Odym did not acknowledge the gatekeeper, but squeezed her hand. “The curse affects us in different ways. Grendall and I are tied to the majik of this place and like the wards, we too will continue to fade until none of us are left. Since you have rejected the Prince, the curse will ravage you until you waste away to madness, like the other beasts. However, if you succeed where others have failed, if you embrace the curse, you might be the key to our salvation.”
“No, you cannot ask this of her! You have no right!” Grendall struggled against the rocks.
Vynasha couldn’t look away from the quiet hope in Odym’s eyes, the pleading. “All I wanted when I came here was a way to heal my nephew.”
“Soraya poisoned the Source with her curse, but if you embrace it, you will have the power to revive us all.”
“Enough!” The rock wall shifted and groaned under Grendall’s weight. “Vynasha, do not listen to this madness, I beg of you!”
Despite Grendall’s protests, she could not peel her eyes from the wyne’s, or ignore the relief his words gifted her. “All this time, you could have told me. You both saved my life the night I came here because you believed I was the curse breaker, didn’t you?”
Odym bowed his head in assent. “We suspected, but when you took to majik so quickly and Grolthox showed you his favor, we were certain.”
“You have gone too far, Odym!” Grendall roared and the wall shuddered with the force of his desperation.
Vynasha released her hold of the wyne’s hands to hide the trembling in her own. “You knew this entire time about the Source, the way I could save Wyll? Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Her light flickered with her anger and then burned with brighter intensity.
Odym wrung the bundle in his hands. “Please, Mistress, I was bound from telling you too much. It was not my place.” He turned to look over his shoulder and then at the wall as it shuddered one last time and sighed. “Do not think I ask this of you lightly. Much has been taken from you and still more will be asked of you before the end.”
“None of us have a choice in the end, do we?” Vynasha clenched her fists and winced at the wound her beast had inflicted. “What will I become, if I break the curse? You said I would transform, but into what? I’m not afraid and I promise I won’t run away this time, but I want to know.”
Grendall’s assault ceased then, his voice turned pleading. “Please do not ask this of her. I cannot bear to lose anyone else.”
Odym took her hand in both of his. “I do not know. If you let the majik of this prison transform you like it did the others, you will be tempted to lose yourself. I cannot tell you what way the curse will manifest in you. But if you are truly a Phure as I believe you are, you will endure and perhaps save us all.”
“You’ve mentioned the Phure before, but what does that mean?”
Odym opened his mouth to reply. “They were the oldest race from the other side of the mirror. Soraya’s folk considered them a thing of legend, yet she claimed only a Phure could undo her curse…”
Grendall’s horror drowned out the old wyne’s words. “Stop filling her ears with pretty lies! She cannot do this! No one has retained their true self upon embracing the curse, old fool.”
Vynasha looked to the hole with more than a little bitterness. “You don’t get to dictate what I can and can’t do, gatekeeper. You knew this was the only way I could save Wyll…” She stole a gasp as the weight of this realization filled her. All the times Grendall had prodded and pushed her along, to what end?
“I tried to protect you from all this, tried to let you go like you wanted,” was his pitiful reply. His brokenness gutted her more than the moment she’d watched him shed his form and take the shape of her Beast.
She turned to Odym and pushed aside her turbulent emotions. “How long will this take?”
“The transformation has already begun. Your bond with Grendall ties you to us where others were not before. I believe this gives you an advantage.” He paused, a whimsical smile lifting his solemn face. “To defeat the monster you must embrace the monster within.”
“You speak in riddles again, old man.”
“We were prepared to set you free when you asked it of us. This was not the choice we wanted for you to make.”
The sound of chains clanking together echoed from the hall beyond her cell, drawing their attention.
“Rrolthoz will know you have gone by now,” Grendall said, his voice strained, weaker. “I could not contain him this last time.”
