Chapter 7
Elysia stumbled, her knees hitting crumbling white stone steps. She brushed the dust off her smarting kneecaps and stared at the ancient temple before her as the wind whipped furiously. Tucking her hands into her sides, she lowered her face against the stinging winter cold and began her ascent.
Up on a thick platform, the bone-white walls of the temple jutted against the dusky bloodred sky.
Domed and octagonal with dark windows, it was eerie how the temple loomed over the rest of the world.
Instinctively, she kept her steps silent and cautious.
Off-white dust drifted into the wind like smoke, but she refused to look out below as the steps grew steeper.
Though her chest and thighs were burning, she heaved herself over the hanging edge of the temple’s platform and stood.
The wind was even worse this high, her hair cutting against her skin.
She held it back with one hand and swept her gaze over the desolate sea of tombs that rolled out in waves as far as her eye could reach.
A fraught silence prickled against her skin. She studied the temple at her back. It was too quiet. The kind of quiet that made her fingers itch for her dagger. Aidan had said they were expecting her, but he wasn’t even allowed in this realm. Maybe he was wrong.
In the distance, a strange howl pierced the silence, and Elysia fought to temper her unease.
The beasts of Bellia were nothing like those of Kava.
Bitter winters and beautiful temperate summers gave way not only to bears and wolves, but to shifters and magical creatures she’d only glimpsed in Topp’s books.
The kind of creatures that a mere dagger would not even be worth raising against.
With the sounds of Bellian beasts at her back, the temple invited her closer.
She approached, snatching her hand back from the temple wall before it could touch what she now realized were actual bones pulverized into compacted form.
Little shards stuck out in odd places, ready to slice the unsuspecting person who was unfortunate enough to trail a hand over the walls.
Elysia pushed against the heavy black door until it slid silently on a well-oiled track.
The door clanged as it closed behind her, the sound echoing throughout the empty temple.
All at once, candles burst to life. Flames danced inside hanging lamps, and fat half-melted candles were strewn about the bone-dust-covered floors.
At the center-back of the temple was a throne.
Enormous and intimidating, it was a massive puzzle work of perfectly fitted skeletal remains.
She drank in the silent and still room. It was death made into art.
There were spiraling columns of spines, interlocking femurs from which lanterns hung, and more pulverized dust pounded into symbols on the black floor.
Every sculpture, every detail was death given form.
While most of the old Kavian beliefs had been lost, there were many who still held the old superstition that the spirit of a person lingered in the bones. If the old Kavian beliefs about bones were true, then the amount of power in the very structure and material of this temple was inconceivable.
Footsteps echoing, she walked closer to the skeletal throne, her gaze snagging on the golden coins clamped between teeth and pinched between creeping tarsals. Snug within the eye sockets were dark, glinting bloodstones that she imagined their master could peer through to see his earthen temple.
Unlikely, but in the flickering candlelight, the gemstone eyes seemed to follow her, pressing on the strange guilt she carried for ignoring Aidan’s wishes.
Given Crusher’s unexpected appearance, she wouldn’t be surprised to find out the hypervigilant pervert was still stalking her.
Glancing around, she scanned for a reaper or priestess lurking in the shadows but saw nothing except what one would expect inside a temple.
Burnt-out and still-flickering tealights, food offerings, and curios were scattered about the base of the throne.
Despite her non-religious upbringing, she knew each little candle signified a petition or prayer.
It was a foreign curiosity to her—praying to someone or anything with expectation for response.
Kavians still used the term undead gods, but to Bellians it remained true.
Kavians said it scoffingly. Bellians said it reverently.
It was difficult to extricate the jaded ideas she carried about the gods. In Bellia, the gods were the ones who placed each and every magical gift like a benevolent seed into mortal souls. In Kava, that connection was long gone, and they were left with not only soot-ridden skies, but bodies.
Bitterness twisted her mouth as she stared at the hopeful petitions around her feet. Undead or not, she wanted nothing to do with them. Aidan with his broken powers and useless deal. Not to mention every other god who must have watched as her people fell from their curse.
