Chapter 5
Avriel
T he rabbit’s foot, hanging from my belt, bounced rhythmically as Imari and I followed Empress Avena. Gently, my fingers clasped around it, my thumb stroking the soft, white fur.
It reminded me of him . Instantly, the tension in my shoulders eased.
I had served Empress Avena for the majority of my life, and I had gone to the Creator’s Tower, nestled in the northern part of the palace, thousands of times before.
Still, I hated going there. Detested it with every fiber of my being.
Not that I showed it.
The men in this castle were forced to wear physical masks, but as for us women, ours were invisible, carefully honed from years of hiding our true thoughts and feelings about the world we lived in .
I braced myself as we turned to our left and walked down the last, long hallway, leading up to the monstrous tower.
The tower received its name from Emperor Alaric.
He was a primordial god, the creator of everything.
In this very tower, he would spend countless hours plucking the stars from the sky, shattering them apart, and creating souls.
He made their vessels too, forging life on his great, mighty anvil.
Emperor Alaric had made nearly every species known to femalekind—mortals and immortals, animals and mythical creatures—even dragons , which no longer existed.
Well, at least, not living ones. Dragons had all been destroyed during the War of the Creators, which led to Emperor Alaric’s defeat, dethroning, and ultimately, his death.
His wife, Empress Avena, had been the one to take his life.
After, she had the tower completely gutted, destroying everything and anyone she deemed to be of no value to her.
She had kept the emperor’s journals, his anvil, and his hammer, which she’d used to forge her own creations, infusing a different truth into those she made—infusing them all with lies, that she was the original creator, that Alaric was the imposter.
And they all believed her, especially the Ashamori, her most loyal subjects—which was what Imari was.
I couldn’t blame them. I, too, had also once believed her. I’d even gone against my own mother when she tried to tell me otherwise.
The truth of the past was an easy thing to corrupt, especially when anyone who opposed it had their tongue permanently silenced.
A memory pried loose, and my mother’s sad, smiling face flashed before my eyes, right before her soul was torn from her chest and crushed by the hand of the very female who walked in front of me.
“This way,” the empress said as she turned to her right.
I took a breath, knowing I was going to need it, as I followed her inside the tower.
Dozens of mezzanines were stacked over top of one another, circling the exterior of the tower, open in the very middle, all the way to the roof.
Hundreds of feet above, hung from the ceiling, was the remains of a dragon, its magically preserved body on display instead of being given back to the soil, where it could decompose and finally rest in peace.
Dozens of stygian forgemasters were at work, experimenting and testing, breaking and—according to them—fixing.
Animals howled in their cages while hammers clamored and chisels picked.
A horrific female scream sounded from somewhere up above, followed by a whirring noise that made my blood run cold.
“What is this place?” Imari whispered to me, her eyes shifting this way and that.
Where morality comes to die , I wanted to say, but instead, I replied, “The Creator’s Tower is a place for education, where new species are created and great mysteries are solved. It is overseen by the top stygian forgemaster— ”
“Victor,” the empress said by way of greeting as the man himself approached us.
The centuries had not been kind to him. His shoulders were permanently curved from a lifetime of standing over top of his .
. . creations as he worked on them. His eyes bulged from their sockets, the whites littered with broken blood vessels.
His skin was paler than the dead, which was rather fitting, considering a lot of the things he worked on ended up that way.
Something that could also be said for the empress.
Although Victor and Empress Avena had been able to create some species, they couldn’t create like Emperor Alaric could.
They had tried and tried to remake dragons, the emperor’s greatest creation, but they failed time after time.
In their desperation, they had resorted to horrific measures, which was why this place had become what it was.
I often wondered if Emperor Alaric had rolled over in his grave knowing what had become of his beloved tower. Could he hear the desperate cries of those tormented inside this terrible place?
I could.
Every night when I laid my head down to sleep, they were all I heard. Even though my room was on the opposite side of the palace, my mind had recorded the sounds, playing them over and over again.
“Your Majesty,” Victor said, voice hoarse.
He cleared the phlegm from his throat, making an awful sound.
Due to his lifetime of service, Victor was one of the only males in this realm allowed to go without a mask when in public.
