Chapter 3 #3
The relentless vividity of Infinita Mori was no less unnerving as the days passed.
Every leaf and bloom pulsed in the tempo of a heartbeat.
Their colors bled their fleshy bodies onto the earth and snaked into the cracks of the roads.
The ground didn’t just crunch beneath her boots; it reverberated, responding to each strike like a new offense.
A world after death had never belonged to the belief system she had been raised on.
The parables of the Guardians spoke of the afterlife as a return to the source of all things, a surrender of an individuality that was never more than transitory.
But the Infinitum housed the dead of all beliefs and all lands and worlds, and most who’d shared their stories with her had come not from the dark, suffocating spires and hills of Rivenholde, or the Reaches of the White Kingdom, but other worlds too, places she’d only known from fables.
But though their lives may have varied, their journeys into death had been quite consistent.
Everything they’d believed had been turned inside out upon arrival, upon crossing the Desidero in the pitiful canoe that wouldn’t hold its own on the stillest lake in the living world.
She’d met a former grand minister of the Reliquary who, a century into his sentence in the Infinitum, still couldn’t reconcile the truths he’d been fed and had taught others with the heavy eternity greeting him upon death.
She moved to the small clay stove and removed the water boiling in the rusting cauldron, carefully wrapped the handle in her skirt, and poured the steaming liquid over the scraped petals.
The scent was pungently floral, the taste bitter and almost rancid, but there was an undeniable comfort to it, a tentative normalcy, and after weeks of hiding and shaking and running, she embraced the importance of routine.
Each evening was a fresh nightmare. The tortured dead stalked the world.
They deviled those who still had their souls.
One had fastened to her steps since her arrival.
It had taken a week of sleepless nights before she’d had the courage to ask someone about the shrieking demons.
They were often called fiends, half-souled and fractured, but their real name was simulcra.
Some had been careless with their sacred flame and had let it be stolen.
Others had succumbed to the temptations of Infinita Nemus, the cursed forest her prickly custodian had warned her about.
The only way to restore a simulcra’s soul was for it to steal one or trick another into handing over their sacred flame.
Some, like her fiend, apparently stalked the same target for years until they wore them down.
Elloven wasn’t afraid of it though, only sad.
Regret and loneliness shared her table, and there wasn’t room for more.
The simulcra drew power from the darkness. Some were bipedal, others hunkered like beasts. No one she had spoken to could explain them fully. Most of what she’d learned seemed speculative.
In the beginning, she’d preferred the packed safety of the cloisters, despite how crowds had always fed her anxious nature.
Neither the simulcra nor the dictatorial vigils, who enforced the laws of the netherworld, spared much effort on the larger communities beyond harassing them.
Dividing and trapping people was more effective.
But it was there she’d learned a little about the layout and politics of the Infinitum.
As she watched emotional family reunions, it was also where she’d decided to find her brother, and maybe her father.
She had eternity to do it, but she prayed it wouldn’t take that long.
But Elloven couldn’t weather the fights, the orgies and dance parties, the noisy conversations at all hours, or the confused cries of poor children taken far too early from their world.
Solitude might make her more of a target in the Infinitum, but she had designed her mental structures around the acceptance she’d never be connected to anyone but herself.
That’s not true. There was one other, even if those days are only a dream now.
“Well, dreams aren’t real,” Elloven said to herself as she drew a sip of her tea, wincing ahead of the bitter sting.
Sometimes she entertained the notion Jesstin hadn’t meant all the cruel things he’d said, but then she remembered how much he’d kept from her.
He was a necromancer, and according to Sesto, he could speak with the dead whenever he felt like it.
His nonanswer when she’d asked if he had spoken with Gennady was telling.
But she’d been in Infinita Mori for weeks, and he hadn’t even tried to speak to her. She didn’t need Sesto or anyone else to explain the meaning of that.
Though routine had helped keep her grounded, it hadn’t gotten any easier while realizing she was no longer a part of that world.
