Page 26 of Pain Run Rampant

It’s not a voice I heard that much, but in my heart of hearts, I know exactly who it belongs to. I turn away from the aether and see a woman standing on the far side of the platform, wearing the clothes she wore in the visions I saw of her: red robes with a few metal pieces here and there. Her long, brown hair is splitevenly, half draping over each shoulder. Her hands are folded over her stomach, a soft smile on her face.

“Mom?” The word escapes me, so soft I can hardly hear it, and yet it echoes in the space between us.

She says nothing else, but her dark eyes meet mine across the space. A single hand lifts as she offers it to me, wordlessly beckoning me to come closer.

So I do.

I go to her, and the moment I reach her, I set my hand in hers. Behind her a stone door opens, a bright white light shining through. She turns and leads me through it, but the moment I cross the threshold she disappears.

I stand in a world of twilight, standing atop water, the horizon caught in a perpetual sunset any which way you look. Above my head the sky is black, like an eclipse is blocking out the sun. But it’s not my surroundings that I’m drawn to, not my surroundings that made that bright light shine through the door—a door that is now gone. I don’t have to look behind me to know it; I just do.

The thing that shined so much blinding light was Invictis. A statue of him. He stands in his ascended form, an impressive eight feet tall, his six wings outstretched behind his back, floating and unattached. His golden, metallic body shimmers with an unnatural glow, as if his form is moving even though it’s not.

His feet, more like armored boots than actual feet, are flat on a small platform above the water I stand on, spread just as his hands are, like he’s welcoming you, taking you in. From inside his golden, faceless head shines a light that makes his whole head appear like a halo.

My breath catches, my lungs condense. It hurts to breathe, looking at him like this. Never has there been a more beautifulruin, so bright and blinding it’s all you can see. If he’s not a god, I don’t know what he could be.

I step toward him and lift a hand. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I feel… I don’t know. I feel like I need to be closer to him, even though it’s just a statue of him, frozen in time. I climb onto the foot-high platform and slip my hand into his.

The moment my fingertips brush against the metal of his hand, the warmth emanating from Invictis’s inhuman form vanishes, and when I blink, his golden hue rusts and flakes away. Before my very eyes he changes, morphing into something else.

Not bright. Not warm. Not the epitome of light.

The opposite.

I wake with a startled gasp, jerking awake as I feverishly look all around to make sure I’m not hand in hand with some anti-Invictis. We’re no longer in the inner chamber; if I have to guess, I’d say Invictis carried me up all those steps.

Frederick sits nearby, scribbling in a journal. Invictis is beside me, gazing into the campfire with a far-off look. When I wake, however, both men drop what they’re doing to pay attention to me.

“Rey,” Frederick says, shutting his journal and setting it on the grass. “You passed out again. Did you see something?”

I draw my legs in to my chest, not saying anything for a while. Invictis watches me with a tight expression, the blueness in his eyes reflecting the orange fire.

“I did, I think.” I close my eyes. The dream, the vision, whatever you want to call it, is still so vivid in my mind. “I felt something in Pylos, too, but this one was… different. I think it’s a memory from the first high empress, something she left for me.”

“For you?” Frederick repeats. “That’s impossible. How would she know you would come along?”

“Well, not me specifically, but me as in the person who’s going to change everything. She set this in motion, and I’m…I’m what she hoped for.” Saying it aloud sounds wrong, like I’m blowing smoke up my own ass. I glance to Invictis. “Do you remember the first high empress at all?”

He lets out a slow breath as he thinks back. “I… it was a long time ago. I was trapped in those labyrinths for so long. I only remember that she could not defeat me, so she imprisoned me.”

“And what about before that?”

Invictis’s brows crease. “When you live an eternity, you tend to forget some things.”

“It’s happened before. You. You wiped out all the humans living here before Laconia became Laconia.” As I say it, Frederick’s mouth drops open, but Invictis appears unbothered, as if he’s mentally telling himself,Good for me.

I continue, “When she was exiled from her home, she was brought to Laconia. She found an empty city. She also found the aether in the undercroft. By bathing in it, she became the first high empress. She stopped aging, gained magical powers, and as more people found the land, she helped them prosper and they worshiped her.”

Invictis acts bored, plucking at the moss on the ground near him. Frederick, on the other hand, is enrapt.

“And when Laconia became Laconia, with people spread out into other cities and villages, you came and started to wipe them out,” I say, shooting a glare Invictis’s way. “She knew she couldn’t defeat you, not permanently. She knew something had to give. She tore you apart and locked you away, in three pieces, and then she did the same to herself. One high empress became three, one for each of the labyrinths. She did so hoping one day something would change.”

I move my gaze to my knees as I hug them closer to my chest. “She knew the aether was connected to Invictis, the lifeblood of the land, of magic itself. For it to change, she would become the first drop to taint it. She was never supposed to find the aether.It wasn’t supposed to happen like that… but it did, and then one day Invictis was set free and the three empresses tried to trap him again—only this time there wasn’t three pieces, there was four.”

Frederick’s mouth thins, like he’s remembering what I told him before.

“The fourth piece, a tiny piece—but enough to make a difference—went inside the belly of the pregnant empress, Krotas.” I pause, feeling a pang of sorrow in my heart. “My mom. That piece went inside me. It’s why I can do what I can do, why I can ignore the madness that made the other empresses lose their minds.”

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