Zora nuzzled the nape of her neck, and Misti hugged her closer. She tucked Zora’s long tails under one arm and wrapped the other around her back and wings, protecting her as best she could from her parents. Zora’s fur and feathers and warmth comforted her, like always. Zora nuzzled her neck again, scratching at the pendant’s Moon cage with her claws. Reminding her why she had traveled so far, why they had wanted to find the banished ones to begin with.
She didn’t know why or how her family was here, but that didn’t matter now. What mattered was getting this pendant off her, and since her parents had ones just like hers, maybe there would be Divus to take it off. Gathering her courage, she looked to her father.
“Are there any Divus here?” she asked, pleased that her voice didn’t shake with anger.
Her father nodded. “There are. Our friends can take that pendant off you just as easily as it was put on.”
Her mother offered her hand. “Please, sweetheart, let us take care of you. We give our word that your friends will be safe.”
Misti slowly left the cage, holding Zora tight. “Zora comes with me.”
It hadn’t been phrased as a question, but both her parents smiled. Her mother gave a light chuckle, the soft one that Misti remembered from her youth. “Yes, Misti. Zora will always stay with you. Now, please, follow us.”
The same blinding white light that had transported them here appeared next to her mother, so bright that it obscured everything else. It hurt Misti’s eyes to look at, and she shielded Zora’s with her hand. Her father stepped through first, disappearing into it. Her mother stepped forward, and then looked over her shoulder.
“It doesn’t hurt. Trust me,” she said, and melded with the light.
It occurred to Misti that she could leave. Right now. Run to the cages and free Dylori. Find their way out of the Ravenlock Woods and never look back. Find some other way to break the pendant. But she had been running for so long now, and she knew it was time to stop, to face what she had been running from so desperately. Her jaw set, Misti walked into the light.
Warmth surrounded her like a caress, like water flowing around a rock. It tickled, feather-light on her skin. The trip took less than a heartbeat. One moment she was in an ashy field surrounded by silence, and the next she was in a camp, sounds crashing into her—the steady thunk of axes chopping wood, the crackling of fires, the hum of conversation.
She blinked the bright light away, but not before a hand pulled at her arm. She tried to tug away, but her mother’s soft smile came into focus, and she stopped resisting. Her mother guided her through the camp, winding through the spindly trees of Ravenlock Woods. It was no simple dwelling, not the nomadic camp like Misti had assumed it would be since they held meetings so close to Rok.
Did Roorik lie to us, or just neglect to elaborate how settled in these folk had become? They had made a life here. Multi-room tents were scattered throughout the trees, pathways wound this way and that, and wells dotted the ground. They had even set up a pen with cloth for a roof, but no animals lingered in it.
Misti looked closer and noticed they had taken precautions. The heavy gray material forming the tents nearly blended into the trees and the wells sat low to the ground.
Even the people who lingered near the tents or dunked buckets into the wells or stared at her as she walked past dressed in gray, just like her parents. It seemed this was a popular place for all banished folk, not just Divus. Elu, Vagari, and even some Nemora lived in this place. She was surrounded, and she held Zora tighter from fear.
Are all these people sun goddess worshippers, too? Or just murderers who got away from the guards? Just murderers. The idea would’ve been funny if Misti weren’t so terrified. Zora trembled in her arms, Misti trembling along with her. But it was the Divus that caught Misti’s attention the most, the Blood crafters who could help her. Scared as she was of them—of everyone in this camp—hope brightened in her chest at the sight.
Misti also kept her eye out for Zarious, but to no avail. She’d been shocked to see him with these people, shocked that he had somehow become a part of this, that a sun goddess worshipper could rise so far in the Moon Knights’ ranks. Was no position safe? Part of her wished she could see him just so she could fight him. Hurt him, even a little, for such a betrayal to the Moon Knights shouldn’t go unpunished. If Dylori saw him again, he certainly wouldn’t leave this place unscathed. With Dylori’s new outlook on killing maybe I’ll have to bring him in instead.
