Chapter 51 #2
The floor is cracked black marble slick with something old and dark, and every towering pillar throws long, uneven shadows in every direction.
A shadow wielder’s paradise.
My stomach sinks.
Across the nave, perhaps forty feet away, my opponent stands with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, as though he is welcoming me in his own abode.
He is tall, broad through the shoulders, dressed in fitted black armor that gleams dully beneath the fractured light.
His hair is the color of wet ink, cropped close at the sides and longer on top.
His face bears the sort of sharp, clean symmetry usually reserved for nobility or predators.
There is no tension in him or anticipation.
There is no sign that he views this as anything but a tedious obligation.
His eyes slide over me once then makes a tsk sound.
“Well,” he says, his voice carrying easily through the cathedral. “That is disappointing.”
I grit my teeth “You expected someone else?”
“I expected more.” His gaze drifts over my frame in naked dismissal. “This is the anomaly they’re whispering about? The one climbing too quickly?”
Once more, he mentions the anomaly and it makes me wonder if other warriors talk about me, if they whisper about my abilities or my prowess and how they do it. Do they actually respect me and find me worthy as an adversary, or do they…mock me as seems to be the case with the male in front of me.
He tilts his head to the side.
“Either the system is malfunctioning,” he muses, “or standards have fallen catastrophically.”
Rage flares hot in my chest.
“Enough talking,” I say as I attack.
A shadow explodes from beneath my feet and races up my arm, hardening into a jagged blade as I close the distance in a heartbeat and slash straight for his throat.
He does not move—at least not until the very last second. His white teeth gleam in a blinding light just before he shifts to the side.
My blade cuts through empty air.
His hand snaps out and catches my wrist. He does it so easily, as if I am moving slowly enough to be plucked from the air.
For one impossible second, our eyes meet. Another smirk. Then he twists my hand. Pain detonates through my arm as he hurls me against the nearest pillar.
I crash through ancient marble in a shower of shattered debris and hit the floor hard enough for the impact to bounce my skull against the ground.
My ears ring. My vision doubles.
But he gives me no time to rebound or even breathe. He’s once more on me.
Fuck.
A boot slams into my ribs before I can rise, launching me across the floor like trash. I skid through dust and broken stone, barely managing to roll aside before a lance of shadow spears through the spot where my head had been.
No. It’s not just a lance. It’s dozens of them.
So this is the gap between our levels, I think bitterly.
The lances erupt from the ground in a writhing forest of black spikes, tearing through marble with obscene ease.
I wrench my own shadows upward to block, but the moment they meet his they topple like a nail beneath a hammer. Not only can he command more of them, but they are stronger, more resilient, and just…more.
He walks toward me through the wreckage without urgency, just as if he was taking a midnight stroll. His pace is slow and calm. Not only because he knows I’m no match for him, but because he wants me to feel the difference in our levels of strength.
He could crush me so easily, but he doesn’t. That wouldn’t amount to a show, and it’s clear he’s putting one on right now.
By the Seven! And I thought Lis’ training was rough, but now, looking back, she was really holding back.
“You are not just weaker,” the male says, almost conversationally, while I force myself back to my feet.
“You are rash.” He gestures lazily as more shadows gather behind him, coiling upward like serpents obeying a master.
“Embarrassing, frankly. You do not deserve the praise you have been getting. ”
I bare my teeth and throw myself sideways just as the dark serpents strike.
They smash through pillars, walls, floors. Everything in their path is obliterated in violent bursts of stone and dust. One clips my shoulder and tears my flesh open to the bone. Another catches my thigh hard enough to send me spinning.
I force my bleeding leg to move and hurl three shadow blades from different angles while duplicating the broken spear shadow of a nearby shattered column, sending all of them at him at once.
He glances at them, then flicks his fingers.
Every construct I made freezes midair.
My blood runs cold. My mouth opens in shock as I stare at him.
His smile widens.
The shadows I created peel away from my control. Then, they come back to haunt me.
I barely throw myself behind a collapsed pew before my own weapons obliterate the stone where I stood, blasting it apart in a spray of razor-sharp fragments.
My pulse thunders in my ears.
He stole them. No… I don’t think he stole them. He overrode my control somehow. His mastery over Shadow Domain eclipses mine so completely that my—recently and hard earned—control means nothing in the face of his.
His boots crunch over rubble as he emerges through the settling dust like death given form. Shadows orbital lazily around him in shifting ribbons.
Then he speaks words that freeze the marrow in my bones.
“Let me show you,” he says softly, “what your domain looks like in capable hands.”
Darkness erupts outward from him like a living storm. The cathedral vanishes beneath it.
Shadows flood across the floor in violent waves, swallowing fractured moonlight, crawling up the pillars, the walls, the shattered pews, until the entire arena seems to plunge into night.
I leap backward on instinct, but the darkness moves faster than thought itself, coiling around my ankles before I can clear the ground.
It yanks.
I hit the marble hard enough to crack it.
Before I can rise, the shadows slam into my limbs and pin me spread-eagle against the floor.
