They called her the Witch of the Wires, which was true. But she was also a princess. The last in a long line.
“We are long overdue.” Her voice was a dry, cracking croak that filled her temple.
Shadows filled this cramped, ancient place, cut by slender beams of light that speared up from the carved holes in the temple’s stone-hewn floor. The air was frigid and full of choking dust and dirt, but Yarsi dared not cough, lest they made her leave.
“A pilgrimage must be made.”
“Why? Sen left us!” Her father’s voice was strained, his breathing ragged. But he refused to leave, until he spoke his mind. “No one go on pilgrimage. Not in all my life.”
Yarsi could hear the bloody phlegm in his throat. That cough, threatening to climb out of his mouth and take him down. Yarsi wished he wouldn’t shout. She tried to pull his arm, to make him sit, but her father was as strong as the upside-down mountain in which this temple was built.
Sometimes, gatherers were wounded on their scavenging trips to the surface. Bloodied. Missing claws or eyes or limbs. Musekgai, the old Bloodchief, had never been the same after he fell and hit the back of his skull when running from the machines.
But most of her people healed quickly. It’s what they did. Yarsi thought rest and food, and a few weeks of staying home would help him. If she could get him to rest…
“Sen not call. Not answer prayer. Never again. What good to make pilgrimage?” the Bloodchief growled.
Yarsi didn’t understand his distaste. Secretly, the idea of the pilgrimage had always excited her. The thought of seeing far off places, the old relics of Sen. The sacred paths her people used to walk. To see Her holiest shrine, with her own two eyes.
“Why?” he barked.
“You know why,” She Who Remembers answered. All the wires draped up from her skull and down her spine tautened as they lifted her head, angling her gaze towards the human. Her long, fleshy neck snaked towards him, stretching even as her gargantuan shell refused to move.
How easily she could fit his head in that huge, sharp beak. It was made for cracking hard shells and bones, and when she opened her mouth, out came a long ponderous hiss and the smell of putrid breath.
“He cannot stay here. The Undoers hunt him.”
But the god did not flinch. His mouth was a grim line, so soft in comparison to her beak. And all that silver cloth, or metal, or whatever it was, rippled over his body like an ice-melt river.
“If he is dangerous-” the Bloodchief started.
“Of course, he is dangerous. He is a god, oh, mighty Bloodchief. The will and whims of the Divine are above you. And above even me.”
Poire said nothing. His gaze crawling up the princess’s cables, as if trying to figure out how they worked. Good luck with that, Yarsi thought. Not even she can remember that.
“We should not have brought him here. Bad,” her father said, and though he didn’t look at her, Yarsi felt her heart sink. It had been her idea after all.
“It was not your choice,” She Who Remembers said. “He would have come, without your help. It is foretold.”
The Bloodchief grunted, a disbelieving sound. Yarsi could see her father deciding, right there. “I go. I take him now.”
“Father!” Yarsi squeaked, “You are hurt too bad! You not go now!”
He looked down at her, his long, gray jaw set. The old, sturdy muscles in his neck flexing as he spoke, “It must be done.”
“No,” a harsh crow from the feathered corvani. “We’re not going anywhere until we get answers.” He turned to the princess witch, “Who the hells are you?”
Yarsi balked at his roughness. “You pay respect! She is the Princess Altanbaturzh.”
“Princess of what?” the corvani asked, holding out his arms to gesture at their empty domain.
“Be calm, Yarsi,” the Princess Witch chided her. “They know not our ways. I am a princess of the Five Kingdoms, at least I was. Their names would have no meaning to you, as they were fallen before I was born, many long years ago. Now, I am the Steward of Memory, and High Priest of the Mind Wire. Myself, and my lassertane are the only ones left of Sen’s children. So it must be.”
“How many years?” the human asked. “When did they fall?”
And the Witch turned back to him, nodding with a knowing look in her eye. “I remember the kingdoms that covered this world. And I remember when Sen left. Two thousand years ago.”
