“Val, I watched your fight at the entrance. You do have the skills, you just need to use your—” I cut myself off with a cough before I could finish the thought. I won’t teach her our magic, I said to Lia, the betrayal I felt raw and irrepressible through our mental link.
We need her, Lux.
I know we do, but she’ll be fine without it.
But she would be better with it.
I wouldn’t even have time to explain it.
You don’t have to. Just give it to her yourself.
I paused as I considered the thought. I’ve never done that before.
Time to try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll just make sure to keep her safe during the fight.
I scowled at the idea, but I knew she was right. Fine. “Val, come here,” I said, waving her over. She followed the order obediently and stood at my side in the doorway. “We need you if we’re going to win this fight. I swear to you, Lia and I won’t let you die,” I promised her, placing a hand on the edge of her shield. “I still have more questions for you before I let that happen.” Mana surged into the shield and bolstered the reserve I had left previously, then continued on to suffuse her entire body. I walked through my list of combat enhancements, activating them in the fashion I had first learned in Alderea. Greater Strength. Greater Agility. Pain Reduction. Greater Windstep. Greater Combat Acceleration. Heighten Senses. Each rune along my sword flashed in turn as I activated the mana within her shield.
Val gasped as the energy took effect and tried to step away, but I held her firmly in place. Watching carefully, I was relieved to find my deposited mana draining as it fueled her enhancements without further attention needed from me. “There,” I said with a labored breath, cutting my connection with the extended energy. “Now you can fight like us.”
“Lux, what have you done? I...I do not understand,” she stammered, clenching her fist into a tight ball to test the new power..
“You don’t need to,” I countered, already turning to prepare myself for the assault. “You’ve fought like this before, but you believed it was some sort of holy blessing. If it makes you feel better, you can just pretend it’s that again.” Lia gave me a knowing smile as we readied ourselves, and I gave her a quick eye roll in return. “Now, you’ll hold the center of the hallway, while Lia and I hold the left and right, respectively. It’ll be easier for both of us to cover you if you’re between us.”
There was a long moment of silence behind us as Val processed the situation. “I will do it,” she said eventually, all uncertainty gone from her voice. “We will not fail.” Her olive eyes burned with overwhelming confidence, matching the look Marin had given me before every sparring match during our month of training.
“Alright then, let’s go.” I stepped through the doorway and immediately fell to one knee as a powerful wave of death energy punched me in the chest. Dark smoke began to seep out from my gloved hand as the force threatened to overwhelm me, and the color in my vision began to drain. Lia stumbled as a shock of sympathetic pain rushed through her arm, and she immediately dropped to the floor to aid me. “No,” I hissed through clenched teeth, “stay back.”
You can’t keep going on like this. You’ll burn yourself up.
Lia, I won’t let you get corrupted like me. It’ll kill you. It already has, once. As I struggled to maintain control of my body, I absorbed the remaining darkness that lingered around us into myself, groaning from the effort. I can do this.
“Lux, your hand,” Val whispered fearfully. “You are unwell.”
“I’m fine!” I snapped, clearly lying. I knew that she had seen the smoke once before in Attetsia, moments before my rampage in the courtyard, but I couldn’t find the focus to convincingly assuage her worries.
Lux, please. You won’t survive.
It’s the only way.
No, it isn’t. She reached out and held me by the chin, forcing me to look into her eyes. You can use it.
The icy grip of fear squeezed at the back of my neck as I desperately tried to hide the memories of my rampage from Lia. I can’t do that. I can’t let you see me like that. If I embrace the darkness, I could...I could hurt you.
You won’t.
You don’t know—
Lia leaned in and kissed me, and a burst of strength surged through our bond. You won’t. You never would.
It felt as though my chest were about to explode as Lia’s light pushed against the encroaching darkness. I knew that if we battled farther into the mine, the void energy would continue to increase and, eventually, find its way out of me one way or another—the annihilated Lybesian forest polished in smooth, black glass was all the proof I needed of that. Even still, I shuddered as my ecstatic dance of death through the Strategist’s soldiers played out behind my eyes. The rush of memories left me trembling as I accepted an unavoidable truth: if any of us were to survive the night, I would have to once again embrace the darkness.
