It was someplace she had already been.

Purple water with scorched dirt that was painted black was laid out in front of her, while a strange forest of vegetation was behind her. Green, dull skies with thin fog-like clouds rose above. Creatures that looked like people with flat paddled hands were riding larger creatures of bone and peeling grey-stretched skin through the water in the distance.

She heard someone scream. Airya accidently took a step and sent a rock hissing and bubbling into the water. The next second, the water turned into an endless black that shivered as if a breeze had run past it.

Over across the water on the other side were at least seven people, beings, with burning spots of inky black skin over their shimmering opalescent tint. The beings looked as if they were in pain as the same devouring blackness that was in the water splotched on various parts of their bodies, eating away parts of their faces, their hands, and their legs, all of which were bare, except for the sharp green contrasted vine that had their wrists tied together. That same sharp green was tied like a rope around their torsos, holding them together in a line

Other beings were leading them with thin faces stretching into grins and paddled hands hitting the staggering beings that were tied together.

The tied-up beings were being led into the water. Even though the people screamed, they did not fight back as the black water took them in. They didn’t swim, they didn’t hold their breath; it was as if they were walking into a portal of their own. Airya waited for a hiss from the liquid that didn’t come.

Airya’s hands started shaking. She hated how she hadn’t considered the dangers of traveling to another world she knew nothing about.

The creatures with thin faces and paddles let go of the green vine looking pleased. They didn’t go after the beings that had disappeared. Then in the next moment, the water shimmered again, turning to the acid-free moving liquid it had been before.

Where had those people gone?

One of the creatures with thin faces turned to her. It waved and got the attention of the others.

Airya’s mouth went dry.

Why did her portal take her here? Where was Obsviden? Was he in charge of these creatures?

The creatures had called over a larger creature to ride their way over to her. She had no idea where to go but felt the urge to run into the thick tree-like plants growing up from the ground with leaves like blades behind her. There had to be something here that was related to Obsviden.

The ground beneath her feet was loose and dry as she ran in between the tree-like plants. Each of her steps sunk deep into the floor, cradling her skin. There had to be a reason she was here. She wouldn’t have been sent here if there wasn’t. She had called out with a want for Obsviden, so he had to be here. That was always how the portals worked. If she wanted something bad enough, it took her there.

She saw a small opening in the layers of the plants covering the forest floor. Her heart sank.

More vines were blocking her way. The creatures were rustling through the forest behind her. Vines were strung every which way as if to create a home. When she looked closer, she noticed what could have been beds and enclosures like rooms, but most were cut up, torn down, and trampled on. There was ice-blue liquid all over the leaves.

Then she saw it. Further in. Decaying dead bodies.

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Bodies passing like she knew her people should be from the books she read.

They were the same beings that she had seen tied up. But why? What happened to them?

She couldn’t help but to begin to make her way over to the dead bodies. There were careful vines strung up in various places with withering flowers tied to them. It was as if she could almost sense terror hanging in the air with an old peace layered underneath.

Were the flowers beautiful once? She wondered what color they had been before they had turned to a sickening grey. She could almost imagine the being that was the body that she was walking to now, happy once, cheerful, lying in these vines in peace.

Airya bent down and ran her fingers through the body’s brittle black hair. How could the monsters she had seen do this to them? Had these people, these beings, been here all along until those monsters came? Had they been too weak to fight?

Airya shivered when a sob tried to escape. She was happy that when her parents had arrived in Ausrine that they hadn’t done this. That they hadn’t destroyed the Solocs like those monsters had these beings. That they hadn’t made the Solocs live in whatever way those paddled-hand creatures were making these blue beings live now. That they hadn’t forced them to…

Airya’s mind halted. The word forced lingered in her head. It would not let her go on.

No… no. The Yellow Eyes hadn’t forced the Solocs to leave their kingdom. They hadn’t forced them to do anything. The Solocs had left on their own choice.

She had to believe what she had been told.

There was a feeling. A familiar one. That ache in her chest again.

That was when she saw the red glowing stamp that she had seen with Obsviden before. It was planted on a piece of skin like the grey-stretched skin of the creatures she saw swimming in the purple-burning water. The skin was dangling from a tree and reeked of death.

When she got to the piece of skin, she saw that she had no idea how to read what it said. There were lines and edges to the skin that looked like someone had been trying to make something resembling a piece of art. But why was the red stamp on it?

She sighed and touched the cool skin. The stamp grew darker. It wiggled a little at the touch of her hand until she pulled away.

She grabbed and yanked the foul-smelling peel of skin away from the tree and tore it from the spike set in its top middle to hold it in place. The part with the spike through it ripped, leaking blood. The skin floundered in her hands, not appreciating her touch.

She opened a portal back to her home, wondering if taking something like this with her was wrong.

But she needed to know what it said.

Grasping the skin with both hands, it curled up and around her fingers as she entered the portal. She found herself right outside the temple. The grey slab of skin grew warm as it worked to try to find a way out of her hold. Its edges pulled at her skin, grasping her as it tried to pull itself out of her hands and escape.

She opened another portal that she knew would take her to the room with the mirror. She arrived in front of the mirror that refused to show her the depths of herself and held the skin up to it, trying to stretch it out so that the mirror could see the language hidden there. Then she pressed it against the mirror so she could touch it. Its cold likeness trailed through her.

She looked down at the skin and then back to herself in the mirror again.

Although she could only see a blur, a reminiscence of her past, her mind lit up in wonder as the lines and their meanings fell from her eyes to the page, still squirming in her hand.

Right away, she knew what to do. She laid it on the ground and put book after book on top of it on all four corners to lay it flat. Although it was still struggling, she could look at it and read it. She saw what the first thing it said.

Jasp Cih

An item that would take anyone to where people who died at birth would be.

A dead end.

It had all been for nothing.

But it said something else too.

If not taken to the dead in the cycle of days that it takes of thirty-seven, they will be gone.

A warning. One that she did not know what to think of. One that made her want to yell out because she did not know what it meant. Should she be worried about it? Did it pertain to all death, including death in other worlds? And how many days and nights did it mean?

She glared at the red stamp that had worked its way to the corner of the skin. Then she took the books off of it and let it go.

It crawled away across the floor. Where it was going, she didn’t care to know. At least she knew now that she had found a way to be taken to the things that Obsivden had collected in his own peculiar way.

And she would try again now.

Hethei flew back into the room in a panic just in time. He must have seen the page slipping away.

Without explaining her thoughts, she opened another portal feeling the urgency in her blood. She knew her mission was etched in her face.