When Xarl came forth from the cave, he was not the same man. Nothing had been done to him scientifically. He had not been opened and remade as Telos had. But something within him had changed. The vision would stay with him until his dying day. If, indeed, he could ever die.

  Waiting for him around the cave mouth were women. They were beautiful in a terrifying way. Naked from the waist up, with skin so golden he thought they might be made of metal. Each had sheered off one breast, and they carried longbows and quivers at their hips. They wore their hair absurdly long, dreadlocked, like a tangle of serpents that followed after them. Some had birds upon their shoulders of exotic plumage. They spoke a language of clicks and grunts that he felt he should understand, but could not parse.

  One thing he did know, however. This was the Forbidden Archipelago.

  One stepped forward, more regal than the rest. She wore a head-dress of white feathers, her face painted for war. She spoke, and he was surprised that she commanded a halting Yarulian. He felt strangely honoured.

  “It is forbidden to enter the chamber of the Mother,” she intoned.

  “It is forbidden to impede one who has been touched by a god,” he replied. Were they his own words? He had not thought of them. His mouth moved, his overlong tongue forming around the aberrant syllables, but it was not he that did this. Some power had indeed touched him, and now could move through him.

  The leader hesitated. Her eyes narrowed.

  “It is blasphemy to declare that one has encountered the goddess, falsely.”

  Xarl strode forward. Back the throng recoiled, hissing. Only the leader, presumably a queen, stood her ground, her eyes orange, burning defiance hard as twin jacinths.

  “I do not lie,” Xarl answered, and these words felt more like his own. He surveyed the hunting party about him. Their arrows were keen. Their bows drawn taut. Their faces showed death’s image. But he was chosen. Eresh had kissed him. Eresh had whispered to him. Death could do much, but it could not defeat change.

  “Prove it!” the queen demanded. At this, the rabble feel to utter silence. Xarl heard only his own breathing, which was a mirror of the gushing tide, a lullaby of the world, soothing the shoreline to sleep. The Forbidden Archipelago was a paradise. Golden sands. Shady trees. It was warm even though night reigned. Crystal clear waters lapped at the shores. He was amazed that the men of the west had not come, with boats and thunder and swords, and taken it for themselves. Perhaps they would, in time. But for now, it remained sacred, unblemished, a place where a goddess could dwell, with her chosen people.

  He had learned so much, yet he felt if anything more ignorant. His tiny mind had begun to grasp the size of the world, the size of the gods. Who they were, even. Only a glimpse, but still.

  Her face. Such rotten wonder. Such deformed beauty.

  Nothing he had seen had ever been so hideous, so splendid, all at once. It was a juxtaposition without equal. Only the world itself could be so cruel yet kind, so ugly yet beautiful. He knew then this was his answer.

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  “I have seen her face,” he said.

  The queen hissed, spat. Murmurs ran about the throng.

  “The Mother does not show her face to anyone.”

  Xarl stood his ground.

  “She has shown her face to me. I am her chosen one, her champion—”

  An arrow whistled through the air. It struck Xarl cleanly in the chest, penetrating the ribs, emerging out of his back. He staggered. Blood welled and spilled. He let out a hoarse, grunting sound. His lung had been punctured.

  He gripped the arrow and ripped it out of his chest. The trickling blood became a geyser.

  The women watched in horror as the wound knitted.

  Xarl looked at the woman who had loosed her arrow. Her righteous fury was already melting, like ice beneath sunlight. Her eyes had grown wide with a kind of terror. He missed his sword. How he would have relished cutting her down with Darkbite, letting the Qi’shathian blade drink her blood.

  But he did not need to use a blade, now. A power had been awoken in him. He had been given a gift.

  He opened his mouth, exhaled. At first, there was nothing but hissing breath. The women looked at each other, confused. But as the exhaled elongated, another sound rose beneath.

  Buzzing. Droning.

  Rising, rising out of his gullet. A swarm. A storm of translucent wings and black bodies and fetid corruption.

  The spell made his body vibrate, his blood burn. He held the words and symbols she had taught him in his mind. They pulsed, luminous.

  Then with a gurgle, the flies were free. They cascaded in a cloud thicker than fog toward the woman who had dared to strike at a servant of Eresh. She screamed as they enveloped her. Their buzzing reached incendiary pitch. The whole island seemed to vibrate with them. She staggered, swiped. But it was useless. They cleaved to her body, a carpet of blackly glinting exoskeletons and compound eyes and filth-covered limbs. They nestled into her eyes, nose, and mouth. They found ways in.

  And then, a moment, later, they were gone, rising into the sky, scattering, as though the will that’d guided them had expired.

  She stood, swaying. Her body was a map of buboes and pustules and wounds. They wept pus, discharge, hideous fluids. The others recoiled from their stricken comrade. They turned their weapons on her.

  She blinked out of one eye. The other was mere swelling, blood, and purple discolouration. She opened her mouth to beg, holding up her hands in supplication.

  “Whhhyy?” she croaked, falling to her knees. “Whhhy? Why this creature? Why not us?”

  She collapsed forward as the plague took her. White foam spilled from her lips and she twitched. Corrosive patches spread across her flesh. Soon, the flies will be back, Xarl thought. And then I shall lick them from her still-dying corpse.

  The others and the queen now stared at Xarl.

  “Proof enough?” he said.

  One by one, they knelt. He felt his heart thunder in his chest. Always, he had served. He had been taught to serve since his earliest memories. The Governor had taken him in, showed kindness, given him purpose. But at the end of the day, he had still been a drone, a mindless slave. Now, he was something more. A chosen one. He served, but he served not some manmade power, but something greater. My maker. The maker of my race.

  “W-what is the command of the goddess?” the queen muttered.

  Xarl smiled.

  “A ship must be built. You are all coming with me.”