Chapter Four #2
Khalida stood in a defensive position, her hand touching the hilt of one of her swords as she tapped on it.
The movement was subtle enough that he would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it.
Khalida only ever fidgeted when she was unsure of her place or role within a new situation.
It was a tell that she hadn’t gotten rid of, and one that would annoy her if she realized that he still noticed.
It was amusing that she still carried her dual swords—that they remained her weapon of choice.
Old world weaponry but still highly effective in close combat.
She had re-braided her hair, pinning it to her head. Her black hood was raised, covering most of it. He didn’t blame her. The color was hard to hide, and the hood gave the appearance of blending in as one of the guards.
“Talik, Khalida. You came.” Sypha’s voice was soft and lyrical. “Together.”
Sypha’s words set off internal alarm bells.
“As you requested,” Khalida reminded them. “Unless there was a misunderstanding.”
He was slightly taken aback. Khalida and diplomacy were not something that went together. She was all beauty and brute force.
Sypha settled back against the pillows, their gaze impenetrable as they looked him and Khalida over. It was like being at an auction, and he was the prize. It did not bode well.
“No misunderstanding.” A dark look passed over Sypha’s features as they held out their hand. “It is all I could find.”
A scroll? It was the same size as a letter. Where had Sypha hidden it? When Sypha had been found, they had barely been breathing, alone, bruised, and battered. Everything had been left behind to get them to the infirmary as quickly as possible.
Khalida glanced at him, and he shook his head at the unasked question. She moved toward Sypha and gently took the scroll away, careful not to touch them.
The scroll was translucent white, the edges a musty yellow. It looked old. Khalida delicately unfolded it and held it up to the light, frowning. There was nothing on it. No marks. No writing.
Just an entirely blank scroll.
Deep in a trance, Sypha’s attention was on something that clearly was not in the room. They tilted their heads as if they were listening to another conversation. Talik glanced behind him, but it was just him and Khalida.
For the umpteenth time in his life, Talik was grateful he did not have any powers. The price of the so-called gifts and abilities sporadically appearing within their species were not worth the cost. Or the prison sentence, for those unable to control their abilities.
“What is it?” Khalida gently asked.
Far more gently than he would have expected possible from her.
“Can you see it?” Sypha asked.
Both of them stared at the scroll.
Lines materialized. Straight. Curved. Sharp angles to soft curves, followed by dots. Too quick to decipher.
His heart thundered, and he heard Khalida’s do the same.
She gasped next to him, and her grip tightened on the scroll as she trembled. He automatically reached out to touch her, but snatched his hand back before he crossed another boundary.
Sypha stared at them. A blood tear rolled down their face.
***
KHALIDA
Khalida dug her nails into her palm to ensure she was not hallucinating and relished the temporary pain.
As a daughter of a high priestess who practiced ancient alchemy, a practice that had been outlawed by most Atlantean houses.
Khalida had been surrounded by the unusual and the bizarre during her occasional visits to her mother’s home on Jirisan Mountain in South Korea—but she had never seen anything like this.
The glyphs on the scroll continued to change configuration, each transition faster than the previous version, until the images all blended into one. Some sort of cipher that they needed to decode. After three minutes, it began to repeat.
None of them had moved.
“Will this help us find the Anki?” Khalida asked, nodding in approval as Talik pulled out his cell to record the transitions.
The dark circles under their eyes looked like dark bruises against their pale skin. “Search for the symbol of Ninhursag, and you will find an ancient relic.”
That wasn’t a helpful answer.
After a full rotation, Talik moved, the heat from his body surrounding her as he stood next to her, replacing the cell in his pocket.
“Where is it from?” Talik softly asked.
Sypha slowly looked up at Talik. “There are some places you would not believe exist.” A hint of darkness tinged their tone, as if they had brushed death to find the scroll.
Sypha and their damn cryptic answers. After all these years, Khalida wasn’t sure if Sypha did it on purpose or was naturally vague.
She glanced at Talik. He stared at Sypha.
His stoic expression gave nothing away. A war was coming.
If the wayfarers and the Anki found Atlantis before them, they could awaken the O’hurani.
And if the O’hurani returned to his full power, there would be nothing they could do to stop the onslaught as he remade the world in his image.
They had barely survived their last encounter with the serpopards and the wayfarers—and they hadn’t even been up against the Anki themselves.
They needed answers, but were they asking the right questions?
“What is it?”
As a seer, Sypha saw endless possibilities. Not all of them would come to fruition. But Khalida was not the gambling type. She needed assurance before they made their next move. Assurance that Sypha could not provide with the accuracy she wanted.
“I don’t know,” Sypha hesitated. They shook their head, strands of their strawberry blonde hair falling across their face, obscuring their eyes. “It came from Idris, deep within his mind. He repeated the name Ninhursag, over and over again, until it was the only coherent part of him.”
Talik shifted next to her. The move was subtle, but unmistakable. A flash of anger crossed his face before his composure returned, except his eyes darkened with fury. Talik had never quite learned to mask his anger, unlike his other emotions.
“Idris?” Khalida repeated. Thoughts of the traitor were never far, not when the wounds and the evidence of his betrayal were still very raw.
She had considered him a close friend, a brother, had trusted him with her life and her family’s.
In this, she well understood Talik’s anger. “You were in his mind?”
Sypha shrugged. “Another power. I would not call this one a gift.”
Khalida didn’t want to press them, but the pain was unmistakable—laced through Sypha’s every word and action.
“His mind is a twisted labyrinth, designed to trap anyone who enters without his permission,” Sypha continued.
“But there was something else, something that had burrowed deep within him, until they had become one, symbiotic. I don’t think they were aware I was sharing the same space as them.
I have never felt darkness like it—insidious and impossible to feel until it was upon me. ”
“Ninhursag?” asked Talik.
Khalida rolled back on her heels as she processed the information and suddenly felt like she had the weight of the world on her.
Sypha closed their eyes. “It appears so.” Sypha brushed a strand of hair from their face. “Whatever it was, it was interwoven with the essence of Idris—a small threadbare part of him that couldn’t be extinguished. A sliver of his heart.”
“He can’t be saved,” Talik said solemnly.
The words were said so softly, Khalida almost didn’t hear them. She wasn’t sure if he said them for Sypha’s sake or his. Talik looked at the door, any trace of emotion gone from his features. Perhaps he had learned to mask himself when he needed to.
“I was fooled, just as you and Dante were,” said Sypha.
The words tore at Khalida’s heart. Betrayal was not something to be taken lightly.
She wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy.
And what Idris had done was unforgivable—he had sided with the Anki and had been a willing and crucial participant in setting the conditions for the rise of the O’hurani.
He had been willing to sacrifice Rieka to the ancient gods, to find Atlantis.
That he still lived was a testament to Rieka’s humanity.
Khalida took a small pleasure knowing that he was in a prison he would never escape. It was more than Khalida would have given him. But there was honor in death, something that Idris did not deserve.
“He was never the Atlantean we thought he was.”
Talik closed his eyes before he slowly opened them. “What did you see?”
“Death.”
Khalida recoiled. She forced herself to relax her grip on the fragile scroll, lest she tear a corner. “It stopped moving.”
When she held it up, the image was static. In the center, surrounded by a thin dotted border, was a symbol she semi-recognized. Two stylized omega symbols, mirror images of each other.
––––––––
“And hope,” continued Sypha in a hoarse whisper. “The symbol will lead you to a relic, and that is the key to finding Ninhursag and the Anki.”