Chapter 10 Carbella #2
Hardin helped Pell regain his footing, his decision made. “We’re not waiting until midnight.” He turned to Quinthara, their thoughts aligning. “Can you sense how deep the magic in these runes goes? If we tried to destroy them here at the square, what would that do to the people?”
Together they extended their mental probe, searching the power within the runes.
“They run deep, feeding down into whatever is in that cave,” he concluded.
He got the sense from Quinthara that breaking them individually might hurt the people more than help them. If they were going to break this curse, they needed to break the runes all at once.
“Can we do it, though?” Hardin asked.
Quinthara’s determination agreed with him. They had to try.
He faced Marra again. “The caves were sacred for a reason. Our people should never have been forced to go in there.”
His sister’s eyes widened. “It’s down there, feeding. They need to keep it satiated, or it will—” She doubled over, the dark stains on her skin extending further up her neck.
Hardin supported Marra as she struggled to stay upright. The stains on her skin had spread noticeably in just the short time they’d been talking. Whatever was feeding on the townspeople’s life force had suddenly grown hungrier.
“Quin,” he said aloud, though their thoughts were already aligned. “We need to get into those caves. But if Thorgan is there…” Hardin felt a sensation. Quinthara shared her plan with him. An instant later he said. “Do it.”
Together, they approached the cave entrance. The runes glowed brighter as they neared, pulsing with a sickly rhythm that matched the mechanical movements of the townspeople.
Quinthara’s warning reverberated through Hardin.
She reared up, spreading her wings to cast a shadow over the mouth of the cave.
Drawing in a deep breath, she released. Where normally fire came blasting forth, she expelled a resonating hum that made the air itself vibrate.
The sound sent ripples through the flow of magic feeding the runes.
The effect was immediate. The townspeople stumbled, their rhythmic movements disrupted by the blast. At the sluice box, his mother dropped her bucket, water splashing across the ground as her hands flew to her head.
“Again,” Hardin urged, placing his hands on the stone beside the cave entrance. The magic was trying to reform its patterns. The spell was trying to maintain its grip on the people like magical wards tried to block people out.
Quinthara’s hum deepened, and she added a trickle of their own power. Hardin’s pride swelled as he marveled at her ingenuity.
A crack appeared in the stone, splitting one of the central runes.
The flow of magic began to unravel, but a force fought to stitch it back together.
A surge of bone-chilling air swelled up from deep within the cave.
Frost spread across the rocks, filling in the cracks where Quinthara’s draconic powers were disrupting the runes.
“It’s protecting itself,” Marra gasped from behind him.
Hardin felt it then. Layers of magic, like sheets of ice, one laid over another. Thorgan’s spells were just the surface. Beneath them lay an older power, something even more sinister.
Quinthara’s hum changed pitch, harmonizing with some deep note that Hardin could feel in his bones. The townspeople were stirring now, their movements becoming more natural as the spell’s hold weakened.
The frost from the cave spread faster, trying to reform the broken runes. But now Hardin understood. It wasn’t just about breaking the bindings. They had to sever the connection to whatever was feeding on his people’s life force.
Together, they ventured hesitantly into the cave.
The deeper they went, the colder it became.
Frost coated the walls in intricate patterns that mirrored the runes outside, glowing with the same white light.
They found a man who’d been carrying a bucket back down into the depths.
He was slumped against the wall. Hardin checked him, the man was unconscious but still breathing.
Others dotted the sides of the path as the cave transformed into something of an ice tunnel.
“Whatever or whoever is doing this, their magic is stronger here,” Hardin said, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked back at Quinthara. “Can you get them out?”
The dragon’s response was immediate. She carefully gathered those who’d fallen unconscious from a lack of energy. Using her wings to shield them from the biting cold, she backed out of the cave.
Hardin pressed forward alone. Eventually the passage opened into a larger frozen chamber.
He stopped short. These walls were covered in thick glacial ice.
