“All right, let’s pretend we get the corruption we need. Then what? Anything I can do to not go insane?”
“Your dragon fire is the key,” said Kiku. “As everyone knows, corruption is not only extraordinarily potent in tiny amounts, but it will conquer even powerful souls as it supplants its host’s prana. It’s simply too much for most people and spells to handle. But dragon fire may be able to use that power as fuel. If you can hold your concentration, then you should channel the excess corruption into your flames. Burn it away until you can gain control of the flood of power that will be doing everything it can to take over.”
“I see. That does sound promising. Anything else?”
“Purely little details. For instance, it’s best for Ghevont and I that you aren’t armed or being defended by your dragon armor when we’re corrupting you. If you go wild, then I’m sure you don’t want to make it too difficult for us to kill you.”
“No, I suppose not… though don’t be too hasty either.”
“I’m sure I’ll be quite conflicted when the time comes. Another thing, if you can indeed channel your corruption into your flames, there’s a small chance you can prevent a bit of your prana from being corrupted. You’ll sacrifice a little power, but Ghevont thinks having a reservoir of your own prana will, uh… What will it help with?”
“Control, of course,” replied the scholar. “No matter how familiar the fiend’s prana turns out to be, casting spells with corruption will be a demanding task at first, but if Mercer succeeds in keeping some of his soul untainted, then he can use that prana to reclaim a grip on spells that threaten to ‘run rampant,’ as it were.” To me, he continued with, “It’s nothing you should specifically pay attention to unless you feel you can afford to do so.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“No, no. That’s the opposite of what I recommended. Keep it far back in your mind, if at all. It’s safer that way.”
“Er, yeah. That’s what I meant. When can we get started?”
“Right away!” said Kiku. “Roll up your sleeve so that I can cut the samples. Ghevont can get started fashioning the rune.”
So as I rolled up my sleeve and unraveled part of the cloth around the chain-teeth, Ghevont headed into the island foliage to look for a nice piece of flat soil to etch his rune on. Kiku pulled out a dagger and used her fingers to feel the chain-teeth’s hold on my arm. She studied each embedded tooth, looking for one or two that would be the easiest to nick off. Wiggling the teeth irritated my skin, but that was going to be nothing compared to what I was really here for.
At any rate, Kiku irritated me even more when her dagger’s edge cut into a marred tooth’s base. To prevent my skin from moving too much, Kiku wrapped her hand with the cloth so she could hold my arm down without cutting herself in the process. The hard organic material lodged in my skin acted almost like rock, so despite it already being damaged, it took dozens of sawing motions for Kiku’s dagger to finish slicing off a chunk of the tooth.
In the time it required for her to cut a second piece of the engrained tail, Ghevont returned to notify us that he finished carving his part of the rune and needed Kiku to put her touches on it. She and I accompanied him through the tree line and into a small clearing where a fifteen foot wide rune circle had been engraved. Between and around the triangular, circular, and irregular shapes within the rune, Kiku used an earth spell to write a script of characters that looked like an ancient language.
“Oh, you really do know more Olishkari glyphs than I,” said Ghevont.
“Told ya.”
“What are Olishkari glyphs?” I asked the scholar.
“One of the scripts of the corrupted realm. None are all that well-known in Orda.”
“The corrupted realm has written languages?”
“Several,” answered Kiku, not looking up from her work. “Most are incomplete perversions of fallen civilizations, but Olishkari is thought to be spoken and written by many of the least insane inhabitants of the corrupted realms. Predictably, that makes it a forbidden thing to learn outside of the cults of strife.”
“I didn’t know there were enough lucid minds in the corrupted realms to share a language.”
“Most people associate corruption with the ruined, untamed worlds rogue summoners can easily connect with, but the corrupted realms wouldn’t be much of a threat if there were no lucid minds directing matters. There are hard-to-reach realms that are more organized, civil even. No one talks about those worlds. Too scary a thought, I suppose.”