The xenos looked at each other. Yarsi could already tell what they were thinking. The Wire Witch was old, many centuries she had lived. But she could not possibly have been there, when Sen turned her back on the world. Gods live forever, but we don’t.
The Wire Witch was saying, “This body is not so ancient. Some of my ancestors lived to seven or eight hundred. I thought I might see my fifth century, like my own grandmother did. But all changed when our god abandoned us.”
The wires lifted her grisly head to the ceiling. Her face softened with deep memory. Her eyelids closed over those crystalline eyes, a gift from Sen herself, handed down from generation to generation. They glistened, not with tears, but with the wetness that comes from machine embedded into flesh.
“Did Sen create you?” Poire asked, a burning, impatient desire to know. Yarsi thought his question a strange one. Shouldn’t a god know such things?
“We were made by another. A god who created us for Sen, because he loved her. Our purpose was to live, to grow and prosper. To keep her company, when she was alone, for Sen was always alone. But she built us a paradise, and instructed us to grow it and make the world beautiful. And so, it once was... ”
And here, the Princess’s voice became misty, full of choking emotion. Twin tubes, more cloudy than clear, extended from the ceiling and made a slurping noise as they siphoned the moisture at the corner of her eyes.
“I remember it all. Such bountiful glory. Cities sparkled like jewels among the endless fields and towering forests. The whole world was a garden that seemed to go on forever. The mountains divided us, kept us separated, that our individual strengths might flourish. We were not a perfect people. We broke her laws from time to time, yes. We warred. We bled. But the glory… The cities, full of such aching beauty and wonder. We celebrated her name with festivals and dances and music. We studied the world she made for us, and our culture blossomed. Such laughter. The trickling of sweetest wine and the breath of acrid flowers, such pleasant delights to fill our bodies and heighten our thought, and… and…”
The Princess clapped her beak shut. Opened it, and clapped it again. A frustrated, furious sound.
Yarsi could feel the heat of her anger. Of her despair, for how the world had been before. Even her father, ever practical, somberly shook his head. And when he coughed, he covered his mouth, trying to hold it down.
“You were there?” Poire asked. “You met her?”
“This body was born long after Sen abandoned us. But my mind has been passed down for generations.”
The xenos looked confused. Doubtful, even. But the young god’s eyes were wide with understanding. Yarsi didn’t know why, but it made her heart swell to know that Poire believed. Maybe he understood more than she did.
“A memory emulation?” Poire said. “You’re attached to a bank.”
“Ah,” all the wires squeezed as they bobbed her head in a slow nod, “You know the words, then.”
“How far does it go back?”
“To the Maker of Life. To the first words our Maker ever spoke to us. Can you hear me, daughter? And the words he spoke after, teaching us how to keep our God happy, when he went away. She will hate me. She will despair. And in her misery, you must keep her company. You must live, and prosper, and in so doing, you will keep her from falling until I return. And so we did. And so Sen waited… and waited. For too many thousands of years. We sang to her, we made her offerings. We built statues for her, we made our cities soar to make her world more beautiful than all the stars.”
“He never came back,” Poire said.
Yarsi had heard the story so many times. Her clanmates, the other children, all of them had acted it out so many times. She loved playing the Princesses most of all, but it had always been playing.
Only now did she realize how true the story was. Not just to the Witch, but to Poire. There was such sadness in his voice. The pain of loss. Yarsi had lost clanmates before, but this god… This god was all alone. She wanted to tell him something, anything to make him feel better.
“What was his name? The one who, uh, who made you?”
“Auster.”
At that, a spark of recognition. The human’s eyes went wider. There was so much white around those dark irises. But he said nothing, letting the Princess Witch continue.
“We were making ready for a pilgrimage. All the correct offerings in place, all the city praying as one. But this time, Sen did not answer. Instead, she came up. Came to our world above, the outside of the shell, as my people call it. We had never seen her on the surface before. My whole kingdom came to watch.
“She brought with her a gate. We had never seen one before, but we watched her turn it on. And step upon it. A light, brighter than the sun. And then, she was gone. We tried to follow her. We sang the words she did, though they were strange to our tongues. Many, many thousands of us went through. Never to be heard from again.”
