by James Stone
Maybe they should have done, Magmaya thought.
‘They made me their leader when I wanted to run and hide, and they made me rule with a heart I didn’t have,’ she sung. ‘And after several months, I heard my children had been sold. I had been replaced with a clockwork belly as the traders had passed them through the Ash Wastes. My children were commodities sold to the highest bidder—triplets of a goddess taken before their first breath. Would you believe it? Trophies on some sick man’s mantle.’
‘Yes.’ Magmaya stopped, drawing a breath. ‘I’ve heard it all today, it seems.’
‘It is my duty to the First for you to know.’ Deih smiled softly. ‘And in due time, you will need to know. You see, there are three truths you must learn. One for Mercy and one for Faith, and lastly, one for Death.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Magmaya narrowed her eyes. ‘I know those truths… I have fought for my home—’
‘Not yet.’ She shook her head and looked to Magmaya with a face more radiant than the ages, and once again, there was a palm held out, black and blistered.
‘You want my hand?’ Magmaya asked, and her voice trembled. Though beneath it all, she was infuriated—infuriated with herself that she hadn’t left yet. ‘Is there more I have to see?’
‘Much more—for you’ve yet to open your eyes.’
When she touched Deih’s skin, Magmaya felt herself grow limp, and a sickness washed over her. The world faded away like ink in rushing water, and then the High Priestess was gone.
There was a moment of peace and sincerity after, as Magmaya looked around the chamber. Still, Deih’s words hung over her head like a curse, and her head grew lighter and lighter until it looked as if the mausoleum’s roof had collapsed in on her.
She looked around for a way out—there had to be some way, somewhere she could escape from the madness of this lullaby. Perhaps this was how Albany had felt in his final moments, she realised—a helplessness and despair like none she’d ever known. It was the sort of thing that drove a woman mad.
As she turned away, some fragile whisper lingered in some part of her like a watery kiss, growing larger until it engulfed her. The dizzying sounds ran through her head like unbound colours until softly and slowly, they subsided, and she was left alone to study the monotonous thumping of a clockwork heart, raging against her chest.
And then there was a coldness against her palm again, and she looked up to find the omniscient face of Deih; her hand was in Magmaya’s, although she could’ve sworn she’d never taken it. She watched as her palm, still swollen by the infernos of Highport, was engulfed in Deih’s talon, thin and veined. They became intertwined like comet’s tails—a malign tendril stretching from one corpse to another.
‘What have you done?’ Magmaya exclaimed, tugging at her hair. ‘You’ve cursed me with witchcraft! You promised me the cure…’
‘There is no witchcraft here, there is only truth,’ clockwork spoke in tune with Deih’s blossoming lips.
‘One for Mercy, one for Faith and one for Death,’ Magmaya spat. ‘I know, I understand!’
‘No,’ Deih said. ‘You must face them yet, girl.’
A sinister white glow washed through the Temple like a rain of hot needles. Magmaya was blinded in an instant, but not quickly enough to watch as Deih and the mausoleum slipped away into an aether, their hands unfurling at last.
And after all of it was done, all that was left was silence—in her head and all around her—an impenetrable buzz which kept her awake. In the back of her mind, Magmaya could still see glimpses of reality seeping through, but whatever spell Deih’s words had cast over her was too strong. Before her, there was the First Temple, but no longer was it grand and shining; it was hallowed and shattered amidst a mountain of ash, twisted in the moonlight.
Magmaya felt a rush of fingers through her hair, and a chill joined her hand as if Deih was still holding it, though there was nothing to suggest the High Priestess still lingered. Perhaps it was what she had intended for her: a dream or vision of something she was supposed to be—but as her head swam, she couldn’t even begin to understand.
