Chapter 14 #2
We hit the treeline with a sickening crunch, branches shattering around us as we plummet into the undergrowth. Falcen takes the brunt of the impact, his body curling protectively around mine until finally, we come to a jarring halt in a tangled heap on the charred forest floor.
For a long, terrifying moment, all I can hear is the frazzled sound of my own breathing and the ringing in my ears. My entire body throbs.
Falcen groans beneath me.
I gasp. “You’re alive!”
“It appears so,” he manages, his voice strained. “Alive and covered in glowing slime goop.”
I lift my head from where it’s tucked against his neck, blinking away the spots dancing in my vision. “I ... I think I’m alive, too. Am I alive?”
“You’re in shock.”
Nothing feels broken, though I’m sure I’ll be a mottled canvas of bruises come morning. If we make it until morning.
Gingerly, I try to extricate myself from Falcen’s embrace, but he locks me in place on top of him.
“Don’t move yet,” he warns. “We don’t know what state the drake is in.”
The drake. Gods. In the chaos of the fall, I’d almost forgotten about our murderously furious mount.
I still, straining my senses. The Blightwood around us is unnervingly quiet, like it’s holding its breath. No birdsong, no rustle of small creatures in the underbrush. Even the ever-present hum of insects is absent.
Only the greasy crackle of the closest Veil tear disturbs the environment, making my skin crawl with its blasphemy.
“Where is she?” I whisper, dread pooling in my gut.
As if summoned by my question, a guttural snarl rumbles through the trees, so low and deep I feel it through the enamel of my teeth.
Falcen tenses beneath me, his hand splaying across my lower back.
“Don’t. Move,” he breathes in my ear.
I’m as rigid as a corpse, scarcely daring to draw in oxygen.
The growl comes again, closer now. The underbrush rustles and snaps as something massive pushes through it. I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing myself.
But the attack doesn’t come. Instead, I hear the drake’s labored breathing and the wet rattle of lungs that shouldn’t still be working. The stench of decay thickens the air, gagging me.
I risk cracking one eye open.
The drake looms over us, her ravaged body heaving with each breath. Ropes of black ichor drip from her jaws, sizzling where they hit the ground. Her eyes, once a milky obsidian, are now pits of black, vines of darkness leaking from the sockets.
My magick did this. The realization hits me like a punch to the gut, horror and guilt intertwining into a sickening knot.
Are you all right? I ask her. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I swear it. My magick just…
The drake regards me long enough to believe we’re about to die in a single bite. Then her voice, scraped and rasping, echoes through my mind.
You are more threatening than I realized, little soul-wielder.
I swallow hard.
The drake continues, None of us ask for the burdens we must bear. But bear them we must.
She shifts her massive bulk, bones creaking and popping. Falcen’s arm keeps me firm against him, but he’s ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation.
The drake merely settles herself, folding her tattered wings along her flanks.
I will not harm you, despite the agony you have caused me.
I wet my dry lips. “She’s ... not going to attack.”
Falcen’s gaze darts to mine, sharp and assessing. “How can you be sure?”
Because she told me, I want to say. Because despite the fact that I just ripped through her decaying form with my out-of-control magick, shredding what little cohesion she had left, she recognizes the burden I now carry. Isn’t that nice?
But I can’t tell him that. Can’t reveal the impossible connection that has sprung up between this creature of the Void and me.
So instead, I shrug one shoulder, trying for nonchalance. “Call it a hunch.”
Falcen’s eyes narrow. His scrutiny makes me want to squirm, but I force myself to remain unaffected underneath his study.
After a long exhale, he seems to come to a decision. Slowly, he loosens his hold on me, allowing me to sit up. I immediately mourn the loss of his weight, the solid length of his body against mine.
Falcen rises with me. “What happened up there?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “It was like something inside me just broke free. I couldn’t control it.”
Falcen’s jaw clenches. “We need to get you to the academy. Quickly. Before it happens again.”
The drake shifts, her deteriorating wings rustling. More of that black ichor oozes from her eyes like tears.
As if to punctuate Falcen’s urgency, a shrill cry rips through the trees, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It’s answered by another, then another, until the dilapidated forest comes alive with the ghostly chorus.
