Jules had always been open to the possibility of god. It was a small opening, to be sure. Very small. Like, amoeba’s-bunghole small. But it was there: a little hole—but not anymore.
A passing half-wyrm had nearly caught them on the way back to the room. They’d hidden under a hallway table, her body pinned between the wall and her brother’s, both of them trembling in fear.
They hadn’t wanted to be wyrm chow.
Jules couldn’t believe they’d managed to avoid getting seen, just like she couldn’t believe what her mother had to show her when she and Rayph got back to the room.
Pel had been waiting for them, console in hand.
Jules held her mother’s console in her hands. She stared at the paused video displayed on the screen like the console was a newborn hellspawn, freshly squeezed out of the darkness where the sun don’t shine.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” she groaned.
“Is that really Jessica?” Rayph asked.
“That’s Jessica Eigenhat,” Jules said, flatly.
Granted, she looked like shit, and was turning into worse-than-shit, but there was no doubt about it.
Jessica fucking Eigenha.
That tiny, tiny possibility of god? It was dead, now and forever. Even if it turned out there was a god, Jules would stand against it—or whatever pronouns it wanted to use for itself.
It was one thing to allow for the Green Death. Was it unspeakably evil and awful? Yes. But, at least it was uniform. But now, that bully Jessica Eigenhat was turning into one of the wyrms.
For Jules, that was just a step too far. It was a bad joke, and she wanted nothing to do with it.
“You need to talk to her,” her mother said.
Jules looked up at her, giving her her patented are-you-nuts?!™ face. “Did you not hear anything I told you?” she said. “They’re eating people!”
“I know!” Pel said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I saw!”
“You saw them eat zombies, Mom. Zombies don’t beg for their lives. And they weren’t just eating, they were training, too. They were using those powers of theirs to play with their food, like a cat with a mouse.”
“Keep playing the video, Jules,” Pel said.
Jules begrudgingly assented. Rayph skittered up behind her on the carpet, raising his head over her shoulder to get a look.
They watched the footage.
“There,” Pel said, “there! Listen!”
“Listen, bucko,” Jessica said, “you’re hallucinating. I thought I was going crazy, but then I realized it wasn’t fucking real! It was all in my head! We’re monsters, and there’s no changing it!”
And then, to her astonishment, Jules watched as Verune ordered his half-wyrms to take Jessica away.
They bound her with their invisible ties, restraining her in place, hovering her in mid-air.
“Verune views her as a threat.” Pel said. “You should—”
“—Mom, we barely made it back when we went out just now. And if they’ve taken Jessica away and locked her up, what do you think they’ll do to us if they find us?”
“Jules, don’t you see?” Pel said, as if it was obvious.
“No, I don’t,” Jules replied.
“What?”
“Think about what we’ve found!” Pel said. “Verune says they eat the zombies because the zombies are demons and the changelings are becoming divine beasts.”
“I think they’re all nuts,” Jules said.
“Well, I don’t!” Pel said, only to pale, and then lower her head in shame. “I mean… I didn’t.” Her shoulders fell.
She coughed.
“Mom?” Jules asked.
“Honey, I don’t know what to think anymore.”
Jules could tell her mother was genuinely scared. That was the most terrifying thing of all.
Pel’s voice broke. “I’m not like your father, Jules. I… I need something to plant my feet on, otherwise… I… —what am I supposed to do, what am I supposed to be, how am I to know what’s right and what’s wrong?! Oh, Angel…” She wept. “I need to know what’s true, Jules, it matters to me. I don’t know who’s right anymore, Scripture, Verune, your father… and… oh Hallowed Beast, give me strength, I’m not strong enough to step into the dark. I need a guardian, someone to look to, an ideal to chase.” She shook her fists. “And I don’t have one anymore, and I’m not okay with that! It’s not okay! I need to know, Jules, I need it. As your mother, I need to know what to do, so that I can do it. Without that… I’m… I’m nothing.”
Her voice died in a whimper.
“Mom…” Jules cried. “You’re the strongest person I know. Fuck scripture! You don’t need ideals, you just need to be you. You already have it in you. I have faith in that. I have faith in you! In who you are!”
“Me too,” Rayph said, chiming in.
