7. Phaeron
As I stood there with Myuna, the ache of my injuries prevented me from focusing on counting the heartbeats thrumming within me. Time passed with the madness of the Void. Hours felt like minutes; moments felt like days. The goddess must have taken the chill of it with her for time to dilate in such a confounding way.
There was a Void between dimensions, an endless blackness. The closest thing humans had come to understanding the Void as a concept was through their study of the celestial bodies. It was similar to space, but things still existed out in space, hanging there suspended with vast distances between them. As much as the Void held the illusion of nothingness, it also retained an echo of all that touched it. It was a chamber where voices and experiences remained, slowly twisting into nightmarish form.
I’d had a few brushes with the Void before, even though I was not of the Vrassorm tribe, the Void-touched. I’d had a friend once who was, and he was excellent at making the darkness answer to his whims. The same friend had helped me guide our people through the Void to Earth. It’d felt like walking through an endless tunnel, the atmosphere cold, cold, cold.
My skin prickled, and I shuddered. I’d lost enough blood to miss it, most of it now dried to the front of my shredded armor. I hadn’t left this spot in…days?
No, that’s not right. I blinked away the fog trying to creep over my eyes. Garroway had yet to return, so it had not even been a day yet. He was bound to the day-night cycle as a vampire, so I could judge time passing by his arrivals and departures.
I knew for a fact that Myuna would eventually rest as well. Until then, she occupied herself with consuming the rest of the enchanted books in the chamber. It would’ve been easier for her if she stood and snatched them, but she was as lazy as I remembered. Either she read their titles aloud and they came to her hand obediently to meet their end, or she lassoed them out of the air with the strands of pure light she’d woven into rope.
This was fun for her. Her occasional laugh threatened to split my head in half, the ha ha layered with so many other voices. It felt like the souls she’d consumed screaming out while she had her gaping maw open to laugh.
Or a small amount of Void doing what it did best, echoing. Its chill lingered in the atmosphere, its many lurid eyes watching Myuna with me. She was too busy trying to call down the final two books from the rafters to notice.
I couldn’t close my eyes for longer than a blink, not when Myuna had forbidden me to sleep or rest. Time’s passing increasingly felt like torture, trapped within a silent, alert body with no reprieve.
So I embraced the Void, just a little. Letting it giggle for me when she grew frustrated. Her lassos broke several human fixtures, casting us into full darkness, even knocking off the object I’d hoped was a weapon secretly pointed at her. It fell to the bloodied ground and shattered with the crunch of smashed glass and fragile metal.
With no artificial light in the chamber, it was obvious when the sun rose. Garroway returned, dragging two unconscious people behind him. “My lady,” he said in the Hungering Darkness’s two-toned voice. “I was not able to find the purple-haired witch. But I brought you a meal…”
Myuna’s lasso flashed out and closed around the torsos of the two victims Garroway placed before her. Her magic faded, allowing her to hold up the man and woman in either hand as if they were dolls.
“…for us to share,” Garroway finished in a whisper since it was already too late. Myuna consumed their souls with all the fanfare of taking a deep breath, then swallowed the bodies together in one ravenous gulp.
“You have forgotten my appetite if you believe that was a meal for me,” she tutted, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with her sleeve.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Forget the girl for now. Bring me more souls.”
Garroway bared his teeth. I doubt the blood baron had made an expression of chagrin like this in decades. “I will remind you that this vessel cannot go out in the daylight, my lady.”
She gazed down at him as if he were a bug to crush. “Worthless. I will make more servants since none of the ones I sense want to answer my call.” Then she turned that look on me, instructing me to walk myself out of the audience chamber to wait five paces from the door for her summons.
My feet moved for me, pivoting me away before she could read the realization on my face. There was a library in the city…and Myuna could sense the denizens within it. It was only a matter of time before she corrupted a small force and tried to raid the building for access to her captured unnatural creatures.
