Chapter 27 Elena
ELENA
I can give my flesh for my people to eat, and still, they will ask for my bones.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
Elena followed the priestesses into the temple, alone.
The Yamni did not allow the Cyleoni into their sacred home, and Kirri, seeing the priestesses’ twitching hair, had not protested.
She supposed she should feel afraid. The stairway was steep and dark, the priestesses strange, quiet, but Elena found herself climbing the steps two at a time.
There was something here. Her Agni hissed, and the dull roar in her ears only strengthened as they entered the temple hall.
The hall was a deep, cavernous chamber with sloped, latticed ceilings that met at a hidden point.
Sunlight bounced off two long silver pools that ran alongside the walkway, their waters so still, so clear, they might as well have been mirrors.
But as Elena neared the end of the path, her gaze pulled from the pools to the icon above.
The Goddess towered over them. Tall, monstrous—beautiful.
She held two weapons, a slingsword in Her upper left, a spear of fire in Her lower right, Her other hands splayed in perfect halves of a lotus.
Made of the same obsidian as the temple, She commanded an unspeakable gravity that plucked invisible strings within Elena and yanked her forward.
“Our Goddess welcomes you, little queen.”
A priestess walked from behind the silver altar.
Unlike the other Yamni, she was of Elena’s height with golden irises, as if the Goddess had taken a kernel of fire and set it within her eyes.
Scriptures were inked across her face, and when she dropped her hood—Elena inhaled sharply—she saw that the priestess was completely bald.
Clipped.
She knew enough from Ferma’s stories to understand that a clipped Yumi was an abomination. A shame. And yet the twin priestesses bowed low to her, the ends of their hair sweeping across the floor. “High Sister.”
The high sister turned to Elena. The sleeves of her robe inched back as she raised her arms, revealing red tattoos swirling down her brown skin. She opened her palms for Elena to take.
“I have waited a long time to meet you, Elena.”
Elena made no move to take her hands. Though her Agni still hummed with a beating desperation, though she knew something in this room called to her, Elena retreated. “Why?”
The high sister smiled gently, lowering her hands. “Because your mother said you would come.”
Elena felt something sharp and small still in her heart. “What?”
“A few weeks before the queen’s death, Ferma sent us a message saying your mother was not well.
That she was prone to hallucinations and long silences.
That when she did speak, she spoke of three fires.
Your Spear begged me to help. So I met your mother.
I journeyed into your dunes, and we met under the shared gaze of the moons, and she told me of you.
She told me that I would one day see visions of a woman so broken and embittered by her own grief that she could not connect with the Goddess’s fire.
At first, I did not understand. But then I saw you in our temple fire, and I knew.
” She touched Elena’s elbow, her voice strong and warm with conviction.
“I could not help your mother. But I can help you, Elena. Trust your Ferma, if not us.”
Elena trembled. She remembered their glittering, broken reflections as Ferma said, Maybe the dance in the scroll isn’t one dedicated to the Phoenix. Maybe it’s of the Goddess.
What was it about this place that made her memories so fresh, her grief so raw?
“H-help?” Elena said. Her mother had been mad. She was not. “I—I do not need your help. I would like to meet your next-in-line regent—”
The high sister rested her hand on Elena’s arm to stop her from shaking. “You struggle to hear the flames. And I know your Agni could not withstand the Prophet’s attack. But I can help you.”
Elena tensed at the mention of Samson, and she had to stop herself from touching the marks on her neck.
She swallowed, hard. “Show me, then.”
An altar stretched beneath the Goddess’s feet. Four Yumi held up the base, each with a different emotion. One bridled with anger; the other hid in fear; another smiled with joy; and the last wept, her tears eternal.
A silver bowl, as wide and long as Elena’s torso, perched within their hands.
White sand filled its depths. Elena stilled.
She remembered her father sitting on his throne, Samson and Yassen taking the Desert Oath and reaching into the fire.
Their imprints in the sand. How young they were. How naive.
“Do you remember the fire dance?”
Elena blinked. “Of course. You know it?”
And at this, the high sister laughed. “We Yamni made the dance. Let us do it together.”
Before the Goddess, Elena and the priestess sank into the Warrior.
