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Chapter Ten



The Swordmaiden, Smoke Spirit and Priestess stood at the edge of a deep, cavernous hole. Rotten tree branches and twitching roots rimmed the edge of the hole, reaching up from the bowels of the earth to slither their way throughout the city.

When Arjasoot strained their ears, they could hear wailing moans and shrieks echo up from the depths, a discordant music that could only have come from the deepest, darkest, wettest of hells.

They warmed their arms around their midsection, embracing themselves until the shudders died down. “So this is where the Sunken One emerged?” They asked Ina.

“No,” Ina said softly, reaching out with her hand, fingers brushing against the carved hair of a broken statue head. “This is where the Temple of Areia used to stand. This is where the Priesthood of Love bound lovers together in marriage and blessed their newborn babes.”

She turned to look at Varayana, who clutched the hilt of her carp-tongue sword with a knuckle-white grip. “She was conducting a ceremony when the Kanwah, the Strangling Root fell from the sky...” She explained.

“That’s…”

That’s horrible, Arjasoot wanted to say. True, they didn’t know much about spouse-hood, marriage or other human customs. But for a ceremony of love to be so cruelly disrupted…

...if they were human, they would have cried caustic tears. But they were a Kindly Spirit, a child of smoke and cinders. It was easy for Arjasoot to swallow their sorrow and hide their dismay.

Varayana didn’t need yet another person to worry about.

“How do you know all this?” Varayana asked Ina in a whisper.

“I was presiding over the nuptials,” Ina explained, adjusting the fit of her red cap. “As a Priestess of Liberty, it was my responsibility to make sure none of the marriage oaths were forced...”

“That’s not what I mean,” Varayana hissed. “How come you escaped, and not…?”

Varayana covered their lips with their hand, silencing themselves mid rant. “I’m sorry…” they said to Ina, looking away. “You’re not seeing me at my best.”

“Don’t apologize,” Ina replied. They looked down at the double-bladed axe in their hands, running their thumb along the vine-patterned etched into the solid metal shaft. “I’m angry too, Vara,” she confessed. “You might not believe it...but imagine how it feels, as a devotee of Liberty, to be set free by someone else!”

A few puzzle pieces slid together in Arjasoot’s mind: “Varayana’s mother...Varavel saved you?”

Ina gestured at the tangled, rotten tree roots around them. “When the Strangling Root descended, his manifold limbs reached out to slaughter hundreds. For every one I severed…”

#

“Eleutha!” Ina shouted, cleaving a grasping branch into splinters.

More fuzzy grey tree roots slithered towards her, creeping along the ground like snakes. She cleaved those apart too.

“Eleutha, be with us!”

Larger roots rose from the hole in the temple floor, smashing pillars, crushing sacred statues in their grasp, weaving themselves together like reeds to form a roof that sealed the heavens away.

Greasy, swollen termites crept along every single root and branches, falling off like seeds to swarm and gorge themselves upon the many corpses, to burrow and build their homes out of mud and flesh.

“Eleutha!”

The fallen corpses were dressed in their finest clothes: shawls and tunics, cloaks and dresses dyed with the finest hues. They wore flowers in their blood-stained hair.

“Eleutha!”

As Ina called upon her Goddess’s name, the patron of liberty lend her champion a small blessing.

Ina felt a pulsing in the back of her head, a tugging sensation leading her towards the nearest soul in captivity.

Ina shouldered her axe and ran towards the source of the tugging: a mother and her shawl-wrapped child were surrounded, penned in by grasping roots that cinched tighter and tighter…

...Ina grasped her axe close to the blade, wielding it like a butcher’s cleaver. A few quick slices scattered the roots., splitting them into wriggling fragments on the ground.

“Thank you…” The mother rasped, stumbling close to Ina’s side, clutching her child tight. “Thank you, Good Priestess…”

Ina threw themselves in front of the mother and child, axe flashing in a crescent arc.

More wriggling roots fell to pieces, and even more roots sprouted from cracks in the ground to take their place. Ina continued to cut and cut, carving out a pocket of safety, but unable to clear the way for their escape.

All around her, wedding guests fled and cowered and fought and screamed as the fallen god took deeper root in Wedwel Dom. A thousand ethereal voices echoed in Ina’s mind, voices that cried out for escape and liberation, voices that Ina’s Goddess wanted her to save…

...voices that were falling silent, one by one, as the life was crushed and pierce from them, as Ina was helpless to save them––!

“Cinder sings in the dead of night,

Crackle lights the pyre.

Younglings drink the sleep of peace,

Will their dear’s desire.”

A gentle soprano voice echoed through the screams and shrieks that filled the shattered temple. Ina froze mid-swing, captivated by the gentle beauty of the song, and the resonant hum of power that filled each word.

“Anger fades with the setting sun.

Scoundrels mend their fear.

Dream of the glory days to come.

Dream and weep, my dear.”

