The Drowned Gods, #2
Stranger Skies
by Pascale Lacelle
Contents
Chapter 62: Baz
Overview
Baz wakes in the infirmary to suspicion and grief after the Vault blast. Polina shares lockets containing Thames’s and Louka’s final memories, revealing Cornelius orchestrated murders, staged evidence, and manipulated both victims. Thames’s coerced Collapse and failed synth kill him; Louka is compelled to abandon pregnant Cordie and is drowned in the Tidecaller pool.
Summary
Baz wakes cuffed in Aldryn’s infirmary, battered from Dovermere. Cordie and Polina report a devastating blast through the Vault and quad; students now blame Thames’s Collapsing and suspect Baz’s complicity. Thames and Louka’s bodies were found in the Treasury. Polina, wearing her own damper, reveals she Enshrined both men’s final memories into lockets and urges Baz to witness them.
In Thames’s memories, Cornelius (Clover) and Thames debate lethal experiments to force Tidecaller awakenings under Bicentennial cover. Cornelius glamours witnesses, kills three students and Wulfrid by varied methods, and stages their corpses as ward casualties. Driven by Cornelius’s nightmare of apocalyptic power, Thames self-Collapses in the Treasury, infuses silvered blood mixed with Cornelius’s Tidecaller blood, and survives long enough to taste new magic. Cornelius then glamours Thames to take the blame. Thames flares with unstable power, Collapses again, and dies.
In Louka’s memories, Cordie reveals she is pregnant and the pair plan marriage and Trevel. Cornelius intercepts, compels Louka to write a cruel breakup letter and to obey. He brings Louka to the Tidecaller grotto as a “blank canvas” and drowns him to test the experiment, intending the act to be hidden behind the Vault’s wards.
Baz returns to the infirmary shattered, the lockets having exposed Cornelius as the architect of the murders, the staged scene, Thames’s coerced fatal attempt, and Louka’s murder after forcing him to abandon a pregnant Cordie.
Who Appears
- BazProtagonist; wakes cuffed in the infirmary, learns the truth by reliving Thames’s and Louka’s final memories.
- PolinaEnshriner; extracted and shares Thames’s and Louka’s memories via lockets, revealing Cornelius’s crimes.
- Cordelia (Cordie)Grieving; injured and devastated by Thames’s death, unknowingly pregnant in Louka’s memory.
- Cornelius (Clover)Antagonist; masterminds lethal experiments, glamours witnesses, stages bodies, coerces Thames, murders Louka.
- ThamesVictim; manipulated into self-Collapsing, attempts a Tidecaller synth, dies after coerced blame.
- LoukaVictim; compelled to abandon pregnant Cordie, then drowned in the Tidecaller pool as an experiment.
- WulfridTarget of Cornelius’s scheme; assaulted, murdered, and staged as a ward casualty.
- LuceLibrarian complicit by absence; her post is cleared during Cornelius’s staged scene.
- KaiAppears in memory at the party; witness Baz confronting Cornelius before being misled away.