I scramble down over rock, and leap across chasms. I am nearly to the bottom when an oddity catches my eye. Granted, this whole world is quite strange…but this is something—someone—out of place and wholly unlike the rest.
A soul in the distance still has a silvery outline that encompasses the faint remembrance of color and shape. He climbs up the rock, slowly determined to get away from death’s Abyss. Every movement seems to hurt him. His edges fray, as if invisible hands are trying to drag him back.
Farther up, I see the makings of the start of a deep trench. He’s scrambling to get up there. Though I can’t comprehend why. I glance between the man fighting to escape and the swirling shadows deep below, deciding he is not my concern.
I continue to descend through the gloom and shadow and rot. Deep underneath the waves, a current picks up and pulls on me. It tugs me in one direction and then another. When I heed its wishes, there is a soft whispering in the recesses of my mind that grows stronger as I no doubt get closer to Krokan. If I move in the wrong direction, the whisper-singing becomes fainter. It is like a child’s game with life and death and the fate of an entire world in the balance.
In the distance, there is a silvery outline of an anamnesis that I recognize instantly. Once more, I am directed by Lellia. Life carries me to death.
I continue, past the anamnesis and the last scrap of light it offers. There is truly nothing now. The sea has become a cold,coldvoid. Nothing but smooth rock and sand beneath me. Nothing above or around me.
Fear tries its hand at me, but I refuse to let it take hold of my resolution. Instead, I hum to pass the time as I continue walking. It turns to singing, as if I can fill the emptiness around me with my voice.
Rather than singing the words inked on my flesh, I sing something else. It’s that same song that’s tied up with the name “Ilryth” and “love.” I have the sense that I’ve heard this song countless times. That it has somehow been my life’s great work. The thing I know deep within me, despite all odds, was right. A great “yes” in a life full of “no” and false starts.
Minutes seem like hours that extend into days. Time is condensed under the weight of all this water. Yet, in what also somehow seems like a blink, I’ve arrived.
CHAPTER42
I knowI’ve made it the moment a new song courses through my mind. There are no words to the lyrics and yet, I can understand them as clearly as if someone had sat me down and asked me a question outright.
“Who are you?”the mighty voice demands through its dissonant and yet also harmonious song. A brief pause and then, “You are not my love.”
“I am not Lellia.” Though now I wonder if the markings made on me—the ones that seem to be able to summon and gain protection—are to mark me as her. That way I can be guided by the anamneses that surround him. Cross through Krokan’s guard to reach his audience. “But I am here to serve you. To be sacrificed to you so that you might find peace.”
“Then they have failed once more.” I cannot see Krokan in the perpetual night and shadow that is alive here.
“Tell me, how have they failed?” I dare to ask.Youhave failed, a quiet voice tries to taunt me. Despite all else, and all my efforts. I am somehow not enough.
There’s a flash of green. Movement all at once. I am surrounded by a thousand writhing tentacles that condense from the currents and shadows. They cage me in place with his anger and rage, blocking all exits. A mirror to the roots of the Lifetree. “There is not much time left before the Blood Moon rises and the barriers between worlds will be at their thinnest.”
The old god finally emerges from the darkness. He is of incomprehensible size—a mountain of a creature—with eyes of green, the same shade as the rare flash that happens when the crest of the sun dips beneath the horizon of the sea at sunset.
“But perhaps you will be a worthy vessel.” The tentacles close around me, agitated and angry. “Give her to me. Take her into you, human, her dear and yet so fragile child.”
The old god writhes. Tentacles thump against the sea floor with such force that it creates cracks in the rocks under me. The world itself seems to quiver. To the beat of his own making, Lord Krokan begins to sing. My mind, empty of myself, yet full with the hymns of the old gods, comprehends the meaning, if not the literal words.
He sings to the distant sky he has not seen since those early, primordial days of gods, mortals, and beasts. He speaks of loneliness and longing. Of waiting for thousands of years for someone that was promised.
The words are low and slow, sung by a thousand unified voices. When Krokan sings, every spirit and creature of the depths pauses to join him. They are calling…calling…
I was called once.
I blink, staring up at the silvery light that is beginning to collect in the water, spinning down. Krokan continues to hold me in place, slowly hoisting me. As though I am a thing to be presented—a sacrifice for a second time.
Take this vessel, his song says.Take her as your own.
Lellia. My eyes flutter closed. My heart sings with him. So much pain and hurt. For what? Why? The Abyss was made not from turmoil or from trauma that scarred the earth long ago. But from the ocean of tears Krokan wept for his lady wife.
For his goddess. Gone.
At the edges of my consciousness, I can hear her trembling words. Unlike the essence trapped in the memories of the anamnesis, which was mostly clear—strong enough—these words are frail. Like a warbling dove with a broken wing.
It’s all right, I try to sing in reply.I don’t understand, but it’s all right. Take me. Make me.
Nois the response.
My eyes snap open at the reply. The moment they do, the silvery light and power that had been gathering around my form explodes into starlight on the dark sea. Krokan’s tentacles unravel and I am sent, once more, plummeting down. Though I do not land violently, but with a sigh.
