Nariah’s stomach dropped when Lily, the panda, jumped into the sky. Her eyes watered in the wind. Burying her face in Life’s back offered her a slight reprieve, but the wind still blew loudly in her ears. Her cowl flew back, whipping around her face along with tangled strands of her sand-matted hair.
Was she dreaming?
Was she even alive?
But the soft fur cushioning her legs felt real, as did the panda’s constant deep breaths. Life tapped Nariah on the hand, then motioned to the sky. When she turned her face up, stars twinkled all around her. How could they even be so high up?
Sand gave way to mountain ranges far wider than her isolated kingdom’s peak. Beyond them, stony gorges cut valleys into a bleak, charred landscape. An ocean passed beyond that, the perfectly clear blue crystalline waves frothing in temporary pillows of white.
If the desert was awe-inspiring, the ocean was breathtaking. Even from this height, Nariah could smell salt rising on the wind, and her arm reached for the water far below, wishing to touch its glassy surface, if only for a second.
They were flying fast, and a temple made entirely of stones loomed ahead of them on the horizon. It they didn’t slow, they would surely crash into the oceanside cliff-face entrance. Wind gave way to stillness as Lily suddenly slowed. For a moment, they hovered above the water, the only sound in their ears the crashing of waves against the cliffs.
Nariah’s heart skipped a beat. Not because of her proximity to the lord she’d clung to the entire flight, or even because she felt that she was living in a dream she feared to wake from at any moment.
It was the overwhelming surrealness of her place in a world so much vaster than she ever could have imagined. Her entire life had been confined to desert wastes and a single mountainside kingdom. In that moment, her place in a universe this expansive was as no more than a speck of the desert sands in the bigger picture.
Her heart fell. How could someone as small as her, a revolting, exiled failure, ever hope to stop a goddess capable of seeing the world like this?
Laughter rang out like tinkling chimes.
“Hold on,” Life said, squealing with glee as he snapped Lily’s reins.
Nariah barely had time to tighten her grip around the lord’s slim waist before the panda dove from the heavens. Her stomach lurched. A shriek died in her throat as she lost her breath. Blurred stones and ocean mist were all Nariah’s eyes could make out at the speed at which they plummeted. Every hair on her arms and neck stood on end, and she found herself rising from her seat.
Tighter than an iron vise, Life’s hand clamped down on her arm.
“Don’t get off yet,” he warned with a chuckle.
Scowling, she dug her fingers into his sides in response and drove her legs deeper into Lily’s fluffy sides. She wasn’t about to fall off a flying panda on her first trip out of the desert.
Icy tears trickled down her cheeks from her wind-stung eyes. Squeezing them shut, she grit her teeth against the roaring in her ears and braced for an inevitable impact with either water or stone. Rearing back on her hind legs, Lily roared as she broke her descent. Any second now, Nariah knew she would be dead.
Could someone die while literally clutching the lord of Life?
Total silence and utter blackness answered her darkest fear. Gone were the rolling waves and smell of salt. Gone was the lord of Life from Nariah’s arms, and Lily from beneath her. No matter how much Nariah blinked, there was not even a smidgeon of light. She felt as though she was standing upright, but her feet dangled as though suspended in the air.
“Death?” she whispered, sure that the lord she seemed to keep calling on the most would be itching to take her life now that she was alone.
“You keep tempting me,” Death’s unamused voice growled through the darkness, echoing in the nothingness. “One of these days you’ll think twice about asking me to take you.”
Ice ran up Nariah’s spine at the lethal warning in his words. He wasn’t wrong; she’d been literally asking for death for years. Why was it that he only listened to her now, though?
“My offer still stands,” she reminded him, even though her entire body trembled. “Even if I’m already dead.”
If this darkness, this nothingness, was all that existed in death, she wasn’t sure how long she could stand the void.
A flicker of light sprung to life, illuminating a cave filled with a bright purple smoke that held Nariah suspended in the center. The light, which Nariah now realized was emanating from a person, approached her slowly, with glowering red eyes.
Death, it seemed, could glow if he wanted to.
“Where are we?” she asked. “What happened to the others?”
“By others I assume you mean Rowan and his pet,” Death seethed.
Rowan… she’s heard Death call Life that before, at the campfire. The corners of her lips curled slightly. She’d never considered the lords having proper names, but of course they had to be called something more than the aspect of existence they controlled.
“This—” Death motioned to the cavern around them, “—is a Void.”
Nariah’s eyebrow twitched in response.
Really? He thought she’d be okay with him stating the obvious?
In less than a blink of her eye, Death’s hand grasped Nariah around the neck and ripped her forward in the smoke. Sparks literally flew from his eyes, singeing her skin wherever they fell. Both of her hands flew to his, her eyes bulging as she gasped for breath that would not come.
“Do not mock me, mortal. I will end you so painfully that you’ll wish the goddesses had burned you to the ground with the rest of that dunghill.”
Breath came rushing back to her as he let her fall, the smoke vanishing from all around her. Panting gasps brought swift relief to her burning lungs. Not waiting for her to rise, Death turned his back on her and walked into a dark tunnel, letting the light fade quickly as he went.
