The Tribe of the Beyond Prologue

This is the full version of the prologue of my book 1! (final draft before developmental edit)

PROLOGUE

Water.

The spiraling chain of spiced liquid fell onto the blue flame. Tipping the jug over the fire was a broad figure that, himself, resembled a shadow like the ones cast against the crude stone walls. He was a dark shape with waist-length black hair and eyes that glowed red.

Why was he here?

Forced to hunch under the low ceiling, the man watched the magic bloom in front of him. The blue flames coughed up a cloud of smoke that filled the small cave and made the darkness even more potent. The smoke made the man’s eyes water and stung his nostrils.

He knew why he was here and yet the question still remained. Why was he doing this?

There was no hope left and yet he grasped for it.

The ritual was almost complete. All he needed was the signifying ingredient—a sweet-smelling, poisonous fungus that he crumbled in his hand and cast onto the fire.

The color changed from cobalt to carmine. A red that scorched the cave ceiling and made the air taste like blood.

Anastasius crouched there for a moment, letting the warmth overcome him. It made his skin feel raw, but he lingered.

Anastasius sighed, removed his clothes, and stepped into the fire. The red flames lapped at his feet and charred his legs but it didn’t hurt. His body dissolved and reformed in the other realm.

The firepit he reconstituted in was surrounded by walls made of thick stone slabs. He was in a small circular chamber off to one side of the Nightlands castle. He stepped out of the flames only to shiver at the chill of the stone against his bare feet. In front of him was a box with a folded letter perched on top. He read the ornate script: I took the liberty of choosing your outfit for tonight.

Anastasius tossed the letter aside, grumblingly, and opened the box. Once more he sighed.

In the outfit his goddess had chosen for him, Anastasius walked down the halls. The snail shell adornments clacked against his thighs as he moved, the echoes of his impractical leather sandals beating every grey surface of the castle.

He made it to the drafty, stone throne room and took a luxurious, if slightly mocking, bow.

A clap minced the air. “Anastasius, you came.” The goddess of death lounged across her pillowed throne. Inscrutable light emanating from the stained glass windows, perhaps from the very heroes and villains depicted there, cast the room in a violet glow.

“I didn’t think I had a choice in the matter,” Anastaisus said coldly.

“Mmm, yes…” she said, examining her manicured talons. Anastasius expected her to say more, but she didn’t.

“I’m here about my sibling.”

“Mmhm,” she purred, giving a long appraising glance down his figure. “I like your outfit.”

His face didn’t change. “You picked it.” He plucked at the black and silver chiton that wrapped his legs and half his chest. “I am not a fan of open-concept wardrobes, my goddess.”

She laughed and let her skink-blue tongue draw over her teeth and tusks. Despite the grin, her eyes pinched at the sides. Anastasius knew that look, that barely-disguised loathing. He wore it often himself.

“What do you expect me to do about your sibling?” Asphyxia said, curling a white tendril of her ruby-decorated hair around her finger.

Anastasius’s mouth opened, then closed. He had expected a lot more avoidance on her part. “I—I need you to stop it. They can’t be lost. They can’t be separated from their family like that. They’ll die on her own. They can’t or I’ll…” His fists trembled as they clenched.

He didn’t know what he’d do.

Asphyxia threw her legs over the side of the throne and let her head dangle off the arm rest. “Fate’s a funny little thing,” she mused. “I’ve met him. He’s bad at cards.”

Anastasius shook his head. “Fate is whatever you make it. You can change fate, you’re a goddess!”

“I’m the goddess of death, my love. I have my domain and I am not one to step outside my confines.” She smirked. “I would need something…shall we say, lucrative, to get me to step even a toe out of line.”

Anastasius tried to retain the growl deep in his throat. He rarely lost control, but Asphyxia was toying with him. Chiding him.

He tried to think of his sibling. He needed to stay calm. For them.

They were like a poppy springing from the barren, icy ground. The only color in his life, the only sign that thaw was soon to come. Thaw was coming.

He released a slow breath and tried to force the strain from his hitched shoulders. “I have other people I can go to, if you insist on being stubborn.”