And Pel smiled. It was a broken smile—the smile of a lost soul—but it was still a smile, and as a smile, it was the most beautiful smile Jules had ever seen.
“I wish your father was here, to see what a wonderful person you’ve become.”
There was a long pause. Rayph looked especially pensive.
“Maybe Jessica will want to help,” Rayph suggested. “Maybe she’ll help us get out.”
Both Pel and Jules turned to stare at him.
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Jules sighed. “I hate it when he has ideas,” she grumbled.
Especially when they were good ones.
— — —
Like most good ideas, Rayph’s suggestion turned out to be easier said than done. It had been a while since their mother had recorded the video of Jessica getting taken away, which meant that there was no obvious trail for Jules to follow to track down where the wyrms had taken her.
Jules spent the first few minutes of her search stealthily prowling through the halls around the Great Nave’s second and third floor, trying to figure out where the hell Jessica had been taken. Once again, Jules blamed her grandmother. Had Margaret not been entrapping her mother in conversation or whatever, her mother might have been able to follow the wyrms that had taken Jessica and get a better idea of where she was. Unfortunately, all Jules had to go on was the tail end of the video, which showed Jessica down the corridor to the left of the Moon Door.
This left my daughter with really only one option: process of elimination.
The everyman’s algorithm.
Jules crept up to the next door down the hall. All the other rooms here had been clerical quarters, so this next room was probably more of the same, but Jules wanted to be sure.
With ginger steps across the carpet, Jules reached for the cold bronze doorknob and turned it open ever so slowly.
She cracked the door open by just a hair and peered through.
Jules bit her lip, trying not to scream.
It seemed one of the wyrms had decided to eat their meals in private.
Jules released her grip on the doorknob and darted away with a shudder.
Well, fuck, she thought.
She’d gone up and down the hallway, with no luck. This meant Jessica wasn’t being held nearby and was instead confined somewhere in the Melted Palace’s labyrinthine depths.
Groaning quietly, Jules readied herself to start exploring the inner reaches, only to freeze—sparks running down her spine—as she heard a pair of solos emerge from the ambient polyphony, accompanied by the sounds of scales brushing against marble.
And it was getting louder.
Shit shit shit, Jules thought.
In this life-or-death moment, Jules decided to try her luck hanging out in the middle of the staircase, scampering down the hall and turning and clambering up to the landing at the middle of the stairs, where they turned around to rise up to the floor above.
Snakes can’t go up stairs, right? she wondered.
The sunset lit up the stained glass windows, making them gleam like gems. It was a beautiful sight. The windows depicted the Lass’ translation into paradise, flanked below by the chasms rent into Southmarch plain, and above by a flock of hummingbirds—iridescent in red, magenta, and emerald green.
Jules held her breath, ducking low, chanting a mantra in her mind.
Please don’t climb stairs. Please don’t climb stairs…
She pressed herself up against the metal railing, trying to make herself as small as possible.
The wyrms slithered by in the hallway below. She could see their shadows moving by when she peered through the gaps in the railing’s twisted iron bars.
One of the wyrms spoke. Jules had to strain doubly, to make sense of their words, and to ignore her pulse pounding away at her temples.
“So, what was up with the girl you took down to the wine cellar?” the wyrm said. “I heard Verune did something neat with water from the fountains.”
“Oh yeah, it was really impressive,” the other replied. I hope someone will teach me how to do that.”
The wyrms stopped. The first one spoke up again.
“But I heard she was ranting and raving.”
“Yeah,” the second replied, “it was not very becoming for a divine beast. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
There was a pause.
“Maybe Hell has corrupted her?” the first one said.
“Perish the thought!” the other replied.
“But, what if—”
“—No, I trust his Holiness. He’s a fucking time-traveler. When someone travels through time, you listen to them.”
“You read too much sci-fi,” the first said.
A moment later, they slithered off.
Jules let go of her breath, panting heavily.
As she got up out of her crouched position, Jules noticed her legs ached.
She cleared her throat.
Or is it just in my head? she wondered.
Jules shook her head. She clenched her fists. “Stay focused,” she muttered.
As soon as she was sure the coast was clear, Jules darted down the steps.
Wine cellar, she thought.
