Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  She ran. It was the only way she knew to ensure she did not lose her nerve.

  Adria had returned only once to the simple dilapidated home since her rescue from Janus. Devin had led the way, armed and eager for another fight, but the way inside the tunnel had been sealed off by a massive wall of steel that Janus no doubt formed during their absence. It refused Tesmarie’s touch. Not even Tommy’s magic had left a dent. But her magic? Her power? She’d not tried once.

  “Be with me, Sisters,” she prayed as she brushed away the illusion hiding the sealed doorway. The slab of steel shimmered into view. Adria touched its cold surface and closed her eyes. Inside would be a small chamber with a well, and from another secret door, there would be a tunnel. At the end of that tunnel… at the end of that long, dark passage… the beating heart beneath Londheim. The chamber of her rebirth.

  “Slay your fear,” she whispered.

  There was no one to draw from but herself. Power surged throughout her body as she tapped her soul’s seemingly infinite reservoir. No fire or lightning could break that door, but she wielded magic fiercer than fire, more intense than lightning. The door before her? Break it down. Rip it apart. She imagined it gone, and demanded the world reshape itself to make her vision true. Little tendrils of light lashed out from her fingertips and ripped their way through the steel like cracks in ice atop a frozen lake. She heard it groan in futile protest. The light continued to spread, as unstoppable as the tides. Unmaking it. Denying its very existence.

  With a whoosh of unsealed air, the steel door disintegrated into stardust that fell like snow upon the floor.

  “Welcome back,” Adria told herself with a grim smile.

  The chamber inside was as her brother had described to her. The walls and ceiling were a smooth dome, its surface like glass separating the interior from a vast star field upon the other side. A stone well was in its center, shaped like three stacked triangles rotated at slight angles so their sharp points poked out in all directions. Liquid starlight dripped into the heart of the well at a slow, steady pace.

  Adria walked across the cold stone floor and peered into the well. Inside was a diamond orb collecting that starlight like a pail set out to catch rainwater. Its light was almost blinding to her sensitive eyes, yet she knew it was but a tiny fraction toward being full. Everything about the setup should have frightened her, yet for some reason she felt… comforted. The protection of the stars, no matter how real or illusionary they might be, was like a warm blanket across her cold skin. If only she could say the same of where she traveled to next.

  Devin had said there was a door hidden by a secret trigger, but she need not search for it. A normal person’s eyes would find nothing, but she could see the thin, swirling beam of starlight and souls underneath the floor leading directly toward the wall. A tiny little tendril of it snaked out to one of the stars, and when she pressed it, a segment of the wall faded away to allow her entrance.

  From within that dark corridor she sensed a hidden voice beckoning her onward.

  “I am blind, but Lyra gives me sight,” she whispered. “I see darkness, but Lyra gives me light. The light I see dwells in me, and it is blinding.”

  A brilliant flare exploded from her palm. She captured it within her mind, calming it, weakening it so it might last for hours instead of one debilitating moment. The pure white glow emanating from her palms soothed her nerves and gave her strength to continue. Step by step, she returned to Janus’s prison. Step by step, she returned to where her life changed forever.

  “Here I am,” she said to the great emptiness of the central chamber. “I’m back.”

  It was as she remembered. The ceiling seemed as far from her reach as the stars in the sky. Bone morphed into steel and back to support the dome’s sides. She dared not touch the walls, but she felt certain they would be firm like muscles. Now that she had time to look, she realized the dome wasn’t quite perfectly round. No, the way the supports came together near the top, not quite connecting, reminded her of standing within a giant, hollow rib cage. This place, it was still alive somehow. Dormant, slumbering perhaps, but still it gathered power, still it prepared to force its gift upon another.

  And there in the center of this otherworldly locale was the broken heart.

  Panic reared its ugly head as she looked upon the twisted remnants of her prison. Her shallow breathing escalated against her wishes. Invisible bugs bit at her fingertips. Goddesses help her, what was she doing here? What if Janus was nearby? She imagined the gargantuan machinery rumbling back to life. What if her rescue had interrupted something? What if the power she wielded was only the beginning?

