"They would never--" Spoiler alert, they did

It was a clever forgery, Agni thought as shivers ran up his spine. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to get a book that looked exactly like Ereshkigal’s, and yet they had not inscribed the rituals correctly. Why?

They didn’t want anyone else to be able to perform them.

“Please don’t get too close to the artifacts,” a woman said wearily, like she had to say it many times already.

The church was cool in spite of it being summer in the Forge, and the chilled air seemed to be coming in through slats in the ceiling. And there was always that maddening pressure cloaked around him. He was beginning to think it wasn’t the humidity permeating through the air.

“Why is this so important?” Melusine asked the woman.

“It’s very old, dated to twenty four hundred years ago,” she said. “Although much of the writing is lost, what’s left tells of a war during the Reclamation Era, as well as the rites performed at the time believed to bring about the end of the war.”

 Melusine frowned, her dark eyes flashing. Not quite anger. Displeasure? Definitely, though the way she stuck her thumbs in her belt like she was spoiling for a fight belied the unease underneath the surface. After thousands of years of service, they had been forgotten.

“Where’s the real one?” Agni asked.

The woman’s mouth dropped open. “Pardon me?”

“The real one. This one is some sort of forgery. Was it purposefully made incorrect? Were the people here the ones who did it?”

She just continued to stare, although he swore she shook her head, if only slightly. She rushed over to the container she had warned them from getting too close to, one hand pressing into the glass. Perhaps she was familiar with what it was supposed to say, because the more looked, the greater the befuddlement on her face. She hurried off, and though Agni tried to follow, she disappeared into a door indicating only those under the employ of the church were allowed in.

Employ? Like they were paid a salary? He had seen churches hire guards over the centuries, but everything else was done by people called to the religious life, from bookkeeping to the meticulous copying of holy texts. Then again, this place didn’t seem like any cathedral he’d seen before, including the one that was built on the Forge five thousand years ago. He hadn’t seen any priests, or nuns, or monks, or any other members of the cloth. The iconography carved into the stone walls showed people bowing in worship to the four figures he had seen out front, yet there was none of that in these supposedly hallowed halls. Rather, it was more like a reliquary.

“Hey, look at this,” Melusine said, drawing him to another container in the corner. The dagger looked like one of the ones she’d been given after they assassinated the Empress and ended the war. Ornate and covered in jewels, she had accepted it, but since it was useless as a weapon, she had left it for the Rapture vault.

“Why did they bring it here?” he asked. The item had tarnished and several of the stones had fallen off, but the sapphire in the handle was easy to recognize, even if it gleamed dully in the light.

“Perhaps they wanted to put it with the rest of my things,” Melusine said. “It wasn’t very well made, but I don’t think the people of Eratta had a decent smith.”

“They brought here and… what? Were unable to open the vault?” He started to turn away, then stopped. “They didn’t open our vault, right? I know they opened the one in Rapture, but they would never have opened ours. Right?”

Next interlude, less death

Preview of the next interlude (it's also super long)

Interlude: Honor

At the age of sixteen, Lucius Aurelius committed an unforgivable sin.

To himself, he could blame the error on having never been in battle before. Years of practice and stories from his father could not prepare him for the blood, the screaming, tripping over a body and realizing it was his friend Antoine. What happened had been a mistake, one he was still paying for a year later. He thought he was doing the right thing. But now he sat in the Emperor’s jail among traitors awaiting his judgment.

Traitors. He was a traitor.

“Lucius Aurelius,” the Praetorian said. “It’s time.”

Lucius got to his feet. He turned around, arms lifted into the air as the Praetorian bound his wrists with chains and led him to the baths so he could be clean before he was presented to the Emperor, and then he was given a meal without maggots squirming through the grain. Still, he might end up longing for his cell once the hearing was concluded and he was sold into slavery.

What he did was not a crime, but a sin nonetheless. It was a mistake made during the heat of battle… yet walking across the courtyard and staring up at the clear blue sky, he thought he would make the same choice.

There had been so much death. Not just for the attacking Glessian army, but for the Summer warriors as well. The Glessians were persistent, a unit went down and they sent another in to fight. Lucius couldn’t imagine how big an army they brought, but there seemed an inexhaustible supply of soldiers, and in spite of the supplies and reinforcements from the inner Empire, he was tired. He wanted it to stop.

That was when Commander Tiberius fell down, an arrow piercing his damaged armor. Blood pooled beneath him, and Lucius skidded down beside him, shield raised to ward off more volleys.

“Commander…”

Tiberius smiled. “It is a good day to die.”

He shut his eyes. There was no higher honor than dying in service to your Emperor. But enough had died today.

Lucius broke off the end of the arrow and lifted his commander, summoning all the strength left in his body as well as reserves he did not know he had. He carried Tiberius back into the trenches and packed the wound as well he could. Then he picked up his sword and shield and ran back out to the fight. Though he came back scarred, he did come back. As did Commander Tiberius.

Now, he walked up the stone steps to Emperor Augustus’s court. He was not there yet, only his praetorians, lining the walls carrying spears. Once, Lucius thought he would stand among them. His father’s family included senators, his mother’s included a mix of warriors and scholars. All were proud, distinguished by generations of service. If he was lucky, Lucius’s brother might one day stand among the praetorians instead.

