“I feel cruel.” She stepped into his protective shadow. “Abandon Marid here or deliver him to his doom. Both feel wrong.”
“His choice.” Garrett caressed her cheek.
“I know. But I hate it.”
She nuzzled close to him. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her cheek to his chest. In his embrace, she watched in silence as the night became absolute. The clouds dimmed from grey to black. The Black Moon’s shadow swallowed Father Sun’s last glimmer. Her Nightness vision reigned, but she saw no stars, no Mother Moon, no sign of light in the entire world. The night was unnaturally dark, and twilight’s funeral but a few breaths long.
In the moments after the blackness took total sway, thunder, distant and dismal, rumbled high above. One raindrop struck her cheek, then another.
A storm is near.
This one is mine.
“I wish we had more time,” she said.
“There is never enough.” Garrett pushed her hair from her cheek and kissed the top of her head. Try though she did, she felt none of his warmth through his cuirass.
“I could have flown us home,” she lamented. “Back to Graehelm, maybe Mormist. I would have done it had you asked. You know that, right?”
He said nothing. The rain, bitterly cold, swept sideways through the valley, and he shielded her. Never before in her life had she felt so loved, nor so doomed. Visions flashed through her mind of the many places she had gone, the cities, forests, and nameless roads she had tread and somehow survived.
No place feels as safe as here in his arms.
“I love you,” she whispered to him, but a clap of thunder drowned her out.
Her reverie lasted only a few breaths. Garrett released her, and whether by her whim or the Black Moon’s will, the rain intensified the moment he let her go. She felt the wind rise, the Sallow dust sting her, and the rain’s whip as it drenched her from head to toe. The sky was pitch, the earth as inky as the bottom of the sea. By the Nightness she saw everything.
“Ready?” she asked Garrett.
“As ever,” he replied.
She faced the rain. She heard Marid shouting. Standing beside the fallen willow, he looked stark against the rain. “Ande, where are you? The rain! I can’t see anything!”
She sucked in a bottomless breath and hoisted her satchel from beside the long-dead campfire. Hair dripping, mouth shaped in a hard, daggerlike line, she took Garrett’s hand and led him toward the tree.
“Ande, is that you?” Marid called.
In the utter darkness, she reached out and touched the front of his shoulder. “Here.”
“I thought you’d left me.” He shivered, shaking the rain from his hair in a cloud of mist. “It’s time? Right now?”
“Yes.”
She allowed herself one last look at their faces. Marid’s was streaked with rain, dark Thillrian hair framing his pale, thinly-bearded cheeks. She saw courage in his eyes, terror too.
Ready as he ever will be.
As for Garrett, she saw the Hunter’s glaze in him. The rain beaded on his short and bristled beard. His gaze, cold and fearless, was fixed on her even in the dark.
“Both of you, listen to me.” Her voice cut through the thunder. “You know what to expect. Wherever we land, whatever we see, look for Grim first, my father second. If we injure or delay them, we might have a chance to stop this.”
Marid’s eyes burned in the black.
Garrett’s went dark as death.
“Take my hands.” She slid her fingers into their grasps. “No telling how this will feel or where we will end up. We could land in a Wolde tent, get stuck in a treetop, or fall right into Grimwain’s lap. Whatever you do, hold tight. Never, ever let go.”
The men intertwined their fingers with hers. If they were afraid, she no longer sensed it. In the blackness, with the rain sliding like a thousand switches against her skin, her power felt absolute. She shut her eyes and let the darkness take hold. She felt her blood thin, her heart cease to beat, and her body stretch and turn to shadowstuff. After a single breath, Garrett and Marid’s bodies became one with hers. She willed herself into the form of a sleek, spectral raven, and each of them into her wraithlike wings.
Now.
In shadow form, she speared the sky. The air split and a clap of thunder shook the limbs of ten thousand trees beneath her. She felt no fear of losing Garrett or Marid. The Black Moon’s presence endowed her with strength unimaginable. She could have circled the earth a hundred times, scorched every cloud from the sky, or danced the entire night away in the dark spaces between the stars.
No one can stop me.