Heat flared up Elena’s spine, her Agni awake, ready.
She spun, and so did the Yamni, their movements mirrored like two perfect halves, like the twin pools running through the temple.
Elena startled. The priestess smiled at her surprise, and despite herself, Elena returned it.
The Desert Sparrow, the Lotus, the Spider, the Tree, the Snake, they flowed through the positions, their arms strong and fluid, their feet skipping over the black floor. The twins began to sing, and the sand rose. It leapt from the bowl and swirled around them, guided by their dance.
“Listen,” the priestess said.
Elena felt the pull in her gut, the call of the land. It was the song of the river, the roar of the waterfalls, the steady pulsing beat of the sleeping volcano, everywhere, all at once.
So she listened.
Elena could have sworn the sand was talking as it swept around her, whispering a secret she could not understand.
She tried to focus on its susurration, but the sand swirled, faster and faster, singing, laughing, purring, grains skating across her cheeks, marking her skin, filling her nostrils.
She gasped. She could no longer see the high sister or hear her voice.
She was back in the sandstorms of Ravence, lost in the fray of the desert’s anger. Somehow, she knew in her bones it was angry at her. For losing her kingdom, for failing to protect her lands.
For not being enough, alone.
Who even are you, alone?
It was a question she could not answer, and caught in the storm, Elena felt herself failing once more. Her Agni flickered, buffeted down by a wind.
“There are three types of fire, little queen.” The high sister’s voice rang around her, though Elena still could not see her.
“That of the Phoenix—a wild, vengeful power. That of the Serpent—a cold, haughty power. And that of the Goddess—a power that nourishes, provides. To find yours, you must first let go of your grief.”
But the sand came on, thicker, gaining weight, gaining speed. Burying her.
Elena tried to fight, but her limbs grew heavy, slow. Maybe she deserved this. Maybe, after all the things she had done, the people she had so recklessly buried alive, she deserved a fate like theirs too. Samson was wrong. They could never absolve themselves of their guilt or of their regret.
Elena sank to her knees and raised her head, her gaze wandering to the heavens—
The eyes of the Goddess seared into her.
Suddenly, the walls bled out. The voices of the priestesses faded. She was drifting alone in an endless expanse with no beginning, no end, an abyss that felt as alive and hungry as her.
You must first let go of your grief.
Her body thrummed, and she knew at once that she was here looking for someone.
She began to run. To call. The abyss trembled, awake to her voice, swallowing it in and sending it—where, she could not tell.
Only that she could not stop calling, could not stop running.
And as time passed in this strange place, she came to the slow realization that she was searching for him.
That this abyss was the cathedral of her grief.
“Yassen!”
She ached for him. The abyss ached for him.
She and the abyss were one, overwhelmed by the cavernous quality of a grief unburied.
He had become a physical reminder, a tightness in her chest, the gritty, popping sensation in her throat.
She had tried to ignore it. Tried to push on, to bury her anguish.
Even when she had thought she was safe, caught in the immediacy of the present, he still came to her.
The smell of wet jasmine reminded her of when they had stood in the garden; a fallen eyelash of when he had touched her cheek and told her, Make a wish.
There were others. Her father, her mother, Ferma, Eshaant, Diya, the ones crushed by the wall, the ones buried in the ruins of Rani. Their faces blurred in the dark until they were a bleating ruinous mass crushing her chest.
Perhaps this was the true nature of her sorrow: to be withered and beaten down to the husk until she was a shell. Empty, like the abyss.
You must let go of your grief.
She felt herself slowing. Her throat cracked and her voice came out in a dry croak.
You must let go.
The darkness sucked at her limbs, and she sank into its grasp.
Let go—
The darkness swallowed her. Let me drown, she thought gently. Let me sleep.
But then she saw it.
A light flaring at the far end.
With the guttural instinct of those prone to surviving, she knew she needed to climb.
To grasp the light that now sparked into a flame.
Her body felt clumsy, awkward. She focused on the fire and its warmth.
She had known a fire like this, she remembered.
She had felt it coursing through her veins once, melded it into her bones, spun it into a spear.
And these people, they had seen it too. They had taught her of love, and family, and home.
Who even are you, alone?
“I am them,” Elena told the abyss. “I am nothing without them.”