She glanced about the room, frantic as a haze drifted across her vision. It hurt to stare, but it was agony to turn away. And in each corner of the chamber, she found a fresh horror growing; in one, there was a splintered tree with a woman’s likeness carved into the branches, embedded from the rafters, while snow fell upwards all around it. In another, a maiden stood naked, facing the wall, but when Magmaya looked closer, she turned and revealed herself. Her breasts were savaged by the pecking of crows, her body bloodied for their picking. Flowers had attempted to grow and die from the sockets where her eyes had been, and a rib cage was working its way through the skin like a jagged sabre. In time, a fountain of birds arrived to begin the feast anew.
As she watched the girl bleed, Magmaya felt the same wetness grow between her legs. It’s the hour of the moon, her mother had once told her, but this was surely the hour of some hell.
In the opposite corner of the chamber, a woman dressed in a red gown stood tall like a statuette, smirking as she stumbled forward, a knife in her back as she bled and smiled and bled and grinned.
Magmaya looked onto the final corner in horror and saw herself standing upon a charred moonstar, while a black sun rose behind her head. She was naked and bruised, and her eyes were alive with crimson—as were her thighs; it hurt her head to look, but it was no use trying to shake it free.
A vibration ran across her skin, and she pried her eyes open to face the Temple again, watching as it rebuilt itself around her. A wave of mist formed a petite cloud overhead, as a number of Temple Guard appeared before her, each raising a spear and shield to catch the moonlight above. They were faceless in rank, and as Magmaya turned, more of them arrived, standing atop the broken battlements. If her dream was over, then why did her reality seem so false?
In time, each of their shields became a mirror. They were a circle of reflections—a hundred distorted faces staring back at her—empty echoes of her own likeness. Sometimes, she wondered if it was the same girl in there—if the same girl was staring back. Sometimes, she wondered if Magmaya Vorr had been a girl from some story she’d read.
In one of the mirrors, she spotted herself crying to the nameless gods at the foot of her tree—a young blonde face, reddened and sore. She saw herself about the forest, all while looming trees formed grotesque patterns in the snow.
Don’t follow the roses! she urged herself, but the old Magmaya wasn’t listening, and she found Albany there again, as red as the day he was born.
When she looked in a few of the mirrors, though, there was nothing where her face should’ve been—not even an echo or silhouette—just a pool of white.
That was until one of the Temple Guard sprang towards her, making its way to the centre of the Temple. In the place of a helm, a face like bark sprouted, chittering and lapping at its lips. Magmaya felt some deep urge draw her closer and force her to touch its thorny façade, but the thing’s putrid breath drooled like brown ichor, warding her back.
The chittering grew louder until it became a vile screech, bleaching the Temple with sound. Magmaya winced as she drew her hand closer, watching worms glisten as they burrowed in and out of the thing’s face. She felt the grooves in its wooden cheeks and the orifices beneath her fingertips. And then she watched as it dissolved around her hands into a fountain of clear, snapping wings.
Magmaya screamed as the swarm rose out of the Temple Guard like a wave. It surrounded her and swallowed her, and then she was lost in them until there was nothing but an endless thumping that seemed to cut the air in two. She felt her lungs burn and beating heart rally against her as the insects festered upon her cheeks, nestling themselves into any cleft they could find.
They kept burrowing until her skin was torn from her, and she lost herself to the dark. She sat in silence, formless, until the insects had gone and the buzzing in her head was drowned o
ut by her sobbing, and her skin was made new with her tears.
But something far worse remained in the corner of her eye: a culmination of the insects and shed carapace of the Temple Guard. It was an abomination; it was a hulk of smouldering pus like some terrible half-human thing. Even its skin (if she could call it skin) was red-hot with disease.
It reeked through the First Temple and washed away the incense and the song of the flowers. She couldn’t bear to look at its face as it changed from glimpse to glimpse; one moment it was Deih’s, the next it was hers. And where a mouth should’ve been, there was a black hole. And underneath, on the underbelly, there was something festering.
She sat, frozen, as with movements more intricate than a seamstress, the abomination outstretched a pair of arms from its belly, the skin withered to the bone. But they were human to be certain, and on their tips, human hands were born with rotten fingernails. It stretched, withdrew its arms, and reached it quill-like fingers inside itself.
