“Then fuck the Lodge,” I said, “and look me in the eyes, #404. Tell me right now that you actually think sacrificing the Sunken Valley is the best path.”
Secretary’s hands clenched the railing. Their back muscles tensed as they tried to shove all the feelings within their heart over the balcony. They didn’t turn around.
“Little brute, that’s not my job,” they said. “I can’t decide who lives and dies.”
“But you do,” Lupe scoffed, “you do, I do, and Nadia does—way too much I might add. Everyone everywhere makes this choice constantly with any decision of consequence. According to the elders down in the valley, the folks of the Old World dealt with it every time they bought something.”
“It’s not the same,” Secretary spat.
“Of course it’s not,” Lupe said. “You only had to push a button. Someone else told you what bombs to use and when to use them. The only thing that changed is now the blinders are off and you’re seeing the tableau for what it is. What doesn’t change, however, is that we were always making the decision. To kill Marduk, the Lurkers, traitors to the Lodge…”
“That’s all it was though,” Secretary said. “This is asking me who lives. Do the people of Brightgate live? Does the Sunken Valley? Marduk has to die, that’s no question, but who pays the cost to put him down? Whose children don’t get to grow up?”
Secretary whirled on me and Lupe. Their eyes warm with rage, but their body frozen by despair.
“Lupe, what you feel for the valley is what I feel for Brightgate. I can’t make that trade.”
I strode toward them. They pressed themself back into the railing, wishing to escape but unwilling to make a proper attempt. I wrapped my hands over theirs, pinned them between me and the railing, forcing them to stare into my eyes. They attempted to meet my gaze with furious defiance but found it unflinching in its loving sharpness. A sunny gold now flecked with carmine stars reflected back within Secretary’s horizon grey irises like washes of paint over a primed canvas.
“Then is this the best path?” I asked.
Secretary’s eyes flicked away from mine as if I was trying to hypnotize them. They bounced to my lips, to Lupe, to my ear, to the star at my temple, before returning to my eyes. Secretary’s face screwed shut and crumpled inward, defeated and excised of a burden they could never carry.
“It’s not,” they whispered.
I removed my hands from theirs, freeing them, but lingered in that position of proximity. Secretary didn’t slip away immediately either. Neither of us wanted to be the first to pull away. Not when we’d been on the precipice of being torn apart by the excuse that was our “professional relationship,” which up to then had kept us together. Lupe, emotionally astute but having little patience for the coy dance between #404 and myself, took the initiative in providing us reason not only to part but return our attention to the tasks ahead of us.
“Are you done eyefucking each other?” Lupe asked.
I said, “No, I was just…”
“...we were trying to…” Secretary stammered
Lupe rolled her head from side-to-side—a replacement for rolling her eyes—and clapped her hands together. We both “coughed,” parted, and gave Lupe our full attention.
“Thanks,” she said. “So with Secretary proving they do have a heart, how are we stopping all the bombs from going off?”
“We just don’t use the detonator,” Secretary said matter-of-factly.
I asked, “But who has the detonator?”
“I do,” they answered. “My superiors assigned the task to me seeing as we’ll be avoiding the party entirely if all goes well with flipping the Angler Knight.”
Secretary held their hand palm-up as they conjured a small carmine box coated in velvet that looked like it was meant to hold a ring or necklace. They cracked it open to reveal a red button on the inside. Lupe chuckled nervously before throwing their hands into the air.
“Really, a big red button?” Lupe asked.
Secretary shrugged, “Lodgemaster Khapoor has a sense of ‘humor’ about these things.”
They shut the box, but rather than put it back in whatever storage-spell or place they conjured objects from…Secretary grabbed my hand and pressed the box into it. Closed my fingers around it with a grip so tight that I felt its beveled edges bite my skin.
I lifted my closed fist. “Shouldn’t Lupe hold onto this?”
“Lupe would toss the box over the edge,” Secretary stated.