“I hope to someday visit such a world,” said Ghevont. “Badu Sissis was said to accomplish the remarkable feat once.”
“And who’s that?” I asked.
“One of the first worshipers of strife. Almost like a prophet for them.”
“He was more like a scholar who dabbled in the dark arts,” added Kiku. “His writings don’t laud the gods of strife as much as describe the new wonders they offered. That a lot of strife worshipers later enjoyed his work was probably not his intent… Aaaand there! All done! I’ll just put the samples in this little hole in the center. Shall we burn them, scholar?”
“No, their presence alone should be adequate. We’ll burn one if nothing happens after a few hours. Now, Mercer, this isn’t solely a summoning rune, but a paralysis one as well. However, there’s always a chance the lure attracts something stronger than we’re expecting, so it’s best to remain on guard lest the paralysis spell is too weak to hold on to it. If anything gets out of the rune circle, just kill it right away.”
“All right. And what happens if you do keep it paralyzed? You’re not gonna let it wrap its tail around my other arm, are you?”
“Oh, no. Direct infusion will not be necessary. I’m still not sure why my sister blighted your soul using such a method. Afflicting one with corruption carries enough risk as it is… Perhaps she wanted to… No, that can’t be… It may have been an unintentional…”
“Ghevont?”
“Hmm? Oh, right. I’m going to need the empty prana crystal you have. I’ll put it in the staff and use it to absorb what corruption I can. Fortunately, we’ll only need to fill a small fraction of the crystal’s volume for our purposes.”
I gave Ghevont the crystal and unsheathed my sword. After a few minutes, the scholar had swapped the green crystal with the blank one. Once he confirmed that everyone was ready, he sat by the rune’s border and cast the summoning spell, giving an unforgiving, gray glow to the rune’s etches.
The rune’s glow hindered the shadows coming from the trees, so the best way to tell time was by the budding sense of hunger in my stomach. When that hunger grew to the point that it threatened to weaken my future battle with corruption, I ate the last handful of seeds and nuts in my satchel. Chewing something durable on the wrong side of my jaw still occasionally produced painful pangs, forcing me to either swallow groups of the hard food whole or munch on them in one puffed up cheek. I avoided doing the cheek thing as much as possible so as not to give Kiku something else to find amusement in.
Almost lost in the afternoon’s brightness, the gray glow shifted to a whiter one. Everyone noticed, perking up our bodies and attention. Seconds later and I thought I heard something sizzling. A rush of air blasting out from the rune stifled the rolling sea’s waves. Then a high-pitched cry that resembled a dagger’s point scratching a rough pane of glass yanked at my eardrums like no other sound before.
A blur of black and red leapt toward Ghevont. He backed away just in time to avoid a swipe from severely curved claws as long as my forearm. A flash of yellow light rose from the rune, freezing the blur in place.
“Sorry! Sorry!” said Kiku. “It was just so fast and loud!”
Its unquiet nature was still evident as a deeper pitch of its inceptive scream continued to emanate from somewhere within its cheetah-shaped body. Needles of various heights ran down the length of its spine, transitioning into the familiar chain-teeth that made up its long, whipping tail. Hind legs lik
e an oversized hare were what stuck it to the ground the most, since its front legs were less than half as short and robust. The forelimbs ended in those curled claws it also used as feet. Black, leathery skin with mottled stripes of dark red tautly coated its undernourished figure.
Truly setting this beast apart from Orda’s creatures was its trim, white head. It looked like the top half of a wolf skull, except with four or five extra rows of teeth and another pair of bulging eyeballs. I don’t know how the fuck it ate without a lower jaw, though that concept was made clearer when the front of its neck flapped open. A lashing tongue longer than my arm nearly slapped Ghevont in the face.
The scholar thrusted his staff’s tip forward, thumping it against the monster’s, uh, brow, I suppose. The tongue wrapped around the middle of the staff, but Ghevont said nothing about it. I thus thought it best to play it safe and not agitate the creature further by slicing its tongue off.