By one of those coincidences that made the world go round, Jules knew where the wine cellar was. That was my personal contribution to this escapade. When she was a kid and her elementary school went on its mandatory field trip to the Melted Palace, I’d gone as a docent to help corral the kids. One thing had led to another, and I’d ended up sort of totally unintentionally taken over the tour, leading the group of students under my care—including my daughter—to the parts of the Melted Palace that wouldn’t normally get shown.
Like the wine cellar.
I’ll never forget the way Jules hid at the back of the group, cringing every time I said her name.
Ahh… parenting.
She never let me forget it, and because of that, she hadn’t forgotten it, either.
She knew the way like the back of her hand. She had to hide off to the side several times on the trip there, to avoid passing wyrms or the cultists that served them. The wine cellar was down in the bowels of the Melted Palace, and, much to Jules’ dismay, the sickly sweet stench thickened the closer she got. Even through her face mask, she could almost taste it. At one point, she could swear she saw the spores capering in the halls’ lambent light. The sight made her stop in her tracks, breathing heavily. She dusted off her skirt and blouse with her sleeves, terrified spores had gotten stuck to the cloth.
She fought a nascent panic attack.
Maybe she wasn’t as ready to die as she’d thought.
Descending to the basement, the walls suddenly changed. The Melted Palace was a Second Empire construction, but it was built on top of a far older substratum. Two millennia ago, the Sword Chamber was at the highest point of the Great Temple of Elpeck. In the intervening years, the city and the land had grown up around it, but the old roots still remained.
The smooth, fine make of the Second Empire’s construction gave way to something agèd and chthonic. The first basement walls were made of brick. In places, the brick had flaked off, like pieces of flint.
The wine cellar was all the way down in the second basement. Modern stairs of corrugated metal had been built as an alternative to the ancient original. The old staircase was a tightly wound square stairwell, carved out by hand. Depressions marred the middle of the steps—as if they were made of wax, and that wax had partially melted—but, as Jules knew, that was just the signs of its age. Footsteps eroded rock as surely as water could.
The second basement’s halls were claustrophobic compared to the ones up above. There was barely a foot of clearance over Jules’ head. The walls were naked and flesh-toned. The stones in the hallways’ arched vaulting were blocky—almost cubic. Jules thought they looked like teeth mortared together, worn smooth by the passage of time.
Small black tags on the walls reminded the public not to touch. Black cables run along the floor and walls, providing electricity to depths, powering everything from the LEDs mounted on the walls and ceiling to the climate-controlling air conditioning humming in the background through the metal tubes that snaked along the ceilings.
A metal path paved the floor, a platform flush to the ground, to give visitors something to walk on that wasn’t the age-old stone.
Over the sound of the air conditioning, Jules heard someone muttering in the distance
Following the path and her memories, Jules turned left at an intersection. The hall ended in a doorless entryway dug into the wall, topped with a broad, protruding lintel stone.
Jules stuck her head in the entryway, just as I had done when I’d told her class all about the wine cellar’s history.
Just as I’ll now tell you.
The ancient core of Trenton lands were arranged in a horseshoe shape around Golden Bay, which stuck up into the eastern half of the continent like a hitchhiker’s thumb. Inlets on the Golden’s east side formed the Elpeck Bay and its environs. Southmarch stretched down along the Golden’s west flank. Elpeck’s peninsula stuck out into the Golden, and the city itself was built at the point where the Golden’s east and west coasts were at their closest. The Pekt had grown rich on trade, ferrying goods across the Golden. The riches of Daxon’s northeastern lands funneled through the city, forming the trading network that gave the Trenton people their identity.
Language and culture spread along the road. Wine from Vineplain would be stored in ancient Elpeck’s great warehouses, left there to age to perfection. The Church used the wine to accompany Bonding newborns to the Light. The wine represented the Angel’s blood.
The size of the old wine cellar always came as a surprise, considering how narrow the ancient hallways seemed to us moderns. It was almost half the size of the Great Nave. Hollows carved into the walls held massive wine casks. Modern racks lined the center of the room, beneath the cedar cross beams that stretched overhead.
Ancient, ancient wood.
The entrance let down into the far corner of the cellar. Jules could see all the cellar’s contents spread out before her.