Don’t let it take me, I begged Lia, gripping her arm. I can’t do this without you.
You will never be without me ever again. I’m with you forever. The powerful resolve I saw in her face was my sole strength as I rose to my feet.
Forever. I gave her a gentle nod, and she stood and moved behind me in line with Val. “Okay, new plan,” I panted as I took another step forward into a fresh wave of death. “Stay behind me and clean up anything that makes it past.”
“Lux, no,” Val insisted. “You cannot sacrifice yourself for us. Not again.” There was genuine pain in her voice as she lunged forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “We can find another—”
I threw her arm back at her and glared over my shoulder. “I said, stay behind me.”
Val’s eyes widened as she recoiled, and Lia pulled her back a step. “Val, I know we haven’t explained anything, but please, just listen. This is the only way we can…”
Lia’s voice cut out abruptly as I took another step forward. KILL THEM ALL, rumbled the presence in my head, blocking out the distraction of my allies behind me. My vision refocused on the movement at the end of the long hallway, where the scuttling Serathids were now outlined in vibrant red light. THEY WILL SUFFER IN RETRIBUTION.
The booming voice crashed over me like thunder, and I felt my body preparing for battle, already accepting its offer. I slowly lowered my barriers against the darkness throbbing in my arm and chest, and the burning energy immediately engulfed the rest of my body. Black flames burst from the surface of the manasteel blade in my hand and rippled up my arm to my shoulder. I felt myself take another step forward, unbidden, then another, and another, each coming faster than the last. My consciousness retreated to the safe haven hidden deep within my mind, and I let go of the last of my resistance. Yes. We’ll kill them all.
My surroundings blurred as I rocketed forward, running in a low hunch with the tip of my sword dragging along the stone floor beside me. The screeching steel echoed along the corridor ahead of me, and the teeming horde of beasts stilled and looked in my direction. “COME AND MEET YOUR END,” I roared in a distorted, booming chorus.
The Serathids accepted my challenge without delay. Dozens of the beasts spilled into the hallway, with countless more taking their places at the chamber entrance behind them. My low run shifted into a beastial sprint as I flung myself forward with both my hands and feet, desperate to meet them in battle. Just as we were about to collide, I brought my sword up in a spinning horizontal slash that sent a vicious wave of dark fire through the air. The energy snapped like a whip as it connected with the leading two beasts and exploded into a shower of black and white sparks that immediately engulfed the pair in flames.
A horrible screech filled the hallway as the burning Serathids fell backwards. A wicked smile crossed my face as I realized the piercing shriek was the first noise I had ever heard the monsters make. They can feel pain.
THEY WILL FEEL MORE. I leapt through the smokescreen I had created and attacked the next closest foe with a whirling skyward slash that sliced easily
through its carapace. The wound instantly caught fire, and another scream echoed against the stone. My arm surged with an influx of new power as the beast was consumed by dark flames. MORE. Serathids approached on either side as the tide of beasts surged around me, and I brought my sword up to parry an incoming volley of strikes. Spinning in a tight circle, I caught each scythe with the tip of my bastard blade, shattering the bony weapons like glass.
A sharp pain raked across my chest as a taloned foot cut through my cuirass and into my flesh. Hungry black flames raced across my body and engulfed the monster’s limb before it could retreat; as it writhed in agony, the fresh wound in my chest wove closed, and my awareness of the injury instantly faded behind the consistent dissociating pain of the void. More, I thought in harmony with the dark presence driving my body.
Every step that brought me closer to the open chamber fueled me with a fresh wave of energy, and every kill further clouded my head with an overpowering, intoxicating pleasure. The dark flames fully enveloped me as I continued my rampage through the sea of monsters, bringing sickly-sweet death with every stroke of my sword. THE SOURCE IS AHEAD. THEIR ULTIMATE END. WE WILL CLAIM IT. The thought of an even greater ambrosia than what surrounded me set off a deep hunger in my stomach, and I rushed to claim my prize. Raising my sword above my head, I smashed the blade down onto the floor with both hands and sent a billowing wave of fire ahead of me that saturated the entire hall in flame. The air filled with fine black ash as the Serathids burned, corpses and living beasts alike, and my path forward was suddenly cleared.
