I can do.”
“Snow...”
“No. No! I am an Acolyte of Sol, I am the Shield-General of the western Front. What in the name of Sol is the point of all that power if I can't... can't save you?”
Another bout of pain surged through Element, cutting off her reply. She fell into the agony, lost in it. He was alone. Element's life was in his hands, literally with the pressure he kept on her wound.
Snow took a deep breath, tried to think through the situation. He still had his Field Doctor's kit, so he started by delivering the best first aid he could. He still needed to transport Element out of these tunnels and to the Front, but he couldn't move her whilst she had internal bleeding.
The Contegon hissed as he worked, tried to buck away from the pain. Snow shushed her, said, “It's okay, Element. I'm trying to save you.”
“It doesn't feel like it,” she whimpered.
“Any Doctor would sew and clean your wound, Contegon. Don't make me order you to stay still.”
“Sorry, sire.”
An image appeared in his mind of a green, wheeled platform holding Element up. He almost jumped at this clear thought that wasn't his. Snow looked around, saw only Sigil. Were the Disciples talking to him? Or was it... could it have been Sol's voice, speaking to him through his Gift?
Whoever it was, he didn't understand their point. He carried only his robes, armour, Field Doctor's kit, and Scar's signet. How could he use those to transport her...
“Wait, transport,” he said. He reached for Scar's signet and visualised what he wanted to do.
That thought, whatever it was, had been right: Snow had an infinite supply of tools at his command with the Gift. Until then, he'd thought only of the Gift's combat potential: it'd never occurred to him what else could be done, not when there were already so many battles he couldn't join. But he often used the Gift for something other than fighting, didn't he? He, and every Acolyte Maya trained, grew wings from their backs and flew. That involved creating a stable structure of Sol's energy. And Certainty's walking was proof that the Gift worked in such ways. The question was whether Snow could make the Gift work so too.
Well, he'd find out. He fused with Sigil to create the aparatus, as they had when they first made his wings. Producing a new energy form required careful connection and shaping, like sculpting wet clay with long poles. They quickly agreed on a flat, mobile bed with wheels, something Snow could push. The rough floor would make the journey awkward, the stiff legs allowing no mercy for whom it carried, but the journey would be impossible without this set up.
Once they'd agreed on the design, they carefully formed this small wagon. This took some time to get right: they couldn't make the legs different lengths, or have the bed slanted. Sigil suggested partway through, in its wordless way, that the bed should dip at the centre. Snow agreed, seeing that would make Element less likely to fall out.
Under their ministrations, the bed appeared beneath Element, lifting the Contegon as they build its supports. Columns appeared at the corners, and then wheels at their base. She was raised four feet from the tunnel's floor, high enough that Snow could easily push her for miles.
“Can we maintain that for long?” Snow asked Sigil.
Sigil nodded slowly: the caution meant it wouldn't be easy, or too long, but it should be enough.
Element was pale, cold, and quiet. Creating this bed must have taken longer than he'd thought. He felt tired, which combined with his adrenaline comedown to leave him woozy. He shook his head, growled, and made himself push Element along. He went at a sprint, but the slightly-uneven floor made the bed buck, threaten to throw its patient off. Begrudgingly, he slowed to a jog.
How could he not have considered the wonders of the Gift before? Certainty used Structure to walk, yet he hadn't thought to do the same thing. Perhaps he'd thought that ability only for the disabled Acolyte, assumed that he didn't need such a power because he was able-bodied. The thought angered him because it was probably true, and he felt ashamed of himself.
They reached the spherical junction quickly. Snow kept her level, kept the heavy bed moving. He soon felt the strain of keeping the Gift construct going, especially when already drained from battle. Making wings took little effort, but he had practised the wings for years. Sigil didn't mind giving up its energy for now, but there would soon come a point where it would have nothing left to give.
Panic tried to set in when he acknowledged how short his time was, the desperation crowding in alongside the fatigue to urge Snow to run faster. It took all his will to breathe rhythmically, aid Sigil, and keep a sensible pace. His entire being became about the next breath, the next step, maintaining the cadence of their transferring energy.
Soon, they were back at the first workshop. The floor was more even there, perhaps because it had been trodden more often, so he allowed himself to run to the platform. Pushing Element up onto it, he hit the up button, and they started to rise.
“Should I maintain the bed as we rise?” he asked Sigil as the Disciple mechanics groaned into life.
The Spirit didn’t respond. Snow looked away from Element to find it flickering furiously in and out of existence. The bed beneath Element almost disappeared, dropped her a few centimetres before it appeared again, shorter than before, its energy much duller.
“Sigil, no, we can't run out of strength now. No. That wouldn't be fair.”
Snow felt the Servant’s will coming to bear as Sigil tried to strengthen itself, but it could not: slowly, it unformed the bed and lowered Element to the ground just before the structure collapsed.