Lucius was brought down the aisle. On one side was his family, his mother, brother, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, all grim faced because they knew how close they were to losing everything. Their lives depended on an Emperor who ordered an orchard burned down because the yield was lower than he wanted, and once elevated a lowly page to a priest because she cleaned mud from her shoes before stepping into the senate chamber, followed by ordering those who didn’t be whipped. The other side was filled with the ones who brought the suit against him and his family. Tiberius was no longer a commander, that much Lucius knew, and seeing him hunched over, thin and pale, it was hard to believe he would recover enough to walk on his own. His sons were on either side of him, leaning away as if they might become infected with his infirmity, while his wife Gnaea gave Lucius such a smoldering gaze that it was a wonder he did not catch fire.

New chapter! Several content warnings.

It's Going To Get More Awkward When They Come Back To Life

The explosion was so loud, Ereshkigal’s ears started to ring, which meant it must have been much worse for everyone else. She couldn’t follow exactly what happened. The back of Imatar’s head sprayed out blood, brain, and bone, and they were down on the paved road, half their face obliterated. It put her in mind of a castle wall after a catapult launched a boulder into it.

Some sort of projectile?

A concern for later. She flipped her staff to her right hand, bringing it to an offensive position. The robber blanched when he saw what he’d done, but the distress was quickly overtaken by an animalistic cunning, the look of a beast realizing it was being hunted. He fled down the street, and Ereshkigal took off after him.

Every inch of earth was hers to command, even the stone embedded in this walkway. A crack snaked across the road, widening just as his foot stepped over it. He was skilled enough or, more likely, lucky enough to get his hands under him before he fell and jump right back up, but he could not outrun her.

She grabbed the back of his jacket, slimy and some unpleasant fabric reminiscent of velvet. He brought his weapon up again and she reached out for the metal, studded with earthen impurities. She did not need to touch it to be able to crumple it in his hand.

“What the fuck?” he said, throwing it on the ground. His eyes were wide as plates, but when he saw her, the predatory gleam was back.

Ereshkigal smashed the end of her staff into his cheek and he staggered back. He punched out at her, but she grabbed his fist and forced it back, then slammed her head into his while her foot hooked out and caught the back of his knee. He slammed into the pavement and she pressed her arm into his throat.

“Get a new profession,” she said.

“Fuck you!” came the strangled reply.

“We have to do something!” Bella cried from down the street. “Call for help!”

That drew Ereshkigal’s attention. The robber wriggled under her, trying to use the distraction to his advantage, but she slammed him into the road again.

“Hope I do not run into you when I have more free time,” she said.

She got off him and went to pick up his weapon, a crumpled mass of metal, likely incapable of being used again, but it was better to be careful. The man needed several seconds to get back to his feet, and his flight was unsteady, but he would give them no more trouble.

Charm’s mouth was open in a silent scream and Vine was trying to comfort her, while Grey sat in the road rocking back and forth. Bella was near Imatar’s fallen form, a rectangle in her hand, but shaking too much to be able to use it.

“You should all leave,” Ereshkigal said.

Chapter 11: Party On

The One Where They're Going To Party

“This is going to be awesome,” Imatar said. “We finally get to see how these people live!”

Ereshkigal sighed again, but that was only because she was notoriously un-fun. Imatar’s new friend Bella had showed them how to get to the party—kind of small because a lot of people were out of town, she had said, but it would still be a blast—by walking with them down the road to a quiet street with several houses. She stopped in front of one where the only real difference was there were eight columns on the front porch instead of six.

“Easy to find, right?” she had said.

“Sure is. You live here?”

“With the rest of my fellowship.”

“Fellow… ship?” They spoke slowly because they weren’t sure they got it right. A fellowship was a band of soldiers or warriors, people with a cause. This girl with her sandals and bag of books did not seem like one of those.

“Right, sometimes you speak so perfectly, I forget you’re not from here. It’s a place for people who have specific goals for their education and their lives. There’s one for musicians, one for scientists, and mine focuses on doing good works for the community.”

“Oh, I get it. That’s a good idea.”

“It is! And we work hard, so we believe we get to play hard.”

“I am in full support of this notion.”

“You’re going to fit right in,” she had said.

When Imatar got back to the library, Ereshkigal was sitting on the field of trimmed grass, her legs tucked under her and her Divining Rod resting across her lap. She did not look at them when they sat down next to her, and they were not sure if she was mad about the party or in deep thought about the knowledge she gained. Though the sigh when they alluded to the party was a big hint.

“Come on,” they told her. “We’ve got nothing better to do anyway. We get to hang out with people, learn a bit more about how this world works, and maybe even enjoy ourselves.”

Her half-lidded expression indicated that this would most certainly not be the case for her. After all, socializing wasn’t nearly as fun as pouring over books.

“She told me it starts at nine,” they went on. “But I’m not really sure what that means. Nine what?”

Ereshkigal’s mouth tightened. She would never be able to resist an inquiry.

“It seems to be their units of time,” she said. She nodded at the tower, with its numerals going around in a circle. “I have seen others inside of the library. They are much like shadow clocks, except they run by an internal mechanism, allowing them to tell the hour at night.”

“Oh. Neat.”

She fell silent. Gods, usually she was in a much better mood after a day spent with books, but she seemed more sour than ever. They asked if she discovered anything good, bad, or interesting, but Resh only shook her head and said she had more thinking to do. When was she ever not thinking?

Check it out from the beginning!