Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

Trial by Claw

Lio conjured a spelllight to illuminate the narrow path through the marsh. The glowing orb dissolved into the pale mist as if the Lustra had consumed it. He sighed. His magic was as useless in here as Mak and Lyros’s wards.

Knight splashed through a stand of reeds ahead of them, sending mud flying. Mak paused at the edge of the soggy ground. “Thorns. We can’t levitate, either?”

“Seems not.” Lyros waded through the puddle.

“I’m sorry,” Cassia said.

Lio laughed softly. “You needn’t apologize for your ancestors, my rose.”

She scowled. “I’d like to have words with Ebah right now. When she appeared to me in Btana Ayal, all she gave me were cryptic commands. Nothing so useful as, ‘By the way, if you ever need to get into that long-lost tower of mine in the eastern Tenebrae, just pull out a focus imbued with plant magic and that bloodthirsty ivy will be docile as a lamb.’”

Mak huffed. “And while she was at it, she could have told us what all of this is actually guarding.”

“It will be worth it,” Lio said. “She wouldn’t have gone to this much effort to hide it unless it was very important to her.”

“Any theories?” asked Lyros.

“Another ritual site, perhaps.” Lio held the drooping branches of a marsh tree out of Cassia’s way and let her go ahead of him. “One even more important than the last two.”

“We didn’t learn much from those,” Cassia grumbled.

“Didn’t we?” Lio asked her.

Mak rolled his eyes at Lio. “Anytime you get tired of his magic teacher tone, Cassia, let us know. We’ll knock it out of him for you.”

She gave Lio her secret smile over her shoulder. “That won’t be necessary.”

Lio smiled back. I do believe you like my magic teacher tone.

I can’t decide which part I enjoy most, you glass-tongued scrollworm. When you instruct me like a student, or praise me like a queen.

I will do either one you like if you can answer my next question.

Their faces must have betrayed their private conversation, for Mak whistled. “Why weren’t our magic lessons this interesting, Lyros?”

“Not fair at all,” Lyros said. “We might have become scholars if we’d gotten to polish our fangs instead of having to read boring scrolls.”

Lio cleared his throat, pulling his thoughts away from that bed in the tower room. “Can you name at least one thing we learned from each of the ritual sites we’ve visited?”

Cassia’s aura grew thoughtful. “Fighting for survival is what brings on a Silvicultrix’s beast magic. The ritual site under the lighthouse where we found the bones could be aligned with that affinity. Fertility and the stone circle might be connected to plant magic. Would that make sense?”

“Certainly,” Lio agreed.

She looked at him askance. “That’s not the answer you’re looking for.”

“All of that is important, but I think we learned something even more interesting from each site. Trust your intuition like Mak suggested. What did you feel?”

She paused to think again. “What didn’t belong was more interesting that what did.”

Lio nodded in encouragement.

“The Mage King’s fire was so strange to find in a Lustri ritual site. That tells us he wasn’t just a guest in Ebah’s passageways. He was a participant. They blended their magic somehow. As for the stone circle…no, this sounds ridiculous.”

“Try us,” Lio said.

“The standing stones reminded me of Btana Ayal.”

Lio was about to reply when Lyros broke in softly. “Do you hear that?”

They stopped speaking, and Lio listened.

Mak said, “There’s only one four-legger with us, but I can hear nine more.”

Such heavy footfalls could only belong to large creatures. The beasts were closing in from all different directions. Their party was already surrounded.

“I can’t feel their auras,” Lio said. “They aren’t normal animals.”

Lyros lifted his spear. “If they’re as friendly as the ivy, get ready to fight.”

Cassia’s horror crept over Lio. She said nothing, but he could feel her terrible realization. If the Changing Queen’s traps required all three of her affinities to escape, then this test of her beast magic was one they wouldn’t pass.

“We’ll find a way,” she said with bravery he knew she didn’t feel. “That’s what Hesperines do, isn’t it? Ebah may have designed one solution to this puzzle, but we heretics will invent our own.”

