Chapter 42 Goddess
GODDESS
Sleep had claimed me—hard and fast. I had no idea how long it had been; maybe it had been hours, maybe days. It was impossible to tell within the darkness of my mind. I knew, vaguely, that I was still asleep, but I was also acutely aware of my surroundings.
It was dark, wherever I was. My feet were on solid rock—the kind that lined the walls of the Cistern: raw, untamed.
There was a dripping sound coming from somewhere, like water trickling down the wall.
I was underground. That was obvious. But I had spent the last several months living underground in the City Beneath Lutesse, and so I was not alarmed.
This place, though, wherever it was, felt older.
Deeper. Further beneath the surface. It was utterly unfamiliar.
“Hello?” My voice was still hoarse, strained from when I sent out that final blast of power into the Bowl.
That final blast of power that had doomed the viscount.
Before I slit his throat for good measure.
I pushed that thought down. Oh Goddess… I would deal with the repercussions of that later.
My voice came back to me in an echo. But no one responded.
I took some tentative steps forward, assessing my surroundings.
My foot splashed—the floor was covered in a few inches of dark water.
Yet my feet didn’t feel wet. Curious. I walked a few steps further, my eyes adjusting to the total darkness surrounding me.
In the distance, there was a light—dim, violet and pulsing.
I should have been more tentative, more wary. I didn’t know what the source of the light was. But I was not afraid, and I moved toward it, my feet splashing through the shallow water of the cave floor.
“Hello!” I called again. Again, there was no response. But that pulsing light grew stronger. I walked toward it. Around a corner—more bare rock with water trickling down it—toward the source of the light.
I froze. It was terrifying to behold. She was terrifying.
Sitting atop a raised platform in the middle of a large open chamber, the light shone from within her.
It pulsed in time with her heartbeat. I felt it in mine.
Her head was tipped up, eyes open, unseeing, staring at the raw rock ceiling of whatever chamber this was.
Her hair unbound, the dark thick curls of it cascaded down her back, over her shoulders.
Her skin seemed grey in the dim light of the cave and she was completely naked, save for twining bands of onyx wrapped around her upper arms and a crown of horns that adorned her dark head.
At her back was a pair of magnificent wings, each feather a different shade of violet, lavender, lilac and indigo, tipped in gold.
Her legs, muscular women’s legs, ended in vicious talons.
But it wasn’t her wings, or talons, or the way that ethereal light seemed to pulse from within her that was truly terrifying.
No. It was the way her veins, black as ink, spiderwebbed up her body.
The way that black flames licked over her hands, her arms, wreathing them in the same flames that I had conjured in the fight against the viscount.
Terror twisted in my gut as I took in the full picture.
I tried desperately to wake myself up. To get out of whatever dream state this was.
But my waking body wouldn’t answer. I was stuck.
I didn’t dare move another step lest I attract the attention of the creature before me.
This creature who somehow bore the same magic as me.
But I couldn’t evade her notice any longer, as she realized that she was not alone in this chamber.
Her head tipped forward, revealing a mouth full of elongated, sharp teeth.
And her eyes. Her eyes were the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
They were completely black—not a spot of white or colour in the corners, the irises or anywhere.
They were so dark they seemed to absorb the light. But they saw me.
The woman—the creature, really—tilted her head to the side, curiously.
“How did you find me?” Her voice was all things contradictory. Young and old, male and female, soft and strong. It filled the chamber with a power that had me trembling before her.
“I don’t know. I think… I think I am dreaming,” I replied, voice shaky and weak.
“If you are dreaming, then wake and leave me be. You have disturbed me. Away, human.” She flicked out a hand—one terrifyingly encircled in those black flames that looked so familiar.
“I have tried. I can’t seem to wake. I don’t know why I’m here,” I whispered. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” She laughed—the sound chilled me to my very bones. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why did I ask?
“Who am I? You ask a bold question, human. So very bold for someone whose entire species is responsible for my entombment in this underworld.”
And as she said it, a cold realization sluiced through me. I had never seen her depicted. But I remembered the story that Rory had told during the Spring Equinox. It seemed so long ago, back when I had first come to the underground city, Beneath.
“Ishtar?” I breathed out in a whisper, not bold enough to say her name any louder than that.
“I have had many names through the eons. Ishtar, Danu, Gaia—call me what you will.” She returned her gaze to the ceiling. The casual dismissal of a god.
“I… my magic—” I didn’t know why I was saying it. I couldn’t help myself. “—my magic is the same. The same as those flames,” I whispered.
Ishtar’s head whipped back down toward me. Her black eyes bored into mine—into my soul. As if she recognized something within me. Fury twisted on her beautiful, lethal face, and she stretched out her arms to me, sending those flames straight at me.
I awoke, then, screaming.