Baffled, Aurnia could only rock back onto her heels and continue to eye the inscription hovering above Agrona's gift. Unicorns did not die. At least not in the conventional sense. Their life threads never faded and would instead unspool and weave themselves into a new younger form whenever the time was right. So it was with the greatest sense of irony that Agrona had chosen them as her token animal.

Aurnia turned the orb in her hand, squinting to make sense of what it meant. Then Koa leaned forwards with a curious little chirp, paws out as if he was asking for a turn. She handed it over and watched as he batted it back into the hollow. His tail dragged awkwardly on the ground, and he hopped to and fro until Aurnia noticed that he'd arranged the orb's inscription so it lined up perfectly with the one on the ground.

A loud rumble filled the cavern, and she quickly scooped Koa back into her bag before retreating into the tunnel. Blue light scattered across the room as a series of concentric circles flared to life before them. Piece by piece, they then began to fall away, grinding and heaving until they formed a set of stairs that descended freely into the darkness below.

Aurnia blinked and the rank smell of old vinegar wafted steadily upwards to reach her nose. She gagged, then shuffled over, offered a short prayer to the gods before venturing unsteadily into the caverns below. The steps were uncomfortably smooth beneath her boots, and with every step, she could feel herself lurching precariously close to the edge.

Agrona might have been smart, but she had somehow forgotten to chisel handholds from the stone she apparently adored. Aurnia hissed and shoved her churning stomach to the side. It all felt wrong. The air was too damp, too heavy and it left a rasp on the back of her throat.

She felt a sharp tug on her heart, and without hesitation, she opened her mind's eye once again. This time, the stairwell was awash with the bright hues of wild magic loping freely through the air. She eyed the walls and was pleasantly surprised to find them lit, and ready to show the world ahead. Footsteps, worn by time and tired feet blossomed clearly on the dark steps beneath her feet. Relieved and with a new sense of determination, she plunged onwards, soon finding herself standing before a small room no larger than her own bedroom back at home.

To her left, a deep alcove had been carefully hollowed from the walls. And within it, a large silver bowl, filled with a thick oil like substance loomed up before Aurnia. She wrinkled her nose, eyeing the crude figure hewn into the rock above it. In its arms, the screaming creature gripped a still glowing lantern within its claws and cast an unsettling sheen over what remained in the bowl.

Koa propped his paws onto the edges of the bowl with a thoughtful chirp. What's that? Aurnia frowned, then gently pushed his tail away to make out what he was pointing at. She squinted, desperately trying to avoid inhaling the putrid remains of whatever substance lingered in the room. Threads, coarse from the bite of old acid and bile, lay just submerged by the liquid within.

Aurnia tilted her head, carefully trying to discern why they looked so familiar. Then, eyes widening, she turned to Koa and shook her head. "Those are hairs from a unicorn."

And watching Koa's enthusiastic nod, she couldn't help but feel guilty about not sharing the complete truth. After all, even she wasn't sure why Agrona would have wanted to experiment with fragments of herself.

Aurnia moved quickly through the room, turning over pages and wincing at the sharp tools that lined Agrona's old workbench. Dark liquid encrusted the end of what looked like a knife, upon closer inspection, Aurnia realised it was blood and she threw it across the room with a shudder. Then her gaze fell upon the mismatched jars that lined the shelves above. She held one up to the light and then it struck her.

Agrona had never stopped experimenting with lost souls.

The twisted shadow of a limb felt heavy between her fingers and the jar shattered when it hit the ground. Koa yelped and Aurnia leapt back as a sharp pinch clenched her heart. Pushing her revulsion to the side, she knelt before the shards of glass, using a stray crystal rod to shift through its contents.

Bones on bones leered up at her. None of which were in the correct positions to allow for movement, or even survival. She gagged, heaved and then retched the contents of her meagre breakfast into the corner under the desk.

She stood with a shudder, legs wavering and moved to get away. It was all wrong. Her mother had promised her that Agrona's experiments had never pushed the boundaries set by the First Mother. Yet this limb, this thing, had a life force that rammed against her heart.

