43. 2
The flames were gone. The fighting ceased. The screaming silenced. He was back in the sand-covered yard at the foot of the tower, staring into the empty sockets of the dragon skull.
“What did you see?” Haem stood to Calen’s left, his helmet gone, nothing but concern in his eyes. Before Ella had arrived at Aravell, Calen had told his brother of the visions. He’d not quite explained everything – mostly because he didn’t understand everything himself – but he’d told Haem of the things he’d seen. Told him of Vyldrar and of what he’d seen when he’d grasped Queen Uthrían’s arm. He’d even told him of how he’d relived that night in The Glade, when Kallinvar had granted Haem the Sigil.
“The same thing I’ve seen since the moment I set eyes on this place.” Calen tilted his head sideways, staring at the dragon skull, seeing the lifeless red eye, the pale pink scales, and the blood flowing over the stone. “I saw death. Pointless death.”
Calen crossed the yard, navigating the field of bones and rocks, his gaze combing the sand.
“Do you have any idea what it is we might be looking for?” Kallinvar asked, matching Calen step for step, his gaze searching the yard.
Calen shook his head. “All I know is what’s in Alvira’s letter. This is the place Alvira and Eluna first met. Whatever she hid, she hid it here.”
Kallinvar gave a short nod, then gestured to Ruon and Arlena, issuing commands. In Calen’s periphery, the knights spread across the yard, turning over everything they could find, their polished green plate stark against the brown sand.
“Sister-Captain Arlena and The First will start in the yard,” Kallinvar said. “They’ll look for anything that seems out of place, anything that stands out. They’ll move outwards in closed sections until Arlena deems they’ve strayed too far from the tower. I and my knights will stay at your side.”
Calen nodded his thanks, glad for Kallinvar’s aid. Now that he was here, he had no idea what the next step should be.
“The pendant is still the key,” he whispered, repeating Alvira’s words as he reached beneath his breastplate and produced the brass-backed pendant he’d found with her letter in Vindakur. Calen turned the pendant over, looking down at the white symbol of The Order set into the black obsidian.
He opened himself to the Spark and pulled on threads of each element. He mimicked what he’d seen Vaeril do back in Aravell, probing through the pendant with threads as though it were a lock to pick. He pushed and pulled, winding the threads over each other and trying every conceivable combination he could think of. For a moment, he thought he saw a light flicker within the black glass, but if it did, it’d only been for a fraction of a second.
He sighed. He should have known it would never be that simple. Alvira hadn’t been leaving clues for Eluna to find something. She had been leaving clues for Eluna to open whatever she had hidden. Eluna already knew where it was.
Calen drew one last long breath and looked from the top of the tower – at least, what was left of it – to the bottom, his gaze settling on the arched opening that looked as though it had once held a door. Now, it was more a gaping hole in the stone, blocks at the side ripped away as though the hinges had been torn free.
Calen started for the arch, but Haem caught his arm. “That thing looks like it’s ready to collapse.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Calen said, stepping through the arch. The doors that had been torn from the archway lay ten feet inside the tower’s antechamber. The wooden frames were charred and splintered, the steel twisted. Large golden plates that had clearly once been affixed to the door’s front were scattered on the ground, depictions of dragons and scaled eggs worked into the metal.
The ground floor of the tower was enormous, large enough to fit a few hundred souls with ease. The chamber was flooded with sand and armoured bones. Staircases, some broken, some intact, led to the upper levels. Corridors spouted off in all directions, moving deeper into the tower.
Calen dropped to one knee beside a bleached skeleton covered in the white plate of the Draleid. Four enormous holes punctured the steel from the right breast down to the navel. The Order’s sigil was set into the breast in now-shattered obsidian, glinting in the light that flowed through the arch. Calen brushed his gauntleted hand against the shards of black glass.
Once more, the visions flooded over him.
Screams reverberated through the antechamber, high-pitched and wailing. Uraks charged through the doors, monstrous Bloodmarked rampaging amidst the swarm.