I’d figured out at some point overnight that the pocket dimension had been closed. The change in air pressure was noticeable once Myuna was no longer bearing down on me. That meant the supply of unwilling servants was the small pool of people who didn’t, or couldn’t, escape from Cerris City in time.
A group of people that might not include Cress and her friends. Perhaps they had escaped not just the audience chamber, but Myuna’s grasp completely. I hoped that was the case. The last thing I wanted was for Cress to see me become one of the goddess’s servants, but that was only a matter of time. Myuna could already command my body. She’d make it as slow and torturous as possible, but she would inevitably seize control of my soul as well. A fate that loomed over me with great, ever-present dread.
Thankfully, five paces from the audience chamber took me to a battered bench I turned upright from its flipped state. My legs became one constant ache once I sat and finally took the pressure off my feet. I wanted to stray farther and find a restroom to clean my wounds before infection set in, but I couldn’t defy Myuna’s order to wait five paces from the door.
I massaged feeling back into my muscles and reminded myself that I was still nearly whole. Cress will still recognize you. She will still want you.
I clenched my hand around one knee. I will return to her, I vowed. No matter what tortures Myuna inflicted upon me, I had a mate to claim and protect. It was up to me to find a way out of this situation before it was too late.
The Void’s madness struck again while I was lost in my own thoughts. It felt like a blink’s worth of time before Garroway stood before me, arms crossed. “I was sent to retrieve you,” he said without the two-toned voice that showed Endaeron was in charge.
I stood, wincing and reaching for the wounds that crossed my chest. They were weeping a hint of fresh blood. I spoke with effort, “Before we go back there, I need to clean my—”
“Quiet,” Garroway practically purred. My teeth clacked together so quickly I tasted the cut on my inner lip before I felt it. “Ah, it seems she’s given me the end of your leash.”
If I could correct him, I would. It was my brother, the one who’d swallowed a part of my soul, who had originally had a finger’s hold on my consciousness. With the Hungering Darkness inside of him, Garroway had it too, and I was too weakened to fight back.
He took a more confident stance; this was familiar territory for him, having his orders obeyed unquestioningly.I tamped my anger down with a deep breath. He’s a blood baron. He’s used to mute glares and the futile struggles of those he controls, I reminded myself. When I met his gaze, I wore my calmest expression.
He eyed me for a few moments, his face also a practiced mask. There was no telling if my reaction was also expected, or if he was even a little unsettled. “I’ll take you to a public bathroom in exchange for an honest conversation,” he said.
I waited with patient blankness.
With a soft huff of breath, he added, “You may speak.”
“I find these terms acceptable,” I said.
He motioned for me to follow. There was a men’s restroom waiting just down the hall. Unlike the waiting room, which looked as if a hurricane had ripped through it, the restroom was mostly untouched. I could’ve used a shower, but this public space was better than nothing. I bent over one of the sinks and got to work with soap and lukewarm water, soon ringing the drain with my fuchsia blood.
My skin was purpled and puckered around the wounds as I scraped them clean with cheap paper towels. Endaeron had made the furrows across my armor and chest with his claws, ruining a new leather chest piece I’d painstakingly etched with runes next to the seams.I inspected the destruction with a tisk.
“What did you wish to discuss?” I asked. Not because I wanted to hear Garroway’s voice, but if I kept him talking, it was less likely the Hungering Darkness would rouse.
Garroway had changed into a new set of clothes since the last time I’d seen him. He undid his belt to tug the line of his pants down on one side and removed his shirt, revealing a gigantic blood rune. Its magic was dormant and black, forming three spiky rings of runes that encompassed most of his right side from hip to armpit. Four healed and scarred slashes crossed the rings haphazardly.
“I was wondering if there was any salvaging this, to regain control of myself,” he said.
I pictured the moment of his possession by the Hungering Darkness. Endaeron had made those scars to prevent this blood rune from… I leaned in, reading the intent off the many runes Garroway had tattooed onto his skin.
