Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  “Don’t worry,” Evelyn said from the rooftop. Their fearful eyes turned her way. “You’re about to have all the time in the world.”

  She spun as she descended, her arms extended. Her blades shimmered blue just before contact, heating their edges into unrivaled killing sharpness. One Ravencaller’s head flew from his shoulder. Another collapsed in two, his body rent in half from hip to hip. The one carrying the body dropped it to free his hands, and the words of a curse flowed from his lips.

  “Anwyn of the Moon, hear me!” he cried.

  “She’s busy,” Evelyn said, cutting down the third Ravencaller. “Try later.”

  She flung Whisper end over end, its sharp point easily punching through his forehead. Its rotation continued, burying the sickle deeper so that the point punched out the top of his mouth and stuck above his jaw like a second tongue.

  Just like that, the fight was over. They’d died so quickly, her heart rate had not even accelerated. Evelyn looked over the bodies. A sad ache settled over her chest. They all looked to be in their second decade of age. Incredibly young, even for humans. What promises had they been offered? What sweet lies had her son whispered into their ears? Magic? Power? Authority over humanity once they were conquered?

  “War approaches and you’re killing a few misguided cultists,” she muttered. “What are you doing, Evelyn?”

  It wasn’t the first time such doubts came to her. The old world had awakened with a flourish, and barely weeks passed before factions started forming. Whispers filled local taverns of dragon-sired armies on the move. Once word of Cannac’s death reached his son, Evelyn held no doubt they’d come to Londheim eager to burn the city to the ground in response.

  The only question was whether or not Viciss allowed such an act. If the living mountain stirred, no army could stand against it. That might mean Londheim’s doom, or its salvation, and honestly Evelyn wasn’t sure which might be better for the Cradle. War was war, and always brutal, but her few weeks in Londheim had not exactly convinced her of their ability to have humans and dragon-sired living peaceably together. Hundreds of years had passed while they slumbered, yet humanity remained very much the same upon their waking.

  Evelyn flapped her wings and vaulted back to the rooftops. Such dire thoughts should no longer be hers. She’d fought her wars against humanity. She’d watched family and friends die to the prayers of Mindkeepers and the pistols of Soulkeepers. Coexistence might be hard, but damn it, a life of war was harder. She left the bodies to be found by the city guards and paced the rooftops with no particular destination in mind. The sense of movement helped her escape her own thoughts, which were none too kind.

  Killing the occasional cultist would never be enough, not while her son lived.

  “You’re pulling leaves because you’re not strong enough to cut the branches,” she said. “You really are wasting your—”

  Evelyn skidded to a halt atop an elegant home and clutched one of its steep pillars for balance. A sound like glass scraping against glass pierced through her mind with such force, she clenched her beak hard enough to make her jaw ache. What in blazes was that? Her stomach heaved. Something was wrong. Their creator, Aethos, had granted avenria hypersensitivity to the presence of the void, and she could feel the light of the soul within a human’s body like a warm glow. This sensation, this otherworldly noise, was like a shrieking protest against all she represented.

  Keep your head together, she chastised herself. Focus! Where is it coming from?

  Evelyn closed her eyes and huddled closer to the shingles. This wasn’t a real noise reaching her ears. That glass-on-glass sound was her mind’s interpretation of something intensely wrong. A sensation of… breaking? Piercing? It faded slightly, allowing her a better understanding of its source. This noise, this sensation, was one she had not felt in ages, and never this strong.

  It was the presence of the void, and it was very, very close.

  “How are you here?” she wondered aloud. “How did you break through the stars’ protection?”

  A shiver ran down her spine and set her feathers to ruffling. She had to find it and deal with it immediately, before it could wreak untold damage upon Londheim. Her boots pounded across the shingles as she leapt from rooftop to rooftop, occasionally using her wings to grant her a boost should the gaps be large. The wretched sensation of wrongness guided her like a lighthouse, only it was not safe shores she approached but an unknown monster.

