Saia examined the prior's viss over and over again in the silence that followed her words. She carefully picked the most important question from her thoughts, sharp and unrelenting like snake fangs.

"Are you certain? What happened?"

"Completely certain. All of our records and the chronicles in Aressea’s library agreed about the presence of a second mountain. Knowing the families, it makes perfect sense that they would hide their treasure in two places. As for the rest, we don't know what happened. It was as much a surprise for our monks as it is for you now."

Saia didn't investigate further. She knew what must have happened: one of the other mountain’s gods had made a mistake and the mountain had crumbled on the people living there.

"This is why we split into two groups," the prior continued. "The monks above want to forget that this whole story ever happened, and make others forget as well. We, on the other hand, want to find out the truth through any means possible."

She tapped the weapon softly.

"But in order to get our people to the other side of the sea, we need to kill the monster, or tame it like the Arissians wish. Provided it's actually possible, and so far we haven't found any evidence either way."

Saia forced her mind away from the image of the mountain crumbling down on everything that was built around and inside of it.

"What is this monster? What does it look like?"

The prior's eyes locked on her, no trace of the vacuous reminiscence that had accompanied her narration so far. She sat up straighter, and Saia noticed she was a bit taller than her.

"We don't know everything, but I won't give away what we do know for nothing."

"What do you want to know?"

"I'm very interested in your monks. I want details on their organization, beliefs, knowledge. Anything you can tell me."

Saia didn't reflect long on her request: the monks were her enemies, and if the Arissians had any ill intention against them, so be it.

"They are divided into three groups: helpers, sentinels, scholars. You can guess what they do."

"Not entirely, but go on for now."

"Each group has three priors. Then there's one abbot, which is apparently chosen between them when the current one dies."

"Nine priors?" the woman repeated, then stared into Saia's eyes until she nodded. "That's excessive."

"You have divisions too, right? But the monks above don't."

"No, but it was their choice: factions are as old as our order, because they help accomplish tasks. And the abbot is god-appointed, not chosen."

"How does that even work?"

The prior shook her head.

"It's not relevant. Go on."

Saia focused on all the differences she had noticed since coming to the monastery.

"The monks don't know anything about what you’ve told me,” she said. "They believe the viss was already around the mountain and that their predecessors simply gathered it."

The prior raised her eyebrows.

"I can't believe they've never seen the coins."

"Maybe the priors know. Or some scholars. But I guarantee you that the majority of the monks have no idea."

She reflected for a moment, vaguely remembering the teachings she'd been subjected to before joining the monks.

"They do think they came from the sea, but I don't believe it was for the same reason. Some angry god, maybe."

The prior's chin jutted forward.

"What do you believe in?"

Saia was so taken aback she couldn't figure out what she meant.

"What?"

"Which gods? Or do you believe in strengths and consciences like the people of the Golden Lands?"

"I don't believe in any of that."

"What then?"

When Saia didn't answer, she continued: "I'm asking because I perceived a lot of hostility towards our deities. Earlier, when I told you that they choose our abbots, and now that you’ve mentioned your monks' gods. Do they still believe in the same deities as we do?"

"Yes, I think. The names are a bit different. And they're nine."

The prior nodded. Saia perceived that she wanted to know more, and there was really just one thing she could give her.

"They created fake gods for the people of the villages," she said. "Moving statues like me, with enough power to protect their villages from attacks."

"So you're one of these fake gods?"

"I'm like them, but I was never considered a goddess. And I don't want to be.”

"Wait," the prior said, and rested her forehead on a hand for a moment. "I assumed the people living in the villages were monks as well. Am I wrong?”

“No, they don't know anything. They think the gods are real and don't know that the monks exist."

They didn't, she corrected herself inside her mind. By then Aili should have revealed the truth to everyone.

"And what can these gods do? Beramas has reported of an impenetrable barrier that prevented him from entering the villages."

"Mostly that," Saia said. She knew she had to downplay the effects of their powers, otherwise the prior would have realized just in how much danger her village was. "We can mostly create winds."

"How do you recharge your viss?"

"We don't. We die and get replaced."

The prior nodded. Saia didn't miss a hint of disappointment in her viss. She was still thinking about how she could use that information to her advantage.

"I can tell you've never heard of this before," Saia pointed out. "So the other mountain didn't have gods like ours?"

"I can't exclude that. But I admit it's a good defense system, if it manages to keep even Beramas out. It's likely the reason why you survived this long."

"And the guardian," Saia pointed out. "What can you tell me about it?"

The prior's head tilted to the side.

"Interesting choice of words. Is this what you call it at mount Ohat?"

Saia's thoughts froze for a moment. She recalled Zeles's words.

"The monks call it that," she said. "I didn't even know it existed for most of my life.”

The prior passed a hand over her mouth, back and forth as if to warm her lips.

"I really wish I could have a conversation with your monks. But I guess that's the whole point, right? If we could, we wouldn't be fighting a monster.”

"You haven't told me what it is, exactly."

“ ‘Exactly’ is asking for too much. We know it's big enough that a person can't see the entirety of it and survive. The most recent calculations consider it at least twenty ships long and seven wide. It swims deep most of the time, and only resurfaces to kill."

