My feet are sore. I hold my belly, round and protruding, with one palm while the other hand is held out for balance over the pebble-strewn ground. Every so often one of my feet slip on the loose rocks. Gired and Rasted always catch me, every time, but it makes my heart leap; which makes the baby kick hard.

It's hard to walk when you can't see your feet.

The closer I get to my baby's soul, the larger my belly is. At one point I had to stop and lean on Gired while the baby flipped and spun inside me. My spine feels like cracking and just a few moments ago my breath started to become shallow. I think she's kicking my lungs.

Every part of pregnancy I am hastening through like a galloping horse in the races. It's terrifying, but my feet won't stop stumbling over the ground. The bond is yanking and pulling me forward. It is an undeniable, inexorable force.

The urge to shield my unborn child from this place continues to shove my shoulder blades further and further into the Ruined City deep in the Fields of the Lost. I am feeling every bit of motherly instinct that females have when they are faced with the fear of their child in danger.

Where is my child? What could be happening to her? She is somewhere, hurting, alone, without her mother, without me.

She has fathers and a grandfather and grandmother, a beautiful big sister, and Erra. She will be loved and already I miss her.

I am only a couple of weeks pregnant.

The urge to vomit makes me stop walking. I heave, wondering what could possibly be making me ill now. Doesn't sickness come earlier in pregnancy? I look like I ate Momo; I must be close to the end.

Thane and Thelios' blood gushes out as I heave over the ground. Their blood hits the grass and bursts into flames. Rasted gently moves me out of the way as Gired stomps on the fire. I keep purging my body, and they keep moving, until a trail of burned grass and ash is left in a meandering trail behind me. It mixes with the ash of souls' tears that creates the topsoil in this damned place.

When my stomach is empty I feel better. My back is killing me, and I can't see my feet, but at least I'm no longer nauseous. That's improvement.

I whimper as a shot of pain darts down my side into my leg. I reach out and Rasted is there to lean on as Gired massages my back.

"Don't touch me!" I snap. "You are not the males who should be rubbing my pains away!"

Gired backs off, wisely, his shadowy eyes reflecting what I swear to all the gods, especially War those idiots, is amusement.

Mishu makes a soft cooing noise. They are trying to be cute, to make me smile, but no one can smile when they are this big. I feel like a boat laden with jars of pig fat, listing to one side because some idiot loaded it unequally.

I start to sniffle. "I'm so fat," I tell Momo.

He shakes his head, 'no' so rapidly that I think he's going to pop his head right off.

"Yes, I am. I can't see my feet, but they're fat, too, aren't they?" I sob.

All five of my gargoyles are are shaking their heads. Harku is quaking on my feet, brushing off the tops of my sandals. Mushu is tugging at my hands, chattering in his grating-stone voice. Alnue looks at me as if he wants to lecture me but doesn't have the words to describe how stupid I am.

I start to laugh. I laugh until it hurts, literally, when the baby presses on my lungs and cuts my air short. Spots dance in front of my eyes, so I sit on the ground quickly, before I faint. Harku issues a little squeak and moves out of my way just before I squish him.

"That's what my feet look like now?" I sigh. The straps of my sandals are cutting into my feet. The skin is swollen and looks bruised. I was right, my feet are fat. I want to stand back up just so that my feet disappear again.

"My males should be here to rub my feet and carry me and where are they?" I ask tearfully.

Momo shrugs, "waaawr?"

"War?" I ask him. He nods. I sniffle. "Yes, they're War, Mo. So what? They should still be here."

I stand up with Gired's help. I hear Momo's soft declaration of "waaawr" again and sigh. Momo must miss Thane.

"Let's find my baby," I mutter. I trudge forward, waddling along.

I catch the first waft of rot in the air halfway up a small hill in the ruined city. I stop and look around, wondering where the noxious smell is coming from. It disappears for a bit and I keep climbing. By the time the awful scent comes back I am cupping my belly with both arms crossed underneath. It's heavy and I'm even more off balance than before.

When I am almost to the top, Rasted actually puts his hands on my lower back and pushes me, like that damn overloaded boat, up that last little bit of hill.

I am wheezing when I finally reach the crest, so busy trying to catch my breath that it takes me a moment to realize what hill I've just climbed.

It's a necropolis. The hill is actually part of the circular ring of earth surrounding the sunken burial site. Down below the ridgeline are graves and mausoleums. It's so large that I can barely see the opposite ridge.

When I get over the initial surprise, I'm not looking at cairns and sarcophagus and pretty white buildings of the wealthy Houses. Below me there are souls. But, instead of being inside the stone, they are the stone. Standing, sitting, laying down, they look as though they have been turned into a macabre bunch of garden statues.

