The Archon finished with the tone of one reciting a much loved tale…unaware that Hawk had sunk down to her knees halfway through. Her sarcasm had not been at annoyance with the tale, but at a deeper horror growing within her. Words spurted out like blood, because that was better than tears.


    Alex had been inside the Prism. That meant that Alex had been transformed, as the Ape had been, into an Archetype. He somehow became the protection for every other human within this Rift. Hawk remembered the Ape. She would definitely have called that thing “First God” material. She also knew that Naomi Studdard and her people would have been near Alex, ready to gain and keep control of the only thing keeping them alive.


    The First God had been killed and eaten.


    “Do…do your myths say anything else about the First God? What He was like? What He did?”


    The Archon shook his head. “No. There are, I must say, very few myths about the First God. After all, he was murdered before he’d had chance to gain even a name.”


    “As was your God? Ehred?” She said.


    “As was my God.” He inclined his head.


    “Is that why you sound so resentful?” She asked.


    “Well…would you not? If others of your rank and office may reach out and touch their very gods…they have no fear of doubt, no cause to heresy. Their God is there, in the very room. Mine…I have only a myth and Our Lady’s law to sustain me.” He sighed. “We servants of the White God, as He is called, keep house for one who will be forever absent.”


    Hawk wasn’t so sure of that. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but she thought she could read little bits and pieces of Naomi Studdard’s story into the Archon’s creation myth. But mostly her mind was consumed by the image of a smooth, white orb. Substance of the First God, he’d said. She remembered the Ape. If she hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t been armed against action by skepticism and a secular education and decades of dealing with dishonest humanity, she would have laid herself prostrate before it. Not because it was better than her, smarter or faster or more powerful. It had been something that transcended better. It was something that always should have been, that in a just universe would always exist. I love you, it had said, and she’d had no doubt of that love. She’d known it with every cell in her body, that she was loved—no, adored—by this being, and it wasn’t some toxic depth or mercenary thing, a love of comfort and full stomachs. It was a love that encompassed all. The Ape’s death had, for a moment, been the death of all things. She lost a connection to permanence in that moment, and her soul had been wounded in a way that should have ended existence. How could the world exist, how could love continue to exist, when the thing that did it perfectly was gone?


    It had melted, when it was killed. The Ape. It had melted away into white fluid, leaving only the Orb behind. It was pearlescent and bitterly beautiful. It marked where a beautiful thing had once been, and now was no longer.


    Which meant, if she was right about the myth, if she was right about Alex being trapped in the greenhouse-Prism of Bittermoss School, that Alex wasn’t just dead. He’d been eaten.


    But maybe she was wrong. She had to be wrong. She hadn’t done all this, survived all this, survived the fucking Shadowbeast, to lose Alex to Naomi Studdard’s ambitions. No. She was wrong. If she’d come to this place, this land of gods and monsters where worship was a prerequisite, she was going to cling, not to a god, but to an idea: Alex was fine. She would find him. She would dig through this hell-maze of plants and beasts and darkness, and she would find her husband and bring him out of it. Yes. That was what she was going to do.


    She picked herself up off the ground, aware at last that she was under the Archon’s concerned gaze. She wiped her eyes, because they’d been leaking. Took a deep breath, and chose to go with the bare bones of truth. “I’m sorry. I’m here looking for my husband. I think he fell in here. We live above the geode…thing. Up…” And she trailed off. There were five crystal pylons leading away from the Temple of Light, each terminating in a geode. And she didn’t for the life of her know which one held the rest of her people. “Up there, somewhere. My husband found his way down here, first, with a bunch of missing children. And I’m trying to find him.”This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    There. She’d managed it without lying, and without weeping.


    The Archon seemed frozen by her words. When he spoke next, he sounded distressed. “Above the Nexus? You live above the Nexus?”


    “That’s what you call the geode-things. A nexus?” She pushed as much vocal interest into her words as she could.