Her mother tugged on her arm, drawing her attention, and it dawned on Misti that her parents had kept secret who they worshipped. They were quite influential up in Northtown, even if their positions were a little banal, a singer and a baker by trade. A singer and a baker with contacts. If they had kept their faith under wraps, and if Zarious had, Misti wondered how many other leaders walked under the sun, not the moon.
Her mother’s question cut through her thoughts like a knife. “Would you like something to eat?” She gestured to a small table laden with black squash cut into ribbons and pure white whisperberries. Some kind of cooked gray flesh sat on the far end, and Misti wrinkled her nose at the burnt scent. Even their food was disguised, chosen for its color rather than its taste. Black squash was bitter, and whisperberries barely had a taste at all. Her mother plucked some from the pile and offered them to her.
“No, thank you,” Misti replied, shaking her head.
Her mother popped the berries into her mouth, chewing slowly. “We’re nearly there.”
“Nearly where?” Misti looked around. Trees and tents stretched around them as far as she could see.
“At our meeting place,” her father replied, coming up from behind her.
He put his hand on the small of her back, guiding her forward once more. Misti stiffened, wanting to pull away from the touch, but forced herself not to. If she did what they wanted, perhaps they would help her.
They walked for only a little while longer, her father on one side and her mother on the other, and stopped at a small clearing with five stones in a circle in the middle.
“Please, sit,” her father said.
He took one stone, her mother another. Misti chose a third, sitting directly across from them both so they formed a triangle. The stones sat so close together their knees touched, but Misti forced herself not to shift away. She held Zora close, so that her vulnix wouldn’t touch either parent. Her mother leaned forward and straightened Misti’s tunic a little, brushing off some ash from her shoulder.
“You look so lovely, Misti,” she said.
“Healthy, too.” Her father reached for her hair and picked a stray twig from it, tossing it aside before brushing his fingers through her hair like he used to when she was a child.
They were gestures any parents would make. Gentle gestures of love, of familial comfort. But they set Misti on edge. Even their words seemed to grate in her ears. They had made Char lie to her, she knew that much. Why else would Char say their parents were sick? What else did they make her do? Misti felt sick. She had so many questions, and it seemed like now was her chance to ask them, yet only one made it through to her lips. It was one thing she had wanted to know all along—the only thing, if she was honest with herself.
“Why?” The word passed through her lips quiet as a breath, but from the way her parents glanced at each other Misti knew they had heard, even over the sounds of the camp around them. She said it again anyway, louder this time. “Why?”
Her father opened his mouth to speak, but her mother got there first. “We wanted to see you, Misti. We’ve missed you. You’ve been gone for so long, and you never spoke to us even though you wrote to your siblings and visited them.”
“We wanted to see how you were doing, and since you were determined to run away, this was the only way we knew how,” her father said.
Confusion muddled Misti’s thoughts. They hadn’t answered her question and only created more with their response. It sounded like they had planned something, somehow found
a way to bring her here. “What was?”
They touched the pendants around their necks that were just like Misti’s. Just like the one that had caused so much pain. The truth hit Misti like a bolt, slashing through her and rooting her to her seat. Her fingers flew to the Moon cage around her own pendant, grazing against the smooth blue surface.
Staring into her parents’ gentle expressions, Misti asked, “You did this? How?”
“With the help of our goddess, of course,” her father replied, touching two fingers to his forehead and then pointing upward, a show of respect to Ponuriah common among her followers. “You remember our rituals. The ones we did before.”
Flashes of the blue and black vulnixes bleeding out on the table darted through Misti’s mind. Of the blood on the walls, the floor. Of the blood on her parents’ hands.
Her father smiled. “You were so young then, but you remember. Those rituals solidified us in her eyes. Brought us into her view above all the others. She gave us a task of creation. Imbued us with new abilities tailored to our specific crafting that was far beyond our wildest dreams.”
