“What?” Ahna said out loud.
“Save him.”
“I’m doing that,” Ahna said, raising her voice. “Let me leave, and I’ll do that!” She almost shouted her words.
The creature vanished. Ahna shook her head. Maybe this had been a hallucination or some mind game of the Hollow Earth. Whatever it was, she was out of time to linger on it. She shrugged, turning back to Sahalek, chuckling awkwardly at the situation.
“This was no normal shadow,” Sahalek explained.
“Tell me about it,” Ahna said, but she really did not mean it. It was just all strange to her.
“This was an Archon. One of the kings of the Shadow Realm.”
The Shadow Realm had kings? That was something new...Ahna shook her head again. This was all getting to her. Archon or not, what did it have to gain from Cedric being saved? Why was such a creature of pure evil showing this level of compassion?
And then it flashed in her head. A memory. Words from a Shade on the far side of Luna.
The Rover was not to be touched.
What if...what if that creature, an Archon, had spared Cedric from being consumed? Ahna turned back. Why? She wanted to ask that question to the Archon, but it was definitely gone. Child of Balance and spawn of Shadows. The more mysteries she solved, the more arose.
Ahna exhaled deeply. The shadow was gone. Her time, which she did not have, had been absolutely wasted.
She faced Sahalek again and closed her eyes. She wanted to get out of this place. She focused on the air, the sand, the weight of the sky. She let the silence consume her.
“Find your brother,” Sahalek instructed.
Ahna tried to follow what the demon was saying but to no avail. “What do you mean?”
“Find him in you. Don’t picture him. Just feel what he feels.”
Ahna’s eyes snapped open. She had utterly lost patience. “That doesn’t help!” she barked.
Sahalek’s blossom hand stretched and opened in front of Ahna’s face, catching her by surprise. She stared deep within his palm that whirled into a pit of blackness. A hollow vortex contoured by jagged teeth. Her thoughts and breath halted.
“Don’t search for him,” Sahalek roared. His voice was a faraway bellow. “Let his feelings come to you.”
Ahna’s senses amplified. Emotions submerged her thoughts. It was so much that she was drowning in it. Her mind became a lightning rod for every single emotion felt in the tangible world. It was way too much to bear. Too much so that she could not control the light anymore. Ahna let out a loud and eternal scream. Her body cracked open in rays of crystalline radiance.
That release allowed her to focus more. Voices echoed in her mind—cries, shouts, laughter, and yelps. Among them was one familiar voice. The closest one. Thamias’s anger, she could feel it. She could also feel his pain. And there was so much of it.
Ahna closed her eyes, anchoring herself in the Hollow Earth but reaching out to Thamias’s pain. The pressure lessened. The voices dimmed. She was wrapped in complete silence when her eyes opened again.
What a strange sight. What he held in his hand was no heart, but it beat like one. It was black and eroded, edging in places a regular heart should not. It was more like a crystal of darkness than an organ of flesh and blood.
Thamias stood in the throne room, alone, dried blood covering his face. He held in his hand the piece of his father he had not let go. All the other pieces, the red that painted the walls, the bones scattered across the room, the bits of flesh adorning the ceiling like stars, slithered down to the center of the room. A hand crawled, a leg wriggled, ribs formed spider legs that lurked to where Karlus had stood. His body reconstructed itself bit by bit, but Thamias was not even alarmed or shocked. Everything was normal to him, and nothing surprised him anymore, nothing but the shape of that heart he still held in his hand. His father’s beating heart.
Karlus did not regain life once his body was whole again. He lay sprawled out on the white and blue carpet soaked in blood. Would he wake? Thamias wanted him to because otherwise, he would have to face what he had just done. Though part of him wanted this to be the end. Whatever power had permitted his father’s body to retake shape, it did not have enough to make him live again.
Demonic power was in their blood, after all. But how useful is it when blood does not run? With no heart to keep the machine going, Karlus would never wake.
