Chapter 4
Four
Two more Void hounds slink from the copse of trees, flanking the first.
My back digs into the uneven stone behind me, fingers flexing uselessly while I strain against the bindings. I don’t even know what I could do, but I feel the surge inside me, the need to blast it into these … things.
The lead hound crouches, haunches tensing. My mouth opens in a scream when it springs forward, its gnashing teeth coming straight for me.
In the time it takes to draw in a breath, Falcen comes between the beast and me. His arm is extended to call his blade, but the hound’s teeth clamp down on his forearm before it materializes with a sickening crunch of enamel splitting through metal.
Blood sprays from the mangled flesh of Falcen’s arm as he grits his teeth against a shout. Yet his blade solidifies into being, slicing into the hound’s neck in a spray of black ichor.
The beast’s body slumps to the ground, its head still clamped onto Falcen’s arm.
It causes the two remaining Void hounds to circle him cautiously, looking for an opening. Falcen shakes his arm, dislodging the severed head. It hits the ground with a wet thud before disintegrating into smoke and ash, along with its body.
Falcen angles his body enough for me to see his irises flip to gold as he channels that smoke and ash, the glyphs on his neck and the backs of his hands appearing with a fiery blaze. A guttural, distorted sound rips from Falcen’s throat, sounding more like the monsters he’s battling than man.
Grandmother told me how Elite Renders channel soul-resonance. She described them like gods carved into marble, blank-faced and untouchable as they drained the life out of you.
But this isn’t the clean, clinical display that Grandmother explained. This is a fucking nightmare.
His soul-glyphs flicker between a searing, holy blue and a bruised, oily black.
These marks on his skin look like healed wounds that never quite closed, dark ridges branching and forking like river deltas or the roots of dead trees.
When his magick stirs, they don’t glow so much as deepen, the lines turning from cobalt to a color blacker than black, as if they’re cracks and the darkness behind them is leaking through.
Falcen staggers, his knees buckling for a fraction of a second as the dark soul of the Void hound fights being absorbed. Veins stand out like thick cords against Falcen’s neck, turning a sickly shade of violet as he strains.
“Falcen?” I choke out.
He doesn’t answer. One of the remaining hounds seizes the moment of weakness, lunging with its jaw open wide.
Falcen doesn’t even swing his sword. He simply reaches out with his free hand and catches the creature by its skeletal throat. At the sudden contact, his tattoos seem to bleed into the air and combine with the vile, swirling soul.
With a sickening, wet pop, Falcen crushes the hound’s windpipe. The creature’s body twitches, Falcen’s fingers sinking into the decaying hide like it’s soft wax.
“Verily, look at me,” he commands, not taking his eyes off the putrid soul floating feet away from him.
I tear my gaze from the gruesome sight of his shredded arm holding a dying Voidspawn and the coal-black wisps coming out of its gaping maw, my field of vision wider than ever now that my eyelids have stretched all the way to the back of my head.
“I need you to stay calm,” Falcen says through gritted teeth. “I can’t fight them and keep you from spiraling at the same time.”
“I’m trying,” I rasp.
He raises his free hand, the stolen soul of the hound writhing like pitch-dark steam between his fingers.
“Get back,” he snarls at me in warning.
I look at what remains of the hound’s soul, wriggling and swirling in the air between its disintegrating corpse and Falcen’s lips, and I swear my own mouth waters.
I give a slow blink, mesmerized. Starving.
Want. I want.
Before I understand what I’m doing, I’m pushing off the rockface and hobbling toward Falcen, my tongue running across my top lip.
The surviving hounds hesitate, hackles raised as the corpse of their companion disappears entirely.
What remains of their leader’s soul dances around Falcen’s fingers as he flexes them, and the creatures yelp as if in pain, where I almost groan with pleasure.
They retreat, melting into the forest’s gloom, while I creep closer, mouth open as if I’m willing to bite Falcen’s hand off to get to that soul.
Falcen drops his hand to his side, his chest heaving. If he’s surprised that I’ve wandered so close to him, he doesn’t show it. Blood trickles from the punctures in his arm, the mangled vambrace gleaming under Nox’s moon.
“Inside,” he orders, his voice hoarse. “Now.”
Horrified at myself, I run into the cave, legs weak. Falcen follows, positioning himself at the entrance. He stops to press his bleeding arm against the stone, smearing it with blood. It sizzles as he uses it to etch strange symbols into the rock.
“What are you doing?”
“Warding the entrance. Soul-glyphs. They won’t hold forever, but it’ll buy us time.”
