There’s that oppressive breathing silence, and then, “For…” The valkerax sucks in heavy, sharp air, like it’s been stabbed. “Forever? Forever like the earth-home? Forever like the moons in our dreams?”

“Not forever.” I gulp. “It’s only for a while. But it’s quiet. I know a way to make the voice get so quiet, it’s like it’s not even there.”

Another long pause. Then that creaking growl echoes again, this time up against my ear, a hot gust of putrid air blasting into my face. It has its mouth open right in front of me. The valkerax rumbles, heavy whumps resounding like a giant dog thrashing its tail.

“Above-prison-prison. Above stone, still stone. Warm blood inside metal keeps us here to listen.” The valkerax’s teeth and massive jaw snap together abruptly, throwing brutal echoes into my eardrums. It gives a shuddering quiver-hiss as it breathes in and opens its mouth again, the breath wafting over me. “The song makes great pain. The song will rip us apart. Sing about it to the others. Darkness is the end, darkness to swim-fly within. The little cliffs scratched into shape and stone by mortal fingers,” it thunders. “They keep us here, too. Why?”

Little cliffs? What does it mean? Oh! The runes? The beneather runes—I guess they would look like cliffs in the stone to something very, very small. The valkerax’s logic is baffling, considering it’s not small at all, but it makes a twisted sense.

“To, uh, to teach you.” I try to stand, my new leg wobbling. “The person who caught you wants me to teach you how to make the voice go away. It’s called Weeping. And once you learn Weeping…they’re going to ask you questions.”

The valkerax makes that keening tortured sound again, wheezing after it. “Pain is the question and going is the answer.”

Going. As in, leaving? Of course the valkerax wants to leave this place where it’s being held against its will.

“Is going possible?” it presses, the hot air overwhelming and constant, its mouth even closer now as it thrashes its tail and makes the whole arena shake.

“I don’t know,” I admit, steadying myself and gulping down the urge to run. “All I know is that I can teach you how to Weep.”

The hot air reverses all of a sudden, the sound of inhaling, my clothes flapping as the violent breeze pulls me in like I’m an ant, a bug, something easily moved. I dig my heels into the ground and fight it, but it stops abruptly, and I crash into the dirt. I swivel my head around, trying to get a bearing of which direction it’s in, when six points of light slice the darkness and freeze me in my tracks. Six ovals—each taller and wider than me—two symmetrical columns of three stacked on top of each other and glowing white.