The dreaded name evoked memories of black-furred power, bloodlust burning through crimson eyes. Vynasha placed a hand on Odym’s shoulder. “Go before you’re discovered. I’ll be fine if I am what you say, yeah? Besides, I have my beast in furry armor to protect me.”
Rather than share in her humor, the old wyne urged, as his features faded into his pale inner light, “Remember you have the Source inside of you. Do not ever forget.”
Vynasha followed Odym as he retreated from her cell and shut the door behind him. He fiddled with the latch and set the door bar back in place. She could hear the chains as he linked them together again. She clung to the bars covering the small window at the top half of the door and after a moment, Odym clasped her fingers.
“I shall come to you again when I can,” he said.
Vynasha gave him her best smile and said, “I won’t fail you,” because she still counted him friend. She was determined to believe all his pretty lies, as Grendall called them, for their sake. For Wyll.
Odym gasped at the sound of a loud crash and howl some distance away. “I must go. They will pick up my scent and with the gatekeeper injured… I must warn the others.”
She peered after the glow his form gave off in the darkness.
“ASHES? ARE YOU awake?” Grendall whispered to her through the hole in their wall.
Vynasha lay against the opposite end of her cell, curled in a pile of stale furs. She clutched at her chest and flinched at the sound of his voice. “Liar,” she whispered.
“Ashes, I should have told you, I confess.” He sighed. “Please say something.”
She shut her eyes and tried to block out the sound of his voice. Instead she watched the play of violet light reveal the passage of blood through thin veins. Odym claimed she was already changing, but how long until she was strong enough to use this Source?
“Vynasha, I did not want you to share this burden. It was mine to carry.” After a long pause, he added, “Odym had no right telling you about the curse.”
“The curse—it will destroy you,” the walls whispered.
She opened her eyes and stared at the pale violet glow of her skin. Burn marks from the fire that had destroyed her home rose in uneven grooves along her hand. Grendall had managed to heal the worst of the burns, but she could still follow the bumps of scar tissue along her knuckles.
“I already know about curses,” she told the walls.
“What did you say? Please come to me, Ashes. You are too far away,” Grendall pleaded with her.
She lifted her head and sat up further, ignoring the faint tremble in her limbs as she shouted. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you? You would sacrifice everyone’s lives just so you didn’t have to tell me the truth!” She wrapped her arms about her chest and bit her lip until it stung.
“We are already dead men walking,” he growled back. “What purpose would there be, asking you to sacrifice yourself? You, who are so full of broken promises, deserve to live most of all. Sooner or later we will fade as we were meant to, like Soraya, like the others.”
Rage unlike anything she had known before escaped through her words, pushed her limbs to crawl over to their shared hole. “You are so bleeding selfish! Don’t you care at all for the people here? Because they are people, gatekeeper. They live and breathe just like us. To say their lives don’t count, that your life doesn’t matter…” She shivered again as anger rippled through her and squeezed her eyes shut.
“This is the curse talk
ing through you,” he countered with urgency. “Do not let it control you. Come, touch my hand again and I will help your blood cool.”
She shook her head. “No! Odym said I have to embrace it. The blood bond you made with me woke up whatever majik my mother passed on and kept the curse from affecting me, but I’m not going to fight it anymore.”
“The time for majik has passed, Ashes. All it’s ever done is destroy the people I love. Maybe it’s time for majik to die.”
“You don’t get to undo your history or forsake your family,” she hissed, clenched her teeth as her voice shook. “Majik is in our blood, Grendall. Fighting it hasn’t made you happy, has it?”
He was silent, and part of her cheered to have stumped him. But that was when the voices returned.
“If you embrace this, there is no going back.”
“I know,” she replied.
“Who are you talking to?” Grendall said.
“You smell like fear,” she muttered, then screamed as her muscles clenched and a searing white-hot pain shot through her head. A fierce ringing echoed through her mind and she could no longer hear the Dungeon Master crying her name. Bursts of fragmented light filled her vision until darkness took over.