The Princess’s feet were not the slender claws of Yarsi’s clan, but thick, trunk-like appendages, made for carrying the heavy weight of that shell, though Yarsi had never seen the Witch leave her home. The Wire Witch held up one of those feet, extending a single, stony claw. “But Sen did return, only a few short weeks after our partial exodus. Or maybe it was months. Hard to tell, underneath all these memories. She moved quickly, too fast for us to keep up. It was as if she was running. If only we had run with her…”
“Gone,” the Bloodchief added. And Yarsi bowed her head at the deep sadness of it all.
“When she left,” the Princess continued, “We wondered what would become of us. Would our world wither and perish without her light? But nothing changed. The world yet turned, and the stars yet shone. Until we saw the first shapes in the skies.”
“Not birds,” Yarsi said, almost whispering. Unable to stay out of the telling.
“That’s right, child. Not birds. Demons, living in the bodies of machines. I watched all our cities go down in flames. I fled. I hid. I scavenged and hunted and crawled through the blood, the mountains, the ashes of our homes. I found… others. I-” her eyes were squeezed shut, as if trying to remember the flight from someone else’s point of view. “I found others. We tried to save what was left. We burrowed, dwelled in the caves. And then, when the machines found us, we went deeper. Beneath the shell, where we found our new home. And all this time… I have watched everything dwindle. Become less. With each new body, with each new life, I have added to our memories. But the light only grows dimmer with time.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“You said my coming here was foretold,” the human said, so anxious and hopeful. “Does that mean you have Sen’s memories too?”
“No. Only her words. She told us that the time would come. And we did not believe her.”
All the wires holding her up stiffened. The Princess’s neck dipped as it retreated back into her shell. A glittering, dazzling light from her eyes as they changed shape, and began to glow. The wires lifted the Witch’s arms, and the claws on her stump feet began to wriggle. A deep, throaty hum filled the room, as if the temple’s stones themselves were singing. A resonant cracking sound, deep in the stone above, in the walls, and under their feet.
The dirt on the floor of the temple began to rattle and hiss, as if a nest of serpents were coming to life from below. Yarsi’s father yanked her arm, pulling her away from the center of the temple. The other xenos pressed against the cold blocks of the temple wall. Only the human did not move, as if he already understood this ageless magic.
The Witch churned the dirt into the air, lifting a transparent curtain of dust, separating the Witch from the rest. But the Witch’s eyes were glowing bright now, two flickering stars in the temple’s dim light.
Yarsi gasped as the light from the Witch’s eyes projected onto the curtain of dust, bringing an image to life.
Five ramps, just wide enough for one person to walk across, formed a towering, hollow pyramid. The Shrine of Sen. Yarsi had only ever seen it through the Princess, but she had always dreamed of seeing it for herself. But there hadn’t been a pilgrimage for so long… Never in her lifetime, nor her father’s.
The pyramid swelled, looming larger and larger until Yarsi could only see a single ramp, and a person climbing it.
A human woman. The ramp somehow changed its shape to fit her feet, carrying her up to the top as effortless as if she were walking on flat ground. She held a kind of wheelbarrow in one hand. Only, instead of wheels, it floated next to her and it seemed to weigh nothing at all. There were boxes stacked on it, and neatly coiled wires.
“We watched her ascend,” the Wire Witch said. “She looked back once.” Halfway up the pyramid, the woman stopped, and turned. It was hard to tell in the screen of dust, but her face looked somehow ancient and smooth at the same time, except for the deep, sad lines that cracked her lips. Yarsi felt like Sen was looking right at her. Defeated. Broken. All that sorrow, in a single glance, as Sen looked down the pyramid.
All the ramps met in a flat plane at the top of the pyramid. A round shape, like an egg melting up from the plane, sat at the center. Yarsi couldn’t tell what it was, maybe because of the dust.
