Chapter 29 #2
Their confusion presses against my back. My weapon quivers in my hand, growing warmer, hungrier. I can feel it pulling at something inside me, draining me in a way it hadn’t during training with Falcen.
“Holbrook!” Falcen’s voice cuts through my daze. “Strike now!”
The widow’s head snaps toward Falcen, its body shifting with illogical speed. The moment of strange connection between us shatters as it lets out a guttural screech that vibrates through my bones.
“Do it now!” Falcen roars.
I hesitate, halberd raised, but unwilling to strike.
The hesitation costs me. The widow, now agitated by Falcen’s voice, whips one of its limbs toward me. I manage to deflect it with the shaft of my weapon, but the impact sends me stumbling backward.
My ember sizzles with irritation—not at the creature, but at me.
Another limb lashes out, catching me across the ribs. Pain explodes through my side as I’m thrown across the arena, my body skidding across the packed clay. My weapon tumbles from my hand and dissolves.
The initiates collectively gasp. I hear Rook’s voice somewhere in the crowd. “Holbrook, watch out!”
I try to summon my weapon again as the widow comes for me, but my scarred palm only sparks with feeble blue light.
“Get up!” Falcen shouts.
I roll to avoid another strike, feeling warm blood trickle down my side where the creature’s limb grazed me. The ground beneath me blackens with rot where the widow has made contact.
The creature pauses again, its massive head swiveling toward me with that same eerie recognition. One appendage extends toward me, gently.
It doesn’t want to hurt me.
The realization hits me with startling clarity just as Falcen moves. He materializes between the widow and me, his soul-sword manifested and glowing with blinding magick.
The soul-glyphs on his forearms flare to life as he drives his weapon deep into the creature’s core.
“No!” I cry out, the word escaping before I can stop it.
The widow lets out a keening wail. Its limbs thrash wildly, one catching Falcen across the chest and sending him flying backward. He lands with the grace of a predator, immediately regaining his footing.
The creature’s body begins to collapse in on itself, but not before its many eyes find mine one last time. I swear I see betrayal in its baleful stare before it dies.
Black smoke rises from the widow’s remains, curling through the air like poisoned incense.
I struggle to my feet, my ribs screaming in protest.
“Are you injured?” Falcen asks, his voice cold and clinical as he approaches.
I press my hand against my middle, feeling the warm stickiness of blood. “I’ll live.”
He nods curtly, then turns to address the stunned initiates. “This concludes today’s demonstration. I’ll escort Verily to the infirmary while the rest of you return to your quarters and prepare for theoretical studies this afternoon.”
The other students disperse quickly, some casting horror-struck glances my way, others whispering among themselves. Rook hovers the longest, her expression torn between concern and suspicion, before she too departs.
Once we’re alone, Falcen unleashes.
“What the fuck was that?” he hisses, dragging me away from the dispersing crowd.
I wrench my arm from his grasp, stumbling backward. “I don’t know! It wasn’t attacking me. It was looking at me with intelligence, like it had a rational mind.”
“It was toying with you,” he snarls, his face inches from mine. “Voidspawn don’t make friends, Verily. They mutilate. They destroy.”
But this one didn’t. The realization sits heavy in my gut. It recognized something in me, or rather, in my weapon.
“My halberd changed,” I say, rubbing my palm where phantom heat still lingers. “It altered its shape and made itself less deadly when the widow approached. I couldn’t control it.”
Falcen’s attention drops to my palm, then back to my face. For the briefest second, another flare of wariness highlights his features before he buries it.
“Your weapon shouldn’t be able to do that,” he says, his voice dropping to a murmur. “Soul-weapons are fixed manifestations. They don’t ... evolve.”
“Well, mine did,” I snap, defensive despite my confusion. “Is that another thing that makes me special and marked for dissection?”
He ignores my sarcasm, taking my scarred palm and turning it over in his large hand. His touch sends an unwelcome tingle up my arm.
“You’re telling me your weapon changed shape,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me. “And the widow recognized you.”
“Not me,” I correct him. “It recognized something in my weapon. The Veilrot.”
Falcen’s head snaps up, his eyes locking with mine.
His eyes seem different in this light, the gold ring around his pupils more pronounced, almost luminescent against the blue. Has it always been that bright?
