I stood on the broken rock of the door threshold of the temple, with my legs hanging in the chasm of the wood beneath. The drop didn't scare me. I barely registered it.
What I had felt was my stump--aching to my heartbeat. I felt an icy crawling pain along my arm as sharp and insistent as fire ants, telling me that I was alive.
Barely.
The night air was damp and wet, full of rot and the damp odour of stale blood. My blood. Each shallow inhalation was of copper and failure. The Ashtunda tiger had gone--crept into the shadows on which Nyx had torn me out of the nothingness--but I still could feel it. Somewhere out there. Watching. Waiting for weakness.
My name is Asher.
The sound reverberated in my head.
Not mine.
Hers.
Nyx.
That... thing. Primordial. Goddess. Nightmare Completely clothed in skin and ink. She had shredded my name out of my flesh as though it were of hers, she had rummaged in my memory with the indifference, the careless interest of a cat, and scattered fragments of my life back at me like rags thrown to a cat.
This isn't real, I told myself.
A trial. Hogswami bullshit in the guise of ascension.
Say pass, and I wake, and memory recovered, and energy set free, and any reward that this damned mechanism promises to the desperate mortals. Fail...
Void. Oblivion. Or worse--becoming hers.
Perhaps still my body was there bleeding on temple stone. Perhaps I would wake up in good time to die well. Since the universe loves irony.
It was all so fucked up.
So unfair.
My fine hand tugged into a fist, the nails bit so deep as to draw blood. I wanted to scream. To strike my head into the rock till it was all hushpuppy. Anything to smother the racket in my head.
Fragments surfaced anyway.
Adopted. No one special.
I was six when parents butchered--some of them could not pass trial by tearing a gateway open, horrors flowing in, the village was flamed and burned in one night to screams. Me crawling out, all covered with ash and the blood of another person.
My sister.
Taken a year earlier. Five years old. "Ascended." Taken to the academy due to her uniqueness. I never saw her again. Spend the years wondering whether she was dead, broken or just forgotten me.
Since then eleven years on the streets.
Ghost Team. Four shadows. Best mortals could be. Steal. Kill if needed. Survive. Kings of the gutter.
Until the last job.
A noble died. Messy. Unplanned. We disappeared as usual--but the ordeal struck prematurely.
I'd felt it coming.
There were symptoms: the loss of temper, the displays of strength, the increased acuity of senses, too rapid reflexes to belong to an ordinary body. Academy philosophy pounded it into every one of us--report at once. Allow them to chain you with ascension.
Going rogue?
A crime.
Get a trial and fail in public and you are executed and caged before you are a problem.
I thought again of the warning given by Nyx, which was cold and precise.
The sole escape is to go through the trial in this place. The Forbidden Trial.
Forbidden.
The next beings are so harmful that their names are not uttered.
My stomach twisted.
What are you going to beat even she will not call?
"You don't," she'd said. Almost amused. Next to impossible.
And yet she claimed me.
Chosen one.
Pawn. Bait.
My heart ached, and I caught my breath. My heart beat was too quick and too loud in the quietness. Even the humidity did not keep my skin dry.
What if I failed?
What should be still more unpleasant--to wake up to find academy hunters ready, or to have something kill my team? Or my maiden, had she not even passed away--
The voice was like a blade between the ribs in my thought.
Now it's time you go through the Trial of the Forbidden,it And a caution Never mention it to any one that you trail took a trail of a Forbiddenbeing. It is one of the greatest crimes--even to a primordial.
I convulsed, almost falling backwards into the depth. Seeking to claw at her neck with out one pain, at the other, as I choked out a gasp and saw black.
Calm yourself, Asher.
Her voice again.
Inside my head.
It is only me.
Only.
Something caught me off guard at my chest as I heard the word.
Her presence was thrust into my mind-- velvet-soft, touchable, claws close to the surface. Watching. Waiting. Claiming.
I put my palms, one perfect, one crippled, again against my temples and drew in a shaky breath.
Getting used to this?
Not a chance.
Each time she said a word it was another line to cross. Another part of me was going away.
I looked out into the darkness of the temple.
Who the hell was I kidding?
I would never get used to this.
Never.