It was obvious that mortals and their small magics and lives did not matter to such beings.
Her attention turned to a bronze bell hanging from a rope of spines near the throne. Dangling from the clapper was a skeletal arm with its hand reaching out, waiting, and beckoning her to ring the bell.
The bastard could’ve warned her that she’d have to shake hands with death.
She supposed she already had.
Disgust curling her lips, she placed ice-cold fingers into the skeletal ones above her and pulled. The bell tolled and tolled until the temple hummed. Vibrations rose from beneath her feet. Movement stirred down below as if the temple had only been in slumber.
Gods, what had she done?
She backed away from the bell, her boot crunching on a teacup filled with frozen coffee. She staggered backward, unsteady, as she hastily made it to the door only to find it sealed and locked. Pulling to no avail on the handle, she swiveled, pulling out her dagger. Then the lights went out.
Without the flood of candles, it was utter blackness.
A womb of death, and her within it.
Elysia blinked wildly, bidding her eyes to adjust, and as they did, the shadowy outlines of people took shape. People who had formed a circle around her and the throne.
As one, they began to sing.
The haunting melody had never failed to draw a tear to her eye all those nights she had fallen from her bed to the Deathlands. Now, encircled by priestesses within death’s temple, the familiar voices enraptured her just the same as they had the very first time all those months ago.
She could see now that the priestesses’ robes were simple, dark, yet elegant. One part of their faces were painted like carved bones and the other half sensual and lush. They were beautiful, but haunting.
One of the priestesses floated forward, stopping within a breath’s reach of Elysia, and smeared white paste along her cheekbone, jaw, and lips.
A second priestess took her place, painting her left side with wine-stained lips and smoldering eyes.
Shocked, a natural sense of alarm grew within her as strangers invaded her space.
Still, she fought to hold still as they finished their work.
Together with efficient, nimble hands, they removed Elysia’s clothes. She shivered, her skin peppering with goosebumps as they placed a heavy robe over her and clipped bones into her hair.
The priestesses returned to their places and spoke in unison.
Not one, but two.
A mortal, a god.
One to revere and one to dread.
Fate’s true challenge.
And life’s last quest.
The sudden silence that followed was jarring.
The priestesses broke apart and with their movement, the door and windows slid open, allowing in the yellow light of the moon and sharp evening wind.
A murmur of excitement zipped through the women and people around her, but Elysia was still reeling over the realization she had been hearing them every time she fell asleep, only to wake in the Deathlands.
Their chant played back in her mind, her stomach plummeting with a sickening swoop.
She tried to slam down her walls, to push the words away. But the chant persisted in banging around inside her skull. The god of the dead never worked alone. She gripped her dagger tighter, refusing to consider the final line.
The sick feeling lurched from her stomach to her throat.
She shouldn’t be here. She was just a gossip-ridden, cursed woman who hid in libraries and pantries to steal people’s secrets. Anything involving a life’s last quest was not for her.
A bone-painted face popped up in front of Elysia, eyes and face aglow with excitement like this was all good news and they were at a party. Words flying fast, the woman tried and failed to hook a chummy arm through Elysia’s.
Undeterred, she chirped away. “You’ve finally come! We’ve been waiting so long for you to arrive. We even sang every night to guide you home.”
Elysia’s distress leapt to new levels. Mouth seemingly stuck shut, her gaze darted around to all the people paying rapt attention to their exchange and then to the door.
Another priestess, who walked like a warrior of death rather than death’s handmaiden, hushed the bubbly acolyte before speaking. “Let’s take our guest below. I think a little food and warmth might go a long way.”
Elysia’s shoulders dropped just a fraction. Food, warmth. Those did sound agreeable. Far more agreeable than whatever prophetic nonsense had seemingly already been set in motion without her consent or knowledge.
All the stories she’d studied before seeking out Aidan crept through her mind. How sometimes the mortals ended up wishing the gods had never noticed them at all.
Too late now.
There hadn’t been a single story about the god of the dead always taking a mortal within the Travels of the Undead text, but then again she hadn’t been able to find any other books to study given Kava’s shitty picked-over libraries.