And so from deep within, beneath her grief, her anger, her loneliness, Elena called her Agni.
It came roaring. Skating up her spine, zipping through her veins as Elena found herself looking up at the Goddess. It clicked then. The inexplicable pull since stepping onto this land, since wielding Agni itself. It came from here.
From Her.
“Do you see now?” the high sister said as the inferno spun around them. “You were always one of the three.”
How had she not seen it before?
Elena fell into the final form of the dance, the Goddess, and the inferno sighed as if it had been waiting all this time.
It enveloped her, gently. Colors burst and flared, brilliant and vivid and unlike anything she had ever seen, shades and hues she could not name.
She heard the flames clearly for the first time.
They told her about the fire thrumming through the temple, and the small, distant ones flaring through the capital.
They told her of hunger, and anger, and loss, but beauty too.
The Goddess’s inferno sang to her with a song as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. Was this what Samson heard when he commanded the Eternal Fire? A song of his own being? Elena swayed, overcome.
The high sister steadied her and gestured to the Goddess above.
“The Goddess, the Serpent, the Phoenix, their power is everywhere. It is the prana of the universe. The Triagni can bend it to their will. They can even take it.”
Elena touched her navel chakra, feeling, for the first time, its power. “What is the Triagni?”
“The three wielders of Agni. The three manifestations of the fire goddesses. You, the one they call Prophet, and the third. You are all connected. Created from the same ancient spark of the universe. The core spark spoiled when the Great Serpent betrayed Her sisters. She imprisoned the Phoenix and put our Goddess into a deep sleep. But there was a consequence. The Great Serpent was imprisoned in a cage of Her own making. You must break that cage for the third to rise and the Triagni to be complete.”
Elena turned to the priestess, and as she did so, her vision split.
It was as if she was looking at the priestess from two views: through her own eyes, and that of her Agni.
She saw the heat centers in her body, the warmth in her veins.
Her chakras and nadis were a glowing map. Elena wondered if she could pluck…
The high sister clapped her hands, and the inferno returned to the bowl, morphing back into white sand. Elena blinked as her vision centered. There were no scorch marks on the floor, no ash, no sign of an inferno. It was as if it had never existed.
“Not yet, little queen,” the priestess said firmly. “You have only just opened your chakras. Taking prana now will hurt your Agni, but give it time. You will learn.”
Her body felt raw and aching, as if she had run for several days and had only now come to a standstill. But even through the fog of her exhaustion, Elena desired the inferno and its luscious power. She wanted it back. “Tell me how.”
The Yamni withdrew a shard of obsidian. Frozen within the rock lay a feather as thin as her fingernail and no taller than her pinkie.
“We start with this. Give it to the one they call Prophet, and his Agni can be yours for the taking.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
The priestess smiled, though Elena could see a tinge of sorrow in it.
“The Phoenix gifted this feather to our Goddess. It was once a token of friendship, but it will be a weapon for you now. Give it to the Prophet, and you will open a connection between your Agnis. Then you can start to siphon his power.”
Elena thought of Samson standing in the rain with her blood on his boots, and she imagined her Agni overwhelming his, suffocating the flames one by one.
“Not siphon,” Elena said. “Devour.”
The high sister met her gaze then, but at the sound of footsteps, she hurriedly pulled away. A figure stood in the doorway, and the priestesses shrank back at her approach.
“Sura, you did not tell me that we had such an esteemed guest in our midst,” the Yumi said.
She was tall and limber, with a hooked nose and broad shoulders that made her seem like an eagle perched on a branch, ready to soar.
Her hair twisted into a three-layered braid that ended at her feet.
She gestured, and it was then that Elena saw the golden talons welded around her fingers. “How ever did you find her?”
Sura, the high sister, did not balk. Her expression remained serene, though her eyes narrowed, and her voice was devoid of its melody from before.
“She is our guest and shall not be harmed, Rhumia.”
“I did not plan on it,” Rhumia said dourly. “I have merely come to fetch her for the general. Come, little queen.”
“General—?” Elena began and stopped. “Was he the one who killed your queen?”
Rhumia studied her, and a small smile tugged at her lips. “No, little queen. I did. He merely provided the blade.”