Ceddrych’s tall shoulders blocked the sunlight and she giggled as she followed him down the slope toward their cave.
“Wait, Ceddrych! Wait for me!”
He laughed, the sun glinting off his shoulder-length brown hair. It shone like the tarnished gold coins Old Ced kept in his pocket. Sometimes he took the coins out to count them in the night before bed. Since Mother had passed, his counting had dragged into the night. But Vynasha didn’t like to dwell too much on her father or his plans for the future. She pumped her short legs harder to catch up with Ceddrych’s longer stride.
“Slow down, you’re too fast!”
But Ceddrych did not stop or turn around. He ducked suddenly behind a copse of fir trees.
Vynasha opened her mouth to cry for him again when she tripped on a root and fell face first into the autumn leaves. She groaned as she pushed off the earth and froze at the heaving snarl that sounded ahead of her. She glanced through her tangled hair, unwilling to call for Ceddrych lest the beast be nearby. She dug her fingers into the earth and bit down too hard on her tongue as labored steps accompanied the great beast’s approach. Its shadow filled the space between the trees. Tears leaked from her eyes and stained her filthy cheeks.
“Please…” she whispered.
The creature paused and she squeezed her eyes shut as it approached. Its breath was hot against her neck. She shivered as her limbs began to spasm. When no attack came, she opened her eyes to face the earth and claws grew from her fingertips.
She let loose a scream for her brother, but the only sound that escaped her throat was a bellowing roar. Panicked, she tore the earth in an attempt to escape, to find him and a way out of this nightmare.
Bitter roars woke Vynasha from troubled dreams. She tried to open her eyes but her limbs continued to spasm as they had in her dreams. The metallic tang of blood wetted her lips. The roars blurred and as she struggled past the fever, she could almost hear voices in their snarls.
“Please, help us… free us.”
The voices sounded familiar, like the whispering tapestries, like the walls.
“Free us, Vynasha. You are the only one who can.”
She had been listening to them since her arrival, beckoning her. No longer the faded spirits, but rather trapped spirits in wickedly wrought flesh.
“The curse will swallow us whole and tear this decayed city to the ground.”
“… our last hope.”
“Vynasha?” Grendall called to her, his voice pained and hoarse as though he had been shouting.
Sound fell from her lips as a whimper. “Grendall.” Her bones broke with a resounding snap and her vision blotted as her consciousness floated beyond the agony.
Ceddrych ran ahead of her, so close she could almost see the shape of the furs he wore. He ran through the Wylder Mountains, chasing something beyond his grasp.
“Ceddrych, wait for me!” she called, but the sound came out as a low growl only she could comprehend. He turned to face her, still, eyes wide and flashing from brown to green. She flinched from the fear in his eyes as he pulled out a long, thick blade from his side and held the point out between them.
“Stay back!” he warned.
She tried to speak his name, only to hear the beast instead. Black-tipped claws rose to graze her lip instead of hands, eliciting a scream which became a roar too terrible to bear.
“Vynasha!” Grendall shouted, again pulling her from the bizarre visions that plagued her.
She shivered and held her arms to her chest. Her bones were raw and undone, as though she had been broken and knit back together again. Grendall’s cries brought her back from the brink of another pain-induced blackout. This time she clung to the sound of his voice, his desperation as he called another name.
“Soraya! You have no right to steal what is mine. My blood protects her. I swear by every power I possess you shall not take her from me!”
And the walls whispered back, “She was never yours to possess.”
A dozen other voices joined together, beckoning her. “Remember who you are.”
“Grendall?” She gasped as her muscles tightened and released again. Her limbs jerked in an effort to pull her control apart.
Grendall bellowed and a thud followed his cry with the shifting of rocks. “I will not let her do this to you, love. I swear by all seven hells. I shall tear the foundations of this bloody castle apart if she tries to take you!”
