Transcribed by Songsparrow, Seeker to the Old King

Writhe and Dive, Inlay, Age 5.6 U.C.

Mellow is one of the most requested companions at the Writhe and Dive, and so has earned lofty apartments with a view of the courtyard’s hot springs. We sit cross legged on her balcony, cushioned by pillows of crushed velvet while she sucks on a long pipe and takes in the plucks of a harps and laughter below with hooded eyes. I have a harder time focusing on the patrons’ activities when I have a clear view of Inlay’s slopes and all its wrapped around us like folds of rolled parchment.

Inlay is not the largest volcano on the island belt, but it is the only one to have blown its top. There is no record of when the island transformed from a smooth, black, sloped mountain common on the island belt, to the crater it is now. Students of history at the island’s Reliquaries take this to mean that the eruption happened before 30 U.C., before libraries were lost in the last great Calamity to rock the Sledge.

Knowing the island’s nature as a volcanic pit, one might mistake the phantom cloud wavering above Inlay’s splintered shell for smoke. But push through the peddlers lined along the ports, and resist lingering on the beaches crowded with statues of glass and sand, climb the stone steps over the lip of the island, and you will discover lush jungle cooked in culture, cradled beneath an eternal halo of steam.

There is no winter on Inlay. There is also no rain, or snow, despite the frosty sea surrounding it. The center of the island’s bowl plunges below sea level and water captured on Inlay’s shell trickles through the streets. The miniscule waterfalls evaporate on contact with what is either—depending on which Reliquary you visit—the largest artistic installation in the world, or an inexplicable remnant from Cataclysm: The Tower of Fire.

The spire of clear glass stands taller than the Samwhin palace and pulses red with untapped volcanic potential. Most visitors who aren’t on Inlay for business, will admit they came for the Tower of Fire, and the sheltered weather generated by waves of steam arising from its base.

It is within this soup of steam and fire that I have spent the past three days hiking up and down the bowl of clouds’ winding streets, badgering innkeepers and merchants to locate a woman rumored to have a peculiar curse. That woman is Mellow.

When I ask her if it’s true that she has more than one heart, she cups my cheek and presses my ear to the softness of her chest. An out-of-time hummingbird flutters behind her breastbone. Another long drag from her pipe is all she needs to begin her tale.

-:::::-

I was born to a large family on Beakscoop, the oldest of seven brothers and seven sisters. The island is mostly birds, so living there, it sometimes felt like we were the only people in the world.

We had no reason to care for money, so long as we stayed on the island. We ate, drank, and built our homes as the birds did; catching fish, eating fruit, sleeping in hammocks of woven vines and leaves. But there came an age when my body grew long limbed and restless, and I wished to stretch my wings. My mother filled a sack of sliced fruit and dried boar for my journey and my family covered my cheeks in kisses and tears before sending me off with assurances they would always be there, waiting with open arms should I get homesick.

I needed gold to get on a ship, so I went to the island’s only port and picked up work escorting travelers across the island. People come to Beakscoop for one of two reasons. One is because they’re rich and curios to see the giant birds I grew up calling long beaks. Those visitors I took to the bottomless pools dotting our island and told them to dive in, which they did, happily. The others are researchers. They’ll talk for hours about the anatomy of birds and the history of the surrounding islands but arrive with entire bags filled with scrolls and books, as though they don’t realize their object of study is several days’ hike over hills packed with dense jungle. I built a frame for my back and charged extra to carry their shit.

I worked through one winter and one spring, but Beekscoop isn’t known for its trade and passage on the luxury vessels that did come through was expensive. I soon realized I would need more gold than I’d thought to live anywhere but on the island. At the rate I was finding work, it would take an entire age before I could afford to stretch my wings. My heart ached for my family and our life in the trees. Nights I stayed up late longing for home and pondering my return became more frequent.

Then one day, a ship with black and yellow sails pulled into port. Five men dressed in fine leather carrying light packs and curved swords at their belts swaggered into the port’s inn. The ship didn’t even drop anchor before setting sail again. I let the men settle in before approaching them at the bar and offering my services as a guide. Their leader, a man with a black beard and narrow green eyes, studied me while he chewed.

“What do you know of the surrounding islands?” he asked.

I’d never been to the surrounding islands, but jungle was jungle and despite how sturdy these men were compared to my usual clients, they were clunky enough to struggle through thickets of vines and mud. I him so.