My muscles strain violently. Nothing gives.
Eragon strolls toward me through the unrelenting black with ease.
“This,” he says, “is why imitation without mastery is pathetic.”
The shadows around his feet begin to rise. At first I think they are forming blades. But then, they take shape.
My shape.
W-what?
My lips tremble. My eyes twitch from the shock. I’d read something about imitation in regards to the Shadow Domain, but this…
No…
One after another, figures peel themselves from the darkness—black, featureless replicas of me, each one holding a weapon fashioned from surrounding shadows. There’s five of them. No… Ten… More?
My stomach twists.
He has not merely surpassed me. He has taken my own abilities and elevated them into mockery.
The first duplicate lunges.
I wrench one arm free through sheer force and bring my shadow up in time to block, but a second slams into my side before I can recover, then a third crashes into my jaw hard enough to send me skidding across the floor.
They descend together.
Every strike comes with my own fighting style—every lesson I’ve learned from Lis.
I barely manage to keep up.
Shadow blades crash against mine in showers of black sparks. One duplicate ducks low while another comes high, and I recognize the combination a heartbeat too late—because I mastered that recently.
A blade cuts deep across my stomach. Another tears through my shoulder. A third shadow drives its knee into my spine and sends me sprawling face-first into the floor.
Blood splatters across the marble.
Is there anywhere I’m not bleeding from? I no longer know…
Above me, Eragon watches with detached amusement.
“You are not simply outmatched,” he says. “You are mirrored.”
His eyes darken and the shadows surrounding him surge inward, folding over his body.
My chest tightens.My body feels…wrong. It’s wrong in a way I cannot explain.
My limbs are heavier. My reactions slower. My thoughts half a beat behind where they should be. When the next duplicate attacks, I move to counter exactly as I always would realize too late it has already anticipated me.
The blade punches through my forearm.
I scream in pain.
The duplicate rips the blade free, blood spurting everywhere.
Eragon smiles with glee.
“There,” he murmurs. “Much better.”
Cold dread floods me. He did not just steal my shadows. He stole everything that makes me me—my movements, my instincts, my idiosyncrasies. I am fighting in a body that no longer feels entirely mine.
The duplicates descend again. This time I fare worse—much, much worse.
A blade opens my ribs. A kick caves into my knee. Another strike catches me across the temple and momentarily shatters my vision.
I collapse against the base of a broken pillar, barely breathing.
Eragon disperses the duplicates with a flick of his hand and begins walking toward me, slow and unhurried, his boots echoing through the ruined cathedral like a funeral toll.
“You have talent,” he says. “Enough to become noteworthy, perhaps. Dangerous, in time.” He crouches before me, gaze cold and pitiless. “But talent means very little when still raw.”
He places one hand against my chest.
Shadow gathers there, dense and violent.
“Consider this mercy,” he says softly. He drives his power forward.
This is it. The final blow.
With all the strength I can muster, I glance toward the barrier where Moe is. For one singular moment, our gazes meet. Time stills.
My eyes become drenched in tears—or is it blood? Still, I do my best to look at her, to convey to her through my gaze what I can no longer do through words.
I’m sorry.
I should have done better
I shouldn’t have dragged you into this mess with me.
It’s…all my fault.
In that one second, my entire life seems to flash behind my eyes. The rejection I felt growing up, the loneliness of my formative years…until her.
I love you.
If there’s anything I can leave behind, even when my soul evaporates and ceases to exist, it’s my love for her.
I wish for that emotion to burst out of my chest and gain its own existence so it can continue to live on even when I no longer am.
I love you, Moe. And thank you. Without you, this last year would have been just as bleak as the previous ones. Without you, I would have gone on to believe that the entire world hates me.
You showed me for the first time what it means to be accepted… to be loved. You taught me how to love.
I stare at her, pain stronger than any blow reverberating through my soul.
I am so, so sorry.
Because of me… Because I am not strong enough, she is about to die, too. And I cannot accept that.
I am negligible. It doesn’t really make any difference to the world if I live or not. But she still has so much left to offer, so many more years left to live, to experience the world.
Her voice as she calls out for me echoes in my ears. She’s against the barrier, pushing at the invisible wall, clawing at it to get to me.
When she realizes she cannot do it, she turns to Lis, dropping to her knees and begging her.
Save him. Please save him.
Don’t let him die.
Lis might be strong, but she’s just another contestant. She has no control over the barrier or the arena. She shakes her head at Moe and tries to comfort her.
No. Please, you don’t understand. He cannot die. He’s my mate. He cannot die.
Lis tells her it will be fine, that she needs to calm down.
“M-oe,” I open my mouth, straining to say her name.
She hears it, turning toward me, her face tear-streaked, her eyes red.
“Nyk!”
Then, just as I stare death in the face, I realize what I need to do.
I move my gaze slightly until it lands on Lis. I hope she can understand my intention. If only I can relinquish my ownership over Moe and give it to her… Then if I die, she will not.
Our eyes meet, and she nods in understanding.