“We. can. stay. here. no. longer!” The man opposite Jasper punctuated each word with an angry thump against the table, jostling their cups until the wine spilled over and dribbled onto the pristine marble.

  “And what is your great plan?” He glanced over as the woman sitting beside him scoffed, still confused as to where he was, and froze as it finally sunk in that her skin was the color of jade.

  His body spasmed as the memory of the pain he had just experienced came rushing back to him, along with his identity. He stared down in disbelief at his own hands, a matching tone with hers. Bele?t-Imtu had actually sent them into the past.

  “Do you really think you can fight your way through the hordes of sahkhat unscathed? And if you make it past them, they are waiting,” she spoke the word with a hiss.

  “It’s better than just giving up,” the man roared back. “Your solution guarantees our death!”

  “We are already dead,” a man at the end of the table cut in listlessly. Unlike the man and woman who’d been arguing, the Fey looked unwell. His brow was beaded with so much sweat that his hair hung wet and limp on his forehead. His hands shook as he wiped the sweat from his brow, and the sleeve of his tunic slipped down, revealing skin that had turned a mottled white.

  “You’re just saying that because you’re infected,” the other man snapped back. “But that doesn’t mean we should all doom ourselves.”

  “We doomed ourselves the moment we chose to stay rather than flee,” the sick man replied. “Even if you could escape, Ame?l-Bele?t, would you really be so selfish as to risk dooming whatever poor souls took you in? Marata?nu is right - it is better to take the poison than become one of them.”

  “No,” Ame?l-Bele?t growled, and the stone cracked beneath his grip as he swiveled his gaze on Jasper. “You’ve been silent thus far, Qaspu?l. Tell me you see reason, that you haven’t succumbed to the hopelessness of these two.”

  “Uh,” Jasper hesitated only a second before settling on an answer, remembering what the goddess had told him. In the end, none of this really mattered. It had already happened and nothing could change the doom that had befallen Iltabri?t. “I don’t know. I need some air,” he said, standing up abruptly and stomping toward the exit.

  “We don’t have much time to decide,” Ame?l-Bele?t called him afterward, but Jasper ignored him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw another figure rise and follow.

  He waited until the door had closed behind them to face her. “Ihra?” His voice hitched as he caught sight of the goddess of a woman standing before him. Green skin wasn’t his thing, no matter how pale it was, but it couldn’t take away from her radiant beauty. Her hair was black as obsidian, her eyes as clear as diamonds, and her elaborate black and gold robes left nothing to the imagination.

  The woman raised one finely-plucked brow, and smirked. “Enjoying the show,” Ihra asked dryly.

  He averted his eyes reluctantly, reminding himself that the smoking hot woman in front of him was literally a pile of bones now, and forced a laugh. “I guess we can pretty confidently say that Bele?t-Imtu is not the goddess of modesty.”

  “More like the patron of hookers,” Ihra commented, plucking speculatively at the gauzy trends webbed across her body. “But Bele?t-Imtu didn’t lie. I can tell this body’s owner was a powerful mage.”

  “Does she know where the ritual site was,” Jasper questioned, and he wasn’t surprised when he shook her head.

  “No, but she knows where to look. Come on, we need to get to the temple.”

  As they exited the building the fey lords had been meeting in, they found themselves in the forum, and as Jasper swept his gaze across the thousands of huddled forms gathered in the stone seats, he realized the day they’d arrived in.

  “Lord Qaspu?l - have they made a decision?”

  “Priestess, has the goddess spoken?”

  “We must flee!”

  The forum exploded in a cacophony of voices as many in the crowd surged toward them. The ones that approached were like Ame?l-Bele?t, full of panic and bluster, and not ready to surrender, but another faction remained huddled on the benches, their heads bent and their arms locked as they awaited news of the doom they had already accepted.

  Jasper raised his hands and thundered above the crowd. He wasn’t sure what the council he had just fled from was even named, so he opted not to mention. “No decision has been reached yet. Priestess Tahana?tu and I must retrieve something from the temple. Please, step aside and let us pass!”

  Whatever position Lord Qaspu?l had held must have been a powerful one as, despite the fear in their eyes, the fey immediately complied with his orders, parting like the sea before Moses. Incredulous eyes were fixed on them as the two jogged out of the forum, but Jasper didn’t have time to care about decorum. The goddess had said that time was the same here as it was in their present, so they couldn’t afford to wait. The enemy, whoever they were, was coming.

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  “Aargh, slow up,” Ihra griped, cursing as she paused to pull up the hems of her ‘dress.’ “Guess she wasn’t planning on running today.”

  Truthfully, judging from the fey woman’s lush curves and impractical accoutrement, Jasper rather doubted the priestess ran on any day, but he kept the thought to himself as Ihra finished binding the hems of the garment above her knees and rejoined him.

  But she couldn’t keep up with him anyway. Jasper quickly pulled ahead, his borrowed body brimming with vim and power far beyond what he was accustomed to, while Ihra began to huff and puff, her cheeks red with exertion.

  “How does it feel to be the slow one for a change,” Jasper called back teasingly, pausing long enough for her to nearly catch back up before he bolted ahead.

  “Oh, it’s not…so…bad,” Ihra huffed and Jasper tripped as a long, green tendril erupted from the pavement beside him and wrapped around his ankle. “Seeing…how I’ve got…magic now,” she added as she loomed over him triumphantly.

