A Shard of Sea and Bone

by L. J. Engelmeier

  “We can only help the living. So that’s who we’ll look for.”

  They reached another epicenter of destruction at the edge of the western coast. There was a city below, caged in on one side by the slate grey ocean and on the other by mountains of winter-raped trees. The city had been ravaged. Ships were shattered against docks and floating in pieces out in the choppy waters. The sea-bordered areas of the city were flooded. Buildings crumbled like stale bread, having collapsed on top of one another in a mess of stone. Draven could smell the dust, the brine, the blood.

  In the belly of it all was a crater.

  “Stop here, Sae!” called Staatvelter from the ridge in front of Draven. He brought his hand down three times on the thick scales of Artysaedra’s back, and then they began their descent.

  With one arm, Draven clutched Beaker to his chest, fighting her as she wiggled wildly against his hold. With his other hand, he grabbed tight to his sister’s hide to keep his seat as she rolled, pitched, and yawed. After several long minutes, she alighted on the lip of the city’s crater, amidst half-collapsed walls and dark, exposed earth. They dismounted, and Draven set Beaker down to snuff at the rocks.

  It was impossible to tell what the buildings they were standing on had once been. To Draven, they were nothing but large, uneven chunks of stone covered in dust that his boots slipped in. The rubble could have been a home or a store, perhaps even a post office or an elementary school. There was nothing to indicate one way or the other: no obvious scraps of cloth, no splintered remnants of desks, no street or business signs. Everything looked the same to him, the disaster stretching out toward the sea and into the base of the mountains, worse in some areas than it was in others. It was eerie, especially once Draven noted the coppery smell of blood underneath the debris—the sour of ruptured innards. He was standing on top of hundreds of corpses, and he knew it.

  This is a graveyard.

  “Well, I don’t know what Grandmother was concerned about,” he said, forcing cheeriness. “Everything seems just peachy here. Lovely décor. Death and destruction is very in this year.” His words fell flat amongst them. He glanced back at the others: Staatvelter was kneeling in the dirt, holding a handful of it to his face; Kinrae was turned away with his hands clenched into fists at his sides; Beaker was barking at something; and Artysaedra was yawning. “So,” he said, “the hollowsouls—that’s straightforward. Bets on what did this?”

  Balanced a few feet away on the lip of the crater, Artysaedra rolled her shoulders. He could hear her heart fluttering. She kept closing her eyes and reopening them, blinking rapidly. “I don’t know,” she said. “This city is fucking crushed.” She waved a hand out at the void of air over the crater in front of her. One step and she would have tumbled over the edge. “Maybe earth elementii?”

  Staatvelter shook his head, greasy hair loose around his face today. He dropped a handful of pebbles and tugged his mask back up. “It doesn’t make sense for it to be earth elementii. Everything we’ve seen points to hollowsouls. Except the giant footprints.”

  “Elementii could have made those footprints and this crater,” Artysaedra offered.

  “Doubtful.”

  Kinrae looked over at them. “Neither option accounts for the vanishing state of the Realm.”

  Draven averted his eyes from his brother. He’d been avoiding him all day. He tried to wipe the grease off his forehead with his vambrace, but it did little good. The freezing metal only smeared it around. He pushed his stringy hair out of his face, then winced when some of it got caught in the plates of his gauntlet and were ripped from his head. “So what we’ve got is giant footprints, a demolished city, a bunch of other cities abandoned, millions of people murdered by hollowsouls we haven’t seen hide nor hair of, and a Realm that’s falling apart at the seams,” Draven summed up. “You know—and this might come as a shock to the rest of you—but I think we might be in a little over our heads.”

  “Don’t forget the animals and mermaids we found that just keeled over,” Staatvelter threw in. “Might be related to the Realm vanishing. Might not.”

  “Yes,” Draven said with a sarcastic roll of his eyes, “let us not forget that tidbit, Staatvelter. I guess my point is: if so many different things are going on in this Realm, why are we looking for one culprit? How do we know any of this is connected?”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence to be unconnected,” Artysaedra said, and hopped down from her perch. “Besides, Grandmother sounded pretty damn adamant that whatever’s going on here is related to the murders. That sounds like one culprit to me.”