A sickness caught the air, and Magmaya felt herself vomit. She could only watch as those fingers like diseased ivory pierced in and out of their owner’s flesh, a wetness sounding as if it was rearranging its own entrails.
And at long last, it unearthed whatever it was looking for. The abomination lurched forward and screeched like a dying animal, ripping its fingers from itself. And amid a baptism of milky water, it offered her a child.
It was perhaps hours old as it cradled in the putrid, brown fingernails of the beast. It held it with a grace only a mother knew, but Magmaya couldn’t bring herself to look. It was silent and calm like still water, but as the child slept, it wept inside her head.
‘Get away from me…’ she cried, but her voice was broken and coarse. She kicked out and screamed, but the abomination only dragged itself closer in some desperate hope she would take the child. But the closer it grew, the more Magmaya resisted, and the more she resisted, the more it began to grip the babe in its putrid, yellow fingers.
‘Leave me alone!’ she continued, and after a couple more attempts, the thing obeyed and slowly retreated away.
It looked at its creation in dismay, and its fingers tightened. In one moment, the babe was in its hands still, and in the next, it was not, as they turned to fists around the child, and from them, a serpentine coil of wings erupted, and a new swarm engulfed her.
Magmaya could only cough and splutter as she fell to her knees, overcome by the horror as the girl who’d slain a tyrant died inside of her, and the forest fire that ran through her veins was extinguished.
An instant later, it appeared as if the First Temple had been restored. The Temple Guard seemed to have slipped away into oblivion. Even the abomination had vanished.
She pulled herself up and out of her dream, but whenever she closed her eyes, the thing was still there, worming its way through her mind.
But she could run again, at least—run until her legs gave way. But it felt as if for every metre she left behind, the First Temple grew a mile. And for every mile the First Temple grew, the clearer it became she could only wait, wait until morning or whatever came next. Her mouth had grown dry, and her gums were sore with vomit, but worst of all, there was silence.
She waited for seconds, minutes, hours until its echo left her. But when it finally did, she had forgotten when exactly, like when one tried to remember falling asleep.
Twenty-Three
Up ahead in the dwindling darkness, Magmaya found a fork in the corridor. Through the arch on her left, there was a column of twisting stairs leading up to a glimmer of white light. Through the other archway, somewhere in the darkness, there were footsteps as light as a honeybee’s kiss.
The High Priestess had made it clear enough that there was no turning back, and in the impulse driving her closer to the heart of Temple, there was something alluring; it was like there was an ecstasy hidden beyond every closed door. So, she turned to the darkness, and soon enough, it was as if the fork in the corridor had never existed.
The journey out of the mausoleum was perhaps more confusing than the journey there, though. The eerie masks and symbols of the First which lined the walls seemed to come to life with violent snares as she made her way through the shadows; their eyes were like black wells tracing her every move.
Occasionally, the corridors grew so chokingly thin, she couldn’t help but be reminded of the hallways below Orianne she’d frequented a lifetime ago when Inamorata was just a dream, and a witch’s curse was something Siedous had talked about to scare her to sleep. She hadn’t believed for a minute that the fortune teller had used witchcraft to tell of the Divinicus’ arrival, but had Deih told her the same thing, she might have believed it. The magic in her whispers wasn’t something she could explain away.
Soon enough, the light began to fade, and Magmaya stumbled, snatching an invisible step and tasting blood. She felt for the wall in the wet humidity and pulled herself to her feet, stole a deep breath and carried on.
The silence that plagued the corridors was ringing through her ears and eating away at her head. She had left the dark a new woman, though it felt nothing now would raise her from despair.
The light could at least try, though, and a moment later, a new branch of corridors awaited her as if they were the sprawling legs of a spider stretching into nothingness. Around each corner, there were hieroglyphics in the stonework she couldn’t quite decipher, while floating candles on clockwork plinths lit the way forward like a trail of blue wisps.
