“Four and a half decades ago, the island we call home shook so violently it cracked. The territory was marked by a deep gash down its center, and this event we called the Parting.

  Some say the Gods emerged from the dark abyss of that crevasse in the land, that they had lay dormant below our feet until the moment they were awoken by the earthquake. Others insist that the Parting only presented a way out for them, and they had been trapped down there since the conception of our world awaiting an opportunity to free themselves and claim command of their rightful subjects.

  I’m personally more inclined to believe the latter. I think the bastards were imprisoned beneath us, starving, for a long time. They rattled us mightily with their quakes like a caged animal thrashing against the walls of its confinement for who knows how long, tireless.

  Until that final hit which, at last, unleashed them upon us all.”

  Mantis’s stomach gurgled and her face contorted in disgust. Don’t think about it.

  She glowered at the wildberry tart in front of her on the table. She’d been picking at it with a fork for some time, revolted. The berries on top, half melted by the heat of the oven, glistened brightly with moisture, and the sugar coating sprinkled on top gave them a lumpy texture. It vaguely resembled charred skin. Purplish red juices seeped from the bottom of the crust like pooling blood—

  Just bring it to your mouth.

  It wouldn’t be the first time Mantis’d had to consume something she found nauseating.

  When the berries burst in her mouth and released their juices, her molar teeth ground down on the crust and produced a welcome crunch that resonated in her ears. Smooth fruit skins slid down her throat. The flavor was not unpleasant. Sweet. It did its job at covering up the taste and sensation of something infinitely worse that liked to linger until she did away with it.

  The rest of the tart followed more easily. Mantis avoided the look of reddish liquids collected at the bottom of the tray when the food was gone, and hastily pushed the small metal container away, hoping someone would collect it soon—remove it from her peripheral vision.

  The air was cheerful at the tavern she patronized. Locals were gathered at the cozy family-owned establishment for an afternoon meal or drink, their comfortable countenance speaking of neighborly acquaintance with the place. The air was thick with conversation and warmth. No one had noticed her.

  Until, to Mantis’s left, a minstrel began to sing about love and bravery to a group of giggling girls, his harp a perfect complement to the well-known tune.

  His words rose above all chatter, his voice raspy and trained and lulling, the story so charming not even the busiest of townspeople could resist its call. Some joined in at the chorus; others simply listened and bobbed their heads. Mantis only glared.

  As it went, three young warriors who’d been passing by a burning cottage in the woods on their way to camp had heard feminine screams coming from inside and jumped at a chance to implement their abilities for good, rather than violence, for the very first time.

  The first such gentleman to take action possessed great strength and was able to move a wooden beam which had fallen across the doorframe and blocked the exit. Once the obstacle was cleared, his companion displayed great bravery and entered the burning building with no regard for his own safety to guide the three trapped damsels outside, coughing and panting. The third fellow, blessed with quick wits, collected large leaves from a nearby plant to fan the women with, allowing fresh air to pump into their lungs and clearing the smoke that so badly wanted to choke them.

  The tavern girls giggled and joked with each other as the minstrel went on. The three men, gentlemen as they were, allowed the young women three nights and three days to heal in the woods. They improvised a shelter out of the materials at hand, and hunted squirrels and hares to feed them so they would grow strong and healthy. On the third day, at last, the heroes judged it fair time to take their recovered brides home to wed.

  Mantis squeezed the mug of ale she held in her hands. She wouldn’t drink from it. Its contents would surely taste of bitter old piss. But she was grateful to have something to hold, something to channel her pent-up energy into to stop herself from strangling the singing prick and cracking his harp over his skull.

  Then a familiar shiver assailed her body.

  A curse escaped her lips. No. Please no, she begged internally, clenching her eyelids as if that could blind her to something she didn’t need eyesight to perceive. Not again, so soon. Not so soon!

  Impervious to her wishes, however, her body honed in on him. Her senses flared to attention and her head snapped to the right, every muscle and nerve immediately awake to him. Her new target. A strong one, his aura very bright even from a distance. She could not yet see him, but his putrid soul announced itself blaringly, impossible to ignore. He was walking up the street and steadily approaching the tavern where Mantis had decided to sit down and compose herself after her latest hunt.

  Tears wanted to well up in her eyes. It was unfair. Cruel. She’d done her duty already, that very day! Her belly was still swollen and aching, her consciousness still bruised and foggy with despair. But despite it all, her whole body started to shake with a raging anticipation, and her eyes fixed themselves on the silvery, glowing aura coming her way.

  In minutes, he would waltz into the room where he would meet his end, unbidden, of his own free will. All Mantis had to do was wait. It thrilled her, made her gorge rise.

  When the handsome sea captain opened the tavern door and unwittingly presented himself for the taking, her mouth was watering for him.