Lupe said, “Probably, but handing it to Nadia—”
“Is the best I can do,” Secretary said. “I can’t give up Brightgate, you can’t give up the Sunken Valley, and Nadia’s the only person who’d be audacious enough to think we can save both.”
“She’s selfish,” Lupe argued. “Nadia doesn’t listen to anyone but Nadia.”
“I know,” they said smirking, “I’m counting on it. My little brute would sooner brawl an Earl than accept something she believes to be wrong. If she presses that button it won’t be because of my argument, yours, or anyone else’s. It’ll be because we’re absolutely fucked.”
The detonator felt ten times heavier in my hand, suddenly. I shoved it into my pocket and did my best to ignore the fact that once again people were betting on me based on my worst traits. At least it was trust of some variety. Although Lupe’s expression was of acquiescence to Secretary’s confidence in me rather than true acceptance. She’d still not forgiven me.
“Now, little brute, is the Angler Knight above or below us?” they asked, their expression returned to the cool professionalism with which I was familiar.
“Since the place is upside down, technically below us,” I answered.
“Hmm,” Secretary hummed. “Do you remember any of the security details leading to—”
“Why don’t we just jump?” Lupe asked.
Secretary’s mouth fell open, formed the beginning of multiple refutations, before ultimately closing when no smooth argument came forth. They glanced at me as if I’d rebuke the suggestion in their stead. When none came, Lupe clapped Secretary on the back with a look that screamed, I win this round.
“Seems your ‘little brute’ was planning on taking the brutish option,” Lupe said.
“It’s not brutish! I was trying to be cognizant of time,” I argued. “The party’s already spinning up, I bet, so instead of trying to stealth through however many floors…we could jump. It’d be the stealthier option, right?”
As if it pained them to do so, Secretary agreed, “It would be.”
I gathered Secretary and Lupe into my arms. Together, we stepped up onto the balcony and I felt the edge of the throne’s inverted local gravity wash in and out like a tide. It made the hem of my shirt flutter like the tendrils of an anemone. I’d not forgotten the horrors we’d seen in the Menagerie—I’d never forget them, but for a brief moment I could understand the beauty of this throne with its gentle glow and ancient streets. Especially as that same illumination shimmered across Lupe’s shades, and filled Secretary’s eyes with color when they peeked up at me from beneath their lashes.
“Please, little brute, just jump,” Secretary whined. “I’d prefer this to be a swift torture rather than a long one.”
Lupe teased, “And once again being blind is my victory. Can’t be afraid of heights if you can’t see ‘em.”
I ignored Lupe’s teasing. “#404, shut your eyes and I’ll let you know when to open them.”
My handler trusted me, closed their eyes, and placed their life in my hands—though I suppose handing me the detonator to every bomb the Lodge had smuggled was largely the same. It was without further discussion that I kicked us off the balcony and into the air where for the briefest moment we hovered in space as unspoken forces considered whether we should fall or ascend. A discussion made moot once we’d properly passed the shoreline of the throne’s gravity, and fell. Headfirst, hair snapping and clapping in the wind of our passage, and the ground below—what I’d previously assumed to be sky—magnifying at an increasing rate.
I blinked on my Omensight and traced the tie between Sinaya and myself down the tower. There were adjustments I’d made as we fell; a lean here or a twist there, all so we could slip around Staircases, dodge patrolling entities, and follow the thick magenta bond that led from my heart to Sinaya’s. A focus that prevented me from noticing Lupe’s features made graven as who we approached wasn’t her love, but her greatest foe. I’d also missed Secretary’s expression—yearning and dripping guilt—directed at me to no acknowledgement, and quickly shuffled behind their professional identity as my “handler” when I flexed my spirit to release Sphinx’s wings.
They caught on the non-wind of the domain and cast us away from the tower like a paper hawk. I shifted our weight slightly causing the wings to tilt as we rolled into a turn that redirected us back on target; my tie to Sinaya finally level. The only barrier left between us was the floor-to-ceiling window that framed him in his armored majesty like some ancient portrait—my gallant butch-in-distress had been waiting for me. He exited the glass frame, attending to some mechanism that operated the windows which swiftly slid aside like the screen doors back home.