He’d wanted to make his body a cage. The intricate spell bore marks of suppression and containment. If Endaeron had not destroyed it immediately, Garroway would have gained allthe power of the Hungering Darkness with no foreseeable downsides.
It was unthinkable. And now he sought my help, as if I’d allow him such unchecked power.
“It is not possible,” I stated.
Such a flat answer displeased Garroway. He bared his fangs and said, “The truth, dimensional. Tell me what you know about how to fix these runes.”
Pain hooked behind my eyes the moment I thought to defy his order. I knew a great deal of things I wasn’t willing to open up and share, but I told him enough to soothe the pounding headache setting in. “There is a pinprick of hope for you. Your kind has always used dimensional magic to make these blood runes,” I commented. “From a single weapon shattered into several pieces.”
“Yes. And your fool brother destroyed the part I possessed,” he stated through gritted teeth.
I tipped my head. “If you were to get a second piece…”
“There is nothing else that will fix the magic of these runes?” He demanded.
Again, the pain dug into my head. I hissed with all the banked hostility within me. He was poking a predator through the bars of its cage, and I was just about ready to snap off his finger for it.
I answered in a low voice. “The weapon you were using to make the runes was unique. Endaeron was the one who forged and shaped the original great sword. It was made less for carving intricate displays of runes like this”—I gestured to his body—“and more for branding the flesh of any he faced in battle. It marked body and soul alike for his control.”
“Ingenious,” Garroway breathed.
I was about to call it cruel and share that I’d convinced Endaeron to shatter it, but the remains of my goodwill shriveled up. The few pieces of the sword that’d come to Earth with us had ended up filtered into the hands of the blood barons. They used them to mark the skin of their victims, witches like Ben, who bore the Agonia rune embedded into him permanently.
I knew his type. I’d slain a couple vampires like him in my time searching for the pieces of the sword, trying to destroy Endaeron’s legacy before it endangered too many lives.
Unfortunately, I’d learned the hard way that destroying those shards also killed those who were being directly controlled by the man or woman who’d branded them with it. The mass casualties that’d followed when Endaeron had crushed Garroway’s piece a mere day ago were additional stains on his already black soul.
“This is Myuna’s work, marking souls, permanently branding others for control.” He traced one of the runes marked in his own flesh.
Hatred flared within me at the reverence in his tone. “Myuna had little to do with it,” I said, but he wasn’t listening anymore.
“She is the most powerful being I’ve met in my long life,” he continued. “A true goddess, not like the imaginary figurehead witches pray to. And she has chosen me as her right hand. Since it’s not possible to repair this rune, as you’ve said, I think I will accept what she’s given me.” A slow, cruel smile shaped his lips.
The Void’s chill seeped into my voice. “That only means she will eat you last. You are a servant now, truly disposable to Myuna. She will slurp you up without a second thought, just like those two poor witches you brought before her,” I sneered. I finished scrubbing my wounds clean and threw away a bloodied wad of paper towels.
He jabbed at my enflamed skin with a finger. “Don’t take that tone with me, dimensional.”
I snarled as his control dug in yet again, this time swiping my claws at him. He reared back with vampiric reflexes. “You wanted honesty. Here it is: you are a fool to think you’re anything but a pawn,” I snapped, switching to full venom since he forbade cold judgment.
“Wait. Pause.” He held his hand palm up, and I froze.
I probed at his control, finding it as solid as Myuna’s.
His voice became a velvet drawl. “We don’t have to be enemies, dimensional. Don’t you want to see your purple-haired girl again?”
My whole body tensed, recognizing the threat.
“Now, I’m going to let you go, and we can discuss what we can do for one another…”
The moment he released his hold on my body, I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him through the bathroom mirror. Glass shards fell to the ground in a clanging rain around him. His eyes bulged, and skin reddened, face going slack with fear as shadows erupted from my body, closing around my head to form a wolf-like visage protected by my curled horns.
