Mantis scrunched her eyes in sudden agony and lowered her gaze to her feet, but she could still see the outline of his form even with her eyes closed, floating in the middle of her vision like a specter. She could see his legs, bent at the knee and stiffly positioned at an awkward distance from each other as if this were his first time sitting, and his arms braced on the armrests of the seat with his hands hanging limply down the edges of the bare metal bars, palms-out. The image of his eerily human form was seared into her mind, just a man on a chair—only as tall as five human beings stacked lengthwise on top of each other, and entirely covered in liquid fire like a blindingly bright layer of honey that engulfed his body.

  He continued to dance around, a sinister shadow following Mantis’s vision, as she looked around herself. She was only mildly surprised when she found Leroh at her side rubbing his eyes in pain, and his friend and the new girl, Fala, staring straight ahead solemnly, if a little pale, with their Sun-yellow eyes unharmed by the sight.

  A silence spread and swallowed all stimuli for several heartbeats. Mantis was hit by the abrupt understanding that this might be the place of her death, these her companions in her last moments of life. For a fleeting instant, she found herself regretting the minor things she’d done without thinking over the major themes that had always taken priority in her conscious mind. It surprised her that what she was hurting over, just now, was not being able to remember the last thing she’d said to Teela, or not thanking Yilenn for her smiles.

  Mantis’s deepest fear and desire had long been death. This, she knew as unquestioningly as her own existence. But to be put out of her misery meant that either another poor soul would have to take her place, or that her life’s work would cease to be along with the Mantis of Yriaa, ending the only good thing she’d ever achieved: safety for her kind. And yet, despite this terrible knowledge of her burden, Mantis had spent decades yearning to surrender. Like a coward.

  The shame of that cowardice was what had forced her to live a life no person should have to endure, what had pushed her forward countless times before. As it surely would again, right now.

  That sudden and earnest realization sank to the bottom of Mantis’s stomach like a boulder. She swallowed thickly and allowed herself one long blink of acceptance.

  She didn’t intend to die, not truly, not today. Unfortunately.

  She moved, one unwavering step forward at a time, until she reached the center of the enormous space, the echoing footsteps of her young companions following suit resonating behind her. The worst of it was crossing the ten paces’ worth of raised bridge that allowed mortals to enter the throne room without becoming a liquid, and the group did so in an understandable but embarrassing hurry, spurred on by the painfully hot air that arose from the magma when they were momentarily just above it.

  The only other sound was the crackle of the Sun’s fire stream relentlessly wending around the room like a snake with prey in its grasp, and the only other being in their presence was the Sun God himself. Mantis found it disconcerting that he’d chosen to receive them completely on his own, but she didn’t question that speck of good luck blown her way. She much preferred to keep the words they would exchange amongst themselves, to involve as few Sun servants in her private affairs as possible.

  Mantis carefully took in the room, trying to not to damage her eyes again by looking directly at the God.

  Oddly, his luminescence was contained to his physical form. Much unlike the nucleus of giving light he commanded in the skies, his body did not produce the lethal warmth and radiance Mantis would have expected. He was only bright enough to make him impossible to look at for longer than an instant, but otherwise surprisingly innocuous at such close proximity.

  His throne room was larger than any one uninterrupted chamber Mantis could have ever envisioned, white and sober as if to avoid detracting focus from the few and striking elements it contained. Walls enhanced with stained glass murals rose higher than any construction meant for the habitation of humans, and the reverent images depicted in the windows cast equally beautiful rays of colorful Sunlight into the room in straight beams that painted the air. But it would have been laughable to take the time to properly observe the mesmerizing artwork, for the curtains of colorful light spanning the room were starkly contrasted with a river of liquid fire that emerged from the Sun’s left palm and reentered him through his right, encompassing the chamber’s perimeter. As his hands hung off the armrests of his throne, the stream of magma poured slowly from his body and into the shallow moat carved out from the marble of the floor. It traveled alongside all four walls, at least five feet wide, and produced an ominous red glow and dry heat that made Mantis break into a sweat under the layers of fabric of Yilenn’s dress.

  It was his feeding method.

  Most people were aware of it. And, vile as it was, Mantis had to grudgingly admire the Sun’s innovative way to consume his prey. She envied it. It was widely known that he didn’t ever use his mouth—didn’t lower himself to the beastly processes of humans—for his sustenance, unlike herself.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Before Mantis could gather her thoughts to begin juggling with their lives, a voice very much like a human being’s arose from the area of the room where the throne stood tall. “I never expected to see you with my own eyes, Sitryn. You look the same, after all the years since you last called my attention to yourself.”

  Mantis bristled and took an involuntary step back.

