Chapter Twenty-Six
Beware of the places the world forgets. For the memories that remain there are creatures all their own. Feral with their despair and looking to share misery with their bite.
– Myths of the Damned, 1645
Words from a book that had filled me with nothing but horrid unease as I’d read it, however, nowhere near to the unease I felt looking at the remains of what stood before me.
‘This was Fairfax Manor?’ I wondered just in what century the family had abandoned the house and why.
‘What’s left of it,’ Emrys corrected as we climbed over large roots and up uneven stone steps, passing warped metal gates that led to the front door, or what little remained of one. ‘They clearly have a habit of ruining their houses.’
The forest had claimed the house. A thicket and vines tangled with wood and stone until it was almost impossible to distinguish the two. A large tree sprouted up from where the entrance door had once stood. The space was too packed with bark and crumbled stone to get through.
There was a window frame to the side of the entrance, half collapsed, but a snarled branch was keeping the rest of it upright. I moved up the steps, climbing over the ancient roots and around to the window at the side, pressing myself close to the crumbling stone.
‘Kat,’ Emrys muttered in annoyance as I reached for the shattered window, pushing the ivy away aside to lean in and see the drop on the other side. It appeared to have once been the main hall. Morning light streamed through a gaping hole in the ceiling as birds roosting above flapped their wings in annoyance of our presence. A rusted corpse of a chandelier lay in the centre of the room, the gems that had survived throwing multicoloured shapes into the darkness.
Emrys climbed up next to me, our shoulders pressing together as he peered in. A curse slipped from his lips and he grasped the window frame to climb through. I caught his arm.
‘Do you think that floor will hold?’ I frowned.
‘Only one way to find out.’ He sighed, taking hold of the window frame and using a gap in the bricks to get his foot on the windowsill, barely fitting through the space before he dropped to the other side as silently as a cat. I had to lean in again to check he hadn’t gone straight through the floor.
No, he stood looking up at me in the dismal dark, trying to rub a moss stain off his sleeve. I was instantly grateful to Alma for my trousers as I hoisted myself up and used the ledge to lower myself as far as possible before I let go. Emrys caught my waist as I landed, my back pressed against the warmth of his chest as I struggled to steady my feet on the uneven floorboards. His hands gently cupping my elbows until I was balanced.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered, turning, but he was already moving into the gloom.
The air was thick with damp. The space vast and circular in shape, with only threads remaining of curtains that had once clung to the windows, walls now crumbling, and thick vines and roots growing over them. Archways surrounded us. There was nothing but a dense darkness beyond.
The remains of glass cracked under my boot as I followed Emrys across the room, avoiding loose planks in the floor. The aftermath of the night’s rain seeped through holes in the roof. Most of the upper rooms had collapsed, visible through holes in the ceiling above us that had been painted once with what appeared to be a grand mural, now oVerrun with foliage.
The place teamed with life. Nothing like the darkness that consumed Paxton Fields or that horrid Verr pit in the woods. This didn’t seem like the hiding place of a monster. No, just a forgotten manor in a hungry wood.
‘There isn’t anything here.’ I was overwhelmed by the lack of relief I felt at those words. Only because, if such dark things weren’t dwelling here, they were dwelling somewhere else.
‘Looks can be deceiving,’ Emrys replied, a hesitation in his voice. This wasn’t his first inspection after all.
He moved through one of the sagging archways, unbothered by the cobwebs, seeming to know the layout without having to glance at which way to turn, despite the fact I was certain nobody had been in these halls in the last century. I let him guide me through doorways threatening to collapse and over precarious gaps in the floor until we came to a more protected room. The ruins of a library, judging by what bookshelves remained.
Books and papers were left to rot in a strange pulp on the floor. Amongst the mess was the gleam of golden coins from Elysior, currency during one of the old King’s rule. Tarnished with the centuries that had passed. Wealth that had killed the world.
‘They left in a hurry,’ I observed, kicking over a small wooden chest with my boot. More of the garish bright coins spilling onto the floor, rolling until they dropped through the gaps to whatever abyss lay beneath us.
The disarray confused me, as did the remainder of valuable items. What had stopped them coming back to plunder it?
‘Dark magic has a habit of consuming when it’s left unchecked.’ Emrys’ response held apprehension, making me feel this place wasn’t as safe as I’d first anticipated.
It was then that I noticed how the coins gleamed brighter out of the corner of my eye, trying to attract my attention. Cursed artefacts, holding a great price for those greedy enough to take them.
‘There are curses here,’ I whispered; cautious they were listening even now.
Emrys moved closer to my side, brow furrowed in confusion. ‘You can see them?’
‘My mother was mortal.’ Her blood allowed me to see the things that would drive mortals mad, yet my Kysillian side protected me from being fooled by it.
‘I forget sometimes,’ Emrys murmured, more to himself, turning to consider the mess at his feet.
I weaved carefully through the damp, ignoring the ruined fey trinkets, shattered furniture, and the curses trying to lure me into madness. Towards a small pile of books in the corner, overcome with rot and moss.
One stood out more than the others, left on a table as if it had only just finished being read. The gold embossing still visible under the grime. I took hold of it carefully, allowing my palms to heat ever so slightly, remembering the lyrical mix of the incantation at the back of my mind, a song that didn’t need words to be formed.
Slowly, with a crack and the blue hue of my magic, the complete volume came back to life in my palm.
‘What are you doing?’ Emrys asked at my shoulder, curiosity oVerriding his concern.
‘Reformation.’ I smiled, holding the book out for him to see as I peeled the cover open, the crisp pages turning effortlessly.
