The white god has done much for us. He provided the Astralarium and Sundial, teaching mankind how to blind Leviathans. We owe the Basilisk our very lives and yet, why can’t I shake this feeling that we’ve all been duped? I’ve heard the stories about men and women who cannot die after the Basilisk sunk pillars of ice into their hearts. They’ve gone mad, forever trapped in the city of glass. Yes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but what will we do when we learn our friend’s appetites are just as depraved as the Great Devourer?
Ilene slammed the door behind her, locking the bolt tight and resting her back on the hinge. The walls were thick enough, the door solid as stone, but she could hear the screams all the same.
Thud.
The door handle bounced off the middle of her back. Felix must have been pushing hard, clawing at the walls and breaking the bedposts. Good, the furniture, the candlesticks, the empty scrolls, and dull pencils. There were many distractions to hold his attention—anything to keep his teeth away from his own body.
Thud.
The final stage was always the hardest to endure. That taste, so intense the first time, so surreal and spine-tingling. It was like sinking your teeth into the sweetest fruit, the most tender steak, or the flavor of ice-cold water touching your tongue after days of fasting.
Nothing could or would ever compare to that first taste.
Thud.
Ilene was a little envious. She remembered her first time, that explosion of flavor across her tongue, that eye-rolling sensation of sucking marrow from the bone, that feeling of grit on the back of her teeth. No, not the teeth she saw in the mirror, nor the ones she unconsciously touched with the sides of her tongue. These were the needles that poked through her gums, the ones that bundled together, forming a paper-thin film across each molar, canine, and incisor. These were the teeth that cut deep, creating wounds that never stopped bleeding.
Thud, thud.
The door hinge dug into her back.
Ilene stole a glance at her wrist, tracing the edges of the bloody wound. It had been a long time since she felt pain. Felix had gone too far, but she didn’t blame him. Ilene licked her lips, wrapping a worn cloth around the wound. There was already a puffy white color just under the muscle, a flowing pus-like substance that coated the veins and stuck to the nerves. Another hour or two and the scab would form. A small turtle shell over her wrist. She hated the feel; that sand-like texture and burning itch would keep her up all night, but, by the morning, good as new.
Thud.
Oh, right, she wasn’t the only one putting in an all-nighter. Felix was in for a rough ride. His bones snapping, tendons plucked like taut string, and nails retracting back under the skin. The pain was excruciating, and in those moments, men were more akin to wild beasts. That’s why the door was so thick and the lock sturdy as stone.
Thud.
Ilene was envious of Felix for another reason. He experienced his first taste in confinement under the watchful gaze of the scholars. Not everybody was so lucky. No, some people acquired their taste closer to home. Some lost themselves while their younger sister cowered beneath the sheets, so certain monsters only came from under the bed.
Ilene wiped the tears from her eyes. A moment of weakness. Her transformation was already partially complete when they nailed her to that wooden pole and set the plank ablaze. She was strong enough to undo the binding, flexible enough to slide through the rope, dangerous enough to kill every man, woman, and child who tossed a stone. Yet, she did nothing when the flames touched her heel. Nothing but weep for the one she loved.
Drip, drip; too late.
The flames did nothing. Her skin was too damp and waxy.
The spear in her gut did nothing. There was another bone across her midriff, a flexible net that, when disturbed, became rigid.
The ax to her throat did nothing. There was a coating along her trachea, causing the blade to slip, cutting open the bulbous sack nestled close to her thyroid—an organ filled with a lethal airborne substance, hydrogen cyanide.
At least their deaths were quick.
Thud.
She stopped trusting the voices then, the ones that howled in the night, and whispered in her sleep. They were her friends first, then her gods. So she prayed to them and joined the masses in lifting her arms to saint Iranol. They answered her with blood and death. Ilene was a strong resonant, strong enough to hear the calls of two Leviathans.
Inedia was the first, a sweet and elegant whistle. She tapped to its tune when she was a little girl. Orion’s Leviathan was calm and deliberate, its voice waving in pitch and frequency, but never becoming too harsh or deep. That whisper was like a cat tiptoeing around glass bottles, the sound of its feet soft and plush with only the slightest clink as glass lips touched, wobbling slightly but never falling, never crashing. Ilene sighed. Back then, she was in control. Back then, her stomach didn’t growl when her sister cut her finger.
Back then, she wasn’t a monster.
Thud.
Vorax was there when she lost control, licking her sister’s arm while she slept. The voice from Eridanus’s chariot was like an erupting volcano, a bullhorn in her ear. She jolted awake at night, skin clammy and spine-tingling, her right hand shaking uncontrollably. Where Inedia was a white fabric drifting through the soundless void, Vorax was a hurled stone skipping across the abyss, creating violent ripples and vortices.
