Chapter 3
WRITTEN IN FROST
Lark rushed out of the chamber and into the crag, her pounding footsteps echoing off the stone walls. The dark veins of rimeshade corruption were gone, but the thin layer of rime frost remained.
“It’s on the move!” Lark said, her mind racing in trying to understand what had transpired. White Eye and Nix followed close behind.
As they ran, Lark tested her wrist. Somehow, the channeling of so much regenerative power had healed her.
She prodded at her side but felt no pain or wetness from the stab wound.
The immense amount of magic she’d allowed to pass through her would’ve killed most magi.
But Lark had White Eye and Nix to share the load.
I was controlling it in the beginning, she thought. I managed to weave together both sources of power for a short time.
You’ve never combined them successfully before, Nix replied to her thoughts.
White Eye hummed with confusion. This was new to dragonriders of their era. No other rider they knew of had ever successfully combined these two channels of magic.
“I lost control,” Lark said. “It was because of me that the runes unraveled.”
“The thing that created the rimeshade… The entity that was in that pool, it absorbed each of the draconic and fae powers once they had unwound,” Nix replied.
I gave it the strength it needed to break free, Lark worried.
“We can track it. It’s leaving traces,” Nix said, watching as the frost thawed to water, dripping down the walls as it melted.
“We can’t let it leave the sanctuary,” Lark said, sprinting to the crag entrance, White Eye and Nix close on her heels, both ready to fight whatever they encountered.
Before they emerged into the courtyard, Lark skidded to a stop. She quickly tracked the lines of frost trailing the creature’s path. Ice collected in its wake, seeming to gather around any runes carved into paving stones within reach.
“Those runes still hold magic,” Lark said. “The frost is collecting around them, like it’s concentrating on the dragonriders’ stores of power.”
“It’s feeding on the energy stored within them,” Nix observed.
White Eye stepped forward and drew in a breath to release a blast of dragon fire that would melt away the entity’s grip on the runes.
“Wait,” Lark said, stopping him. “Whatever that thing is, it’s consuming energy as it encounters it. If you breathe fire on it, it could expose a pathway to your draconic power. If it got hold of it, it might syphon off us and weaken us both.”
White Eye shifted his body, butting his side up against her and nibbling with his lips at the bed roll secured to the back of Lark’s saddle.
“What’s gotten into you?” Lark asked, checking to see what was irritating him.
Lark’s eye was pulled to the bed roll. There, hidden underneath, she noticed the black sheath of a brismil sword. The scabbard carved from a dragon’s fang had been carefully concealed and secured to the saddle.
“My brismil,” Lark realized. “I should be using my armor. It might protect me against any syphoning attack the entity will use.”
She quickly flipped up the saddle blankets to reveal Nightfang. Wrapped around the sheath were the leather straps of her scale harness. To her joy, she found the matching black scale still snugly in place.
Lark unwound the harness, slipped it on under her tunic, and locked the scale tight to her side.
A surge of strength flowed through her; every inch of her body tingled with potential energy until she was filled with naturally recharging strength.
She drew her sword from the scabbard. Nightfang’s impressive size was as light as a switch in her hand.
All three of them detected movement at the same time.
At the far end of the icy trail extending the length of the square, a dark figure passed through a doorway.
Tendrils of midnight trailed on the ground behind as he or she slid over the set of stone steps and into one of the community’s few preserved buildings.
Lark tightened her grip on her sword hilt as they traversed the frozen courtyard, approaching the open doorway.
The blade’s familiar energy mixed with the two bonds at her disposal offered a welcome warmth against the unnatural chill.
Ancient pillars flanked the doorway; their surfaces etched with dragonrider runes currently filled in with crystalized ice.
She read the sign over the door before it frosted over completely.
“It’s gone into the archives,” Lark whispered. Her breath formed puffs of fog in the cold air. “Why would it go there?”
White Eye’s claws scraped against stone as he moved closer.
He lowered his massive head to peer into the darkness beyond the doorway.
He sniffed the stone, then sent Lark the sensation that the magic protecting this place had dissipated as well.
