I tapped a finger on the sheet of ice and the first spike shot forward like a bullet, piercing the nearest snake’s body. The shadow writhed and twisted against the ice and then disintegrated with a hiss. I repeated the motion, tapping on the sheet of ice until all twenty spikes had been deployed. I missed a few of my targets, but I’d managed to kill at least a dozen of the snakes.
There were only a handful left, but they were moving too fast. I didn’t have enough time to conjure a second sheet of spikes. Instead, I shifted to smoke just as the first of the snakes reached me, its fangs embedding into the rock where I had just stood.
I moved toward the entrance of the cave, getting as far away from the snakes as I could, but just as I shifted back to human form, the ground under my feet began to rumble. I swallowed and pushed my fear down into the depths of my being. I couldn’t afford to be afraid right now. I had to be strong.
Dust fell around me as the walls of the cave shifted. My eyes widened as the rock actually moved, four large boulders rolling forward and joining the hunter in the center of the cave. The rocks shifted into small statues about half the height of the hunter. They each wore a single emerald around their necks.
I cursed. How the hell had she managed to tame four rock golems?
The hunter’s eyes glowed a deep green as she looked at me.
“You should give up now, demon, while you still have your life,” she said. “The emerald priestess would prefer to use you to open a new emerald gate than see you dead at my hands.”
I studied the golems. They were only minor rock golems, not fully matured. Still, they would not be easy to kill. I needed to keep my focus on the hunter. If she died, whatever power she held over them would be destroyed.
Getting to her would be the hard part. Rock golems were notorious defenders and protectors. They wouldn’t give her up easily.
“It will be tough for her to open any new gates without her hunters,” I said. “And I’ve made it my mission to kill every last one of you.”
The hunter narrowed her eyes and the side of her mouth twisted into a gruesome smile. “Miracashi. Melomorra.” The moment the foreign words touched her lips, the rock golems rushed toward me, their bodies rolling across the stone floor so fast my eyes could hardly keep track of them.
I managed to shift, but before I could fly above their heads, the first golem reached up and touched its stone hand to my shadow. My entire body solidified in an instant and fell to the ground.
I could still see and hear, but I couldn’t move.
Panic ripped through my heart. My power had been encased in stone once before, and the sensation that held me to this form was eerily familiar.
I pushed against it, struggling to shift, but unable to reach my magic.
The golem turned me over so that my back was against the floor. I looked up into its dark stone eyes, hatred burning in my heart. How could this have happened? I’d been so careful, taking every precaution to make sure I had not been followed.
But this hunter had known I was coming.
Either that or the emerald priestess had gotten tired of me killing her slaves. Maybe she’d equipped all of her remaining hunters with their own personal rock golem guards.
If that was true, things just got a lot more difficult for me.
The hunter moved to stand over me, her stink filling my nostrils. “The emerald priestess will be so pleased to know you are still alive,” she said. “Your power will be useful to the Order of Shadows.”
I only had one last trick up my sleeve, and I poured my whole heart into it. My power was dull, but not gone completely. I could still feel it building inside of me. I used every ounce of energy I had to send tiny streams of frozen power through the minuscule cracks and weak points in the stone around my hand. When I felt the ice reach my fingertips, I closed my eyes, needing every bit of my concentration to pull this off.
I pushed my power through those small cracks, forcing the ice to expand. The rock around my hand exploded. Shards of stone flew through the air. I reached for the bag of potions still strapped to my leg. I quickly felt for the small round bottle among the glass tubes and let out a breath of relief as my fingers closed around it.
I smashed the vial, glass piercing my skin, allowing the liquid inside the bottle to seep into my veins.
I sent up a silent word of thanks to the vampire Rend, who had insisted I take a negate magic potion with me. I knew how to make a handful of potions, but Rend was a master alchemist, his skill and power much more potent than my own.
The potion flowed through me as fast as a streak of lightning, and the stone around me disintegrated in a cloud of dust. The rock golems lunged toward me, but I was too fast for them. I shifted to smoke and flew straight into the air, passing over their heads and aiming straight for the hunter and her snakes.
She shrieked and floated forward, searching the dark cave for me. I gathered my energy in the air and formed a single dagger of thick ice, grabbing for the silver dagger at my hip at the same time. I reformed behind the hunter and plunged the ice dagger into her back, hoping to hit what was left of her rotting heart.
She screamed and fell to her knees. The dagger melted in my hand, but I already had my silver dagger at her throat. What remained of her snakes attacked, their fangs sinking into the flesh at my ankles and calves, but I forced my mind against the pain.
Something clanked against my dagger, and I noticed for the first time that the hunter wore a necklace strung with four emeralds around her neck.
I smiled. So this was how she was controlling the golems: one matching stone for each of them.
I used my free hand to yank the strand of emerald beads from her neck. I held them in my hands, allowing the power of my ice-magic to cover them. The four rock golems stopped instantly, their stone bodies freezing in place at my command.