“Voidspawn,” Falcen spits, his hand flexing to call his sword. “Drawn by the tear and the scent of fresh prey.”
The drake brays, the sound vibrating through the ground. She heaves herself to her feet, towering over us. Her wingspan unfurls, tattered and weeping black smoke, but still massive.
Falcen eyes her. “She has to be able to fly. We’re deep in Blightwood territory now. Walking out isn’t an option.”
My attention moves to the gnarled trees surrounding us. Their branches seem to reach for me, the spaces between them filled with a seething, unnatural fog.
My ember is suspiciously quiet, offering no solace, nor caution.
Falcen takes a step toward the drake, his hands glowing with the telltale shimmer of soul-magick.
The drake’s head whips toward him. A hiss rips from her throat as her talons gouge into the dried earth.
I do not need your paltry, sky-colored magick, Elite. The drake’s voice is a thunderous warning in my mind. You have done enough.
“Falcen, wait—” I start, but he ignores me, taking another step forward.
The drake rears back, her neck arching like a cobra about to strike. Her jaws snap mere inches from Falcen’s face, black pus spraying from between her fangs.
Falcen doesn’t flinch, his gaze locked with the drake’s seething pits for eyes. “I wasn’t asking for permission.”
His soul-glyphs flare to life, spreading across the tops of his hands and up his throat and consuming his cheeks like living fire.
The drake screams, an ear-splitting shriek of defiance. She darts for Falcen, but he’s faster. He sidesteps her charge, his movements a blur. The drake counters with a whirl, her tail lashing out like a whip. It catches Falcen across the chest, sending him flying backward into a gnarled tree trunk.
“Falcen!” I scream.
But he’s already back on his feet. His eyes burn with gold, his expression hard and focused in the true face of a Soulren enforcer.
Lethal. Implacable.
The next second, he’s on the drake’s back, one hand slamming down between her withers.
A shock wave of power explodes outward from the point of contact, rippling over the drake’s form in a cascade of electric cobalt light so blinding that the encroaching Voidspawn shriek and fall back.
I watch in awe and a little trepidation as Falcen pours his magick into the drake, the air humming with its force. The sickly magenta light of the nearby Veil tear seems to bend toward him, drawn to the maelstrom of soul-energy he’s unleashing.
Slowly, impossibly, the black ichor stops flowing, the fresh gashes in her flesh sealing themselves.
The drake’s struggles weaken, her limbs trembling with exhaustion. She makes one last, half-hearted attempt to buck Falcen off, then collapses, her sides heaving.
He slides from the drake’s back, landing lightly on his feet.
By the time Falcen steps away, the drake looks almost as she did when we first encountered her in the caves.
Decayed and peeling, yet functional. Her patches of scales shimmer in the bilious light of the Veil tear, and her wings, while tattered and jutting with bones, aren’t leaking anymore.
The glow fades from Falcen’s soul-glyphs, leaving only faint tracings behind.
I realize my mouth is hanging open. I snap it shut.
Falcen turns to me, a brow raised. “I did warn her.”
The drake stirs, lifting her head to fix Falcen with a hateful stare. I expect her to launch into the air and leave us far behind, but she doesn’t.
“You’re controlling her again,” I deduce.
“Is there any other way to use a nether drake?” he retorts. “We tried it her way and made a deal with her. It failed. Now we do this my way and get you the fuck out of here.”
I stare at the glistening Veil tear above us while an inexplicable certainty creeps across my shoulders. “And what, exactly, is your way?”
“You’re looking at it.”
“You can’t be serious,” I say, my voice coming out thin and reedy.
Falcen’s stare narrows. “Do you see another option? With your magick this volatile, flying is too risky. We’d likely end up as bloody smears on the mountainside.”
The drake marks our exchange with malevolent eyes, her wings twitching restlessly. I don’t need to touch her mind to know she’d happily let Falcen fall to his death if given the chance.
“No.” The word leaves my mouth before I can stop it. “Absolutely not. I won’t do it.”
Falcen’s stare surges with gold. “You don’t have a choice.”