It took four flaps of Sphinx’s wings to slow down enough for a proper landing. Though “proper,” in this case, saw the three of us hit the floor in an ungainly stumble to bleed off the momentum that we’d still maintained—flying in this manner was already hardly intuitive, and carrying passengers was a feat I hadn’t found the time to master. Sphinx’s wings beat at the air to help slow us down, but, while well-intentioned, they’d only knocked over the towers of books that coated the floor like weeds and made loose papers cartwheel off into the air. It wasn’t until we crashed into a wall—the only obstacle in the room obdurate enough to cease our passage—that we came to a stop, bouncing off of it and onto our asses.
Though our collision wasn’t completely neutralized by the wall either. The force of it caused a grand painting—at least half the length of the windows we’d flown through—to jiggle-hop off its mount and fall atop us. As its shadow stretched over us I did at least appreciate the hand which had made it; the painting being an expressionist depiction of a rusted set of armor laid out in a field—overtaken by flowers dappled by the sun, a thing forgotten to time and left to rest. My nose was inches from smelling those painted flowers before the painting’s motion was canceled.
I tilted my head back to find Sinaya, his beautiful scarred mouth laid out in a pleased smirk, standing in the middle of the room and my destructive wake. With a raise of his eyebrow, he worked his field-spell with a deftness most at his link could never hope to achieve. Returning the painting back to its place on the wall. After which he swept his gaze across the room, restoring each book and paper I’d misplaced to its original position in, what I’d realized, was an organized garden of scholastic chaos.
“#404, you can open your eyes,” I whispered, trying to avoid giving away Secretary’s weakness.
Their eyes fluttered open, stress washing away as they ran their hands over the hardwood flooring of Sinaya’s room. Finding it firm enough for their liking, Secretary rose to their feet and went about smoothing their clothes—they were representing the Lodge in this, after all. Lupe and I didn’t linger long on the floor ourselves. While Secretary attempted to look the part of negotiator, I was immediately besotted by the layout of Sinaya’s space.
Ignoring the towers of books and papers, his room may as well have been an altar to every pursuit a human could follow that stood in opposition to the mastery of the sword and violence. His walls were festooned with paintings abstract, expressionist, and all too real with softly blended colors which breathed rosy life into its subjects. On multiple bookshelves, he’d made space for miniature sculptures of entities—many of them of Abyss—as well as those that depicted mundane things like flowers, trees, and pastries. Over top his bed was a quilt whose end row was only half-complete. Everywhere I looked was expression of such want for a life that he—standing there in his grim armor rusted slightly by bloodstains he’d given up on removing—had long abandoned hope of escaping.
“Um, welcome to my room,” Sinaya said, his voice shy and off-balance.
I said, “It’s beautiful.”
“Nothing like I would expect from you,” Secretary added. “Though I’d hope what you bring to the Lodge is more than artistic extravagances.”
Confusion drew his brows together. “What I bring?” he asked.
Secretary asked, “Yes, you didn’t think we were coming for you out of some misplaced goodness, did you?”
Sinaya’s eyes whipped to me in wounded disbelief. I’d sold him on that very premise, and from me it was entirely true. Yet before I could arrange the truth to him, make it palatable in the face of the wounds and failed escapes that haunted his eyes, Lupe broke from where Secretary and I stood. Proverbial fangs bared and ready to taste blood.
“Alls below, so the genocidal asshole fashions himself an artist,” Lupe growled. “Whether that’s all he brings or he knows the secret weakness to Marduk himself, none of it matters until I get some answers.”
When his attention settled on her it looked like a firework had gone off in his face. Sinaya stumbled back, toppling a tower he’d just re-assembled—his expression, a panorama of shock and abject terror. He’d had none of it when they’d crossed weapons. Why now?