  “If you say so,” Draven said.

  Artysaedra wrapped her tail around her waist, over the belt that her sword was fastened to. She ruffled her hair and gave an exasperated groan. “If there was a single damn soul here, I would just ask them what happened. But no—”

  “Wait,” Staatvelter interrupted, shock clear on his face. “There aren’t any souls here?”

  “I haven’t seen a single one since we got here,” she said. “I told you. It’s probably the soul-eaters.”

  “Sae,” Staatvelter said. His eyes lit up over the top of his mask, going wide. “Sae, that’s it! Right there! That’s how it all connects!”

  “What connects?”

  He threw out his hands. “This Realm to the murders!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The souls,” he said, emphatic, and grabbed Artysaedra by her forearms. She went unnaturally still, looking down at him. “The Council said the souls of the Guardians were missing. They found their bodies, but their souls were gone. Like they’d been stolen.”

  “Stolen!” Draven parroted with a weak laugh. “Stars above, that would have been a really nice piece of information to have earlier, Staatvelter. We’re not dealing with a murderer! We’re dealing with a soul-stealing murderer! Fantastic.”

  “Draven,” Kinrae admonished.

  “Those Guardians’ souls weren’t found with their bodies?” Artysaedra asked, still in Staatvelter’s grip and failing to shrug him off. Staatvelter shook his head. “None of this trip makes any fucking sense. For fuck’s sake, only the Trinity can ferry souls. And I can assure you I didn’t fucking touch—”

  “I know,” Staatvelter said. “The Council was worried during the meeting. With Penthoseren missing, your sister a child, and you here, there shouldn’t be anyone else that could have taken them.”

  “No. There shouldn’t,” Artysaedra said, firm. “I suppose they could have been eaten, yes, but if it’s soul-eaters, I still don’t know how they got here. I’m telling you: they only appear in the Three Afterlives. They’ve never been seen outside those Realms, and you can only get to those Realms with a portal,” she said with a pained look. “A portal, Naliah. You know what that means. Who that means.”

  “A Guardian?” Staatvelter blinked at her. “You— You think a Guardian did this?”

  “Not just a Guardian,” Artysaedra said. “A member of the Trinity. We’re the only ones other than the Council who can access the Three Afterlives. The only fucking ones, Naliah. So I don’t know what’s going on because none of us fucking did this.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Draven asked, just to snap Artysaedra’s and Staatvelter’s attention away from one another. Staatvelter seemed to get the hint and dropped his hands. “You didn’t do it, and Athirae didn’t. But what about this Penthoseren whoever? The missing Guardian? Why count them out?”

  “She’s presumed deceased,” answered Kinrae, surprising everyone. Draven had almost forgotten his brother was standing there. As soon his eyes found Kinrae, he forced them away. Somewhere safer. “I’ve read many of the biographies that were penned in her Realm before its destruction and several accounts written by expedition leaders who scavenged her Realm afterward. Arielle Penthoseren was the princess of a high-standing Multitudinous family, beloved by many. She was a revered Guardian as well. Even our grandmother speaks highly of her. We are distantly relate
d to her family through our father’s mother, I believe, though I could be mistaken.” Everyone’s attention had zeroed in on him now, and he flushed under it. “But to return to my point, when Arielle’s Realm was destroyed, she went missing. Her body was never recovered, and no one has seen her since. Most assume she perished in the disaster, so it’s impossible for her to have perpetrated any of this.”

  “I’m sorry,” Draven said, mind tripping over what Kinrae had just said, “did you just say her Realm was destroyed? As in, destroyed like the Realm we’re currently standing in, Brother?”

  “I suppose?” Kinrae said. His gaze flitted away. “Writing depicts the dimension as reduced to little else but a desert wasteland. There were no survivors amidst it. No one knows what caused its destruction, but the Council proposed that it was a cataclysmic storm that swept the Realm before it had time to react.”

  “And she vanished in the middle of it. Never found,” Draven said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s a big coincidence. You don’t find it the teensiest bit suspicious? At all? Like she fled the scene of a crime? We’ve both seen the power of a Guardian. She could have easily done that to her home.”