Each time the yellow light flickered I readied my sword for a jab, but Kiku managed to hold on for a minute longer before saying, “I’m losing it!”
“Just unsummon him!” declared Ghevont.
The paralysis spell had to be released first, giving the fiend another chance to ready a pounce. It disappeared at the same time it sprang headlong toward a retreating scholar.
Crossing through the now vacant rune, Kiku asked, “Did you absorb anything?”
Between long inhales, Ghevont replied, “Plenty.”
“You two rest up for an hour or so,” I said. “We’ll begin the second phase of the plan once your strength is topped off. How will you get the corruption in me, exactly?”
“You can just absorb it yourself,” said Kiku. “You used to absorb the dragon prana in the crystal, right? It’s the same thing. Or if you prefer, we can sharpen the crystal and stab it in you somewhere.”
“No thanks. Already been through that.”
Every trace of the taboo rune was destroyed. We next talked about how to best defend against a crazed me. The best idea came from Kiku, who suggested that we go to the sand and bury me up to my knees. In this way I would be partly immobilized and therefore easier to kill without having to devote too much energy in more elaborate arrangements.
The rest of the time I stood against a tree trunk and stared at the sea to the northeast, fiddling with the onyx-colored crystal in my hand. For a while I pondered what it meant for the future of my soul to willingly corrupt it. Did the gods of day and night see the act as unforgivable, no matter how one used it? Or did they grant exceptions? I thought it absurd that all-powerful beings would be so absolutist when it came to interpreting a multifarious human life. Or maybe they weren’t so all-powerful. Or maybe there were unknown gods above them whose rules they needed to obey.
If I recalled correctly, each god was in charge of a different aspect of the afterlife, and depending on how a mortal lived their life, one of the gods would escort their soul to the most appropriate dominion. From there the immaterial essence evidently became inaccessible to mortals and gods alike. It’s possible Duality never mentioned what happened from there since the gods themselves were clueless about it as anyone. The priesthood may have had theories, but it’s likely they changed their stories on a case-by-case basis.
Tahlous traditionally guided the spirits of dragon knights and many great warriors, but corrupted beings were under the domain of strife. I had no idea who would claim my soul. If it was at all possible, then maybe I could get Odet to purify me before I died at a ripe old age. Ha! I already felt old. I couldn’t imagine living another twenty years at the rate I fought otherworldly powers both within and without.
Forgetting what enigmatic gods thought of me, I knew I needed to brace for Odet’s ire. I could come back to her sane, but even if the corruption didn’t take my mind, there was still a possibility that it changed my personality. According to my aunt and family, I used to have a more childish, carefree temperament before the Advent kidnapped me. Certainly, the kidnapping, fighting pit, and being sold to a criminal syndicate may have done most of the changing.
Still, I’d accept a change in myself if it meant I did everything in my power to protect those I cared about. I simply couldn’t go into Jegeru without knowing I was all I could be, dishonorable or not. I hoped using that dishonor did not disgrace Aranath by association, though I doubted the dragon himself cared how I summoned him from his dreary prison.
The scrunching sand beneath Kiku’s feet interrupted my musings. “We’re ready,” she said. “Or do you need a little more time?”
“No, it’s now or never.”
“You’re gonna do fine. Either you’ll come out of this more powerful than ever, or all your problems in this realm will be over.”
“Your bedside manner is unmatched.”
We walked to the thickest patch of beach on the island a hundred yards from where I stood. This way there was plenty of sand for Ghevont and Kiku to use in the event they needed to restrain me. Ghevont had already dug a nice hole for me to drop myself in. The hole that my lower legs did not occupy was then packed in with compressed, wet sand. I could quickly pull out a leg if I put my back into it, but if I did such a thing without first speaking coherently, the plan was for Kiku to stab me with my sword. I removed my cloak and dragon scale armor to make that stabbing an easier prospect.