He finishes the symbols and slumps against the wall, sliding down to a sit. His breath comes in ragged gasps. Falcen grimaces, lifting his other hand. I’m shocked to see that the hound’s soul is still there, sooty vapors swirling with dark essence.
On a sharp inhale, Falcen presses the hound’s remnants against his chest, right over the metal protecting his heart. The vapors seem to seep through his breastplate and under his skin, causing those tattoos of his to erupt before vanishing entirely.
He lets out a shuddering breath.
“Have to ... contain it,” he gasps. “Can’t let it dissipate into the air. Might need it later.”
I stare, horrified and fascinated. “You consumed it? Isn’t that dangerous?”
Falcen’s laugh is more of a wheeze. “Everything about this job is dangerous. But yes, particularly so. It’s like ... holding a piece of the Void inside me. Useful, but it burns.”
I inch closer, eyeing the ruined armor. “You’re hurt.”
Falcen’s laugh is bitter. “Very observant of you.”
“Let me help,” I said, turning to show him my bound hands. “Untie me. I can—”
“No.”
I peer over my shoulder in time to see Falcen’s discomfort fade behind a hardened expression.
“You’ll run.”
“I won’t,” I insist. “Those demons are still out there. Where would I go?”
He squints at me, jaw clenched. After a heavy silence, he reaches out and slices through my bonds with his blade before it turns into azure smoke and disappears to wherever it was summoned from.
I rub my wrists, then kneel beside him. “What do you need?”
“Its fangs are poisoned.” Falcen’s eyes drift closed. “There’s a pouch ... left hip. Gold powder.”
“Gold powder? What does that do?”
Falcen grimaces. “Soul-dust. It’s a rare, highly concentrated form of purified soul-magick, processed and refined by the ancients. Neutralizes Void venom. The hounds’ teeth, they’re pure Void. Cuts through our defenses like they’re nothing.”
“Good thing your armor isn’t made of this stuff then,” I mutter, then catch myself. “I’m sorry. I get sarcastic when I panic.”
Falcen is less than amused. He snaps off the ruined bracer and exposes his heavily bleeding forearm before his head falls back against the cave wall. “Pour it directly on the wounds.”
I watch, fascinated, as I shake the powder onto the gouges and it draws out a murky, oily substance from the bite marks. The powder turns from gold to a shimmering onyx as it absorbs the venom, then crumbles away into nothing.
Falcen’s shoulders sag. He gives a long sigh of relief, which I join him on.
“The process to create soul-dust is lost to time,” he explains. “And highly volatile. While perfect for quick solutions like neutralizing Void venom, it’s too rare for sustained use in armor.”
“I see.” I shift to sit cross-legged. “For someone who doesn’t teach, you’re pretty good at it. All these practical applications you keep demonstrating.”
Falcen looks at me sidelong.
I realize what I just said and bite my lip. Way to go, Verily. Backhanded compliments will really endear you to the guy who just saved your life. Again.
But I hold his gaze, finding it hard to look away from those transfixing eyes, even as the gold ring fades and the blue returns.
“Teaching and doing are two different things,” Falcen says finally, his voice tight. “I’ve spent my life doing. Never had much time or inclination to help other Soulren.”
“Until now?”
I’m glib before I can stop it.
He shakes his head, clearly tired of me. Oh, well. Too bad for him. I didn’t demand to come with him on this gods-forsaken endless hike through hell.
Neither of us says anything for a while, our attention focused on the cave entrance. The symbols he drew with his blood oscillate faintly, like a heartbeat.
I look down at my hands, still tingling from the remnants of those strange, malachite wisps that came from the hounds.
“What’s happening to me? This … whatever is inside me, it felt sentient out there with the hounds. Like it wanted to control me.”
Falcen gives a tired nod of understanding.
“You killed someone. Normally, an initiate is forbidden from doing that because of the sheer power of a soul-rendering. You consumed that village boy’s entire being, which causes intense magickal fluctuations, heightened emotions, and possibly flashes of his memories.
That’s what makes you deadly and unpredictable. ”
I falter, the weight of Falcen’s words hitting me much too hard. “I didn’t mean to kill Edon. I really didn’t.”
His mouth thins into a grim line. “Complete rendering is forbidden for novices for a reason. It can drive you mad. Burn you out from the inside.”
“Then why aren’t I mad and burned out?”
“That’s not a problem for me to solve.” Falcen closes his eyes, ending the conversation. “Get some rest. The wards will hold until morning. The hounds don’t enjoy Lux’s sun very much, so let’s pray it’s not overcast at dawn.”
Instead of doing as he asks, I settle my newly freed hands on my lap and stare at him.