I turned to look at her. The pavilion was gone. I sat in a room. Gauzy red curtains blocked my view, and in the gap beyond them I saw a trellised balcony. A sticky dark puddle slowly spread on the floor, inching toward my feet. I had seen too many puddles exactly like this. The smell hit me, hot and metallic. An awful crunching sound came from somewhere beyond the veils of red gauze.

“What is this?”

“You wanted to share,” my aunt said. “You showed me yours. I’ll show you mine.”

I drew the curtain aside. The sound got louder, a sickening, chewing, slurping sound.

I pulled the last curtain aside. A bed strewn with a child’s toys and colorful pillows. A thing glared at me from the floor. Hairless, gray, awful, with huge owl eyes and bloodstained teeth. It clutched a child’s headless corpse in its front limbs. It stared at me and chewed.

“This is the way your uncle died,” my aunt said. “Also two of your aunts.”

I lunged forward. The thing shrieked, dragging the child’s body with it. I chased it. I had to kill it.

“They came from the sea,” Erra said. “You won’t find their names chiseled into any stone. We obliterated them and their memory. We erased them from existence. They had attacked the kingdoms like a plague, bringing their magic and their creations like that thing you’re trying too hard to kill.”

If only I could catch it, I would crack its skull like a walnut.

“We were betrayed by our neighbors. We had left to broker an alliance. When we returned, the palace of Shinar was silent. We found only half-eaten corpses.”

The thing darted toward my aunt. She looked at it and its bones broke, the big dome of its skull caving in on itself as if stomped.

“Look outside,” she said.

I stepped onto the balcony. A vast plain unrolled before me. An army charged at me. Shaggy, huge armored mammoths; strange beasts, their hindquarters striped, their heads too large for their bodies, their jaws filled with oversized hyena teeth; creatures for which I had no name; and people in armor. I glanced behind me. The dark room was gone. My aunt strode onto the field in front of her troops. She wore blood armor. Her loose hair streamed in the wind. Behind her the emerald standards snapped, pulled taut. She began to run, at first slowly, then picking up speed. The troops behind her broke into a charge. To the right, a man in blood armor on a white horse raised a spear and shouted. His horse reared and I saw his face, impossibly handsome and alight with magic. Father . . .

My aunt charged across the field, magic twisting around her.

The first line of the enemy was almost to her.

Erra opened her mouth. Power tore from her, an unstoppable blast that sent the armored mammoths flying.