The sand was dry.

The sand was hot.

The sand was rough.

Three truths that I had not needed to learn until Mother Azza's punishment had begun.

Tears caused from the slow pain had rolled down each side of my face until they had run dry. Sweat had poured from my body until it had gone the way of the tears and stopped altogether. While it had lasted, the moisture had softened the shifting sands and given me sparse moments of relief . Then, any trace of the sweat soaked sand passed me by and left me to be grinded away grit by grit.

I had accepted that despite her telling me that she wished she could, The Mother in Brown did not mean to kill me. That did not come as the comfort it should have. When my living burial concluded and I had learned her lesson to her satisfaction, I would be sent home. How long would it take me to begin to forget how much pain I felt? How long would it be before my memory of the choking pressure and crushing weight began to fade? How long would it be before one of the eight Mothers that remained ripped me away from my life just as Mother Azza had?

That was my future: Small periods of imprisoned happiness that would only last long enough for me to be suprised when I was thrust into the next unimaginable torture that awaited me.

I could not live like that. Living like that was no life at all. It was its own brand of punishment that required willful denial if I wanted to do anything other than cry and wait for the next Mother to send for me.

Sometime after my burial, there was no way for me to tell how long, my body had been reduced to one raw throb. Every second was filled with a slow, small, pain that urged me to shift or settle against the power that bound me. Then, in the unknowable span of time, the pain flared in countless places. Every flare sent a vision of a small blade tearing through my flesh wherever I felt it. Through the darkness and pain, I needed to know if the vision in my mind of my body red and bleeding was true.

I needed to move. Not all of me, only a finger, and not very far in truth.

The pressure and weight of my tomb held me in total suspension. Attempt to act against it did nothing but strip me of any amount of hope in my power.

Power. I had power; I had my aura.

If training and school had not been forbidden from me, maybe I could have learned how to heal myself or ward my senses from the pain. Most likely not, the reality where I could be like every other maiden had died the moment I had taken The Well. Still, I could not lay there and wait patiently for the pain to end or the pressure to relax. I had to do something. . . Mother Azza would know if I so much as scrunched my nose. She had known when I had struggled against her hold. Before I had said them, she had known when the words in my mouth were not to her liking . If I manifested my power despite the seal that she had helped lay over my navel, there was no way she would not know.

But what was I expected to do? No matter how much she hated me, I was an underwitch, using my power was what I was supposed to do.

Fuck it. She could keep her lesson, the pain was too much for me to continue to take.

No. I thought to myself. You deserve this. You are here because of your own choices.

I was right. Considering how infrequently that was true, it should have made me happy or proud.

It did not.

It hurt me in a way that was altogether different than the agony that every part of me not covered by my dress felt.

Mother Azza had chosen the manner of my punishment, but I had given her a reason to punish me. Maybe, that's what she had meant about learning my place. She meant to teach me that I did not deserve relief. I deserved to be at the bottom of it all, unable to feel anything but pain and the weight of what I had done.

That new hurt, a cold ache that made my heart heavy and my breath thin, settled over me. A dry sob wracked my chest, but the pressure holding me in place kept me still.

Even my ability to cry had been taken from me.

On top of it all, the knowledge that even if I knew how to heal myself, all it would bring me is more trouble. None of The Mothers knew that I had fallen ass backwards into circumventing their seal. None of them knew that part of the seal had begun to break the night before.

Power. . . I had power despite The Mothers. I had been born with it. It was made of my soul, my very essence, but for every reason, I could not use it.

I wanted to go home.

I wanted for my mother to hold me and make me forget everything but the feeling of her embrace.

I wanted to open my eyes and be in my room with Anna, only awake long enough to reach out and know she was there.

I sighed and another sob came, the thoughts of them only making me ache worse.

Through my shut eye lids, light brightened. I rolled my eyes upwards to avoid the blinded glow.

Truly, there was no comfort in my terrible imprisonment. I could not even lay and suffer without some new annoyance ruining the last shred of respite I had found. Why would there be light at the bottom of the pyramid anyways. My place at the bottom should have been reserved for other dark and wicked things only.

How was there light where I was?

I opened one eye and blinked until the sand that had settled on it was cast off. A small pocket of air surrounded my face. Death from suffocation would not have been enough of a punishment from Mother Azza it seemed. Driving out the darkness that had surrounded me when I had first been buried, a pearl pink wisp illuminated the small space. Smaller than the nail of my little finger, the wisp of my aura danced through the air above my lips.