Calen looked down to see the shimmering black sigil of The Order on his chest. About him, his brothers and sisters of the Draleid fought like demons, carving paths through the Uraks with blade and Spark, some wielding níthrals of brilliant light. Elven Praetorians and Order Highguard fought alongside the Draleid. And they fought valiantly, as mighty as the stories had named them, but the Uraks kept coming, hacking with black steel, tearing flesh with tooth and claw. The Bloodmarked ripped through the Praetorians and the Highguard like wolves would sheep.
Calen found the largest of the beasts with his gaze, then charged. He cut down two Uraks as he moved, taking a head with a mighty sweep, then cleaving a jaw with the backswing. No matter the cost, he could not let them get to the eggs. He would not.
He opened himself to the Spark and pulled on threads of Earth and Fire, weaving them through the stone at the Bloodmarked’s feet.
The creature spotted him. It slammed its two hands together, unleashing a shockwave of fire and air that tore through two elves in a burst of gore, their innards spraying in clouds. Calen pulled threads of Air and Fire into a wedge before him, breaking the shockwave in two as he leapt forwards. He hit the ground and rolled, keeping his sword tight. As he rose, he carved through the Bloodmarked’s knee in a single swipe. The creature collapsed, and Calen pulled on those threads of Earth and Fire he’d woven into the stone. The ground beneath the Bloodmarked rippled, the stone turning to liquid then surging upwards into a polished spike that burst through the falling Urak’s neck. The creature’s runes ignited in a blaze of crimson light, black smoke billowing. And then it went still, the runelight dying.
A shriek sounded, and a fledgling flew overhead. The dragon couldn’t have been more than a month old, no larger than a dog. Its golden scales shimmered in the light of the lanterns. The tiny creature shrieked and wailed, swooping onto an Urak’s back and ripping out the side of its throat.
Calen’s heart broke as he watched the small golden dragon. Judging by the agony and rage, the creature’s soulkin had died. To see one so young feel a pain of that measure… It wasn’t right. The thought alone made Calen reach out to his own soulkin, feeling her as she soared over the courtyard outside, raining fire on the Uraks.
Stay strong. This day will not be our last.
A warmth spread from Antala to Calen, filling him. But with the warmth came a rage, an unyielding fury that burned in his bones. Their brothers and sisters had betrayed them this night, slaughtered their own in their sleep. So many dragons dead. So many Draleid… and for what?
Only the chilling shriek of the fledgling pulled Calen’s attention back to the fighting, the rage still simmering in him.
“No…” Calen watched in horror as a Bloodmarked snatched the fledgling from the air and crushed it in an iron grip, snapped bones bursting through scales, blood pouring over leathered fingers.
The beast bit down on the dragon’s tiny skull and crushed it in its jaws. The shrieks of the young fledgling cracked shards from Calen’s heart. About him, his brothers and sisters were falling, the tide of Uraks too strong.
He pulled his and Antala’s minds together, wrapping them tight around each other. He could feel the strength of her wings, the power of her heart, the fury in her flames.
“Draleid n’aldryr, myia’niassa Na solian nai din siel harys von myia thranuk ilumel. Ayar elwyn. Ayar nithír.” Calen raised his blade and set himself for the svidarya, pulling deeper from the Spark. “Uthikar.”
Dragonbound by fire, my love. To live by your side has been my greatest privilege. One heart. One soul. Together.
He charged, carving through the Uraks like a god unleashed, threads of each elemental strand whipping about him. Lightning streaked from the tip of his blade, and fire poured from his open palm. With threads of Earth, he crushed Uraks in their own armour, bones snapping like brittle twigs. With Air and Spirit, he pulled the breath from their lungs and the hope from their hearts.
With every swing of his steel, he felt Antala’s claws slice through leathery flesh in the yard, felt her flames devour and her jaws destroy.
If these voidspawn would destroy everything Calen loved, he would take them with him into the darkness. He set his sights on the Bloodmarked that had killed the fledgling and wrought a path of death and blood.
