Lee sprinted into the open desert and threw her hands on her knees, gasping. Her eyes darted across the bleak landscape from left to right, pausing briefly over the straight white tower blocking half the sun. Where the hell am I? she thought.

I don’t know, something in her mind responded.

“Fylox, any dregs? Where’s the grail?” A voice called out from behind her, down the clay brick steps and back inside the cool, shaded underground of the…

The Middle Forum. The name appeared in her head with a familiar emphasis, but she was distracted by the overwhelming sense of panic and urgency whose source she could not place.

Alarm bells were ringing through her mind. She pulled a bronze sword out from its sheath at her side, hands fumbling over the warm leather. New, unused. Sharp.

It was like the path was laid out for her. Like someone was holding her hand from the other side, guiding it in circles around the sphere of her vision. Sand and dust blew violently past her face. Her heart began to calm; her ears tingled.

There. Tufts of white hair were followed up the last few steps from the Forum by a blood-red face and thin, bony body, with arms carrying a giant axe. Behind this red devil was an unarmed, dark-haired young man with glowing blue boots. Upon seeing the boots, something clicked in her brain.

Run from the man with the glowing boots. Get to the tower.

Her feet shifted agitatedly. Why was she brandishing her sword? Why did this situation feel so dangerous? How had she even gotten here?

Her brain had no answer.

“Tieri girl! Please don’t run away!” said the devil man. His voice was light and cheerful. He waved his hands in the air and let his axe rest against his armpit.

“You see the grail anywhere, or the keeper?” Boots asked. He took a few steps closer, eyes squinting against the bright sunlight. “Isn’t he bound to Pynta now?”

As he spoke, another figure leapt up the steps and came rushing out of the underground Forum. She wore black armor and was pale as bone. The two men flinched and the devil man reached for his axe as she ran past them. Lee locked eyes with the woman for just a second before she was gone, out into the endless plains of sand.

As soon as the woman was out of sight, the men returned their attention to her. She backed up, watching the devil’s axehead move with his breathing, and shook her head. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him. “I’m just trying to get to…” she hesitated, glancing at the other man. “The tower.”

The milliseconds stretched outward with the sound of her breath and the sudden flash of light. Her feet were pushing off the sand by pure reflex before she even processed the glowing boots flying at her face. A huge plume of sand and the sound of glass shattering erupted from the spot where she had been standing a moment before.

“Grab her!” The devil was yelling, as she sprinted toward the tower, trying to rub hot sand out of her eyes. “We don’t let raw meat get away!”

The shattering sound impacted her side this time, and her body was flung, hard, into the sand, scraping every inch of exposed skin. She couldn’t breathe; her ribs felt liquidy and cold.

Her eyes were half-open, and she could barely make out the wooden haft of the axe pressed into the ground before her face.

“Nice shot, Donny. You’d be shit out of luck without those boots.” Subconsciously, she had learned to recognize the devil’s voice, high-pitched but gravelly, with a strange, lilting cadence. She felt herself being lifted in the air and cried out as her lungs burned and bubbled.

“Ah, damnit,” the deeper voice said from somewhere behind and above her. “She’s heavy.” He jostled her around, and she screamed again. “That’s better.”

“You could’ve had the boots too if your record wasn’t so pitiful,” The man with the boots said, then started walking. Her body rang out with sharp pain every step.

“Hey, at least my incarns made it out of Magna Mater,” the devil replied, as her consciousness began to fade. Her body was shifted again, and Lee felt one last jolt of pain before she finally passed out.

----------------------------------------

She awoke to the smell of alliums and freshly baked bread. Her body was stiff and aching, and she had the feeling that any attempt to move would worsen the pain. There were voices murmuring around her.

“Tell us again, what they said about the mausoleum,” came a whisper.

The place she was in was cool, and the air was still. Slowly, she cracked her eyes open and saw five men gathered in a loose circle around a platter of bread and fruit. They sat beneath her and two or three meters away. Glancing around, she realized that she was hanging off the room’s floor, lying on a plank of wood.

