The pounding of her webbed hooves radiated up her scaled legs as she races over rocks that shred pads meant for cupping water rather than pounding against the earth. They had grown harder during her time on land. But, still, blue blood began to run freely from her hooves and left smeared prints behind her, gleaming and barely seen against the dark rocks.

He had fell behind her sprint to the gods, but soon he was alongside her again as she pulled up and halted in disbelief at the crumbling statues. Her ears swing forward from their slightly pinned position as he answered her question: These were just shrines, emblems of the gods. Though his answer quelled the surge of desperation and rage that boiled in her, it did not entirely remove the skepticism from her face. In Akvo, the gods were only as powerful as the people made them. If their shrines were left in shambles, if people did not pray and devote time to the tasks the gods were patron of, then those gods grew weak. Their powers dwindled as their sphere of influence waned.

So, to Aquila, these shabby shrines immediately reflected to power of the gods. But this behemoth warrior, Volterra, did not seem perturbed by them. So her unblinking, overlarge gaze follows the gesture of his broad muzzle, following the instructions he gave. Her long legs carry her close to the shrine of the god she recognized: the God of the Earth. His curved horns and massive wings were barely recognizable amid the crumbled rocks and charred surfaces. A trail of bloodied, azure footsteps marks her approach of the shrine.

She glances back at Volterra’s sharp red gaze—as if for some kind of reassurance. It was so unlike the woman that one couldn’t be certain that her intense glare was entirely for that. But, regardless, her unblinking eyes bored back at the man. And his caution fell on ears deafened by the roaring hope that suddenly surged through her.

And then, with a square of her shoulders and flare of her fins, she walked up to the god’s shrine. “I am Aquila, emissary for Akvo. I invoke your presence to save my people from the persecution by Yothea,” her growling voice was someone more refined as official words she had been given by the council flowed from her lips. Her ridges raised slightly, head proudly raised—only a slight buzz of her tail belied the tension that wracked her body. This was her moment to save her people, to fulfill her purpose and duty to Akvo.

And she waited.

And waited.

“Gods? I beseech you to save my people,” again her voice called to the imposingly silent statue. And her defenses began to fail, her ridges raising as desperation began to swell and spill into her voice, usually so proud began to crack, “They are trapped, infanoj ripped apart by Yothean jaws in front of patrinoj.” Her eyes grew wide, painfully dry as no tears fell from those dwelled beneath the sea. They searched the statue, her legs taking faltering, futile steps closer to the shrine. “Dioj! Do you hear me!” The shout was hoarse, desperate, as her neck craned and she reared up to strike her bleed hooves against the shrine’s base.

And silence reigned.

Her eyes, they stared. Large and glassy and unblinking. Up at unseeing gods who did not heed her plead to stop the genocide of her people. And a tremor shook her plated body once. Twice. Before it shook her whole being so hard that she crashed to her knees, proud body crumpling as waves of loss crashed over her. Unfeeling rocks with sharpened, black edges cut into her scaled skin with ease, leaving more of her blood as some futile sacrifice on this godsforsaken rock. ”Bonvolu,” her whisper fell to blue-stained rocks, “ili mortos.”

And silence still reigned.

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infanoj = children
patrinoj = mothers
dioj = gods
bonvolu, ili mortos = please, they’ll die