One of the beasts stepped before him and roared, a black-steel axe in its fist. Calen didn’t stop or slow. He grabbed the Urak’s neck with a thread of Air as he moved and snapped it, charging over the body as it fell, his gaze set on the Bloodmarked.
The creature was pulling its claws from an elven belly when Calen fell upon it. First, he took its leg at the knee with a swing of steel. Then he raked the blade across the creature’s back, flesh parting and runes blazing.
The creature fell forwards, thrashing and howling, its claws tearing through the calf of a nearby Highguard.
Calen planted a boot on its shoulder and kicked it onto its back before angling his blade and driving it into the Bloodmarked’s gut, pushing up into its chest until the hilt pressed against the bottom of its ribcage.
The Bloodmarked made to grab him with its clawed hand, but he twisted the sword in its gut and it howled.
Calen placed his hand on the creature’s rune-marked chest. He drew as deeply from the Spark as he could, then pulled on thick threads of Fire, Spirit, and Earth.
He looked down into the creature’s red eyes. The Bloodmarked stared back at him, its breath dragging through bloodied lips, black pupils dilating.
“May the pain follow you through the void.” Calen pushed the threads of Earth into the creature’s bones, crumbling them from the inside out. He wove the threads of Spirit and Fire together, driving them through the Bloodmarked’s failing bones, setting them alight. He stared into the creature’s eyes as its bones ignited, its blood boiled, and the flames consumed it from the inside.
The creature shook and thrashed, the howl that left its throat unnatural in its pain. The runes carved into its flesh burned with a crimson light so bright Calen winced. But he didn’t stop. He pushed harder, funnelling the threads through the Bloodmarked’s bones and into its blood. If this creature’s death was the last drop of joy in his life, that would be enough.
The red of the Bloodspawn’s eyes grew brighter, turning a shade of orange, then yellow, until they eventually erupted in a plume of white flames. It thrashed for a moment longer, then went limp, its arms slumping by its side, its eyes nothing more than blistered sockets.
Calen dragged his blade from the corpse, then let Antala’s rage flow freely through him. He hacked and slashed at everything that moved, the Spark flooding him.
A black spear glanced off his breastplate, just below the ribs, and he took both of its holder’s arms in a single flowing downswing. He pushed forwards and drove his steel through the Urak’s chest, driving it deep until his face was close enough to smell its breath.
He pushed off, leaving the blade embedded in the creature’s chest as it staggered backwards. Turning, Calen pulled on threads of each elemental strand, weaving them together into his fist. The power of the Spark surged through him, lightning in his veins, and bright yellow light burst from his right fist. The light twisted in strands, coiling around each other like warring snakes until they finally took the shape of a glowing yellow longsword. His níthral. His Soulblade.
About him, few of his kin remained, though they stood like bastions in the dark night, the Highguard and Praetorians rallying around them. A flare of panic signalled in his mind as Antala watched through his eyes.
We must protect the eggs. No matter the cost. Their fire has not yet been lit. Help will come. We just need to hold them off as long as we can.
Calen thought the words, but both he and Antala knew the hollowness of them. There was little chance either of them would survive this night. All that mattered was that their death held meaning. And so he felt Antala roar, heard it with his own ears from within the tower’s walls. He felt the pressure building in the back of his mind as she laid waste to a clutch of Uraks battling in the yard, her flames stealing their life.
Calen fell back beside his kin and the other survivors, regrouping in a tight formation, forcing the Uraks back closer to the destroyed door. Something crunched beneath his feet, and he dared not look down for fear of being relieved of his head. Friend or foe, the corpse no longer drew breath, and it had no need for its bones.
The line held for a few minutes, a brief flare of hope igniting in his chest. Then three Bloodmarked came charging through the thick of Urak bodies, their shoulders clear above the heads of the lesser beasts. The creatures slammed into the surviving defenders with the force of a hurricane, a storm of claws slashing, a tempest of fire burning everything it touched. And then the chaos resumed.