There was a bright flash and a quiet crackle as a blue flame appeared in the hands of one of the men. His eyes and hair were a startling shade of yellow. “Keep in mind, the words came to me only after I swore the oath. Lux veritas mea est.”

Ropes were strung out in front of her face, tied through holes in the plank beneath her. Through these holes she could see a strange pool that emanated a whitish glow, dully enough that she had not noticed it at first. Her mind struggled to find some context in which to understand this scenario.

She was being kept alive, but for what purpose she didn’t know. The two men who had attacked her were nowhere to be seen. She tried to move her arms and realized she must have been tied to the wooden plank. Terrified as she was, she knew that moving her head would immediately alert someone.

Yellow Eyes was still speaking. “...in the old refectory is a tome, which will lead you to a frieze.” One of the other men bit into a piece of bread, the loud crunch echoing through the room. Yellow Eyes turned to him and glared for a few moments before continuing.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Have an element of the luminous and bear the promise of the White Cord. Speak the words and enter.” The yellow-eyed man grinned and folded his arms as he looked over the other men.

She heard a clink of metal and watched as the five turned their attention to one side. There was the scrape of a heavy object sliding over stone and Yellow Eyes spoke again. 

“Donovan, Fylox. You have been out for a while; the bread is almost gone.”

A high, gravelly voice replied. “We’re here now, aren’t we? We can skip the formalities.”

Lee felt her jaw clench as her two attackers came into view, the red devil, and the man with the boots—except his boots were gone. They both wore plain white robes, but were otherwise unadorned.

There were too many people up and about—she closed her eyes, worried someone would notice she was awake. Feet shuffled around her. Something was thrown into the pool beneath her with a splash.

“Good, you’re all cleaned up. We cannot risk any interference.” She felt her heart racing, and she was sure it was visible from the outside.

“Fuck, I’m nervous,” came the voice of boot-wearer, followed by a sharp slapping sound.

“Donny you idiot, the Cord can hear you,” said the devil, whose name she guessed was Fylox. There was muted tittering from the others.

“Both of you be silent. I thought you had done a ritual sacrifice before?” A sigh. “I gather that was a lie.”

Sacrifice!? Her blood ran cold. A few moments of heart-racing panic, then—“No, no, no!” she yelled, struggling wildly against her bonds. The plank shook.

The men all jumped, but oddly, none of them turned to look at her, except Donovan, whom Fylox slapped again. “Idiot, you’re not allowed to see her now.”

Her eyes bounced back and forth from man to man as she tried to wriggle her hands out of the rope, making little progress. Yellow Eyes was staring at the ground before her, and he shook his fists, apparently in real anger. “I cannot believe…” his voice shuddered. “She isn’t even a neonate? Where did you get her?”

Donovan and Fylox spoke over each other.

“Wait, I swear—”

“She was in the Forum—”

“—she’s fresh as fresh can be!”

“—when we found her!”

Yellow Eyes threw his hands in the air. “Unless her incarns traversed Yunkard or achieved succor, she wouldn’t wake up like this on day one.”

Flyox jumped to respond. “More and more people make it every year, it’s certainly—”

Yellow Eyes’ arms erupted in blue flame, from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers. He strode over to Fylox and rested a hand on his shoulder.

“One more lie, and I will burn you both to cinders,” he said lowly. Fylox grimaced and shook under his touch. The blue flame did not catch on the white robe, but it seemed uncomfortable nonetheless.

“I understand,” Fylox got out through clenched teeth.

The blue flames disappeared and Yellow Eyes took a breath. “I knew the first heat was a backwater. We should have stayed in the Queensgrove.”

One of the others, an older man with a tonsure, spoke. “Darius, the Cord doesn’t like to wait. We should finish this quickly.” 

Yellow Eyes responded by shouting orders, and Lee burned the names into her mind. Darius. Donovan. Fylox. For what, she wasn’t sure.

