Otherwise, we would have dared to defy him and taken her by force. But for all his darkness and the dreaded bloodline he was born from, he’s treated her well… except for allowing her to bypass our rituals.” The High Priestess faced the opposite wall, the dark lands of Irkalla. “If she had been persuaded to meet her birthright, we would be able to find her now.”
“He just wanted her to be her own person,” I said, stubbornly defending him, but… what dreaded bloodline was she talking about?
“Completing the ritual doesn’t make a succubus less of a person,” the High Priestess chided me. “It’s our birthright, and she loses nothing of herself in the process. But I do regret that she is not known to the Mother. We never willingly abandon our own; I too feel pain that one of my sisters is lost to us.”
I shook my head, looking at the specks of light on the walls. “So there’s nothing I can do to track her. Aren’t there any succubi who could search by air?”
The High Priestess spread her hands. “Look at the entirety of Hell. They could spend their entire lives searching and not find so much as a single hair on her head.”
Anger was rising under the surprise of what I’d been told. I’d come all the way here, hoping they’d be willing to go find one of their own, and here I was being told there was absolutely nothing to be done.
“Then why invite me in at all? Why bring me here? You could’ve just told me to abandon all hope at the door.”
She took several steps closer, and one hand rose to close gently around my shoulder. “Because you should not abandon hope. We have too many injured to care for now to waste womanpower on a fruitless search, but you have other means available to you. The Order of the Chain, they follow you, yes?”
I nodded silently. It was impossible to not feel comforted by the High Priestess’s touch, as though she were maternal comfort incarnate, but all I wanted to feel was anger. “Yes. They’ve attached themselves to me, for whatever reason.”
She squeezed a little tighter. “Then it is time for you to commune with them. Our Mother has never felt Vyra’s soul, but you have a strong bond with her: the bond of sisterhood. As Vyra’s unusual family shows you, blood does not determine the strength of the bond. Between you and Lord Azazel, you will have a way to find her.”
I stared up at her, wishing I could read her face through the veil. I hadn’t considered the Chainlings as a means of searching for Vyra.
“As for why you were invited in, it is because of this.” She waved her hand at the ceiling. “You will likely go far. Make note of the lands, and the warnings depicted here. The Mother can’t commune with you, but she requested that I offer this gift of knowledge, for caring for her wayward daughter.”
I nodded jerkily, and the High Priestess sank into the middle of the floor in a graceful lotus position, clearly going into meditation behind her veil.
I walked the walls for over an hour, combing over everything, committing every detail to memory. The names of the kingdoms, where the rivers flowed, where the conclaves of succubi were gathered.
It was the sort of intel not many people would ever see. This map must’ve been centuries in the making, the combined efforts of thousands of succubi on behalf of their communal good, and from some of the warnings written in faint script, many didn’t return from their travels.
Once my head started spinning from the sheer amount of information I’d crammed into it, I finally stopped pacing the walls, pausing with my hand over a black splotch of ink.
Something in me recoiled when I saw my fingers were touching the sphinx statues depicted on the city in Irkalla’s depths. Even though the walls were cool stone, there was an almost slimy sensation about running them over this portion of the map.
The High Priestess was still meditating. I crept around to face her. “Thank you for showing this to me. And for your advice.”
For a moment I thought she was completely tranced out, but her head tilted back. “Thank you for searching, and for healing one of us.”
I might not have gotten what I came for, but at least I had another lead. With the map of Hell fixed in my mind and new hope, I