“Lupe,” he stammered out. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Lupe cackled, its tone jagged as lightning. “Like fuck I shouldn’t,” she said. “I’m the last of the Seven Families, and I’m the one here to kill you.”
“Kill me,” his voice said, breaking like ice over a lake.
I raced past Lupe, interposed myself between her and Sinaya.
“Now who’s getting ahead of herself?” I asked. “You said you’d hear him out first and then judge. Sinaya’s a victim too!”
“Orchard—” Sinaya exclaimed.
Lupe asked, “That’s his name?”
“No—”
“Yes,” I stated, raising my voice to supersede his own. “His name’s Sinaya. His grandparents on his dad’s side ran an apple orchard. While not blind, his arms are translucent, probably because of being born in the Sunken Valley. And he has a scar on his lip.”
From Lupe’s expression, I’d set off a firework of my own. They leaned against a stack of books for support. Shaking their head to rid themselves of whatever in my rambling had stunned them.
“Ate?” Lupe asked.
Sinaya said, “Yes. It’s me—always been me.”
Lupe nodded, righted herself, and raised her chin out in a show of bravery in the face of whatever had passed between them. Yet bravery is the bulwark against fear, and means little when overcome by the conflicted hydra of joy, grief, and complete sorrow. She turned from Sinaya and myself, walking toward his bed, and fell stiff as the dead onto the quilt. Though this proved to be no true support, as her fingers ran over its squares eliciting a guttural sob muffled by the quilt’s thickness.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Wow,” Secretary said.
I asked, “Is this good?”
Secretary sat beside Lupe’s slumped-over form on the bed. Stroked her back, and regarded me with the facial equivalent of a shrug.
“That depends,” they said. “How would you feel if it turned out the person you were set to kill was your sister?”
“Oh,” I said, before turning back toward Sinaya. “If you’re sisters, why are you enemies?”
Sinaya shook his head, unable to form words now that the depths of his identity were revealed. Lupe flipped herself over on the bed. Pressed her palms into her eyes to stopper her tears.
“I already told you, Nadia,” Lupe said. “My sister—Sinaya—jumped a cultist when we were younger. He got the scar in the scuffle. Bonded to Abyss, and trained up to get me out of the valley.”
“But that’d put him on your side, right?” I asked.
“You’d think,” she hissed, “but people can change, I suppose.”
Sinaya’s head whipped up—he’d struggled to form words in explanation, but he had plenty for defense.
“Never in that way,” he said. “I’d never turn…in that way.”
“Then what happened?” she asked. “How’d my older sister go from loathing Marduk like the rest of us to someone who could kill the people who raised us?”
He held out his hand, and I helped him stand. On shaky legs, he carried himself just far enough to find a chair to fall into—one with brassy legs that held up the full weight of himself in his armor. Then, with a steady arm, he pointed at Lupe.
“Because you exist,” he answered. “Marduk may not care about his grandkids but he knows who we are and kept tabs on us. When I killed that cultist, he knew and just let me train in secret. The bastard wanted to see how powerful I could be—if finally, his fucked up experiment worked. When I got you out he was waiting for me on my walk back into town. Told me that for killing his knight all those years ago, I owed him my fealty or I owed him a life.”
Sinaya’s arm fell and with it his spirit. “I couldn’t let him kill you. You were the hope of everyone, and as long as I served Marduk he’d allow you and the families to operate unmolested. So I swung a sword in his name. Bloodied my spirit until I couldn’t recognize myself. Alls below, how’d you put it, Orchard, ‘I chipped away at myself piece by piece.’ Abetted every atrocity because I knew that it meant you had more time.”
“Why not escape?” Lupe asked. “You couldn’t possibly think that I’d be fine with…”
“Marduk made it plenty clear the cost of escaping,” Sinaya said. “Each time I’d failed he dragged me with him to watch as he whittled down the Seven Families one-by-one. Sometimes he made me do it or else I’d get to watch him destroy two at once. Following his will or trying to listen to my heart still left me complicit. It became easier to just—”
“Pray someone would kill you?” I asked, my eye drawn back to that painting. Of that knight at rest and unbothered, free from service even if only through death.
