Chapter 4
As it turns out, our new surroundings are even more desolate than I anticipated, those red dunes spreading out for leagues in every direction, the midnight sky pressing ominously down from above. The only things that break the monotony are the equus skeletons and the mountains jutting in the distance. Those mountains are not like any I’ve ever seen before. They’re made of black stone, and each one curves so drastically, it resembles a crescent moon rising out of the sand. Wing flaps sound near them, the frantic flitter of thousands of tiny creatures moving in concert. I haven’t yet seen any sign of them, but I know they’re somewhere nearby and they must be at least partly responsible for some of the skeletons we’ve seen protruding from the dunes.
While most of the skeletons are halfway eaten, bones and all, many more remain whole except for missing strips of flesh.
It’s those skeletons that worry me when I hear the wing flaps.
Whatever those flying creatures are, it’s only a matter of time before they make their way to us. We have to find a path out before that happens, only I have no idea where to look.
How precisely do we get out of this place?
As I survey our surroundings, tense, Britta does the same, her eyes squinted against the brightness of the stars. “There has to be an escape route,” she mutters. “I mean, who would create a trap without one?”
“Literally everyone,” Li replies dryly. “That is the meaning of the word trap.”
“Speaking of which,” Belcalis interjects, glancing at me, “any idea yet which group of gods is responsible for this abomination of a place?”
I shake my head. “Not the faintest.”
I used to be able to distinguish which god made which creations, but that was before my body started breaking down, before any use of power led to such excruciating pain, I’d scream just thinking about it.
Britta’s gaze wanders back to the sands. “There has to be a way out. There has to be.”
“I’m with you there, heart of my hearts,” Li agrees, using one of his annoying endearments for Britta. “I refuse to lose hope. We’ll find our way out; we have to.” On cue, he squeezes her shoulder reassuringly.
When she leans into it, smiling up at him, envy twinges through me. Keita and I used to be like that, always touching.
I force away the depressing thought. “I agree with you two as well,” I say. “There has to be a way out. There’s always a weak spot somewhere. We just have to find it.”
“And fast.” Keita’s voice is low as he rides beside me, so I glance at him, immediately alert.
“What is it?”
“The light is fading,” Lamin answers from the other side of me, his silhouette dark against the rapidly deepening twilight. “Has been ever since we got here.”
Alarm trickles down my spine. It’s been so bright here all this while, I forgot that it was the middle of the night. “But the stars—”
“Are growing dimmer. And there are more dark spots.” Keita points upward. “Look.”
I follow his finger, my alarm growing when I see he’s right. The edge of the sky is dark, as before, but now there’s also a tiny, almost imperceptible black spot in the middle, as if a shadow has swallowed all the stars. Those flapping sounds are concentrated at that spot. As is that thrumming. It vibrates through me—a warning.
“What happens when it gets fully dark?” I ask.
Lamin points at the next dune over, where large trails ripple across the red sand, equus skeletons in its wake. “I assume that’s when whatever made those tracks emerges.”
“That’s what I thought.” I urge Ixa on, rushing him toward the top of the dune, where Li waits. But as we approach, Li suddenly stops, his entire body stiffening.
“Uhh, everyone?” he calls. “Over there.”
“Wha now?” Britta sounds irritated as she urges her gryph onward, but then she stops too, eyes focused on where Li’s pointing.
The moment I catch up to them, I do the same.
A short distance from us is what looks like a plain, except it’s made of the same glossy black material as the mountains. An obsidian floor almost, but one that covers leagues and leagues of sand. What’s shocking, though, is the group of girls kneeling in the middle of it, robed and hooded priests at their side, all of them carrying daggers. Each of the girls is wearing a gold mask, the kind only the wives of village elders wear, except, judging from their awkwardness and the baby fat swathing their bodies, none of these girls is even old enough for the Ritual of Purity. None of these girls is even old enough to leave the children’s corner of the temples.
“Those would be the sacrifices we’ve been expecting,” Li says grimly, immediately recognizing the scene below, as we all do, from having seen it hundreds of times before.
Swords are unsheathed and war hammers hefted, my friends already preparing to do battle with the priests down on that obsidian floor. One thing we’ve always agreed upon is that we save any innocents along the way. Except when I peer closer, I notice what the priests are doing.
I hold up my hand. “Wait, something’s strange.”
I point to where the priests seem to be handing the girls the daggers and whispering encouraging last words to them before they themselves hurry, footsteps fumbling through the darkness, toward the series of black columns that stand, silent guardians, at the very edge of the black stone floor.
The priests are all human, I can tell that immediately. If any of them were jatu, their vision would be as sharp as ours in this low light, but every one of them stumbles about as if blind, their clumsiness exacerbated by the fact that they don’t have any torches.
They don’t want to disturb the creatures hiding in the sands either, that much is apparent.
