I did as she asked, and though nothing in the room moved or changed, as far as I could tell, now there was noise: The sound of crashing waves and seabirds crying far above.
“You can open them now,” Rhiannon said.
When I did, I found myself somewhere else entirely, high above the raging sea, at the edge of a rocky cliff. I gasped, stepping backwards, right into Rhiannon. “Careful,” she cautioned. “This is real. You can be hurt here, just as in the open world.”
“Theopen world?” I stammered, still staring out at the sea. “Where am I now?”
“Oh, still on Kraitos, you haven’t traveled so far as that.” Rhiannon smiled as she slipped out of her high heels. “And though you can be hurt here, we are notexactlyhere.”
She turned away from the cliff, beckoning me to follow her as she picked her way through lush, tall grass that undulated in the wind. We stood at the bottom of an enormous forested hillside. Everywhere I turned, there were spirits. But they were like none in Orphium. They fit none of the usual classifications. These spirits were at rest, in harmony with the land, blinking in and out, obviously curious about me, but barely taking note of Rhiannon.
And what was more, here I felt that same sensation as in the library. The vibration of some alien power. Only here it felt less strange. In fact, it spun out in concert with the whisper of the wind through the trees. Was this what magic felt like?
My heart felt as though it might swell out of my chest when a flight of herons swept across the field, upward towards someunknown location. Tears slid down my cheeks, though I could not fathom why—why this place felt like home.
Rhiannon turned to me, a wistful smile on her ethereal face. “I am sorry, Ares. That feeling you have now? You will carry it with you all your life. Homesickness for a place you may never come to, a world we are not meant for.”
“Where are we?” I asked, desperate to know why I felt this way.
“Otrera,” Rhiannon said, as though I might glean some essential knowledge from the name.
Itwasfamiliar. There was lore about this, wasn’t there? “Otrera was the first of the Maere?”
Rhiannon nodded. “Yes. She was Amarante and Tanith’s child.”
I sensed she might say something else, that she had something to add about Otrera, but she stayed silent, so I asked the first of many questions that came up. “The Saints?”
“The gods,” Rhiannon replied, sinking down into the grass, wrapping her arms around her legs as an enormous reptile crept shyly out of the trees far above us. It had scales, as well as a silky green ruff around its neck. It took a few delicate bites of a treetop, then paused to look at us. Rhiannon raised her hand to it, bowing her head as she slapped my thigh.
I mimicked her motions, and when I raised my head again, the creature was gone. “What is this place?”
Rhiannon sighed, though it was something between a deep breath and a powerful exhalation. “This is where all parapsych power originates from. It is the heart of our planet, the one place the Corps and the Authority cannot touch.”
“What about the Consulate?” I asked, though I thought I already knew the answer.
“Nor them,” Rhiannon said, her wistful expression turning sour. “The Consulate has done their best, but they are a corrupt organization. You know this. And they can never know this place exists.”
“What does it all mean?” I asked. “I mean, why am I here?”
Rhiannon shrugged. “You’ve been trying to sort out your place in things all your life, right?”
I nodded. She’d cut to the quick of me so easily.
“This is it,” she murmured, gesturing around her. “Thisis our place.Thisis our origin.”
“But what does itmean?” I asked again.
Rhiannon sighed. “It would be easier to show you. Are you up for a walk?”
We walked up the hillside, along a stone path, passing the place where the giant reptile had appeared. Everywhere there was birdsong and the sound of the sea. As wind flowed through the trees, a symphony of natural noise filled my ears. There were no cars here, no factories.
The smell of green things and fresh water filled my nose. Tears pricked endlessly in my eyes, emotion filling me to the brim with a bittersweet longing that had, perhaps, lived inside me all my long life. The trees here were so large it would be impossible to wrap my arms around them.
In all my life, I had never seen such a place. When we crested the hilltop, we found a clearing that looked out onto a small range of mountains. Dotting the terraced hills and valleys were the types of structures I had been taught to believe were built by humans in the ancient world. But now I saw that those humans had only been copying this place, whatever this was.
“Sit,” Rhiannon said, gesturing to a large outcropping of huge black boulders. She climbed them effortlessly, though I struggled a bit.
When I found a place next to her, she smiled, pointing to a cluster of columned buildings in the distance. “Those areAmarante’s temples.” Her arm moved, sweeping over the valley to the opposite side. “And those are Tanith’s.”
