Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Iplunge into the frigid water, the shock of cold stealing what little breath I managed to suck in.
My body knows what to do—thrash, kick, fight—but my mind quickly figures out that any movement will mean a bloody death, not just a watery one. The eels want to feed.
Salt water floods my nose and rushes past my ears with a muffled roar as I sink until the chains of my shackles go taut, pulling my arms up uncomfortably and jerking me to a stop. I’m too deep to reach air, even if I could swim. It’s just enough length to dangle like bait in this watery hell.
My lungs burn immediately. I clamp my mouth shut against the instinct to gasp, but I know I have minutes, maybe seconds, before my body betrays me.
Above, far away, Keeper Malakai’s voice carries through the water as a dull vibration. Words I can’t make out. A lesson. A sentence. A death tally.
Ember flutters beneath my breastbone, agitated but contained. I feel her reaching outward, not to escape, but to sense what surrounds us, since I can’t see anything behind this blindfold.
They’re circling, she warns. Six, no, seven of them. They sense us but haven’t decided to attack yet.
Can you communicate with them?
My question is more feeling than language. I can’t afford extra breaths, even in my head.
There’s a slick brush along my ankle. Another glide past my shin. The touch is wrong in a way that makes my stomach turn. Sinuous bodies gliding past my legs, brushing against my body with sickening, slippery grazes.
Being blindfolded is a blessing and a curse. I can’t see what’s coming for me, but I’m also spared the sight of these creatures preparing to eat me.
I hold still.
I hold still.
I hold—
My body spasms.
The pressure in my chest is unbearable. I’m going to die here, chained beneath the surface, my body torn apart by monsters I can’t even describe.
An eel, larger than the others, its body thick as my arm, brushes against my face like it’s learning my shape. It circles my head once, twice, its body creating a current that pushes against my cheeks. I’m left blinking through the watery depths when the blindfold slips away.
There’s no time to process my ability to use my eyes again because my skull aches as if something is trying to breach the bone.
I know you.
The words don’t enter through my ears. They land behind my eyes, multilayered, too old to belong to a fish in a tank. Ember translates, or maybe she makes it possible for my mind to hold the sound at all.
My stomach clenches. My throat tightens, then loosens in betrayal. My mouth opens against my will, and water rushes in.
I choke. I swallow it. I choke again.
A second presence follows the first into my mind. Then a third.
Rise, little soul-carrier, the collective voice resonates through my mind.
The water churns violently as more eels join the first two, their bodies twisting and coiling under and around mine. Pressure squeezes my ribs.
My surprise fractures. I try to fight. My fingers flex against my restraints. My knees draw up, and the moment I move, their slimy forms tighten around me like water snakes subduing their prey.
They elevate me inch by inch, but stop short, keeping me right under the surface, close enough to feel the pull of air, but far enough to deny it.
See.
The command hits, and then my mind slips sideways. Images slam through my consciousness in rapid, disjointed bursts.
I can’t distinguish between my thoughts and theirs.
Years of memories compress into seconds, decades of watching initiates lowered into these waters, their flesh torn apart by hungry eels who haven’t been fed in weeks.
Some survive their three minutes, their Soulren magick carefully contained.
Most don’t. The eels show me how they’re rewarded with flesh for each failure, how they’ve learned to recognize the ripple of fear, to sense which initiates will break first.
But beneath the violence, there’s grief. Loss. A heinousness that makes me wince.
We were warm once, their voices chime.
The image shifts. A young woman with honey-blond hair thrashing in these same waters as the eels circle her. But instead of attacking, they hesitate, pressing close to her with desperate urgency.
She reaches for them, her mouth forming words I can’t hear through the water, and for one impossible moment, golden light flares around her fingertips.
Then her chain is pulled, dragging her to the surface before the connection solidifies. The eels thrash in her wake, their anguish radiating through the fragmented memory.
They took her, another voice mourns.
Another image rips through my skull, and I’m suddenly looking at a face so familiar it steals what little explanation I have left.
Falcen.
But younger, his face unmarked by the years of hardship I’ve become familiar with. Unlike the other initiates, when he’s tossed in these waters, his soul-magick doesn’t flare defensively. Instead, it implodes, collapsing inward with such force that the water around him darkens to pitch.
The eels recoil, sensing what I can sense through their alien perception. His soul isn’t just damaged. It’s folding in on itself, splintering, reshaping into a form that shouldn’t exist within human flesh.