Snow knelt to check Element's wound. It still bled weakly, and a horrible smell came from it, suggesting that the claws had nicked her intestines. She did not have much time left. “No, Sigil, no. No! We're only... only halfway there. Please, please, we can't let her...”
Sigil shook itself. It had no more to give.
He punched the platform, the blow jolting his whole arm. “That isn't right. This isn't right! There must be something else we can do? We can't just let her die. No, not after Call, not after I fought, and so many people died, to get her to Aureu. There must be something we can do. There must be something.”
An image of Scar's signet ring crumbling appeared, followed by another of Element's wound disappearing.
Snow eyed Sigil in confusion. “That was you, Sigil?”
The Servant nodded.
“Are you saying... are you saying you could use up your own energy and heal Element?”
Another nod.
“What would that do to you?”
Another image of Scar's signet crumbling appeared.
Snow shook his head. “No. No. I can't have to choose between my Servant and my friend. That's fucking cruel. That's wrong.” He punched the floor again. “What the fuck is wrong with Sol?!”
Sigil remained impassive, a faceless image of what he cursed, of his faith, strength, and determination to protect people. Could he let it sacrifice itself to save Element? He remembered his lessons with Maya and her Spirits on the formation of a Servant, the difference between the energy at its command and the energy in its form: he remembered Maya had said Servants could use their essence in extreme circumstances. Snow hadn't appre
ciated the sacrifice involved, or how much Servants cared for their humans, until now.
“I can't let you do this,” Snow said, his eyes tearing up. “I need you, Sigil. The Front needs you.”
An image of a Pyre appeared. Element was atop it, burning. Then Snow was standing over a map of Geos, talking through tactics with his Prime Shields. Sigil was saying he had made sacrifices like this before.
And Sigil was right: he had sacrificed people before. It was unfair to look at this as anything other than a tactical decision, unfair to those he had allowed to die during the Advancement, or to protect Aureu, and unfair on people like Catch who covered for him during his dalliances. So he considered the scenarios, the two options open to him.
He first imagined himself unable to join battles, even temporarily. People died, people he could have saved. It seemed like a simple choice, an easy one, until he remembered he was a Shield-General too. His job wasn't to jump into every battle, but to consider the whole. Would it be so awful to concentrate on that? With no temptation to abandon his post, would he be a better Shield-General, and a better servant of Sol?
Then he imagined his life without Element. Already, the thought of losing her hurt deeply. More deeply than it hurt to imagine life without Sigil. He felt a vengeance in his heart, one that made him scared that he might commit another Loss. He also imagined the other refugees of the Second Invasion weeping, their friend lost, and his heart nearly crumbled. It surprised him how strongly he felt, how much he cared for her in particular.
There was only one choice he could make. He looked at Sigil and broke into tears. As the platform rose, brought them to the surface, he moaned, “I'm sorry. This isn't a judgement on you.”
Sigil nodded.
“I just... I... I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”
Sigil shook its head. Then, wonderfully and horribly, it spoke in a calm, sexless voice. “I wouldn't have made the offer if I didn't know you would take it. I care too much about you to have you consider something you wouldn't accept.”
“You can...? You...?”
His Servant nodded. “I can. I just didn't need to say anything important before. Now I do. I say this: goodbye. I don't know why I'm called the Gift, but this is my Gift to you, who I love so.”
“No, Sigil, wait!”
The Servant dissolved, becoming a fine sand which poured onto Element's stomach. Snow tried to grab it, stop the act, but he had no connection to Sigil: it had already ended itself, if not his ability to ever control another Spirit. What he saw now was the pure energy that comprised its form. He wanted to howl, to scream, but owed it to Sigil and its sacrifice to watch what it did, appreciate the enormity of a life saved.
Sigil's personal energy entered Element through her robes. The Contegon's eyes opened and she screamed. A high-pitch buzzing echoed through the narrow shaft. Element went into a fit, her whole body shaking as a narrowing shaft of green light poured out from the wound.
Snow held her down, prevented her hurting herself. He could sense what was happening to her – still apparently able to sense emotions and holy energies – and felt burning within her. Sigil’s power was cauterising Element's wounds from the inside, sealing her busted guts together and even, he guessed, clearing the blood and other horrors which had been spilt through her system.
The green light diminished, diminished, and then disappeared. Sigil was no more. A howl rose in Snow's throat, but he held it back to check on Element, whom the Spirit had given everything for. He found the scar of a burn on her stomach, sealed. It looked weeks old.
“Snow...” Element said, sitting up. “Snow, what happened?”
He couldn't respond, simply grabbed her, and held her tight. She reciprocated gingerly, confused at his actions and her state, and then even more confused when, as the hatch above them opened and let the day's light spill onto the rising platform, Snow couldn't stop sobbing.