The tug on my baby's bond grows more insistent. Stone stairs are cut into this side of the hill. They, like the rest of the city, are broken, but still much easier to navigate than the pebble-strewn hill.

I begin my descent. It's not just my belly making it difficult, I keep looking out at the stone souls, my eyes catching something else unique about them every time I look up.

Each one of them is burdened with a tarnished silver bond bearing all the marks of rejection. None of them have more than that. Just one bond left. As I near the bottom the ground below the souls seems to be painted pastel. When my foot touches the last step I see that they are the tattered remains of bonds. Lavender, blue, pink, all crunching under my feet like dried-out husks of locusts.

When I walk past the first soul I see that his wrists are bound tight, his mouth gagged, with Inanji's silver bond. It drapes over his shoulders and seems to anchor him to the ground. It looks like a chain and manacles. I swallow heavily and move along. Rasted and Gired are quiet. Not unusual, but their guard seems down, as if they know that no one in this Necropolis can cause me harm.

I look into the eyes of one of the souls. The agony I see in there makes my heart skip a beat.

Please help me

I almost trip. My assassins catch me. My gargoyles hiss in worry. The voice... it was so weak, so faint. These souls have lost themselves to their anguish.

"I can do this," I whisper. The insistent pull from my baby makes me take another step. I can do this. I can find my baby, set these souls free, and return to my males.

I follow the golden ribbon, stepping around souls caught in the torment of their bond. As I go deeper into the Necropolis I see three souls wound together, another curled into a tight ball with her bond wrapped all around her body. Every time I look into their eyes their plaintive cries echo in my head.

Help me

Please

The pain... My Lady

The worst ones, however, are the ones that say nothing. So deep in their misery, so trapped by heartache, that they can't even plead for salvation.

My tears are burning my clothes. Bitterly, I wipe them away. In this cursed place even the blessing of the Underworld is broken.

I nearly walk into her. I should have seen her easily, in her dark green robes with her cords of gold and red and the yellow sash she wears around her waist. How do you miss this female, especially in this grey, dead place? My tears are blinding me.

"Mara, the Lady Grief," she says quietly.

"Enlal," I respond. It's all I can say. The urge to just push past her and go to my baby is yanking on my soul. "Why are you here?"

"You have destroyed Inanji," she says, her own eyes shimmering with tears.

"Look around you, Enlal," I snap waspishly, "this is all her doing!"

Her tears flood, overflowing onto her smooth cheeks. Her soft brown eyes are filled with her own heartache. "I know. This place... Inanji hid this place here. I think she tried to set them free. She did," Enlal says stubbornly when I scoff. "She couldn't do it."

"I doubt she ever tried. All of these souls have Fated out there," I wave my hand behind me wildly, "who can now be her toys, her game pieces."

Enlal's jaw works, teeth grinding as she looks past me into the distance. "You are young, Mara. You don't know what Inanji was like before you came to us."

"Well, now she's gone," I tell her.

Enlal nods slowly. "Yes, and you are here, in the Lost Necropolis." She turns burning eyes to me. "I want this war to end, Mara. Inanji still exists, even if she's been placed in your sycophants. I will not let her destruction stand without retribution. Fix this mess you've caused and I will consider forgetting your earlier actions." She looks around with a shudder, then she vanishes.

I let out a little roar of fury. My feet pick up speed, rushing now to get to my baby before any of the other gods appear to try and intimidate me.

"I am Death's daughter," I mutter under my breath. Mushu pops out from where he was hiding and huffs an agreement. "I am the Lady Grief," I tell him. He nods in agreement, strutting along beside me with his shoulders thrown back proudly. "I am Grief made into Life, the Princess of the Underworld!"

Mushu huffs in acknowledgment. Mishu tackles him, taking his place, before Mushu shoves him back out of the way.

"I am a goddess, damnit!"

My stomach cramps. I gasp in pain, doubling over. Rasted and Gired hover, the gargoyles all gasping with me.

When the pain passes, I straighten up. "I think I'm having my baby?" I ask them, confused. Alnue takes my hand gently and points. I look up and feel a spurt of surprise. In front of us is a mostly-intact building. I didn't see it from the ridge, but the round, squat building is most definitely here.

It looks like the Mausoleum of the Recondites, just smaller. Round, and somewhat squat, it's styled like a fortress more than a place of the dead.

I step inside. It's just one round room without windows. It isn't dark, part of the roof is gone, letting the weak light filter inside.

In the center, chained to a black stone, is a soul.

This place isn't a fortress. It's a prison.

