Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Falling into death was a lot like falling asleep.
Waves of black rose up on either side of me, tunneling my vision, making my balance sway. I hit the ground and a heaviness immediately followed—one that made my eyelids droop and my limbs feel sluggish and clumsy. If I could have just rested a moment, then maybe…
( You can’t rest here. )
The voice in my head was familiar, yet far away, like something from a memory. I tried to pinpoint its origin, anyway, stumbling along with my too-heavy body, reaching out with tingling hands.
The very air seemed to be fighting against me. Collecting against me, too, the particles of it settling on my chest and making it harder and harder to breathe.
Panic started to sink in, until, somehow, Orin’s instructions parted through the drowsy fog in my brain. My fingers fumbled along my wrist until they closed over the bracelet I needed—my red-beaded bracelet with its golden charm. Just touching that charm was enough to send a jolt of confidence shooting through me.
“ Siphonus, ” I whispered.
The air sparkled with a myriad of colors, suddenly—all the different shades of life and magic surrounding me. With some effort, I could partially make out the shape of the Nocturnus Road itself—a relatively clear outline beneath everything else.
The second most prevalent energy swirling around me held no definite shape. It was the color of a sky at twilight, rippling like a protective shroud over the road, masking large swaths of it.
This was the chaos Orin had warned me about; likely made up of the residual memories of all the ones who had walked this road an age ago. An energy contained within the stones of the road itself, at one point, but now it had grown restless after being left to fester and swell on the abandoned path for so long. I’d seen similar colors swirling around abandoned graveyards.
Life left a lasting imprint, even in the most desolate, forgotten places.
With a flourish of my hand, I pulled bits of the chaotic energy away from the road, trying to drain them and clear my path forward. They resisted. I dug in my heels, clenched my bracelet more tightly, and tried again. And again.
Finally, I felt a line of it shifting—like a stubborn vine breaking free from the grip of thorns, nearly throwing me off balance as it snapped toward me.
Like it always did, the spell left me feeling like I might topple over with the slightest breeze. Draining did not mean dissipating; energy did not simply disappear. It had to go somewhere—into me, in this case—and I’d yet to learn how to stay balanced while the bits and pieces of other things redistributed themselves into my body.
When it all finally settled, I looked up and tried to orient myself.
I’d cleared my path, but it was one that seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions.
Remembering my newest bracelet, I lifted it in front of me and grasped both of the large amethyst stones—the hot one above and the cold one below. I thought of where I wanted to go, as Orin had told me to do, and I squeezed tightly. The hot and cold of the gems seemed to meld inside of me, bringing a comforting, warm certainty into my limbs.
As I relaxed into the feeling, I felt a pulling sensation taking hold of me—the same kind that had urged me to step through the doorway in the shrine.
Once again, I followed it.
Dizziness still threatened, but I broke into a jog, determined to reach the end of the road before the twilight energies I’d absorbed had time to be replenished, to converge and block my path once more.
After what felt like a mile of pushing my way through thickening darkness, the same heaviness from earlier began chasing me. The farther I went, the more tempting the heaviness became. It nearly made my knees buckle more than once. If I could have simply knelt for a moment, maybe rested my head…
( You can’t rest here. )
There it was again—closer this time. I clambered toward the voice as if caught in the crashing, pulling surf of a restless ocean, trying to make my way back to the shoreline.
My foot caught on something. I tripped, only just catching myself against the road I could barely see. I twisted back around, searching, reaching for the knife near my boot.
Phantom’s eyes blinked back at me.
If not for those familiar blue eyes, I likely wouldn’t have recognized him. He was in a strange shape as he slinked closer; something serpentine, but with powerful legs, clicking talons, and a sharply-tipped tail.
And he was… solid .
Solid enough that I’d actually tripped over him.
“Are you…?”
He lifted his tapered snout and huffed out a breath that sent a puff of shimmering, warm dust into the air. Though his shape was more dragon-like than dog-like at the moment, he was still covered in waves of sleek black fur. Solid black fur. It glistened in the breath of energy he’d exhaled.
( Let’s just hurry and get away from this road. It feels chaotic. Unstable .)
Despite all my burning questions, I followed his lead as he broke into a sprint. His footfalls were quiet—yet not the silent steps I was used to hearing from his more ghostly form. We ran together down a gradually steeper slope until, soon enough, my feet fell upon soft, spongy ground.