The restraints had not loosened despite her efforts, only making the plank swing a bit over the white pool. The men threw the rest of their food into the pool, which bubbled but otherwise did not react.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, glaring at Darius when he walked closer. He did not look up, but continued his preparations as he spoke.

“Blessings do not come easily. The White Cord asks for a willing sacrifice,” he said. The men were putting out the candles and torches scattered around the room, and the silhouettes wavered and shifted until they were visible only by the dim light of the pool beneath her.

Lee watched as the tonsured man walked up to the pool. “A willing sacrifice? You don’t mean me, right? Why would I ever agree to this?”

Darius clapped his hands. “I think we are ready. Dear Sunbrother, you may begin.”

The tonsured man peered into the glowing pool and sighed. “You are not a willing sacrifice—this is true. According to the dogma, the ritual is tainted.” He raised one hand in a gesture above his head, fingers pointed toward her face. “But spells of suggestion can circumvent this restriction.”

A blue mist spilled out of his hand and she held her breath, trying to move her head out of the way. An odd calmness entered her mind.

“Stay still,” the monk said. His voice echoed through the room endlessly. Men walked to her side and unlocked the restraints around her hands and feet. She felt this was somehow important, but the thought flitted away after just a moment.

“When I give the command, you will jump into the pool,” she heard him say. He continued to speak with a steady and commanding cadence, though she found it difficult to focus on the words.

Eventually, there was a long pause. “May your descendants pass through time unblemished,” the monk said. “Now jump.”

She moved to the edge of the board and felt it tilting downward. A muted spike of fear erupted within her, but her body continued to move.

Right before she slid into the pool of whiteness, she heard what sounded like a chime between her ears, and she scrambled back in the next instant, the board rocking back and forth.

Heart racing, she glanced around the room to see them all still looking at the floor. She had just a moment to notice the doorway on her left, a stone arch flanked by two men with swords, before the monk spoke.

“Something is wrong,” he said. Bracing herself with the ropes around her, Lee prepared to leap over the pool. “Girl, tell me what has happened.” She had another half-second of hesitation before she noticed the monk beginning to raise his head, and then she leapt off the platform.

The board swung as she jumped, and she landed awkwardly, her knee slamming into the head of the kneeling Donovan, who yelped. “Payback,” she said as the room erupted into chaos.

She felt hands try to pull her back as she sprinted to the door, but the men reacted slowly, as if they had not expected an escape to even be attempted. Darius was yelling and a whip of blue flame flogged her back as she barreled through the half-guarded doorway, knocking over one of the men and somersaulting into the hard ground.

Crying out in pain, she regained her balance and took in her surroundings. She was in an featureless corridor, but she felt oddly sure she was still in or around the Middle Forum. Moving and navigating by instinct, she ran up the nearest staircase and tried to ignore the burning pain in her back.

Yells and the cacophony of shoes slamming into stone continued to chase her, but her brain was going on autopilot as she flew up the narrow stone stairways. Suddenly the passage opened up into a giant courtyard with rays of sunlight shooting down onto hanging flower pots and vines.

Lee’s eyes darted around and snapped onto a familiar silhouette standing in an archway through which she could see a mass of green beneath a blue sky. “Help, please, help!” she yelled. “These men, they—”

She was cut off by a ball of blue flame slamming into her arm and the ground beside her. She screeched as her skin began to melt in front of her and nearly bowled over the woman in the archway.

Her eyes were filled with tears, but she felt the woman steady her, say something she couldn’t quite understand, and then shove her, arm-first, into the sand-covered floor. The pain tripled for a moment before quickly numbing away.

“There you go, Miss Freshie. Remember for the next time you catch fire. Sand is your best friend.”

Lee looked up to see the pale, black-armored woman who had run past her moments before she was attacked. Her eyes were blood-red and she was grinning, two long incisors biting into her lower lips.