I ran, my feet pounding against cobblestones and dirt, lungs screaming for air. I was trembling, my mind spinning as I thought of my mother, my entire family, dead. I couldn't make sense of it. Part of me wished I'd just died with them, but my father's eyes… he wanted so desperately for me to live.
There was nowhere to run, no one I could turn to that could possibly help.
Could anyone?
Before I could consider it any further, distant screams rose behind me, and my mother's voice slipped into my mind.
'Don't leave us, Aine.' The words repeated, over and over, louder each time. Fresh tears streamed from my eyes as I heard my brother's and father's voices mixed in. Woven together like some monstrous chorus, a cruel reminder that they were dead because of me.
I passed a row of cottages, my eyes flicking to the windows, picturing the families inside. I imagined them warm, asleep...now waiting to be slaughtered because of me. My legs threatened to buckle as I pushed myself harder. I couldn't bring this horror on anyone else. I couldn't be responsible for any more death.
There was only one place I could go, I realized as I eyed the black spire jutting from the center of the village.
I could lie; I reasoned to myself. I could tell them she'd just turned, pretend not to know why.
Part of me knew how stupid that was, the Sanctari knew everything about the flowers. They'd see her and know exactly what I'd done. For the hundredth time that night I cursed myself for disobeying them…for stealing the flower…for thinking I could use something that wasn't meant for us.
I shook my head. It didn't matter, If the Sanctari could keep more people from dying, I had to go to them, even if they burned me for it.
'AINE-,' the creature's voice cut deeper my mind, freezing me mid-stride. I felt my will to run begin to fade, dissolving as it continued to speak.
'I will take you to your family.'
I fought, my vision starting to blur at the edges.
"No…Stop," I shouted, reflexively cupping my hands over my ears to drown out the voice, but it only grew louder, booming in my mind.
A flicker of hope kindled as I realized where I was, just steps from the temple.
A pair of guards looked on uneasily as I approached, one of them shouted something, his arm outstretched as if to say, 'get back'.
I ignored him, stumbling forward. The creature's words felt like chains around my ankles, constricting more and more, until my legs could barely inch forward.
"Sanctari," I breathed as my knees hit the stone, my face following closely behind as I collapsed on the steps. One of the guards stepped closer as my world began to fade, and the darkness swallowed me once again.
I woke sitting upright, eyes flinching through bright lights, at a room I didn't recognize. My breath quickened as I tugged at my wrists, immediately noticing the binds fastening me to the chair.
I blinked away the blur, slowly recognizing the shapes around me. A simple metal table was positioned before me, its brushed surface catching the glow of lights overhead. I craned my head to look at the strange rods bolted to the ceiling; they emitted a blue-white glow unlike any torches I'd ever seen.
Across from me the outline of a person came into focus, unnaturally skeletal and towering. I recognized him immediately as the Sanctari, even without his strange mask.
"My mother, she's turned…you have to stop her before she hurts anyone else. Please," I added, voice trembling.
He stared, a curious expression barely showing on his pale face. His skin seemed more like stone than flesh as he opened his mouth to speak.
"You need not worry, Ashand. The Feral has been eliminated," he answered, his cold eyes piercing mine as he continued.
The feral?
"Does that mean my mother is dead?"
"Yes, your mother ceased to exist the instant the feral took possession of her body." He answered. I flinched at the indifference in his voice, but that small spark of anger was drowned out by the realization that she was really gone. Tears welled in my eyes, dissolving the room into watery shapes, I swallowed hard, fighting to choke them back as he spoke again.
"Do you understand why your mother became…violent?"
"No," I answered, struggling to swallow what felt like a fist caught in my throat. "She just seemed to turn." I made a conscious effort to unclench my fists as he stared at me pensively for a moment.
"Despite my limitations, I find it fascinating that you are capable of deception. Were there no shortage of feed, I might try to make a case to my superiors that you should be studied."
"Deception?" I asked, heart pounding.
A tight smile formed across the Sanctari's lips as he outstretched his open hand, I recoiled as light began to dance upward from it, settling in the shape of a window. My chest thumped as I saw myself on its surface, standing amid the garden the day before. The window tightened to a view of my hand unzipping the rubber suit, and another tucking the flower inside.
My lungs felt shallow, unable to gasp air quickly enough. My chest tightened as the scenes played out in his hand, the next showed me crouched outside his doorway, just as I had been that morning when I'd overheard him speaking with the lord.
How much had they seen? How much did they know? I felt anger overtake my fear as I stared at him, ignoring the window in his hand.
"If you knew, then why didn't you stop me? Rheinan…my father…they'd still be alive," I spat, rage burning in my throat. He seemed to take my outburst in stride, replying evenly without so much as blinking.
"Due to…limitations…placed on my kind, I'm unable to process every surveillance feed in real time. I only began reviewing events once the feral was eliminated." I winced at the word he kept using to describe my mother, the casual reminder that she was dead.
And limitations? Surveillance? What was he talking about?
"Ah, I understand your surprise." He added, as if responding to my confusion. "I am a construct, one of many created by our living gods."
I let out an involuntary laugh that seemed to startle him, only then noticing feet shuffling behind me. I turned my head, managing to make out a guard standing there, a plain metal door to his left. I tugged at my restraints, feeling them tighten around my wrists and ankles in response. They dug uncomfortably into my skin before they finally stopped constricting, there was no escaping this.
If I'm going to die anyways, I may as well get some answers to all the questions that'd plagued me all my life. I let out a deep breath. A weight seemed to lift, my body relaxing, as if it too were accepting my fate.
"Have I said something…amusing, Ashand?" the Sanctari asked with a puzzled expression.
"It's just that, it's no surprise you aren't human…you never looked the part, anyways… if that's what you were going for."
"I see, it's interesting that you're able to make such distinctions." He responded impassively.
"Why?" I asked, impatiently. "Why am I the only one who notices anything?"
He stared for a moment, as if considering whether to answer the question.
"You and your peers were engineered-," He paused, as if considering his words. "Bred to lack that capacity. If I had to guess, it's likely an irregularity in your genome."
"Ge-nome?" I asked, feeling more confused for his answer.
He regarded me blankly. "Put simply, you are a bad seed."
"Bad seed?" I asked, incredulous.
"Yes," He responded, tone devoid of any inflection. "Your purpose is to nourish the flowers, to do that one must reach a certain threshold of emotional responses. Had you remained within parameters, your sibling may have survived long enough to meet that threshold."
Some of the words felt foreign, but the meaning cut through. I felt myself sink; somewhere deep, suffocating. Part of his answer was salt pressed into the raw wound of Rheinan's death. The other made me feel small as I began to understand how little my life, all our lives, meant to the Sanctari and the gods they served.
"What now?" I asked, suddenly, "Am I to be burned?"
"It may be of some solace to you, that no, you will not be burned. As I mentioned, and perhaps you overheard," he nodded to the image of me outside his office, still projected from the palm of his hand, "there is a shortage of feed."
I shook my head in disbelief. Feed. That's all I was, all any of us were. I wanted to curse him out, to spit at him, anything, but he spoke again, motioning to the guards behind me.
"I did enjoy our conversation, Ashand." Then looking past, to the guards, he said. "Please bring this one to garden subsection 12, lay her to rest with the newest planting"
I clenched my fists, fighting my restraints, twisting just enough to see the guards move in. I barely had time to brace before something hard cracked against my skull, and once again my world went black.