“You may have noticed,” Nyatrix begins, uncharacteristically shy, “that the Sepulchyre honors our Beloved Dead in specific ways. The Ossuary Wall. The reliquaries. The bone fetishes. The skeletons of great warriors strung up like banners.”
I swallow hard and nod. It is not a practice I understand, nor one I feel I ever will, but I would devour a world for this woman.Birth her a new one. Again and again until everything was to her liking, until the sun hung perfectly in the sky, until the moon rose just as she wished.
“If I should fall,” she whispers, looking up at me through her helm, her eyes a storm, “toss me into the waves. Leave me to the elements. Dispose of me. Let no bone of mine hang in these halls.”
Distantly, I register Agrippina’s sharp intake of breath. I grip Nyatrix’s hand harder. “You will not fall. But yes. Whatever you wish. Anything you wish.”
“The Sepulchyre has taken enough from me,” she whispers hoarsely. “Do not let them desecrate me, too. At least in death, I will no longer be theirs.”
I lean forward, resting my skin against the cool metal. “Should you fall,” I murmur, wishing with every fiber of my being that no such thing will happen, “you will at least be free.”
Three final words clamor in my throat, but my tongue refuses to speak them. I cannot bear the idea that Nyatrix may not return my feelings—for I am, I realize, falling in love with her. Perhaps I have already fallen. And yet I say nothing; more cowardice, I know. But I cannot bear the weight of another unrequited love.
Nyatrix stands and reaches out for me, her gloved fingertips brushing my chin. “Perfect,” she murmurs. “Completely perfect. You are a revelation, Ophelia.”
And then she turns, claps Agrippina on the shoulder, and disappears out into the corridor. I slump back against the chair, my heart pounding even though I could swear it has been torn from my chest and is now affixed to the armor of the wolf prowling the halls of the Conclaves, seeking blood and recompense.
It is my desperation, perhaps, that creates a crack in the old papyrus a few bells later, written in the rushed, uneven hand.The sheer terror I feel pounding through every vein in my body, the way my mind twists between visions of Nyatrix dead or the Host recapturing me or this entire city laid to waste, compacted into something small and sad that will fit in the First Son’s mouth—it all urges me onward, faster, faster, faster.
“Sails,” I almost shout, startling Agrippina, who is transcribing the papyrus to enable me more time with it before its absence is noticed.
“What?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me.
“This word,” I yell, stabbing a finger at the manuscript. “It means sail! Or something close—a noun, maybe, or the verb. The means by which a ship moves across the water.”
“How are you so sure?” Agrippina asks, a tender kind of hope in her voice.
“I can’t believe it took me so long to realize,” I exclaim, digging my fingertips into my hair. “Renault, he’s been researching shipbuilding for many anni. We just translated—no,Ijust translated—an old folktale that uses a ship as a metaphor.”
I’m not sure if what I’m saying makes sense, and I don’t take the time to ask Agrippina, instead turning back to the papyrus. Using that word, I can confidently transcribe two more characters into our modern version of Ceremonia. My hands shake, trembling more with each character.
An enormous, echoing boom sounds somewhere in the distance, causing me to knock over the inkwell. Agrippina catches it, staining her fingertips black. I look up to thank her, and her face is pale, corpse-white in the dimness of the evening.
“What was that?” I ask.
She swallows hard and shakes her head. “Keep going,” she offers as a reply, sliding the half-full inkwell toward me.
I nod, unsteady, and do as she says. My lettering won’t be legible to anyone but myself, but it doesn’t matter—I just keep going, untangling this knot of language and time and death.
Finally, I sit back, scanning the words my mind hasn’t been able to read as a whole just yet, only parse out individually, one character at a time.
We are leaving the only home we’ve ever known with our Creatrixes.
There is no hope here on Sylva any longer, not with the First Son. We’ve tried to show the truth to the Host’s people, but they will not see sense. So we’ve gathered up our Sepulchyre Court and we’ve prepared ourselves to set sail into the unknown.
We are all accounted for, save for our great warrior Petronyx, whom we have not recovered following a recent battle near Lumendei’s outskirts. She carried one of the last goddess-forged weapons, the World-Eater. With her husband three fortnights in the grave and no known heirs, one of our court’s oldest bloodlines may be at an end. We can only hope neither she nor the blade has fallen into the Host’s hands. And our Beloved Dead we must leave behind as well. May they understand, and may they hold back the tide of the First Son’s bottomless ambition.
Moryx’s priestesses have instructed us to destroy all knowledge of shipbuilding, a desperate hope that the First Son might not follow us across the waters. We do not know if anything awaits us. But we cannot stay here.
He is so hungry. He will not cease.
We must get the Creatrixes far from His seeking jaws. They worry He wants to devour them, just as He did His siblings. If He manages such a thing, there might be no stopping Him at all. With His ability to command so many bodies at once, Hisvast mind somehow looking out from every single pair of eyes, we cannot curtail Him. A god. A gestalt. A horror.
We cannot sacrifice any more of the Sepulchyre to His jaws, to this Sundering, to this war. We cannot save this world. So we must find a new one.
The Creatrixes have already diminished themselves, a pale shadow of what they were, and we cannot stand for any more. They’ve left one last shred of salvation for the people of this continent—should any of them find it within themselves to rebel, to stop this madness, a hidden power will strengthen them. Guide them.
Avatars, they’re called. Vessels of the Creatrixes’ power, sleeping until the right time. I find myself skeptical of this for a number of reasons, but for the people of the Host who know nothing better, I pray it’s true. I pray they have a fighting chance at anything.