Her hand brushed against a faded notebook that sat forgotten beneath a pile of old mottled papers and broken quills. Aurnia pulled it out and gently unwound the leather strap that tied it shut. Upon turning the pages, she was pleasantly surprised to find that she could finally understand most of what was written. Rows of scrawled writing spilled out onto the page, some underlined with a force that broke onto the page below.

Ritíba...angí....

Failures and omissions. The words hung heavily in her mind as phantom shouts, voices that she had always wished to forget trickled in from the depths of her memories. She shoved them aside with a growl. Her mother might have thought her to be a failure, but Agrona had no children to shame.

Aurnia cast her eyes around the room, then glanced at the shattered jar beside her feet.

The next page had a corner folded down, and upon it, a crude diagram depicting a chicken's heart lay proudly next to the image of a snake. Aurnia sucked her breath through her front teeth, something had been crossed out. And above that Ritíba had once again been scrawled, this time in red ink. As she regaled herself with whirling images and spiralled text, Aurnia's heart continued to sink. Agrona's hideout had not provided her with the answers she needed, and now, she was back to square one.

But as she read on, she was struck by the vengeance with which Agrona scratched out certain words. Over and over again, each word spilled frantically across the page until they resembled that of a newborn's scribblings. Some crawling, others shrinking to fill the empty space left by their brethren. Then finally, she reached a blank page marked only with a strange glyph and the queen's name.

Selene Dumieres.

That name would haunt Aurnia until the end of her lightless days. The laughter they had shared had been hollow, their trust brittle, and their smiles as barbed as the unruly rose bushes the then king had called his treasures. One look at Agrona's handiwork proved that her sentiments did not go unshared.

She turned her attention to the glyph on the side. Dark ink raced across the page, in some places, thick and almost solid as Agrona had clearly broken a nib. Aurnia traced her fingers over the image. It was unfamiliar, its looped edges too smooth to be anything she recognised. Yet she had to admit that it was beautiful, and upon holding it at arms lengths, she realised the centre resembled that of a dying rose. Scrawled in the corner, so faint she had to pull her light orb closer, was a short phrase dating the page to less than two months ago.

Her breath caught in her throat. In the grand span of the gods' lives, two month was nothing but a blink of the eye. They thought nothing of dedicating centuries to tasks that piqued their interests, and with that came an incredible sense of pride, of ownership over their creations. Yet Agrona had chosen to abandon her workshop to the hands of time.

As to where the goddess had travelled to next, Aurnia found no further clues. It was all too strange, and the room far too cramped. Aurnia shuddered and tucked the notebook neatly behind Koa. If there were mysteries to be solved, she would much prefer to be solving them while warm and leagues away from the leering creatures imprisoned in the jars around her.

Aurnia raced back up the stairs, making very certain to avoid tumbling backwards lest she slice her arm open on the sharp edges of the steps. She reached the top, chest heaving and bitterly disappointed that her search had turned up nothing. Then a glimmer of orange caught her eye and when she looked down, she realised that she'd forgotten to retrieve Agrona's orb.

As she knelt to pick it up, she immediately paused to examine the small string of letters that had appeared around its centre. She frowned. The orb had been blank had it not? Her tongue flicked in irritation, and she growled under her breath. The gods and all their secrets drove her up the wall. Even their contraptions seemed to mock her uncertainties.

All she wanted was to go home.

When she wrapped her palm around the cold stone ball, she snarled and collapsed onto the ground. The thick smell of iron filled her nostrils, and the image of a young man, with eyes full of tears pleading for mercy, flashed across her vision. She shook her head with a low roar, back pinching as she inadvertently transformed back into a dragon.