Sen bent over the boxes floating behind her, and did something that made the pyramid blossom with light, so that the contrast rendered Sen almost invisible. An insignificant shadow against the brightness. Sen did not move for a long moment, as if she had not made up her mind.
“And then,” the Wire Witch said, “she stepped through.”
And the god’s silhouette was swallowed by the light.
“Where did she go?” the corvani crowed.
“Is it a gate?” the tall xeno asked, the one with the pretty scales. Both of them were looking at Poire, but he could only shake his head.
“I have no idea,” his mouth twisted, his soft brow furrowed in thought. Yarsi could read his expression so easily, the concern and confusion on his soft skin.
“Princess, please,” the human asked, bowing his head at the Witch, whose limbs were now quivering, shaking with the effort of holding her hands steady. Even the wires were straining. “What happened to her?”
“Sen left us,” the Bloodchief spat. “To go hungry. Food for machines.”
“Not all of us,” Yarsi said, earning a noncommittal grunt from her father, which turned into another series of wracking coughs. The sound came from his chest, and Yarsi cringed as he gritted his jaw against the pain.
When he was done, the Princess Witch continued, “Sen may be gone. But still her voice echoes through this world. Her words are stretched across the years. We, the stewards, have collected them for ages. But now I am the only one left with the memories.” And she bowed her head, exposing the long slope of her neck to them, revealing the carved line of glittering tech embedded in her flesh where she kept her memories.
“What does she say?”
“Mmmm,” the Witch’s voice thrummed through the stones. Heavy and brooding. “She spoke of your coming here. Of your journey to the throne. And of the trail of death that follows you, oh, Herald of Ruin...”
She saw the paleness of Poire’s face, the same look of defeat worn by Sen in the Witch’s image.
Something whined in the walls, and a sharp, snapping click repeated through the stone, loud enough that Yarsi could feel it in her feet. The wires began to retract, lifting the Witch’s head once more. Her voice came out in a dry rasp, “She wants to see you…”
“Why?”
The voice that came from the Witch’s beak was not her own. It was softer somehow, more light weight. As if it took her no effort at all to speak. “My life was torn from me, long ago. No longer do I fear the end. So go, and bring him to me. Bring me my death, and the Herald who bears it. There is more to understand that only he can know.”
The Wire Witch’s arms were shaking, hanging in the air. All the wires struggling to hold her up. And all at once, she dropped, gasping. All the dirt dropped to the floor, pieces of gravel rattling on the stones. Yarsi sprinted forward, trying to speak to her giant ancestor, but her father caught her, and held her back.
At least she could still hear the old one’s breaths, rising and falling deep within that gargantuan shell.
“The Herald,” Poire echoed, staring down at his hands, where the liquid metal had peeled away to reveal the pale brown of his palms.
“Fledge,” the corvani crowed softly. Offering a comforting hand.
“I need to speak with her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. She might try to harm you.”
“She can’t,” Poire said.
“You have no idea if that armor will stop you-”
“No,” Poire said. “I mean, she is somewhere else, Eolh. She can’t reach me.”
“How can you know that?”
Poire looked at the corvani, and said simply, “The tests.”
The corvani clicked his beak shut. And opened it again, “I don’t like this.”
“We don’t have a choice. We have to see her. Maybe Sen can help.”
“And if not?” Eolh asked.
“Then perhaps…” Poire struggled with the thought, “Perhaps she will know what to do with me.”
Yarsi saw the look between Eolh and Agraneia. Neither of them agreed, but Yarsi already knew the human was right. This was the way.
This was foretold.
A pilgrimage.
Another god, walking the paths to the Shrine of Sen. They need to be guided, Yarsi thought, unable to keep the excitement from rising in her heart. They need help to cross the beams. It couldn’t be her, could it? She had to take care of her father. But they need someone who knows the way-
“Yarsi,” her father growled, as if he could read her thoughts. “Go home.”
She opened her mouth to argue. But saw it in his eyes, the way he commanded her like he commanded everyone.
Not fair.
