As the spaceship breaches the city’s armor, lightning dances across its walls on all sides. I crane my neck to see, spinning on the spot so I don't miss a single thing. We exit into the black of space, rotating so the red desert that made up half our sky for the past week ends up below. Watching the world spin while being pinned down by artificial gravity is a dizzying experience.

My cabin in the belly of the Chimera’s ship seems to be translucent all around, except for the slick black metal floor. There is hardly enough room to turn on my own axis beside the small cot – smaller than any bed I have ever slept in even since I was a child.

But the view distracts me. I run my fingers over the walls, which can’t truly be translucent or I would see into the other cabins. Instead, they seem to be displaying the space around the ship with the clarity of a technology that no longer exists after the collapse.

Art, who is upstairs on the ship’s bridge, told me “Welcome to the waste,” and then ordered me to rest. Taking her order seems impossible – I have ants in my stomach and every time I sit down on the cot I jump back up again. There is nothing to rest from. My whole life I haven’t done a single thing that one would need a rest from.

I watch the towers of our palace and the tiered city below shrink as we travel further and further away, dizzied by the sight of intersecting realities, trying to contain my emotions. I keep thinking, Today is my last day, trying to grasp the staggering implications of that statement. It feels like this should be a special occasion but then perhaps that is the princess in me speaking. Most people do not get a special fanfare on the last day of their life, few even have the luxury of knowing there is only a day left.

As I throw myself on my cot my mind conjures up images of what it might be like if I survived – I imagine myself with tattoos as plentiful as Art’s, my name on the lips of bards and storytellers. But I quickly dismiss the thought because I can feel my chest swelling with something like hope, which will make my death that much more tragic.

Despite how unsettled I feel, after hours of tossing and turning, I eventually fall into a feverish and restless sleep. I startle awake every time I hear a noise from the ship’s divine engine, just to let the stars lull me back to sleep. In my dreams, I face monsters with a thousand legs and Lucius’s face, just to look down to find my hands are fingerless stumps.

“Ekko!”

I jerk into a sitting position, sweaty and breathless, to find Art sitting on the corner of my cot.

As usual, her face is lit up by a smirk. “Are you dreaming of me, princess?”

Shaking my head, I shudder, trying to shirk the lingering dread from my nightmares. “Not unless you’re a giant centipede with big…” I hold my index fingers next to my mouth and wriggle them. “Teethy things?”

She tilts her head. “Not yet, although I have been thinking about getting myself a cool set of teeth.” Before I can respond, her head jerks up and she looks through the translucent ship at the horizon. She leans over and tugs at my arm. “Come on, you’ll want to see this.”

While she’s already heading out of the cabin and up the stairs to the bridge, I slip out from beneath the sheets and readjust my linen shirt and trousers. They’re Art’s and so made for her tree-trunk-like thighs, slipping from my narrow waste.

The open door looks like a portal in space, interrupting the projection of our starry surroundings. My feet are cold and sticky on the slick black metal that makes up the ship’s floor and I instinctively tiptoe to avoid the chilly surface.

Art is already nearly all the way up the winding stairs. “Come on, princess, hurry up!”

I cling to the railing as I follow her up. The material the ship is made from is nothing I’ve seen before, slick and smooth, seemingly without any bolts or joints. As if the Goddess carved it all from one piece. The elaborate engravings on the walls depict planets and beasts and fierce-looking Chimera. Strangely, they remind me of home, of the murals that adorn our own towers. The railing, too, is elaborately decorated, the tops of its posts carved into the heads of dragons, lions, and beasts stranger than I could have ever imagined.

When I enter the large oval bridge, everyone is already here. Art, Selene, and Leila have pulled up battered old lounge chairs that look like the Goddess would find them profoundly offensive inside her holy architecture. They are gathered around a deck of cards and glasses of dark wine while watching the curved walls, which display our surroundings just as they did in my cabin. Oren, who my father ordered to come along, is standing at the bow of the ship before a plinth that holds a hologram map of the surrounding realities.

“What is it?” I want to know as I tiptoe across the room, looking around at empty space. The desert that was colliding with Cascade City is long gone, and so is the city itself.

“Watch!” Selene says as she pours herself another glass of wine.

