The tracks were unclear to me, but following them was second nature to Arzmais, who was humble in acknowledging that she had known the sha’keer for longer than humans had possessed the knowledge of making the great carracks of the Six Cities.

  In the 130s of the Times After Death, Sangrin the Builder constructed the carrack. She was then at least four hundred years old. The first of Sangrin’s carracks left the ports of the Six Cities in 143 TAD, and I was born into this world well after in 552 TAD.

  All of that noted, she mentioned that the death of God proved an unnatural force upon the sha’keer, who she had known to be once a kind and manageable people like the humans or the Delm’ri. If this were the case, not just the espousing of second-hand knowledge as fact, then she was born in the Times Before Death.

  Arzmais possessed refined and respectable knowledge of the sha'keer. She did not track them the way a hunter tracks deer, or a hound rouses a duck, but the way a friend would track another of sweet import to them had they gone missing.

  I could not help but feel she was looking for something beyond the simplicity of its physical form. Instead, she was subtly looking for any evidence that perhaps this one particular sha’keer was capable of more than the others of its kind.

  This evidence never came, and disappointment mounted in the atmosphere around our Delm’ri companion. When we arrived at the outskirts of the ancient prison, the sands piled so high along the nearly smooth sandstone brick walls that one might have mistaken it for a lonely hill.

  “Last I saw it, the entire structure was above ground. But the sands of this land shift beneath our feet, and all things but the imbued roads move where the current of the desert carries it. Granvich was a fool to have brought you here, though I am sure you thought whatever cause you have was so urgent as to warrant this extreme an exercise.”

  Arzmais fixated on the approaching ruins. Thereafter, my attempts to delve into her mind for more information met with silence. We took cover along the buried perimeter wall and sat in that silence, hearing only the vicious wind, which cut our faces with tiny grains of sand.

  She took a deep breath and centered herself. “I can hear it in the sands. Granvich is below. Alive, but far from conscious. The sha’keer will gather food for their babies from his memories for as long as possible. We will lose him if we are slow. Not his body, but his mind.”

  Lubina’s frustration and anger came to the forefront, “Then why are we sitting here, talking?”

  Arzmais replied with a simple Delm’ri proverb, “To be eager is to be dead.”

  “Have we not cause for eagerness?” I asked.

  “These ruins have developed their unique ecosystems, False Leper. They are microcosms of the life that occupied these once-verdant lands. We must proceed with caution.”

  With her warning taken in earnest, we followed her through to what would have been the prison’s roof long ago. The staircase leading further into its guts had collapsed, which was of no particular concern for the agile Arzmais but required about twenty feet of rope for Lubina and me to scale down. A large mound of sand that had blown in over time softened our descent.

  A struck two torches and passed one along to Arzmais. She took the leading position, and I was at the rear, keeping Lubina safely between us and her hands free to perform her sorcery. Unlike many times before, I did not hesitate to keep my blade drawn and readied. I had learned from my mistakes and sought not to make them again.

  As we moved into the first chamber, the air became moist and the ground squished under our feet. Under our torchlight, Arzmais’ concerns came to fruition. An untold number of plant species had called this first chamber home, and it was not until we reached the center of the room that they acted.

  Their vines slithered subtly into a cross-knit pattern beneath our feet, forming a net that quickly pulled us from the ground into the air. Beautiful purples and reds pulsed rhythmically from large bloomed flowers as a gas sprayed from them.

  To this day, I have no clue what the gas would have done if it had reached our lungs. Lubina was sharp with her reaction and used some sort of barrier to push it and keep it at bay.

  When I fumbled through my companions and hefted my sword upward, the vines seemed to wince, and the flower petals folded in on themselves.

  I yelled, waving the sword and touching the organic net around us. “Saint Olovf has blessed me, you vile things! Submit! Submit to his divinity!” With my declaration, the plants listened and waned in fear or deference. Whichever the cause, the vegetation released us without hesitation, and our way forward was clear.

  Shortly thereafter, we reached what appeared to be a chapel for the inmates. In the center of the room, a prominent and imposing statue carved from dark rock stood out.

  “Is that..?” I asked.

  “God. Yes. Long before His death, anyway.”

  Lubina and I could not believe our eyes. The realms of man, both the Elder and the Saintly lands, strictly forbade depicting such things. The Dead God did not look as one would expect. Where I had imagined a strong and towering figure, wrought with muscle and divine in beauty, there was instead a man of only 20 years in age and of average height and slender build, wrapped in loose-fitting robes, holding a book and squinting to keep reading glasses from riding the bridge of his nose.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Surely this is a mockery,” I said to her.

  “This is how the Delm’ri encountered God. Artisans carved it with great respect and reverence, honoring the truth of the man.”

  “What do you mean presented? Have you seen him yourself?”

  “Me? No. But my grandmother had. "A mason," she said, pointing to the statue's base where a mason had carved a cauldron emblem. “Fras’iko. A dear friend of hers and perhaps even a lover. It was he who sat with God and made his form in our art.”

  “Granvich would die if he heard all of this,” I told her.

  Arzmais smiled at me. “He is well aware of it. He is perhaps the only person in any of those many clerical orders to know it as fact. After all, I told him many years ago. Showed him, even.”

  “And he handled that… well?”

