Chapter 2
UNBOUND
“Viyetlo,” Lark whispered, crafting a spell from the power born in her dragon bond. A small celestial light appeared like a tiny glowing star before her. Its white starlight illuminated their path and exposed a disturbing scene.
Lark let out a shallow gasp as black veins spreading all through the carvings in the rock wall became apparent with the light.
These black veins stretched out like a web, each vein darker than the pitch black of the underground cavern.
Yet, within that blackness, the veins held countless flecks of silver lights that sparkled like stars in the night sky.
“This is rimeshade magic,” Lark said, her heart pounding. “They’ve been here recently. But why?”
She leaned in to examine a single vein that ran eye level with here five-foot nine-inch height, careful not to touch it.
Lark recalled what she knew of the rimeshade’s magic.
When active, it spread out with black tendrils that crawled like tentacles across its target.
Spiked icicles grew out of these specks of silver, spreading with raised rime frost as they consumed their victim.
The ice paralyzed the victims first, as the dark veins underneath injected power like a poison.
Though a layer of frost coated the cavern floor, Lark observed no frost spreading out from the silver flecks within the veins.
This meant only one thing. “The rimeshade have taken root here, but an active rimeshade is not down here right now,” she discerned.
“If there were one, these veins would be covered in a rime ice so thick and crisp, we wouldn’t be able to see the black underneath. ”
White Eye let out a soft growl in response, a warning to anything that might be lingering within the cavern.
“That the veins are lingering, though,” she continued, “means the rimeshade’s influence is being powered by something other than their presence. But what? And how did they find this place?”
Her mind drifted to her lark-shaped pendant for a moment. I wish you were here, Nix. You could help us.
Nix was of the fae. She likely knew more about the rimeshade than Lark and could offer more insight than Lark’s still hazy knowledge of them.
“How did you know this was happening?” Lark asked her dragon.
A string of complex emotions came pouring through their bond. Lark struggled to put them together, not understanding what White Eye wished her to glean.
White Eye stomped his paw and snorted in frustration at their as-yet imperfect communication. They were still working at getting reacquainted after a long, tumultuous separation.
Lark glanced over at the mixed language carvings on the wall, seeing they were done more hastily here than above. She recognized one of the old riders’ runes. “Dishonor,” she said.
White Eye hummed, gently pushing his muzzle against her like he did when Lark understood what he was thinking, back before they’d bonded. And she realized, that’s what he was trying to tell her.
“This place wasn’t just a dragonrider sanctuary, was it?”
Scuffing across the frosty ground sounded behind them and Lark thought she saw one of the veins move in the darkness.
She held her breath as White Eye inhaled, facing the chasm, ready to blast dragon fire into the depths of the mountain.
After a moment, when nothing attacked, she stroked his neck, calming him with her touch.
A gentle warmth spread across her chest, the sudden familiarity now calming her to her core.
Sparks showered in a pinwheel near her shoulder.
Nix burst through, yellow and orange fire roiling off her body[MOU1] .
The fae’s red dress and flaming hair rippled as though it were caught in the wind.
“Nix, you found us!” Lark said, her smile fading upon seeing Nix’s fearful posture. Her facial features were tight, glowing eyes wide and darting around as she flashed in bursts of red flame. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Lark asked.
“I know what’s down there,” Nix panted. “I tried to warn you not to come inside, but you did anyway. Now you can’t leave. And the corruption is spreading.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lark frowned. “You let us come down here, knowing it was a trap?”
White Eye growled.
“Not a trap,” Nix corrected. “We may be able to stop it still, but it’s going to take something that we haven’t done before.”
“Ashes, Nix. Why didn’t you warn us?”
“I couldn’t, because of our contract with the Night Court,” Nix said.
Lark frowned. The details of how Nix was bound to Lark via the Night Court remained cloudy following Lark’s bout of amnesia.
She could remember the events leading up to the fae realm and what happened after she returned to Sataran with Nix, but Lark couldn’t remember the details of their contract with the Night Court.
“Now that you’ve broken the threshold, and are in here against my will, I can show you,” Nix said.