  What if. What if. What if.

  Adria’s heart pounded as if she sprinted in a race, yet her feet remained bolted to the ground. Her eyes locked on the broken metallic heart in the center. She was a fool coming here. What did she think she’d learn from the broken glass, metal, and membranes? A sob escaped her throat despite her not crying. She remembered Devin’s panicked screams as he failed to break her out. She remembered urging him to run, her death a certainty, her fear hidden behind a fake smile. That sense of insurmountable dread returned to her, and no rational argument held sway against it.

  The Mindkeeper collapsed to her knees. Real tears finally broke free. She’d not cried for herself, she realized. From the very moment she awoke from Janus’s capture, she’d comforted her brother. She’d wiped away his tears and brought life back to his beloved Jacaranda. There’d been no tears for her. There’d been no time. No privacy.

  But she had both time and privacy in this monstrous rib cage, whose veins pulsed with starlight and whose heart was a shattered construction of tubes and metal. Londheim was a world away, and despite her fear, and her trauma, she allowed herself to finally break. A twisted part of her almost wished Janus would arrive. He was the lone being in all of Londheim who might understand what she felt. He might even be the only one to truly know who and what she was.

  We know what you are.

  Adria jerked her head up, her eyes wide. That voice, that cold, slithering voice… where had it come from?

  “Hello?” she asked, her own voice small and insignificant in the gigantic expanse. “Who’s there?”

  We are. We have always been. We will always be.

  Adria spun in place, searching for the speaker whose voice seemed to enter her mind without touching her ears. Counting the corridor she’d come from, there were six total pathways leading into the enormous center. She could only guess as to what she might find down them. Would they be similar chambers as the one she’d entered, or was there more to this machine capable of granting godlike powers? She scanned the entrances, looking for a person, a shadow, a hovering pair of eyes.

  Instead, not far from the broken remains of the steel heart, she spotted a long, slender wound in reality itself. It was like a long, wriggling black scar torn through the air. No wider than a piece of string, but she could see within, and her mind looped from vertigo. It seemed inside that scar was an entire world, infinitely long and impossibly dark. There was no light, no stars, only emptiness. Only void.

  The lines are breaking, spoke the scar. The stars fade. The walls tremble.

  “Be silent,” she said. Wisps of smoke floated from the scar and sank like water. It dissolved before touching the ground, but the mere sight of it filled her with a visceral revulsion. “Whatever you are, leave this place.”

  This voice, this presence, this void, cared not for her threats. A sudden surge of mist burst out from it, forming two long spider-silk strands that wrapped about her wrists.

  They call you Chainbreaker, but it is not humanity’s chains you break.

  Adria screamed against the cold fire blackening her skin at its very touch.

  It is ours.

  Her mind blanked with horror. She tried to summon the strength of her soul, but she could not command it. She couldn’t even see its phantom glow. The scar’s tendrils tugged and pulled, dragging her closer
to the jagged window of an impossibly endless void. Fury fought against her panic. This was not how she would die. Her mindless scream became words of a prayer she belted out at the top of her lungs.

  “Blessed Sisters, I seek your protection. Bind the darkness so it may not touch my flesh. Show mercy so I may stand in the light.”

  For the first time since her healing powers awakened upon healing old Rosa’s knee, her prayer went unanswered. The tendrils tightened. Her boots skidded against the floor.

  “Blessed Sisters,” Adria begged. “I seek your protection.”

  No anger this time. No commanding the power. She was desperate. Helpless.

  “Bind the darkness so it may not touch my flesh.”

  Silver light sparked about her feet. The tendrils cut through flesh entirely, their spidery touch clinging to naked bone.

  “Show mercy so I may stand in the light.”