The moment they reach the columns, they begin blindly pressing the black stones, as if searching for a specific spot. It’s almost amusing, watching them, except they’re clearly villains: they left those girls out on that obsidian floor to die.
Britta squints. “Wha are they doin’? Why are they touchin’ those things?”
My own eyes widen as I realize: “That’s how they’re getting out!” I hiss. “They’re using those columns!”
Now Britta grins. “I knew there had to be an exit!”
As we both watch, rapt, one of the priests reaches the last column and presses something there. The moment he does so, his hand disappears, then his whole shoulder. My breath hitches. It truly is the exit.
I commit the exact location to memory as the priest then gestures to the others, who all follow him as he steps through the rift in the column, as silent as the tomb.
My group remains quiet as well—just as we have this entire time, but our efforts, as it turns out, have been in vain. I look back toward those strange mountains, where that thrumming sound is getting louder with every moment that passes. The creatures know we’re here, likely felt our footsteps the moment we landed in this place. Their bodies are already uncoiling in the distance, readying themselves to hunt whatever unlucky prey has stumbled their way.
We have to hurry now.
I return my attention to the others. “I saw where they pressed the column,” I say. “We take the girls, make our way out through there before those things come out of the mountains.”
“Let’s hurry, then.” Britta grasps her war hammer as we all ride across the sand.
We’ve just finally crested the next dune over when the sky just to our right suddenly goes black. Terrified gasps rise from the obsidian floor, the girls swiftly huddling together, their eyes looking in the same direction that ours are. It’s as if all the stars there were candles and someone just snuffed them out. The gryphs begin growling low in their throats.
I turn to my friends. “Hurry!” I urge.
Then we hear the cracking sound.
It’s coming from the darkness, where one of those curved black mountains is shuddering. As I watch, unnerved, another crack sounds, this one even louder than the first. Then another sounds, and another, all in swift succession until—boom! A column of eerie blue light explodes into the air from the peak of the black mountain, releasing four towering black reptilian shapes, which fly in the direction of the obsidian floor and the girls waiting there in terror.
When an eerie scream splits the air, that horrible thrumming underneath it, I glance down at Ixa. Go! I command.
And Ixa begins running, headed straight for the girls.
As he moves, a familiar feeling slithers over me, oily yet suffocating. “The Idugu,” I whisper, hoarse. If I wasn’t certain before, I am now. I turn to the others. “Whatever those things are, they’re connected to the Idugu.”
“Which is why the mist snatched all of us boys first.” Keita curses under his breath as he urges his gryph on.
The male gods have been dead set on vengeance since we escaped their temple three months ago, and Keita is the primary target of their wrath. After all, he’s the one who burned their temple to dust.
“HURRY!” I shout, abandoning all pretense of quiet. “Get the girls through the columns.”
Half have risen and are swiftly removing their masks, horror on their faces. But they’re not what worries me. It’s the other girls. They remain kneeling, lips moving in fervent prayer. One of them, in particular, a lanky adolescent with the same dusky skin and midnight-black hair as the others, seems to be intent on keeping her companions in place—even the ones who want to leave.
I sigh. There are always girls like that, girls who believe so desperately that they’ll get the lives they’ve been promised if only they sacrifice everything that they are.
That’s how those who have power retain it: by promising they’ll share some of that power if a chosen few obey whatever commands they have been given.
I spur Ixa on. “We have to get them away from here!”
“Deka.” This call comes from Lamin, whose eyes are busy surveying the area as he keeps pace with me. “We might not have time to rescue all of them—”
I cut him off by pointing. “Whatever those flying things are, they’re proxies for the Idugu. And those girls are designated sacrifices. So if any of them die before we reach the gate—”
“The Idugu will be able to manifest here.” Lamin nods his understanding, urging his gryph faster now.
I glance back at the beasts, trying to gauge how much time we have. They still haven’t left the vicinity of that mountain, that strange blue light illuminating their massive leathery wings as they fly in aggressive circles around it.
“Why aren’t they comin’ for the girls yet?” Britta’s puzzled question echoes my thoughts.
I squint at the creatures, trying to answer the question, until finally I spot the pattern. “The darkness—they’re not moving past it!”
“But those stars over there are already dimming,” Keita says, pointing to the area just next to the cracked-open mountain, where the stars flicker dully, as if holding on to the last of their power. It’s the same with the patch of stars just in front of them.
The moment they turn black, the creatures fly toward them.
“A path!” I gasp out my horror. “The dimming stars are a path.”
Even now, the creatures are winging closer and closer, slick black bodies gleaming in the darkness. That strange blue light pulses from what look like scales on their sides, as well as the single, gigantic circle that vibrates and thrums in the middle of their chests. Their hearts, no doubt. It’s the only weakness I can discern. They have no eyes to gouge out, no mouths that I can see. But they must have mouths somewhere. How else to explain all those half-eaten skeletons littering the sands?