The effort of my attack had drained a majority of the dark energy from my body, reducing the blaze around me to wisps of black smoke, but the ambient power lingering in the air quickly surged in to renew me as I sprinted into the chamber. The construction of the room changed abruptly at the entrance: the floor, walls and ceiling of the massive chamber were constructed of a seamless, white marble, not unlike the roads and buildings Lia and I had seen in Atsal. Old oil lamps hung from the walls at regular intervals, lighting the room with a flickering orange glow. There appeared to be three exits from the marble room: the large, open space through which I had entered, a roughly tunneled hole ten feet in diameter on the wall to my right, and an ornate door made of black metal on the opposite wall.
While the chamber was an impressive sight to behold, I only had eyes for the singular object stored within it. At the far wall, only a few feet from the black door, stood a waist-high marble podium holding a large glass box. Though I couldn’t make out the details of the object it held, the blinding crimson light it radiated told me it was the origin point of the dark energy feeding me, the final goal of our expedition.
CLAIM IT. I took a single step forward, and the room shook violently beneath my feet, knocking me to one knee. A deafening hum filled the chamber as the space above the display case began to vibrate, distorting like air over hot stone. There was an ear-splitting sound of glass shattering as the air itself ruptured, and a gout of dark flames burst from the crack in reality. I watched as the fissure split open and revealed the black void between worlds, just as it had once before in the Lybesian forest. The gaping wound grew wider and wider as the chamber trembled, expanding until it was nearly twenty feet across. Shadows danced back and forth beyond the veil as a new wave of Serathids began to pour through the gap, falling haphazardly to the marble floor below.
“Lux!” A familiar voice from behind me cut through the reverberating hum that rattled my bones. I spun, sword blazing, to find Lia and Val standing half a dozen yards away. Their faces and armor were painted with a fresh coat of Serathid ichor, and Lia was panting heavily from exertion with a hand over her chest. A strange sense of vertigo spun my head as I saw brief flashes of myself through her eyes: a dark, distorted figure, hidden beneath black smoke and shimmering air, too bright to stare at but too dark to see.
I’m...here, I thought through the furious haze in my mind. While I had lost my sense of self when I relinquished control to the dark presence, Lia had apparently refused to let our connection fade, despite the obvious toll it took on her. Lia, I’m...still here.
“Lux, I can see it,” she called out to me. “The darkness; I can see it. Where the Serathids are coming from.”
Through all the warring forces that clouded my psyche, the statement still managed to plant a seed of fear in my chest. You shouldn’t...see that...
“You have to stop them!” she cried, pointing her sword across the room. “Whatever is in that box, you have to destroy it!”
I turned my attention back towards the source of the rift and the massing force of beasts that crowded around it. The hunger flared in my stomach as I drank in the red light pouring from the display case. “I’ll kill...every last one of these—”
“No!” Lia interrupted my fiendish curse. I whirled on her in a sudden fury at the idea of being denied my quarries, but she held my gaze without flinching. “Leave the monsters, Lux. Get the box! You have to stop them!” While her lips stopped moving, I heard her voice continue in the safe bastion within my mind. I’m with you. You’re strong enough to do this. I love you.
I stared into her eyes, my body continuing to seethe with rage as her message registered in my mind. A flicker of movement caught the corner of my eye, and my attention snapped suddenly to Val. I caught a rare, unguarded expression as our eyes met: terror. Those are Marin’s eyes. Is that how you see me now, too?
CLAIM IT. The dark presence thundered back in full force as my mind began to wander. THE SOURCE. CLAIM IT. My body turned and lunged ahead before I could react, and I found myself sprinting headlong across the chamber towards the growing wave of Serathids and the pedestal behind them. While my sword rose above my head and burned with renewed energy, I reached out into the empty air with my other hand and closed my fingers around an unseen object.
