7. The Girl
Chapter 7
The Girl
T he girl’s soul watched as the General made his way up and out of the cavern before she was snapped back into her body. She opened her eyes on a gasp, her physical body adjusting to the billions of memories and visions she was shown previously. Her body hurt , like she had run for days without stopping, and the accompanying headache threatened to pull her unconscious.
The girl took a few labored breaths, trying to suppress her ailments, when she started to smell the distinct, acrid smell of smoke. With a few grumbled curses and moans, the girl pushed herself up from the floor, wiping at the blood that was coursing from both her nose and eyes. She eyed the bowl with the thread and needle, but quickly dismissed the desire to add to the rug. It would burn, just like everything else here, and it wasn’t like any future Matriarch would access this room.
She had seen the futures. And there was not one where she had a child to continue the line of Matriarchs.
The girl stumbled her way to the door, pressing her hand to the lever on the inside, which unlocked it. The girl struggled to push it open, her arms shaking with the force, and barely edged it a crack. Too weak to open it any further, she pushed her body through and slipped into the burning room, assaulted by the heat of fire and smell of burning wood .
The girl pulled the neck of her kaftan, ripe with the smell of blood and sweat, over her nose and mouth, desperately trying to keep the smoke from her lungs. She pressed her body to the side of the wall, feeling along the edges in an attempt to get back to the secret panel that would lead her to the staircase and away from the burning house.
The smoke was dark and thick, the only light coming from the orange glow of the flames. Sweat beaded down her back and stuck her hair to her forehead. More than once she had to double over to cough, each time making her chest spasm and her throat split open.
Finally, finally , she reached the panel on the wall and blindly pushed around, looking for the hidden release. The flames at her back grew impossibly hotter, and she heard the support beams cracking as the flames licked higher.
Her breathing grew more rapid and shallow, her search for the button more erratic.
I can’t die here. This can’t be my end .
She let out a cry as she finally fell through the door, the mechanism unlocking with her touch. Miraculously, the smoke and flames had yet to reach the passage that led up and out, and the girl sucked in deep, greedy breaths of clean air. She was never more grateful for the humid air of her village than at that moment.
But it wasn’t long before the flames and smoke licked into the doorway, forcing the girl to her feet, willing herself forward by sheer determination and anger alone.
She pulled her worn-out body up the steps and out the main door of the house, just as she heard a groan from the structure, the floor caving in to the catacombs below.
The girl bent over, hands on her knees, as her body shook. She coughed and retched a few times, expelling the lingering smoke from her lungs before standing upright and surveying the damage to her village.
She’d seen each and every death through Solace, nothing should be a surprise at this point.
But it was.
It was one thing for the girl to see the destruction of her people from the safety of her Seeing Room. It was another entirely to walk amongst the dead, gazing into unseeing eyes as her bare feet squished through mud wet with blood. The air was quiet and still, the only noise was the faint crackle of dying flames and the occasional caw of circling crows.
More than once the girl had to stop to empty the bile from her stomach, the horrors of the massacre of her people simply too much to bear.
She saw women with kaftans ripped and bloodied, still in the positions the male Mages put them in to rape them.
She saw men castrated and impaled on stakes.
She saw children with looks of terror frozen on their little faces as their bodies lay broken on the ground.
And everywhere she walked, she stepped in ash and blood.
The girl methodically combed through every inch of her village, saw every burned building, every desecrated body.
The more she saw, the more her anger grew, until it felt like the anger wasn’t even hers, but the culmination of an entire people.
And, distinctly, she felt another’s anger, one that was vast and more nuanced than her own human emotions.
Solace .
The girl closed her eyes as she climbed the same hill from this morning, her feet automatically taking her to the spot she first sat in to reach the goddess.
How fitting. That the destruction of my people began and ended at this spot .
The girl took a deep breath before slowly spinning on her mud and blood soaked feet. Below her lay her village in ruins, and the new absence of sound was a heartbeat in the girl’s ears.
There was no wind.
No animal call.
Not even the crackle of fire remained.
Solace . The girl called.
And Solace answered.
Help me, Solace. Help me hunt and kill those who did this, those who violated the sanctity of life, those who would dare oppose a goddess .
The girl felt a warm breeze like a lover’s caress at her prayer, and she knew that Solace would answer.
“ My child,” the wind whispered everywhere and nowhere all at once. “ We have much to do, you and I. ”
The girl was flooded with images, some too fast to fully grasp, but the intention of them made her smile, a feral thing.
Faces flashed through her mind, and she knew them all.
They were Keepers—or they were —sent to the courts across Elyria as advisors.
And they’d known this would happen, yet none did anything to stop it.
Them first . The girl thought. They could either join her, or be eradicated like the Warlord and his allies.
The girl asked for one more thing from Solace before she turned her back on her people, vowing never to return.
And Solace agreed.
Slowly, as the girl picked her way across stones and through trees, a fog rolled over the sight of her village, and water filled the bowl. There was magic in it, the girl could easily sense it, and she knew that Solace would preserve this place. If anyone tried to disturb the final resting place of her people, they’d simply join them.
The girl smiled again, and she swore she could hear Solace’s laughter bounce through her skull as the girl relayed her detailed plans.
It would take time, but she would see that everyone that had a hand in today would pay.
And Fate wept.