‘How did you come up with that?’ His eyes were bright and clear with his confused amazement.
‘I took apart a looping spell and …’ I began, but something in his expression stopped me, something that felt more intense than simple admiration.
‘Never mind.’ I shook my head, turning my attention to the page of the book before me, finding it full of scrawls, sharp dark markings and demonic wishes. The ink had a strange red hue in parts. My magic rose in recognition of it without even touching the ink. Blood ink, made with fey sacrifice.
I recoiled, the book tumbling from my hands, falling to the earth as nothing more than a moss-covered piece of rot.
Here . The word brushed calmly over my shoulder. A comfort in it. Something small caught my eye in the dim light. Something brighter than all the other earth-toned colours around it.
‘Emrys.’ My hand reached out, catching his sleeve before I moved towards the corner of the room, right by the doorway into another. A small Nox offering leant there, next to an upturned volume of a book. Not a piece of damp on it.
I picked the book up, flicking through the pages to see one torn. Remembering the shape of the note Emrys had been left, I turned to him. ‘He was here. Thrombi was here.’
A darkness passed over Emrys’s expression that could have been a trick of the light. ‘Which means so is the anthrux,’ he said. ‘It’s a perfect nest. Enough dark spells to feast on.’
He frowned at the mess, troubled. A cold breeze swept through the room, rolling papers and leaves over our boots. I shivered, but Emrys’s head snapped to the side, facing down the hall as if someone had called his name.
He moved past me to the doorway to consider the darkness beyond. Frozen in place, his face bleached of colour, those scars more prominent down the side of his face, an odd tension coming over his limbs. Shadows seeming to pass over his skin.
‘Emrys?’ I asked.
But he didn’t move, no recognition that he’d even heard me. I reached out for his arm. He flinched at my touch, turning towards me, eyes impossibly dark.
‘Something else is here.’ Those words left his lips softly but there was a fear moulded into them that turned my blood cold. The dark played games with the truth. I remembered that.
‘We need to go,’ I urged.
He shook his head slightly, his hand dropping to capture my own as he turned and pulled me back the way we had come.
There was an urgency to him that made me hesitant to argue as we wandered back through the rooms, a horrid coldness following that had nothing to do with the wind. There was a pattering of footsteps that weren’t our own, a creaking of the trees but nothing lurking on their branches. The shadows became longer and darker.
The shattering of glass echoed down the hallway, stopping us as we reached the main hall. Emrys released his hold on me to turn towards the sound.
The birds above took flight, small feathers and dust rained down, making patterns in the sunlight. But there was nothing else. Silence from the shadows.
The stone around my neck burned with an intense warning that my magic followed.
The dark played games, wishing us foolish enough to let it feast . My father’s voice echoed through my memories as I slipped my hand into my bag, finding his hilt. I took it out, let it slip into a small blade against my palm, warm and ready. My magic welcoming it.
Steady is the heart. Swift is the flame.
I heard the slightest creak and tap of something on the wood. My magic barely rose in warning before I turned, forcing all my energy into my arm as I threw the blade. It sailed effortlessly through the air like an arrow, nothing but the sheen of metal as it travelled through the stream of sunlight straight into the dark. A loud thwack the only evidence it had made contact, and then came the screech and the scuttling of limbs.
Attached to the wall and hidden in the shadow was the creature. Covered in putrid grey scales, long and flat with arachnid limbs. No bigger than a city rat. It curled into itself with a cracking of thin bone, black blood dripping to the ground before it shifted to nothing but ash. The Kysillian blade protruded from the wall, gleaming in the limited rays of sunlight.
That horrid feeling dissipated, the light a little brighter as the stone around my neck went silent once more. I moved to retrieve my blade, having to jump over the gaps in the floor, listening to it groan in protest.
‘Remind me never to piss you off, Croinn,’ Emrys offered wryly, considering the darkness around us, hand extended to coax me back to him.
Only there was no relief in his amusement.
‘It should be more difficult than that.’ I moved closer to the dark where the thing had hidden. Beings of such power didn’t need to hide, not when they should be ravenous with a will to live.
‘Ancient things don’t tend to do well in modern times, dormancy weakens them tremendously.’ Emrys’ voice echoed across the space.
It was something more than that. I pulled the blade from the wall, letting it turn dormant once again as I pushed the hilt back in my bag.
I crouched to run my fingers through the dark ash the creature had left behind, confirming by the gritty texture it was as ancient as I believed it to be. ‘I don’t understand how it survived. There isn’t anything here to feed on.’
‘It must have come from somewhere else.’
If the house was connected to the Verr pit, whatever was causing this must have been hiding between. We needed to find out where this had begun, and the only thing effective in hunting the dark was the magic it craved. I kept some of the dark ash in my palm, causing my magic to flare with irritation, I rolled a small spark against my skin and manipulated it into a shape.
‘ Zeltu, ’ I ordered, watching the spell flare in recognition before forming a hard glass-like orb with a faint glow. I opened my hand, letting it roll off the tips of my fingers. It bounced and spun of its own accord across the rotting floor, vanishing through a hole in the wall.
A hunting orb.
‘What did you tell it?’ Emrys asked, watching the path the strange spell had taken.
‘To go to the beginning.’ I smiled at him, watching how the rainbowed light from the scattered chandelier gems reflected off his darkness. ‘All we have to do is follow.’
‘Croinn.’ He smiled, but there was something lingering in his features, a slight unease that surprised me. As if the distance between us was something he couldn’t quite bear.
My confusion lasted a mere moment as a sharp crack made us both go still.
‘Kat,’ he said, lips parted to give me an order, but the floor gave in beneath me before I could hear it.