Thamias looked at the heart, hesitant, unsure what to do with it. He knew, though, what he wanted. He just needed to find that one inch of courage left in his bones to do the deed. It takes more than might to commit the atrocity that patricide was. Was it right if justified? Thamias felt like it was right, so why was guilt prickling his pores like sharp needles? He needed to act before that guilt consumed him and made him change his mind.
His amber eyes flared, and Thamias clutched the heart. It was as though he did not want to let it go, but in reality, he wanted to crush it. His fingers pierced through the warm flesh, making this awful moist sound that encouraged him to press more. When his eyes fully turned to flames, the heart burned hotter than Dwellunder fires. It collapsed into a pile of ashes stuck to Thamias’s palm. His gaze was fixated on it, almost hypnotized by it.
At that moment, guilt struck harder than ever. Thamias moved the ashes around with the fingers of his other hand. He was searching through them. When he realized there was nothing to find, he collapsed to his knees. Tears filled his eyes as he crawled to the lifeless body of his father. He scooped him off the floor and dragged him closer, holding him against his chest. His father’s face rolled back and rested on his lap. No matter the pain Karlus had caused him, Thamias hugged him tight and emptied his eyes. Remorse clawed him open and made his soul bleed until he could no longer breathe.
* * *
A gasp made him turn his head. Thamias locked eyes with Veraniel, who had just entered the throne room. She looked at both, shocked, as though she did not believe what she was seeing. She walked to Thamias, slowly, afraid. Her mouth was slightly open. She wanted to speak but could not. Minutes ago, he had wanted nothing more.
But now, he was like a child who had done something bad. Something terrible. Something that could not be forgiven. He was looking at Veraniel with pleading eyes, pleading for help. Help she could not give him because he was not a child. He had to deal with this on his own like he had done with everything else.
Thamias felt so alone.
“It’s alright,” Veraniel said in a motherlike voice. She came next to him, laying something she held on the floor so she could hug him.
It was not a regular embrace. She was trying to get him to stand.
“No!” Thamias yelped, but he was forced to concede.
“You need to go,” Veraniel warned. Her voice sounded angry, but she was not mad. She was worried. “Once the guards get here, the whole city will move against you. You need to go.”
Thamias held onto his father a little longer before letting him go. He stood, looking around the throne room like a lost cub. Veraniel stood with him once she had picked up what she now gave him. It was a small jewelry box, so small he could hold it with one hand. It was made of silver and engraved with old elven adornments, with a blue sapphire stone at the center.
“This was your mother’s,” Veraniel told him. “She gave it to me for safekeeping. She said I should destroy it should she...pass.”
Thamias opened it, not knowing what else to do. He was absent in mind, but he saw what was in there. And it did not make much sense to him. It was a necklace he had never seen, made of cobalt and volcanic stones. He mechanically brushed it with his fingers, feeling nothing but those needles forbidding him to breathe. Encrusted in the pendant was the name Meriel written in Dokkalfari.
“But I didn’t destroy it,” Veraniel added. “Take it with you. But make sure Meriel never sees it.”
He did not react. He was more puzzled by why he had never seen Ahna with this necklace and why she should never see it. Veraniel
had made that clearer than possible, like a death threat. Thamias made no sense of this, why his mother had given it to Veraniel, and why Veraniel had been asked to destroy it. It just did not make any sense.
Veraniel fetched his satchel for him from the other side of the room and slipped the jewelry box in it. She peered over her shoulder before looking back at him.
“I’ll take you to the stables,” she urged. “You can take the rocky road back to the Frontier and get out of this place.”
It was like all his senses had dimmed, and only this discordant music shrieked in his mind. Thamias ambled aimlessly behind Veraniel, following her without purpose.
The sudden sharp sound of something cracking open awoke him again. For a second, he thought his father was waking, and he was briefly relieved, but when he turned around, he saw Ahna step out of a fissure through the world.