Ina felt a strange sense of calm and peace descend over them. The wedding guests––those that lived anyway –– stopped screaming and panicking.

The swarming termites slowed as well, creeping across the ground at a sluggish pace. The roots around Ina stopped writhing, went completely still.

“Roam the earth as it settles down

Raise your breathing higher

The Moon will guard your dreams with Love

The Sun will light your Fire.”

“...come,” Ina said to the mother and child. “This way!”

Ina cut people free from their tree-root fetters, organized them into bands, urged them to head south and evacuate through the city gates.

Once she’d gotten everyone still living out, she ran up the Temple steps to find Varavel...

Ina found her kneeling at the base of her shattered altar, staring right into the gaping depths of the root infested chasm, lips moving in song.

The Priestess’s husbands stood by her side, helping their wife sing her binding spell in every way they could. Ramides swung a silver censor filled with the finest incense. Zol spun and danced in place, ringing bangles full of chimes in harmonious rhythm. Vasura etched glyphs of protection on the stone floor with his stylus. Argus swung with his finest swords, hacking apart the roots that still thrashed about.

“Everyone alive has escaped,” Ina told them all. “You can go now.” Her voice took on a desperate edge as she addressed Varavel alone. “You’re free to go!”

Varavel shook her head ever so slightly, the locks of her long, curly hair tumbling across her shoulder. She kept singing, chanting the words to a lullaby for gods.

“Would that we could,” Argus said to Ina, speaking for his wife. He swung his bronze saber in a figure eight, severing a sluggish purple root that reached out towards his spouse. “Vara’s barely holding onto the reins of this beast. The moment she gives out, it’s going to grow.”

“All the more reason you should run––!” Ina pleaded.

“You don’t understand,” Argus said, turning to face Ina. “This thing is going to grow. All over the city!”

A cluster of purple roots rose up behind Argus’s back. Ina leapt forward, her double-bladed axe raised high. Argus ducked. A single swing. The seeking roots fell into fragments, sap and swollen termites pouring form them like blood.

“I’m sorry, Ina,” Argus said, rising back up. “But we need you to evacuate Wedwel Dom. Bring its people to safety.” He gave her a crooked grin. “Not that we could ever tell a Priestess of Liberty what to do.”

Ina, for a moment, thought about acting contrary. She thought about defying reason, staying and fight with Varavael and the Four Fathers to the bitter end, whatever that end would be. Eleutha would smile on such a decision, she knew: her Goddess blessed all choices that were true…

“Damn you,” Ina spat at Argus.

“I’ll gladly be damned,” Argus said flippantly, stamping down with his foot and crushing some termites beneath “Just so long as I can drag my enemies down with me.”

“Don’t listen to him, Ina!” Vasura shouted from the back, gesturing towards Argus with the tip of his stylus. “That man’s too dramatic for his own good! Evacuate Wedwel Dom, then come back to save us!” The erudite scholar gave Ina a scowl entirely unbefitting of his station: “Fail to save us, and I’ll be haunting you!”

Zol and Ramides remained silent, focusing entirely on their dancing and censor-waving activities. The brief glances they threw Ina’s way, however, spoke volumes.

Ina of the Axe knew better than to ask the Four Fathers to flee with her. She felt no need to make desperate promises or state the obvious: her course was clear, and she would walk the path she chose to it’s bitter end.

She lowered her axe and turned to go…

...and then Varaval, Priestess of Areia, sang a new verse to her Spell of Slumber:

“When spite and fury spend their strength

And slumber stills the glow.

Greet my kindred in your dreams

Tell her I said hello.”

Ina turned back one last time to stare at Varavel. The Priestess of Love continued to kneel before the altar, her back turned to Ina, her face unseen.

And that was fine. Ina didn’t need to see Varaval’s face to know what her fellow Priestess felt.

#

Ina fell silent. She reached for the waterskin at her hip, taking a long swig of wine-mixed water to soothe her strained throat.

Arjasoot clutched at their chest, feeling a deep, rending pain run through their heart-flame. It was the same, they thought, the smoke-formed flesh of their body shimmering like a mirage. Gods Above, it’s the same damn thing.

Varayana finally spoke up. “Was that all she said?” She asked Ina, her words calmer than ever.

“That was all that I heard,” Ina replied.

“I see,” Varayana said.

The two women, the Priestess and Swordmaiden, stared into each other’s eyes for a long time. Unholy shapes stirred in the deep, cavernous hole by their feet and horrible lamenting cries rose up from the depths.

Arjasoot finally mustered up some words with which to speak: “What’s your plan, Vara?”

Varayana tilted her head back and forth, the bones in her neck realigning with an audible ‘pop’. “My plan?”

She turned and gave Arjasoot a comforting smile: “My Mother and Fathers said hello to me.” She drew her carp-tongue sword from her sheath with a musical ‘ting’ and held it up to catch the evening light. “I’m going to return their greeting, as a daughter should.”

Next Chapter: Chapter Eleven