The Fire-Born Tribute

There weren't always dragons in the valley. But now they are gone for good.

The old ones say that the gods have turned their backs on us. A fate we apparently deserved as we had turned our backs on them first, long ago, when we had been an Empire of Glass, with hollows of steel for shelter.

Our ancestors once received grace from the gods freely. Yet, what did we do with those gifts?

We created abominations.

Aetheric energy that captured minds and produced soulless masses with empty chests and eyes full of greed.

Metal deserts in the heart of forests.

Toxic fire in the many waters.

We had twisted the many blessings we were given; forgotten the source of our magic. We declared ourselves sovereign gods of this world and defied anyone to tell us different.

The gods answered our hubris with destruction.

Grace and forgiveness no longer flow to us freely. Now, we need to woo the gods’ favors. Become tributes. Living sacrifices for their divine purpose.

I don’t question the faith. To do so would be an immediate shunning. Outcast into the punishing wastelands that the world outside of the Empire has become. A world that has been overtaken by the Wild Night, where savage hunters thrive in the sprawling Killing Fields.

I shiver to think of them. They are monsters if the stories are to be believed.

Our Protectors that live on the edge of the world are no better. Touched by the gods to combat the Hunters, they protect the fraying edges of the Empire from succumbing to the Wild Night.

As the conduits of the faith, it is the duty of my House to carry out the yearly pilgrimage to the edge. To provide the living sacrifice, the tribute, to ensure the bonds between the Protectors and the protected are strengthened, and the gods appeased.

This year, the lot of tribute fell on the Fire-Borns.

As the only Fire-Born of my House in this generation, that meant me.

“There now, my child. Are you cold?” Melia, who was once my nanny and now lady-in-waiting, shuffles to the fire, stoking it. She absently strokes my hair as she passes my seat.

The gossamer fabric used for my tribute dress barely qualifies as clothing, and yet I’m not cold. I never am. As I think it, heat radiates from my heart, and into my palms, the fire inside me amplified by the fire in the hearth. I press my hands together, in a look of piety I don’t feel.

“Thank you, Melia.” I don’t have the heart to tell her not to bother. Making sure I am properly attired and chaperoned to the temple had given her a sense of purpose this past year. Kept her hanging on longer than the other crones that have chosen to whither and pass from this life.

I’m grateful that she chose to come with me on this pilgrimage, even though only the able-bodied are required to go. Her presence is familiar and comforting here.

She struggles now with hauling a pitcher to make the ritual tea. “Let me get the water,” I say.

“Nonsense, Anala.” She rarely speaks my name plainly, only when she wants to chastise me. Any further rebuke dies on her lips as I take the jug from her, and help lower her into my vacated seat. “You’re not appropriately dressed,” she tsks. “What if someone sees you?”

I look down at my sheer dress framed by the dark curtain of my unbound hair. The shadows of my nipples and at the juncture of my thighs show starkly through the white fabric as it clings to me, accenting the gentle curves of my body as it is meant to.

I had been on each pilgrimage since I was a girl. I’d never once encountered a tribute, and so doubt that anyone would see me. The tribute’s encampment is pitched away from the rest of the pilgrims, surrounded by the Empire’s Praetorian Guard in case the tribute shied from her duty.

As if we would. Even as novitiates, we are trained better than that.

“There’s no one here who would care. And, if they do, it’s not like they can touch me.” Or would want to touch me.

As the living sacrifice, my body is set apart, but as Fire-Born, it’s literal.

I am untouchable.

By nightfall, my body will be an offering, no longer even mine. The gossip among the novitiates is that tributes would pass on to a new form, but would be consumed first. As someone who has cursed her skin since the Fire-Born mark bloomed on me, I found a sense of peace in that. When the lot fell on me, I welcomed it with relief.

Maybe the purifying fire of sacrifice will give me new skin.

Without another word, I move to the tent flap and grab a cloak draped over a chair as an afterthought, letting it hang loosely from my shoulders more to keep from brushing up against someone accidentally than for modesty. I step outside.

Summer fades early this year. I can smell it in the air. The salt winds have already shifted, chafing through this valley.

Dappled sunlight breaks through the canopy of the forest. Just a few summers ago, the dense foliage was so tight, it made the forest floor seem in perpetual nightfall, earning its nickname, The Dim.

How long will it take for this valley to succumb to the unrelenting sun as well? Until this all becomes part of the wasteland? Will future generations even know the comfort of shade?

I walk to the nearby summoning well, set the jug on the blessed earth, and ask for water to fill the jug. I laugh as an answering tickle of breeze tosses my hair about, and a sprinkle of flower petals graze across my face.

I pick up the now-full jug and bow my head in proper gratitude for the gift.

A noise from beyond the clearing breaks my attention. I peer into the patchwork night of the forest but see nothing.

I feel it, though. A presence. And not the playfulness of the gods’ blessings.

This felt heavy.

Like a promise.

Or a prophecy.

A shadow flickers on the ground in front of me. I freeze, softening my focus.

Out of the corner of my eye, a movement. Slight but there.

A trembling in trees.

A horned head.

A whisper of wings.

And then nothing.

#

The temple is nestled deep in the dark womb of the earth. I wait just outside of the entrance, drinking deeply from the chilling air. The sun blazes across the sky toward the horizon.

