4. Maren
Maren
My lungs begged for breath.
I leaned over the pommel of Kye’s sword, pressing into the Abyssi’s body until her remaining legs drifted aimlessly against the settling water.
My skin smarted where I’d scraped it against the rocks.
The cavern sat before me, wide and deep and utterly black.
I shifted toward it, ignoring the dull scream in my tail where she’d hooked into my fluke.
She lay unmoving underneath me, legs curled grotesquely into her belly, like she were nothing but an uninvited houseguest who had been unfortunate enough to endure a slap from the bottom of a shoe and not a monster who guarded the passage to another realm.
I passed overhead. She twitched.
The movement was slight, but it was enough to startle me into the serrated ceiling, flukes throbbing from the sudden excursion.
Below, the spider’s legs shrank and joined, four stilts becoming one arm and leg.
Her body withered as well, the clicking pincers shortening into a human jaw, claws molding into hands, until a young woman lay where the spider fell, eyes and mouth gently parted, long black hair wafting in the water, her maimed arm and leg lying a few feet away, half hidden in her nest.
I wondered how old she’d been when she’d struck a bargain with Darkness. How old she was now.
And then, before my lungs threatened to burst wide, I ceased my wondering. I left her at the bottom of the cavern, entering the tunnel that would claim my life.
The cold stopped. The taste of blood in my mouth vanished.
The weight of an entire sea above lifted.
Just as I fell from water to an airless chamber in the depths of Sylus Lake, I suddenly stumbled through water and into stars.
The liberation of my muscles sent me forward as heavy liquid turned thin and dry and almost ashy, the buoyancy of my body evaporated.
Unable to swim, I transitioned and stood, wary of my shin, which now housed a wide gash.
Without the joined force of my opposite limb in a single tail, my leg threatened to cave under my weight.
I promised myself I hadn’t rebroken it, a feeble attempt at hardening my resolve as it shook underneath me.
Whether or not it tried to crumble, it still held me upright. For now.
The place I stood glittered.
Not brightly. Softly. Tiny fragments captured the glow from my stone, releasing the shine almost as fast, tiny shards of a smashed mirror. It sifted under me, somehow finer and softer than sand. Like someone had ground glass into silver dust and poured it out in a long and winding pathway.
Shimmering light hung over every corner, vaulting above me and below. Stars. They danced, twinkled, vibrated. Some of them arced and fell, but most hovered in place, growing and shrinking in luminous clusters.
I stole a small step forward, toes sinking into the dust, and felt it fall out from under my foot.
As though I stood on ground only an inch thick.
I didn’t dare lean to the side to watch it spill away.
There was nowhere below me to land. If I fell here, I’d surely fall for an eternity before I found myself in the house of shadow, my mouth wrapped in skin and my eyes receded into my skull.
I shuddered the thought away. My fingers flexed into a fist. Unflexed and flexed again. I ignored the wobble in my chest as my eyes veered off the sides of the dust pathway. I’d never been prone to a fear of heights in the mountains of Leihani or the slopes of Sylus. But this wasn’t merely height.
I’d exited my world through the Gateway to Darkness and landed among the endless night sky.
My leg shook as I took another step, bare toes pressing into loose fragment—and the fragment moved.
It gathered over itself, pouring and folding and building.
Until it shook itself free of silver ash, a small cloud burst of glitter.
A creature with wide wings emerged, flat like a leaf.
A giant leaf. It moved like a cloak with no master, tilting its winged arms to veer back toward me, and I realized what it was.
A manta ray, forged in the ash of stars as if my soul had asked a question, and the stars had answered.
The only thing that didn’t sift and sparkle as it drifted by were its eyes.
Deep, black, soft eyes that settled over me with a profound sense of peace, like it had been waiting in the silver sand for a thousand lifetimes.
It swerved into me, the ash of its wing crumbling as it glided through my arm, reforming again on the other side.
“Hello,” I said, my voice echoing strangely back to me.
The creature drifted to face the long, winding pathway, tail flowing behind it, pausing for me to follow. I took a cautious step, my silk skirts floating around my thighs, as weightless as the manta ray.
“Death will lead you home,” a voice reverberated across the star-spun sky. I started at its volume, sending my scattered gaze across the endless twinkling to search for its source, though it came from everywhere at once, loud enough to rumble in my chest.
Not that it had been harsh. It may have been loud, but it had also been smooth. Feminine. Perhaps even sweet.
“Show yourself,” I demanded, quelling the thud of my heart. But nothing appeared. The twinkling lights shone back to me, gleaming and silent. Masking the voice along with all the other secrets stars keep to only themselves.
The creature made of glittering dust passed again, tilting to give me a full view of its back in the windless air.
“Are you Death?” I asked it.
It shimmered at the word.
“A strange choice to come here, young mortal, while you still fear Death,” a second voice said.
Just as loud as the first—but less warm.
Stealthy and clever. My spine locked in a rigid line.
I didn’t move, but my eyes continued roving the lights above, searching for the source of the voices.
“There is no more loyal friend. Nothing in the cosmos to lead you to the other side with more patience and understanding than Death itself.”
“She does not fear Death,” came yet a third voice, and finally something in the distance moved.
The stars above vibrated at its sound, crossing and clustering, until the outline of a stoic woman hovered before me in the sky.
She gazed at me without a trace of fondness in her starlit eyes.
“She simply has not yet met it as the dead.”
“I know the soul of this one,” mused the second voice.
She wove the stars together, drawing her own cosmic form.
The stars that made her body rose and fell in rhythm, ticking softly across her shape, her smile sly as she peered down at me.
“She stole from me. Exacted a bargain with Caecus to travel a distance that should have taken weeks.”
“A petty theft,” the third voice remarked. “Her crime against me was more severe. A Naiad sharing with a human that which they must covet.” She fixed harsh eyes on me, the shine of her stars blinding. “If you are to cross, I demand payment.”
“You’re the Fates,” I breathed. “Time and Truth.”
“And Love,” the first voice cooed. She twisted herself into the sky, more colorful than her astral sisters. Her boundaries radiated with soft nebulas of green and blue and pink, each swirling slowly within her. Death shimmered again at her entrance, flying in a wide arc around my shoulders.
Love leaned in, her celestial face growing in size as she brought herself close enough to study me, forcing me to shield my eyes at her light. “This one stole from me as well.”