I slowed, taking in my surroundings. The scent of damp, rotting earth overtook me at first, but a sweeter aroma—like freshly-picked berries—eventually fought its way toward me as well. Ethereal wisps of fog snaked through the air. Beyond its swirling, I could see the outlines of distant trees draped in shadow and edged in what seemed to be starlight—though there were no stars above that I could see.
It was desolate. Foreboding. Frightening. And yet…
It was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen.
Walking through it made me feel as if I were floating. As if all of the questions and fears weighing me down were suddenly gone. Not simply dead and buried…but gone.
The feeling of liberation, unfortunately, didn’t last.
As we reached the starlight-edged trees, the temperature dropped alarmingly quickly. An odd wind whispered around us, making it feel even colder. My skin tingled with warning, as though lightning was building somewhere nearby, preparing to strike.
I jerked my head up in search of an oncoming storm.
The entire ‘sky’ might have passed for a tempestuous cloud; one continuous, lightning-filled cloud, shifting between shades of black, red, and grey. The way it simmered and seethed reminded me of the volcanic fields I’d once visited as a child, in the Ember Islands off Valoria’s eastern coast—only the colors were more muted, and somehow more ominous because of it.
My stomach flipped.
How had I already let my guard down?
Beautiful though it might have been, this was a dark place. A dangerous place. I didn’t truly belong here, and I needed to stay focused so that I could accomplish my task and then leave it all behind as soon as possible.
I abruptly realized Phantom was not behind me, and the anxious fluttering in my stomach became painful.
I found him just before panic truly set in; he stood beside a narrow stream of silvery water, gazing at his reflection. He was back to something that resembled his original canine form.
“You’re almost solid,” I commented, still unable to fully believe it.
( More suited to the dead world than the living, it would seem .) He wagged his tail, and was promptly distracted by the sound of it actually thumping against the ground. He chased it for a few seconds—clearly enamored with the fact that he might actually be able to grasp it in his jaws for the first time in years—before collecting himself and settling back into a more dignified sitting position. ( I feel light here, even though I’m more solid. )
I frowned; I still felt that way, too—as if I could float away and forget about the world above, if I really wanted to.
It was unsettling, how dangerously alluring death could be.
“Let’s not get used to it,” I told him. “We have a job to do here. Nothing else.”
Phantom stood, giving his body a hard shake. He lifted his gaze to mine, expectant.
I adjusted the weight of the bag on my shoulders and set off, and he didn’t hesitate to follow.
“From a topographical standpoint, the dead world mirrors the living, in many ways,” I said to Phantom as we walked, reciting the lessons Orin had given me on the matter. “So we’ll follow the route east, just as if we were returning to Rose Point in the world above. That will hopefully lead us to the place where the Light King’s sword carved out a path for the rot of this realm to bleed through…”
Phantom trotted along beside me, mostly listening, though his ears occasionally perked and his hackles lifted at what I assumed were distant sounds too quiet for my own senses to pick up on.
My eyes darted all around us, scanning for landmarks I might be able to orient myself by. I was trying to maintain my optimism, to keep myself grounded in the knowledge that this place was only a reflection of where I came from; I wasn’t that far from home, really.
But the longer I studied it all, the more this particular swath of the Underworld seemed entirely removed from the living realm I’d left behind.
To my left, a great chasm split through the ground, wild and twisting, a murky ocean of dark fog and scattered wisps of white energy filling it. I veered farther and farther to the right as I walked, trying to put more space between myself and the chasm’s precarious edge, but that only led me to looming mountains with cracked and crumbling faces. There were piles of rubble at the base of these mountains, and stripped, gutted grooves that suggested prior landslides, making me hesitant to wander too close.
Despite the ominous surroundings, however, our journey proved uneventful for several miles—until I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye: Dark, shadowy bodies with strands of gossamer white energy tangled like spiderwebs around them.
The restless, wandering souls of the dead.
They were a jarring sight, even though I’d expected to see them here.
Orin had warned that, given my innate magic, there was little chance of me being able to walk through this morbid landscape without causing some sort of disturbance. It was only a question of how much and how many I would disturb—and how dangerous that disruption might prove.
I kept my eyes straight ahead, determined not to get distracted. The amount of chaos my power and I could potentially wreak in this dead world was immeasurable. It was imperative that I chose one path to follow and followed it to the end.
But the souls continued to follow me down my chosen path, too.
