Chapter 38 #2
The walls here had once been white. No longer. Webs of black-red hung over the ceiling, crawled up the walls. They wound around marble columns, and over the arches of five doorways, each bearing shimmering grey mist within.
Septimus turned to the far end of the room.
“This was a temple once,” he said. “The ancestors of the Bloodborn, before Obitraes became Nyaxia’s territory, had believed that the holiest places were below ground.”
I turned, slowly, to follow his gaze.
A gasp caught in my throat.
A beautiful mosaic stretched from floor to ceiling on the far end of the room—countless colors, all creating a silver arch stretching up the wall, in a way that reminded me of the great stained-glass windows in temples of the White Pantheon gods.
But I could not tell what it depicted, because a person—or what had once been one—was up against it, at the center of all those ropes of blood.
A man. His face was distorted, as Erekkus’s had been—gaunt and angular in an exaggerated fashion, his ears pointed, his teeth too long.
And yet, his resemblance to Septimus was so strong.
He had white hair that fell past his shoulders, then wove into the web of red.
The scant remnants of what had once been perhaps Bloodborn finery—a white and red jacket embroidered with silver—hung from his emaciated form, barely visible under all the blood, ripped and threadbare.
But the crown on his head was still gleaming.
Bright gold, as if someone had taken the time to polish it every night.
I did not need to be told who this was.
“Best to stay back,” Septimus said. “He’s nothing but instinct now, and you’re human. God-touched, besides.”
The Bloodborn king stirred against the wall, his slitted nostrils twitching. The web shivered, delicate threads of red peeling from the web and reaching for me. It reminded me of the way Septimus’s eyes looked when the rings of red appeared, every thread crawling to the center.
“Easy, Father,” Septimus murmured. “We’ll be going soon. And she is here to help.”
He laid his hand across his chest and dropped into a kneel.
“Watch over them,” he said softly. “And soon you can rest, my king. Soon.”
Then he stood. The threads of black-red reached for him, too slowly, as he strode away.
“This is another insult of the curse,” Septimus said.
“The more it takes from you, the more powerful you get. Most Bloodborn are put to death when their curse takes the most of their faculties. But my father chose to be put down here. My mother, on the other end of the castle. As long as they must live this way, they provide protection and power.”
He looked to the doors. These, I could tell just by looking at them, were more advanced than the other common aethergates I had seen, even if I couldn’t quite identify what made them so. The frames were more ornate, the mist within them shimmering with a faint rainbow glow.
“What are these?” I said.
“Look closer,” Septimus said. I squinted into the mists.
In one of them, I could make out the outline of silver domes and rolling dunes of sand.
In the next, the knifelike peaks of the House of Shadow.
Another, the blocky stone fortress of the Salt Keep.
And finally, a temple forever seared into my memory. Hegaella.
All places Septimus had gone in pursuit of this mission.
“I’ve needed aethergates to important, inconvenient locations. It took a lot of work from the seers to build them.” He nodded to the fourth gate. “That one’s ours.”
And then he raised his hands, and ropes of black-red burst through the bandages. The bloody web above contracted violently, sending a fresh dripdripdripdrip patter over the floor.
Red flooded the carvings that adorned the frame of the first door, then the second, then the third. Crimson mist pumped up from the floor, consuming the rainbow mist within. Septimus’s jaw was tight, his hands trembling, sweat beading at his temple.
I didn’t know what he was doing, but one look at him, at the red and black on his hands, told me it was taking him great effort—perhaps more than he had to spare—to do it.
“What are you doing?”
I had to raise my voice as another explosion rocked the castle.
“They won’t breach the walls,” he said through gritted teeth, without looking at me. “But if they do, they cannot find these gates. No one can.”
Septimus’s father let out a feral hiss. The webs on the wall swayed and groaned.
One door crashed to the floor, and then another, and another.
“Go!” Septimus said, jerking his chin to the final door.
I stood at that last wall of mist. Within it, the faintest silhouette was visible of the temple where my god had died. Where my god had failed me, and I had failed her.
The last gate split with a deafening crack. Fissures spiderwebbed through the frame of the one before us. And then Septimus was beside me, shoulder against mine. He shot me a wry glance.
“Ready to fly?” he murmured.
A humorless smile twisted my mouth at the echo.
“At least I have a working sword arm this time,” I said.
He smirked. “For now.”
But as flippant as we sounded, my fingers wove through his, and we squeezed each other’s hands so hard they trembled.
And then, together, we fell.