Chapter 21 #2
The Shadow Bringer was wrath embodied, his shadows a vengeful sea of bite and fury. With a slash of his hands, they rose as one, and with a dip of his shoulders, they eddied under and around him. They moved as he moved; he was a living, breathing shadow himself.
It was difficult not to stare—not to gape in admiration as he fought.
But Somnus moved like a shadow, too. The Weaver of the Past was true to his name, flitting in and out of sight as though he were no more than an afterthought, a slip of some long-forgotten memory.
The Bringer’s shadows couldn’t reach—couldn’t quite wrap their tendrils around his ghostly form.
Somnus swirled around the room in wide, sweeping flashes, dodging the castle’s deteriorating structure with the ease of a centuries-old legend.
Then it stopped.
The shadows slowed to a drip, inching forward like a crawling, sluggish thing, quivering around the Bringer’s body as he halted in midair, his face twisted in pure, unadulterated wrath.
Somnus stood before him, lacing threads of silver through the air.
They coiled outward, holding back the Bringer in an enormous web.
Somnus walked to a mostly upright armchair and sank into it with a sigh.
“And greetings to you, too, Shadow Bringer. Obstinate as ever, I see. A pity, as that will make things a bit more vexing for me.” He thrummed the edge of the chair, vacantly draping a leg over a piece of rubble as though it were a footrest. “I thought the years would have aged you. Though I cannot recall your hair being quite so pale, and you are a degree angrier than you ever were.”
The Bringer, frozen in time, fought to speak, jaw clenching and eyes wild.
“What is that? I seem to hear something, but it eludes me,” Somnus murmured, feigning a troubled stare around the room.
When his gaze sharpened back to the Bringer, his lips angled up in a serpentine grin.
“Aha: You appear to be stuck in my web. Allow me to free you.” The web gleamed, visibly loosening around the Bringer’s upper half.
The Shadow Bringer took a deep, ragged breath. “Let me down.”
“Apologies,” Somnus said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper, “but my web will not loosen. You understand.”
The Bringer’s only answer was a strangled curse.
“Esmer, do come join us.” Somnus beckoned, motioning a bone-white hand in my direction. I took a seat atop an overturned chest, careful that its broken edges didn’t cut the backs of my legs. “We have much to discuss.”
The Bringer cursed again. “Do we, now?”
“Oh, we do, Shadow Bringer. Verily, we do. If you’ll be good, that is.
” Somnus threaded his fingers through the web; at his touch, the silvery threads tightened, earning a grunt of discomfort from the Shadow Bringer.
“The ward protecting this place has been broken, rendering you as vulnerable as a bird with clipped wings. You could flee.…” A thread of his web quickly trimmed pieces of the Shadow Bringer’s and my hair, and another thread launched them toward a hole in the ceiling.
As soon as the locks touched the air beyond the ceiling, they burned, shriveling into puffs of ash.
I flinched, horrified. “But something is preventing you both from leaving this place.”
My stomach dropped.
I hadn’t imagined that I’d be trapped like the Shadow Bringer.
Locked here, yes, but not trapped to the point where if I tried to leave I’d burn.
Suddenly I felt too overwhelmed, too powerless, too small.
I was trapped. Truly and utterly trapped.
I needed to figure out how to escape. How to leave this place forever and wake up—even if it meant that the Shadow Bringer might wake up in the Tomb of the Devourer, too.
The Light Bringer’s voice rang clear through my memories, a frantic warning.
So above all else, do not harm the Shadow Bringer, and do not release him from his tomb or his castle. We need him there. I need him there. Swear to me, Esmer. Do not release him.
I shoved Mithras’s command aside, trying to stay focused. Perhaps he’d have a different opinion now that the Shadow Bringer’s demons had been released.
“You cannot die without first fulfilling your Maker-given purpose.” Somnus crossed his arms, looking to the hole in the ceiling.
“Corruption is festering past the point of no return. It needs to be wiped out for good, and I have a few theories about how your abilities can help us. If your domain does not implode on itself first, that is. Or if you’re not too twisted to manage. ”
“I will never help the Weavers,” the Bringer snarled.
“Not just your help, Shadow Bringer. We need both of you. You both have certain talents that may prove necessary if we wish to be rid of the demons once and for all,” the Weaver said. “Regrettably, your talents are wasted while you remain trapped in this cesspit of a castle.”