  Staatvelter frowned visibly through his mask. “Are…you saying what I think you’re saying? You think Penthoseren killed her own Realm? That a Guardian has been lying low for a hundred thousand years in the Infinity and resurfaced just to massacre another random dimension and murder other Guardians? That’s a conspiracy if I’ve ever heard one.”

  “It’s not a horrible idea,” Artysaedra said, to everyone’s shock. “It might explain why the Council is trying to hide it. If it looks like they can’t keep the Order in check, then what would stop our parents from stepping in to challenge their authority over the Infinity? And how would they tell the Guardians the threat is internal without inciting chaos?”

  No one had anything to say after that.

  There was a tug at Draven’s buff coat, and he looked down. Beaker had her teeth sunken into the undyed leather and began growling. “What?” Draven asked her. She let go, unleashing a wailing howl. “What in the worlds is it, darling?”

  “She wants you to follow her,” Artysaedra said. Her tail twitched around her waist, and when everyone stared at her, she tried to look nonchalant. “What? I just get dogs sometimes. No need to make a big deal of it.”

  Beaker seemed to take Artysaedra’s words as a signal because she darted off at break-neck speed through the rubble in the direction of the bay thundering against the unseen shore.

  Draven darted after her, calling for her to wait. His first couple of steps over the debris were awkward. His feet slipped on dust and shifting rocks and his ankles rolled, but after a few minutes, he got the hang of it. He could hear the others following behind him as he jogged over half-collapsed walls and down into pits of crumbled stone. His sword smacked against his leg with every step, but after about a mile, his lungs began to ache from exertion. He wasn’t even at a twentieth of his top speed, evidenced by Artysaedra, who quickly overtook him in a blur of metal and rushing wind. She leapt through the destruction unhindered.

  Maybe I should spar with General Nordus or some of the trainers in the Keep, Draven thought, panting. I’m being outdone by my little sister. And I’m supposed to be protecting her.

  Ahead, Beaker was weaving through the rubble and barking the entire way, though she was now trailing after Artysaedra, who had passed her up and vanished somewhere in the distance.

  “Guys!” Artysaedra called, her voice rolling over the fallen city. “Guys, you need to see this!”

  Draven didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

  On a large hill of pulverized stone, which had likely been a tall building, was a Guardian. A dead Guardian.

  Propped against a cracked wall, she sagged amidst a bed of indigo autumn crocuses. Her aubergine silk asa, and the white linen robe beneath it, were parted to reveal her heavy breasts, which were stained with blood that was dark against the reddish brown of her skin. There was a gaping hole beneath her ribs, and in her left hand was her heart, stilled. The empty sockets of her eyes stared back at them, and crusted blood streaked her cheeks like tears. It was unnerving.

  “I…remember her. The Guardian of Nightmares, Marette Huan,” Staatvelter said quietly. He knelt in the rock, fist pressed to his left shoulder. “Glalla mund heil vaug.”

  “So everything is connected,” Artysaedra said, too much satisfaction in her voice for someone standing in front of a murdered body. She stepped out of the arc their group had made, placed her gauntleted hand on the curve of Marette’s shaved scalp, and tilted it forward to inspect it. “Soul’s gone. No wounds I can see other than the obvious. No magic I can see, either. No scent other than her own.” Draven could smell blood and feces and beneath it the scent of pomegranates and sugar. There was something else, though. Something sharp. “She didn’t do this to herself.”

  “What was your first clue?” Draven quipped, and ignored the way his stomach rolled when Artysaedra let Marette’s head flop back against the wall. “Was it the lack of blood here? The fact her eyes are missing from the scene? Her somehow ripping out her own heart? Or the literal writing on the wall?”

  At that, Draven gestured up at the blood-scribed message scrawled across the chunk of a stone wall over Marette’s head. No one had mentioned it yet.

  To him, it was nothing more than three lines of incomprehensible swirls and spirals that were attached seemingly wherever they pleased, dots placed randomly amidst them all. Something about it was still oddly familiar.

  Kinrae was the one who spoke up. “It is High Su’net. Albeit the characters are poorly scribed. It is legible enough, however, that I believe I can parse its meaning if you’d like me to.”