As soon as I laid my eyes on it, it snaked to my left and pushed the writhing sand back. I watched as the shoulder of my white dress led to the end of my sleeve and a small sliver of my arm was revealed. The sight of my cracked skin and the long red streaks cutting through it forced me to wince. Bloody stains like strokes from a paintbrush stained the bottom of my sleeve, but I could not keep my eyes on them. I looked to the wisp, which was circling a blot of blood higher up on my shoulder that was darker than the rest.

My stomach began to turn and I had to close my eyes or I would have gotten sick.

Where did it come from? I had not so much as focused my aura and yet, there it was in full color. Mother Azza would have to know that I had not done it on purpose. I took the fact that I had not been ripped out of my tomb as a sign that she did.

My upper arm had some small protection, but if it looked the way it did, what hope was there for my lower half?

No matter what happens, I’ll be here when you get back. Anna had told me that right before she had kissed me.

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I wanted her to do it again. She could not heal the wounds the sand was leaving on me, but she could make the ache in my chest go away. The wave of nausea passed and I opened my eyes to the pink pocket that had become my world. The truth that I did not know when I would see her again brought me back through the empty motions of crying.

The wisp went mad, looping endlessly around itself like animate string. It coiled and rolled, dipping and rising over the maroon splotch on my shoulder.

The splotch that I realized in that moment was not my blood.

It was wine.

Anna’s wine.

She had spilled it onto the dress on Galahad’s night after my mother’s points tournament. In my rush to hear the Lao’s argument, I must have grabbed it off the floor of my closet and pulled it on without realizing. My heart longed for her and my aura had taken it upon itself to show me that there was a little piece of her with me. A small smile stretched across my face. My lips were so dry that the small movements sent cracks down both of them and I inhaled sharply. The metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth and the small pleasure I had felt died with the new pain.

"Anna." I croaked, my throat as dry and raw as my skin.

Thunk.

A sound that I had never been so pleased to hear echoed in my mind.

“Please.” I whispered weakly.

Thunk.

“Take me away from here.” I begged, terrified that I was imagining the rhythmic call.

Thunk.

The pink light began to fade. My mind began to slip away from the grinding pain and heat, away from the pressure and weight, away from my tomb of sand.

With a bloody smile of relief cracking across my face, I took refuge within The Well.

The Shift broke the sky over Yazz-Zararaz the moment before my execution.

Found guilty for the unforgivable sin of being born different, Zultan Zufar and the rest of the city had gathered around to see my end.

Magic of any kind was strictly forbidden. Any that possessed the potential to commit acts such blasphemy were marked and watched by Zufar’s chieftains.

What they did not understand was that asking someone like me to live without their souls being able to speak, was akin to asking the night to not be dark. It was my nature, I could not live without it. Being caught using my aura to alter the color of a garment and shortly after being sentenced to death for it was a high price to pay for a handful of coin, but I knew what I was walking into when I set out for the city of a thousand colors.

“Azza Ofnone,” The long bearded chieftain that had been appointed the officiant of my death began. He projecting his voice so the crowd that had gathered below the platform could hear. “As Strazotl demands, you are to be allowed the chance to disavow your crimes as you look up to his kingdom. In the name of Sultan Zufar, I give you this moment now.”

I took a breath.

Your death does not seem to worry you as much as it should. A voice that only I could hear spoke.

There is nothing for me to worry over. I do not plan to die. I answered it in my thoughts.

You did not plan to be arrested. My daemon, as Old Acari had named it once I had come into her care, reminded me.

From my place on the scaffolding that surrounded what was meant to be my grave, I had a clear line of sight to the unfinished tower to heaven. Every golden brick had been laid perfectly to form the structure that was already the tallest thing by a hundred feet for miles around. Positioned at the base of it, Zultan Zufar sat upon his golden throne. From where I stood, he looked like little more than a decorative display of vibrant fabrics. Waves of thin sheer in bright yellows, blues, and greens canopied down from the peak of his pointy hat. Behind the thin fabric, his shape could be seen, decorated in similarly colored robes. His face was concealed but there was one thing that kept my eyes focused on him.

Sitting proud on his lap, was an entirely hairless cat. It looked like a plucked chicken hanging from a stall in the market. Except for the spot on its upraised leg that it was vigorously cleaning, it looked completely disinterested in anything else.