She stood suddenly enough to startle Saia, even if she didn’t show it. She reached a drawer in the corner, made of heavy wood filled with holes, as if it was built with the planks of an old ship. She took out a bundle of rolled-up pieces of parchment, mixed with smaller sheets. Saia started examining the drawings they contained even before the prior could finish spreading them on the table.

"Don't take any of these as the truth, or even part of it. The sketches are made from memory, by the few monks that managed to get close enough to the monster and survive."

If Saia had seen the sketches without knowing what they tried to depict, she'd have thought they were part of a whole encyclopedia of sea monsters. The small notes surrounding the yellowish area around each drawing were certainly enough to fill an entire volume.

Most of the sketches portrayed some sort of monstrous fish, with a large snout and small eyes, sometimes protruding fangs. Others, a bit older, depicted the monster as a giant crocodile, the lizard's tail long and flat. Some of them had scales, others a sleek shell covering the whole body like the one of an insect.

An animal, all the drawings agreed. A very territorial one.

"So it never leaves the eastern side of the sea?" she asked, recalling Deoris’s words at the quarry.

The prior's viss trembled.

"It never comes close to Aressea's side, if that's what you're asking."

Saia stopped pretending to look at the drawings and pointed her eyes at the woman.

"It's not what I'm asking."

To her credit, she managed to keep a calm expression.

"So you know that it leaves. Why?”

Saia repeated what she had already told everyone since her arrival at Aressea.

"I saw a tanhata ship in the sea in front of the mountain. It never happened before."

The prior frowned.

“It’s because the guardian has left, right?” Saia prodded.

"The monster does leave periodically. But it's a rare event: the last time it happened was more or less a century ago, which means that the next time will be about a century from now."

Saia was getting tired of those people not knowing anything about the mountain, and yet still refusing to believe her.

"You're wrong. How could that ship reach us, if the guardian was still around?"

"Our job is tracking its position and trying to understand what it is and what it does.” Her whole viss shone with annoyance. “This is our life purpose. The monster hasn't left."

Saia was unconvinced, but the more the silence protracted, the more stubbornly the prior stared at her.

"Why does it leave, then?" she asked in the end.

She took a while to answer, as if still trying to prove her point.

"The most accepted theory is that it leaves to feed. It reaches the ocean through a strait and only returns after a few weeks. It's almost impossible to track with our resources, especially since it doesn't harm ships or people while it's gone."

"If you know it when it leaves, why didn't you reach the mountain already?"

"Our submarine ships are a recent invention, just like our alliance with Aressea. And while we know that the monster leaves, it's impossible to predict its return. It could find all the food it needs in a matter of days and catch us on our way back."

"Have you tried blocking the strait? Baiting it away with food?"

The prior sighed, annoyance resurfacing.

"We have tried everything. We can’t build a barrier strong enough to stop it. Besides, the strait is barely larger than its body. We think it was the monster itself to create it, and it’s undoubtedly strong enough to do it again. As for its food..."

She took out a yellow sheet from the center of the pile and tossed it at Saia. It was a list of Arissian words she'd never encountered before, exception made for a few instances of 'fish’.

"What is it?"

"They're all animals. They were, at least: each of them has disappeared in conjunction with the monster leaving.”

"So it eats other animals?"

"No: it extinguishes entire species. Eradicates them completely, until the only exemplars left are the ones in aquariums, if any."

"And it doesn't kill people?"

The prior shook her head.

"Nothing, until it returns to its duties."

Saia took a moment to absorb it all, from the drawings to the prior's most recent explanation. She pictured the monster now, an unstoppable force that could carve out species from the oceans and straits from the mountains.

She put down the sheet with excessive care.

"You said the other mountain was completely destroyed."

"Yes."

"And that it was the monster who created the strait."

"We found enough evidence it was the case, yes.”

"Could it have destroyed the second mountain?"

The prior lowered her gaze and tapped an index on her lower lip.

"It seems to be strong enough, sure. But it has never behaved like that. Never attacked settlements.”

"Not that you know of."

The prior shrugged.

Saia tried to picture the monster as a creature big enough to tear down mount Ohat. Cloud people, the earthquakes, and now a menace from the sea: the more she tried to imagine a world without gods, the more she was shown proof of their importance. And that was without considering what the Arissian families could do, once the monks found a way to reach their lost gold. She'd seen enough of the Golden Lands to know it would be worse than the mountain crumbling over everyone's head.

The prior gathered the sheets in a pile. Saia pinned down a drawing of the monster with a finger.

"How can it be killed?"

The prior started laughing. After all of the wariness she’d shown up to that point, it shocked Saia more than if she had shot her.

"I like your attitude, but we have no clue," she managed to say in the end. "See, there's a small problem."

She spread out two of the biggest drawings, one depicting the monster as a crocodile and one as an eel. She tapped the monster’s back: in both cases, it was covered by a layer of triangular scales.

"Its whole body is protected by metal plates. We hope they're not indestructible, but we've yet to find a way to harm them."

Saia recognized the shape. She only hesitated one moment, realizing what she was confessing with her words, before pushing them out anyway.