She glanced around, stared down by the frowning infant-faces sculpted into the walls, and followed the lights onwards.
It was as if some mysticism held the Temple in its bare grip; no longer was she in a fortress mountaintop, but it was as if she had ascended into the heavens. The weight of Magmaya’s plate had drifted off her shoulders, and her chest felt as if it was swaying above her in the open air.
Magmaya felt a whisper call to her from the corridors, and she lashed out at the air, cursing, ‘Get a hold of yourself!’
But her heart rebelled against her words, and deep in her, she knew there was no leaving the Temple now. Part of Belliousa had become ingrained in her, and any attempt to leave would’ve been sinful—a heresy against all she’d been told. The thought was filling her with dread.
As she entered the next chamber, candlelight lashed out against her eyes. She was blinded until the distant chanting of preachers below took over; their humming drowned out the silence in her mind, but when she opened her eyes again to face the light, it was almost worse.
Magmaya found herself in a chamber; it was a pocket of light amid a labyrinth; the curving walls were lined with the carvings of priestesses, stricken with bloody runes, and the ceiling was plastered with intricate paintwork depicting angels amid clouds of gold. In the chamber’s centre, there was a table made of precious gems, shimmering blue to purple to red in the dim light. Beyond that, there were vases of porcelain and crowded bookshelves overflowing with holy books and drooping scrolls.
She followed the cobblestone floor until it met a veil of crimson silk, weaved with veins of ivory. Magmaya paused, stole a breath and traced the creases in the fabric as they reached a pale neck and a head of curling hair, fastened with a pin of polished brass.
She was intoxicating—her aura, and everything she was—and when she turned to Magmaya, it was like she had been born anew.
The High Priestess grinned and swilled ruby wine around the glass that lulled between her fingers, the trinkets on her wrists singing as they kissed one another. She set the glass down beside her and outstretched her hand. ‘This is Elysia,’ she said like honey. ‘I must apologise for leaving you in the mausoleum, but I pray you will join me now.’
Magmaya felt drawn to a brass stool beside the shimmering table, but a red fear grew in her blood as she sat.
‘You look pale, girl.’ She frowned. ‘Well a little more than before, anyway.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Magmaya rasped
. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I tried.’
Deih shook her head and ambled across the room to a small stained-glass window. In it, there was a playing board—long discarded and overgrown with branches of candles—extinguished. That was until the High Priestess brought a kindling to them and they came alive with a green-blue flame, bathing Elysia in a cool glow.
Magmaya looked around in desperation as the colour absorbed her, but found no escape, save for the door she’d come through, spiralling into a world of black shadow. She turned back, ears pricked, as the High Priestess spoke again.
‘I believe in many things some consider strange.’ Deih nodded. ‘I fear little you might say will surprise me.’ She looked to Magmaya and tapped her fingers on the window, a whimper of sorrow about her. ‘Are you thirsty?’
‘I’m quite alright,’ Magmaya answered stiffly.
The pair sat in silence for a few moments, allowing the air between them to soften, all while Deih supped slowly on her wine, and Magmaya sunk down low into the chair. The kaleidoscope of light that framed the room submerged them until Deih finished her drink, and then Magmaya looked up, eyes sore and cheeks red.
‘This is the heart of the Temple—cold and hard to reach.’ The High Priestess smiled to herself. ‘Say what you please; there is no one around to hear and think you a fool.’
‘I don’t know, I can’t—’
‘Then don’t speak another word,’ Deih said. ‘If you can’t, then you can’t.’
‘But—’
Deih raised an eyebrow.
‘I, I saw things in that chamber,’ Magmaya found herself stuttering. ‘They were… terrible… things… and all over me, there were swarms of insects and…’
‘I see.’
‘You have to believe me!’ she pleaded. ‘They were burrowing into my skin…! I know it was all in my mind, only colours and noises. But it was happening like it was right in front of me—not just in my head.’ Her fingers were quivering as she moved. ‘I feel—I don’t. I don’t know. But… I have to leave.’
