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CHAPTER 3 - LANCELET
To whom did one prayafter being dead and returning to life?
Marzanna was queen of eternal rest. Death was her dominion. She embraced rotting flesh and chiseled bones. She swung a sickle.
Was she to whom I should now pray? Or had she discarded me like ashes, like carrion, like a worthless corpse?
Or perhaps it was Zorya to whom I owed my devotion, my gratitude? Was it she who had reclaimed me, queen of light and life? Had she pulled me into her warm embrace, refusing to let the shadows carry me away?
If so, damn her to hell. Damn them both.
Life was unexpected. Death was supposed to be a certainty.
You made a choice—or someone made one for you—and your last breath was gone before you knew it.
I had known it. I had felt mine going.
By rights, I should have died back in that place. Back in that tomb. Back in Meridium.
Yet here I was. Made new. Reeking flesh and full of holes.
A brand new Lancelet.
No one could tell me why I was here, how, or for what purpose.
I couldn’t remember crawling through that arch. I couldn’t remember being alive enough to do so.
Yet, somehow, I had passed from death to life.
I could swear I had died. Or had been close enough to it to have made no difference.
Yet here I was, forced back into the land of the living.
So, to whom did I pray?
Did I pray for gratitude, guidance, or forgiveness? Did it matter? Was there anyone listening at all?
I had seen the face of the gods in the mouths of those hungry children. The power and the horror. The helplessness and the futility.
Thedivinewas a gaping, hungry mouth.
The divine was nothingness.
I had wanted to sink down into that nothing. To let it consume me.
But then I had seenher.
Fragile like a bird. Wings broken but healing. Trying to fly.
