Chapter 12
Twelve
Three pairs of liquid eyes peer out at us from the inky darkness. Milky white orbs swirling with mauve and onyx emanate from the nether drakes’ decaying forms. I feel the tug of the Void, a sickly sweet sensation that curls around my mind, urging me to come closer.
“Steady,” Falcen murmurs, his hand coming to rest at the small of my back. “Guard your mind. Use the instinct within your Soulren magick instead.”
His calm words, combined with his touch, ground me, allowing me to focus past the drakes’ poisonous call.
I take a deep breath and reach out with my senses. The nether drakes’ souls are a writhing mass of contradictions. The cloying decay of the undead interwoven with the vibrant spark of stolen resonance.
What is this?
I don’t know, I answer my little ember, then amend. Evil. It’s definitely evil.
The largest of the three drakes unfurls its wings with a rattling hiss, exposing the tattered remnants of membranous flesh stretched between gnarled, bony fingers.
“They have wings,” I say to Falcen. “I thought drakes were ground-dwellers.”
Falcen raises an eyebrow at me. “And who told you that little nugget of misinformation? Some crusty old tome gathering dust in Belgrave’s poor excuse for a library?”
I lift my chin. “I’ll have you know, Belgrave’s crusty old tomes contain a wealth of knowledge.”
“Knowledge of a world that no longer exists,” he retorts.
I swallow my pride. It’s not worth arguing with Falcen right now. “The library did not mention wings. Where did they come from?”
“The Void changes things.” His voice is flat. “The longer something stays close to it, the less it resembles what it started as.”
That’s not an answer. But the way he says it, like he’s describing something he’s seen firsthand, makes me pause my next question.
The largest drake’s serpentine body is a morbid patchwork of decomposing scales and exposed muscle that swirls with a haunting, purplish light. It lowers its massive head to regard us.
Their heads are in different states of decomposition. This one is reduced to little more than a skull with bits of rotting flesh clinging to the bone.
Heart pounding, I inch closer. I force myself to breathe normally as a voice like the rustle of dead leaves enters my mind.
Little soul-wielder, it croons, you dance so precariously close to the Void’s embrace. Shall we waltz?
My heart won’t slow down. The drake’s presence is overwhelming, a miasma of decay and pirated life that threatens to smother.
“Verily.”
Falcen’s voice cuts through the haze, his fingers on my waist spasming.
“Don’t engage. Shield your thoughts.”
I nod, trying to focus on the warmth of Falcen’s touch, the steadiness of his aura. I imagine walls of shimmering energy rising around my mind, blocking out the drake’s sinister request.
The second drake, its hide a mottled gray and lavender, shifts restlessly on its skeletal legs.
The Elite reeks of self-righteousness, it hisses, baring rows of needle-like teeth. His soul burns too black. It sears our flesh.
Their third companion chitters in agreement. They circle us, their movements unnaturally smooth.
I whisper out the side of my mouth to Falcen, “Is there a way you can dampen your magick?”
His attention jerks toward me. “Why would I do that?”
Before I really think about what I’m doing, a guttural string of hisses and clicks resonates inside my head in a way that I actually understand. I respond to the drakes internally. Your flesh was blistered long before he arrived.
The drakes halt their prowl, yet their eerie eyes swirl with increased speed.
You speak the tongue of the Void, the skull-faced drake muses, cocking its head. How curious.
Perhaps she is not so firmly tethered to the realm of Lux after all, another drake adds, its forked tongue flicking out to taste my exhales.
Falcen’s brow furrows as he glances between me and the drakes, his side pressing into mine so protectively that his belt bites into my hip.
He says to me, “You should be gathering impressions and feelings from them. Are they willing to negotiate for our travel?”
It’s difficult, but I tear my focus from the largest drake and turn to Falcen. I’m about to ask him why he doesn’t do it himself, but there’s a hard set to his jaw, as if he’s frustrated he has to beseech me instead of taking control of the situation.
“I … I think they’re willing to negotiate,” I respond, my voice one notch above a whisper. “Should I ask them a direct question?”
Falcen frowns. “That’s impossible. We can’t communicate in their language. But you can send a feeling toward them, or an image of where we’d like to go.”
I pull my lips in, unsure.
What Falcen just described isn’t true. I can understand them the same way I communicate with the magick within me. Yet both times I’ve prodded, Falcen has resolutely shut down the possibility that I can speak to the Void.
And I’m already showing signs that aren’t normal, like my age and the rapid evolution of my magick. Did I want to give Falcen more ammunition to give to the academy when we arrive? Or should I enter their gates with a few secrets of my own, to be released when I need them most?
Oh, we so love secrets, the third drake trills.
Though the sheer appetite in the drake’s voice makes me shudder, I feel the need to mention to Falcen, “I’ve never seen the academy. I don’t know what it looks like.”
Falcen frowns. “Not even a drawing? A sketch? A drunken synopsis from a traveler stumbling out of an ale house?”
I shake my head, feeling so naive and unprepared.
Falcen sighs. “Very well. Allow me to paint you a picture, then.”
He leans in close, his breath warm against my ear as he murmurs, “Imagine a castle built for a queen, then gutted and repurposed by the people who took it from her.”
His rich, honeyed voice becomes a brush against my imagination, stroking more than it is painting. I suppress a shiver as his breath runs along the small tendrils of hair at my temple.
“Battlements carved from marble that drinks the light rather than reflects it. A courtyard where the ground has been worn smooth by decades of boots and blood and things I’m better off not naming.
” Falcen’s hand slides up my spine to rest at the nape of my neck, his fingers toying idly with the wispy hairs there.