Calen hurled himself into the middle of the melee, his Soulblade cutting through Uraks like a scythe through grass. Where the yellow light shone, blood spilled. He moved through the forms of svidarya, from Howling Wolf to Crouching Dragon, his Soulblade guiding him as much as he did it. In the skies above the tower, he felt Antala’s every movement as she weaved between tooth and talon, protecting a contingent of Highguard from the rear. She had been forced to take the lives of six of her kin and the blood weighed on her heart. This was not how it was supposed to be. They were her brothers and sisters, her family. That did not mean she would not do her duty though. She would guard the eggs until her dying breath.
Calen lost himself in the killing, his mind fading to a blur. A sword sliced along the side of his neck, and a spear split the links of his chain below his breastplate. The pain was nothing but an old friend, emboldening him. He had fought and killed these beasts for three hundred years. He would not stop now.
A heavy blow took his helm from his head, ringing his ears and sending stars across his vision. He pushed on, hacking, slashing, carving his way through the seemingly endless sea of Uraks. Movement flashed in his periphery, and he shifted his feet, twisting at the hips as he swung.
A flash of light erupted, and he found his níthral levelled against another – a spear wrought of white light.
His heart slammed against his ribs as he looked up at the mighty frame of Kollna, daughter of Luan. The Jotnar had clearly been sleeping when the attack had come. She wore no armour, and her clothes were in tatters, her body laced with bloody wounds. The left side of her face and neck were covered in burns that trailed down over her shoulder, the fabric scorched away.
As Calen stared into her dark eyes, he also looked through Antala’s to see Kollna’s mighty soulkin Tinua swoop around the northern face of the tower and rip a traitor’s wing free with his monstrous jaws.
“Kollna…” Calen’s mouth was dry, his every breath ragged. He pulled his Soulblade away. “It’s good to see you still draw breath. Coren, is she safe?”
“None of us are safe, Tarast. But she was alive when I left her. With Farwen and Dylain.”
“The Archon? Eltoar? The council?”
She shook her head. “The city will fall, old friend. The Archon has set me a task. I need three of your warriors.”
Calen looked about him. The Drac?rdare had come charging down the stairwells with sharp steel in hand, reinforcing the lines, and yet their numbers were still far too thin. “You will have them,” he said, steeling himself. He grabbed three of the Highguard closest to him and ordered them to go with Kollna. He straightened, reading the sombre lines of Kollna’s face. “Aldryr ar orimyn, vésani. Det harys von atil haydria.”
Fire and fury, sister. It has been an honour.
Kollna gave him a knowing look. “This is not the end, Tarast. Only our end.”
And with that Kollna and the three Highguard were gone. He did not ask to where they went. It mattered little. His place was there, at the base of the hatchery. If the Uraks wanted to get to the eggs, he would make them pay a price of blood so high as to put fear in the hearts of their ancestors.
He turned and rejoined the fray.
The world flickered and blurred, and Calen was once more kneeling in the sand-filled antechamber, his gauntleted fingers trembling against the obsidian symbol of The Order on the dead Draleid’s chest.
“What’s wrong?” Haem’s hand rested on Calen’s shoulder, concern in his voice.
Calen stared into the sockets of the skeleton before him. Into the eyes of the man whose last moments he had just witnessed. Tarast, soulkin of Antala. He rested his palm on the shards of obsidian that adorned the man’s breastplate, broken by whatever had stolen his last breath. Calen had never met the man, never exchanged a word or a passing glance. He’d died hundreds of years before Calen had even been born, and yet Calen felt as though he knew him intimately. He whispered, “Alura anis, akar. Du dauvin val haydria.”
Rest now, brother. You died with honour.
