Chapter 41
Lore
Iturned away from Moira's crumbling remains, her false memory scattered across the cold stone. Reyla's hand found mine. The corridor stretched ahead of us, lights flickering across the walls.
We rounded the corner toward the main hall and came to a stop.
Queen Naveer waited in the center of the corridor, but she’d transformed into something terrible.
Her skin held the sheen of polished marble, her eyes blazed with inner fire.
The stolen life force of dozens rippled beneath her flesh, making her appear decades younger than the woman who’d lorded her magic over the deadly games.
Power radiated from her in waves, distorting the air until reality seemed to bend.
“Leaving so soon?” Her voice bloomed with newfound energy, each word thrumming through the stone beneath our feet. “Without saying goodbye?”
Dorion stepped closer to us, flames already gathering around his fingertips. The air shimmered with heat.
“Did you enjoy Prager's little gift?” Naveer's smile carved shadows across her eerily youthful features. “Moira was one of her finest creations. So convincing. So perfectly calibrated to break your heart at just the right moment. How unfortunate you discovered her ruse and killed her. I would’ve liked to see how she devoured you in the end.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Rage blazed in my chest. “How many died to feed your hunger?”
“Every contestant who chose their fate willingly.” She lifted her hands, and power crackled between her fingers. “Their energy flows through me now. Death called to them, and I answered.”
The attack came without warning. Bones erupted from the walls, ancient mortar cracking as skeletal remains pulled free from their resting places.
The castle itself became her weapon, ribs and femurs weaving together into spears that hurtled toward us.
The sound of grinding bone and splintering stone filled the air.
I drew power and called earth from the foundation stones. A barrier of granite rose between us and the bone spears, the impact sending tremors through my arms. Beside me, Reyla's shadows writhed outward, seeking purchase on Naveer's mind while her other hand crackled with building electricity.
“She's trying to influence our choices,” Reyla warned, her voice strained. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she fought against invisible tendrils of persuasion. “I can feel her pressing at the edges of my thoughts, whispering that we should kneel.”
Dorion's flames roared to life, melting the bone constructs into smoking char. The scent of something burning filled the air. I reshaped my earthen wall into stone spears, launching them at Naveer while she reformed her grotesque weapons from the ancient remains embedded in the castle walls.
The queen moved with inhuman grace, her stolen vitality making her faster.
She danced between my attacks, her laughter echoing off the high ceiling.
Each gesture brought new horrors. Skulls materialized from thin air, their empty sockets glowing with malevolent energy as they snapped at our ankles.
Finger bones sought our throats with grasping motions.
“Your coordination is admirable,” she called, deflecting Dorion's fire with a shield of interwoven ribcages. “But you fight against years of accumulated death. Each soul I've consumed makes me stronger, and I have feasted very well these past months.”
I felt the weight of her words in my bones.
This was no ordinary opponent drunk on stolen magic.
She’d become something beyond mortal comprehension, a creature that fed on willing sacrifice and grew more powerful with each life claimed.
The realization sent ice through my veins even as I called wind to scatter her next volley of bone projectiles.
Naveer raised both hands, and the very air around us began to tighten.
Her willbinding pressed against my mind, urging me to lower my defenses, to accept that resistance was useless.
The sensation was like drowning in horig, sweet and suffocating at once.
My stone spears wavered as doubt crept through me.
But Reyla's nullification magic slammed into Naveer, shattering the psychic assault.
“Not today,” my wife snarled, lightning arcing between her fingers as she prepared another strike.
The queen's perfect features twisted with frustration.
She gestured sharply, and the bones scattered across the floor began to reassemble themselves into larger, more terrible forms. Skeletal warriors pulled themselves upright, their empty eyes burning with fire.
They lumbered forward, surrounding us while Naveer floated above the fray, her stolen power allowing her to defy gravity.
I drove spikes of iron up through the stone floor, impaling two of the bone soldiers, but they reformed around the metal, incorporating my own weapons into their grotesque frames.
Dorion's flames washed over another group, but they emerged still burning, their frames now wreathed in supernatural fire that didn't consume them.
“She's using the death energy to animate them,” I said, dodging a swipe from claws made of sharpened ribs. “They won't stay down while she has power to fuel them.”
Reyla's shadows coiled around the skeletal warriors, binding their joints and slowing their movements, but it was like trying to hold back the tide.