Sinaya gifted me a weak smile. “Unfortunately mine weren’t answered, but Orchard here convinced me that I should at least try one last time—to live free, if possible.”
Lupe propped herself up. “Yeah, Nadia’s pretty convincing. Can’t tell a lie to save her life.”
“But she wields truth adeptly,” Sinaya said. “I get why you all followed her.”
“It is, little brute’s specialty,” Secretary said. “Though, can I ask why you call her, Orchard?”
Lupe and Sinaya answered at once, “She has apple-sized tits.”
“They’re not that small,” I protested, to the snickering of both sisters. “If you can make fun of me, can I assume Sinaya’s not dying?”
“She may have been stuck working for Marduk,” Lupe said, “but I could never kill a member of the Seven Families. Sister or otherwise.”
“Lupe—” Sinaya started.
“But,” Lupe continued, “while I’ll help free you…I think it’ll be a while before I forgive you. Also, I’m punching you in the face—you at least owe me that.”
“Punch me as much as you want,” Sinaya said. “I couldn’t bear to have you hate me.”
“I couldn’t hate someone who's been fighting for me for so long,” Lupe stated. “It’s my fault I failed to produce results until now. If I was better…”
“Don’t go down that road,” I said, “there’s no answer at the end. We always wish we were more than we were, but it’s about what we can do now. And from where I stand, right now, there are two surviving daughters of the Seven Families of the Sunken Valley ready to crack Marduk’s scheme wide open.”
Secretary added, “Sinaya, if you’re willing to become an asset of the Lodge, work to try and offset the balance for your years serving Marduk, we’ll do everything we can to free you.”
Sinaya ran a hand through his hair, pushing his head back. Squeezed shut his eyes in an attempt to prevent tears from forming. He was facing down years, maybe decades, of service to the Lodge and undoing the ills he’d inflicted on the world. From the smile that caught his tears, wetting his lips, I knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’d be doing that anyways,” Sinaya said.
“Then it’s done,” Secretary said. “We’re breaking you out of here. So, first order of business, do you know a way out of here?”
Sinaya rose from his chair, a woman enervated with new purpose and bright eyes.
“I do,” he said, “though we’ll need to move quickly. Marduk’s attention won’t be held for long.”
“The party?” Lupe asked.
“Party,” Sinaya said bitterly, “he doesn’t care about that any more than he loves to gloat—I’ve listened to him gloat for far too long. No, it rarely happens but Marduk has a visitor.”
“Who’d visit him?” I asked. “It’s not like this place is easy to get into.”
“Everyone has family, even him,” Sinaya said. “Although, according to the way he rants about them when drunk, there’s little love between the lot of them.”
While he spoke, Sinaya opened a drawer filled with long black tee shirts. He removed one and held it out to me, his eyes dipping briefly to my chest with a concerned frown.
“Since we’re trying to be stealthy, I presume, it’d be best if you changed clothes,” he said. “Walking around in a blood-splattered shirt will bring up far too many questions if we run into anyone.”
Sheepish, I took the shirt and hurriedly made the swap. Secretary’s eyes didn’t stray from my body as I stripped, but they lacked a joy about themselves for all my brief nudity. While I stomped on the urge to sniff the shirt Sinaya decided to loan me. His scent might as well have been woven into the fibers, and I yearned to add it into my olfactory memory.
Lupe asked, “Wait, you’ve been walking around in a bloody shirt this entire time?”
“Not the entire time,” I said. “Only after I killed Tomas.”
Sinaya asked, “You killed Tomas?”
“Alls below, don’t tell me you liked him,” I whined.
“No, no, you’re fine Orchard. He willingly worked on the Menagerie project,” Sinaya said, “so he deserved it. Though, why not try to clean the shirt or leave it?”