Thud.
One last kick and the door fell silent, but there was still scrambling about the walls. Ilene sighed, stepping away from the hinge and wrapping her arms around her shoulders. The air was so heavy with moisture she could’ve swum down the halls.
The Astralarium was a strange place, indeed. The bleached walls convulsed, ushering in waves of hot air as the floor perspired. It was as if the Astralarium were alive. But, no, she corrected herself; the Astralarium was alive. The white god had shared that much when it was bestowed upon them.
It was called a hive.
“How is he?” father Itrit asked, stepping from the dark, face concealed beneath a deep cowl.
“Alive, at least,” Ilene said, pressing her ear to the walls.
There was a scratching noise now. Hopefully, he had found that soft wooden tablet under the bed and wasn’t working on his hipbone. Still, his transformation was well underway, and normal wounds wouldn’t likely kill him.
“He is on his own now,” Itrit said, touching her shoulder. “Come, it’s time to read the star charts.”
“Of course.” Ilene bowed as he guided her down the hall.
Itrit was the only one left older than she, the only one left who remembered when the oceans receded and the world trembled in the grip of a clockwork horror. When the first scholars accepted the white god’s gift, he was there when the sundial first turned. They say there was ice in his heart and that he couldn’t die. Yet, Ilene need not hear the words to know that they were true. After all, his skin was icy, back hunched as he clung to an ivory staff, and there was such weight in every step as if he had to shake stones loose from his joints. Indeed, she had seen two hundred years and aged not a day; how many centuries must this man have seen for his skin to wrinkle, his frame to bend and his ankles to creak like a rusty crank?
“You’re not eating well,” Itrit said, pointing to her cheeks.
“I have an acquired taste.”
He chuckled, dust running off his shoulders. But, of course, he knew she was lying. Ilene was never comfortable satisfying her appetite. Like all genuine scholars, she trained herself to go months without ever stoking the flames. Feeding on oneself was common practice. Ilene preferred the thigh, easy to hack off a slice and quick to heal. She almost went an entire year eating that alone, but then the hunger came.
Holding back the urges was like damming up a river, water swelling on one side as it slipped through the cracks and rolled over the edge. Eventually, even with care and maintenance, the river won, and the walls collapsed, a deluge of water drowning the land. That is why, once every year, the scholars return to the capital of Bruma.
“Fear the saint’s light!” they preached to the masses.
It was all a cover, of course, a ruse to blind the audience from their nightly activities. The inquisition knew, she could tell from their shifty glances and pointed stares. That organization prided itself on hunting down witches, warlocks, and monsters. But the scholars? They were a necessary evil. Besides, who cared about prisoners who went missing in the night?
This year, there was quite a selection. They even took some for the road: an innkeeper, a doctor, and a penny pincher, fresh, tender, and delicious. Felix was going to join them, another purse snatcher to whet her appetite, but then she tasted his wrist while he slept in that dank cell. Before the flavor came the memories, memories of a boy watching his mother staked in the center of town. Ilene could smell the putrid stench of burning hair, hear a woman’s screams, and taste the ashes in the wind.
“Burn the witch!” the crowds shouted over and over as a baleful, twisted light looked down upon them.
“When the path leads you astray, Saint Iranol will know the way,” said Felix’s mother.
Sweet, savory, and sour; she knew this taste very well. Felix was a fledgling larva, an untested resonant. Ilene touched the scar across her cheek, the blistered skin that held memories of hot coals and branded iron.
“You did well to bring that young man to us,” Itrit said, rubbing his chin.
“I know he will serve us—” The words stuck in Ilene’s throat as a screeching noise brought her to her knees.
It was Vorax again.
The Chariot’s call was like shattering glass next to her ears, but there was something deeper this time, another voice hidden behind the Leviathan’s bellyaching. The younger resonants couldn’t pick them out, but her ears were trained now, trained to hear the pitch of the Devourer’s children.
“Stay calm. It will pass.” Itrit grabbed her shoulders as she convulsed.
“It’s Persephone!” Ilene shouted, clasping her ears shut.
From the throat of every Leviathan came an earsplitting scream, causing the Astralarium halls to dilate. On the plains of Kath’le Kal, the last of the great names was about to make her move.
“Elder, we have to hurry,” Ilene said, grabbing hold of his robes with shaking hands.
Suddenly, the floor trembled, utensils scattering across the ground and glass pitchers tipping over the edge. A terrible earthquake struck, freeing mortar from the walls of Bruma’s capital, knocking over towers in the free city of Calphas, and splitting the great silver bridge into the eastern province.
The constellations were awake, and only the scholars could stop them.