Uta: The Heq-Ashqen's Tower: Qemassen
Uta dreamed of waves.
She was standing at the top of the Talefa Hill and everything was so, so quiet. Staring out to sea, she could see the wave—taller than the city walls, tall as the firmament itself, so vast it seemed to move as slow as time. And all around her, though she could see the water approaching and there was no time—no time!—the people clogging the road at the gates to the palace moved as though through soup. And Uta was screaming at them, though no sound escaped her throat.
Why wouldn't they move faster? Why wouldn't they move?
Madaula wasn't with her—lost somewhere in the rush uphill. Uta spun round, searching for a familiar face, but none of the people crowding her had faces. Instead, they all wore masks.
"Hurry." Uta grabbed the nearest man's arm—not even a Massenqen but a Lora soldier—and tugged him in the direction of the gleaming palace gates. His death mask stared impassively forward, the holes where she ought to be able to at least glimpse his eyes all in shadow.
"Come on."
Each time the sunlight hit the gates' golden surface a bell chimed.
Ting.
Blinding light glanced off the metal, filling her vision, if only for a moment.
Uta couldn't pull the man along to safety. He was too heavy and she was too—she looked down at herself. She was small. Her hands were small. She was a girl.
Ting.
This time, the noise echoed around and around and around like someone had dropped a stone inside a metal bowl, only instead of quieting, the reverberation grew louder. The light throbbed, then vanished.
Uta clamped her hands over her ears.
All around her, what had been a crowd frozen in place became a frenzy. The people rushed in, hurling themselves at the gates. A soldier's armoured knee thwacked her arm, a housewife's hips jostled her shoulder. In the chaos, she was nearly knocked to the ground.
The road had become a bottleneck, the desperate and the dying trampling friend and foe as every one of them pressed themselves to the bars of the palace gates, crushing the bodies of those who'd come before. Men, women, and children screamed. The gates rattled.
Uta was on the ground. Sitting with her little girl legs stretched in front of her, she had a perfect view of the winding street that led up the Talefa Hill. Down below, where the road began to level out, a figure all in black stood watching. Their shape was hazy, almost as though they were outlined in smoke.
They were very tall, their hooded head towering above the people fleeing uphill, and where they walked—or floated—the bodies of everyone else seemed to make room for them.
Ting.
Uta glanced behind her at the gates. She could barely see them for all the bodies.
Ting.
Back down the path, the figure had grown much closer.
Ting.
Terror Uta had never felt before gripped her in what felt like a chokehold. Her bones ached all over her body; her heart thumped.
Ting.
Beside Uta, sunlight glinted off bronze.
Her lantern.
She'd lost it in the tunnels the day of the siege.
Tears welled in her eyes. Her parents' lantern. The last thing she had of them. The only thing she'd owned that connected her to them. She reached for it—