“We’re headed to Sinsula,” he said. I’d gotten decent at hiding my unfamiliarity with mainlander words, but he unrolled a map and pointed out the island anyway—a narrow crest of land north of Beakscoop.

I did recognize it. My grandmother used to point to it on clear evenings and tell us children about the legend of the chimera; a monster said to haunt the only island on the belt where no birds will land, and devour the hearts of trespassers.

“You children must never set foot there,” she told us. “The chimera has been hungry a long time, waiting for someone to ride out of its prison.”

My grandmother also told us stories of dragonflies carrying misbehaving children away in the night and dropping them in the ocean for the sharks, and princesses that could decipher magical incantations on the pits of mangos. They were wild tales, but as a child of the forest, my grandmother’s words had been as real to me as the trees.

And perhaps those old fears still lingered, because the price I named was beyond what any reasonable person would pay. Enough that one journey to Sinsula would more than equate to my passage off Beakscoop.

The man with the green eyes only smiled and unstrapped a sack of gold from his belt. “Half now, half later,” he said as he placed it in my hand. He was not a reasonable person.

There was only one boat at the port sturdy enough to reach Sinsula, but I lied and told them I needed time to find oarsmen with a scoot large enough carry the six of us. Really, I wanted a night to sift through the decision I’d made and decide if it was worth ignoring my grandmother’s warnings. But the men were anxious to get going and claimed they’d already arranged for a boat. So, we left that afternoon.

We hiked to a cove north of port and found a sleek boat with four oars tethered in the shallow water. Not even growing up exploring every inch of Beakscoop had I seen the cove before, as it was well hidden under a rocky, tree-covered shelf. It worried me, that these men knew something about my home that I didn’t. But my future was close enough to touch and I was afraid of losing it, so I emptied my head of questions. I told myself these were wealthy, well-planned men capable of arranging for boats to appear where they needed them.

We climbed aboard, four men taking up the oars without question and I was left to sit at the front of the ship with the green-eyed man. They had not offered their names or asked me for mine and the silence that persisted as we glided into the water implied it would remain that way.

We bumped over the sandy beach of Sinsula before sunset. The island was small, with hardly enough forest to hide danger—just widely spaced saplings with so few leaves that building a nest would have proven difficult. All my life, I’d grown up under a canopy of birdsong, but Sinsula sat quiet in the ocean, no more alive than a stone. My grandmother was right about the birds.

Night was approaching, and I expected the men would want to set up camp on the beach before exploring the island the next morning, but the green-eyed man pulled a wooden disk from his bag and faced the forest. I was taller than him and was able to peek over his shoulder to study what I thought might be a large compass, but without any spinning needles or marks for North. Instead, it was smooth wood polished to a shine. Patterns of engraved dots were charred into its rim and a single cross sat at its center overlaying a half circle. The man with the green-eyes glanced to the sky and turned the disk before shouldering his pack once more and pointing into the trees.

“That way,” he said. The sweetened his tone and gestures to me. “Lead the way.”

I’d never thought sand to be loud, but on the quiet of Sinsula, it churned beneath our feet like crashing waves. I was more concerned that no one had handed me anything to carry on out close-lipped trek. These men had a destination in mind. At one point, a banded crimson snake slithered onto the path, and I halted them to let it pass. There were no gasps, no questions, only dispassionate observation, and impatience to be on our way. I began to wonder what my purpose was if they had no need for a guide.

The sky bled from pink to inky purple and the five men pulled torches from their bags. The man with green eyes handed his to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to return his small smile dancing in the flickering shadows. They walked behind me in a row, a school of tuxedoed whales herding a seal towards the shore.

I thought about the boat still resting on the beach and wondered if I could outrun these men should I need to flee. But they had done nothing of concern so far—other than pay me more gold than I’d made in almost a tenth of an age leading people on far more strenuous climbs. For the moment, I kept my head and focused on the pouch of gold in my pocket.

At the crest of the island’s shallow ridge, the forest opened into a tight clearing with a flat, square stone resting at its center. The five of them halted. None of us were out of breath and I thought it odd they would want to rest so early, until the green-eyed man once again consulted his wooden disk. He looked to the half-lidded moon overhead and grinned.

“We’re here,” he said and the other four dropped their packs without being told.