  Waves of brilliance washed over her. The tendrils withered into flecks of ash. The moment they departed, she felt her world reawaken, and the presence of her own soul was the clearest, most beautiful sensation in all the world. Power flowed throughout her body, brilliant lightning streaking down her spine, through her arms, and out her fingertips. She grabbed its white fire and swirled it across her wrists, mending the ripped flesh. Once healed, she lashed the light against the sides of the tear. Six new tendrils emerged from inside, but they withered and broke against her might.

  You should have never been. Become ours. Heal the wound.

  “I am not yours,” she seethed. “I belong to no man. No monster. No void. Be gone!”

  Her hands smashed together. The rupture sealed shut with a tremendous hiss of air. Though silence followed, the scream of the void echoed like distant thunder within her mind, forever to stay.

  CHAPTER 24

  Crksslff bounced and somersaulted across the waves inside a tiny pocket of steam. It wasn’t one to feel fear often, but it did now. Devin and Jacaranda were long gone, having managed to resist the current far better than it could, given its now diminutive size. That size would continue to shrink, too, should it not escape the cistern’s channel and seek dry ground.

  Another rough bounce. The waterkin weren’t near, so far as it could tell. Now was its chance. Crksslff directed all its heat directly beneath itself, creating a burst of steam to catapult it out of the cistern’s flow and to the stone. There it lay for several minutes, shivering against the cold. There was so much moisture in the air, it irritated its flame and left it miserable.

  Crksslff hopped up onto two legs when it heard an oncoming rush of water. Were the waterkin hunting it? It didn’t know, and it feared to be caught in its current state. Crksslff was hardly larger than Devin’s pinkie at this point. The well-fed waterkin could douse it into nothing with hardly any effort. The little firekin dashed to the far wall, its beady eyes searching. A tiny crack was all it needed, and it found one near the bottom. Crksslff quickly hopped in and shriveled its flame down to a faint spark.

  Two waterkin passed by while leaping in and out of the channel’s surface like dolphins. Crksslff listened for what felt like hours, but did not hear their return. At last it allowed itself to relax. A little bit of green moss grew in the crevice, and though it was thick with moisture, Crksslff had plenty of time to digest. It let its heat slowly dry the moss out, and once sufficiently warmed, Crksslff placed a tiny arm against its center. By this point Crksslff was barely larger than the flicker of fire atop a candlestick. Smoke rose in soft curls as the firekin ate. The fuel wasn’t much, but to the starving firekin, it was a feast.

  A day passed before Crksslff poked its head out from the crevice. The moss was gone, and had been for hours. The firekin was back to the size of Devin’s thumb. Not the strongest, but it could wait no longer. While in a dry, barren environment Crksslff could survive for weeks, the thick moisture of the cistern would slowly wear away at it like a fatal itch.

  So far Crksslff hadn’t seen any sign of the waterkin after the first few initial searches, but it kept on its guard nonetheless as it hopped along the cold stone ground. It kept an eye out for any sort of ladder or stairs to the surface. Living among the humans presented its own set of challenges and risks, but at least the humans had not tried to kill it like the waterkin had. Plus among humanity’s massive collection of clothes, knickknacks, and fluff, there was a seemingly infinite amount to eat.

  The firekin did not find a ladder, but it did find square alcoves spaced out along the pathway. Most of them were empty, but the second one it encountered contained dozens and dozens of logs stacked up like firewood, and tied down with a thick burlap sack to protect against moisture. To find such a treasure belied belief, but starving firekin couldn’t be choosers. Crksslff darted to the very back of the stack, hugged a thick chunk of pine, and happily burned the hours away.

  Firekin did not dream, but they did fade away for long periods of time with the entirety of their focus upon the slow, steady consumption of their food. It was in this sleeplike haze that Crksslff heard movement from beyond the wood pile. Its beady little eyes snapped open. The tarp pulled away, and torchlight spilled across the logs. Crksslff kept low, confident it would go unnoticed with how far back it hunkered.

  “The humans haven’t retaken Belvua yet,” a foxkin said to the lapinkin with him as the two loaded logs into their arms. “Maybe they’ll decide to give us a place to live.”