“That sounds welcoming,” I murmur.
“Every arch, every parapet, every iron-tipped spire designed to remind you that beauty no longer lives here,” he continues.
“The main gates are forged from soul-iron, black as pitch, etched with the runic names of every Soulren who has fallen since the academy’s founding.
Not as a memorial.” A pause. “As a reminder of what disobedience costs.”
I bite my lip. Falcen’s hand stays on the back of my neck, and not as a form of affection. It’s his measure of dominance. The firm ridges of his fingers pressing into my skin warn that if I try to run … he’ll catch me.
The Elite’s presence in our nest is an affront, the eldest drake spits, its skeletal wings twitching. He consumes the essence of our kind, growing stronger as we wither. Your time here is limited, little soul-wielder. Ask what you must.
I ingest Falcen’s bitter words carefully, turning them over in my mind the way you’d handle a sharp and unfamiliar kitchen knife. Even though I could simply ask them, I decide to play along with Falcen’s imagery.
Facing the skull-faced drake, I let the picture unfurl, pushing it through that strange inner channel I’ve been using to speak with my ember. Gutted queen’s castle. Mountain fortress. Granite teeth biting at a gray sky that Lux refuses to bless.
The Soulren stronghold, the eldest drake interrupts inside my head, its tone dripping with disdain at my amateur image versus just using their language. The nest of soul-render fledglings. You seek passage to their domain?
I nod.
The drake regards me. Its swirling eyes slow. You do not speak the truth.
I pray that my gulp isn’t audible to Falcen.
This passage is not by your choice, the drake deduces.
Its massive body stills enough to convince me that it’s actually pondering my current circumstance.
And when I feel it, feel her, sinking into my mind, her exploration like pincers raking over my skull, I can’t help it. I yelp, flying back and clutching my head.
Falcen catches me mid-collapse. I clutch at him, my fingers digging into the gaps in his ripped tunic, struggling to regain my equilibrium.
“Focus on my voice, on my touch, Verily. Use me as an anchor.”
Falcen’s normally composed presence is taut with alarm as he maintains his hold on me.
I try to latch onto his words, but the drake’s relentless assault drowns them out.
Fragments of images flash behind my mind’s eye, dazzling soul-glyphs, a tome bound in pale leather that seems to writhe beneath my fingertips, a figure cloaked in shadow performing an incantation that makes my psyche recoil.
Interesting, the drake purrs, her voice a debilitating caress against my ravaged mind. Such a delicious treat, little soul-wielder. One we have not tasted in decades. It clings to you like a second skin, humming with forbidden magick.
I don’t understand! You speak in tongues. My moan comes from the inside, but it feels like I’m screaming on the outside.
You truly do not know? she presses, oddly confused.
I feel Falcen’s breath, hot against the side of my face, murmuring, “Breathe, Veilbreaker. In and out. Nice and slow.”
The drake’s skeletal head weaves from side to side, her movements sinuous and hypnotic. The Void calls to you like an Elite, yet you are a hatchling. You cling to Lux. A delicate balance, one that could tip either way.
The drake’s decaying maw splits into a macabre grin, revealing rows of jagged, rotting teeth. I shall grant your passage, little one. As for the Elite, not even your delicious secret is enough to allow him on our backs.
Falcen tenses as if sensing the drake’s intentions, his free hand lowering and flexing to call his sword if necessary.
“I’m ... I’m okay,” I manage, straightening in Falcen’s arms. His brow is furrowed, his blue-gold eyes searching mine. “It was just a sudden headache. I think the drakes’ presence is overwhelming my magick.”
It’s not entirely a lie, but the omission tastes bitter on my tongue.
He frowns, but doesn’t press further. Instead, he turns his attention back to the drakes, his stance protective and wary. “Will they take us?”
My little ember answers before I can. Its balmy glow in my chest contracts, sharp and small, like a fist closing around a coal. Not quite a word. More like a no pressed directly into my bones, because it knows what I’m about to do.
Falcen’s explanation of what drakes require to perform favors, and the one item I have to offer, the very thing Falcen took from me on the forest trail.
Except he called it “merely a sip” as though that made it forgivable.
It’s the instrument the academy harvests from prisoners and volunteers and children too young to understand what’s being stolen.
And here I am, about to hand a morsel of it to a Void creature.
I have to, I tell the ember’s agitated quiver.
You swore not to give any more.
I swore a lot of things before I ended up in a cave negotiating airfare with a corpse dragon, I reply, then seal my doom.
I offer a piece of my soul, I say to the drake, my mental voice steady despite the abhorrence churning through my veins. Freely given, if you take the Elite as well.
She lowers her long neck, her grisly snout mere inches from my face. The stench of decay is overwhelming, but I force myself to hold steady.
I brace for the tearing sensation and the awful gap that follows, like the one Falcen left when he sipped from me on the trail.
Muscles locked, teeth clenched, fingers curled into my palms hard enough to leave crescents.
But the drake merely withdraws her snout from my face. No pull. No lurch. No sunken ache behind my ribs.
She didn’t take it.
Tell me, child, have you ever wondered what it would be like to embrace that darkness within? To let it consume you utterly?
My response is instant. No.
The drakes chitter among themselves, their bones rattling with amusement.
You play a treacherous game, little soul-wielder. But you intrigue me. The drake’s rotting breath washes over me as she rises to her full height. I would like to see you in the academy. If this Elite must escort you, then so be it.
She pauses to turn her snout, peeling nostrils flaring, at Falcen, regarding him for the first time. She gives him the once-over in her own, drake-like way, her long, blackened tongue playing along her mildewed fangs. He has no idea what he’s helping walk through those gates.