65. Bind to Me
Chapter 65
Bind to Me
20 th Day of the Blood Moon
Berona – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Fane drew deep slow breaths as he sliced through the skin of his forearm with threads of Spirit. He tapped into the gemstone clutched in his fist and bound the threads with a weave of Essence. Power surged through every fibre of his being, each heartbeat sounding like the thump of a drum, each breath like a roaring storm.
He watched closely as the interwoven threads of Spirit and Essence delicately parted the flesh, carving in the rune of binding. Blood flowed, dripping onto the stone. A moment passed. The rune glowed with a bright red light, veins of pearlescent white striped throughout it. And as the light poured from the rune, the strength emptied from his bones like a cut wineskin. He dropped to his knees, holding himself upright by gripping the edge of the table at his side.
His eyes drooped, heartbeat slowing. He squeezed the edge of the stone table, feeling the blood flow over his arm. There was no other way to test these runes, and without them, everything was for nothing. Fane had always found that to be the way of things. There was always a weak link in the strongest of chains, the most elaborate of plans hinging on the most fragile of things, the greatest of deeds requiring the unlikeliest of occurrences. Everything he had done, every life he had taken, every line he had sworn he’d never cross… It had all hinged on what happened next. It would all have been for nothing if the workings of these runes had not been deciphered. Kiralla Holflower and Drakus Pirnil, two of the most inconsequential mages to cross his path, and yet the necessary links in his chain. In their command of the Spark they had been entirely unremarkable. And yet, their research would save the world.
“There is nothing you can do.” No matter how many times he heard it, the Vitharnmír’s voice made Fane’s skin crawl. It was not a natural thing. “There is nowhere you can hide from him now. Your fate is sealed, traitor.”
Fane looked down at the runelight that shone through the blood on his arm, then hauled himself upright using the table edge for leverage.
“I am not hiding,” he said as he turned to the kneeling creature before him, glowing red runes inscribed across its body.
The Vitharnmír gave a cruel laugh, hands tugging against the chains that bound it in place. “Then release me.”
“I am not stupid either.” Fane shook his head at the creature and paused for a moment. He tapped a finger against the black leather of Kiralla Holflower’s research notes, which sat atop the two volumes of Brother Pirnil’s. The Scholar had been hard at work.
Fane faced the Vitharnmír. “How does it feel?”
The creature stared at him with those dark empty wells that had once been eyes.
“You are a Vitharnmír, one of Efialtír’s Chosen. The greatest of his champions. You have fought wars in the Godsrealm for millennia beyond counting. You have seen this world in all its iterations. You are a higher form of existence.” Fane walked forwards until his toes were a fingernail from the circle of runes set into the ground around the Vitharnmír. “And yet, now you are nothing. You are mine.” He dropped to his haunches so as to stare into the creature’s bottomless eyes. “Your soul will shatter in this tiny room, your light will die, and no eyes will watch it fade but mine. Your god will not hear you, he will not see you or feel you, he will know nothing of you but your absence. And there is not a thing you can do to prevent that fate. For all your power – all your hubris and arrogance – you are as helpless as the people upon which you feed. How does it feel?”
The Vitharnmír’s expression didn’t shift. “He will carve you apart for eternity. He will flay your body and burn your soul every second of every hour until the breaking of time. You will know pain eternal, and I will smile and listen to your screams as the music that they are.”
“Perhaps,” Fane said with a shrug. “You are likely correct. If I fail, he will not show me mercy. And the odds are ever skewed towards failure. But I have a chance, and that is all I need. And it is more than you have, for you were wrong on more than one account. You will not smile, and you will not listen to my screams. You will be shorn from the aether. And everything that you are will be mine.”
Fane stepped inside the circle, and the Vitharnmír lunged, snarling, its chains snapping tight. With the Spark flowing through him, Fane bound the creature in threads of Air and slammed its knees back down to the stone, twisting its head so it could do nothing but stare at the bloody rune carved into Fane’s now outstretched arm.
“Did you know that it was Jotnar who first created blood runes?” Fane asked.
The Vitharnmír strained against the threads of Air, the veins on its neck bulging, its muscles twitching, but Fane held it in place. He wanted this creature to know exactly what its fate would be.
“I didn’t. Not until recently. They created them during the Blodvar, when the elves had pushed them to the edge. They carved runes into their own flesh and infused them with the Essence of life, bound their bodies to Efialtír in exchange for the power to defeat their enemies. An immortal sacrifice. But this,” he said, gesturing to the rune on his arm, “this is a thing of my own creation. One of which I am very proud.”
Fane moved so he stood over the Vitharnmír. He manipulated the threads to angle the creature’s head upwards.
“I will cleave your soul from this body you have stolen, and before it is lost to the void, I will snatch it and bind it to my bones. You will become my flesh and my blood. Your strength will become mine, and your soul will be trapped, screaming and helpless, awake and aware, but numb and cold. You will know pain eternal. I will ensure it.”
The Spark pulsed through Fane, and he pulled on each elemental strand. His níthral took form in his fist, blue light washing over the stone. It was a strange thing to look upon a níthral formed from his own soul after all these years. The chamber severed his connection to Efialtír, just as it did the Vitharnmír.
The creature pulled backwards, chains holding it in place, its limbs visibly stiff. Fane could feel the fear in the creature, true, genuine terror.
“Now you understand,” Fane said. He pulled a slow breath into his lungs, savouring the moment, savouring the fear. The Vitharnmír were the closest things to the Enkara that walked the earth. If this creature feared what Fane would do, then he was on the right path.
Fane stepped forwards, clasped his left hand on the Vitharnmír’s shoulder, and drove his níthral through its chest. As it shrieked, he leaned closer. “The gods were not always gods, and so they may not always be.” He paused for a moment, then recited the Jotnar binding. “Ikol ukir olan mitik, Gothandur. Tur brekka ku, binthe ehn mite, ruhnl mite, iklan mite.”
Your soul is mine, Vitharnmír. I command you, bind to me, obey me, become me.
Blue light burst from the Vitharnmír’s bottomless eyes and swirled through the air, twisting and turning like a trail of luminescent mist. For a moment, it hung there, weightless, before surging into the furrows of the rune carved into Fane’s flesh.
Fane snapped his head back and let out a gasp. His body burned as though his blood were molten steel and his bones living fire, and for a moment he feared that he had pushed too far, that he had overstepped. That was until the burning ebbed and was replaced by a strength that set lightning in his veins.
Before him, the Vitharnmír collapsed, its body reduced to little more than skin and bone, a lifeless husk.
Fane reached down and grabbed the creature’s skull, turning it so that he could look into its eyes. Those deep, black pits stared back at him, empty and devoid of all life. If he focused, he could feel the creature’s soul within him, feel it thrumming in his bones. The rune on his arm glowed dimly, the light shifting from blue to white.
He drew in a long breath and squeezed. The Vitharnmír’s skull shattered in his hand, blood, gore, and bone splattering the floor.