The memory shifts again, and I’m witnessing Falcen being dragged from the water, his body limp, lips blue. Not dead, but worse. His eyes are open but unseeing, with black veins spreading beneath his skin like ink through parchment.
They promised us wings, the hive eel-mind whispers. They promised flight.
A younger Keeper Malakai stands at the edge of the tank, his face rippling through the eels’ watery vision as he supervises Falcen’s limp body being dragged from the tank.
“Take him below,” Malakai says.
Falcen’s eyelids flutter. His lips move, forming a simple ask: Please stop.
Malakai merely smiles. “Fighting it will only cause you more pain, Initiate Reaves.”
The image tilts. Falcen is hauled toward a corridor and down a staircase deeper than the infirmary, deeper than classrooms, deeper than anything a student is meant to see.
The ones like him always go that way, the eels croon. Always.
Black spots bloom in my vision, eating the edges of the eels’ shared consciousness.
No, wait, I plead, my thoughts sluggish. Show me where they took him. What did they do to him?
I try to project the thought, but my lungs are on fire. Who was the blond girl?
The eels’ presence recedes, their memories dissolving as my own consciousness fades. My limbs go slack. The last of my air escapes in a stream of silver bubbles.
Falcen isn’t here to save me from drowning this time.
I’m left thinking of the grandmother I left behind, the emotions left unsaid with Falcen, and that my goal to get his face to break into a genuine grin will never be reached, and the mother and beloved pet I’ll get to see again…
I’m coming, Mother. Noxie, I can’t wait to—
A tearing pain rips through my shoulder. Then another in my side.
Hooks pierce through my clothes and snag my skin as they find purchase.
I’m dragged upward by them with sharp force, breaking the surface with a violent gasp.
I’m slammed onto the cold stone floor like a dying fish on a line, heaving as salt water exits my mouth and darkens the floor.
Through a watery haze, I notice two long poles with hooks retract from my body, wielded by two silent, gray-skinned Hollows.
“Three minutes and fourteen seconds,” Keeper Malakai announces, his voice a calm, detached note between my ragged breaths. “Remarkable. It appears you have more control than we anticipated, Initiate Holbrook. Or perhaps the eels simply found you unappetizing.”
I’m too spent to react. With my cheek resting on the floor, I track as Malakai’s polished boots and robes move toward the next initiate.
As Malakai’s hand clamps onto Davrin’s shoulder, a sudden headache pierces my skull. The eels’ memories, Falcen’s limp body being dragged away, the black veins pulsing beneath his skin, and Malakai’s younger face overseeing it all crash through me with a nauseating sway of images.
“Unchain Initiate Holbrook,” Malakai orders a nearby Hollow, barely sparing me another glance. “Then escort her to the infirmary.”
A Hollow shuffles toward me, keys jangling at his belt.
My gaze remains fixed on Malakai and Davrin, directly across from me, on the other side of the tank.
I try to sit up, still coughing. The other initiates keep their kneeled position, blindfolded, jaws set, and their pallor much paler than before, including Davrin.
I’m no longer part of the triangle, but lying just behind, with Rook the closest.
Two Hollows position themselves on either side of Davrin. He doesn’t tremble or speak.
“Three minutes,” Malakai reminds as he steps back from Davrin. “Begin.”
They shove him forward.
Davrin hits the water cleanly despite the shackles and with much less splash than I did, his body cutting through the surface.
With the Hollow’s help, I rise on weak legs, waiting for him to unlock the shackles on my wrists without taking my eyes off the smooth surface of the water. Waiting for the thrashing, the circling shadows, the signs of eels closing in for the kill.
But the water remains still.
Too still.
Seconds pass. Ten. Twenty. The surface doesn’t even ripple.
“What’s happening?” Rook whispers. It takes me a second to realize she’s posing her whispered question to me. “Are the eels…?”
“There’s nothing,” I reply in a low whisper. “No sign of Davrin, or the eels, either.”
The eels should have reached him by now. They’re always hungry. Malakai said so himself.
My cuffs unlock after a spin of the Hollow’s key, clanging to the floor. He takes my arm to lead me out of the chamber, but I shake him off. Hollows are strong, but slow. I dart to the side so he has to shuffle to reach me again, and continue the dance as thirty more seconds pass. Then forty-five.