It was as if thousands of bees had taken up residence just below the surface of her skin. Head pounding, she squirmed as her heart lurched and thudded with a beat she had long wished to never experience again. Her mind's eye flared to life, then veered beyond her control. She gagged, the obsidian walls became translucent giving her a vision of the world beyond. Life threads shrivelled, burned and bloomed without control. Aurnia was horrified to find that while she could feel their jumble of pain, every attempt to soothe the chaos only resulted in what felt like a punch to her stomach.

She turned to Koa, trying to gasp a few short words. Yet when she looked, she almost screamed. Kao stood before her, amber eyes hollow and his heart awash with turmoil. In a flash, he had started to bleed. Like tar, the substance leaked from his ears, covering his eyes until nothing remained.

The world was crimson, fractured and impossible to piece back together. Blood, thick like mulled wine flowed freely through her claws, merging with her tears and the sorrows she had to bear. Tears, the boy–

Aurnia roared, desperately trying to shake the nightmare away. Suddenly she felt like a child once again, huddled and weeping for the warm embrace of her mother. One blink–

The boy's face wavered across her vision, hand held up uselessly as he tried to slash through the fog of wrath. One blink and he became a man, bruised and battered by a way he never wanted to fight.

A sharp pain rocketed through Aurnia's tail. Snarling, she whirled around claws extended only to throw herself to a stop when she caught sight of Koa hanging on for dear life. His amber eyes gleamed as he sunk his teeth even deeper through her scales and she shuddered to a stop. At that, he leapt forwards and knocked the orb away from her claws.

Aurnia gasped for air, suddenly grateful for the ever lingering chill. Taking in shuddering breaths, she gazed stunned at her own claws. Unfamiliar power thrummed just below the surface of her scales, itching and pulling until she had no choice but to force herself back into a human.

She swiped her hand across her eyes, and when her palm came away wet, she realised she had been crying.

"I'm so sorry." The words spilled from her and her grief deepened when she noticed the compassion that lingered on Kao's face. Her friend remained still, before racing forwards and kicking the orb into her open bag. He then curled beneath her arm.

It's okay.

His soft voice echoed through her head sending Aurnia into another round of sobbing. Her shoulders heaved as she gulped for air, hiccupping. Her cheeks burned. Years in this cursed world and she was no longer a child, yet here she was sobbing freely into an empty room. But she had seen him dead, festering as if he had been one of the great evils that murdered the Oneas, a goddess her mother once called a close friend. 

They remained on the floor, curled in silence and shared fright until finally, Kao reached up and patted her on the forehead. You were screaming, and it scared me. And then I heard you call for your mother so I decided you weren't so scary after all.

Aurnia gave him a watery smile and slowly heaved herself onto her feet. "My mother used to sing me this lullaby whenever I had a nightmare–" She trailed off, staring out into the tunnel and into the room beyond.

Nightmares are scary. I never want to have one. Kao climbed clumsily back into her bag, and Aurnia nodded and patted him on the head.

"Then I'm sorry that I brought you to this place of decay and warped magic."

The walk back into the open felt longer than it should have and when they found themselves looking out onto the Molten Seas and its ever churning magma, Aurnia felt them both breathe a sigh of relief. She pulled her bag around her shoulders before turning to gaze at the darkness they had just stumbled from.

If Agrona had no use for this place, then the least she could do was ensure that nothing could ever get in or out. The glassy eyes of each preserved creature wafted across her vision, and she raised her hand with a hiss. Every ounce of disappointment, fear and anger, she poured into her next spell. Aurnia effortlessly forced ice into every crack in the rock face before her, and she watched with a barely contained smile as the the force of the rapidly created steam thrust newly formed boulders down onto the entrance.

She pulled her map from the bag, absentmindedly trying to figure out where to go next. After a moment of careful consideration, Aurnia decided that her priority would be to get out and find a place to shelter and recoup her energies.

She easily took the skies once again, not even daring to look back at the mess she had left behind. The humans often liked to send their researchers out into the Molten Seas in an effort to understand a power that could rival the gods. And if they had any sense, and stumbled upon the entrance to Agrona's lair, they would set aside their pride and leave it alone.