Page 10 of Between Soul and Vessel
The rabbit’s foot, hanging from my belt, bounced rhythmically as Imari and I followed Empress Avena. Gently, my fingers clasped around it, my thumb stroking the soft, white fur.
It reminded me ofhim. Instantly, the tension in my shoulders eased.
I had served Empress Avena for the majority of my life, and I had gone to the Creator’s Tower, nestled in the northern part of the palace, thousands of times before.
Still, Ihatedgoing there. Detested it with every fiber of my being.
Not that I showed it.
The men in this castle were forced to wear physical masks, but as for us women, ours were invisible, carefully honed from years of hiding our true thoughts and feelings about the world we lived in.
I braced myself as we turned to our left and walked down the last, long hallway, leading up to the monstrous tower.
The tower received its name from Emperor Alaric. He was a primordial god, the creator of everything. In this very tower, he would spend countless hours plucking the stars from the sky, shattering them apart, and creating souls. He made their vessels too, forging life on his great, mighty anvil. Emperor Alaric had made nearly every species known to femalekind—mortals and immortals, animals and mythical creatures—evendragons, which no longer existed. Well, at least, not living ones. Dragons had all been destroyed during the War of the Creators, which led to Emperor Alaric’s defeat, dethroning, and ultimately, his death.
His wife, Empress Avena, had been the one to take his life.
After, she had the tower completely gutted, destroying everything and anyone she deemed to be of no value to her. She had kept the emperor’s journals, his anvil, and his hammer, which she’d used to forge her own creations, infusing a different truth into those she made—infusing them all with lies, that she was the original creator, that Alaric was the imposter.
And they all believed her, especially the Ashamori, her most loyal subjects—which was what Imari was.
I couldn’t blame them. I, too, had also once believed her. I’d even gone against my own mother when shetried to tell me otherwise.
The truth of the past was an easy thing to corrupt, especially when anyone who opposed it had their tongue permanently silenced.
A memory pried loose, and my mother’s sad, smiling face flashed before my eyes, right before her soul was torn from her chest and crushed by the hand of the very female who walked in front of me.
“This way,” the empress said as she turned to her right.
I took a breath, knowing I was going to need it, as I followed her inside the tower.
Dozens of mezzanines were stacked over top of one another, circling the exterior of the tower, open in the very middle, all the way to the roof. Hundreds of feet above, hung from the ceiling, was the remains of a dragon, its magically preserved body on display instead of being given back to the soil, where it could decompose and finally rest in peace. Dozens of stygian forgemasters were at work, experimenting and testing, breaking and—according to them—fixing. Animals howled in their cages while hammers clamored and chisels picked. A horrific female scream sounded from somewhere up above, followed by a whirring noise that made my blood run cold.
“What is this place?” Imari whispered to me, her eyes shifting this way and that.
Where morality comes to die, I wanted to say, but instead, I replied, “The Creator’s Tower is a place for education, where new species are created and great mysteries are solved. It is overseen by the top stygian forgemaster—”
“Victor,” the empress said by way of greeting as the man himself approached us.
The centuries had not been kind to him. His shoulders were permanently curved from a lifetime of standing over top of his . . .creationsas he worked on them. His eyes bulged from their sockets, the whites littered with broken blood vessels. His skin was paler than the dead, which was rather fitting, considering a lot of the things he worked on ended up that way.
Something that could also be said for the empress.
Although Victor and Empress Avena had been able to create some species, they couldn’t create like Emperor Alaric could. They had tried and tried to remake dragons, the emperor’s greatest creation, but they failed time after time. In their desperation, they had resorted to horrific measures, which was why this place had become what it was.
I often wondered if Emperor Alaric had rolled over in his grave knowing what had become of his beloved tower. Could he hear the desperate cries of those tormented inside this terrible place?
I could.
Every night when I laid my head down to sleep, they were all I heard. Even though my room was on the opposite side of the palace, my mind had recorded the sounds, playing them over and over again.
“Your Majesty,” Victor said, voice hoarse. He cleared the phlegm from his throat, making an awful sound. Due to his lifetime of service, Victor was one of the only males inthis realm allowed to go without a mask when in public. He also didn’t have to bow to the empress. It was considered highly disrespectful not to bow to our sovereign, yet the empress didn’t seem to mind. Had it been anyone else, she would have had their head.
But Victor got special treatment.
I had once heard a rumor he had been quite handsome in his younger years—however, I believed the nature of his work had drained him of any beauty, inside and out.
Still, I put a fake smile on my face as his slimy eyes slid to mine, his smiled widening as he said, “Priestess Avriel.” I swore I could hear his back popping as he forced his shoulders back, trying to stand taller.