  “Well?” She laughed. “No, I wouldn’t say well. But he came around.” Arzmais paused, and we decided it would be best to keep moving. Not that the conversation bothered me particularly, but young Lubina was in no condition to hear such things. Tolerant as she was, she was still a Saintly girl, with all the installed fears and expectations that come from the Church’s teachings.

  Perhaps part of me worried as well that such mockery of the Saintly and the Dead God would come to haunt us in our search for Granvich. My doubts persisted; as we entered the next hall, Lubina triggered an ancient pressure plate, causing a wrought-iron gate to fall behind us.

  With our way out no longer viable, we could only hope some alternative exit existed further within the ruins. As we delved deeper and closed in on our quarry, Arzmais insisted on our guarded silence.

  The final chamber lay before us, carved out from the ancient ruins and the surrounding sandstone. The ceiling was not high, perhaps only ten feet, but the tight sliver expanded outward a great distance to create a large floor space.

  We laid down at the entrance, and Arzmais pointed upward toward the pocketed ceiling.

  “Tunnels, used by the adult sha’keer. We’ll be at a distinct disadvantage. When invaders attack their hives, the sha'keer will fight to disorient them. First, they’ll sunder your mind, and then they’ll drag you off into the winding labyrinth above.”

  “How are we supposed to keep our wits about us?” I asked.

  “Pain or deflection. Their telekinesis will fail if you experience pain while they burrow into your mind. You can avoid it altogether if you can keep their focus drawn elsewhere. Once you’ve engaged one, do not relent. Do not let it flee from you.” Arzmais looked to Lubina. “All of this applies to you as well. If your magick fails, sweet girl.”

  Lubina nodded succinctly. “It won’t. But I’ll be sure to keep it in mind.”

  I sighed and patted the girl on the shoulder. Through the thick armor of her confidence, we knew she always listened. She craved knowledge, and she carefully stored every piece of information she received in her memory.

  Perhaps this information was only used to displace the horrid memories of her youth. Perhaps it shored them up, giving her more and more with which to exact her vengeance.

  The eggs lie buried beneath us. The sha’keer will know the moment we move within their nest. They almost certainly already know we’re here.”

  “Then we must press our advance, as you’ve said. Where should Granvich be held?” I asked.

  “Somewhere near the center of the hive, buried beneath the sand in a spherical chamber. The eggs are feeding from his memories.”

  I looked to Lubina, who shared no glance in my direction. She was intent, focused, drawn toward our goal. No one would reduce Granvich to a husk. She was sure of that truth. And she was driven toward ensuring that truth was reality. Arzmais and I shared one last look, and we began.

  As quietly as we could, we spread out and moved across the sand shavings and jagged rock of the cavern. Lubina took center, with me on the left and Arzmais on the right.

  “I found him!” Lubina called. Only she was standing still, her muscles twitching desperately despite the locking of her joints. Her eyes twitched and looked far past the material world and into the realm of dreams and lies. Peeking from one of the many holes above us was the head of a sha’keer.

  “Arzmais! Above!” I yelled to her, pointing toward the pimple of camouflaged flesh. A knife spun dexterously from Arzmais's palm and clipped through the upper portion of the creature’s head. It lost whatever grip was keeping it hanging and collapsed to the floor, writhing and pulsing as its body failed to control its muscles and organs.

  While it sputtered out a blue bile and leaked its liquid membrane into the sand, Lubina regained her faculties and smiled at me.

  Her smile twisted into the crooked, unnatural teeth of my sister when she was just a babe.

  “Mom tastes good,” she said to me, fanning her sickly, clawed fingers. I felt a surge of angry resentment, realizing my sister had lied and tricked me. I raised my blade and charged into the morphing Lubina.

  Fortune favored our circumstance, and my grip was loose. Loose enough that Lubina, who recognized the vacant stare upon my face, could use her magick to push the sword free from my hands and slam it against my nose. The bone broke, and I felt the bridge veer from its proper track. The pain brought me back to our reality.

  Lubina’s hands had tracked toward a second sha’keer and, with her vengeance and anger toward it fueling her potent abilities, she crushed the innards of the creature’s ears and popped its eyes like tiny eggs.

  It screeched as the three of us closed in on it, and I pleaded with Lubina to consider her actions.

  “It is just a creature defending its offspring. It must eat, same as us, and it must breed, same as us. Different as it may seem, I assure you, it is hardly different. It means us no harm, only its own preservation.”

  But Arzmais intervened, “When your God died, the sha’keer lost their nature. The sha’keer contorted into evil, senseless, thoughtless things. And no attempt by the Delm’ri to restore their sanity brought positive results. Lubina, the sha'keer are lost. Their whole species. There is no hope for them. To end them is to show a blessed mercy.”

  “I—” I couldn’t find any argument. Such things were beyond my understanding. I knew that. But it felt wrong. Yet I could not bring myself to argue, and instead left the choice to Lubina. Her survival in our world demands such decisions.

  “It dies. Not to slake my thirst, but to quell its suffering.” She tapped her hand against its skull and its ragged breathing ceased. “The eggs must go as well.”

  We followed as she instructed, not wishing to undermine such a formative choice. We found Granvich and the eggs. He was unconscious but stable, his wrinkled nose popping snot bubbles and the corners of his eyes crusting, and we spared an hour to clear the nest in its entirety.

  When I asked Lubina how she felt, she replied simply:

  “This may not be our realm, but it is part of our world. The rules apply equally.”