Dark eyes stare at me in shocked suspicion, narrowed in a face that resembles my males, if utterly feminine. Dark hair, black as night, spills over her back in limp, greasy tangles.

Another contraction steals my breath, so I can't answer her when she asks in a hoarse voice, "who are you?"

The anguish of a broken bond coats her voice. The tarnished silver chains are heavier on her than any of the others. Her skin is pulled tight where they wrap her up, weighing her down. Bitterness twists her mouth.

"Are you the Love goddess? You bitch!"

I feel the edge of a smile curl my lips. My daughter is a beautiful fighter.

"I am the Lady Grief," I manage to say through the increasing discomfort in squeezing my middle. My back is literally falling out of my body, it hurts so badly.

"I am the Princess of the Underworld. Grief made into Life. Daughter of Nateos, Death himself."

I suck in a breath through my nose as the pain hits again. Ouch, baby.

"Why are you here, goddess?" my daughter says warily.

I close my eyes to keep from yelling in pain. When it subsides, I open them. The suspicious fades in those dark eyes has faded. I answer her question with one of my own. "How are you so cognizant in this place?"

"You must be a new goddess," she mumbles. I don't answer that, either. I am new. "I am the original. Lucky me," she spits.

I stare at her, the maelstrom of bitterness, hate, anger, sorrow, and fear that swirls through her is nearly overwhelming. I don't need to ask her to clarify her statement. I understand. She is the first. The first to be rejected.

"How did you come to be here?" I look around the tower room.

Warily, she replies, "I was the first here. The soul... the soul I was bonded to... he left me here. He didn't want me in life or death. Over and over he has rejected me and left me here to rot in this tower while he lives over and over in the above."

I am beginning to understand this. I am beginning to see how the bonds of Fate work. A bond meant to offer love and support has imprisoned her. I take a breath, "do you know this soul's name?"

She spits, "it changes. Four lifetimes he's had since he left me here for the first time. This last life he was called Arim. Arim of the First House."

I laugh, a little hysterical, but forgive myself. My ferocious daughter may think I'm laughing at her, but the irony... And, this giving birth stuff hurts.

I'm not sure how this works, but the pain is growing and now I feel the urge to push this baby from me. The golden bond is sparking and I feel tears unleashing in a torrent from my eyes.

"What's wrong, goddess?" the souls asks me.

"What is your name?" I gasp out around the pain. "No! Tell me, what you want to be called?" I amend. My daughter can choose her name. She will be allowed to choose many things.

"I am vengeance and anger, nothing else," she spits, but I hear the deep sorrow.

I close my eyes again, "Oh, my poor baby."

"You should leave," my daughter's soul says. "You can't possibly give birth in this place. This is a broken, awful place."

"It is," I breathe. Stumbling forward, I grasp her chain in my hands. She watches, eyes wide, as I yank and pull until they break apart under the oil of my tears and the force of my anger.

"Just wait, baby, a little longer," I breathe. I leave the tower, my stunned daughter behind me. She is asking me questions, wondering who I am to her, how I got here, how it's possible that I set her free when I am clearly no warrior.

I grab the first soul near me and rip the chains on him apart. They fall to the ground, mixing with the pastel colors, bleeding into the ground in green and silver and black.

I yank and pull and rip at every soul's bonds I come across. Voices rise in agitation, in wonder, in shock, as they are set free of the grey death.

More and more and more as the pain in my middle becomes an agony coursing through my body.

It's only when my gargoyles grab my hands, stopping me, that I can focus on anything but the pain and the bonds.

I look into Harku's dark eyes. He is cooing softly, pushing me backward. I lay down on the stone and look at my belly. It is moving, pulsing, the baby bearing down, ready to come into the world. Blood is trickling down my ankles, the thinnest stream mixing with fluid that hisses as it hits the earth.

I push. Pain eclipses all else. The world could be burning all around me and I wouldn't know. I scream and the sound is echoed a thousand-fold as the freed souls of the Necropolis join in my suffering.

I can't see anything but darkness, but I can feel. The slicing agony, the wet feeling of birth, the relief.

Oh, gods, the relief. Alnue is the one who gets to lay the baby in my arms. Her hair is still dark, her eyes dark, too, but with the milky-blue of newborns as she stares back at me.

"I will name you Nehmasis, the goddess of Righteous Vengeance, my sweet baby," I murmur to her.

Her eyes drift closed, at peace with me. Nestling Nehma against my chest, I look up at the dark sky ceiling of the Underworld. I hear my gargoyles cooing over the baby, over me. Rasted and Gired are keeping the curious souls away from me. Harku is cleaning. I've made a mess.

A faint smile crosses my face as I clutch my baby and let unconsciousness drift over me.