Sarah Z. Creates

In the World-Building Wednesday series, I’m doing just that: using writing prompts to flesh out Talah, one of the worlds in The Sundered Realms. Images are generated using Microsoft Copilot.

Adalhia took a deep breath. Stepping into the shadow of the Nightmare was like diving into ice water. Not that she really knew what that felt like. But she could imagine. Tiny knives stabbing her all over. The breath whooshing from her lungs. The aching, suffocating feeling of weight.

She hated it. She hated the sacrifice. And she hated that she had to make this sacrifice.

The Dreamer took the easy salt: sweat and tears. And she took them from anyone. Her offering bowl was always clean — the salt sank into its porous surface and helped form the twisted, winding pedestal beneath it, a glittering sculpture of natural beauty to offset the ethereal beauty of the softly carved Dreamer.

She didn’t know which ancient had created these statues. Sometimes she thought they must have been created by different hands, despite the skill that had gone into each. For the Dreamer was lovely and perfect. But the Nightmare …

He was taller than Adalhia, despite the fact that he was kneeling. Like the Dreamer, his face was serene. Adalhia thought that was wrong. He should have been scowling. A scowl might have matched the blood-stained dagger he wielded above the fetid, gore-crusted bowl he held in his other hand.

She didn’t want to get close enough to see if his features turned mocking at close range. She didn’t want to smell the death and decay that never emptied from that bowl, despite how rarely people offered to the Nightmare. His bowl was never empty of blood.

Adalhia had no choice. It wasn’t really her blood that was the sacrifice here. It was her rage and desperation. But the Nightmare took the blood, too. And oftentimes, the life that came with it. These offerings were always a gamble. Though they were rare, everyone remembered them. And they remember how many had been fatal.

Adalhia wasn’t sure if she prayed for that outcome or not.

Only the desperate made offerings to the Nightmare. The desperate and the damned. Adalhia was definitely desperate. She wasn’t sure about the other. Not yet, anyway.

But all this dithering wasn’t making the offering.

She drew a deep breath, gathering her rage and hatred and savageness close to her in lieu of bravery, and stepped into the Nightmare’s shadow.