Chapter 42 #2
“What. The fuck. Is that?” Vidar said, lighting up the slick surfaces of the tentacles with his torch. The light pierced through the obsidian base, casting glassy, orange distortions on the floor around us.
“We should look at the walls,” I said, unable to stare at the statue any longer. “They will have information.”
“Provided we know how to read it.”
“We’re here to try,” I said, heading to one of the many clusters of images.
Everyone split off in different directions, each of us choosing a section of the wall to investigate.
I found myself staring at a tall, carved image of a siren, her tail curled into a long, intricate knot beneath her like a throne.
Her hair fanned out around her head and held in her conjoined hands in front of her was a round object.
I couldn’t figure out what it was. Time had eliminated much of the detail, but to me, she was a centerpiece, so I moved on from her and started skimming the wall slowly in search of sense.
After what felt like an entire day of everyone staring at those walls, I had found women praying.
Men with spears in boats. Bodies on alters.
Red paint that had chipped and faded illustrated rivers of blood that wove between one scene and the next.
When I found myself standing next to Meridan scrutinizing a crowded scene of bloodshed and war, I stopped, sighing.
“There is nothing on this wall that isn’t violent,” I said.
We stared at the small figures clashing like two waves against each other, one side like shadows, the other like ghosts.
“Kroan and Naros,” Meridan said. “I don’t even recall us being at war.”
“This place is older than both of us. Older than our mothers. I’m sure there were plenty of wars before our time that no one talks about.”
“When did it all go wrong, though? I’ve been searching for that answer above all else.”
My eyes wandered to the left to see symbols etched into the stone, following the thin trail of a tentacle. I skimmed along the writing, my fingers lightly tracing over the shallow grooves.
“Ik’kri’kal’met’ti,” I whispered to myself. “S’tok’ur’in’ka’di.”
The symbols went on and on until I found myself staring into deep, cavernous eyes chipped into the basalt.
The insides were coated in layers of melted wax as if many candles had burned out inside of those two cavities.
Stepping back, I saw the rest of the carving.
Numerous lines came together into a knot-like image of a face, long, misshapen, and consuming like nightmares themselves had gathered to birth it.
Directly behind me, across the room, was the image of the siren holding the round object like the two figures were staring at each other.
I repeated the words to myself that I’d read along the tentacle when Vidar silently stepped up beside me.
“What is that?” he asked.
I swallowed, slowly turning to look at those wax-filled eyes again. I followed the wax, frozen in time, where it had dripped down from the holes like tears, nearly to the floor.
“Only a god can kill a god,” I muttered, the trace amounts of hope I still harbored inside myself dwindling.
“It sounds like something a pretender would say,” Vidar said.
I stared at the haunting image a bit longer, hating the sense of bleakness it emitted.
The way the empty eyes stared from the darkness.
The way the tendrils snaked out into the world, touching almost everything on the wall in one way or another.
It was all so invasive. So despairing and sickening.
Unnatural, like a parasite that had attached itself to things that did not belong to it.
“Makes me wonder who wrote this,” Vidar said, his voice sounding farther away. “And how twisted they were in the head when they finally did. This? This is what a monster who fancies himself a god wants us to see. The answers are here, Dahlia. We need to see past the lies.”
I clutched the hilt of my cutlass and nodded as I followed a particular trail of dark tendrils along the wall to a picture not like the others.
The tendril coiled around a circle of women, all of them holding a small babe toward the middle of the ring like offerings.
My stomach sank. I knew very well what it was that Akareth demanded.
To see it depicted on wall carvings and paintings somehow made it worse.
He’d always demanded sacrifice. Sacrifice of our children.
Our freedom. Again, I glimpsed the siren holding that unfamiliar object in her hands.
I noticed more age in her lines. More wear from time.
Perhaps she was the oldest image in that place, although, even if she was, I was no closer to knowing what it all meant.
They’re not here, whispered a voice.
I turned to Vidar, but he was staring up at the walls, same as I was, analyzing everything and paying little attention to me.
Tilting my head, I studied his face. The way his torch lit him up from below reminded me of nightmares that still sat dormant in the back of my mind.
I breathed a sigh of relief when he raised the torch to look more closely at something.
The light chased away the shadows and he was himself again.
He glanced at me as he moved away from the wall to seek another area to explore, but when he realized my lingering stare, he stopped.
“You alright, love?” he said.
I peered over every detail of his expression, making certain that he had not been fabricated from the assumptions of some horrid god.
Akareth never got it right. I kept reminding myself of that.
Without the shadows to cover his eyes and the silence to swallow the tone of his speech, I could tell it was Vidar.
But why was I still uneasy?
My heart was beating like it knew I’d been deceived and was laughing at my naivety.
“Yes,” I answered.
He placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder as he passed, but a dirty feeling remained.
Something was not right.
You have yet again wandered home, the voice said, circling me like a vulture stalking a carcass.
I spun and found Meridan standing in front of another carving, her head cocked to one side like a child ogling their first sunset.
“Meri?” I said.
She remained unmoving, staring blankly. I slowly inched my way toward her, reaching out to touch her when she finally snapped her head toward me and smiled.
“Quite astonishing, isn’t it? All of this.”
“I’m not sure astonishing is the word I would use.”
“No? Do you not think it’s fascinating? A god who can control an entire race of sirens simply by existing in their heads?”
I knitted my brows at her strange words.
“Meridan—”
“I think it’s rather foolish for you to question him.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You question all of this, too. Every day. Same as me.”
Her head swiveled toward me again, her lips stretching into an unfamiliar grin that was far too wide for her face.
“Do I?”
It is not her, the voice said, a marriage of female and male tones. I shook my head, turning to face away from her when I realized my mind was starting to bend and warp the world around me.
“Stop,” I muttered, screwing my eyes shut.
“Dahlia?” Meridan said… or perhaps it wasn’t her.
Kill her…
The voice was no longer strange to me. It was my mother’s. Reyna’s.
Rid yourself of these creatures feigning familiarity. They will drive you mad.
“No.”
I took in a deep breath of the stagnant air and focused my eyes on the walls again.
There had to be answers in that place. Knowledge. I just needed to find it.
But Meridan was disinclined to let me concentrate. Her hand swept down my arm to get my attention. I pulled away from her touch with a start only to see that sneer still deforming her lips.
That could not be real.
Or perhaps my tired eyes were playing cruel tricks on me.
Kill her, my mother whispered.
I closed my eyes again and turned from Meridan to see Mullins wandering the far wall, his torch raised above his head as he studied something high. The way the shadows engulfed him as he did so made my skin crawl. Nearby, David was also cloaked in shadows that robbed him of distinguishing details.
I could not deafen the voice in my head telling me that it was all part of a plan that was not ours.
That we had trapped ourselves someplace we were never meant to be.
That everything I’d done and thought about the past few weeks was all part of the design.
I was a thread being woven through a tapestry, but I was not the needle. I never had been.