Chapter Two #2
There was a meager congregation already assembled when we arrived.
The spirit of the mob contrasted notably from the one last night.
No one was chatting or laughing, no one was eager for the coming revelry, telling stories or calling to nearby friends.
Everyone simply stood about, stoic or crying, hugging their friends and families, saying their goodbyes.
Darius, to his credit, kept his chin high despite the gloomy atmosphere. I watched him in stunned silence, wondering where he’d found such strength.
I stared up at the archway carved into the stone of the twelfth side of the dodecagon.
Each were numbered and served a specific purpose.
Twelve was for the Culling, the very top of Sanctuary, the northernmost point.
It sat between eleven, which housed the Oathstone, and one, where the first Trial took place.
I’d witnessed the Oathtakings before but never a Culling. I’d never wished to see one.
I turned back to Darius, watching him as he glared at the ancient stone archway.
I should’ve said something but goodbye was too painful and anything else felt pointless.
So I remained silent and busied myself with peering around at the others waiting to be culled, trying to keep the tears at bay for just a little longer. For him.
There was a rabble of Deckers all huddled together. They were gawking at the archway, eyes wide and terrified and, I noticed, they were all young. Very young. Nineteen or twenty, perhaps one or two even eighteen.
I whirled around to the others.
Three more stood near one another but still distinctly apart, with their families.
Class separation, even here, indicated they were from the Third Ring as well.
All of them looked to be Darius’s age—my age.
Another was from the Second Ring, obvious because of her fine clothes made of a deep purple that wasn’t the cerulean, maroon, or emerald that the Major Houses favored.
She was easily eighteen but not a day older.
Past her, there were five from the First Ring.
They all stood tall, proud. But just as the rest, none of them were even twenty-one.
I turned back to Darius.
“How many people usually get culled?” I asked.
He turned to me with a shrug, as if glad to have something to talk about, something to fill this accursed silence.
“Not sure,” he answered. “I think I remember hearing once that it was only ever two or three a year. At most, four.”
“Look around,” I whispered.
He did, and I watched as his brows furrowed, then raised as he counted his fellow doomed.
“So many,” he hissed back. “And all so…young. Like me.”
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t get a chance to speak.
“From the Geist, all things are given, and to the Geist, all must be returned.”
In the quiet of the morose gathering, the man’s voice boomed and reverberated off of the stone walls.
People toward the back stepped aside to admit a small processional of three elders in long ornate robes.
The first man’s were red with the sigil of a colossal beast covered in fur with a short snout and claws; House Lynx.
Behind him, standing side by side, was a middle-aged man of dark skin in a green robe with the sigil of the long, slithering reptile of House Viper, and a woman with gray hair and a wrinkled smile in blue who bore the sigil of the feathered creature with wings and a beak from House Avus.
It was the elder in the crimson robes who’d spoken.
“My people,” he greeted once he’d reached the archway and turned to face us with a demoralizing smile, his hands raised. Darius scoffed and I couldn’t help but echo the sentiment. “We are gathered here today on this most joyous occasion—”
Darius glanced sideways to stare at me in disbelief. I merely shrugged.
“—to fulfill the wishes of the Geist, as we have for millennia. As in the Trials, we become one with the Geist, so in the Culling, we honorably go forth to serve them.”
“Who is this guy?” Darius murmured but gasps around us caught our attention.
An inky black hole appeared just below the number twelve in the archway.
It swirled and churned, growing bigger until it filled the entire arch.
I squinted into the mass, hoping to see a hint of what was beyond but, the more I stared into that unending darkness, the deeper it seemed to become.
The whispers increased both in volume and intensity, and some of the Deckers clung to their friends and family.
A man stepped forward. No, not a man—a boy.
He was maybe seventeen. Tall and robust, he walked with an air of superiority despite his young age.
His clothes were finer than anything I’d seen before, an intricate design of golden webs woven into a soft, red velvet.
He approached the trinity of priests and knelt before them, placing an elbow on his knee and lowering his head piously.