“Home,” he said again, pointing a claw out of the temple. Nothing could change his mind. Even with his bandages soaked with blood, and the rattling in his chest, he was as steadfast as their home, clinging to the shell of the world.
She just wanted to stay. To listen.
To go.
The Witch’s head descended from on high, lowering down to put her huge beak in front of Yarsi’s face. “It is better this way, child.” Her ancient breath was stale and sour, and it blew cold over Yarsi’s scales.
She wouldn’t cry, not like some hatchling child. She wouldn’t even complain, though she desperately wanted to. Yarsi would show her father, show them all how grown up she could be. She bowed to the Witch, and bowed to the human, and refused to look her father in the eye as she stomped out of the temple with her head held high.
As she walked through the dark tunnel with that blaring white light shining at its end, she heard her father start coughing again, a wracking sound that felt like it lasted hours. Before he gained control of himself, Yarsi made her decision.
She tucked herself into one of the corners of the hallway, hiding behind a boulder jutting into the path, and listened to them talk and plan their journey.
***
She heard her father’s wracking cough long before he set foot on the bridge that lead up into their burrow. Yarsi scampered around their burrow, cleaning and opening the slats and angled the glass to let the light in from below, warming the rocks inside, to make it look like she had been here the whole time. She was even boiling a stew of fresh greens and oil and a single egg to soothe his throat.
Outside, her father’s footsteps made the old wooden slats of the bridge creak and thump against their metal supports. He made a clearing sound in his throat, and spit loudly before ducking into their tunnel.
“You need to rest,” she said. She hoped he wouldn’t notice how nervous she was, how out of breath. Yarsi had to run fast to get home before her father.
But he wasn’t watching her. He was too busy trying to catch his breath, wiping the spit and blood from his snout. She brought him a rag, and helped him lie down. They ate one last meal together, though he didn’t know it would be their last.
Long ago, the pilgrims never worried about coming back home. Sen always protected them.
Maybe, she hoped, this new god will make things go back to how they were.
Finally, her father settled into his sleeping nook on the light-warmed center of their home, and Yarsi waited until she heard the deep, rasping snores that puffed up his throat. She snuck over, and pressed her snout against his head, whispering, “I make you proud, father. And I come back.”
Yarsi crept out of their burrow with a satchel full of salted meats and dried grains. She had three waterskins, and carried two empty clay pots, hanging from a stick that she hefted over her shoulder. Soon, they would be heavy. A full-grown lassertane might carry them easily in their hands, but she was not yet so big.
She crept down from her burrow, across the thinnest bridge, this one made only of rope, towards the apiary that hung over the void below and all those criss-crossing beams, an impossible distance away. When she was younger, Yarsi and her clanmates had thrown things off the sides. Rocks, mostly. Until the elders yelled at them, and swatted them, and made them promise never to do it again. We can’t afford to waste anything ever again.
The apiary was closed, and all the bees were sleeping in cold darkness, but Yarsi knew the hives so well, she didn’t need light to find the honey, and drain it into her clay pots, until that warm, golden liquid brimmed over.
Outside, all was bright. The metal braces and reinforcing scrap steel that laced through those upside down mountains gleamed in the light of the world. But the clan was sleeping, all the lassertane in their tunnels. All their doors closed, their slats shuddered.
Yarsi made her way across the sole bridge that connected the Witch’s temple to the rest of the clan home. She meant only to leave the pots of honey as an offering, an apology for what she was going to do. She pulled back her claws, trying only to walk on the pads of her feet, and entered that dark tunnel, but before she could set the clay pots down, a voice called to her.
“Honey? You always did know my favorite,” the Witch’s voice echoed through the tunnel.
Yarsi held her breath. Not daring to move.
“I could smell you before you set foot on my bridge. Come here, my child.”
And when Yarsi stepped into the temple, the Princess Witch’s huge face was hanging their, not quite grinning. Her crystalline eyes were back in their box, and the Witch couldn’t possibly see her with those empty sockets. Yet she seemed to stare right at Yarsi, all the wires moving her head, her nostrils flaring as she inhaled her scent.