  She had to fight her own body to keep her gaze away from him, in that moment. Her survival instincts were urging her to face the creature threatening her life, to identify and fight the danger her animal brain had detected and was so alarmingly warning her of. It was an effort of will to wrangle her eyes toward the monstrous window on her left, and to force them to stay there.

  Hers was a name long in disuse, lost in time to most who’d at one point been able to associate her with it. Mantis didn’t care to hear it now, especially in his voice.

  But worse was the worldly tangibility of his words. He was as real as any of them, another person in the room. He sounded unremarkable, just a man, neither young nor old. His tone was even amicable, casual. And yet there was an undertone of wrongness in the sound, like a hallucination, both harmless and unspeakably frightening for its detectable deceit, more disturbing than any outright display of hostility in its pretense of normalcy. It chilled Mantis’s skin despite the stifling temperature of the room.

  She could find no words to reply to him. He sensed it, and spoke again, “You want these souls from me.”

  Mantis swallowed and straightened her spine. “Yes.”

  She had to find her footing.

  Her plan was simple: to bargain according to her findings. If all was as it should be, if her worldview should remain unchallenged by hearsay and commontalk, she could try making a conservative deal with the Sun, a risk she’d successfully taken once before. She’d trade him for her own targets, compromise to surrender her own prey to replace the two souls she wanted freed. Ombira would put up a fight, but Mantis knew from previous experiences that it could be done, albeit with great difficulty.

  The other direction her negotiations could follow—the path Mantis was reluctant to even consider—was the one in which she reached the devastating conclusion that absolutely everything had to go to shit. In that case, she supposed she could go ahead and bargain wastefully, ignoring reason and feasibility, for there would be no need to fulfill her end of the agreement at all if she intended to make an enemy of the Sun God shortly after their encounter anyway. She was heavily inclined to avoiding that outcome.

  And she would. Her findings had been inconclusive. Fala could be lying. The whole story could be the result of a bored population prone to gossip. There wasn’t sufficient proof to warrant obliterating the foundations of Mantis’s life, the beliefs that were the very reason for her existence. She could discard these possibilities. She had to, in fact. She would. Now.

  “I would request a trade. Two new souls in exchange for these young servants.” The words were out before she’d had time to decide what to say, almost against her will. Her throat was burning like she’d vomited in her mouth.

  The Sun God replied in a gentle tone that again put a tingle in Mantis’s skin. “That is all you want? This is the reason for your coming to my city?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do not expect me to believe that.” He sounded disappointed, like a parent scolding their child. “The human I have allowed to live despite her robbing me of my rightful property on several occasions, and whose existence I tolerate on the basis of mutual respect, would not make a mockery of me with this nonsense.”

  “Free these people whom I have personal ties to as a benevolence to me, and I’ll replace them with a different but equally valuable pair of souls. My offer is fair.” Mantis was quiet for a moment. She decided she might be able to do a little better. “Or I could make it three, if it please you. It’s my intention to reach an agreement today. So. Three souls in exchange for two. Is that better to your liking?”

  “You truly have no other intentions coming to me, beyond this inane proposition?”

  “What did you have in mind?” Mantis’s head gave an involuntary twitch with the question. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling. She couldn’t decipher why she’d suddenly become so tense and still, or why her pupils and nostrils had widened in alertness.

  “I do not accept your offer,” the Sun declared. “Now, leave. Go back to your Goddess, and I will continue to keep my distance from your affairs so long as they don’t interfere with mine.”

  With his dismissal, a potent light emanated from his form and lit up the room like a strike of lightning. It didn’t burn the skin, but it made Mantis and her companions bend to cover their faces with their hands in reflexive protection of their eyes. The doors produced a sound behind them and Mantis understood that the Sun had commanded the guards posted outside to open them and escort them out. He was finished with her.

  “There is more,” said someone loudly.

  A palpable tension filled the air with the God’s redirected attention.

  It had been her.

  Mantis could not recall saying it, and the voice still reverberating in the massive and mostly empty chamber hadn’t wholly sounded like hers to her own ears, but she knew objectively that the words had come from her lips. The Sun remained quiet and appeared to reconsider, and after half a dozen heartbeats of his vibrating waves of power sweeping through the room with his answering emotion, the doors stilled and remained closed.

  He said nothing. Mantis opened her mouth, both voluntarily and involuntarily at once, and spoke. “You know what you fear, and so do I. But I will not give voice to the threat, for we both would avoid reaching that point, I believe. Instead, I will raise my offer to four souls in exchange for two.”

  “You disgrace me.” There was a furious calm in his voice, and that only spurred Mantis on—to her own outrage and disapproval.

  “Eight.”

  “Your Goddess will not tolerate—”

  “Sixteen,” she heard herself say, vaguely aware that her lips were now stretched in a smile. “Thirty-two.”