He shakes his head, but I notice a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across his forehead. His fingers flex at his sides before his eyes narrow to slits.
“Weapons are an extension of the wielder. It did what you subconsciously wanted it to do.” He grabs my chin, forcing my head up. “You wanted it to spare you.”
“I wanted not to die,” I retort, twisting my face from his grip.
His gaze drops to the gash on my stomach.
“The widow’s limbs are coated in a necrotizing agent.
A single scratch is enough to rot the flesh from the bone within an hour.
” He glances toward the tunnel where the Healers dragged away Davrin.
“Initiate Koll is likely screaming for them to amputate his arm. So tell me, Holbrook, why aren’t you screaming? ”
Falcen brushes the edge of my wound. I look down, and the blood on his fingers when he removes them is red, clean.
There’s no sign of the blackening rot that had instantly consumed the clay floor where the widow stepped, no hint of the decay that should be spreading through my veins.
The wound stings, but it’s a simple cut. Nothing more.
“I don’t know,” I say, the truth a dead weight in my chest.
Another mark of my otherness.
He pulls a small vial from a pouch on his belt.
“For the benefit of anyone watching, I am now applying a counter-agent. A rare one, reserved for Elites.” He uncorks it and dabs the glittering, viscous liquid onto my wound.
It smells faintly like the golden powder I’d used previously.
“You were lucky I had it on me. Understand?”
The unspoken threat is clear. This is the story. The only story.
“Yes,” I say, my throat tight.
He straightens, his eyes scanning the empty arena entrances.
“Your remnant blood must give you a higher tolerance, but it won’t last. The poison is just slower to take root. We need to get you to the infirmary before it spreads.”
It’s a quick, plausible lie meant for any lingering ears, but a lie nonetheless. There is no venom in me. And we both know it.
“We need to report this development to the Master Keeper,” he says after a long exhale.
“About the widow? Why? You killed it, and the other initiates didn’t see enough to force us to bring it to the Master’s attention. Falcen, please, as much as I joke about it, I actually don’t want to be dissected and experimented on.”
“I have no choice,” he corrects before turning away and rolling his shoulders as if the muscles are suddenly too tight.
The movement makes me glimpse the shifting of his tattoos, the glyphs shimmering with an irregular rhythm that doesn’t match his breathing as it normally does.
“Falcen, are you alright?” I take a step toward him.
He holds up a hand. “Stay back.”
“You’re acting strange.”
“I said stay back!”
The command tears from his throat with such force that I recoil. When he faces me again, his pupils have narrowed to vertical slits for just a heartbeat before returning to normal.
My ember stirs with interest, stretching toward him like a curious child.
“What’s happening to you?” I whisper.
Falcen drags a hand down his face. He lets out a humorless laugh.
“Let me count the ways, Verily. I’ve been forced to return to this gods-forsaken academy where my sister would rather see me imprisoned in the catacombs than wandering the property, I’ve been ordered to put you on a leash even though you are an individual of which no living Soulren can shed light upon, and now you’re summoning shape-shifting weapons that Void creatures find appealing. ”
“Are your tattoos supposed to move like that?” I ask, pointing at his forearms where they continue to shift beneath his skin.
Falcen glances down. He quickly pulls down his sleeves, covering the evidence.
“It’s nothing. A side effect of using my soul-weapon against a Void creature.”
It’s a lie, and we both know it. I’ve seen him fight Voidspawn before without this reaction, but he forges on. “Not to mention the fact that you have something living inside you that you refer to as ‘she.’”
I stare at him, momentarily stunned.
“Don’t lie to me.” His fingers encircle my wrist, not hard, but with enough pressure that I can feel my pulse hammering against his skin.
“I’ve seen your eyes change. I’ve heard you refer to her.
Whatever is inside you, it’s affecting your soul-weapon, and by extension, your interactions with the Void. ”
The ember stirs again, a warm, liquid sensation pooling beneath my breastbone. She’s fascinated by Falcen, drawn to him in a way I don’t understand.
“She’s not dangerous,” I defend before I can stop myself.
Falcen’s hold turns painful. “So you admit it.”
I close my eyes, defeat washing over me. “I don’t know what she is. She appeared after I resurrected Noxie, and she’s been with me ever since. She talks to me sometimes. Helps me.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this before now?”