Chapter 28 ELLA
We started a quiet routine. Zaph and I would go off to work in the morning and meet back up together in the evening, like an old married couple. Only that there was no morning and evening here. Like I said, time is a funny concept.
It would have been normal—in the way that living among gods and alien worlds can be called normal—had it not been for the fact that Zaph was going off to fight Mmuhr’Rhong while I went to the Hall of Knowledge to meet Selkaris.
I tried to keep my mind blank when I thought about him during the day, tried not to think about the dangers he was in, the battles he was fighting—I had been dropped into one of his battles once, ripped through a window of light and straight into hell.
The screams, the smoke, the monsters—those memories still haunted me in my sleep.
The Hall of Knowledge was as impressive as its name implied.
Light—from unseen sources—pooled in long ribbons across the tiered desks and suspended walkways, painting the air with pale gold.
I stepped from the breakfast room, where Zaph and I had just given each other our kiss goodbye, right into the hall.
I was getting better at this… whatever it was, teleportation?
And there he was. Like always: Selkaris, already bent over a cluster of tablets and memory-cores, hair unbound, eyes bright with the kind of focus that forgets sleep exists.
“Did you rest at all?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
His mouth tipped, not quite a smile. “Later,” he said, which in Selkaris-speak meant not likely, and slid a stack of interface slates toward me.
As usual, I had put in the translator contacts right after finishing my morning routine.
They were like what we wore on Earth to see, but more high-tech.
On Earth, they would have been a miracle.
Through them, I could read any text my eyes fell on.
The novelty of it hadn't quite worn off yet, but imagining what I could have done with them back on Earth had.
With every passing day, I was becoming more accustomed to my new home.
Used to living and working among gods, sleeping with one—here I couldn't help the smile, because the sex… it was out of this world, literally.
Selkaris and I fell into our rhythm: he moved through the digital data, while I prowled the physical stacks and artifact cases.
The translator contacts and the chip in my brain were barely a thought now as I turned glyphs into meaning, teasing stories out of metals and stone. If my professors could see me now…
I wasn't even sure what I was looking for. Any mention of the Harrowed One, I supposed, or Mmuhr’Rhong.
I was distracted when I tripped over a forgotten palmtop on the ground.
To catch my balance, I reached out, and my hands swiped against an urn.
Even while I was trying to keep on my feet, I could already see the urn falling in my mind, and the archeologist inside me screamed, No!
It was such a pretty thing, a mix between clay and glass, with intricate designs I had admired before.
My cartwheeling hands managed to snag it just as it teetered on the shelf, but then we both went down.
I cradled it against my chest and hit my head on the stone floor. "Ouch!"
From my peripheral vision, I watched Selkaris get up in alarm.
The impact made me roll, and the urn became squished between the ground and me.
I heard the telltale sound of a crack and pop and groaned when I realized all my acrobatics, the swelling I would surely get on my head, and the bruise on my back were all for nothing.
Selkaris helped me to my feet, "Are you alright? That was a nasty fall."
"I'm okay," I managed, fighting the urge to touch my head, because I was still holding the damn urn.
I checked it for damage and noticed that the lid that had previously been sealed shut had come loose.
If that was all the damage it took, the bruises would be worthwhile.
I tried the lid, popped it open, and out came a palm-sized rock.
It was iridescent black with veins like frozen lightning.
Pretty, I thought, and picked it up, thinking it was just an ordinary rock. I should have known better.
The stone warmed.
Letters—no, not letters—impressions surfaced under my fingertips, and the air around me thickened.
Fog rose out of the rock like breath in winter, coiling into a slender column that hovered at eye level.
Selkaris straightened, the light from his console washing off his face as the fog turned from gray to starless black shot through with embers.
A voice followed the smoke or, possibly, swirled within it; it was hard to tell. It was deep and old. Not spoken so much as remembered.
“When the first worlds fell, their fire had no river. All that lived bled into the wound. The wound learned to hunger.”
My skin prickled. The fog swirled, forming the rough impression of a map, rings curling inward toward a dark heart. Holding my breath, I realized it was a replica of the Dark Abyss.
“Centuries upon centuries, light without source pooled in Nox Eternum, filled it with knowledge, energy, and tragedy. But what devours, learns. What gathers, awakens. Deep in the hollows between dying worlds and stars, a will took shape. We named it Nhal’Vareth.”
Selkaris’ head snapped toward me. His lips shaped the word silently—Nhal’Vareth—like it might bite.
The voice went on, uncaring about its audience or their feelings.
“Not mind. Not soul. But will. It drank heat, and then thought, and then breathed. Those who drifted close felt the pull to look, to know, to enter. Then came the first Arkhevari, to stare into the wound that calls.”
The fog flexed. For a heartbeat, it suggested figures haloed in light, standing on the edge of an endless black sea.
"Then another and another. They all succumbed to its lure, to its promise of endless knowledge. All but one.”
A figure broke away from the others, smaller against the dark, hand linked to a second shape wreathed in soft glow.
“He turned and, with his Aelyth, fled the call. Their names were written once and then erased: Caelor and Ashera. They vanished into the living veil. Never to be heard from or seen again.”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. This had to be a coincidence, right? It just had to. A shudder moved through me, shaking my body as if I had a fever chill. Selkaris looked at me, concerned, "Ella?"
Ashera. The name echoed inside my head. Bounced from one end of my brain to the other, back and forth, like a ball in a tennis match. No, racquetball, because this wasn't just a ball moving back and forth; this ball was brutally hitting every which way.
"Ella?" Selkaris called out again.
And then out of nowhere, as if he had felt my discomfort, there was Zaph.
"What is it? Ella?" He pulled me into his arms and snarled at Selkaris, "What did you do to her?"