  His hair was blond, streaked with a lighter golden shade that framed the front of his face. Sun-touched. His skin was a healthy, warm canvas of scars and freckles. A fighter. A privateer. His immaculate uniform revealed just how he cherished his position, and how proud of himself he was for having prospered in a world that he’d had a hand in ruining.

  “I’ll just ask her if she needs anything else. She hasn’t had a sip of the ale I brought her,” Teela insisted through her teeth, trying to shake free of her brother’s grip on her upper arm.

  “Just leave her alone! What’s the matter with you?” came Leroh’s brusque whisper near her ear.

  Teela wasn’t sure. Something was the matter, evidently. But what?

  All she knew was that she’d been unable to peel her gaze from the strange hooded woman sitting a few paces away since she’d trudged into their tavern and taken a table at a secluded corner. Now the stranger was gripping her drink as if to squeeze a secret from it and focusing to a near obsessive degree on a uniformed gentleman who’d walked in and sat at the bar.

  Teela just wanted to talk to her. It was foolish. She wanted to know if everything was all right.

  “Ma’am?” she ventured and, finally releasing herself from Leroh’s grasp, neared her table.

  The hooded woman was much smaller up close than Teela would have thought. She might have been a girl no older than herself. Her slender frame was garbed head to toe in darkly-colored fabrics the likes of which Teela had never seen. Expensive, thick materials which probably acted as an excellent protection from the elements. Her cloak was weathered and slightly dirty, its large hood raised to cover her head and most of her face, revealing only up to the tip of her nose. On her lips she wore what appeared to be a cosmetic that enhanced the reddish tint of her mouth. The shade was bright, deep, beautiful…and oddly not quite unnatural.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  When the stranger continued her hypnotized staring without so much as a twitch of acknowledgement at her approach, Teela lowered her head to match her seated height and stole a peek under the opening of her hood.

  What she found there froze the blood in her veins.

  Her eyes. Something was wrong with her, Teela could now be certain. The stranger’s pupils were so dilated that almost no color showed around the black and bottomless circles. A hair-fine ring of brown so warm it was almost orange was all she could see of her irises. But what unsettled her most about the face she peered into was its expression.

  “Apologies, ma’am. We’ll be sure to leave you to your business.” Two strong, long-fingered hands gripped Teela’s shoulders and pulled her back by force. Distraught, she let herself be carried away. “Go help Mother in the kitchen now or I swear I’ll give you a lashing myself. You child,” her brother hissed lowly in her ear.

  The blond man who commanded the stranger’s undivided interest continued to drink from his mug unfazed, seeming unaware of the bizarre behavior of the person at his back.

  Then, “Privateer,” the hooded woman spoke, her voice at once a boom and a hum. “Come.”

  Teela planted her feet on the ground and watched.

  The words hadn’t been particularly loud, but they’d had a sort of melodic echo, a power that enhanced the woman’s volume tenfold. It aroused the man’s notice, made him stand and turn to face her. It also caught in its net the attention of every other person in the tavern, vacuumed the noise straight from the air.

  A man to Teela’s left took one look at the scene and, astonishingly, began to pray. Hands crossed over his chest and palms flat on his collarbone stretching up to cup his neck, he lowered his head, shut his eyes, and breathed soft, pleading words to the ground. Another man at that same table followed his example and positioned himself in a similar fashion, whispering frantically in short, rhythmic bursts of rhyme, matching his companion’s pace.

  The girls who’d been so charmed by the minstrel’s song but a few moments before were looking all around similarly to how Teela herself gawked in confusion. Not another word was spoken by anyone present. The air was abuzz, strained. Something of importance was occurring.

  It could only mean divine intervention.

  Teela’s heart thumped wildly in her chest; her scalp prickled. She recognized the sensations as symptoms of fear, yes, but also anticipation. Excitement.

  She was too young to know the ways of the world, and this had always been explained to her as a privilege. Her mother and older brother had insisted on shielding her from the uglier sides of life throughout her childhood and adolescence despite her desperate desire to be enlightened, but she wanted so badly to understand why people were so afraid. What was so terrible? What threatened them?

  What could drive someone to pray, to defy all reason and take such a great risk pertaining to the Gods? And why couldn’t she pray, or at least learn what there was to know of the practice? What would happen?

  What was out there?

  It occurred to her that she might just find out. Right now. The two men to her left were deep in prayer. Teela could recognize the act despite never having observed it before. She’d heard whispers of it. She knew that much. And this, now, felt important, clandestine. Magical. She was in the presence of two people praying to the Gods.

  With whom they communed exactly, she couldn’t know. But she understood that if there were to be immediate consequences, she’d be there to witness them.

  “Teela, listen to me. We have to leave,” Leroh urged in a barely-audible breath from behind her. “Come, now. Come with me.” He tried pulling her away again, his hands trembling on her shoulders. She did not balk.

  He fled.