  The void could take on any shape, for it had no inherent shape of its own. Even knowing this, Evelyn was not prepared for the bizarre horror that crept down the empty street. It looked like the void-monster had chosen to emulate the body of a human, only instead of walking on two legs, it crawled on all fours, with both its arms and legs disturbingly long and double-jointed. It reminded Evelyn of a four-legged spider, only it had no fat abdomen or segmented thorax. A long-necked head sniffed the ground, while a second head grew between its shoulders facing the sky. Its mouths were open, and swirling between pure-black teeth was an unending chasm. Everything about it was the absence of light, of definition, of meaning. A ravenous anti-existence, with only nebulous hate and loathing to give it purpose.

  “This is what you were made for, Whisper-Song,” Evelyn said as she drew her two sickles. She jammed their lower ends together and twisted. The wood connected as if it were one long branch (which in fact it had been, centuries ago) and then extended. Evelyn twirled the twin-scythe in a circle, knowing she’d need its greater reach. “Let us pray the centuries have not dulled your blades.”

  Evelyn leapt over three more rooftops, closing the distance between her and the monster. With how it ignored the nearby homes, she assumed it had a destination in mind. Whatever it might be, she wouldn’t let it arrive. No one, not human, not dragon-sired, deserved to die in the clutches of the void.

  With one head looking forward and another staring up and behind, there’d be no sneaking up on the monster. Evelyn dashed off the tall spire of a wealthy mansion and dove for it anyway, hoping her speed might overwhelm it. The monster shuddered at her approach and released a blood-chilling howl. She spun just before contact, the blades of her scythes shimmering blue as their firekin magic enacted.

  The resemblance to a spider appeared appropriate, for it moved with the speed and reflexes of one. Arms and legs scrambled out of the way so that the leading scythe struck the street, cutting a deep groove into the stone and scattering pebbles in all directions. Evelyn tried to continue her momentum but a weirdly jointed arm struck her in the abdomen, knocking out her breath. She spun Whisper-Song before her, forcing the creature back lest she hack its arm off with the two twirling blades.

  “Avenria,” spoke both heads simultaneously. “The stars moved much since we last met.”

  “Sorry,” she said as she braced her legs for an attack. Her words came out raspy and weak from her attempts to regain her breath. “Can’t say I remember you.”

  The void-monster lunged after her, and she met it with a leap of her own. They twisted together, Evelyn relying on her finely honed reflexes to carry her through. Pure black arms and legs thrashed about her, but she shifted her hips and twisted her shoulders to avoid the blows. Whisper-Song’s sharp point plunged into the dark shape just above the hip.

  She failed to anticipate its sudden fury at being harmed. The monster flung her away like a ragdoll. She flared her wings and flapped to slow her descent so that the hard stone didn’t crack open her skull upon landing. Whisper-Song clattered to the street beside her, the blue hue fading from its blades.

  “Arrogance,” said the monster. “Bluster. Pointless.”

  It bounded toward her, the thud of its hands and feet upon the stone like that of a panicked horse. Her hand closed around Whisper-Song’s hilt as the void-monster towered above her.

  “Light must fade,” the monster gloated. “Hunger will be sated.”

  Evelyn’s wings turned incorporeal, granting her body passage through the solid stone of
the street below her. The void-monster’s arms pummeled where she’d been, bashing giant cracks and indents into the street. Evelyn righted herself as she fell, then shot a hand upward. Her clawed fingers hooked the stone of the street. Her descent halted, she pulled, and then shot out of the ground like a bullet. Whisper-Song’s handle rolled over her shoulder, back into her grip, and then swirled. Both scythes carved through the void-monster’s body, spilling shadow. Evelyn flapped her wings to carry her above, and then she ripped Whisper and Song apart so she might bury both their blades directly into the void-monster’s forehead.