“I am a boar,” she said, smiling with a molding sweetness.

And I am a foolish child. He had gotten his hopes up, thinking this spineless sow would help him in any way. Thinking he mattered enough to get her to listen.

He turned away and started toward the main entrance.

“Going so soon?” Asphyxia asked.

“I didn’t think I had a choice in the matter.”

“You always have a choice here.”

He stopped walking. “If I had a choice, I would never come, Asphyxia.” He looked over his shoulder and repeated something his sister said once. “You can only stretch the word compromise so far before it loses its meaning.”

He left her there, playing with her drapery. As he stepped into the hall, he heard his goddess’ voice booming after him, “Be a good boy and water the garden before you leave!”

“Yes, my goddess.”

After his duties were complete, he constructed the ritual once more and returned to his own realm. He slowly dressed in his thick wool garments and donned his goat-hide boots.

He was crouched in the dark of the small room for a long time, listening to the base-tone wails of the storm outside, whining as they slipped through the cracks in the uneven, wooden door.

Anastasius looked once more at the lumber in front of him, his eyes glowing like the embers that no longer stared back at him. Then he unplugged the wooden slab from the entryway and stepped into the flurry.

The gods were a petty lot.

There was no conversation to be had about the fate of his sibling. The gods had made their choice and he was very unlikely to get them to crouch down and see him and his situation eye-to-eye.

He transformed.

Thick fur sprouted down his back, fingers morphing into claws, spine and joints reconfiguring into a hunched then quadrupedal shape.

In the form of a huge wolf, Anastasius walked down a sinuous path carved into the side of the icy peak he had sheltered in. Down, down—the trail was a layer of compacted snow made from centuries of ancient footsteps. His scruffy black pelt contrasted with the surrounding white and the slices of pale blue indicating sky-reflecting ice.

Living on the altitudinous, barren cliffs of the Mountain for most of his life, he had grown to expect the heartache, heartbreak, and heart-decomposition that had befell most of the Tribe of the Rocky Slopes.

His sibling, despite it all, was his poppy. They were the brightness in the storm. But eventually the biting wind would rip their roots and break their back. Anastasius knew this. There was nothing he could do. He dared not rely on fantasies to give him unwarranted hope.

A strong wind tugged at the fur along his spine. Anastasius hunched forward, putting more weight on his broad shoulders.

Fantasies were frivolous. He could not keep hoping for the best because fate was never kind. Especially with the curse that had befallen him; especially with the fate of his sibling written on their eyelids, where anyone but them could see it.

He had seen the work of the Named Gods for himself, but had grown pessimistic about how much power they really had.

Dote, god of love.

Anamnesis, god of memory.

Asphyxia, Estimable, Topor, Largesse.

Names, names—Names until the names lost meaning.

If Asphyxia could (or would) do nothing, perhaps his pessimism was warranted. The people’s myths and legends seemed to do more for the gods than the gods had ever done for the people. Asphyxia was a personal favorite of his tribe.

Anastasius felt a growl boil in his throat. Her clothes, the easiest to replicate of her features, would be worn around funerals and celebrations alike. He often dreamed of yanking those shells from the sages’ and children’s necks.

But her fame. Unchanged and unchangeable to her, but perhaps malleable—manipulatable—to Anastasius…

Maybe then he could fight the fate of his kid.

He felt like a mosquito, flicked around between her intricately braided curls—but perhaps he could work his rank. Maybe he could blend in with those chains of dangling rubies that fell from her scalp to her argentine neckline.

Asphyxia would often flick her hair over her shoulder to expose her beautiful silvered neck then simper and coax him nearer with a purr. She’d whisper into his ear as he growled; her breath smelled of sweet, poisonous fungi.

Her voice was filled with chiding flowers and deceptive fruit, promises that meant nothing to her and everything to him.

That dastardly woman—Anastasius’ fury brightened his internal flame.

If he worked his rank, that would only lead him closer to his goddess.

She would notice anything he tried, the way she studied him despite his open hatred.

Her help would cost Anastasius. He would need to do her another favor.

That meant spending time with her—the needling, ridicule, pain.