“That’s right!” Mak called into the night. “Come and get us, you doddering spell-beasts. I bet you’ve never met a Hesperine before, have you?”

They fell into their fighting formation, back-to-back in a circle again. Knight let out a howl unlike any sound Lio had heard him make before.

Unearthly howls answered him. Wolves.

The pack emerged from the fog, nine beasts as large as Knight. Their eyes, orange as magefire, held uncanny intelligence.

“What are they?” Lyros whispered.

“Not illusions,” Lio murmured back, “nor similacra. Not mundane wolves, either.”

“Creations,” Cassia breathed.

Knight howled again, and the pack took up his song. Dare they hope the wolves were their allies?

A single wolf turned away from them and trotted a few steps along the path. As one, the others surrounding them faced forward.

“This feels more like an escort than an attack,” Cassia said with relief. “I think they’re offering to lead us out of the marsh.”

The wolf in the lead, surely the alpha of the pack, looked over his shoulder at her expectantly. When she hesitated, he spun to face her. His teeth peeled back, and his warning growl sent a chill down Lio’s spine. They all stood very still.

Cassia took a slow breath. “I think he wants me to communicate with him using my beast magic but I…I can’t.”

Lio put a reassuring hand on her back, trying to think of a plan. “You communicate with Knight intuitively even without your beast magic. Perhaps the wolves will respond as he does?”

Her misery intensified. “It’s not there anymore.”

“What’s not there?” he asked, trying to understand.

“The connection I felt with Knight.”

“No! That was your latent power—your innate capacity for your future beast magic. That should still be there.”

She shook her head.

He couldn’t bear her looming sense of failure, her fear that she couldn’t protect them. He was the one who had Gifted her before she had claimed all her power, without knowing what the consequences might be. He cursed everything they still didn’t understand.

The promise he’d made to her the night of her transformation burned through his veins. He would not rest until she claimed all her power.

The wolf took a step forward. This time, his howl sounded like a war cry. The pack turned on them and attacked.

Lio swept his staff out at the three wolves lunging toward him and Cassia. There came no impact of adamas on muscle and bone. The staff passed right through their bodies.

He dropped his weapon and threw himself in front of her, his arms up to shield his heart and throat. The fangs that closed around his forearm were no spectral touch. Pain tore through his flesh. A sickening crack rang in his ears, punctuated by Mak and Lyros’s shouts.

Lio swung his other hand, aiming a fist at the wolf’s jaw. His knuckles passed right through its head.

Then there was a heavy thud, and something jostled the wolf off Lio’s arm. Fresh agony burned through his wound, but he was free.

Knight wrestled the wolf to the ground, aiming his bite at its jugular. The other two wolves had already retreated a pace with scrapes marring their fur.

“Oedann,” Lio barked out, then whirled to check on Cassia.

She had her eyes closed, one fist around her pendant and the other around Rosethorn’s hilt. Two points of Lustra magic grew in her foci.

The magic flew outward from her all at once. Black roses tore out of the marshy ground, forming a barricade between them and the wolves. Knight’s opponents leapt over the rising thicket just before the roses grew too high for any wolf to jump. The beasts harrying Mak and Lyros retreated, yelping at the sting of the thorns.

“They can feel that,” Mak snarled.

But Cassia’s face crumpled. “I can’t make the roses attack the wolves. The Lustra vines won’t turn on their own. I’m sorry. All I can do is buy us time.”

Another howl sounded from outside her barricade. Bloodied jaws tore through. The roses grew closed again, shutting out the beasts. But on every side, Lio could hear their teeth and claws working at the vines.

“Now would be a good time for obtuse arcane theories, scrollworm,” Mak called over the growls.

Lio had walked into this trap with nearly a century of knowledge from the greatest libraries in the world stored in his head. All of that meant nothing in the face of ancient power from a lost epoch. He didn’t know enough. He didn’t understand anything.

He dragged a hand over his face. “What’s happening here defies every known law of magic! If they obey any law at all, it’s some primal code we don’t understand.”