“Come with me,” she added, nervously glancing at White Eye before shooting off into the darkness.
Lark hesitated for just a moment, caught between White Eye’s steadying presence and Nix’s retreating form.
The fae’s flames cast shadows on the veins spreading across the walls as she sped through the crag.
Lark gave in, hustling after Nix while keeping her broken wrist steady against her chest. The veins of the rimeshade’s corruption grew wider, spreading like tree branches across the walls.
“Wait,” Lark called after her.
Nix paused, illuminating another chamber that opened up just ahead. White Eye’s bulk filled the passage behind them, his breath warm against Lark’s back. But even her dragon’s presence couldn’t fully repress her unease.
The crag narrowed, before opening up into a temple under the mountain. The expansive stone walls rose high overhead, the broad veins of rimeshade scarring coalesced, thickening as they covered nearly everything on the cave walls. These all led to a void at the center of the chamber floor.
Nix’s fire and Lark’s mage light illuminated the scene, exposing a patchwork of stone and icy corruption. Everywhere the rock was open to the air, Lark spotted more carvings.
It’s as if the black veins of corruption are unable to touch anywhere there are the runes and symbols. She scanned the entire opening. The only rock free of rimeshade ice was that which had been adorned with the dual dialects.
A powerful energy filled the chamber, charging the air.
Whatever magic these runes and symbols hold has kept the rimeshade’s power at bay, she thought.
But the danger posed by copious amounts of dark veins was not to be underestimated.
Lark wondered how long the power here could last if the rimeshade continued to return and activate these dark magic veins.
“Nix, what is this place?” Lark asked.
“The magic here... it remembers,” Nix said, ominously. “It remembers what they were and what they became after.”
“You said this would spread by us entering?” Lark asked, trying to discern what that could mean.
“This thing,” Nix said, drifting toward the center of the chamber as though she were caught in a trance. “This entity is being unbound.”
Lark’s gaze focused on the center of the cave where the rimeshade’s corruption fed into a deep black void.
No, Lark realized, seeing it ripple along the surface of the abyss. That’s not a bottomless pit; it’s a pool.
Lark noted that the liquid surface was stagnant, unnaturally still in the calm air. The dark liquid, however, wasn’t the same as the rimeshade veins that fed into it. It lacked any flecks that spread frosty rime ice out of the dark veins.
“Nix, explain. What do you mean that the magic here remembers?” Lark asked.
“Your dragon is connected to this event in the past. He can show you through your bond better than I can describe it,” Nix said.
White Eye growled, the reverberation shaking dust off the cave ceiling.
Images came to Lark in fragments: dragons fighting in a war.
None of the images strung together in a coherent thought or emotion.
Lark received them as random snippets of dragons fighting one another.
Then one image came through clear enough for her understand.
It was a group of dragons all huddled together in this very chamber.
At the time it had taken place, the walls were bare of writing, but the dark pool was still at the center of the cave.
The dragons were gathered around it, their attention focused on it.
Though there was no wind or disturbance in the ground, a ripple passed over the liquid in the pool.
From within the glossy black void emerged a creature cloaked in the same liquid that made up the pool.
Overwhelming fear from all the dragons swelled in Lark’s link with White Eye.
“What is that?” Lark asked, staggering as she forced the scene to end.
“Lark, this magic that is unwinding here has been binding this entity,” Nix said, drifting closer to the pool’s edge.
“What entity, the pool of midnight?”
“This thing is what created the rimeshade. It’s how they came to be.”
“That can’t be,” Lark said. “The rimeshade are creatures born of the dark fae, sent by the Night Court to take over Sataran.”
Nix shook her head. “Not the Night Court alone or any individual fae court for that matter. When the dragon war ended, the war that sent the original twelve to seek Hyalites on Sataran, the dark fae didn’t want anything to do with this realm.
The magi, dwarves, elves, and orcs had already claimed large areas and were forging kingdoms. The fae wanted to cut all ties with this realm due to the conflicts that had arisen.
But there were these portals, pathways between worlds that would remain paper thin despite the faes’ attempts to separate themselves. ”
Like the pool Omirre spoke about in the Gosmer Mine, Lark thought.