When Calen stood, he took in details that he had first missed. The snapped fragile bones of what must have been baby dragons – fledglings Tarast had called them. The breastplate that bore the flaming dragon egg insignia of the Drac?rdare – the dragonkeepers, those responsible for the care and protection of the eggs and the young. He brushed his foot across the sand, finding more bones beneath, dense and large. Urak bones. The entire antechamber must have been covered in the remnants of the battle, concealed by the sand.
“Kollna was here,” Calen said to Haem, still examining the mass grave upon which they stood.
“The one mentioned in the letter?”
Calen nodded. His hand still trembled, his pulse quick. “I saw her.”
Haem narrowed his eyes and stared into Calen’s, his expression asking a wordless question: ‘Are you all right?’
“I’ve never had so many of these… visions.” Calen shook his head, the world flickering back and forth around him between sand and bones to blood and carnage. “There’s just… just so much. I can’t control it. This place… It’s full of ghosts.”
“Take it slow.”
Kallinvar and the other knights appeared at Haem’s shoulder, expectant. To Calen, hours had passed since he’d last looked upon the Grandmaster, but it seemed mere moments had expired.
“Anything of use?” the Grandmaster asked. His gaze softened as he looked about the antechamber, the lines around his eyes creasing, his bottom lip drooping. Haem had told Calen of Kallinvar, about how the man had fought in the battle at Ilnaen all those years ago. Calen had seen only fragments of the slaughter, only slivers of time through the eyes of others, and even still his heart was heavy as iron. He dared not think of the pain behind Kallinvar’s eyes.
Calen gestured towards the corridor at the other side of the chamber, which he’d seen Kollna and the Highguard vanish down. “This way.”
No light touched the corridor’s depths save for a trickle of pink moonlight that shone over Calen’s shoulders, revealing nothing but bones, rubble, and sand. He pulled on threads of Fire, Spirit, and Air, a baldír forming before him, pale white light illuminating the path.
The corridor was wide enough for four men, the ceiling tall enough for a Jotnar. Glass oil lanterns were set into the alcoves in the walls, some shattered, some whole – all long dead. Patches of carpet peeked through the sand and bones. The colour was faded, but Calen could make out depictions of dragons worked into the fabric.
His vision flickered. For a moment, the sounds of battle raged at his back and the oil lanterns were in full flame. He marched down the corridor, a fellow Highguard to his left, the Jotnar Draleid on his right. It pained him to keep walking while his brothers and sisters in arms fought and died to hold the antechamber. But he would do what the Archon commanded. He would do as he had vowed, even on this night, his last night. He would not falter.
Everything shifted once more, blending into coloured blotches and mixing until a new picture was formed.
He walked down the same corridor, but the sounds of battle were gone and the lanterns burned lower, drawing near their end.
“Who else knows?” The words that left Calen’s lips were not his own. He knew by the voice on his tongue and the bluish hue to his skin that they were the words of Kollna.
He looked down to see a woman at his side, half his height. She didn’t return his stare, instead looking forward. She was lean with dark hair falling past her shoulders. She wore a long white dress threaded with gold, The Order’s insignia woven into the right breast, a sword belted at her hip. A pendant hung from her neck, that same insignia in white, marked into black glass, the very pendant that now hung around Calen’s neck.
Alvira Serris.
“No other soul but Eluna.”
He and Alvira turned left at the corridor’s end, then right, reaching a stairwell.
Alvira stopped and turned to look at Calen, her eyes dark, her stare unyielding. The way the woman held herself, Calen felt as though she could carve through armies. There was power in every breath that left her lips. “I hope to the gods that I am wrong, that I am all paranoia and mistrust. But I am the Archon. It is my duty to safeguard our people and our future, and so this is what I must do.”
“I am always at your service, Archon. Speak, and it shall be done. But why do we keep the circle so small?”