  Their shimmering steel tore through the pure black essence, and she carved the twin blades along its body, shredding it like she would tall grass. A flailing arm caught her chest, and she flew several feet before landing painfully on her back, but the damage to the monster was already done. It broke apart, losing all form completely. Liquid shadow flowed across the stones, hissing and evaporating beneath the distant glow of the stars. With the monster’s death, Evelyn instantly felt better. The glass-on-glass scraping inside her mind faded to a distant whisper. Evelyn let out a long sigh and separated the two halves of her twin-scythe.

  “I am too old for this,” she grumbled. Every bone in her body ached. She pushed herself back to her feet and stared at the vacant spot where the void-monster had existed mere moments before. The Cradle was like a sealed boat adrift in a vicious ocean. Once there was a leak, that leak remained until fixed. The question was… where was the leak?

  Evelyn folded her wings over her face and slowly exhaled. The presence of the void was distinctly alien to everything upon the Cradle, and that meant it left a trail. No normal eyes would perceive it, but this was what the avenria had been made for. Every step the monster took scarred the very building blocks of matter it touched. It destroyed the air that contacted its skin. It absorbed all light that fell upon its body and returned none of it. The void was hunger and fury, and once Evelyn’s eyes looked upon a world made of souls and shadow, the path it had taken stood out like a black scar.

  Evelyn followed the path despite dreading where it might take her. The monster had snaked through a trio of homes. In each one she found furniture tossed, doors broken, and blood splashed across the walls and floor. No bodies, though. The damn thing ate them. Based on the damage, it looked like the monster had grown in size as it feasted, with the damage to the third house significantly greater than the first.

  The black scar returned to the street, its trail smaller and harder to follow. Evelyn had to drop from the rooftops and scan the cold stone for signs of its passage. She found them in small, bright grooves, as if the stone had been sanded and cleaned. The path took her across the street, through an alley, and then into another home. Evelyn paused before it. Unlike the nearby buildings, this one appeared older, and completely carved from stone, whereas newer buildings used a mixture of bricks and wood. The front door was open and unlocked, and when she hurried inside, she found similar destruction to the furniture. A trip upstairs found a bloodstained bed, and Evelyn offered a prayer for the slaughtered owners.

  What she did not find, however, was where the path originally began. The black scar of passage looped and circled about the home, yet she couldn’t find where it had entered the home. For ten minutes she paced the property, ensuring there were no other signs of the void-monster outside the building. Then she began anew inside, retracing the creature’s steps and building a timeline of destruction in her mind. At last she had the idea to check the enormous fireplace. Perhaps it had leapt from a nearby building and then scuttled down the chimney?

  Sure enough, she saw signs of the void’s presence within, but not as she’d expected. Power emanated from the fireplace, and she felt it on her feathers like a cool wind. Evelyn pushed her fingers to the stone and held her palm flat. Immediately the back plate of the fireplace vanished as if it had never been, revealing a long, dark passageway.

  “Well now,” she whispered. “What have we here?”

  Evelyn curled her wings and ducked underneath to fit. Thankfully it widened out into a tall, narrow corridor. The glass-on-glass screech in her mind returned, but it was duller, and more constant. She readied her sickles just in case. Her initial assessment had placed the corridor only a hundred feet or so long, but that was born of an optical illusion due to light coming in from behind her. In truth it continued in pitch blackness for hundreds of feet without curving. Evelyn tracked her progress mentally with each footstep, picturing where she might be if topside.

  Evelyn knew without a doubt where she was when she reached the corridor’s end: directly below the entrance to the humans’ Cathedral of the Sacred Mother. Before her was a strange, domed room, and its wonders danced in her eyes. Despite knowing her curiosity might be her undoing, she lifted her sickles and stepped inside.

  “What is this?” she wondered. Stars surrounded her in all directions. It felt like standing atop the highest mountain in all the Cradle, alone with the sky’s wonder. A triangular well was built in the center, a diamond orb hovering just within. Starlight trickled down into it in a thread thin as spider’s silk.

  Evelyn buckled her sickles at her hips and approached one of the walls, if “wall” was what one should truly call it, for it was more like a window to heavens so far away. Once she removed a glove, she lovingly brushed her naked hand across the stars. She felt their presence on her scaled skin. Protecting them. Keeping the void at bay.