“It’s Nemesis’s stupid Bloodlust curse,” I said. “Ever since I caught it that night during the wild hunt, it’s become really hard to not get covered in blood. You get it, right?”
“Not really,” Sinaya groaned. “Alls below, Marduk’s a monster, but he knows his way around Sorcery, especially curses. Taught me a method to tamp down the Bloodlust curse so it barely develops.”
He removed his gauntlet and held up a translucent hand. The bones were carmine. I caught his hand between my own utterly fascinated. Sinaya had fangs, but that’s where his curse had stopped before Marduk had taught him this method. Relying on the nearly unchanging facet of Abyss to hinder the curse’s progression. It wasn’t a method that’d work for me, and while the truth of that hurt…it was a dull pain that paled in comparison to the relief I felt that Sinaya wasn’t likely to suffer as I’d suffered. At least in this respect.
“Can I, um, have my hand back?” Sinaya asked, that pale flesh of his nearly as red as his bones.
“Now, little brute!” Secretary snapped. “I’d like to be free of this place.”
I released his hand with a wink and a smirk. Which drew nervous chuckles from him. The way he held himself, so demure yet contrasted by tender bulk, introduced me to the other side of Bloodlusts’ coin. The violence inherent in attraction, and my desire to knock him down so I might taste him again. It was only by him cupping my face, the distraction of tangible touch versus abstract lust, that pulled me from fantasy.
“Give it time,” he said.
“Alls below and all of the Nine,” Secretary bemoaned, “which way to getting the fuck out of here?”
“This way,” Sinaya said, opening the door of his room and leading us out into the hall.
Secretary followed close behind him, with Lupe and myself taking up the rear. I drew close to Lupe as the four of us slipped through what Sinaya had termed, “the Executive Hall,” where the abodes of those who largely led the terrestrial affairs of the cult for Marduk resided. As we crept down the hall toward the stairs, I drifted back toward Lupe, slowing my pace to match hers.
“Lupe, since it seems everything worked out,” I whispered, “is there any chance to us going back to how things were?”
She let the question bob in the air between us. Holding an answer in her mouth, while we descended a staircase with too many landings leading off to countless other halls connected to the tower’s main function. “Atlantean secrets,” Sinaya stated as he warned us about drifting off from the pack. The throne predated Marduk as well as the world, and as such held enough secret paths that more than a few Lurkers tempted by knowledge had been consumed by shifting passageways which rarely aligned to the throne’s spine—the term for the staircase we were on. It was in this quiet descent surrounded by paths never taken, that Lupe answered me.
“Nadia, everything working out was coincidence,” she said.
I said, “That’s maybe downplaying the work I put in for you to not just immediately kill him”
Lupe’s head rolled side-to-side. “If it was anyone else, sure, it would be. If it was anyone else, it’d be incredibly generous. The problem is you did it Nadia, and that means you did it for you. It’s intoxicating when that selfishness of yours lines up with what I care about—trust, it felt so good to see you knock the Angler Knight around—but I know now it was never for me. Nor was it for some higher purpose or value. Nadia, what happens when one of us actually gets in your way?”
“I’d find a way around it,” I said, trying to convince myself more than her. The image of what I saw in the Palace of Ghosts flashing through my mind. Their corpses dangling in my fist.
Lupe sighed, “I’m glad you believe that but I don’t. I’ve seen what you’re like when someone’s needs don’t align with your wants—cruel, manipulative, and I think my sister was right—back in Fort Tomb—about you. Though now she’s, to use her own words, ‘infected’ by you. Fortunately for me, huh, that you’re your own vaccine. I’m cured and Nadia, I don’t want to be sick with you ever again.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked, my voice rising.
Lupe stopped, caught me by the arm, and pulled me close. Whispered into my ear, “It means that there’s no going home, Nadia. There’s no going back. Everything we were, and, much as it pains me to say it, everything we could’ve been is never coming back.”