I held my dagger close to the hunter’s neck, allowing the blade to sink into her corroded skin just enough to keep her from moving. With a deep breath, I forced freezing magic through my veins, focusing on the lower half of my body. Ice crackled as the snakes drew the magic in through their fangs and froze in place.
“Where is the emerald priestess keeping her?” I asked, my teeth gritting against the pain in my legs. “Tell me and I will spare what is left of your life.”
The hunter’s shoulders slumped forward, and she practically leaned into my blade.
“You are a true warrior,” she said. “But after all the killing, you have yet to learn the most important truth.”
“What truth?” I asked.
“No hunter will ever tell you the secrets of the emerald priestess,” she said. “The moment any hint of it left our bodies, we would disintegrate in an instant. It’s part of the magic that keeps us loyal. How can you not have recognized this by now?”
The air left my body, as if she had kicked me in the stomach.
I’d spent months tracking and torturing hunters, praying for one of them to break down and give me some clue as to where I could find Harper or the emerald priestess. None of them had spoken a word to me of their whereabouts, and I had cursed their loyalty to a priestess who had offered them nothing but sorrow. I had wondered why none of these former witches had been willing to turn on a woman who had stolen their lives from them.
“You’re going to die, anyway,” I said, leaning close to the hunter’s ear. “Make the sacrifice of your life—of who you were before she turned you into this rotting pile of flesh—mean something. Die with honor and tell me where I can find your priestess.”
The hunter drew in a shuddering breath, and a drop of burning acid fell on the back of my hand.
She was crying.
“I used to be beautiful,” she whispered. “I was young, and like you, I was in love. My priestess did not approve of my love and had promised me to another. If I tell you something, you have to promise me one thing.”
“Anything,” I said, my heart pounding.
“Find Kristie. Find my mot
her. Tell them I’m sorry,” she said. “Please, tell Kristie I love her and that I died clinging onto what was left of my humanity.”
“I will find them,” I said. “I promise you.”
“When Priestess Evers took me from my home for refusing to follow her plan for my life, she brought me to a place near her home,” she said, her words coming rapidly. “An institution filled with other girls. She meant to add me to her collection.”
Her body began to decay as the truth poured forth from her. Acid pooled at my feet, and I stepped back, removing my dagger from her throat.
“What collection?” I asked quickly. “Where?”
The hunter turned to face me, her skin almost melting from her bones. Tears of thick acid streamed down her face, and for a brief moment, I could see the girl she once was.
“I don’t know where it is,” she said. “But she has a collection of them. Hundreds of them. That’s where you’ll find your Harper, if she’s still alive.”
The hunter fell to her knees as the rest of her body disintegrated into a pool of acid, corroding the rock beneath her.
I collapsed onto the ground, tears in my own eyes. “No,” I shouted. “Don’t go yet. I need to know where she is. I need to find her.”
I pounded my fist against the stone, knowing it was no use. The hunter was gone and could tell me no more.
I’d Like To See You Try It
The sound of steel hitting steel pulled me from my nightmares. My body tensed, every muscle aching from weeks of sleeping on the harsh stone floor. Around me, demons groaned and mumbled as they sat up and rubbed the sleep from their eyes.
“Get up, prisoners,” the guard shouted. “It’s another day in paradise.”
I narrowed my gaze. This guard was one of my least favorites. Karn. He was mean to the weakest among us, using any excuse to serve a few extra lashings on those who deserved it the least. His soul was dark, and I hated him with intensity.
Anyone who would prey on the least fortunate didn’t deserve to be in charge of prisoners. Especially prisoners who were mostly innocent of any crime worse than simply trying to survive in a world ravaged by the Order of Shadows.
I’d heard Andros speak of the deterioration of the kingdom, but I never expected this level of destruction and depression. I’d had a hundred years to come to terms with the fact that my king and family had abandoned me to my fate, but understanding how the king could abandon everyone who didn’t benefit him in some way was beyond me.
I hadn’t spent much time above ground in the King’s City, but what I had seen here in his prison told me all I needed to know.
The king was no longer concerned with justice or the wellbeing of his people. He had either lost his mind or been turned by greed and fear. Either way, I didn’t care to serve him.
There was once a day when I was in training to become the captain of the King’s Guard. But that was a long time ago, when I was someone else. Someone I barely remembered these days.
“What are you staring at, prisoner?” Karn said.
I realized he was talking to me. I lowered my head, letting my long, dark hair cover most of my face.
“That’s right. You aren’t worthy to look upon my face,” he said, a sick kind of joy in his tone. “Maybe I’ll place you in the front of the line today. Let you learn to really pull your own weight around here.”
I didn’t answer or speak back to him, but I swore that one day, when he least expected it, I would repay his kindness.
“Let’s go. We don’t have all day,” he said, turning his attention to the other demons in the room.
About twenty-six of us were crammed together in a cell that should have held no more than ten demons. My second day in the dungeons, I’d been dragged from my cell adjoining Lea’s and brought here, where I was forced to work in the quarries, mining gemstones.