Black veins shot through the ice, funneling toward a mound near the center of the cave where a human-sized pillar of washed stones rose up from the floor.
Veins of darkness flecked with silver light fused into the stoney monolith.
Resting atop the pillar was something Hardin had never seen before.
“Is that, an egg?” he breathed.
There was no mistaking it. The dragon egg was massive, bigger around than a round shield. Hardin was nearly six-feet tall and it would’ve come to hip height on him had it been resting on the ground.
That’s much larger than I imagined, he thought. Hardin had sung songs about the hatching grounds of the first twelve dragons, but he’d always imagined them being more the size of something that would contain a cat or a small dog.
It’s scaley green shell was the same hue as the emerald the Paragons and Knights wore to represent Storm Keep.
Despite its stunning magnificence, the dragon egg was crawling with the same darkness that crept its way through the ice.
Those same evil tendrils that were marking his loved ones and devouring the life force of everyone in his hometown.
“What’s causing this?” he whispered, edging farther into the frozen chamber.
Movement caught his eye. Governor Rodjex stepped out of the shadows.
Instantly Hardin recognized that this wasn’t the same man who’d been coaxed by Thorgan to take a bribe.
That initial crime had resulted in the debt that beset the first curse on his hometown.
Before, this man had resembled the image of perfect health with taut muscles, sharp features, and a thick hairline.
Now the governor appeared alien and sickly.
His skin was nearly translucent, almost glowing a faint green like that ebbing from the dragon egg.
His hair had thinned to the point of near baldness, the wrinkles on his skin sagged to soften his once handsome features.
The pattern of black lines crawling over the dragon egg also crawled across his skin.
Though it was frigid in the frozen cave, Rodjex wore an open robe exposing a blue amulet that bore the curse.
This was fused in a swarm of black tendrils at his chest. The tainted magic wormed from this amulet out through his veins.
“You shouldn’t have come back, Hardin,” he said through blue lips. “You should’ve taken these people’s money and started a new life.”
“I’m not like you, Rodjex. I’m not selfish enough to prey upon the town’s good will,” Hardin replied.
“Now that you’re back, I can’t let you leave. They won’t allow it,” Rodjex said, almost sadly.
“Who won’t? Thorgan, The Warlock King?” Hardin said, trying to stall so he could think of what to do next.
He now had the potential to use magic, but he lacked the training.
If it came to a fight, he was only trained in Dor Bishdo, which taught him purely defensive tactics, and he didn’t possess a weapon.
The flaws in his na?ve plan to free his home of the curse came into harsh focus.
“Thorgan is a mere tool of an Entity much larger than us. We’re servants following the Lady Sanj’s directives that are meant to bring a new race into power here in Sataran.
A race that is far greater than any human, mage, dwarf or elf alone.
We do as the rimeshade do and pray our preparations will coax the Void Drinker from its prison and bring forth a new era,” he said.
The temperature in the chamber plummeted as Rodjex raised his hands.
Behind him, the egg pulsed darker, the corruption spreading visibly across its surface.
Though he couldn’t see her, Hardin sensed Quinthara’s alarm.
She had recognized a clue hidden within her ancestral memories.
This giant egg was no ordinary dragon egg.
With the taint of rimeshade corruption transforming it, the egg would bring forth a creature that hadn’t been seen before on Sataran.
A variant of the dragons that had served the enemies who forced dragons to flee into Sataran.
This knowledge came to Hardin in a flash of visions, and finally, ended with the resounding sensation that the creature within the egg was stirring. It was about to hatch.
The amulet around Rodjex’s neck swelled with light. A dark vine of corruption rose from the egg.
“The first dragonriders were right to fear their power,” Rodjex said, his voice distorting further. “But they were fools to think it could be contained forever.”
Hardin felt Quinthara’s urgency as she rumbled toward them in the cave.
Are the people safe? he checked with her.
She sent him a vision of those who had been in the cave now safely placed in the square, but none had regained consciousness.