That did not surprise him either. His mind was entirely blank.
Ahna stood there, in the middle of the throne room, her eyes fixed to their father’s body. She had not expected to find this upon her return. The little she felt after the torrent of emotions from all corners of Terra was comparable to the touch of a thorn from a bouquet of dead roses. She did not give herself more time than necessary to make peace with this man’s demise. He did not deserve more.
Ahna made sure she still held that talisman in her hand. There was no safer place for it. She would hold on to it until the end.
“We need to go,” she declared. She would ask her brother about all this after her mission was done.
Veraniel knew imperial guards would swarm through the throne room soon. They had to hurry to the back hallway, through the atrium and antechamber that led to the stables. She could already hear footsteps approaching. Ahna led the escape, followed by Thamias who looked more dazed than ready to run. The few people they passed looked at them with beady eyes. They reached the stables, a troop of guards in red armor chasing them. Ahna shut the gate behind them, and Veraniel launched an energy wave to keep it closed. She needed to hold it shut for as long as she could, but she was not the sorceress she used to be, so Ahna and Thamias had limited time.
Guards came fast, knocking against the gates, trying to ram it open. Ahna could hear their shouts through the cobalt doors. She turned around and led Thamias to the stables. She went for the largest nightmare stallion she could find, one that looked like it could race through the Dwellunder and get them out. Veraniel could not hold on much longer. Ahna ran back to her and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. This was goodbye. She smiled at Veraniel, her caretaker from a lifetime ago. Before mounting the horse, Ahna cast one last glance at the old woman who reminded her so much of Skaiel. Thamias, on the other hand, did not. He mounted the horse, his mind blank. They galloped toward the western pass as fast as they could, Ahna leading, Thamias gazing over his shoulder. Daranak’s alarm rang behind them.
He had entered the city through the western gates. Greeted by a dozen cultists from the capital’s shadows, a wave of lost creatures followed him in. Not all of them were human. Some were wolves, horses, deer that had succumbed to the curse of eternal night. All in search of something to tame their hunger for living flesh.
He marched in rags of an old dark purple robe, his head made of bones and dried tissue. He dragged a familiar scepter of bones beside him. His eyes had begun to deteriorate again. He, too, needed to feed. Father Gale, who came at his feet, would do.
The Undead King halted in front of a frightened and awestruck man. He could hear his shallow breath and see the man’s chest heave frantically. He relished that sight. Fear is what he could feed on. And life is what could restore his face.
It had cost him almost all his energy to wake the Avatar. Buried deep beneath the ruins of Antaris, the fiend had slept there for all these years. After the dig, the Undead King had gathered the lifeforce from many of his Prophets of Mort. Enough to perform the Awakening.
He had chosen this fate fourteen years ago. He had bowed down before Mort and begged for a shred of his power. A tiny drop of Undead Curse spilled upon his flesh. Phorus Adal had made a choice that day, to become a lich, to one day dominate the Avatar. Control it, and use it to make Bravoure pay for her crimes.
He had tried to warn them, those Academy good-for-nothing idiots who played with magic tricks instead of preparing for their fate. Phorus knew about the undead tide to come. He had seen the effects of the Avatar when he had investigated the curse for himself. Foolish people those magi were! The Undead Curse was Bravoure’s fate—retribution by the gods themselves. He could be its tool, its emissary. Being a powerful mage allowed him to preserve his consciousness, even in this state. The Avatar had gifted him with this ability to preserve himself, and the curse even amplified his power.
Father Gale withered into ashes when Phorus was done with him. The other priests stared at him, waiting for a command, an order, something the Undead King would say. Phorus looked to the horizon, to the south of the city. The towers of the Castle of Gold had been tarnished by oozing blackness. The void dragon was nowhere in sight, but its shrieks still echoed against city walls. It was near. Phorus could feel his power. After all, they were connected, and the Avatar’s power was his to tame.