He would hide away within his mind because he knew that, as his hostility toward her grew, her love for him would follow at its independence. Despite his yelling, hissing, spitting—

Or perhaps in spite of it, no, because of it, she would dote on him like her puppy.

The thought brought bile to his tongue.

He remembered discussions they’d had long before his sibling had been labeled “lost.” Asphyxia would tell him things: the difficulty behind worship; how being scorned made one the lowest and most mortal.

A worm dug in his gut. Using her was to sink to her level. But, oh, to make her feel his pain—an eye for an eye, a sister for the god’s wrath.

He could almost hear Nisha’s words when he had told her of his vague ideas to get help from Asphyxia.

Are you crazy?, she had said, She’s literally the goddess of death!

That had been last time he’d seen Nisha. Anastasius had parted with her and his young sibling near a grassy cave, the only rest stop amid their route. He left Nisha with orders to remain in the area, remembering his own first time making the trek where he had collapsed from exhaustion. The whelp was much younger and smaller than he had been.

Anastasius had drifted from their camp to collect food only to return to find his orders disobeyed. In his absence Nisha had brought his sibling to the river. She never listens.

Nisha had teased him about his rules and thorny attitude. That twinkle in her eye, that goading simper with a bit of river sand stuck to her cheek—made it hard to retain his even frown. The only way they’d have made it back in time was because Nisha made them run. Imagine—running all the way to the river and back!

They had been in their canid forms when he faced them, his kid’s tail wagging as they bounded around Nisha’s ankles.

His sibling’s matted fur was still tinged with sandy water as they sang about how they had taken an impromptu bath.

He recalled their crystalline smile. Would that smile remain when fate struck them down?

He was surprised they had the strength enough to yawn.

Come on, Annie! I carried them the whole way there and back, Nisha told him, shoulders lax.

No you didn’t, you made them run!

After the whelp had fallen asleep, he took Nisha aside to tell her what he had planned for this visit… what he had failed to achieve, what he wasn’t strong enough to achieve. What he could’ve done… What he didn’t do.

He had to consider what he would do with failure tied to his neck.

Hours later, his claws clinked against the flat slab of rock that signaled the end of the Carapace’s steep decline. Briefly stretching the tension from his front limbs, he broke into a sprint up the slopes that led him home while the wind smacked at his face. If the weather was on his side, he could make it there before tomorrow afternoon.

But no. As he galloped—ignoring the wildfire burning in his tendons—his lips pulled back across his gritted teeth. His body ached, every muscle strained from the overexertion. He would have to rest. Frustration at the thought sent another burst of energy through his body, rage frothing at his mouth. The anger of the wind rivaled his own.

His conversation with Nisha came back to him. Their words irritated his eyes.

Keep them with the tribe as long as you can. They’ll be safe here, protected, Nisha had said.

Briefly the fire of rage morphed into something cold and fearful, clenching his heart with the strength of a dead man’s fist. His paws thumped against the ground.

Where are you going? Anastasius asked her when his sibling was tucked away and sleeping.

Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump.

You know where, she said.

Thump thump, thump thump.

But I want to stay with you! I… I love you.

Thump thump.

I know. But you love the little one too, and they are, well, lost. It’s okay, I’ve been waiting to see the human villages again! Nisha chuckled softly, then the humor left her face. Don’t worry, Annie. We’ll see each other again. But I want you to promise me you’ll prolong our meeting as long as you can.

I promise.

Eyes blurry with prickling tears. He blinked them away, felt the wind pull them back along his cheeks. He had to talk to Nisha. She’d know.

The weathered stone that was so familiar left scrapes on his pads as his steps faltered and stumbled. There were spots of blood trailing behind from his abrasions. Finally, he stopped.

His body was aching and bruised, his ribs heaved, but he couldn’t bear these thoughts. He needed to rest. To recollect. To finally think.

You always have a choice, Asphyxia had said. Yet as she governed the domain of death, her words made Anastasius’ goal sound arbitrary. What did choice matter when everything had the same end?

Anastasius huffed out an opaque cloud of irritation. The closest rest stop was in the opposite direction.