“What’s ‘here’?” I asked. The green-eyed man reached into his pack and pulled forth a mallet. He gripped it by its long handle and started towards me. I waved my torch towards the trees, searching for an opening, but it was too late. They had me boxed in, their curved swords drawn. The green-eyed man stopped within arm’s reach. I wanted to fly so badly back to the cradle of my family’s forest, I thought wings might spring from my shoulders. Instead, the green-eyed man grabbed my hand holding the torch and exchanged it for the handle of the mallet.

“Fortunes long forgotten,” he said and pointed to the square stone. “Open it.”

The mallet was heavy in my hand, heavy enough I could crack the man’s skull with a single swing if I was quick enough. I imagined the give of his bones, slick blood covering my hands, compromising my grip, the shink of the four swords at my back slicing though my guts.

I climbed onto the stone at the center of the clearing. It was smooth as glass and warm under my feet. In the moonlight, my reflection stared back at me. She looked terrified.

I gripped the mallet with both hands and raised it high overhead. Open it, he’d said, so I swung down. A crash like thunder split the night and a crack snaked from where my mallet had struck to either diagonal point on the stone.

I swung again, and again, and again until my arms felt like they might twist from my shoulders. There was something in the stone these men wanted, a treasure. As I swung, I planned mt escape. As soon as they stepped closer to retrieve whatever it is they wanted from the rubble, I would dash into the trees and risk my luck reaching the boat before they did. I hefted the mallet one more time, the stone now pebbles beneath my feet, when something shiny caught my eye. I let the mallet fall to my side and climbed back onto the sand.

“There,” I pointed, my heart pounding as I waited for them go for it. None of them moved.

“Pick it up,” said the green-eyed man.

My mouth was dry, my chest heaved, I barely had the strength to keep the mallet clutched in my hand. Somewhere, a canopy filled with hammocks and fruits and birds was calling for me to run into Sinsula’s slim forest, to the beach, to home. Anything but stand still another second in that silent clearing, on the island from my childhood nightmares.

“I won’t,” I told him.

The green-eyed man frowned and drew his sword. “You will.”

I did. With shaking hands, I reached back into the remains of the stone and dug until I uncovered a small golden statue the size of a human skull and in the likeness of a coiled snake. Red gems and pointed ivory fangs sparkled in its split face, and despite my hammering, it was unscratched. I gripped it in both hands to pull it lose and suddenly it felt as though my skin was trying to peel away from my fingertips. The metal was searing hot. I fell back onto the sand twisting and kicking, trying to get away from the heat, but my hands wouldn’t let go. I was crying, and I looked to the circle of men, hoping against all sense that one of them might help me. They kept watch.

Slowly, the heat faded and my tears stopped. One by one, I pried my fingers from the statue and cradled my hands to my chest, certain they were blistered to the bone. But when I checked my palms, they were smooth and cool against my cheeks.

Boots appeared in front where I was still laying curled and shaking in the sand. The green-eyed man didn’t spare me a glance as he crouched and plucked the statue hesitantly from the ground my its delicate neck.

I waited, wanting it to burning him as it had me, but the snake only sat cold and still in his palm. He held it up to the light of the moon and studied it with sparkling eyes.

My breathing was slowing, but my heart wasn’t. A strange feeling overtook me, like a rockslide was tumbling through my chest. I felt for my pulse. Badum, badum, baudm.

My heart was racing and beating out of time. Bad-badum-bad-badum-bad-badum. It was too fast for me to keep breathing, too fast for me to survive. But my breath stayed even, there was no pain, just too many heartbeats.

One of the men spoke and broke me from my focus. “What about her?” They had all put their packs back on, the snake statue gone from sight. The green-eyed man met my gaze and drank in all the hate and fear I sent his way. I hope he felt sick from it.

“Leave her,” he said. “She’s served her purpose. It’ll come for her soon.”

“What’s coming?” I demanded, but my voice sounded quiet over the crash of my heart. “What did you do to me?”

The men ignored me and turned to leave. As the oldest, I’d never been quick to cry, but in that moment my body turned to an ocean begging to spill from my eyes. I scrambled to my feet, ready to chase after them, ready to do whatever I had to if it meant getting onto the boat and back to my forest.

“I want to go home,” I cried and grabbed the green-eyed man by the back of his shirt. “Please, don’t leave me here!” The world snapped to black. When I opened my eyes, I was face down in the sand, my jaw aching. The bastard had punched me in the face.

I cradled my cheek and sat up slowly, only to come nose to nose with the point of the green-eyed man’s sword. He opened his mouth to say something, when—

A voice shrieked from down the island slope. Boars make similar noises when their legs break in hunter’s traps—their cries are so wrought with rage you can feel their pain in your soul.