“We do not know how far or how deep the seeds of Fane’s words go, and still we may be seeing shadows. There are rumblings amongst the mages, whispers in the dark, but nothing more. My web of spiders grows quieter with each passing month, as though vanishing. Fane gathers support, and with each moon, his words grow harsher, his intentions more muddled. It would be easier to guess which way the wind will blow on this day next year. I may be seeing shadows, Kollna, but I must fear what lurks in those shadows. The Draleid cannot be the ones to make the first move. Power is a precarious thing. If we use ours to destroy something that does not yet exist, history will name us worse than that which we seek to destroy. Fane has eyes and ears in the wind. We cannot risk an overheard whisper or a wandering eye. This is the future of our kind.”
Calen and Alvira continued on, moving through a series of corridors, everything blurred, the colours dancing, the light moving in a haze around him.
When everything settled, he was once again seeing through his own eyes, both Haem and Kallinvar staring back at him, voices dull and distant in his ears.
“Calen.” Haem shook him, hands clasped at his shoulders. “Calen. Wake up. Wake up.”
“What are you doing?” Calen stepped back, pushing Haem’s arms at the elbows to release his brother’s grip. “What…” He looked about himself. He no longer stood in the corridors. A chamber rose around him, illuminated by the baldír at his side. The walls climbed into a vaulted ceiling, carvings of dragon scales and wings marked into the white stone. At the centre, shards of sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, and a dozen other coloured gems comprised a mosaic of a dragon egg. A swirl of rubies and topaz flowed about the egg, mimicking the movement of flames.
The chamber had only two entrances, one behind him and one ahead of him. He looked back at Haem, who was staring into his eyes.
“You just kept walking,” he said, unblinking as he watched Calen. “We called to you, but you didn’t stop. Your eyes… they were like Ella’s, white as clouds.”
The knights all studied Calen, some curious, others uncertain. They didn’t know what he was… though, in truth, neither did Calen himself.
Kallinvar met Calen’s gaze. The man didn’t speak, but the look on his face told Calen that he expected an answer.
“I can… see… things. The past. In glimpses. I’ve no control over it, and I’ve not experienced it like this before. At first, it was only when I slept, in dreams.”
“When you say you see glimpses, what do you see?”
Calen explained what he’d seen outside the tower, in the antechamber, and again in the corridors. Speaking the words aloud somehow made even Calen sceptical.
“Very well.” Kallinvar nodded slowly, staring past Calen as he did. “Carry on. You lead, we will follow.”
“You believe me?”
“I knew Tarast. Met him and his soulkin many years ago in Amendel before I joined the knighthood. Laid eyes on his níthral at the Battle of Ulthar’s Helm. I cannot see a way you would know his name, and that of Antala’s, let alone know the light of his níthral. I don’t know the workings of druids. I’ve never laid eyes on one. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. But if you can lead us to the Heart, I can sacrifice understanding for faith.”
Calen drew a long breath, letting the knight’s words sink in. He looked between the two doorways. “Which way did we enter?”
Haem gestured to the one behind Calen.
“This way then,” Calen said, marching in the other direction.
The doorway led to a long stairwell that sank into a dark abyss. Calen hesitated a moment, Valerys rumbling in the back of his mind. The dragon soared in the sky above Ilnaen, watching for any signs of movement. He’d spotted some N’aka and a few drifting shadows, but nothing that set his frills on edge. And yet, the idea of Calen moving deeper into the ground, where Valerys couldn’t get to him if needed, was one the dragon vehemently opposed.
They should never be apart. Dark things happened when they were separated. Memories flooded his mind. Memories of Drifaien, of the agony, of the emptiness.
Haem will be by my side. He would never let harm come to me.
The dragon snorted his disapproval. Haem was family, but he had not been able to protect Ella. He had not been there when Calen had needed him. He was strong, but he was not Valerys, and in the protection of Calen’s life Valerys trusted no-one but himself.
There are no choices here. I must go. If you trust no-one else, trust me.
The dragon gave a reluctant rumble of acquiescence in the back of Calen’s mind and wheeled off to watch over three of Sister-Captain Arlena’s knights, who searched the rubble to the tower’s south.
Calen stared down into the stairwell’s shrouded depths for a moment, then adjusted his baldír and descended.