I’ve never shirked my duties but standing outside of the temple, I find that I want to stay outside and under the sun for as long as possible.

This will be the last time that I will be fully me as I am now. I, like other would-be tributes, have been prepared for service. Told what to expect. Still, all I dwell on is that none of the other tributes ever returned. They went to the temple and were never seen again.

If this is my final moment to own myself despite my cursed skin, I want to remember it.

The horizon erupts into a fiery brilliance that answers the beating in my heart. As a Fire-Born, I take it as a good omen.

Inspired, I release the clasp of my cloak and it flutters away from my body. I raise my arms, in both salute and farewell to that fire in the sky.

I am here, I say to the sky.

The wind whips around me, and I smell the heavy scents of flowers. I don’t need to open my eyes to know that petals rain down around me. Power crawls up from the ground through my bare feet, wrapping up my legs. The air grows heavy with moisture, and it settles on my skin. With a little more power, I can call lightning.

“Your grace.”

A simple address, but the tremor of fear ripples through me and breaks me from my personal revel. I blink the dazzle of stars from my eyes to see Melia’s worried face as she looks beyond me to the woods. I look over my shoulder and realize that the forest is alive with movement.

Dark figures, cloaked in shadows, run toward us, gaining speed.

I’m very aware that I have no guards here. I know in my head that I ought to seek shelter in the temple where the priestesses are preparing the space for my tribute tonight, but I’m rooted to the spot.

I shift the power within me, calling down fire as a shield rather than lightning. I feel it answer me, surrounding me, incinerating my dress, replacing the delicate fabric with rippling flame.

Within a blink, a shadow jumps from the forest. My mind tries to comprehend the dark blur, making sense of the various horns, wings, and hooves as it descends.

The thing had been in the forest earlier; this is the presence I felt watching me. It was real. And it’s here, now.

It skitters to a stop just in front of me. I take several steps back and brace myself to project the fire into a burst around me before focusing it forward. The one offensive spell I’ve mastered.

And then the shadow stretches its hand out to me as if to say “Stop.”

A hand?

It tugs on its head. The veil of undulating nightmares that flows around it melts away to reveal a man’s head.

What magic is this? A cloak of living night and shadows?

Thick black hair whips around a face made for decadence and sculpted from unyielding granite. His black eyes pin me, that mouth…

I realize belatedly that he’s talking to me. The fire I called to me roars too loud for me to hear him. I breathe my power back inside of me until it manifests as a dull flickering flame over me.

“Magnificent,” he breathes. Then, as if he realizes he is gawking, he bows first to me and then to Melia. He moves fluidly despite the bulk of what must be his armor. “We didn’t mean to alarm you, Your Grace, my lady. We… heard… the call of power, and answered thinking you might have needed help.”

As quiet as falling night, the shadows exit from the forest into the clearing. Each one is a jumble of confusing nightmarish parts that flow away from them and become plain black cloaks flapping in the wind as they reveal their faces.

And then I understand. Their magic. A camouflage of nightmares to go undetected through the Killing Fields.

They aren’t the Wild Night pressing in or the Hunters come to prey on us.

These are our Protectors. The line of defense to keep us from becoming prey to the endless night.

The ones who will take me as a living sacrifice to appease the gods.

An older man among the group steps toward me and bows. “Please excuse Ravi’s manner, or lack thereof, Your Grace. I am called Thane. I never thought I’d live to see that kind of power. It gives me hope, that the gods have not abandoned us after all.”

My heart swells at his words of hope, though I don’t quite grasp his meaning. Many in the Empire feel like the conduits of faith were prophets at best, witches at worst. It is best for all of us that we are a nomadic house, spreading what blessing we have among the people.

I nod my head at him to acknowledge his words. I can’t seem to speak. These men…are beyond what I expected. Not that I have been exposed to many men, but I’ve seen the Emperor’s Praetorian Guards training.

I know without knowing that these men are on another level.

And the one that came first, the one called Ravi who looks like he wants nothing more than to devour me, he seethes with power. It coils around him like a separate living thing.

I realize that there is another way to be consumed and yet live. And my prayer now is that I get to experience it first before I die.

“Are you the tribute, then, Your Grace?” Thane asks.

I nod again.

A frisson of energy ripples through the men, low bass rumbling that I feel in my belly. The air feels concentrated, like a storm about to break.

I take another step back.

Thane silences the men with a hiss. “Forgive them, Your Grace. They were in the middle of an assignment, and some”—he says with a nod toward Ravi—“clearly have not proved themselves worthy of being anywhere near here and you.”

A rustle of movement presses in behind me. The priestesses step from the temple, swords drawn. The steely voice of the High Priestess rings across the clearing. “Indeed. This premature gathering is most irregular, Thane.” The way she says his name makes it seem like a title earned rather than a label bestowed at birth.

For Thane’s part, he looks perfectly chastised and bows his head ever so slightly.

The High Priestess beckons me inside, unfazed that I wear a dress of flames rather than the whisper of cloth. “Come, Anala. Let us leave them to their work, as we focus on ours.”

Wordlessly, I turn to follow her.

I feel it again. The look. The weight of prophecy weaving itself into the fabric of the air, wrapping around me like a caress.

Unable to help myself I turn back and meet Ravi’s scorching gaze. I am convinced that he was the one who had watched me earlier. And now, his unspoken message imprints itself within me: I will come for you.