We all froze, the only movement a tremor in the tip of the green-eyed man’s sword. When the echo disappeared, he barked an order and the other four fanned out, cursing and waving their torches around the clearing, trying to poke a hole through the blanket of darkness holding us in.

“I thought you said it would only take her,” hissed one of the men.

“It will,” the green-eyed man said, but his eyes were wide, and he didn’t sound so certain. Finally, he turned his blade from me to the trees. “It’s coming for her, not us. The first one to touch it gets the curse.”

Sinsula must have disagreed, because at that moment a branch snapped just beyond the trees, then there was the whisper of sand as something heavy slid over the ground. We turned slowly; our ears glued to whatever was out there circling us. When it was nearest to me, it stopped.

All I heard was my heart, beating too fast to be real. Badum, bad-badum, bad-badum. This couldn’t be real. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the darkness between the trees.

Branches groaned as they were forced apart, making room for something glittering and green that crawled into the moonlight. All feeling fled my body as I took in a creature with long, scaled forearms which dragged a round body wider than a man’s shoulders behind it. Plates of scales overlapped its chest and up its neck to meet the smooth face of a man with slitted red eyes. His lips and jaw were stained with tracks of blood from where yellow fangs cut down past his chin from a mouth too small to house them.

The creature scanned the clearing and our unmoving forms. When it saw me, it hissed, and a black hood flared open on either side of its face. Its body whipped back and forth, propelling it closer like a fish through water.

My stomach was soup, my heart a cacophony of pounding drums and I scooted backwards on my elbows. Get up, I thought, get up, get up, get up! But my legs weren’t listening.

“Where is it?” the green-eyed man shouted, waving his sword vaguely in the direction of the monster; the chimera, straight from my grandmother’s stories.

Too petrified for words, I pointed, but the fools may as well have been blind. The chimera’s eyes contracted, nearly squeezing the dark slit of its pupil closed as it refocused on the men. It split open its bloody mouth and shrieked. I clamped my hands over my ears, the sound so sharp I was afraid it might pierce them. The men jumped. At least they could hear it.

“Run,” whispered the green-eyed man and he backed away from where I was pointing. “While it’s distracted!”

The chimera moved, reaching black-clawed hands towards my ankle, either to grab me or shred through my flesh. But it’s attention flickered once more as the men began backing away into the forest. The creature’s body swelled with tension and a wave of sand flew into my face. When I looked back through bleary eyes, the manticore was gone.

Someone screamed, then coughed wetly. Something dark and warm splashed against my shoulder, then washed across the ground. I looked up. The chimera had its long teeth sunk into the green-eyed man’s neck and it shook him like a doll while he kicked, spraying droplets of blood over the rest of us.

One of the men shook himself of his shock and slashed his sword blindly in the chimera’s direction. I imagine all he saw was the green-eyed man’s body convulsing in midair. When his sword met nothing but air on his first swing, the creature raised its arm and batted him away, the limb crashing into his body as my mallet had cracked through stone. He flew across the clearing, towards a tree. Crunch.

The green-eyed man stopped twitching, but blood still spurted from his neck, and the creature wasn’t done. It drove its talons deep into his chest and tugged, jerking the man’s body like a bird yanking bark from a tree. With a snarl and a squelch, the green-eyed man’s heart detached from behind his ribs. The chimera held the glistening organ up to the moon, its face rapturous. Its jaws opened wide, then wider still. Its cheeks stretched thin and translucent until a man’s entire head could have fit inside the jagged cave of its mouth. It slid its lips over the man’s heart and chewed.

The green-eyed man’s body thumped to the ground at my feet. His eyes were still open, staring at me.

Badumbadumbadumbadum.

Time sped up, my body no longer numb, but burning, pulsing with too many hearts, and I sprang to my feet. I glimpsed the creature turning to where three men still stood, white faced and gaping, then I was crashing through the forest and branches where clawing at my eyes. I had no torch, so I chased the downward slope. Screams rang behind me, then grew faint as I stumbled, fell, scraped my hands and knees before finally I burst onto the beach and spotted the black beetle of a boat.

Badumbadumbadumbadum.

The chimera screamed. It was getting closer.

I slammed all my weight into the boat and didn’t worry about the men who might still be alive on the island. It slid into the water, and I paddled madly away from the shore. I was barely past the breakers when the chimera slithered onto the beach. It’s red eyes glowed hot and it wove back and forth at the water’s edge, spitting, and hissing. Then it dove into the water, its long green tail slipped below the surface.