It wasn’t like the other trials of her life, when there’d always been a shred of hope.
There was no coming back from death. Whatever had happened and why, they’d been targeting her.
She’d gone over that night so many times.
Everyone she’d met in Rivenholde had cause both to need her and to betray her.
That it could be any of her relatives stung worse than the blade going in.
Her fiend shrieked outside. The sound tore the sky—at least, that was what Elloven imagined—his face distorting as he released his wrath.
She counted the seconds between the last one and his next one.
Twenty-seven. The one before had been two hundred and eighty.
He—it, she reminded herself, though she felt strongly it had been a he at one time—adhered to no pattern in his terrorism, and she was more bothered by his inconsistent effort than the intimidation itself.
Sometimes, she’d voice these thoughts aloud, and to make herself feel less unreasonable about holding conversations with herself, she’d pretend it was Jesstin she was talking to.
Don’t do this. Don’t go. I didn’t mean... I didn’t mean...
Elloven gripped the steaming mug in her hands so tight, her fingers blanched. Oh, he’d meant it, every word. His guilt in those final, dire moments had compelled him toward a regret he would not otherwise have felt.
Twenty seconds later, her fiend screamed again. Only five seconds passed before the next.
Another long night then.
Elloven went to the corner, where she’d hung the satchel an old man had given her in her first week.
He made them by hand and sold them, but she had no currency with which to purchase anything, and so he’d taken pity on her and given it to her in exchange for a day’s labor.
It was honest work, helping tan the hides he used to stitch the bags, and made her feel alive and useful, two pleasant surprises.
She’d offered to stay and help longer, but his family returned the next day from an excursion across the valley to acquire new tools, which meant he no longer needed her labor.
He, his wife, and his six children had all perished together in a fire.
It was unspeakably sad, but observing their joy and cohesion, even if in death, was a lesson that home could be anywhere.
She withdrew the velvety frond from the inside pocket of the satchel and unrolled it.
Two vials were left of the seven she’d purchased after working four days for a trinket vendor in the Canterwhirle District.
One was still full, but the other was nearly spent.
Many in Infinita Mori used the serum; there’d be no rest without it, not with the demons nettling them from twilight to dawn.
She’d rationed hers as best as she could, saving them for the nights her fiend was particularly animated, but she’d need to find work again soon to afford more.
This was to be her “life” for eternity. Skulking about in the daylight hours in search of work and a few kind words, describing Gennady to anyone who would listen, hunkering in solitude when darkness fell, and praying for nights she could skip the sleep tonic she was growing dependent on.
A gentle knock sounded on the havre door, sending Elloven’s heart into her throat. It creaked but didn’t open. It wouldn’t. The sigils kept the devils out. The monsters could scream and howl and shake the earth, but they could do no harm to anyone safely ensconced in sanctuary when twilight fell.
But her fiend had never knocked.
It came again but with a pattern, a pattern that had been branded into her heart and sealed with hatred.
One firm. Four swift. Two slow. Six in rapid succession.
No, no, no. No, this fiend, this trick of shadows, could not possibly know this.
It had only ever been used by one person, and that person was gone, he was d—
Elloven gasped.
Her scattered gaze traveled to the two vials in her hand, one nearly empty.
It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be. There had to be millions of souls in the Infinitum.
One woman, a museum curator in her actual life, had said she’d been there two hundred and sixty years and hadn’t crossed paths with a single familiar face.
Some were more fortunate, but it would be easier to swim through the sea in search of a specific fish.
Elloven had never been much for luck, but the odds of her wicked husband finding her so fast were impossible to calculate.
The sinister pattern returned. She could swear she heard the fiend laughing.
It’s not Fabrien. The dead know more than the living, and they can use it as a weapon. That’s all. There’s logic in that, which I can believe.
But she’d let her imagination run, and the cursed fiend had the stamina of a bear emerging from hibernation, ready to forage.
Before her fiend could finish the next sequence, Elloven’s shaking hand emptied the vial down her throat.