Her focus, though tenuous, endured. She tore northward into the clouds, for she knew where the Undergrave would be. The Black Moon, its lower two-thirds bursting below the clouds, served as the only compass she required. She flew straight at the dread thing, speeding faster and faster. Ten hours’ march became a hundred breaths’ flight, and the symbols graven into the Black Moon grew massive to her perception:
Imprisonment. She read them again. Spirits of Nether. Confined. Removed. At play with souls of wickedest dead. No freedom. No release. Locked in darkness.
Sealed by Archithrope.
Archithrope.
My ancestors.
The etchings on the moon’s surface mesmerized and fascinated her. She sensed its dark origin, and for a breath she believed she saw the world the way it had been ten thousand years ago. She wanted to fly to the moon, to touch it, to read and decipher every sigil, but ten breaths before breaking through the clouds, she changed course.
Down, down she plummeted. The rain streaked to the earth far slower than she, and the wind fled before the force of her shadowy wings. Like stars, the fires of the Wolde encampment sprang into her perception. The tiny flames blanketed an area the size of a city, ringing the base of Undergrave Hill and filling the dreary valley to its brim. Though she could not count them all, she sensed many thousands of heartbeats pounding in the dark. Some drummed fearfully, others slow and methodically, while a handful thrummed with an emotion she assumed to be exhilaration.
Grim’s closest, she understood.
The Black Moon reigned in the skies above. The rocky crown of Undergrave Hill lurked below. Spreading her wings, keeping close hold of her companions’ essences, she slowed her descent to that of a falling feather.
The Undergrave. Her memory of the dark, twisted underworld sent a shiver through her ethereal form. Fly to its bottom. The tower awaits me.
She descended toward the Undergrave. She sensed the black opening just beneath her, wide and toothy as the jaws of some primeval, earth-eating horror. Only a few fires flickered at the dark entrance, while no heartbeats were near. She picked up speed and knifed through the night, and though she had no breath to hold she felt breathless all the same.
And then it happened.
A moment before crossing the boundary between overworld and Undergrave, she struck a magical membrane stretched like a spider’s web across the Undergrave maw. The Nightness shuddered and failed, and the thrill of flying became a sickly sensation that felt like being torn in two. She lost hold of Garrett and Marid. Marid spun off to her right, Garrett to her left. The earth, cold and hard, greeted her with pain when her body, half-corporeal, skidded and slammed to a stop.
Consciousness became a delicate thing. Pain lanced her elbows and knees. Blood trickled from her lips.
Flesh again.
What happened?
Disoriented, she felt someone take hold of her upper arm and haul her to feet. She allowed herself to rise only to retch and topple back to one knee. She wanted to die of the pain. She dared not.
“Wake up, Ande.” The voice beside her echoed in and out of her ears. “Wake up. Or we are already dead.”
She wrenched herself upright. She blinked some of her bleariness away and hissed in pain as she drew three shallow breaths. Torchlights burning atop poles swirled in her vision. She felt her heart pump back to life, her p
ower regenerating.
“Where are we?” she creaked.
“The Undergrave entrance,” said Garrett.
“Did Marid make it?” She leaned against him.
“Hurt, but alive.”
Her next sensation was the heat from Garrett’s sword as he ripped the infernal thing out of its smoking sheath. Enemies are near, she knew by the tension in his body. She was stunned to realize it, for she sensed no hearts beating nearby besides Garrett’s, Marid’s, and her own.
“Look.” Garrett waved his sword into the darkness. “There. And there.”
She saw what he saw. Hunkered amid the tomblike mounds of slate flanking Undergrave maw, the Sarcophages stood watch. There were nineteen of the dreaded monsters, twelve to her left, seven to her right. Their sockets gleamed with dead white light. Their skeletal limbs were jeweled with gauntlets, bracers, and bits of rotting, rusted armor.
I remember you, she wanted to scream at them. Father’s pets. Haunting Midnon’s corridors. Chasing me across Thillria.
“What are those?” Marid staggered to his feet in the shadows behind her.
“Dead men,” answered Garrett. “Risen to fight for Grimwain.”