This strange being, whatever this entity was, seemed to be passing through powerful wards as though they didn’t exist.
It’s like Hardin’s Ward Walking abilities, only the magic of the wards melts away or disappears altogether, she thought.
She stepped forward, Nightfang raised before her. As she gripped it, a question drifted through her mind. Is my newly healed arm strong enough to withstand a fight with this creature, even with the brismil armor?
Inside the archives, the line of frost spread across the stones for the length of the building.
It wound its way up and down row after row of bookshelves.
Every row Lark inspected as they passed by had been ransacked.
Scrolls and texts were strewn on the ground everywhere.
She had to suppress her desire to stop and read them.
She would love to tap into the ancient dragonrider knowledge these texts held.
“What is it searching for?” she asked.
A crash echoed from deep within the building. Glass shattered on stone. Lark jerked toward the noise, her body tensing for battle. White Eye’s growl sent threatening vibrations through the ground. Nix trailed just behind them, her small ethereal form glowing with fire.
“The vault,” Lark said, the thought coming to her through White Eye’s realization.
“There’s a vault in the archives?” Nix asked.
“That’s where they would keep the most dangerous artifacts,” Lark replied. She didn’t know it until she’d opened her mind to the ancestral knowledge that White Eye shared through their bond.
As she started forward, White Eye curled his tail forward, momentarily blocking her path. He nudged her toward the floor, where Lark noticed the frost patterns changing. Where White Eye indicated, they were spreading outward like cracks forming on glass.
“It’s not just consuming magic. It’s starting to use it,” Lark said.
More shattering sounded deeper in the archives. The breaking glass sound mixed with something else… a rhythmic scraping, like claws against stone.
“We need to reach the vault before—”
The patterns of frost around them began to move and come to life.
Raised spines of frost coalesced, growing as they converged ahead of the trio.
Hundreds upon hundreds of spines built until it took on two humanoid shapes.
Before these beings’ true forms were revealed, black smoke formed like cloaks over their bodies, but Lark saw their faces under their hoods.
Nearly human, their skin had a silvery frost, and their eyes were white as snow.
Blue patterns glowed as the glyphs tattooed all over their bodies became exposed to the air.
“Rimeshade,” Lark said through clenched teeth.
Icy white blades trailing black smoke formed in their hands much the same way brismil did for dragonriders. Then they attacked.
Lark met the first rimeshade, blocking his sword with Nightfang.
She hoped the clash would shatter the icy blade, but instead, the clang of blades rang through the archives.
The resulting vibration was so strong, it sent pain through Lark’s newly healed bones.
The rimeshade moved with unnatural speed, his sword whistling through the air where Lark’s head had been just a moment earlier.
She ducked, feeling the chill as it passed overhead.
White Eye’s tail swept through the narrow space, forcing the second rimeshade to leap back. Her dragon shared his strategy of attack with Lark. She keyed in on his instincts, realizing it would require all three of them to coordinate without giving one another away.
Nix erupted in a burst of orange flame, forcing the rimeshade to go on the defensive. Look at the script on their skin. It’s like the fae script from the cave, she projected into Lark’s mind.
Lark recognized it now as she parried another strike.
The glowing blue tattoos weren’t just random patterns.
They matched the symbols woven among the dragonrider runes in the cave.
Lark stabbed at the rimeshade. She missed.
Nix and White Eye moved in between in an attempt to keep the rimeshade from joining together and regrouping.
The brismil was giving her strength, but Lark knew she was going to fade quickly. She’d been stretched thin for too long. Her pendant grew warmer against her chest as she pressed forward, Nightfang narrowly missing each strike.
The first rimeshade hissed a sound like cracking ice.
He brought his blade down in an overhead arc, but Lark was ready.
She caught the strike with her sword, the brismil blade clanging against the corrupted creature’s as she batted it to the side.
Behind her, she heard Nix’s magic snapping as she assailed the second rimeshade.
White Eye’s presence filled her mind with strategy. He needed Nix to work with him to beat the rimeshade.
Work together, Lark projected into Nix’s mind.