Leila raises her eyebrows. “Aren’t you going to offer Art’s girlfriend any?”

“Which one? I’m starting to lose track of them all,” Selene retorts with a chuckle.

“Oh, shut up,” Art says as she takes the bottle from them and gets up, presumably to find another glass. I carefully examine the worrisome pang Selene’s words have caused in my chest but decide that of all the things, jealousy is not at the top of my list of priorities.

“There!” Selene says, pointing at something far ahead of the ship. “C’mon Art, you’re gonna miss it.”

Art appears beside me and pushes the glass into my hands just as my eyes find what Selene is pointing at. Something is shimmering in between the stars. At first, I think it’s a planet but as we get closer – or it gets bigger – I notice that its center is strangely dark, only its outline glowing. The surrounding space, too, seems to be changing, the stars rippling like waves. Squinting, I move forward toward the bow, where Oren is standing over the map.

“What is that?”

He waves me over to himself and points at the hologram. “See this?”

I watch as, in between the regions depicting the realities in our immediate surroundings, a small rift opens up on the map. While its outlines grow on the hologram, the size of the shimmering thing also gets bigger.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“It’s a new schism,” Oren explains when he sees my confused face. “Here!” He nudges me to bring my attention back to the view outside of the ship.

Just as I look up, the thing – the schism, as Oren said – seems to explode. As if space is tearing into pieces and the edges catching on fire, a kind of glowing fissure bursts out from it. Painfully bright light shoots out from it as it expands and for a moment I need to close my eyes. A sound like the humming of a thousand voices goes through the ship.

When I open my eyes again, we seem to be inside the schism, luminous rings rippling out over the surface of the ship. The stars that are still visible behind us swirl and dance like a mirage before settling back into their usual formations.

Ahead, instead of the black of space that was there just a minute ago, is the milky arched surface of an unfamiliar planet, painted with rippling clouds and swirling vortices. The ship slows and tilts so the schism is above us instead of behind.

“Extraordinary timing, Captain,” Oren notes with a chuckle.

Art, who has gotten up to inspect the hologram, which is still adjusting, gives a little bow. “I try.”

“Oh, yes,” Selene falls in sarcastically, her words slightly slurred from the wine. “Isn’t she just such a prodigy?”

I suppress a grin as I watch Leila take Selene’s glass away. At least I'm not the only one sick of hearing just how grand Art is. Although I can't help but be a little bit impressed myself.

Distracted by watching the Chimera, I hardly even notice that my world has begun to tilt strangely until I need to steady myself on the plinth. My ears rush and my view of the ship seems to be spinning.

“Uh-oh,” Oren says, steadying me. “I think she’s going to be sick.”

“I’m not–” I swallow my words with the rising bile as dizziness threatens to overwhelm me.

Art appears by my side and takes the precariously tilted wine glass from my hand. “Please don’t vomit on the map,” she urges.

I grip her arm on one side and bury my hand in Oren’s tunic on the other, trying hard to suppress the horrific spinning sensation. “What the hell?” I groan.

Selene appears before me with a bucket that I'm pretty sure is meant to be a wine cooler – just in time, as I can already feel the contents of my stomach rising, my abs cramping desperately.

Art rubs my back as I grab onto the bucket and hurl up seemingly everything I've ever eaten. “Space travel is rough on you,” she says. “But watching the Goddess open up a hole in the fabric of reality right before your eyes is a whole other story. You get used to it eventually.”

In lieu of replying, I hug the bucket and slump over pathetically as I'm shaken by my body's attempts to rid itself of its insides. And then again, and again, until I have the overwhelming urge to just lie down on the cold metal floor and never move again. When it becomes clear that this bout of motion sickness – schism sickness? – is not going away, Art and Oren transport me back down to my berth.

“No,” I complain miserably. “I’m gonna die soon, I want to at least have some wine and hang out and–” My stomach cramps and I feel the saliva pooling in my mouth. I let out a pathetic whine as they place me down on my bed.

Art brushes the hair from my face. “We’re nearly there, anyway. We’re descending now.”

“Wait, really?” I push myself up on my elbow to glimpse the planet below the ship. “That’s Her?” I’m not sure I've phrased that right – my religious education is flimsy at best. Is the Goddess the planet or does she just reside within it? I try to recall my lessons.