“Do you hate me?” I asked, voice cracking.
“No,” Lupe answered. “I just don’t trust you. It’s a shame they do, Secretary and my sister, but they’ll wake up one day. Maybe you will too.”
She kissed my cheek. Then hurried down toward Sinaya and Secretary—they’d paused on the steps near the hallway we were searching for—and while it took me a moment, breathing down the accusations she’d leveraged, I soon joined them.
“Little brute—” Secretary started.
I shook my head, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Secretary’s eyes narrowed, and while I walked past them—when I think back—they muttered something. Just below their breath. I think it was, “I’m your handler.”
Though maybe I’m wrong. It wasn’t like I gave them much attention in that way. We continued into the hall, the four of us, and it was marvelously gaudy in impression. Floors of soft red velvet, a number of black plinths atop which were pillows the hue of Abyss, and capped in glass. Peering through the glass, it was completely transparent, there were diamonds the size of my fist resting on each pillow. Below them were little gold placards with names and dates debossed.
I read them off, “Janet Fairtide, April 3rd. Gustav Carlsson, October 12th. Johnny Ying, May 4th. Carlos Zapata, Lori Bird, Danny Payne, Cameron Carter, Bobbi Kim, October 24th.”
“What are these?” Lupe asked.
“Trophies,” Sinaya answered. “This is the trophy hall. Each one is someone Marduk defeated.”
I spun around—the hall was spatially expanded—in both directions I saw plinths that went on for at least forty rows deep before I lost sight of them. We’d already passed at least twenty columns on the way in. Secretary’s eyes widened in shock—a summoner this prolific was the exact kind that the Lodge was meant to deal with. Lupe only grit her teeth, having long accepted the facts about what kind of monster Marduk was.
“How’d we never know about this?” Secretary asked.
“He didn’t want you to know,” Sinaya said, then pointed off into the distance. “It won’t make you feel better, but the Lodge’s secretaries have tried to report on him before. He keeps all their diamonds in one large see-through pillar.”
Lupe said, “I can’t believe he goes and grabs a diamond to celebrate.”
Sinaya shook his head. “No, he doesn’t grab them. He—”
His voice cut out. Silenced like a microphone whose plug was pulled. All of ours were, and with the loss of our voices so too came the loss of our limbs. Like the strings that let us walk and gesture were snipped. We dropped to the floor. There wasn’t a pressure pushing down on us, or the feeling I had when Nemesis leveraged her full attention on me—like my spirit would be snuffed. Any description in that vein would feel like something a mind was meant to process. Something you could resist. I flipped the pages of my memory to find something to compare this to, but it was Sphinx, quiet up until then, who stilled my mind with an answer.
From within myself, she said, “A Sovereign is moving.”
Oh, I thought, and then swiftly felt myself stop thinking. To think would be an action, a verb. Synonyms for think: deliberate, consider, imagine, deem. None of these happened. The Sovereign had called for a pause in the story, and we players fell still, fell silent. Our director wanted to flip through the pages of the script, take a walk to consider our blocking and decide if they really did like the design of the set. In this forever moment—recognizable only once it had ended—reality felt fake. A shared delusion we all gladly agreed to. I mean, who’d want a heart that beats? Blood that flows? Lungs that inflate? It’s kind of disgusting, isn’t it. The very costume of consciousness designed and laid over the physical was a work of bodily horror lacking in elegance or mystique. Just fluids and gases moving, churning, and transforming.
But you’re beautiful. Said the flipping pages of lines and actions. Said the lights which brought illumination to the hall. Said every fiber of my spirit and the spirits of others beside me. Everything that was, fake as it was, agreed with the Sovereign that I was beautiful. The only thing that’s real.
Then to places we were called, reset to our last mark.