They spoke of Ponuriah like she was alive, but according to the myth, Ponuriah had died during the Great Rift. She had split herself asunder. Destroyed herself so that the world would be riddled with suncreatures.
Her father lifted his palm to the air, and a skreeter landed in it. Misti had only heard of them in stories, in dark tales told in the dead of day to scare children. Skreeters were small serpentine creatures with green leathery wings, a long, split tail, and no eyes above their pointed snout. No legs. No elemental abilities, either. They mostly went after bugs and ate them whole, swooping down and unhinging their jaws to gobble unsuspecting prey. They looked harmless, but a single bite from that toothy maw would paralyze a person in seconds, and a second bite would kill.
Her father’s eyes glowed orange, and the skreeter’s coloring changed. Its green leathery wings grew white, the small bones glowing red underneath the thin skin. Its body brightened as well, tail growing longer and sprouting hooked barbs at the tips. Glowing red orbs popped open above the suncreature skreeter’s snout where eyes would be if it had any. The skreeter opened its mouth wide, screeching as its pink mouth turned white, its white fangs glowing a fiery orange.
Misti couldn’t believe her eyes. The skreeter had turned into a suncreature version of itself. How was that possible? Was the original skreeter dead? Yes, the original creature had to be gone. Corrupted into this…this monstrosity. So suncreatures are created by someone. It was what Misti had suspected since she discovered her parents’ worship—once her faith in Aluriah broke that day, her belief in Ponuriah did, too, and the myth that she split herself to become the suncreatures went with it. Someone else needed to create them. But to see it actually happen, and to have a Vagari do it no less, made her skin crawl. It would be a deed worthy of death for sure.
Dread filled her soul. ‘New abilities tailored to our specific crafting,’ her father had said. Tailored to Vagari crafting, Animal crafting. And if Vagari could create more, could use their crafting in such an evil way, Misti wondered how would it ever end. Maybe this was why there were so many suncreatures. So many more beasts to fight. Because Vagari who worshipped the sun goddess were creating them. She remembered the orange tooth in her pocket. Had the pyrewolf once been a living creature?
An even more terrible idea crossed her mind. If the Vagari could transform any beast into a suncreature, that meant they could transform any companion animal. Had the suncreature pyrewolf once been someone else’s companion? Had the unceg? Was that why they wanted Zora and Dis alive? She clutched Zora tighter, though her vulnix had already tucked herself closer to Misti’s belly in fear, eyeing the skreeter suncreature and trembling. No, she wouldn’t let that happen. She’d never let that happen.
“Beautiful, isn’t he?” Her father seemed oblivious to the horror on Misti’s face, stroking the skreeter suncreature. “She gave us other crafting skills and a means of transportation you’ve already witnessed.”
“Other…skills?” Misti managed to choke out around the fear clawing at her throat.
“Yes,” her mother chimed in. She rested her hand on Misti’s knee, fingers gently curling around the dark fabric there. “After you left she brought her other followers to us in Northtown and together we managed to do many things over the seasons in her honor, preparing Northtown to be the start of her domain like the Lights calls for so the world could be better for it. So it could be better for you and your siblings.”
Better for us? Misti gave a disbelieving laugh. “The Lights only speaks of fear and suffering, of transforming the world into an ashy wasteland, how is that better for me or Char or Danill?”
Her mother kept talking as if Misti hadn’t interrupted. “Killing worthless fools who got in our way to cover our secret. Transforming beasts in her image. Crafting beyond ourselves and our own abilities with the help of others. Like that pendant around your neck. Yours was a prototype, you see, a test to see if it worked. She connected us with Zarious and together we formed a plan.”
“But…the banished one,” Misti murmured.
Her mother simpered. “You didn’t think that banished fool created the orb, did you? That lowlife murderer would never have the power to craft such a marvelous thing.”