I hadn’t seen Lea since that day, but there wasn’t a moment when I didn’t think of her.
Was she okay? Were they treating her well?
And how was I going to escape so that I could get her out of there?
I didn’t trust her father. Especially not now that I’d seen with my own eyes how much he valued his own people these days. A lot could really change in a hundred years.
The guards sneered and pushed as we filed out of the cell toward the mess hall. I kept my head down, not wanting to draw attention to myself. So far no one in this godforsaken place had recognized me. None of the guards seemed to know who I was, and I intended to keep it that way.
If these guys found out I was the son of the king’s closest advisor and a former slave of the Order, it could cause some real trouble for me. I wanted to be as invisible as possible until I figured out the right moment to escape.
For the past few months, I’d been paying attention to every detail of our routine. Every shift change. Every key ring. Every guard’s uniform, name, and disposition. Nothing went unnoticed. After a century locked inside someone else’s body without the ability to talk or control anything around me, I’d gotten very good at observation.
But so far, no plan had emerged. Without magic or weapons, I was powerless.
I just had to be patient and hold on. I had to wait for the perfect moment when the routine was off or all the guards were looking the other way.
They had pulled me away from Lea just when I was starting to finally remember what it was to hope. I still thought of the way it felt to touch her cheek with the back of my hand. The way her black hair fell across her shoulder when she tilted her eyes toward mine.
Those memories were the only thing that allowed me to keep my head down and be patient.
Someday, I would find my way back to her. Even if I had to kill every guard in the castle.
I shuffled through the line and carried my daily portion of food to the stone tables lining the room. I chose a seat at the very end, away from any of the others. Just like every day. I didn’t speak to anyone, and I kept my eyes hidden. The less they knew of me the better.
The four demons sitting closest to me were debating about the uses for the gemstones we’d been mining. I kept my ears open and my head down as I shoveled the cold paste they called food into my mouth.
“But why would the king need so many sapphires?” an older man named Trention said.
Trention was one of the few demons I recognized in this place, though he didn’t seem to recognize me. He used to be a top scholar in the castle and the headmaster of the city’s school. It was a prestigious position that took hundreds of years of study to obtain, and I couldn’t help but wonder why such an intelligent and decorated demon had been thrown in the dungeons with criminals. I’d never heard him say.
“I don’t see why it matters what color stone we’re mining,” a demon with eyes as dark as the Black Cliffs said. I’d heard others call him Soran. “It still hurts like hell at the end of a long day, no matter if it’s sapphires or rubies.”
“For all we know, the king is stacking them up in his chambers so he can sleep on them at night,” a tall demon named Priyo said. “The old demon lost his mind a long time ago, if you ask me.”
“It matters because the sapphire quarries haven’t been mined this hard in centuries,” Trention said. “Most demons don’t even know the quarries just outside the gates exist. Over the years, the king and his guard have been very careful to keep them hidden so that other demons wouldn’t steal them. But some of the other stones like rubies or amethysts are much more useful. Rubies are the basis of most communication spells and are used for things like powering lights. Amethysts are used for healing and growing crops, but sapphires? What use would the king have for a hundred thousand sapphires?”
I wondered if any of them knew about the fall of the sapphire gates in the human world. Could that have anything to do with why the king suddenly needed a stockpile of sapphire stones?
Most of us weren’t even halfway through the pitiful bowl of food we’d been given before the guards started clapping their hands
and shouting at us to fall into line to be shackled.
Many of the demons in the room groaned and protested, but as always, I kept my head down and did as I was told. I was uniquely suited to being a slave, after all, and if there was one thing I was still good at in this world, it was following directions.
And biding my time.
Let them think I was docile and weak. What did I care? I just wanted them to ignore me, and so far it was working.
As a guard named Thoriare passed by, I held my hands out. He slammed a silver shackle on each of my wrists. The shackles were all connected by a strong link of chain that kept us in line and bound to one another as one long group. The material the chains were made of had the unique property of blocking any demon’s magic so that we couldn’t cast. Down here in the dungeons, our magic was blocked by spells, but outside the gates in the sunlight, they needed these shackles to keep us in line.
Still, they seemed to trust us with tools to mine, and as we marched through the dark corridor that wound under the streets of the King’s City and out toward the mines, I gripped my pickaxe tightly in my hand.
As the sun came into view, I lifted my face and let its warmth wash over me. This was my favorite part of the day. Many of the others complained about the physical labor of having to mine all day without a break, but I loved it. I enjoyed being outside when the weather was nice. I loved the feel of the axe in my hand, even though this one was nothing like my old weapon.
This was a quarter as heavy as the weapon I’d favored as a young demon and only had a small pick on the front end instead of a broad axe-head, but it was close enough to give me comfort in these dark times.
And since the power of my magic had seemed to abandon me, I knew my unique ability to fight well with a weapon in hand-to-hand combat would become useful someday soon. The more chances I had to strengthen my muscles, the better.
Forgotten Darkness Page 2
