I stood there far too long. Awestruck, I didn't hear the engines of the vehicles, nor notice the blaring lights that centered on me. Their voices were a distant, muddled echo. Yet I complied. I put my hands behind my head; I got to my knees; I lay on my stomach.
Soon enough they pin me and pull my hands behind my back. All the while, I'm wondering how I survived. They shuffle me into one of their cars. What happened? I stare beyond the space between the bars and the wall of the opposite cell across the hall.
? Jaime. Naeyr's voice inside my head is the same as when she's talking to me face-to-face. What good is that, though? They're going to torture me.
How can I ignore the tremble in my spine; the weakness in my legs even as I'm sitting; the knots in my intestines; the rapid thrash of my heart?
? Jaime.
Yes? What?
? Leave your worries behind, Jaime. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.
And that's supposed to mean…?
No answer.
Days went by. Or at least I think it was days. One by one the cells emptied. Men and women were carried away kicking and screaming; crying, feverishly petitioning to a goddess who was deaf to their pleas; repenting, but only receiving refuse.
When keys jingled and the tumblers of the lock to my cell rattled as they rolled back, and the bars finally slid open, I knew it was my turn. For what, exactly? I don't know. But they took me in a direction opposite of the ones I had watched despair over their plight.
Had I hope? I don't think so.
The stink had abated. Mostly because I was in an orange jumpsuit. Not that they allowed me to bathe. It wasn't a prison that I was kept in. Just a small county jail near the courthouse.
They pushed open the wooden doors to the foyer of the court. Inside, there was a plaque above the secondary doors that read 'Her Holiness, the Supernal Justice.'
Beyond those doors the interior chamber of Pephistofar was gothic in its structure at best. Stained glass windows depicting her as justice; romantic affairs, such as slaying 'evil' and 'injustice', like something out of a legend of swords and sorcery.
Once more I took my station at the podium. They never unbound my wrists.
"You again." By her tone it was obvious that Pephistofar was not happy to see me. "How did you escape the pit?"
That's a bit hard for me to explain. I shrug. "Can we just get this over with?" I know this isn't going to be a proper trial. The Mystarium had declared me worthless death-fodder already.
I'm waiting to see the fulfillment of that. Kill me. Please.
"Since no one has come to your aide, and those 'foreign gods' have forsaken you, it is my pleasure to put you in the crusher."
Oh sweet son of a stuffed baguette.
"Until you cough up your poisonous philosophies, and the locations of your fellows." She grins. "Or, until you renounce your stance, and accept me as I am."
I open my mouth to plead, because crushing my joints one by one over the span of several days isn't something I want to endure.
Then Naeyr steps up beside me.
"What are you —"
"A challenge was made over this young man's life," she says, her voice loud, stern, ever-monotonous. "That the 'foreign divinities' make themselves manifest and we contend with you to prove whose 'godship' is greater.
"Here I am." She stares into Pephistofar's gaze with absolute, unadulterated contempt.
Pephistofar laughs. "And just who are you?"
"Naeyr, first-created of the Alyi; Senior of the Panjillead; and Supreme Judicature, second only to my Maker."
"Hah. What's that supposed to mean to me?"
Naeyr narrows her eyes. She utters something in a language that I've never heard before, and whatever it was that she said, Pephistofar's eyes widen as if with compulsory obedience.
"You'll trade your life for this man's?"
"Yes."
"Then it is done." Pehpistofar sat back. "You'll remain in prison until I decide what to do with you." She laced her fingers and grinned.
Naeyr lifted her chin.
"What are you doing!?" I whispered to her.
She gave me a sideways glance. There was no fear in her eyes, just this rigid determination.
"You're making the wrong sacrifice!" Yeah, I want to protest. "I am not worth the death of…" Someone that's divine? No. "A friend."
Her expression changes. She cants her head, and arcs her brows. "Oh?"
"Yes! What will Aischen, Dyiij, and the rest of them do without you?" She had such command when it came to their gathering in the motel. I'd swear that she was their leader or something. They needed her.
"You don't know them," she said, "And you hardly know me."
"Still, what happens to you if you die?"
She shrugged. She didn't know, and neither did I. Just as they came and cuffed her hands, she leaned and kissed my chin. She was shorter than me.
The officers took her by her arms, and she kept stride with them.
"Will I see you again!?" I shouted.
She didn't look back. She didn't answer.
I don't know why I was still in the courtroom after that. Technically I was free to leave. I must've lingered for too long, because Pephistofar's voice filled the chamber up to the impossibly high ceiling.
"Get out," she commanded. So they uncuffed me, and I did.
Harbinger.