    He sighed. “I halfway believe your story. Only a child of the God-world would be this ignorant. Yes. One of them is the seal between the God-world and ours. It was struck two, three hundred years ago,” he waved a hand. “Until then, there was a great hope that one day the God-world would draw near enough for the Gods to enter, and the era of peace and wealth would begin, with soils that grow food always and a light that never ends, a sky without borders, with lights out of reach.” She could hear a yearning in his voice for the things he described, as if they were rare. “But the Shadow came—He is always and ever present—and he sealed the God-world so that our Gods could not return.”


    “Why?” she asked.


    A hand-wave. “Who can discern the will of the Shadow? It is the business of Gods, and not of us.”


    “But he had to have a reason. No one does anything without a reason.”


    “To keep the Gods from reaching the God-world, then. To keep the rest of us from its bounties. And, as Nasheth says on each year’s turning, to feast upon our bodies when the Dark Seas rise and all turns to weeping and ashes.” Another wave of a hand. “It means nothing. Truly. The will of the Dread is not something we should discern.”


    “But—” she stopped herself. If he didn’t want to talk about it, he didn’t want to talk. She shifted from there to her next concern. “Our people are trying to break through the geode—”


    Now the Archon seemed to take her seriously. “They’re trying to break the Nexus? Why?”


    “Because we lost six hundred children down a hole, and we want to find out where they went. We also lost my husband. I want to know what happened to him.” And I’d like to make sure he didn’t get eaten by a principal with delusions of grandeur and too much money for her own good. And then she frowned. “Besides, it’s your God-World up there. I’d think you’d be happy we want to contact you.” She paused. “As long as you understand, we aren’t Gods. We’re people like you, and some soldiers, who are looking for children.”


    “Well enough, well enough.” This earned her a deep sigh.


    And then one of the acolytes of the Temple came forward. It was a girl, but layered in enough fabrics and brocades to make this meaningless. She said something in a language Hawk couldn’t make heads or tail of, though it sounded like it should have been English. An English with all the rough edges knocked off. And she found herself remembering one time in college, when an English professor began reading Beowulf in Old English, to drive home his point on linguistic drift. Her first thought had been one of curious amusement—here were the roots of her own tongue, absolutely incomprehensible. But something deeper than that had underscored every word, something deeper and older than church-organ song. Foreign to her, it was the whisper of longships and braided hair, rough furs and rougher fires and a cold that wound bitterness down to marrow…and yet. There was space here for warmer visions; all cultures have place and purpose for war-drum pulses. She found herself reading along in the approved translation, not so that she could understand the story but so that the thrum in her bones had a greater expression.


    She was so caught in the rhythm of their words, that she didn’t catch on to how they went south. At least, not until the Archon’s tone changed from one of docile indulgence to one of tension. Then, when the acolyte left, he cursed and began dusting out his robes.


    “Come here,” he said, to Hawk.


    “Is there a problem?”


    “The Archon of Earth is here. It’s an official visit that I ought to have expected—so technically, she’s late. But she’s coming to speak with me, and that means there’s no time to hide you. Stand in front of me for a moment.” He frowned. “Your dress is too simple. Well, I’ll say you’ve taken a vow of poverty while you learn the Holy Tongue, which would also explain why you do not speak anything else. Earth will mostly converse in the Holy Tongue, anyway. No better way to lord one’s education over others than to be incomprehensible. Keep your own mouth closed unless you are spoken to—let me do most of the talking.”


    “I’ll have to,” Hawk said.


    “Indeed. If you are asked questions, say that you defer to the wisdom of the Archon of Light. That should do for most of it. Remember, you have surrendered your name. You are Acolyte, or Acyle.” He pronounced this Ah-KAI-lee. Then he paused for a moment, glancing over his shoulder to the gates in the milk-quartz wall. “I should also warn you—do not react to anything you see or hear. The Archon of Earth has reigned long and is much loved amongst Nasheth’s temples…but her reign has been uneasy, and she has felt Nasheth’s wrath. There are many reasons why being an Archon is undesirable…and you shall see most of them in these next few moments.”


    And across the mossy lawn, beneath the flameless light of the Temple, the gates in the wall opened and admitted a crowd.