  High Su’net—that was why Draven vaguely recognized it. There were several books in the restricted sections of the Hanaran archives written in the tongue, books he always passed over. High Su’net was a finicky language. The slightest twist of a character—a curl or swirl even a degree off its intended angle—changed the entire word, which was disastrous when every word was its own unique character. There was no alphabet in the language.

  Over the years, to fix the problem, Low Su’net had been developed, a phoneticized version of its predecessor using the Common alphabet. Spoken, the languages sounded identical, but written, they had about as much in common as toads and nuns.

  “Ah,” Draven said. “I’m afraid I’m a bit rusty at High.”

  Artysaedra hummed in agreement, backing away from the Guardian’s body to look at the three lines written on the wall. “Jaimess never forced me to learn to read anything other than Low Su’net. And thank the stars for that.”

  Staatvelter frowned at the wall. “I’m glad you recognize it at least. It all looks like nonsense to me.”

  Draven rolled his eyes. “Oh, everything looks like nonsense to you, Staatvelter. Why do you think we all ended up here in the first place?”

  Before Staatvelter could respond, Kinrae said again, “I can translate the message.”

  Artysaedra slapped him on the shoulder. Metal thumped metal, and the blow knocked Kinrae forward a step. “Well, go on then. Be useful.”

  If the words bothered Kinrae, his face didn’t show it. Without a beat of hesitation, he read. His words flowed, his accent shifting out of its brogue to caress the Su’netian words properly and turn them into their own music, like the whispers of rushing water. The whispers of the dead. “Nferf dok ankh dok wunen ekonei nyallaeKah.”

  Artysaedra echoed him in translation, her black eyes contented, sparkling with an indecent thrill: “Fear seven and seven at a ruler’s—no, the king’s—the king’s beginning bell. Primordial bell. First bell, maybe.”

  “Gfen esse kaeru en nekshnevt asain avak eihuet feren jos exo.”

  “What long hides—hid—in darkness again awakes to bring fire to days—no, to worlds. Definitely worlds,” Artysaedra continued. She laid her hand on the wall as if it were a
precious thing. “What has long hid in darkness has again awaked to set fire to worlds.”

  “Daf kepedzekinrae,” Kinrae finished out, “yen ende Die: per ama heik ankh per de heik grenkesh?”

  “Ask a dragon’s child whose name is death—or was death—who she is and who she’ll take, or did take, or takes. Fucking lack of tense and articles in this language. Makes all this really murky. Stars, I hate this tongue.” She paused and spread her hand over the last character of the bloody message. “But this is our clue. This is what we solve to unravel everything.”

  “And does it happen to mean anything to you? Because all I’m getting out of this,” Draven said with an edge of facetiousness, “is that Arielle has a proclivity for badly written poetry scrawled in blood, like some overdramatic teenager’s magnum opus. You’d think that would have made the memoirs.”

  “You really think Arielle is the one who wrote this?” Staatvelter asked, his brow furrowing as Beaker tugged at the toe of his boot, growling. A shrill whistle by Draven stopped her in her tracks, but her ears remained flat against her skull.

  “Isn’t that what we decided earlier? And it says she, doesn’t it? What she’ll take?” Draven paused, then reluctantly turned to Kinrae. He was afraid to meet his brother’s eyes. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  Kinrae didn’t look at him, but he did give a small, terse nod. “I have to express my doubts, though,” he said, “along with Guardian Staatvelter. Arielle’s Realm spoke almost exclusively in Lu’va. They wouldn’t have used Su’net, and Su’net in and of itself is rarely utilized anywhere in the Infinity anymore. Very few speak it, and even when it’s written, people tend toward Low Su’net; the Common alphabet makes the tongue more consistent, easier to understand, though not by much. As for High Su’net, I’ve never seen it used outside of the upper echelons of pureblooded drake aristocracy. Arielle had some very distant drake lineage on her father’s side and her mother was a drake, but she herself presented as a panther animalus. Drakes rarely allow non-drakes to study the language, so her exposure to Su’net, and to this written form of it specifically, would have been minimal.”