“My father not go,” Yarsi said. “He is too hurt.”
“He is.”
“New god not know way. He needs guide.”
“He does.”
“I know the way,” Yarsi said, sticking out her chin. Defiant. Ready for the Witch to send her home.
“You do not.”
Yarsi tried not to break, but the Witch’s words sucked the breath from her lungs. And made her feel small.
“At least,” the Princess said, “You do not know it yet.”
She lowered her head, until that massive beak - as large as Yarsi was tall - was right in front of her face. The wires strained to hold her head up.
“My favorite granddaughter, I am so proud to have met you. Once, I believed you might be my successor. But now I see you will be so much more.”
“Princess?”
“I hoped you might not do this. Your father tried to spare you. But we are mortal, and death is always a part of our journey. The way ahead will test you, but you were always brave. Braver, even, than me.”
Yarsi didn’t think she was all that brave. She was only doing what must be done, just like her father always did. Just like any good lassertane would do.
“Come here, girl. It is time I shared my burden with you.”
Yarsi stepped forward, into the center of the cramped stone temple. Pinpricks of light were poked holes in the floor, and Yarsi could only see the shape of the Wire Witch.
There was a series of snapping sounds, of chunking metallic clicks, and the sound of ancient scales brushing against stone. The Wire Witch loosed a heavy sigh as wires began to pop out of her flesh. One of them dislodged from the back of the Princess’s skull, carrying something long and slender on its tip. Like a metal thorn, tipped with a jewel.
“I feel so much lighter,” the Witch said, her voice almost happy. And then, not happy at all, “So light and empty. They are already washing away from my mind…”
“What is it?”
“My memories, for you,” the Witch said. The wires lifted her arm, so thin and long and bony. Extending her palm out. “Some of the past, and one of time yet to come. Turn around, child. This will hurt.”
Yarsi did as she was told, trying not to tense up as the living wires brushed against the back of her neck, and scraped the thorn against her spine.
“Hold still.”
The thorn shoved into the back of her skull, at the top of her neck. She screamed as it sank into her flesh. First, from pain. And then, from the sensation flooding her mind. Heaving and rolling and throwing her around in her own mind. Threatening to drown her thoughts and break her.
“Breathe,” the Witch was saying. “Breathe and relax.”
Yarsi tried, but there wasn’t enough air. She sucked in breath, again and again. Choking, as a flood of lifetimes surged through her mind. The Princess had not given her everything, but it was still so much. How could anyone hold onto so much? So many sights and sounds, words and places and people. And feelings that weren’t hers. She was there, she could feel all this time happening to her right now, all at once.
And then, the remembering turned towards sight.
A vision of a vision, of what was to come.
“No,” Yarsi gasped. Feeling the strength drain from her bones. The wires caught her as she sagged, and all she could do was shake her head, “No.”
“I am sorry, granddaughter.”
“Is it true?” Yarsi asked, her eyes welling with tears. Trying to shake off the sight of all that black, glittering dust.
“Nothing is true, until it happens. But it will happen.”
“I not go. I go back. What then?”
“Will you turn back?” the Princess challenged her, suddenly tense.
Yarsi wanted to. Everything in her wanted to. So much regret, so soon. But also… she could remember. There was no going back.
Yarsi shook her head.
The Princess relaxed, loosing a hissing sigh that filled the temple with her breath.
“How soon, Princess? How soon will it happen?”
“You know what I know. And neither one of us can say. But the end of all things approaches.”
Yarsi stared at her claws, the same way she had seen the human stare at his soft hands. “I ready.”
“Yes you are, my brave child.”
“I see you again?”
The princess said nothing. So, Yarsi made up her mind. “I pray to come back home.”
“I pray that you do no such thing,” the Wire Witch said. “For a true pilgrim, home is only the next step.”
The wires retracted the Witch’s neck, pulling her back into her shell, letting her rest. After so many centuries, rest.
“The human and his xenos are in the last tunnel,” she said. “You know the way.”
“I do.”
“Then go, my Yarsi. You carry the memory of us with you.”