“No, he wouldn’t. He wasn’t even a follower. But he was foolish enough to put it around a knight’s neck for a few handfuls of coin.” Her father chuckled, his dual-colored eyes glinting. “We needed to see if it worked, but we also needed a willing participant who wasn’t a Divus, and up at Northtown, we only knew Divus. We didn’t want to try it on any of Ponuriah’s followers or even the banished folk, as that would be cruel, but we did need to test it. We didn’t think it would kill the wearer, but we needed to be completely certain. It was then that Zarious mentioned you, and we readily agreed.”
Anger sparked to life in Misti’s chest, burning some fear away. “It would be…cruel…to test it on banished folk, so you chose your own daughter instead?” Misti spit out the words, but her question was met with only an arched eyebrow from her father and a frown from her mother.
Her father continued in an even tone as if she hadn’t interrupted, “We knew they’d send you to the Nemora, and with some select…pushes…we knew it would eventually lead you here, to the only known meeting place of the banished Divus. If you got injured or died along the way because of the pendant, well, that was a chance we’d have to take in order to test the new crafting. We would’ve known its powers and limitations either way.”
In one breath they said they missed her, but the next they spoke of her being some test subject, and they spoke so easily about Misti possibly dying that her anger burned even hotter. They really don’t care about me at all. The struggle in her mind to separate her parents from the worshippers ended right then and there. Sure, they could act like her parents, with gentle touches and soft words, but underneath it all they were worshippers through and through. Not her parents, not loving people who needed her aid, not ones who deserved her respect, but worshippers with too much blood on their hands to see the color of their skin underneath.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why you didn’t run into any other banished Divus save for the first one who vanished?” her mother asked.
Misti had wondered. The entire journey south from the Ingo Grove, she had wondered why they hadn’t seen any banished Divus on the way. She had decided it was because they were a nomadic race and that luck wasn’t on their side. But it was because her parents had hatched some plan with Zarious to get her here, some plan to use her.
Misti focused on the pendants around their necks so as to not look at their faces any longer. “You’re wearing them now. When did you discover the test was successful?”
Her father stroked the skreeter suncreature. “After Laidly, when you killed that unceg suncreature we set out for you.”
The suncreature they set out for me? Misti’s mind reeled. How did
they send a suncreature after me? How did they know I’d even be there that evening?
“We knew when you controlled the power of the pendant,” her father continued. “We started wearing them shortly after, but the test wasn’t officially completed until today when we captured you. That was the deal, to strap this pendant around your neck so that we could finally see you.”
“The deal with who?” Misti asked.
“With Zarious and with our leader,” her mother replied with a two-finger touch to her forehead, lifting her gaze when she pointed upward as if she could see Ponuriah herself in the sky.
Probably a twisted individual dedicated to their twisted goddess. Misti chewed on that explanation. That was why the vulnix flew south with her last message to Char—Char was actually in the south. They’d been away from Northtown for a while then.
“You spoke about ‘pushes’ to get me here. How did you know the people I spoke to would lead me here?”
Her mother laughed. “Our goddess is powerful, Misti. It’s what we were trying to tell you all along.” She gestured to the camp, to the folk milling about. “And look at all the people turned to her light. Her followers are everywhere, feeding information to key figures, gathering information for us.”
Fear crept up Misti’s back, spreading like a cold, wet blanket. So all these people were worshippers. She knew worshippers could be anyone, but to think they somehow influenced her entire way south, that just because of the pendant she was important enough to funnel here, seemed insane to her. She was no one. No one but an Eildelmann with a Blood orb around her neck.
“We had you followed, daughter, even through the Groves.” Her father lifted his hand and the skreeter suncreature flew away, headed for the food. Misti remembered the Dara Grove, the red leaves that looked so much like eyes. Perhaps they were. “And Char’s letters helped as well, since we could glean information from the vulnixes sent back. We knew where you were and where you would go every step of the way. All for her glory, of course.”
Sunkissed Feathers & Severed Ties Page 32