  “Who says I don’t?” He grinned back, and she fell on her ass as the tendril suddenly unwound from his ankle and dragged her down.

  “No fair - you got magic and strength?!” She protested, and Jasper laughed.

  “What can I say? I’m just that awesome.” But his grin faded as he noticed they had a watcher. A small child peeked through the slats of a nearby fence. The garment she wore was studded with enough rubies and gold to feed an entire town, but all Jasper could see was the sweat that wreathed her brow, the paleness of her flesh, the trembling of her hands, the tears in her eyes. She was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  He looked away, overcome with nausea, and offered Ihra a hand up. “Come on, let’s get to the temple and get this over with,” he muttered.

  Surprised by his sudden change of heart, she started to speak, and then she noticed the girl behind him. Her cheeks paled, and they took off again, this time in earnest.

  The barricades around the temple had already been erected, and were manned by a skeleton crew that greeted the priestess with bemusement as she approached. “Lady Tahana?t - is there something wrong?”

  “I need to see the archives,” Ihra snapped out. “Quick, unlock the gates.”

  The doors swung open, and the two rushed up the steps. Entering the temple he’d already visited was an odd experience. Two minds at once provided details - Jasper could only recall the central court of the temple and the divine idol, but Lord Qaspu?l had clearly been a frequent visitor. Still running ahead of Ihra, his body needed no guidance to find the archives. He took the steps into the lower floors by threes, and reaching the landing, burst through the third door to the left before Ihra could catch up.

  The room was smaller than he’d been expecting, and its contents were even more unusual. While the right side of the room was occupied by a row of metal shelves filled from floor to ceiling with a mixture of books and scrolls, and the center of the room featured a number of desks and an unlit hearth, the left side of the room held shelves filled with an unfamiliar medium - row upon rows of thin metal sheets inscribed with a script quite unlikely he’d seen.

  Well, any Jasper had seen; when he picked up one of the metal sheets out of curiosity, somehow Qaspu?l’s filled his with the translation, a rather eloquent ode to the Mistress of Poisons, Bele?t-Imtu. He scanned it quickly, realizing as he read that her name wasn’t as sinister as it sounded. While poison was an aspect of her domain, the particular poison she was associated with was the foundation of their gem-crafting industry. Unfortunately, though, the poem contained no clues to the ritual site, and he shoved aside and reached for another.

  “Any luck,” he called over to Ihra, who had finally caught up with him, and ignored both sets of bookcases to lean against the fireplace, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.

  “Give me a moment,” she grumbled, and straining on her tiptoes, touched the painting hanging above the mantle.

  “Don’t tell me there’s a secret passage,” Jasper scoffed, but as she settled back down, he saw a rusty key clutched in her hand.

  “Fine, I won’t tell you,” she tossed back as she walked over to him, and pulling a stack of the metal pages aside, pushed the key into an imperceptible lock behind them. There was a faint click as she turned it, and then silence.

  He swiveled his head, looking for the passage the lock had opened, but the room appeared unchanged. “Uh, is it broken?”

  “Just overly complicated,” Ihra sighed. “Come on, we need to go somewhere else now.”

  While Lord Qas?pu?l’s body had known where to find archives, it was utterly unfamiliar with the path Ihra now took, and Jasper was forced to follow behind her. They delved deeper into the temple, leaving behind the polished marble walls and radiant crystal floors as they exited into the honeycomb of tunnels that had been carved into the mountain.

  It was clear that the tunnels had once supported a thriving community. Wide avenues lined with gaudy shopfronts and personal homes had been hewed into the rock, enough to support thousands, but unlike the acropolis above, which remained sparsely populated, the tunnels seemed all but abandoned.

  Yet, Jasper knew that was not quite true. Qaspu?l’s memories told him that the plague released by the knockers had struck here too, and though the members of the acropolis had many trips below to purge the undead, some yet remained.

  None bothered them, though, as Ihra guided them down a series of lanes until she stopped in front of a smaller shrine dedicated to Bele?t-Imtu.

  Unlike the magnificent temple above, the shrine was little more than a single room, with a small altar hewn from the rockbed over which a silver idol presided, and a large mural on the back wall that depicted legends and miracles from her past.

  As Ihra circled the altar she suddenly disappeared from Jasper’s view, for reasons that became clear as he jogged around its corner, panicked at her vanishing. A panel hidden in the back of the altar had slid aside, revealing a pair of stone steps that led into a chamber underneath the shrine where a second, much larger library awaited them.

  “Wow. Paranoid much?” Jasper joked as he joined her in the room.

  “Eh, they had good reason to be,” Ihra shrugged. “If the knowledge in my lady’s head is any indication, these people knew some dangerous secrets.”

  “So, any idea of what we’re looking for?”

  She walked straight toward the far corner of the room, and zeroed in on the top shelf. “Yes. A diary from one of the city’s founders. Tahana?t felt certain it would be there,” she added as she pulled one of the metal sheets out of the case.

  Jasper waited silently as she thumbed through the pages, until she came to a stop. “This is it,” she murmured. “I know where the ritual site is.”

  “Great - so we can go back?”

  “Not great,” Ihra disagreed with him. “Unless I’ve misread the map, the ritual site is where that sinkhole is.”