  Teela followed him with her eyes. Her brother let go of her and scuttled, grimacing, in the direction of the kitchen, then disappeared behind swinging doors, the sound of heavy wood swaying on creaky hinges a final insulting flourish to his retreat.

  The hooded woman was looking at Teela.

  Her brother’s movement had likely drawn her attention. Teela turned to glance at the space he’d left empty behind her and realized, with a small breath of relief, that the stranger was in fact not observing her at all. The target of her scrutiny seemed to be the two praying men, a distance away behind Teela’s back.

  Mother and Leroh had always uncompromisingly silenced her whenever she’d dared to ask about the deities, and so Teela had no knowledge of the ritualistic customs of religion. But that made it all the more fascinating for its secrecy, for the danger that coated everything divine and magical. It was a manner of torture to her, to know such things existed but not to be granted the indulgence of understanding. She’d marveled at the mystery, yearned so terribly to know all purposely kept concealed.

  And so now she could identify no more and no less than the presence of magic in the room. It was an entirely unfamiliar sensation, from which she could only logically deduce the Gods’ involvement.

  She was overtaken with a thrilling terror, unable to even conceive of escaping the revelation of answers and the manifestation of the divine she’d always dreamed of. Still, Teela’s own stupidity didn’t escape her by any means. It would have been wise to listen to her brother, she knew. But naturally she had to stay.

  The two men continued to pray in short breathy releases of almost musical speech, none of it clear enough for Teela to discern. They remained seated but, strangely, a large number of tavern-goers had quietly stood up from their seats and gravitated toward their table. The men remained the only two people in the room who dared to speak at all, but now a veritable crowd of onlookers lingered around and behind them, opposite the hooded woman, whose gaze had gone back to the blond fellow.

  To Teela’s shock, he was approaching her table as she’d commanded, his heavy leather boots dragging loudly on the wooden planks of the floor and producing a rhythmic sound which interwove with the men’s prayer. The space was flooding with an oddly melodic beat.

  His eyes were fixed on hers, his face neutral if not a bit…droopy. When he reached her and only stood before her, mouth hanging slack, the hooded woman sprung up from her bench in a single fluid movement. She stood significantly lower in height looking up at the sea-man for a moment. Then, in a rapid motion Teela was barely able to follow, the stranger’s arm snatched out from under her heavy cloak. She hooked her forearm behind the uniformed man’s neck to draw him down toward her and placed her pigmented mouth softly over his.

  From between the red-tinted flesh of her lips, Teela thought she caught sight of something like a…cord? It was a black protuberance, no thicker than the tail of a rat, and it shot out of her mouth to go into his, then receded as swiftly as it had first appeared.

  The blond man subsequently collapsed backward by a minute push of the hooded woman’s finger on his chest. As if all his muscles had turned to mush, his limbs and core gave out and came crashing down with a thud, the dull sound of his head coming in contact with the hard surface of the ground making Teela flinch.

  He remained immobile when the woman crouched down beside him, brought her face to his, and raised her peculiar mouth to his right eye.

  Her lips touched him, pursed, and adhered to the delicate skin around his eye socket. Her throat visibly contracted in a downward motion that resembled swallowing. All was silent except for a quiet gulping.

  Perplexed and in a state of disbelieving confusion, Teela lowered her own face slightly to try to get a better look of the scene taking place before her. And so in her gawping, she missed a different sequence of events that occurred behind her. The praying had stopped.

  Abrupt noise broke from the area of the room where the crowd had gathered, like wood against wood, and then steps rapidly approaching.

  Before Teela even had a chance to turn around and notice the two men who’d been deep in prayer but a few instants before charging toward the strange woman crouching in front of her, two long, black tendrils not unlike what Teela had seen in her mouth emerged from the stranger’s extended index and middle fingers and quickly retreated, sucked back into the flesh of her fingertips. It was so impossibly fast, so uncanny that Teela could not comprehend it at first. One moment, the mysterious woman had had her face on the blond man, not even looking up. The next, her hand had been pointed at the praying men and the black, leathery strands had appeared seemingly from her body. Like a lizard’s tongue plucking up an insect, they had shot out from the space under her fingernails and disappeared back into invisible slits.

  Teela finally glanced backward and found one of the men kneeling on the ground behind—almost beside—her, his face locked in an expression of agonized shock. One of his hands was clutching his chest, and the other held a short dagger.

  Teela spun to the other side but the second man was nowhere to be seen. It was when she completely turned around that she found him, right behind her, almost at her heels. She noted with dismay that he’d been trying to use her as a shield from the hooded woman’s view.

  But he’d failed. The projecting black strand had gone straight through her heart before ultimately finding his.

  Teela fell to her knees and then flat on her face on the old rotting floorboards she’d known since birth. They smelled of smoke from the perpetually-lit hearth. They smelled of home.

  Her eyes fluttered closed and, as her consciousness dissipated and blackness invaded her mind, Teela drew her last breath.