I willed strength into my arms and paddled harder. Every wave knocking against the boat had me looking over the side, expecting to see a human face and a mouth wide enough to swallow me whole.

It took me all night, but eventually I made it back to Beakscoop and dragged myself ashore where I collapsed into the sand. The boat pulled away in the current and I let it go. I laid there in the morning light, listening to the chittering of birds, and watching the water rush across the sand, waiting for the chimera to drag itself ashore and rip my heart out. But the chimera didn’t come.

Bad-badum-um, bad-badum-um, bad-badum-um.

When I was strong enough, I walked into the warm embrace of my forest. The sack of gold coins from the green-eyed man was still heavy in my pocket. My heart still beat large and wild. I couldn’t make sense of it, but I didn’t care; I was alive, and I was home.

I walked to the eastern edge of the island and found my youngest brother sitting in a mango tree, swinging his legs. The sight of him was like rousing from a nightmare. I ran to him, waving and calling out his name. But when he looked down at me, there was something missing from his eyes. Badumbadumbadumbadum. When he climbed down, I hugged him to my chest, trying to will all the love and relief I felt into him.

“I’m back,” I cried into his shoulder. “I missed you so much, I never should have left.” When I released him, he shrugged and wandered away.

Badumbadumbadumbadum.

The beating in my chest swelled. There wasn’t enough room for its pounding, but I ignored it and followed my brother through the trees, my pulse barely faster than my racing feet. My family appeared, hanging from the trees, weaving nets, chopping fruit, but they greeted me with blank faces, as though I was a stranger.

“I’m back,” I said.

“Of course, you had left,” they said and returned to their business.

BADUMBADUMBADUMBADUM.

My heart grew larger still, until its frenzied beat filled my entire body, and I burst into tears. My family paid me no mind, stepping around me like they might a stone in their path.

I climbed into a tree and wept as I hadn’t since I was a little girl. My body ached for someone to hold me, but no one came, so I wrapped my arms around my knees and wished the pounding in my chest would go away.

That night, something scratching at the base of my tree woke me, and I had to remind myself that my racing heart didn’t mean I was dying.

Hisssssss.

I knew before I looked what I would see—the face of a man with glowing red eyes and the body of a giant cobra.

From the ground, the chimera snarled and dug its talons deeper into the bark, but it didn’t leave the ground. I watched it through the night, clinging to the shaking branches every time it slammed its body into the trunk. Morning came and it gave one final hiss before slithering away into the forest. I climbed down and found my family one last time.

“I have to leave,” I said. “It’s not safe for you while I’m here. Something is coming for me.” I wanted them to tell me it would be alright. I wanted them to wrap their arms around me and tell me that they loved me as they once had. Instead, they nodded.

There were no lunches of sliced fruit, no tearful goodbyes, only the pounding of my heart fading to a distant thrum with every step I took away from my home.

But the beating never really stops—you heard it.

I didn’t have enough gold to start the life I’d planned, but I did have enough to get to Inlay. It wasn’t until I started at the Writhe and Dive that the chimera reappeared one night. It was coiled just at the edge of that pool, down there. Patrons walked past it like it was nothing, they still do. I don’t set foot on the ground at night, and it won’t come up here. Maybe it’s afraid of heights. I don’t know.

Whenever it’s close, my hearts beat harder. That’s what it does, whatever this curse is. It fills you with the heartbeat of everyone who’s ever loved you, then seals that love away where you can’t touch it. A devourer of hearts, just like my grandmother said.

All I have left now are memories of dragonflies and mangoes, and days spent living as the birds did. Now, I have the chimera. One day, I think I might just lead it out of here and feed it the hearts of every man from a ship with black and yellow sails. You know the ones—they sit like yellow jackets in Inlay’s harbor. They all read the same thing; Samwhin.

I have been to the establishment where Songsparrow found Mellow. Although she visited many ages ago—nearly thirty years ago, if we’re going by old time—there are still those that remember a woman claiming to have multiple hearts. She disappeared shortly after Songsparrow collected her story. Perhaps she left on her quest to dismantle the Samwhin navy. If so, it appears she was largely unsuccessful.

I have found no records to suggest why a Samwhin navy ship would have been sent to deliver treasure hunters to Beakscoop.

Signed,

Mercurial Lascar, Age 1.5 Until Calamity