Certain talents?
As if hearing my call, a few shadows slipped around my ankles, waiting for a command. I nudged them away with my boot, not wanting them to draw Somnus’s attention. With my luck, they’d charge him like a feral cat.
“Then summon the rest of the Weavers here, nullify the curse, and be done with it,” the Bringer said.
Somnus’s thin mouth tightened. “It is not that simple. The Seven are not fully convinced of your innocence, and many are still in hiding, weakened by the demons that plague us. What locks you here binds you regardless of their influence. Only you can solve your freedom now. And the two of you must work together to solve it quickly, or else you shall both perish.”
“We’ll never escape, if that’s the case,” I grated out. The Shadow Bringer’s castle was massive, but its ornate walls were starting to close in. “The Shadow Bringer and I aren’t allied in the slightest.”
“Perhaps not,” Somnus said, giving an elegant shrug.
“I would not know. However, there is something dark in both of your pasts that is haunting you. Something that appears to be haunting you still. My intuition tells me therein lies the key to your survival. Or your demise.” He shrugged again. “That is for you to decide.”
My stomach instantly knotted.
Something dark in both of your pasts. My past was filled with haunts and hurts. Darkness clung to it like tar, seeping into wounds both fresh and buried. Grief washed over me, ever suffocating. Eden, dead. Mother, dead. Father, dead.
Elliot, gone.
The Shadow Bringer made a sound of utter disgust and said: “The only thing haunting me is you, you—”
Somnus sighed, and the Bringer went still, mouth locked in a snarl.
His eyes blinked, furious; it was the only movement he was capable of.
“It seems you have lost all sense of civility in your imprisonment. You are filled with rage and bitterness and not much else,” Somnus said, his eyes softening a touch at this observation.
Then he said, turning to face me, “Esmer, perhaps you have an idea of what haunts you. I sent you to visit a dream where the darkness was strongest. What did you see there?”
A winged demon peeked over this unfurling edge, its skull ringed in horns that crowned red smoking eyes. Where its face should have been was a mask of swirling darkness.
Merely remembering the demon sent shivers of disgust down my arms. The fact that it felt familiar, somehow, unnerved me even more. Had I dreamed of it once? Why did it know me?
“There was a demon unlike anything I’d ever seen.”
“And what did it look like?” Somnus asked.
“It had red eyes that burned like fire, and its face resembled a—”
“Storm.” The Shadow Bringer finished my sentence, no longer frozen. “And it has armor. And horns.” We locked eyes, an uncertain understanding forming between us. “I dreamed of such a demon as a child.”
I nodded grimly. “My brother did, too.”
“Interesting,” Somnus murmured. “The Weavers believe this same demon is orchestrating part of the Dream Realm’s Corruption.
Unfortunately, it continues to elude us.
We receive reports of its whereabouts, but whenever we are on the cusp of finding it, it either disappears or proves indomitable.
It may be stronger than any of us are capable of handling.
” He placed his hand upon my shoulder, looking unexpectedly sympathetic.
“Esmer, this demon has been hunting your family. First, your sister. Eden.” A chill raced over my skin, settling hard in my stomach.
“Not long after, it found Elliot. That was the dream you just experienced.” I squeezed my hands together, horrified at the truth beginning to unravel.
“Most recently, it claimed your parents. Naturally, Elliot would be next. Then you, of course. If you survive long enough for it to find you, that is.”
I chewed on my thumbnail, trying to come to terms with this terrifying revelation. If I dwelled too long on the fact that Elliot might still be hunted by that demon with smoking eyes, I’d lose what little shred of control I had left.
The Shadow Bringer’s shadows raced up Somnus’s web, ripping it to shreds.
“Unless you are proposing something that results in both my freedom and your head atop a pike, get out of my castle and never return,” the Bringer threatened.
Somnus’s eyes flashed in irritation. “I came here to request your aid in destroying this demon, and to offer my assistance in helping you flee. If you will not heed my request, then go ahead and rot inside these walls as the world crumbles around you. Despair as the demons you unleashed prey upon Noctis.” He added coldly, looking at me, “Your brother included, Esmer. Your time is running out; if you do not find a way to escape this wretched place, your soul will fester here forever.”
And with that, he vanished in a swirl of black.