Heirs of the Gods

Ch 70: The Queen's riddle

Blaise, like many intelligent people, tended to think faster than his mouth allowed him to speak.

Thoughts came too fast, too frenzied, quicker than rainfall and just as hard to catch. In the time it took for them to calm him down enough to understand his frantic rambling, the true meaning of his words had finally sunk.

"Calm down," Aedion tried, managing to settle Blaise into a seat. "Tell us what happened, start from the beginning."

Blaise laid the pages on the low table and fanned them out. "This happened." He let out a shaky laugh and dragged a hand through his dishevelled hair. "I managed to decipher the code Queen Saoirse left behind."

The pages they'd found stashed inside the book. Parchments full of cramped writing, jotted words, circled phrases and ink splotches stared back at them. But there, between all the jumbled and crossed-out words, a translation. Clear as day, and understandable enough that it was like a punch to the head.

"These pages are from Queen Saoirse's journal. Pages she never published into the official book. These are her writings detailing what truly happened during the Great Demonic War. The details they've omitted for so long, until they became forgotten. Don't you wonder why all those books were burned?" Blaise asked, staring at them with feverish green eyes. "Why they tried so hard to eliminate all evidence? This is why."

Etched into worn paper, a sequence of inky drawings told a story. Writhing cloaked figures danced in front of a blazing flame, their shadows long and ghostly. On their heads, the skulls of animals, in their hands, knives. In the next panel, a small figure surrounded by the gloom, face twisted into macabre pain. A sacrifice. In the next illustration, there no longer stood a victim. Instead, a ram-skulled leader raised wicked hands, as the fire flickered even higher and the dancing turned even darker.

In the last depiction, rising from the flames and ashes, a creature. Long, ghastly face, twisted limbs, scraggly wings. The face of hell. A demon.

As they all drank in the implications, the room plunged into frigid silence.

"It's a sacrifice," Ella voiced, her mind filling to the brim with memories and images. "They're sacrificing people for their summonings."

"Live offerings suffice for small summonings. But the summonings of the magnitude they need..." Blaise clenched his fingers around a sheet of paper. "They're sacrificing people. The most potent of summonings involve fresh blood. Young blood."

The missing children from Rhothomir. The one they tried to steal from Ardowen. Lyra Acer. Ella pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling it churn with bile so strong, that she feared she'd start heaving.

"Fuck." Val closed her eyes and rubbed a hand on her forehead, before letting herself fall in front of the table. She rifled through the stacks uselessly, just as frenzied as Blaise had looked. "Is there anything we can do? There has to be a way. Did she leave anything behind, a way to stop them?"

Blaise hesitated. His lips pulled into a tight line. "I don't think there's a way to stop them. The process has already begun."

"So what are we supposed to do?" Aedion's hand gripped the back of Blaise's seat in a vice grip. "Are we to stand by and watch them wreck havoc and destroy the earth? They nearly managed it the last time. They succeeded in bringing forth the darkest of evils, they sunk us into the worst period our world has ever had. We cannot allow it."

"We can't stop the process, but we can combat their uprising," Blaise said quietly. He held the pages close to his chest, as if hiding them. "The Queen, she left behind instructions on what to do."

Val let out a snort. Humourless and half-hysterical. "What, like a guide on what to do? A five-step set of instructions on how to summon your local Gods to request their help?"