"Nothing. He did nothing," I managed to put a soothing hand on his arm and watched distractedly as the black in his aura retreated.
I even forced up a smile. "We found something.
" I stared at Selkaris. "That name. Ashera. She is mentioned in Earth’s history.
Well, someone with just about the same name is…
" I was aware I was rambling, but I couldn't stop.
"She was… a goddess, a very old goddess, a mother goddess.
The wife of El…" I broke off. El. Caelor.
Was it possible that our ancestors had shortened his name?
I barely noticed that the rock shivered, and the fog pulled back into the stone with a soft hiss, as if the rock had exhaled for the first time in ages. The hall’s normal sounds crept back in the low thrum of the archives, the faint chime of Selkaris’ console.
My mouth was dry. “On Earth, Asherah was erased,” I said, softer now, as if the hall might judge me for speaking a forbidden name.
“Scrubbed out of scriptures, turned into an idol instead of… instead of what she was, a goddess. But there are fragments, inscriptions that say Yahweh and his Asherah. And El—El is one of our oldest words for god.” I looked between them.
“What if Caelor became El? What if Ashera… is Asherah?”
Selkaris didn’t breathe for a count of heartbeats.
Then his eyes lit in a way I hadn’t seen before, memory kindling into wonder.
“Names erode,” he murmured, almost to himself.
“Stones keep their bones; tongues keep their breath. Caelor to El. Ashera to Asherah.” His gaze found mine.
“Your world remembered them, even as it forgot.”
Zaph’s hold gentled, the growl in his chest unwinding. He brushed a knuckle along my cheek, the gold in his eyes chasing out the last ring of black. “If these are your first seeders,” he said, “then Earth is not an accident. It is a sanctuary.”
A thrill of fear and awe slid through me. “A sanctuary planted by runaways.” I swallowed. “By the ones who refused the Abyss.”
Selkaris moved with sudden purpose, palms sweeping across the console.
Glyphs rose and rearranged, a star-map peeling open like a flower.
“If they fled into the living veil, there will be residue,” he said.
“Bent routes. Quiet lanes. Places where memory thins.” He flicked me a quick, conspiratorial smile that made him look younger.
“You and I will chase their wake through archives and artifacts. We will test your Earth stories against our broken songs.”
Zaph’s thumb traced the pulse at my throat. “You will not do it alone,” he said to both of us. “While you hunt their path, I will prepare the others.”
A draft of cooler air kissed the back of my neck. I didn’t have to turn to know a shadow had lengthened at the far archway.
“Good,” came Dravok’s voice, low and amused in that unnerving way of his.
“Chase your saints through dust and lullabies.” His silhouette cut loose from the pillar.
“I will chase the ones who profit from forgetting. The Ohrur keep ledgers longer than their consciences. Somewhere in their accounts is the first sale that wasn’t a sale at all. ”
Zaph didn’t release me, but his chin lifted a fraction. “I thought you were hunting Nythor.”
“If he is still Nythor to hunt,” Dravok replied, and the corner of his mouth bent like a knife’s smile.
His attention skimmed me for a beat, assessing, approving, then gone.
“When your myths point to a door, little historian, send for me. I prefer to open such things from the inside.” And then, after a little pause, not looking at all like the self-assured Dravok I'd met so far, he continued, “Tell me something, little historian.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Human females.” His eyes gleamed faintly, the amber in them flickering like embers through fog. “Are they all as… defiant as you?”
Zaph stiffened beside me, a low rumble curling up from his chest. I felt it against my back before I heard it. “Careful,” he warned, each syllable lined with quiet threat.
Dravok’s smile sharpened, the kind that never reached his eyes. “Relax, Praetor. I’ve already found mine.” He tilted his head, shadows licking up his jaw. “She just hasn’t accepted it yet.”
Something in his tone—dark amusement layered over a hint of reverence—made my pulse trip.
“She’s human?” I asked before I could stop myself.
A low chuckle slid through the hall, rough and amused.
“Oh, she’s something.” He brushed invisible dust from his coat, every movement calculated indifference.
“Stubborn. Infuriating. Soft in ways that make you forget the war outside your ribs. You’ll like her, little historian, if she doesn’t stab me first.”
Selkaris hid a smile behind his hand.
Dravok’s gaze drifted to me once more, softer now. “Your kind has teeth. I like that.” Then to Zaph, “Keep her close, brother. The dark eats more than it swallows these days.”
Before either of us could answer, his shadow peeled away from the wall, spreading like wings, and he was gone, leaving the scent of ozone and a thousand unasked questions behind.
I exhaled slowly. “Was that… normal?”
Zaph’s hand slid down my arm, grounding me. “For Dravok?” He paused. “That was almost polite.”
"Am I the only one who wonders how the hell he knew what we were talking about?" I asked out loud, not wanting to think about the unsuspecting human woman Dravok had set his eyes on.
"Dravok is… Dravok," Zaph explained without clarification, letting out a long, deep sigh.
Silence pressed for a moment, full and electric. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and looked down at the stone in my palm. It was cool again, ordinary, except my fingers still tingled where the fog had breathed through me.
“Ashera,” I said, trying the name once more, not as a scholar but as a daughter. It felt right. Heavy and bright. “If you planted Earth, we’ll find your trail.”
Selkaris inclined his head, formal and fond all at once. “Then let us begin, Ella of Earth. We will lay your myths beside our memories and see where the lines agree.”
Zaph’s hand covered mine around the stone, warm and steady.
“And when the lines converge,” he murmured, “we follow them home, or perhaps into the mouth that wants to swallow them.” He bent, brushed a kiss against my temple, and the gold in my skin answered his like a promise. “Either way, we go together.”