  “Or maybe they’re waiting until they have enough soldiers to burn the whole district to the ground,” the lapinkin argued. “Stop giving humans the benefit of the doubt. They’re scared children. Provoking them like Logarius has will only make things worse.”

  “Is it really so wrong for me to be hopeful?”

  “It is if it gets you killed.”

  The two departed, their arms full, but Crksslff heard them give a parting greeting to an unseen third in their midst.

  “It’s all yours, Fifissll. We’ll come back in an hour to replace the tarp.”

  Crksslff expected another foxkin, or perhaps a gargoyle. What it did not expect was a firekin to climb the wood pile like stairs and dive headfirst into the thick of it.

  Firekin could suppress their fire by concentrating it more densely in a single space, turning their soft reds and yellows into small blue orbs. This was how Crksslff watched the other firekin crawl and weave through the wood pile. It didn’t set the logs alight, nor settle down to burn. It was more like Fifissll was inspecting the logs, stroking them with burning arms and kissing away lingering wetness. Keeping the logs healthy to burn, Crksslff realized, until the others, whoever they may be, came for them.

  Loneliness and yearning tugged at Crksslff’s heart. Fifissll was the first other firekin Crksslff had seen since waking from their centuries-long sleep. Shyness kept it still. How might this other firekin react? Would it be happy to see Crksslff? A quick shake of the head pushed such doubts away. Had its time with the humans taught it to share their fears?

  While Crksslff communicated with most beings via letters it spelled out, other firekin could understand the little pops, sparks, and whistles that emanated from their burning cores. It was with that manner of communication that Crksslff expanded back to its full size and addressed the other.

  “Hello. I’m Crksslff. You?”

  Fifissll froze in place, half its body wrapped around one end of a log. Its black eyes rotated ninety degrees about its head to stare back. They trembled.

  “Another?” Fifissll asked.

  Crksslff bobbed up and down.

  “Another!” it said. “How are you?”

  The other firekin snaked across the logs faster than a bolt of lightning. It circled the air about Crksslff as if unable to contain its excitement. One word sparked out from the firekin’s core over and over in joyous chant.

  “Happy! Happy! Happy! Fifissll so happy!”

  They spun and danced and yammered at each other for what felt like hours. Crksslff could hardly believe its luck. To find another fireki
n in Londheim? Never did it think that might happen. They swapped stories of awakening from their slumbers. They spoke of lost families, of friends in the old times, of their favorite moments when but little embers. The foxkin and lapinkin returned to replace the tarp, but neither firekin noticed.

  “Crksslff stay here long?” Fifissll asked. Its eyes glanced away. Nervous? Excited? Both?

  “Fifissll want me to stay long?” Crksslff asked.

  The other firekin bobbed up and down. A chunk of firewood charred black from its sudden surge of warmth.

  “Stay,” Fifissll said. Each word brought them closer. “Days. Weeks. Years!”

  For the first day, it felt like they could indeed spend years together. They flitted among the giant wood pile, playfully chasing one another as they told stories of the before-times. Sometimes they burned side by side, saying little. The heat of one’s company was enough. They had many stories, for Crksslff had been born an ember in the far west of the Oakblack Woods, whereas Fifissll had come from the east once it had grown strong enough to leave its parent flames. They swapped tales of creatures they’d encountered, faeries and dragons and talking stones.

  Perhaps a day or two passed. Down there without the sun, it made it hard to know. Crksslff had not realized just how much it had ached for another firekin to burn alongside. Meeting Fifissll felt like a gift from the stars, and to be gone from its sight for even a moment was unbearable. But it was not to be. Fifissll grew restless, and finally it exited the wood pile and gestured for Crksslff to follow.

  “Come with,” Fifissll said. “More dragon-sired to meet.”

  The two hopped along the cistern tunnel, Crksslff suddenly reminded of why it had hidden in the first place.

  “What if waterkin find us?” it asked.

  “Waterkin friends,” Fifissll said.

  Crksslff let out a huff of smoke.

  “Someone tell waterkin that.”

  Fifissll’s eyes bobbed and narrowed with laughter.