“Primal laws…” Mak echoed. “What’s the oldest law there is?”

Something passed between him and his Grace, and Lyros answered, “Trial by combat.”

“What?” Cassia protested. “No, I won’t let you—”

“Let us try,” Mak said firmly.

She shook her head, her magic growing stronger in the ground under their feet. Her rose barrier grew higher.

Mak eyed the vines. Then he slashed his finger on one of the thorns. “We, Telemakhos and Lysandros, warriors of Hespera, challenge your wolves to trial by combat, Silvicultrix Ebah of the Lustra.”

The rose vines parted and sank into the ground. The wolves stood in a ring around them. Torches that hadn’t been there before now encircled the area. They burned not with mundane flame but with magefire that felt akin to the lighthouse.

His heart was in his throat. All he wanted to do was reach out to hold his Trial brothers back from this battle. But he was beginning to understand the laws at work here.

I think Mak just found the alternate solution to the puzzle, he told Cassia.

If the wolves hurt them—

Time to trust our warriors.

The alpha wolf and a fearsome female who must be his mate stepped out of the formation to face Mak and Lyros.

Mak squeezed Cassia’s shoulder, and his reassurance flowed through the Blood Union. “They’ve accepted our challenge and chosen Lyros and me as their opponents. It would be dishonorable for you and Lio to intervene.”

Her jaw tightened, but she nodded.

Mak approached the alpha as Lyros faced off with the vicious mate. Even Knight stayed back as if he had understood this law all along.

Lio could do nothing but stand helpless and watch. Cassia took his hand, and they held on tightly. His vow pounded with his pulse, a wordless determination now. He would learn. He would know. When they finally faced that door, his ignorance would not be the death of his Grace and Trial brothers.

The two wolves moved as one, launching themselves at Mak and Lyros. Lio’s muscles braced for the pain his Trial brothers were about to meet.

Mak turned his powerful frame with graceful precision. He moved into the wolf’s attack, merged with it as if he too was a force of nature. The beast’s pounce carried them both to the ground.

His hands closed around the wolf’s two front legs. Solid. The beasts truly had accepted the challenge. His biceps strained as he forced apart the claws trying to pin him down.

The alpha’s mate had landed behind Lyros to nip at his heels. He danced out of the reach of her jaws. With his own predatory gaze, he watched her every move. They circled each other, her eyes calculating.

Mak emerged on his feet. His face was utterly calm despite the fresh claw marks on his barely-healed arm. This time, it was he who pounced. He wrestled the alpha back to the ground, and they rolled in a whirl of black fur and blacker cloth.

At last, Lyros struck, a blur of immortal speed. His fist connected, a rapid strike at the wolf’s muzzle. It must have been a vulnerable spot, for she let out a yelp that promised revenge.

A glint of firelight on water revealed the wolf’s strategy to Lio too late for him to call out a warning. Lyros’s sandal slipped on a patch of muddy ground hidden in the reeds. He lost his grip on her muzzle. Lio was sure the wolf had lured him into that position on purpose.

She forced Lyros to the ground with her front paws on his chest. His leg, trapped in the mud, twisted at an unnatural angle. Lio shuddered at the pain that contorted Lyros’s face. He took a step forward.

Cassia grabbed his arm. They’re right. If we intervene, we’ll all fail this test.

The clever wolf bared her teeth and aimed for Lyros’s throat. Lio didn’t know what oath he shouted as the beast’s teeth connected with Lyros’s jugular.

But it was she who leapt back, whining and pawing at her muzzle. With a savage smile, Lyros made it out of the mud, favoring his broken leg. The torn collar of his battle robe revealed what he’d hidden there: a vine of black rose thorns, the Lustra’s own armor.

Mak’s pain raked across the Blood Union, yanking Lio’s attention back to his battle. His blood flew, a spray of bright red in the firelight. He broke free of the alpha’s grasp, rolling away from the wolf, only to fall still on the ground.

His hand moved. He pressed it to his chest in a vain effort to staunch the blood streaming from his heart wound.