Between Deaths: Chapter 2
A Terrible Gift
When Xara finally awakens, everything is black. She tries to sit up and bangs her head on something above her. Rubbing her forehead, she squints her eyes in the darkness and tries to see what’s in front of her. Upon closer examination, she can see what appears to be a crack of light running in a rectangular shape above her body. Am I inside of something? She reaches her hand out in front of her. Her fingertips rest a few inches from her body against a cold, hard surface. It feels like steel. Suddenly, a light ring illuminates right in front of her face, blinding her.
“Good, you’re awake. Come on out, I have something for you.” The ring brightens and dims in sync with the tonal fluctuations of the voice.
“How do I get out?” Her voice sounds too close in the cramped space.
“Just press in the middle of this circle. Last room at the end of the hall.” The voice sounds like Amna.
Xara does as instructed and pushes in the center of the ring with both hands. A click, and the lid of her container hisses and moves up and away on its own. As she pushed the lid, she felt a pinch in the soft meat of her right inner elbow. Examining her arm, she notices a needle. Even though the light is dim, she can tell the dark liquid in the IV tube is red. As she sits up, the right-hand wall of her container slides down into the platform beneath her. She swings her legs over the side of the platform and sees clear vessels stacked nearby. They all appear to be filled with deep crimson liquid. Was Amna doing a blood transfusion on me?
The room around her is cavernous with a rounded ceiling. A bar of light runs the perimeter along the floor and in a circle around the top of the domed ceiling. The hallway is also rounded, with a single continuous tube of light along the ceiling that follows its length. As Xara walks down the hall towards the door at the end, she raises her hand to her throat. Her fingers find nothing out of the ordinary, no broken skin. Did she imagine what happened in the forest?
The door to Amna’s room slides open right as Xara reaches it. This room is even more gigantic than the one she was just in with a monumental, round skylight. The three moons provide all the light they need to see their surroundings. Amna is in the center of the room beneath the skylight, half-submerged in a milky pink pool that’s in symmetry with the skylight. Her white rag of a dress is gone, and she’s now clad in metal mesh. Her hair is held back by a silver band that wraps around her head, emblazoned with innumerable miniature copies of the moons above.
“Welcome, Xara. I trust you slept well.” She gestures towards her. “Come closer.”
Xara hadn’t realized she’d stopped in the entryway in surprise. “You’ve had a real glow up.” Her eyes dart around the room, afraid to alight on Amna for too long. “I can’t swim, if you’re wanting me to join you.”
“I’m sure your feet will reach the bottom,” she lets out a tinkly laugh. There’s no trace of the fearful woman she was before. “I’m not sure swimming will be a problem for you anymore anyway.” She looks from Xara down to the edge of the pool in front of her, again inviting her to come in. The floor descends softly into the pool there.
For the first time, Xara realizes she’s not wearing her priestess robes anymore. Instead, she’s clad in a wrap dress the color of new leaves. “You don’t mind if I get your dress wet?”
“It’s your dress now.”
At this, Xara carefully descends into the pool and stands a short distance from Amna. “You look like a princess.”
Amna laughs again. “You know what a princess looks like?”
“We had books. We had info towers too, but the priestesses weren’t allowed to use them. We were allowed to ask questions, though. Then they’d consult the machine and tell us the answers.”
“It’s hard to know what question to ask if you can’t have free thought first.” She takes a couple of steps forward, her long black hair pooling gracefully around her body. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“Because you bit me? Why’d you do that?”
“For a few reasons. I’ll tell you one of them now. Turn away from me and lie down. Float.”
For some reason, Xara does as Amna says once again. She doesn’t really have to think about it. It just seems like the right thing to do. She looks up at Amna, who is looking down into her eyes, too.
“The last few days, I’ve been giving you my blood to remake you. Unfortunately, blood that’s been sitting around in containers leaves out the most special part. To fully experience your new self, you must have it warm from my body.” At this, she brings her hands up out of the water. On one hand, she has a ring encompassing her whole index finger, with a long, knife-like nail. Imperceptibly fast, she uses the jeweled point to slice her opposite wrist. “Open.”
Xara watches Amna’s blood as it pours from her wrist down into her own waiting mouth. Xara’s consciousness draws back and immediately explodes outward. A thousand violins playing at once. The creaking of the moons on their axes. Ancient buildings with pillars made of the whitest stone. All of her eyes open wide, devouring a millennium worth of lives lived.
“You’ve become a part of history,” Amna’s voice brings her consciousness back to the milky rose pool.
“Why give me this gift?” She stands and turns to face Amna again.
“It’s not a gift. Being frozen in time is a punishment. You may have saved me, but it was at the cost of eight other lives, that you so readily and thoughtlessly disposed of.”
Xara is silent for a moment. “Well, what do you expect when I’ve been part of sacrificial rituals since I was 12?”
“Those sacrifices should’ve taught you the value of life. That their lives were worth enough to be taken by the Way. Wasn’t that what you were taught?”
“I guess it depends if you’re a chalice half full or half empty type of priestess.” Xara looks more deeply at this confusing woman. She transforms from a lamb, to a predator, to a princess moment to moment.
“I’m not a princess or a queen. I’m a king.” Amna lightly grabs Xara’s chin. “And now you’re beholden to me, new one. You’ll live forever…”
“…instead of a servant to the Wayfinder, one to you.”
“Did you get the login notification?”
“Excuse me? Login?”
“You have been successfully logged in to ____. Press tattoo to initialize.”
Xara splashes wildly and rights herself in the pool. “What tattoo!”
“So you do hear it! Look.” Amna took Xara’s left arm and rotated it towards her. Xara sees a fresh, black, circular tattoo near her elbow. “Touch it.”
Xara hesitantly presses her index finger against the tattoo.
“Initialization complete. Welcome!”
Immediately, Xara is struck by a red-hot skull and crossbones glyph above Amna’s head. “Wha-Why is there a skull over you?”
Amna raises her eyebrows. After a second of silence, she suddenly bursts into laughter. “I imagine you’d see the same if you could look at the sun.”
Xara logs that comment away for now. She feels utterly confused. As she heaves a frustrated sigh, the skull and crossbones glyph above Amna’s head suddenly intensifies, glowing brighter until it becomes blinding. Xara shields her eyes, but the light burns through her eyelids, searing into her mind. She feels the ground give way beneath her, her body weightless and spinning. The last thing she sees, larger than life, is Amna’s lips curled up in haunting, gleeful laughter.