For every one we destroyed, Naveer pulled more bones from the castle's ancient foundations.
The walls began to show gaps where skulls and ribcages had been extracted from, leaving the structure diseased and hollow.
Naveer descended closer to the battle, her eyes now completely white with stolen power.
“Feel the weight of all those willing deaths,” she snarled. “Each one chose to die. Each one fed my ascension. You cannot fight destiny itself.”
The psychological pressure intensified. I felt the despair of every contestant who had entered these trials thinking they could win, only to find themselves trapped in Naveer's web of manipulation. Their final moments shoved their way into my consciousness, trying to overwhelm my focus.
“Lore, no,” Reyla cried. “Eyes on me, sweetums. Don’t look away.”
That nickname. I loved this woman like no other. My smile barely lifted, but my will strengthened. I shoved Naveer’s power out of my mind.
“Together,” I shouted.
Working as one, we created a resonance between shadow and element that neither of us could achieve alone. The bond we shared became a shield against Naveer's assault.
I raised my hands, calling not only earth and metal, but wind and water from the castle's ancient plumbing.
The elements swirled around us in a protective vortex while Reyla's shadows wove through the storm, creating pockets of absolute darkness to confuse Naveer's death sense.
Dorion added his flames, his fire dancing with my winds to create a roaring tornado of destruction.
Naveer's confident expression finally cracked. Her bone soldiers crumbled in our elemental storm, unable to maintain coherence against our magical assault. She raised her own defenses, but fighting three of us at once while maintaining her animated army was draining from her stolen reserves.
A woman’s cry of pain from the side corridor made us all freeze.
“The queen promised you to me,” a man’s voice boomed from the shadows, and we saw him dragging Laphira toward an open doorway.
Desperation flashed across Dorion’s face.
“Go,” I yelled, sending icy spears at Naveer with Reyla’s shadows riding along to mask them.
He broke away from us, flames gathering around his entire body.
Fire erupted from his hands in a torrent that turned the air incandescent. The man’s scream cut off as the flames consumed him, his body crumpling to ash in seconds. Dorion caught Laphira as she fell, cradling her against his chest.
Naveer used our distraction against us. Bone spears materialized around us with renewed fury, forcing me to raise multiple barriers while Reyla's shadows lashed out at the queen. A crow cawed, circling overhead before disappearing down another hall.
“Prager was watching,” Reyla breathed, rage flaring in her eyes.
The queen’s confidence wavered, but her rage about the man’s death only intensified her power. “You think breaking one little curse will save you? Prager's power runs deeper than you can imagine. She’s been preparing for this moment before you drew breath.”
Her form began to shift, her skin turning translucent, revealing the network of consumed souls writhing beneath. She was becoming something beyond death itself, and I worried we wouldn’t be able to fight her off.
I caught Reyla's gaze. We moved as one mind, our magic flowing together, love and desperation giving us strength. Her shadows wrapped around the queen’s legs and arms, binding her in place while lightning crackled from her fingertips.
The electrical current ran through the shadow bonds, creating a cage of energy that even Naveer's new state couldn't escape.
I shaped metal from the castle's iron fixtures, drawing every nail, every hinge, every decorative element into a swirling mass of weapons. The metal responded to my will, forming itself into razor-sharp spears while Dorion returned to us, his flames burning hotter than ever before.
“Now,” I bellowed.
My metal spears became conduits for Dorion's fire, the iron heating white-hot as they pierced Naveer’s chest. She screamed.
Her stolen power hemorrhaged away in waves of escaping souls.
Once they’d escaped, she aged rapidly. She’d claimed their souls for many years, but the fates were calling the debt due.
Her body crumbled to dust, leaving only the faint scent of mildew behind.
A clink rang out as something golden settled among her remains.
Reyla gasped and we ran forward.
The featherdorn pendant gleamed on the floor, its tiny wings fluttering.
Reyla lifted it, her hands trembling. “The third talisman. We have them all.”
I pulled her into my arms. “Finally.”
We had three days to break a curse that had lasted for centuries.
Footsteps echoed from multiple corridors, shouts growing louder.
“We need to get out of here,” Dorion said, supporting Laphira while scanning the hall. “Now.”
As we raced down a hallway, the castle's ancient bells began to ring, the frantic clangs signaling invasion and emergency.
If they found what was left of Naveer's body, they'd kill us.