I waved over Ghevont. When he came close, I said, “If the worst happens, make sure you stick by Clarissa for as long as you can. I don’t know how big you are on oaths, but can you promise me that?”
“I have nothing against sensible oaths. This one sounds sensible.”
“Thanks… Oh, and remember not to dissect me. Burn my body and toss the ashes into the sea.”
“Oh… Um, okay.”
“Now stand back and make sure my legs don’t get free.”
Ghevont shaped his right hand into a loose fist. I felt the sand around my boots tighten. Any tighter and he would completely cut off circulation to my feet. Kiku, blade in hand, stepped a few feet behind me and nodded at my turned head. I faced forward, toward the water. In my right hand I held the crystal and in the opposite I squeezed a dragon stone. A couple of final deep breaths and I was as ready as I was ever going to get.
The mere act of linking with my own prana sent the corruption in the mineral vessel in a tizzy. Its ravenous nature practically had it jumping out of its cage and into my blood without me having to do a damn thing. Possibly to its great surprise, I welcomed it in. It was like opening the door to an old friend, a friend who made it no secret that his greatest desire in life was to disembowel you and devour everything that spilled out. That’s basically what the initial rush of torturous agony felt like, except infinitely more addictive. There was simply no absorbing only a third or a fourth of the corruption. I took it all in.
Pulses of creaking pain and ponderous numbness battled in my mind, blood, and bone. In the flashes of sensibility I could feel myself smiling like mad. In another flash I realized my left hand was empty. It had dropped the stone some time ago. Later, another gleam of reason permitted me to release a burst of my prana. Using that chance, I sensed the stone and lit its contents aflame. The exquisite brightness penetrated through my shut eyelids, gifting me with slightly longer bouts of sanity.
I now perceived which part of my spirit was being appropriated and washed my prana over it. The action exposed more of my prana to the defilement, but it was the only way to guide it to the dragon spell. That seemed to do something, for some of madness’ encumbrance was transferred to my left hand and out of my body.
A whirling mess of light, darkness, heat, and cold obliged me to peek open my left eye. That’s when I saw a blazing column of dragon fire intermixing with what appeared to be another flame composed of a nighttime shadow. The water lapping on to shore steamed without even contacting this bizarre flame. My sliver of eyeball could not get accustomed to the different phases of brightness and temperature, forcing me to blind myself again.
Since time was meaning
less in my chaotically confused state, I could only say that at some point I realized that I was not going to have the amount of dragon fire necessary to absorb all the corruption. The mere act of guiding it was putting too much of it in contact with the hateful power. I tried scaling back how much I was willfully handing over to the outsider. However, there was no going back. I already let him in the house and he was well on his way to gobbling up my entrails.
I put so much of what was left of my prana into my flame that I felt my left arm and face blistering and cooking. Echoes of screaming and hysterical laughter came from somewhere around or within me… Everywhere and nowhere… My legs felt freer… I moved one leg up… Something stopped me from lifting the other leg… They needed to die… I needed to die… A refreshingly cold passion ran through the center of my body…
My head craned downward. Everything was mildly less dark when I opened my eyes. The dark red, glossy tip of a blade protruded out from somewhere between my neck and waist. It was hard to judge distance. I do know that I dropped to my knee, instantly feeling better… as though my problems no longer mattered…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Odet
I woke with a start. Strangely, no sound or disturbance in the room seemed to cause it. Only the tallest candle remained burning, so it was dawn behind the heavy curtains. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, I decided to get dressed, all the while trying to recall why I woke up from what was otherwise a satisfying sleep. To be sure, it was one of the few times my mind did not conjure up a nightmare potent enough for me to remember.
Kiku entered my thoughts. The woman’s image incited the same sensation that awoke me. I needed to learn more about her. She may have helped Mercer get back to us, but she did not strike me as a priestess, at least not a serious one. A one-on-one talk was in order.
The Dragon Knight and the Light Page 39