He also didn’t have to bow to the empress.
It was considered highly disrespectful not to bow to our sovereign, yet the empress didn’t seem to mind.
Had it been anyone else, she would have had their head.
But Victor got special treatment.
I had once heard a rumor he had been quite handsome in his younger years—however, I believed the nature of his work had drained him of any beauty, inside and out.
Still, I put a fake smile on my face as his slimy eyes slid to mine, his smiled widening as he said, “Priestess Avriel.” I swore I could hear his back popping as he forced his shoulders back, trying to stand taller.
“Forgemaster,” I greeted him, tipping my head in respect. It made me want to vomit.
The sound of something buzzing, and the desperate roar of an animal from somewhere up above, sent my nerves on edge.
“To what do I owe the honor?” he said, his slimy tongue pressing against the corner of his parted lips, moving up and down. Up and down. Up and down. The act, accompanied by the way he was looking at me, made me want to crawl out of my skin.
Still, I hid my true nature, my invisible mask permanently in place. “I’m here with the empress,” I said, giving him a soft, fake smile.
“Always such a good girl ,” he rasped, his words sliding over my skin, painting them in his nauseating filth.
The need to run and find a scalding-hot tub to douse myself in and a wool brush to scrub my skin raw with became exceedingly strong, but I steeled myself.
The empress gestured to the female in Imari’s arms. “Do you recognize her?”
He stepped closer, surveying the white-haired female. His hand wrapped around the bottom half of her face, shifting her head from side to side. “Oh yes,” he cooed with a raspy chuckle, his eyes glinting, as if a shiny new toy had been gifted to him.
My fingers twitched at my side, desperate to reach for the rabbit’s foot. I didn’t know the female, but I felt for her in that moment, watching as he put his grimy, horrible hand over her face, as if he had a right to.
He looked at the empress, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “If she is here, Nockrythiam might follow.”
“Nockrythiam?” I asked, feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of me.
There wasn’t a soul alive who hadn’t heard that legendary name, regardless of how hard the empress tried to erase it.
He was the greatest fighter in all of the lands, the bringer of death, and the last defender of Emperor Alaric. The Ender of Realms.
I glanced at the vessel . . . How was she connected to him? It was a question I was determined to find the answer to.
“Let us hope that she succeeded at her task,” the empress said, ignoring me. “Nockrythiam is the key.”
“Indeed, he is,” Victor agreed, pulling his hand from her face. “Shall we find out what happened?”
“Yes. How long will it take?” the empress asked, resting a hand in the crook of her hip.
He surveyed the condition of the vessel, before he said, “It shouldn’t take much more than a few hours to repair the damage, but as for the soul—”
“I’ll see to that,” the empress cut in, raising her hand, the one with the gold cuff on it—something she never went without. “It will be much faster that way.”
Victor eyed the jewelry, then replied, “Very well.”
He and the empress began to walk toward a secluded room. Imari and I followed behind them.
Long legs speeding up, Imari caught up to Victor. “I can help.”
“And you are?” Victor asked without so much as glancing her way.
“Imari, sir. I work at station 104 along the Miyakai River and—”
“Thank you, Imari,” Empress Avena cut her off. “But I have another task for you, which I will explain later.”
We filtered inside the room, brightly lit. Inside, there were trays and walls full of various tools and instruments. The look of them made my blood run cold. In the middle of the room, an altar made from stone. It looked hard and unforgiving. Cold. It fit the rest of this place.
“Lay her there,” Victor directed Imari, gesturing to the altar before he walked towards a desk. Slung over the chair was a blacksmith’s apron. He grabbed it and began to put it on.
Imari laid the female down on the altar and then took a step back .
“You can wait outside,” the empress directed Imari before her eyes shifted to mine. “I want an emergency council meeting arranged three hours from now.”
I glanced at the white-haired female, a gnawing feeling in my stomach. Although she was a perfect stranger, leaving her with Victor just didn’t sit right with me. But just as I always did, I bowed my head to the empress and said, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
I could feel Victor’s eyes on me, watching as I walked out the door.
The second I was outside, my twitching fingers grabbed hold of the rabbit’s foot, and I left the tower as swiftly as possible.