I keep my eyes trained on the creatures, marking their progress, as Ixa makes his way to the obsidian floor, where the girls are still arguing among themselves.
That is, until we emerge from the darkness.
As they stop to gape at us, I hurry Ixa over. “We have to leave. Now,” I say brusquely.
But instead of rushing toward us in relief, the lanky girl I noticed earlier just looks up at me. Then she notices the boys riding beside me. She quickly lowers her gaze, her eyes fixed respectfully to the ground. I bristle with annoyance. One thing about Otera that hasn’t changed: women are always desperately subservient to men, even ones they don’t know.
No wonder so many of them are so easily taken advantage of. They’ve been primed their entire lives to not only tolerate abuse but to also expect it as their fate.
“Evening greetings, travelers,” she says, her trembling voice the only indication of her fear. “Who might you be?”
It’s ironic, actually. Even in a situation like this, she still retains her manners.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” I say, urging Ixa forward once more. “What matters is we have to leave before those things come.” I point at the creatures, which have now moved to the patch of darkness a few steps removed from the obsidian floor.
“What things?” another girl asks with a quiver. She appears to be the oldest—a plump, frightened little wisp of about thirteen or so.
Her large brown eyes worriedly search the distance, but it’s clear they see nothing. Being human, she can’t see the creatures from so far away, even though they’re approaching ever nearer, that awful sound echoing from their chests.
A few minutes more and they’ll reach the obsidian floor.
“Is it the wraiths?”
“Wraiths?” I echo, tension stringing my muscles tight as yet another patch of sky darkens, this one almost to the edge of the floor.
“Vale wraiths,” the plump girl says. “They’re the only things that live here in the shadow vales, but we haven’t seen any.”
“And yet you seem to be able to,” says the lanky girl, her eyes narrowing. A hateful, considering expression fills them as she stares at me. “You can see the wraiths, can point them out in the darkness.” She takes a step back. “And there’s gold dripping from your body…. You’re an alaki, one of those monsters.” Then she looks at Ixa. Her eyes widen. “The Nuru!” she shrieks.
The word slices through me, as sharp as any blade. Nuru. That is the name the Gilded Ones gave me. The name they told me meant “beloved daughter.” The entire time I was with them, they assured me I was their only full-blooded daughter, born when they cried tears of gold and vengeance.
But that was a lie. I was never their daughter; I was their slayer, a deity descended to this realm to end their wickedness. Except they captured me, lied to me, fed from my kelai, all the while using my power to amplify theirs. All the while pretending that they were the all-powerful gods when in fact they were leeches, sucking me dry. Pawn. That’s what Nuru actually means.
“You’re the Nuru,” the girl continues accusingly. “I recognize your foul mount, the blue drakos.”
Ixa sniffs, displeased by this characterization. Rude, rude girl.
When he bares his teeth at her, she takes an alarmed step back.
“I no longer answer to that insult,” I say, fixing her with a cold glare. “I am the Angoro, slayer of the gods—that is the title I have chosen for myself.”
“Angoro or Nuru, we will go nowhere with you.” The lanky girl’s jaw juts stubbornly, and she glares at the other girls. A stern reminder to them. “We are the chosen maidens of Gar Nasim. We will give our lives to the great god Oyomo to ensure that Otera is made whole again. We will heal what you broke, Deka of Irfut, and ascend to the Blissful Lands, where we will be reunited with our families in the beyond.”
She sounds so certain that she’ll go to the portion of the Afterlands reserved for only the most faithful, it’s like looking in a mirror at my old self. Once upon a time, I was like that: firmly sure of the infallibility of the gods.
“Oyomo is a lie,” I say, abandoning all attempts at civility. “He is the creation of a vengeful group of gods called the Idugu, who aim to bleed humanity dry. The only thing you’re doing by sacrificing yourself is giving those monsters your life so they can continue destroying Otera.”
“You’re the one who lies!” the girl spits. “You’re just trying to tempt us from our path!”
The plump girl slides nervous eyes toward her. “But what if she’s telling the truth, Palitz? You saw how frightened the priests were….”
“You’re too easily led, Nevra,” the dark-haired girl hisses. “These demons will say anything.”
“All right, we don’t have time for this!”
As Palitz sputters, Belcalis scoops her up and plops her onto a gryph. She turns to my other friends. “Get the girls. Preferably before we all get eaten.”
“Ye heard her!” Britta grabs two more girls as they run for Palitz, then holds them tight as they kick and scream against her before going for two more. “Careful now,” she tuts. “Don’t want me to accidentally crush ye.” She gives them a warning squeeze.
That’s enough to stop them from struggling any further, and just in time.
As my friends round up the protesting girls, the other girls hurriedly falling into line, a deep roar sounds, followed by darkness. The stars above us have died, snuffed out by an invisible hand. We all freeze where we are, glancing at each other.
And then the first vale wraith flies overhead.