Scrambling upright, she staggered after him, barely able to keep up in the quickly thickening blackness. She had to say something, do something, to convince this lord to help her people. How could she change the mind of someone who thought so little of mortals? Especially ones who didn’t serve him?
“My people…” Nariah wheezed, her words finally freezing Death in his tracks. “My kingdom… is not a dunghill.”
“Really?” he asked, turning back to her and crossing his arms. “Or have you just been at the bottom of the heap so long that you’re numb to the filth around you?”
Bristling, Nariah rested her hands in the crook of her elbows and raised her head high. This man might be a lord, but he was acting no different than any other judgemental mortal she knew. Maybe her visions were wrong… at least where Death was concerned.
She shuddered at the implications behind a false vision. It wasn’t the first time she’d doubted one’s meaning, or its very existence. But certain visions were far more vital than others. Such as the one in which this lord helped save her people.
“If I was numb to the smell of filth,” she said, grinding her teeth but trying to force a smile, “I wouldn’t be able to smell you.”
She braced herself for Death’s outburst, but it never came. Instead, he started walking again. Nariah scrambled to catch up once again.
“I deny your deal,” he said as he walked toward a stone archway filled with a swirling blue light. “I couldn’t stand to be stuck with you for eternity.”
Without another word, Death stepped through the arch and vanished. His refusal stopped Nariah in her tracks. What more could Death want than her soul? What would she do?
Black runes stood out across each of the stones in a language so old that Nariah barely understood it. Squinting, she could just barely make out the phrase:
From darkness, to darkness, light guides.
From light, to light, darkness joins.
From Void to Void, Worlds bridge.
“Deny me or not,” Nariah whispered, her hands curling into fists at her sides, “my people won’t die. Even if they are less than filth.”
As she stepped into the light, though, her heart wavered. Would she still care about the people who’d only ever wronged her when the time came to die for them?
The cavern gave way to an open-air stone walkway carved into the side of a cliff, facing the ocean. Stepping through the arch took less than a second—at least in Nariah’s perception. And yet when she emerged, the daylight that had illuminated the ocean earlier was gone, replaced by a sky full of stars and both moons.
The light of both celestial guardians in their full glory had called the ocean up a tremendous amount with the tide. Frothy white waves spilled over onto the stones, and threatened to rollover the lower mountaintops to either side of what Nariah could now see must be the temple she had observed when she and Rowan were flying.
Laughter echoed out of two massive stone doors in the cliffside just ahead. Nariah recognized some of the voices as ones from the fireside, and marched toward the doors, undeterred by her appearance and determined not to let Death’s refusal to aid her be the end of her goal.
Music and the scent of a roasting sheir bird with butter and basil wafted through the doors as she approached. When was the last time she’d had meat at all? Much less a rarity like the mountain poultry bred exclusively for the temples and the King’s family? Such niceties had died with the rest of her old life, and grains fortified with powdered minerals served as the majority of her nourishment once she was exiled.
Her mouth watered at the thought of flame-roasted tomato, which she’d craved so badly she’d risked her life in the market for a taste. It was her birthday. Didn’t she deserve at least one thing that didn’t want to kill her?
Nariah’s stomach grumbled, and she crossed her arms over it in a vain attempt to still the queasiness rising within.
Speaking of killing her, if Death wouldn’t kill her to take her up on her deal, what was the worst thing they could do to her? Banish her? Leave her fate to the goddesses? Either way, she’d be in no worse a position than she was in when she stumbled across them to begin with.
Clenching a handle in each hand, Nariah shoved against both the doors with a grunt, prepared to announce her intention to their group from the start.
Neither door budged.
Nariah’s face flushed as she sucked in her breath. Shaking out her hands, she seized both iron rings once again and shoved.
Again, the doors stood still.
She cursed under her breath. With a pleading glance to the stars above, she whispered, “Please, open for me. Let me save my people.”
Then, with a mighty cry and all the strength her battered body could muster, she threw herself into the doors.
Which opened outwards, knocking her flat on her rear on the cobblestone walkway.
The lord of War grinned down at her, then stood aside to give his comrades a clear view of the literally fallen exile.
“Hey fellas, look what’s stumbled into dinner!” War roared.
The room erupted with laughter, and Nariah hung her head. Their laughter scalded her, eating away at her. Where were the chivalrous lords from her visions? The ones who would stand against the goddesses and save her people?
Stinging pain in Nariah’s palms grounded her as she clenched her shaking fists. Standing, she tried to think out her response as carefully as she could. She’d already lost one lord’s support. What happened next could be the deciding factor on the entire future of her kingdom.
“Lords,” she said, stepping up to the doorway and making a point to ignore War’s smirk. “I come to ask you for—”
A long, hollow, bellowing growl from within her own stomach cut her words short.
Nariah’s eyes fell shut and all color drained from her face. The ocean itself may as well have been sloshing in her stomach, with a thunderous storm belittling all the grand things she’d wished to say.
This was turning out to be an even worse birthday than the one she’d been banished on ten years ago.