Yes, much better. I hated Garroway’s presence less when he wasn’t wearing that look of smug superiority. I caught his wrists with tendrils of shadow, pinning his arms down to his sides and his legs together with them.
“Let’s get one thing straight, blood baron,” I growled. “I do not tolerate petty tyrants. You will not dare speak of my mate if you want to leave this bathroom intact.”
“Is that so?”asked the Hungering Darkness, disembodied from the choking grip I had Garroway in.
“Fuck,” I said under my breath. There went the moment I had to make good on my promise and be rid of Garroway forever.
“Release my vessel, Phaeron. That’s a good brother. Now, let’s return. You obviously can’t be trusted away from Lady Myuna’s gaze.”
I jerked away from him and didn’t move to the door until he ordered me to walk. We marched our way back to the audience chamber and the waiting goddess. Garroway spoke behind me in a two-toned voice, “Our lady will be quite interested in the interaction we just had. How do you think she’ll react to such an assault on her favored servant?”
“Her only servant,” I muttered.
“We’ll fix that. You’ll join us very soon.”
I stopped in my spot before Myuna, who had her chin propped on her fist. Her white-filmed eyes were dull with boredom. She would rest soon, which would delay Endaeron from sharing anything with her.
“…I can’t wait to have you back, brother,” Endaeron whispered. I glanced over my shoulder, but it was just a trick. Only madness from the Void lingering around us.
A fine shiver worked its way up my spine.
My breath came shorter. I was trapped…an animal in a cage of wills, stuck between a goddess and my brother, the first dimensional she had corrupted beyond saving.
No help was coming. How could it? No one could stand against Myuna, even as weakened as she was.
Everyone left in this pocket dimension would end up dead or worse. And I stared into the maw of worse as the white figure on the dais yawned impossibly wide and closed her eyes.
She rested for a minute, or perhaps an hour, or it could have been an eternity. But her eyelids popped open again, suddenly and immediately awake. Garroway twitched, and I looked up, taking in the change. Something had shifted beneath our feet, but it emerged as a beacon to my magical senses, glowing with pure power.
Braza.
My hopeful smile came and went quickly. Braza, here? The first powercore ever made was a buffet in front of Myuna’s single-minded hunger. “That soul’s power…it tastes familiar,” she commented, turning her gaze my way.
She beckoned me forth, lifting me in an orb of her energy so I floated before her. “Tell me what you know,” she ordered.
Talons of pain sank into my skull when I tried to keep my silence.
“Don’t make this so difficult on yourself. I know the feel of souls…but it has been so long…” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Hmm. She feels like the girl you were going to adopt. But I ordered her dead. Endaeron, why is she alive?”
My eyes widened, but shock turned to pure wrath. Many deaths in my family could be traced back to Myuna, but here she gloated over one that was still a ragged wound within me.
“I’m not sure I know who you’re talking about, my lady,” he replied.
Her lips spanned a toothless grin. “Perhaps Phaeron is ready to enlighten us.”
The pressure was mounting, making it feel like my horns were about to implode and crush my skull. “Her name is Braza,” I muttered.
“More,” she demanded.
“I did adopt her.” I stared at her in defiance. My hatred was an unsheathed blade before her, ready to cut.
“More,” she hissed.
“And then my brother murdered her. She was one of his first victims on Earth. We thought we were safe from you and your creatures, your madness, your endless hunger for our life force,” I spat, picking up fervor as I spoke. If she would just silence me before she probed for the relevant information. “But we had no such luck. He cleaved her soul nearly in two in his frenzy before I killed his vessel. We gave them both the best funeral we could, but—”
Myuna made a silencing gesture. “Yes, yes, yammer more about how terrible I am.” She rolled her eyes. “If she is dead, why is she here? And why does her soul feel so powerful and juicy?”
Slowly, she unspooled the truth from me about libraries and power sources. Her eyes glittered with interest as we discussed the possibility of there being a Cerris City Library and what “delights” might be locked within it.