“I am Nicholas of House Lynx,” he spoke plainly, stoically. I frowned. Why would he bother to introduce himself just to disappear forever in a moment? “I pray to Blessed Harlowe for perpetual fortitude and an inquisitive mind. I am proud to serve the Geist.”
He rose again and, without looking back, walked straight into the swirling black mass.
A few of the Deckers gasped. I took an involuntary step back. Darius muttered a curse.
Nicholas was gone. As simple as that.
Shock still held my heart captive as another First Ringer came forward, this one a girl.
“I am Fari of House Lynx,” she announced.
Had she and Nicholas known each other? Had they grown up running through the halls of their ancestral estate, giggling across the table at family dinners, trading knowing glances and conspiratorial grins?
“I pray to Blessed Alosia for cunning and inner peace. I am proud to serve the Geist.”
Just as Nicholas had done, Fari followed her speech with walking straight into the gathering darkness and was no more.
Chaos broke out. As another First Ringer stepped forward automatically, behind me, one of the Deckers let out a wail of terror and bolted.
“Child—” the priestess with the blue robes shouted but she was too late.
From the top of the swirling black mass, between the one and the two of the twelve, a dark tendril curled slowly outward. It stretched maliciously into the air in front of us.
We all stood perfectly still, gaping in horror at that seeking smoke.
Behind us, an acolyte in a brilliant white robe stepped forward and grabbed the fleeing Decker by the shoulders.
He spun the boy around to face the oncoming darkness.
The Decker didn’t even have time to scream.
The coil of darkness touched him and he simply disintegrated.
A few others shrieked as the tendril disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a smoking pile of white dust that looked suspiciously like bone.
Darius met my gaze, blinking rapidly.
That settled it. He’d been right. There was no getting out of the Culling.
My hands began to shake.
As the panic faded into resigned fear, the First Ringers continued to step forward, say their names, their useless prayers, and step into that swirling black mass while the rest watched on in horrified silence.
When the last of them were gone, the priests peered out at the rest of us, expectantly.
It was a few moments before someone moved.
Unsurprisingly, it was the girl from the Second Ring.
She said no words. She didn’t introduce herself.
She didn’t speak to the priests. She just closed her eyes and walked straight into the swirling blackness.
The Third Ringers glanced at one another nervously. One of them would be expected to go next.
The Deckers were jumpy, terrified. One girl, very small and perhaps the youngest of them all, took a shaky step away from the archway as if to flee, but Darius’s hand shot out and gripped her forearm tightly.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice a low warning.
Darius turned back to the archway, releasing his hold on the girl once her feet settled. Then, he looked at me and offered one singular nod, jaw tight and sorrow clear in his sapphire eyes. I reached for him and he reached back, our fingertips brushing in this final farewell.
My heart sank when he pulled his hand away.
Darius approached the priests. They smiled expectantly at him, holding out their arms in a tender greeting far kinder than anything their ilk had bestowed upon us before.
But Darius stopped a foot away from them and spat on the ground at their feet, then turned—and stepped into that swallowing darkness.
I stopped breathing.
I couldn’t look away from the archway. He’d been there, my best friend, an instant ago.
He’d been here, alive and well, speaking to me, looking at me, reaching out to me.
He’d been at our apartment this morning, had attended the party last night.
He’d been smiling and laughing, shooting me looks from across the room and meeting us after for drinks and telling the same stories we’d all heard a hundred times. Stories I would never hear again.
I didn’t hear the name of the next Third Ringer who stepped forward and shakily announced themselves before disappearing forever.
A loud wailing behind me turned into a muted buzz, and I hardly registered the disgusted looks the priests hurled toward the Lower Ringers at their display of grief.
I just stood there, staring into the void, and waited for Darius to come back, to walk back through laughing as he always did.
I waited for him to return, to tell me it had all been an elaborate joke, like always.
I waited until every one of the Culled had stepped out of our world and into the next, waited until their families pulled each other away, sobbing and screaming, waited until the priests clapped each other on the back at a job well done and dispersed as well.
But he didn’t come back.
And some part of me shattered.