My eyes wandered to the left to see symbols etched into the stone, following the thin trail of a tentacle. I skimmed along the writing, my fingers lightly tracing over the shallow grooves.
“Ik’kri’kal’met’ti,” I whispered to myself. “S’tok’ur’in’ka’di.”
The symbols went on and on until I found myself staring into deep, cavernous eyes chipped into the basalt. The insides were coated in layers of melted wax as if many candles had burned out inside of those two cavities. Stepping back, I saw the rest of the carving. Numerous lines came together into a knot-like image of a face, long, misshapen, and consuming like nightmares themselves had gathered to birth it. Directly behind me, across the room, wasthe image of the siren holding the round object like the two figures were staring at each other.
I repeated the words to myself that I’d read along the tentacle when Vidar silently stepped up beside me.
“What is that?” he asked.
I swallowed, slowly turning to look at those wax-filled eyes again. I followed the wax, frozen in time, where it had dripped down from the holes like tears, nearly to the floor.
“Only a god can kill a god,” I muttered, the trace amounts of hope I still harbored inside myself dwindling.
“It sounds like something a pretender would say,” Vidar said.
I stared at the haunting image a bit longer, hating the sense of bleakness it emitted. The way the empty eyes stared from the darkness. The way the tendrils snaked out into the world, touching almost everything on the wall in one way or another. It was all so invasive. So despairing and sickening. Unnatural, like a parasite that had attached itself to things that did not belong to it.
“Makes me wonder who wrote this,” Vidar said, his voice sounding farther away. “And how twisted they were in the head when they finally did. This? This is what a monster who fancies himself a god wants us to see. The answers are here, Dahlia. We need to see past the lies.”
I clutched the hilt of my cutlass and nodded as I followed a particular trail of dark tendrils along the wall to a picture not like the others. The tendril coiled around a circle of women, all of them holding a small babe toward the middle of the ring like offerings. My stomach sank. I knew very well what it was that Akareth demanded. To see it depicted on wall carvings and paintings somehow made it worse. He’d always demanded sacrifice. Sacrifice of our children. Our freedom. Again, I glimpsed the siren holding that unfamiliar object in her hands. I noticed more age in her lines. More wear from time. Perhaps she was the oldest image in that place, although, even if she was, I was no closer to knowing what it all meant.
They’re not here,whispered a voice.
I turned to Vidar, but he was staring up at the walls, same as I was, analyzing everything and paying little attention to me. Tilting my head, I studied his face. The way his torch lit him up from below reminded me of nightmares that still sat dormant in the back of my mind. I breathed a sigh of relief when he raised the torch to look more closely at something. The light chased away the shadows and he was himself again. He glanced at me as he moved away from the wall to seek another area to explore, but when he realized my lingering stare, he stopped.
“You alright, love?” he said.
I peered over every detail of his expression, making certain that he had not been fabricated from the assumptions of some horrid god.
Akareth never got it right. I kept reminding myself of that.
Without the shadows to cover his eyes and the silence to swallow the tone of his speech, I could tell it was Vidar.
But why was I still uneasy?
My heart was beating like it knew I’d been deceived and was laughing at my naivety.
“Yes,” I answered.
He placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder as he passed, but a dirty feeling remained.
Something was not right.
You have yet again wandered home,the voice said, circling me like a vulture stalking a carcass.
I spun and found Meridan standing in front of another carving, her head cocked to one side like a child ogling their first sunset.
“Meri?” I said.
She remained unmoving, staring blankly. I slowly inched my way toward her, reaching out to touch her when she finally snapped her head toward me and smiled.
“Quite astonishing, isn’t it? All of this.”
“I’m not sure astonishing is the word I would use.”
“No? Do you not think it’s fascinating? A god who can control an entire race of sirens simply by existing in their heads?”
I knitted my brows at her strange words.
