At the center of each woven part, there are raised, wide and flat slabs of grey stone. Dark channels have been cut into these slabs, radiating outward like veins from circular depressions in the center. The hollowed-out parts are darker than the rest of the slabs…stained, I think.
My chest tightens as I realize what I’m looking at:Altars.
And those dark stains are likely from blood.
Briar moves to stand beside me, neither of us speaking for a long moment.
Finally, she whispers, “What the hell have we just stumbled upon?”
I don’t answer because I don’t want to say it out loud. My mind races with possible explanations, each more horrific than the last. I want to vomit. I want to close my eyes. I want to run.
Instead, I make myself move methodically through the space, studying everything. The stains; the massive cages along the back wall; the piles of bones and large skulls; the way the ceiling on the far side looks like it might open into a larger channel—presumably to allow for a creature as massive as a dragon to be pulled down here.
There are countless shelves full of glass jars that look to have been designed for a very specific purpose; they’re wide-mouthed and heavy, with grooves cut around their necks as though made to be held in a specific kind of frame, and symbols etched into the glass itself, each one unique. A few still have what appear to be tiny, fading vapors of different colors in them.
Briar has gotten caught up in an area full of tables and shelves covered with books, one of which she’s reading with wide eyes.
She hands it to me as I approach. “I think this is a record book, maybe.”
“Looks like it,” I agree, flipping through the brittle pages. Even though we can’t read much of the language it’s written in, there are charts, numbers and tally marks that tell a clear enough story. The mundaneness of it makes it so much worse, somehow. As though this is all normal—like they were merely counting and cataloging brainless livestock.
It’s wrong.
Even when I was desperate to hate dragons, to distance myself from them, I knew better than this. To reduce them to whatever has happened in this room…
I shake my head, flipping through more books at a frantic, desperate pace.
Within them, I find stomach-turning diagrams of blood-letting, wing-tearing, bone-crushing. Instructions for burning broken pieces over divine flames, and what to do with the resulting ashes and smoke. There are pages covered in messy notes, including drawings of various types of chains and collars and brands, and other tools that I don’t want to look too closely at.
I see sketches of jars similar to the ones covering so many of the shelves, as well. The word beside them, I’m able to translate because it’s the same one the common tongue uses—essence.That’s what they called whatever they collected in those glass containers. The record books seem to catalogue this collection alongside the notes taken on whatever dragons were processed during any given week.
Clearly, this was a vast, organized operation.
My eyes cast about. Looking for what, I don’t know. Just something less disturbing than the books. But my search is in vain;everythingabout this place is disturbing, including the set of stairs I eventually settle on, which spirals up higher than I can see.
“The Temple of the Mouren Flame…” I say, my voice hoarse. “It's directly above us, isn't it?”
Briar looks up at the ceiling. “That would be my guess.”
The full, terrible picture begins to assemble itself, and I can’t shut my eyes and ignore it any longer.
Below the very temple meant to honor the gods and the uniting power of their dragons, the rulers of Mouren found a way to dismantle it all. They brought dragons here and they opened them up and they siphoned out whatever they needed to take control of their essence, to make themselves into something the gods never intended.
We stole it.
This is what Reave meant.
An emotion I can’t name surges through me. Something ancient and furious, tempered by a sorrow deep enough to drown. It feels too big to be only my own; I think it might be coming from Sesca, that maybe she’s reading my thoughts, or even seeing some part of this horror through my eyes.
I find myself longing for her voice to follow the feeling, for her warmth to reach me down here in this dark place.
But her voice doesn’t come.
I don’t know if it’s because we’re too far from one another, or if there simply are no words that can properly speak of this grievance. Like she knows I simply need to see it, nothing else.
It makes me wonder if some buried part of her already knew about this horrible place, but she couldn’t find thewords to tell me about it. Not the particulars, maybe. Not this room, these walls, these altars. But somewhere in the depths of her—in whatever accumulated memory she carries from lives before this one—I fear she has to havesomeknowledge of what went on here.
Is that why the gods sent her to me?