“I refuse to take a casual stroll through a portal to the Void!”
“Your magick is unstable,” Falcen reiterates in a tiresome tone. “You could bring us down again at any time. And the drake is weakened, drained from healing. The Veil tear is our best option.”
“Best option for what? Getting ourselves killed? Or worse? You said you couldn’t take me that way when we first met. Remember? You said I was unpredictable.”
I can’t keep the rising hysteria out of my voice. The memory of what I saw, what I felt when we flew too close to the tear is still fresh in my mind. The skittering shapes in the mist, the awful cold, the sky promising madness.
Falcen grips my shoulders. “Verily, listen to me. I know you’re scared. But we need to get you to the academy, and I’ve exhausted all other options. I’m skilled in this kind of travel. You must trust me.”
I flinch at the word trust, wrapping my arms around myself. The memory of my magick surging out of control, ripping through the drake’s already decaying form, makes me feel sick and tainted.
Falcen’s hand glides down my arm, then steadies on my elbow, his fingers gentle despite the soul-glyphs starting to flow over his skin again.
“We don’t have a choice,” he repeats, this time including us both as the problem. “The Voidspawn is circling. I blew them back enough to disorient them, but they’ll recover any minute.”
As if to punctuate his words, a high-pitched shriek rips through the trees, far too close for comfort.
Falcen’s attention snaps not to the sound, but to the expanding Veil tear not fifty paces above our heads. Its edges undulate.
The drake’s voice slithers into my mind. If you wish to survive, little soul-wielder, you will heed the Elite’s words. The Void calls to its own.
I am not part of that, I inwardly hiss.
The tear is like a festering abscess, weeping corruption into the world. Yet there’s a terrible beauty to it.
Falcen’s hand tightens on my elbow. “We have to go. Now.”
Another shriek, closer still. The underbrush rustles and snaps as something small and fast moves through it.
The drake sways impatiently, her scythe-like claws gouging deep furrows into the blackened earth. She knows what’s coming, and despite her hatred for Falcen, her self-preservation instinct is stronger.
Fly, little soul-wielder, she croons. Before the darkness consumes us all.
I take in a shuddering breath. “Okay.”
Falcen nods, a flicker of relief crossing his face before the hardened warrior replaces it. He guides me toward the waiting drake, her patchwork of scales glistening in the light of the tear.
“Up you go,” Falcen says, boosting me onto her back with an easy shove against my rump.
I scramble for purchase, my hands slipping on the slick, rotting flesh.
Falcen swings up behind me, the heat of him white-hot against my back. Or maybe I’m imagining the warmth exuding from this man. Falcen isn’t pleasant. He isn’t cuddly, either, yet his chest is a solid mass that I want to lean into and make my home.
“This is insanity,” I whisper to him. “Are we going to die?”
“Probably,” he agrees, far too calmly for my liking. “But it’s still our best shot.”
Another shriek rends the air. The underbrush swishes and clacks, the shadows between the twigs writhing with unnatural life.
“Hold on.”
It’s the only warning I get before Falcen digs his heels into the drake’s sides. She leaps with a teeth-clanking lurch, her powerful hind legs propelling us skyward.
This time, I don’t close my eyes.
Falcen’s arm is an iron band around my torso as he leans in over my shoulder. “Remember, no matter what you see or feel in there, it’s not real. The Void will try to trick you, to divide us. Don’t let it.”
I nod jerkily, my throat too tight for words. The drake’s wingbeats thunder in my ears, nearly drowning out the shrieks of the Voidspawn closing in below. They’ve sensed their prey escaping, and their starvation is palpable, a frantic lunacy that rakes at the edges of my mind.
“Get ready!” Falcen shouts.
The Veil tear fills my vision, a swirling maelstrom of acrid crimson and oily blacks. Scions of evil reach out, eager to welcome us into their cold embrace.
The drake tucks her wings close to her body, streamlining herself.
Mara, she says.
I look down at the back of her head. What?
My name, little soul-wielder. Use it wisely.
She bucks, shooting Falcen and me off her back and forward like arrows loosed from her bow, straight into the heart of the Veil tear.