  The void was nothing, her mother had told her when she was a small child cuddled in her wings. Empty, without thought or want or care. Then the three Sisters came to this barren place. They brought light into the darkness. They brought with them love, and joy, and creation. But the void had spent eternity comfortable in its nothingness, and now there was a light shining upon it, giving it shape. That light was the First Soul the Sisters brought to humanity. The void has sought to destroy it ever since. It will rip apart everything so it might sleep in peace.

  Evelyn had squirmed in her mother’s lap and buried her beak against her chest.

  The Faithkeeper called it a dragon, she’d said, the reason she’d brought the matter up in the first place. She’d lurked nearby during one of the ninth-day sermons the humans held in the market near Belvua, listening as he ranted about the void-dragon, and how it would swallow them all in darkness for tolerating the dragon-sired’s perversions.

  The five dragons are the Sisters’ children, beloved creators of the Cradle, her mother had said. The void is no dragon. It is emptiness given a mouth. It is apathy given teeth. It has but one desire, to return to a time when it had no desires. That is why we were made, little one. The stars hold the void at bay, but sometimes there are long shadows in deep places. Places we must go.

  Places like this, Evelyn knew, and she readied Whisper-Song.

  The scar ran four feet long vertically, though its width was barely more than a strand of hair. It wriggled and squirmed like a trapped worm. The stars to either side of it were noticeably dimmer than the rest, and she had a feeling at least a few had winked out completely. Evelyn stood before the scar and readied her sickles. This scar, it was like a tunnel of near infinite length, and through which the earlier monster had entered their world. The question was… could she seal it?

  The sounds of voices broke her concentration. People, here, now? Evelyn didn’t know who, but her gut screamed to hide. She cast her eyes about the domed room. There was nowhere to go. The floor was perfectly smooth, as were the walls. Based on the echo of the voices, which reverberated multiple times in the long hallway as to render the speech indecipherable, she had only a minute at most.

  Evelyn flapped her wings and chose the best place she could think of. Just above the arched entryway there were stretches of shadows before the stars began, and she sank her wings into them, allowing her body passage. She sank her body into the stone, all her extremities going numb as her flesh and feathers became incorporeal. When she ceased moving, only her hooded face remained free. It
’d be safer to vanish completely, but she had to see who the voice belonged to, and if they were the one responsible for the wriggling void scar.

  When her son entered the mysterious room with a fellow avenria, she questioned the wisdom of her decision.

  “I see no sign of it,” Logarius said after a moment. “Do you?”

  The other avenria shook her head.

  “Nothing. Wherever that void creature went, it’s gone now.”

  So they were tracking the same monster as her. Well, no wonder they couldn’t find it. Whisper-Song had put a fitting end to that nightmarish entity.

  Logarius approached the wriggling scar and lifted his right hand.

  “At least we know where it came from,” he said. Shadows began to coalesce around his fingers. Evelyn watched as her mind began to swim with spots. She could not breathe in her current state, and even the flow of her blood was momentarily halted. Remaining like this beyond a minute or two was a dangerous risk, but what was this place, and what was its connection to her son?

  “This construction is dangerous,” the other avenria said as the scar sealed shut. “We’re running a very big risk by not dismantling it.”

  “Dismantling it poses far greater risks than leaving it be,” Logarius said. He let out a deep breath, his body clearly taxed by sealing the rift. “We’re almost ready, Ilia. The occasional void tear is something we can handle.”

  As much as Evelyn wished to know what that plan of his might be, she could endure no longer. She sank all the way into the stone and then allowed herself to fall. Cool air greeted her as she dropped free into the long corridor. Her lungs gasped in a grateful breath. The darkness mixed with her wings to keep her hidden, and after a brief respite, she sprinted down the corridor. Whatever her son planned, it was greater than she could handle alone. As much as she hated the idea, it was time for her to find help.

  Thankfully for her, she knew just the Soulkeeper for the job.