No. My stomach lurched as the world blinked away into darkness, only to reappear a moment later from a different perspective. I won’t claim it. My empty hand rested on the edge of the glass display case, and I stared down into the box at the ultimate source of the Serathid invasion. A distorted, oblong skull made entirely of black glass stared back at me, radiating a wave of void energy more powerful than even my memories of the void itself. You don’t control me. I felt my connection with Lia growing stronger, even as the conflagration around my body intensified.
CLAIM IT. BECOME WHAT YOU ARE MEANT TO BE.
I am what I’m meant to be. I brought the point of my sword down onto the skull with both hands and shattered the artifact into dust. An ominous stillness fell over the room as the incessant hum ceased. The dozen Serathids that had fallen through the rift paused in their charge and turned as a high-pitched hiss rushed out from above my head. Black smoke poured from the wound in reality as it stitched itself shut, vanishing entirely within a few seconds. With the link to the void removed, the dark energy that had suffused the space dissipated, and I immediately took back full control of myself as the black flames covering my body sputtered out.
A pair of warcries echoed through the chamber as Val and Lia charged the remaining beasts that lingered between us. The battle was short-lived; by the time I was able to gather my senses and round the marble podium, the last Serathid had already fallen. After scanning the chamber to ensure we were finally alone, I dropped my sword and let out a ragged sigh of relief. The feeling was echoed through my bond with Lia, and I braced myself as I heard her light footsteps racing towards me from across the room. I caught her as she threw herself against my chest, squeezing her tightly as I fell back against the display case for support.
“Are you alright?” I asked her. “I’m sorry if the pain bled through to you, and that you...had to see that.”
“No, I’m fine,” she answered, shaking her head. “I had no idea how much agony it caused you; I hope I was able to take some of it away.” I felt a quick pulse of golden mana circle my body. “How are you feeling? You look...okay.”
“I feel okay,” I adm
itted, rolling my shoulders. “I hate to say it, but I think I’m getting used to that, somewhat.” The thought put a frown on my face, but I buried it in her hair as I kissed the top of her head. “It’s over. That’s all that matters now.”
“Yes,” Val agreed. I looked up to find her standing a cautious six feet away, watching our quick reunion. “I am unsure what transpired, but I believe this may have permanently stopped the Serathid invasion. I am in your debt, yet again.”
I held her gaze for a long moment and was happy to find that she didn’t look away. All traces of the fear I had seen before were gone, replaced once again by the inscrutable steel mask.
“I’m sure you have questions.”
“For another time,” she said, raising a hand. “We are still in unknown territory. We should continue to explore this facility and stay on guard for more Serathids. While we may have halted their ingress, many have already come through.”
A tight knot in my stomach released all at once as I realized my inevitable conversation with Val had been pushed further down the road. “Right. Thanks.” I gave Lia a final hug before breaking away from the embrace and turning towards the door behind the podium. “I’m guessing we’ll find more answers that way.”
An automatic pulse of mana ran down my legs, and I was surprised to find the energy unhindered as it spread onto the floor and raced away beneath the black door. Lia noticed the freedom from the beast’s aura along with me and joined in with her own scan, checking back in the direction we had come and out through the tunneled hole in the chamber wall. While our immediate surroundings were clear, various pockets of static indicated that multiple Serathids still lurked somewhere within the mines, though the aimlessness of their movements showed they were unaware of our presence.
My forward sweep of Detection revealed a series of smaller chambers furnished like a small home: a bathroom, kitchen, living space, bedroom, and office. Beyond those, a final, larger room held multiple rows of pedestal display cases similar to the one beside us, though the objects held within showed no signs of any latent energy, malicious or otherwise. A small counterweight elevator stood open and empty on the far wall, the shaft for which traveled straight up to ground level. It opened into a small chamber built into the side of one of the twin mountains that covered Shadowmine, with a well-concealed stone door leading out onto the opposite side of the mountain from which we had entered.
Restart Again: Volume 3 Page 49