“Why aren’t they attacking?”
“They will. Soon enough.”
The Nightness thrummed in her blood, eyes, and ears. The Black Moon saturated her with power. As her pain fled, she took stock of her surroundings.
Twenty steps beyond Undergrave maw.
Rain is weaker here. Storm catching up.
Sarcophages holding their ground.
Waiting for something.
“You did not mean to bring us here.” Garrett’s sword smoked with her spell.
“No.” She swiped the blood from her chin. “The Undergrave would not let us in. Sealed against us. Another wizard is here. Not Father. Someone else.”
She sensed a heartbeat draw nearer, trailed by several others. Across the cold, wet slate at the top of Undergrave Hill, she heard the clatter of booted footsteps approaching. The Wolde coming to investigate.
She glanced left and right. The Sarcophages clacked their fleshless jaws, but came no nearer. The Wolde arrived behind her. Torches smoking, giant swords in hand, ten Yrul rushed across the shattered slate and halted in a hard line. The Yrul knights were fierce and fiery-eyed as mountain lions, their copper hair dangling like twisted ropes from their heads. Wolves’ teeth hung in long strands from their necks, while their lean, whiplike bodies were locked behind bronze breastplates and smooth, steely greaves.
And then, from beyond the bristling Yrul swords, an eleventh Woldling arrived. Parting the Yrul rank, a diminutive man clad in a grey robe stepped between the two sides. She disliked the look of him. The Wolde torchlights burned at his back, but nothing seemed able to illuminate his face.
“Witch-girl.” The little man sneered. “We began to think you mightn’t make it.”
Ur smoke on his fingers, she sensed. The wizard.
“It was you who warded the Undergrave,” she hissed at him.
The little man smiled. “Did your father convince you that you were the only one? Why, there are hundreds who are capable. Even the prime specimen beside you, whom I didn’t think to see again in this lifetime, carries our blood in his veins.”
Her fingers seized into fists. A thousand questions caught fire in her mind and smoldered on the tip of her tongue. Lifting her chin, she asked only one:
“If you are so mighty, so grand as to serve Grimwain, why did he resurrect my father? Why not have you do his dirty work?”
The little man’s pupils caught fire with quick anger. “You shouldn’t have brought her here, Hunter,” he growled at Garrett. “She’s earned no quarter from the Master. Once the Ur arrive, he’ll pry her skin from her pretty bones and light Ur candles in her sockets. You should’ve spared her. You should’ve stayed in the dark with your little Yrul wench.”
She looked to Garrett. “What is he talking about? How does he know you?”
“His name is Wrail,” said Garrett. “We need to kill him.”
After a flutter of her black-limned lashes, she made her life’s swiftest decision.
I am not a killer.
But here…
…and now.
She slammed her eyes shut and willed her body to become a searing, smoking shadow. What Garrett’s reaction was, she did not wait to see. She speared through the night straight at Wrail, knowing she had to burn him away before his heart enjoyed another beat. Shouts erupted around her. Violet lightning shattered the air in her wake. She did not care whether she lived or died. All she wanted was for Garrett and Marid to have a fighting chance.
But Wrail was not so easily slain. He possessed the Nightness, and his swiftness was that of a serpent. Her passing disintegrated two of the Yrul and scattered the rest, but Wrail swirled into a cloud of ethereal black mist, utterly indestructible.
Like me.
Damn him.
In the instant after she passed through Wrail, the Yrul charged Garrett and Marid. The Sarcophages, stirred by an unseen will, closed in.
The battle began.
She tried to cry out to Garrett, but possessed no voice. Full of fury, she speared herself through Wrail a second and third time. His shadow-body swirled like smoke impaled by the wind, but he held fast. With a clap of thunder and a crackle of Ur lightning, his skin turned to shadow and his limbs stretched into skeletal wings. From his roiling flesh, black knives of Ur fire erupted. Can he hurt me? Is his fire colder than mine?