Perhaps it was my magic inadvertently fueling them somehow, but they seemed more sentient than I would have expected. They slowed when I slowed. Turned when I turned. A few made movements on their own, too, sweeping wider and out of my line of sight—almost as if they were dividing and preparing to attack from all sides.
Phantom voiced my fears a moment later: ( They’re trying to surround us, I think .)
I broke into a run.
Ahead, the terrain became messier, the mountains I’d been traveling alongside easing into my path, into foothills full of uneven ruts, path-blocking boulders, and jutting rock formations of all shapes and sizes. I set my eyes on two particularly large slabs of stone rising up in the distance, a narrow passage cutting between them. If we could get through that narrow gap, hopefully…
I didn’t think beyond this. I only ran faster. Just as I reached the opening to the gap, I caught a flash of swirling white energy diving toward me.
A terrible coldness wrapped around my ankles. Fingers slipped beneath my pant leg and clenched into my skin—not quite a solid touch, but enough to knock me off balance. I stumbled. Stayed on my feet. Kicked at the reaching fingers, gasping as my boot went through them. As an even deeper cold sank into my bones—
And then something struck the fiend that was attacking me, drawing a sound like howling wind from it as its hold on me slipped.
I was free.
I didn’t stop to try and make sense of how , or of what had just happened—not until I was on the other end of the gap.
Phantom raced ahead of me, bolting out onto a sweeping expanse of dark, uneven, but mostly clear ground.
Breathing hard, I straightened and glanced over my shoulder. The sound of howling wind persisted. An odd energy funneled through the gap behind me. I risked a few steps back into that gap, just until I could see the opposite side again.
Nothing else was there—dead or otherwise—aside from the creature that had tried to attack me. It was shriveling up, turning to nothing more than wisps of smoke that occasionally curled into the vague shape of a human.
Disturbing—but harmless now, I thought.
An arrow lay on the ground beside it. One that seemed to have sucked the sentience out of the wandering soul and put it to rest, somehow. Whoever—or whatever —had fired that magical arrow…had they been trying to help me escape?
“Thank you?” I called out, unsure of what else to say, and hoping good manners might coax my protector out of hiding.
I received no reply.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I climbed the rocks to my right until I came to a large, flat ledge that afforded a better view. I searched for several minutes, but…no sign of anything, spectral or otherwise.
Oh well.
I jumped down and continued on my way. And as I emerged on the other side, I quickly forgot about what I’d left behind, my attention grabbed instead by a grove of flowering white trees that had suddenly appeared in the distance.
“That grove wasn’t glowing so brightly before,” I whispered to Phantom as he raced back to my side. “Was it?”
He growled in response, the air around him darkening as he stalked forward. His body shifted as easily as it had in the world above, but arguably more impressively, now; rather than shadows tumbling chaotically about as they had in the past, watching him change here was like watching ink spill upon a page, only to arrange itself into the shape of a perfectly accurate drawing.
This time, the ink became the dragon shape he’d taken on the bridge—with the addition of wings. He flexed those leathery appendages but didn’t take flight; only pressed them back against his lean shape, streamlining his body, making it even faster.
I lost track of the blur he became as he hurtled into the trees.
Those trees reacted strangely as I stepped into their embrace, their white flowers blooming with sudden ferocity and expanding to their full diameter in the span of seconds—only to shrivel up in the next breath. Several of them burst as they withered and compressed to their most compact point, showering me with fragrant petals as they did.
Incredibly bright , fragrant petals.
After so much time in the darkness outside of this grove, the effect was blinding.
Squinting against the light, I carefully picked my way down a narrow path. Even as my eyes adjusted, the brightness made my head ache. Deeper inside the grove, the trees grew more scattered, which meant less petals to blind me—but countless other things seemed to be glowing at this point, too; the veins of leaves; clusters of berries; little mushrooms lining the trails. And the warm, close air, while pleasant at first, soon became sweltering. Paths crisscrossed in a labyrinth-like fashion—well-manicured, yet leading nowhere clear.
I finally caught up with Phantom at the center of four of these paths.
( I think we should leave this place. It was a mistake to enter it. )
I was nodding along with him before he finished the thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to follow him as he turned and slinked away in search of an exit.
Something in the distance had caught my eye.
I stumbled a few steps closer, until I was certain of what I saw, and I froze.
Less than a hundred feet away, reclining against a massive silver tree with his eyes closed, was a man who looked exactly like the King of Elarith.