* * *
Sinaya said, “No, he doesn’t grab them. He—”
Before Sinaya could answer, a door slammed shut. We spun around to discover five individuals racing down the aisle between the field of trophies that intersected with our own. Both paths led to an obelisk of Abyss-blue bone that curved up from the ground like it’d carved its own in. Sinaya was crestfallen upon sighting the five new-arrivals to the hall.
“Who are they?” I asked.
Sinaya hissed, “Marduk’s executives.”
One of them spotted Sinaya from across a quadrant of trophies—not hard considering his size.
“Knight, your sage needs us!” they yelled, not stopping in their sprint toward the obelisk.
Lupe crossed toward Sinaya, whispered, “Why are they here? Don’t they have cult shit to do?”
“They normally do, and there’s only one reason they’d be here,” he said. “Unlike every other time, Marduk decided to take this meeting in the Cathedral of Virgin Black.”
Noting our blank expression, he explained, “It’s one of the most inner secrets of Atlantis. Offering paths to every domain the throne touches, including the ones that exist at depths deeper than Marduk can enter. Whenever he leaves the Cathedral it’s a rule that we greet him.”
“And,” Secretary guessed, “this Cathedral was to be our way out?”
Sinaya grunted his agreement.
“Knight!” the executive called out again.
“New plan, then,” I said, grasping Sinaya’s arm. “We can’t give away Sinaya’s turning, so we all just walk up like nothing’s wrong—cause there isn’t—and get through one conversation. We’ll take a different Staircase out.”
“And if they ask who we are, and why we’re here?” Lupe asked.
“Then we tell them the truth,” I said. “A version of it anyways. Unless we want to take our shot trying to run away from Marduk’s strongest people?”
My plan wasn’t that great, but when compared alongside an even worse option it was rather palatable. So with me hanging off Sinaya’s arm, looking ever the love-drunk girlfriend, followed by Secretary and Lupe—each doing their best to keep a grimace from their face and maintain whatever characterization they’d decided on—we joined the five executives who were waiting on their knees for their sage, Marduk, to exit the Cathedral of Virgin Black. As the lot of us joined them, I saw a flash in the corner of my eye.
There, standing amidst the quadrant of black plinths that may as well have been tombstones, was another of my potential Barons come to haunt me. She stood there, hair shorn low to a buzz, and wearing my clothes that rippled according to a non-existent wind. When I blinked, she was gone, but then I felt her tap my shoulder—not gone, just moved. I turned my head to find her sitting on the floor beside me. My face showed all the hallmarks of excitement; wide-eyes with pupils dilated, mouth slightly open to sink my fangs into the moment, and chest heaving in anticipation. As this Baron wore my body, I looked almost gleeful about what would come.
She tilted her head toward mine, whispered, “Nadia, not to bias you, but the winds of fate are always blowing. And it wouldn’t do for you to miss this moment thinking about me—though I appreciate the attention.”
“What moment?” I asked.
She winked, “When your quest finally begins.”
I blinked, falling out of the Godtime she had only briefly dragged me into. Revelation Questing—as that felt a fair guess—was serious about what she said. The giant bone obelisk had begun to glow…though as it was Abyss it wasn’t with an illuminating radiance. Rather, a sort of anti-light that consumed the illumination within the hall. Casting us all into a darkness that hadn’t known light for thousands of years. My breath caught in my chest, as if that too would be stolen to power this elder artifact’s functions. But when I was forced to breathe so too was it forced to release its hold on the light, its non-existent maw slamming shut and letting every wisp of light flit about in a daze reminiscent of a murmur.
It was in this drunken shifting luminescence that I beheld Marduk for the first time. He wore armor that was blacker than black. Slightly shiny, like a crayfish shell. With a mask that hid his face and intentions through a Sorcery I wasn’t able to properly pierce. Though my eyes no longer forcibly slid away from it. So I tell you this, with utmost confidence, that his mask looked like that of an ogre with a dorsal fin and heavy brow ridge.
As one, the crowd of us on our knees looked up and called out, “Hail, Marduk, Sage of the Deep. Slayer of the one named, City Killer.”