I had never seen a more ugly creature.

I had never loved anything more.

The throne would be mine, every golden ounce of it, but the cat would come first.

You plan to steal the creature, do you not? My daemon sighed, guessing at my intentions just as the chieftain cleared his throat.

My moment with the sky god Strazotl was over and it was time to begin my execution properly.

I plan to escape. If I can give the cat a much more loving and stylish owner in the process, so be it.

“Azza Ofnone. You will be made into an offering to Strazotl until the time he chooses to smite your figure.” The chieftain yelled out to the crowd. Every street and back alley was filled with the colorful people of Yazz-Zararaz.

It was not known as the city of a thousand colors for nothing. The poor wore fabrics of every shade and hue in wild combinations. The traders and craftsmen wore bare whites that acted as a canvas for the higher quality scarves and sashes they decorated themselves with. The rich, who there were many of in the prosperous city, did not waist their wealth on their clothes. Instead, they used their wealth to dye their own skin. The women took soft shades that were the colors of the sparse flowers that grew in the arid climate and the men wore bold reds and blues and grays. The truly rich, like Zultan Zafar, wore the rarest commodity of all. Undyed fabric. Every color that was draped over him had come from far off lands and had always been the shade it was then. All gathered around to watch the first execution since I had arrived in the city. I had been among them for the last, a single dark spot in an ocean of color with my black robes.

“Step forward.” The chieftain commanded me and raised his hand to signal the drumrakers.

A strange call and response began from the masked figures that stood around the base of the scaffolding. They struck three large drums in unison with massive mallets. The rakers, two of them at each drum, would then drag a thin flat blade across the taught surface. The sounds they made would be reminiscent of a thunderstorm to someone who had never heard a real one. Even though the sound was not accurate, the ritual was effective, as I had seen at the prior demonstration.

Below me, walls had been raised to form a pit. Once I stepped into it, it would be filled with sand and a large metal rod would be stuck into the top of it. The drumrakers would continue their ritual until a streak of lightning arced down from the sky and struck the sand. The sand would turn to glass and all that would be left of me would be the patches of color my melted body cast through the clear tomb.

That was how it had gone the last time at least.

I, as soon as the sand covered the top of my head, would make my escape through the sand beneath my feet. My power, my illegal magic, may have been what led me to the execution, but it would also be what allowed me to escape it.

“Step forward,” The chieftain repeated. Then, he leaned and spoke in little more than a whisper. “Please, do not make me push you. I do not relish these moments.”

I never did as he asked and he never had to force me to.

The moment after his oddly considerate plea, with the drumrakers rhythm reaching a volume that made the air around me crackle with energy, the sky split over the top of the tower to heaven.The ground shook and the crowd let out a chorus of startled cries. The chieftain nearly lost his footing and fell into the death pit he was ever so nicely trying to talk me into. Zultan Zufar gripped the arms of his golden throne and craned his head up towards the splitting sky.

The hairless cat did not so much as blink.

I had never seen a more wondrous creature.

The crack ran as far in front of me as I could see and with a quick glance, I saw that the same was true behind myself. In an instant, it splintered out in every direction, turning Strazotl’s kingdom into something that looked like a soon to shatter mirror. Then, one by one, the shapes formed by the cracks began to fall.

They separated into dust that rained down onto me and everyone that had gathered to see the end of me.

A dark sky, filled with volatile clouds that turned violently above, replaced the burning sun.

The air became much cooler and a ring of mountains in the distance dwarfed the tower to heaven.

I find it strange that you have lived less than forty years and have witnessed two Splits. My daemon offered its opinion on the sudden change of events.

I find it strange that I have a voice in my head that won’t tell me why it is here. I answered him. Do you think this will change their opinions of me?

I have told you that if you go to the temple underneath, all will be revealed to you. And, no. I suspect this has made things much worse for you.

Zultan Zufar cradled his cat, my cat, in his color washed arms and shot up from his throne. “Witch! She blasphemes Strazotl’s will! She commits dark magic to save her skin,” He screamed in a much higher pitched voice than I would have imagined. How could he truly be the leader of his people if he sounded like puberty had yet to take him? “Kill her! Kill her now before she dooms us all!”

My daemon was correct in his assumption.

The situation had become worse for me, much worse.