"Like the one on which you test your weapons?"

The prior tensed again.

"So it was you, then. I had my suspicions, after seeing how easily you entered here.”

"Yes. You can tell the abbot to leave my assistant alone. They were just trying to stop me, but tripped and fell down the stairs."

"Is that so?"

"They're lucky to be alive, really."

The prior frowned, but she didn't comment. Her hand brushed the drawings again.

"The scale is impossible to break with anything we have. Our artificers are working day and night to come up with something that can scratch it, but so far we only managed to burn the external layer."

"How did you even get that scale, then?"

"Pure luck, to the point we're not even sure of what happened. It was found about eighty years ago by a ship sent to recover what remained of an earlier expedition. The scale was thought to be a part of the damaged hull until we could examine it closely. We now think that it was some sort of internal damage to the monster's skin that dislodged it. Not something we did, at any rate."

"So that's your strategy to defeat the monster? Attack the scale until you break it?"

"We're considering multiple solutions. Our mechanics are working with the families on faster vehicles that could outpace it and work as bait. But we're not there yet, by a long shot."

"What about going by land?"

"If we wanted to waste all of our resources and get most of us killed by the tanhata clans or by the Ohaten forest, we would."

"Your weapons should be enough to deal with that."

"They belong to the Arissian families. We can't use magic, so we only follow their instructions. And their interest lies in defeating the monster. They won't give us the resources for a land trip, especially considering that all the ones we tried in the past failed horribly."

"You could steal them."

The prior gave her an unimpressed look.

"Sea or land, we're not powerful enough either way," she concluded.

Saia nodded. That explained why she had accepted to talk to her at all: she hoped to find something powerful enough to deal with the monster. There was just one part of the story she didn't understand.

"Why did that ship reach our coasts, then?"

The prior shrugged.

"Maybe it sailed from the tanhata territories and managed to stay close enough to the coast?"

"Has it ever happened before?"

"Not that I know of, but if the ship is small..."

"It wasn't."

The prior seemed to actually consider her words for the first time. While she waited, Saia detected a change at the edge of her domain: the village’s entrance was being opened from the outside. The abbot stepped through, closely followed by the librarian and another monk she’d never seen, but that surely had been chosen as escort for their bulking figure. She started down a corridor without reciprocating the dark monks’ greetings.

"The abbot's here," Saia said, standing.

The prior stood with her, but there was no threat in her gesture.

"I hope we’ll continue the conversation. I still have questions about your monks. I could tell you more about the ship, after consulting with my colleagues.”

Saia didn’t like the idea of that information spreading more than what was necessary, but she wanted that answer, and a thousand others as well. Still, the abbot was coming straight to the prior’s office, and it was too dangerous to be found there.

"I need to go."

"If she's here, she already knows. Leaving is only going to make her suspicious."

"So what do I do? Make her fall asleep?"

"Sit down and let me speak when she arrives."

"If you betray me you'll both pay for it."

"I know."

She lowered her head and grabbed the weapon. Saia’s viss buzzed with tension, but the prior put it away in a drawer, then covered it with the stack of sheets.

“Explorers wouldn't survive out there without loyalty and obedience," she said then. "So I give you my word that I won't tell her nor anyone connected to the families about what we discussed here."

"Included who I am and what I can do?"

"Included that."

Saia sat down. They didn't have to wait long for the abbot to burst into the room.

"Why is this intruder in your office, Letru?"

Saia knew she should have pretended to be startled, but spun on the chair and stared at her in the eyes as if unbothered. That seemed to anger the abbot even more.

Letru stood slowly, tension tightening her jaw.

"She's not an intruder. I personally invited her."

Her control of her own viss was remarkable, but not perfect. Saia was ready to hide any trace of a lie if one of the three newcomers thought to check.

The abbot was so taken aback by that answer that she seemed to forget her anger for a moment.

"Without my permission?"

"I didn't know this guest was important enough to require it."

"But important enough to call her here?"

Letru lowered her gaze.

"I want to know when you plan to meet our guests and what you discuss,” the abbot said.

"I just wanted to interrogate her, since she came from far away. Any information about the monster could be helpful."

Saia didn't miss the abbot's disdain at the mention of the dark monks' goal.

"Since you're here," Letru continued. "I'd like to request your permission for a meeting tomorrow morning."

She briefly looked at Saia. She knew it was a bad idea, and already dreaded having to explain it to Serit. She still nodded.

"Not so fast. I want every detail of your conversation, in writing. I'll let you know about my decision tomorrow morning."

“Of course,” Letru said, lowering her gaze with a meekness that didn’t suit her.

The abbot looked at Saia, then nodded at the monks that had followed her.

"Take the guest to her room."

Saia shared a quick glance with the prior before preceding the monks outside. They had only made two steps down the corridor, when the discussion between abbot and prior resumed with animated tones.

She'd have to be ready that night, just in case the abbot decided that her presence there was too suspicious. She hadn't learned as much as she wanted about gods, instead gaining something else to worry about: that the guardian might not be a protector at all, but one of the many dangers the mountain had so far narrowly escaped. She needed to alert Aili immediately.