The undead tide that followed him spread into the city like a virus. Streets were drowned by the stench of rotten flesh. People ran, hid into houses, fell to the ground as their limbs were eaten. Upon taking their last breath, they would close their eyes, and not a minute later, they would rise. Everything that died under eternal night would rise again. And the more undead rose, the more powerful the Avatar became.
* * *
Cayne hid against the wall of the scorched western watchtower by the river, Jules by her side. They had just seen shadows move, heard bones crack, followed by screams. Cayne had never witnessed such horror in her entire life.
“Do you see anything?” she whispered to Jules.
He was peeking past the wall at the central plaza where the Bastion stood. He did not answer just yet. He wanted to see what was coming because he had a feeling something would.
Everyone had been confined to the sacred walls of the cathedral. The two had gone into the streets on recon. They wanted to assess what was going on and if there was any way they could fight this infection that felt more like an infestation.
Jules turned back to Cayne. “Nothing yet,” he whispered back.
It was so dark, they could barely see anything. They could only hear and hope it would be enough to react in time should something happen. And something did happen. Up on the Bastion’s roof, Jules saw the movement of a large creature resting there. The swipe of a tail. He heard a low growl and a slither that sent chills down his spine. It was the void dragon, and it had taken refuge there.
Below the Bastion gates, a cortege of people in long robes gathered. They walked in unison and perfect synchrony past the fortress and headed toward Jules and Cayne.
“Cultists?” Jules checked.
Cayne nodded. He could not actually see her, but he knew she had just acknowledged his words.
“What the Hell is that?” Cayne said suddenly. Her voice was low, but it was apparent how shocked she was.
Whatever she had seen, it frightened her to the core. Jules perceived her fear in the tremors of her words. He did not want to look. He did not want to see anything more than what he had already seen.
But Cayne insisted. She was at the other side of the wall, with a better view of the road that headed to the central bridge. That was where they walked, the robed men. Where they were headed was a mystery, but right now, it looked like their destination was the Castle of Gold.
Jules sighed. Alright, he would allow himself to look. He had no choice. He needed to know what they were fighting. He moved silently to Cayne, and they switched places, peeking past the wall.
When he turned back, he rested the back of his head against the solid bricks of the scorched watchtower. What he had seen was indescribable. What he had seen was
monstrous.
A being that looked human but paler than a corpse. At their distance, its eyes seemed to leech out of their sockets. The creature walked with a bone-white staff that almost gleamed in the darkness of eternal night.
“What do you think this is?” Cayne asked.
Jules sighed again. “Not a good sign.”
This thing was probably what led them, and if it was headed to the Castle of Gold, maybe it wanted it for itself. Why, though? One thing was sure: this creature was not his captain. His captain was slithering on top of the Bastion.
When Jules looked back, he wanted to check the fortress. He wanted to see what the void dragon was doing. What he saw petrified him. The dragon was looking down, straight at him. Its eyes shined with purplish flames. Even from afar, Jules could feel its gaze delving into him. Though the creature did nothing. Instead, it patiently watched the robed men walk the bridge of sand marble. Behind them followed a trail of animals that looked too dead to be alive.
* * *
The gates of the cathedral instantly closed behind her. Cayne passed the people amassed in the nave without looking at them. She heard their whimpers but had nothing good to give them. She headed for the other side of the hall, where Wolf Pack fighters waited for her. Jules went to Luthan and Berius and shared the information with them.
“There’s a creature,” he began. “I think it’s their leader. Somehow, dead animals follow it.”
Luthan raised an eyebrow. “Animals?”
“Dead animals, and maybe people. It looked like a man, but it wasn’t alive.”
“An undead leading other undead...” Luthan thought for a second. He was not much for undead lore, but he knew a little bit about it. One thing in particular, “We’re talking about some kind of Necromancy here.”
Cayne rejoined them after she had briefed the clan leaders. “I don’t know how long we have before the entire city is overrun—”
Tempest of Bravoure Page 24