“No…” Vynasha could not open her eyes but she could sense his panic, the fear he would not share with her. “Let me go,” she groaned and rolled onto her back. Her bones shifted again, snapping to pieces throughout her body. Blackness called to her with the promise of endless nightmares and delusions from the pain.
“Never!” Grendall growled and she could almost taste his urge to change. He was trying to harness it, to use the beast’s strength to break the wall between them. The enchantments of the castle were weakening. Majik could contain him to a degree, but Grendall had power of his own.
She knew this now because it flowed in her veins, along with the agony he shared with her.
The other beasts snarled and howled with increasing fervor. Now she heard the words hidden in souls trapped by enchanted flesh. Some cursed her name, but most begged her to remember.
Her human nails broke and stronger black nails grew in their place, sharpening as she dug into stone. She could not see for the blood in her eyes and fought the blackness with every fiber of her being.
“Do not give in, Vynasha, you must fight it!” Grendall snarled and pounded against the rocks separating them. The floor trembled and she cried out.
“Remember,” the other beasts called through growls and snarls.
“Remember,” she gasped.
Odym’s words echoed in her fractured mind. “Remember you have the Source inside of you. Do not ever forget.”
“Please don’t leave me.” Grendall sobbed brokenly against the wall. His injuries on top of the pain he was sharing with her through their bond would weaken him eventually. She could feel his struggle within herself, coursing through the blood and majik they shared.
You have the Source inside of you, she thought with an inner voice so calm she clung to it. She thought of Ceddrych, of the other trapped beasts, women who had been prisoners as she had. The majik in their blood had not been strong enough, too diluted over the lifespan of an ancient curse. Vynasha’s mother had been different. Wynyth had passed her gifts to both Ceddrych and Vynasha. Majik had bound them together all their lives, even now in the pit of hell. She thought of Ceddrych in his wolf form and her nightmare. He had looked at her like she was a monster, just like the children in the village had looked at her after the fire…
Stop it. Odym told you to embrace the monster.
<
br /> “Fight it, Vynasha!” Grendall pleaded.
“No,” she growled, and with the admission, the tension in her body slipped away. She sighed and the shift was painless, welcome even, like slipping into a comfortable skin. With every breath her larger, more powerful lungs took in, Vynasha’s body adjusted to the changes the curse had wrought. New muscles corded and lengthened her limbs. Her flat teeth sharpened against her tongue and her sense of taste and smell came into glaringly clear focus. Her skin, scarred horribly by the fire that killed her family, smoothed and tightened.
Vynasha opened her new eyes and howled and the other prisoners in the Prince’s dungeon answered her call.
UNLIKE GRENDALL IN his beastly form, Vynasha could stand upright on two legs. She looked down and ran her tongue against her sharpened teeth. She held up her hands and was relieved by how remarkably human they appeared, save for sharp black claws. Through tattered clothes, she observed the way her soiled dress clung to a thicker, new body. Any exposed skin was still smooth, without fur and miraculously free of scarring. She stumbled on her first steps.
“Soraya!” Grendall roared from his cell, more beast than man. “I warned you! Now I shall tear this place apart, stone by stone, if I must.”
Vynasha turned her head and sniffed the air, smelling his blood. She could sense his need to shift, but his soul was fractured, split in two between the man he tried to be and the beast within. His inner beast cried for freedom from its master’s imprisonment and she pitied him.
That was when she heard the other voices calling through the dungeon, calling for their freedom. The Prince had trapped them for over an age. He was the true monster, marked by the rage of his captives and the decay of their prison, in the black majik that clung to her soul. Vynasha snarled at the sickness and closed her eyes to focus on the light inside of her—the Source, as Odym called it. Only after her rage abated did she dare speak.
“Grendall, I’m all right.” Her voice came out as a deeper rasp, but still hers.
Grendall paused in his tirade against the dead. “Ashes? How are you… did you not transform?”
Scarred Beauty Page 2
