Chapter 7 #3
The words dissolved in my throat. Behind the shadow, seeping from between the stone, an inky blackness appeared.
It spread, quick as the tide, till it covered all of the surfaces around me, blotting out the blurry images of Cirian and Sancha across the room, and then even my own body as it moved.
Panic gripped me, spurring me into motion as I hurled myself toward the small tear in the Veil.
From behind, the shadow bellowed in a resonating timbre, both lyrical and vile:
“The Umbral’s Embrace will be known!”
As my hand made contact with the tear, the crushing weight of gravity took hold as I sank back into my body, my breath coming in gasps.
Across from me, still slumped against the wall, Malachi’s body had begun to change.
His pale skin darkened till it resembled his raven hair.
But the inky metamorphosis didn’t stop there, as even his garments’ rich color was smothered in complete darkness, till he resembled the very shadow that I had been speaking with.
“Bast?”
I glanced quickly at Cirian, who still held fast to the Cardinal. His eyes were wide, and for the first time since that day in Adoracia Cemetery when Tobias fell from the sky, I saw fear reflected back at me.
“What in the Source’s name is that?”
An unnatural chill trickled down my spine, the hair on my neck standing on end.
A wet cracking sound came from behind me, conjuring ghastly images in my mind.
Slowly, I braced myself, rising from my knelt position while keeping my head turned from the place that Malachi lay on the floor.
The chill only grew more prevalent, prickling across my skin like hoarfrost. From the edges of my vision, tendrils of inky matter squirmed along the walls, splintering out like roots of an ancient tree.
I moved toward Cirian, ignoring the urge to look over my shoulder.
I didn’t need to see whatever it was to know that we were in danger.
Sancha sat slumped in her chair, eyes closed and her brow slicked with sweat.
Cirian clasped to the wound on one of her palms, his own hands glowing with cerulean light, though they were stained with blood.
He wasn’t looking at me, however. His eyes were trained intently on whatever horror rose behind me, and his fear grew with each passing second.
“Get her out of here,” I hissed, already rounding the desk and hooking a hand under Sancha’s arm.
“Careful!” Cirian replied, his attention snapping back to me. “It’s nearly all I can muster to keep this wound from sapping every bit of magic from her veins. She can’t be moved in this condition.”
“Would you rather stick around for that?” I asked, throwing a thumb over my shoulder.
Cirian didn’t answer, his gaze fixed once more on whatever was behind me. I heaved with all my strength to lift Sancha from her chair, but the added weight of her vestments prevented me from outright pulling her from Cirian's grip.
“You’re going to have to help me here,” I huffed, waving a hand over Cirian’s face in an effort to break his trance, but he merely stared ahead, his expression frozen somewhere between panic and confusion.
“Bast,” he said breathless. “It’s stopped.”
My frantic pace wouldn’t slow to comprehend what he was saying. “It doesn’t matter. We have to get her out of here—”
“Bast,” Cirian repeated. His hands slipped from Sancha’s, the cerulean glow of his skin dulling as he moved from her side. “You have to see this.”
I could avoid it no longer. Leaning the Cardinal against her chair once more, I turned toward Cirian and the source of his transfixion.
The half of Sancha’s office where Malachi had been pinned to the stone was shrouded in a curtain of darkness that undulated like sheer fabric in a breeze. Cirian had almost reached the mysterious wall when I caught him by the wrist, wresting his hand away.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“It’s speaking,” Cirian replied, though his gaze had not torn itself from the curtain. “Don’t you hear it?”
I dragged him back a few paces. “We don’t have time for this! Sancha needs you. I need you.”
A thread of emerald green burst to life between us, connecting the two of us. This seemed to have broken his trance momentarily as Cirian’s dark eyes found me, the light returning long enough for him to voice, “You need me?”
Once again, I cursed my own words to damnation. But there was no time to explain myself.
“More than I care to admit. Now, come. Help me get Sancha to safety—”
A figure brushed past us, stumbling toward the wall of shadow.
“Sancha?” we spoke in unison, watching the woman pitch forward, her bloodied hands catching against the curtain and holding herself up as they rippled.
“What is she doing?” I questioned as Cirian lunged forward, twisting his fingers into the fabric of the Cardinal’s vestments to try and wrench her backward. But her hands held firm to the curtain, the inky blackness already crawling its way up her arms as she stared ahead, blank-faced.
“Sancha!” Cirian shouted, his voice nearly swallowed up by the oppressive presence of the darkness.
“Can you hear it, boy?” she whispered, her eyes welling with moisture as she stepped forward, her hands sinking to the wrist into the darkness. “We must heed the call.”
Cirian gritted his teeth, his heels digging into the stone beneath as he tried to pry the Cardinal loose.
With a bellow of frustration, he tore his hand free, loosing a bolt of cerulean lightning into the curtain of inky night.
The flash was devoured by the darkness, and Sancha moved forward another step, the front of her body swallowed.