He came for her. His wings beat the night into ashes, and black fire dripped from his jaws. He looked human no longer, but more like an Ur. Still in shadow form, she led him on an aerial dance above Undergrave Hill. He chased. She flew faster. Clouds of smoke and eruptions of violet flame choked the hilltop. Her passing cooked the tops of a thousand lifeless trees, while his sheared stone and wood, burning all substances away. The graveyard of trees caught fire. The skies opened with a torrent of rain. To those who heard the battle from afar, it seemed as though the world were cracking open.
But there was method in her flight.
She soared in a deadly pattern, scorching the earth in a hundred places. All of it had purpose. Twice, she led Wrail near the Undergrave maw, and twice she speared a pair of Yrul warriors, slaying them before they could reach Garrett and Marid. I am colder, she knew. I am hotter. I am faster. I am death.
The merest touch of her shadowy skin was more than enough to cook the Yrul. She speared four of them, their flesh and marrow melting in her wake. Their screams were silent. Their heartbeats were quick to end. She sensed the four remaining Yrul quaver and die, all hewn down by Garrett, whose heart beats strongest of all.
Behind her, Wrail lagged. She sensed his power was unpracticed, undisciplined. She knew it was so when he flew back to the clearing in front of the Undergrave and shed a volcano’s worth of smoke in returning to mortal form. In an instant, she perforated the night and retook mortal shape ten steps behind him. She felt no weariness. If anything, I feel more powerful than ever.
“You!” She caught his attention before he could turn his hateful magic upon Garrett. “Remove the ward and let us pass!”
Wrail pivoted and hurled a fistful of Ur fire at her face. The pitiful glob of flame burned only half as cold as hers. Deftly, she snatched it from the air and snuffed it out.
“I do not want to kill you.” She wrung the ashes from her hand. “Remove the ward. Let us pass.”
Time was running out. The Sarcophages surrounded Garrett and Marid, jaws open and rusted swords held high. Torches, dropped by slaughtered Yrul, sizzled beneath the rain, illuminating the Undergrave entrance in blood-red light. I have to help them. These Sarcophages…too powerful.
Wrail laughed. His eyes rolling back, his teeth bared, he groaned a guttural phrase and willed a smoking Ur sword to take shape in his grasp. She sensed the disease dripping from the blade’s black edge. A droplet was likely enough to put half of Thillria
in its grave.
“Why did you come here?” He advanced upon her.
“You know why,” she spat. “I will not sit by while you kill everything.”
“It’s better this way.” Wrail slowed. “I’d rather it be peaceful…no blood, no death. But this is the only choice afforded us. I’ll not spend my eternity tortured by Them. I won’t. If you understood our pain, you’d let me kill you.”
Between his breaths, she acted. No time for any more talk. Swords clattered in the background, and haunted groans of hungry Sarcophages tormented the night. With a hiss, she willed herself to become shadow again. She plunged beneath the earth, cracking slate and corrupting soil, vanishing to all sights before reemerging a single step behind Wrail. As silent as a wisp of wind, she retook mortal form and plunged her burning hand like a dagger between his shoulder blades. He spun and lashed out with his Ur blade, but she winked in and out of shadow form, and the sword passed right through her.
Wrail fell to his knees, burbling blood and black foam. His eyes went dark, his skin flaked off like ash from burning parchment, and his screams died in his throat. She tore her gaze away as the Ur virulence claimed him, buzzing in his flesh with the sound of a million maggots gnawing.
Wrail, servant of Grimwain, was no more.
And the ward is broken.
She spun to face the fight between Garrett, Marid, and the Sarcophages. Four fallen skeletons steamed at the Undergrave maw, sizzling beside the Yrul where Garrett had cut them down. In the rain, the fallen Sarcophages’ sockets still burned white, but their bodies were useless, limbless, and hewn. Her heart sang with hope when she glimpsed Garrett moving in the rain. He swept like lightning among four Sarcophages, flicking his burning blade out as though it were weightless. Each of his swats chipped off ribs, fingers, and pieces of rotting armor. He could fight a hundred and survive.
And then she saw another Sarcophage, still ambulant, hacking at Marid. Poor Marid seemed barely able to lift his sword and stave off each killing blow.
“Marid, move!” she screamed.
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