“The home of the Goddess herself,” Art agrees. “We’ll throw you into the liquid core and see what comes back out.” She winks at me.

“Oh,” I say as I sink onto my mattress, suddenly feeling not ready at all. How pathetic would it be to die in the first ten minutes because I'm still motion sick?

“You should rest,” Art says. “There’ll be some time to get ready before the Challenge.”

“Rest,” I grumble into the mattress as I hear her footsteps recede. “Yes, rest.”

I cling tightly to the cot below me as my body questions whether it really is below me, or maybe behind… above? I close my eyes to suppress the dizziness. How embarrassing. It stings just a little that the others have left me here, even Art as if her last opportunity to spend time with me is worth nothing. Maybe it is.

The view stops me from keeping my eyes closed for too long. The milky blue and grey planet grows until there is nothing but it in our field of vision, the black of space turning into blue sky as we enter its atmosphere. Thick clouds whirl past the ship, giving off a blue and green shimmer. Between them, strands of strange liquid flow like rivers through the sky, undulating and deforming as we pass. They break the dim sunlight like a prism and draw rainbows of light on my cot and the black floor. When the liquid hits the window, instead of splattering and wetting its surface, they simply deform or break up into large beads.

The view doesn’t last long as we descend through the planet’s atmosphere. Like fog, it gets denser and denser around us until I can’t see anything but a faint blue-white mist. Eventually, spire-like stone formations begin gliding past us, partly obscured by the dense fog, reminding me so much of the towers of home I have to suppress a few tears.

I wouldn’t have thought I’d miss it but suddenly, it feels like an unbearable loss. It had been one of my passions to restore the murals in the towers at home. Now, they’ll probably continue to fade until they’re forgotten. Out of all the things, this is the one that makes me ache.

Steps on the winding stairs outside of my cabin pull me from my thoughts. After a loud knock, Art announces, “We’re docking now. Are you up?”

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

The temple grounds are like nothing I’ve ever seen. The dense atmosphere barely allows me to see further than a few feet but what I do see is so strange, I have trouble keeping up with the others. I’ve gathered we are in something like a courtyard. Both the floor and the walls seem to be made up of some kind of ice, cold and translucent. When I lay my hands on it, they come away damp, my body heat having melted the surface.

That, however, is not the strange part. Strange is what is beneath the ice under our feet, pulsing and undulating with a rhythmic fervor: Her. I can feel Her presence, feel Her watching us as we cross the temple floors. Until now, to my mind, the Goddess has been nothing but myth, mostly irrelevant to my way of life. But with Her right beneath my feet, it suddenly seems absurdly conceited to have thought of her like that – especially considering Her power over all realities.

The alienness of this place fills me with such awe, I wonder if it might have been worth it to throw my life away for just one glimpse.

“Ekko!” Art waves at me, barely visible through the fog, as I’ve fallen behind again.

I speed up, feeling uncomfortably choked under the mask protecting me from the toxic gasses in the atmosphere. Neither the Chimera nor the priests seem to have a need for masks, only me and a couple other outsiders we pass on our walk.

From the courtyard, we enter through a pair of airlocks into a large domed structure filled with clear and breathable air. When I remove my mask, it smells so clean and fresh it’s as if I’m taking my very first breath.

Carved into the ice that makes up the dome’s floor are square pools revealing the shimmering gold and red liquid beneath. The light emanating from them pulses and dances across the ceiling, the figures bent over their edge in prayer or communication throwing long shadows across the hall. My steps slow as I stare into the liquid – I can feel Her pull, almost hear Her whisper in the quiet sloshing and splashing filling the room. Suddenly, I feel an acute, desperate need to jump into one and let myself sink beneath the surface.

Oren pulls on my arm and forces me to keep walking. “Careful,” he says. “Not everyone can bear the presence of the divine.”

As he pushes me along, I watch people dip their fingers into the pools as they murmur their prayers. Hot envy surges through my veins, sharper than I’ve ever felt it.

Oren, who looks at my face with recognition, adds, “You will be with Her soon enough. But you must go through the initiation first, to avoid sullying Her waters.”