Chapter Twenty-Eight
C HAPTER T WENTY -E IGHT
The seventh moon slid into place behind its fellows, forming for the first time in a thousand years a straight line that blocked sunlight and all its reflections from reaching Lir. Only the stars were left in the heavens, but they shone so faintly that the world was effectively plunged into shadow.
In the depths of the moonless night, the dragons growled and huffed and beat their wings. The primitive racket, speaking to magic much older than these islands, was soon joined by a low rumbling from the crater below Alaric’s feet.
He glanced beyond the yacht. Embers of violet light bled upward in a slow and mesmerizing ascent from out of the darkness. In their glimmering multitudes, they shone like fireflies rising from the bushes in early summer as the dusk crept in.
But these “fireflies” carried death on their wings.
Alaric and Talasyn summoned their shields from aetherspace. Radiant light and black smoke, each other’s mirror. He felt a twinge of pride at how solid her shield was, such a far cry from the days when she hadn’t been able to conjure one at all.
I taught her that. Through the silver-flecked haze at the edge of his shield, he looked into her eyes, golden all over, blazing like high noon. We’re stronger together. He’d told her that after the guerrilla attack on the Citadel, and he’d never meant it more than he did now.
They brought their shields together at the same time that the Enchanters hovering around the volcano seized hold of the magic in the metalglass jars. Aether cores blazed and wires sparked, and Lightweave and Shadowgate melted into each other. The two shields expanded, flowing from Alaric’s grasp and Talasyn’s to transmute into that familiar shimmering sphere, covering the entire peak of Aktamasok in a dome of black and gold.
From the belly of the volcano, the Voidfell came screeching forth, an eruption of molten amethyst, as hot and rich as lava. It crashed into the lower half of the barrier and—
—and truth be told, Alaric hadn’t been expecting it to hit that hard. They could have trained for years instead of months, and he still wouldn’t have been able to brace for the magnitude of it. Nothing could have prepared him. It was a thousand—no, a million void cannons all at once. The impact reverberated through the sphere, rattling his teeth, rocking the butterfly-wing yacht from side to side. The metalglass jars of the amplifying configuration swayed, coming dangerously close to tipping over.
Talasyn reacted quickly. Her hand slashed through the air, plucking out several threads of Lightweave from the interior of the sphere. She spun them into ropes, and at her command they wrapped around fore and aft, while she took care to control the magic so it wouldn’t cut through the hull.
The other ends of the ropes, she connected back to the sphere. The yacht held still, tangled up in strings of golden magic that lashed it securely to the barrier’s curved, glimmering walls.
Alaric blinked. “Good idea.”
“I’ve been known to have them from time to time!” she snapped.
He hastily disguised a chuckle as a cough. Now was no time to be bickering.
The Void Sever flared brighter, pushing against the eclipse sphere with surge upon surge of raw, unbridled might. For the next several minutes, Alaric and Talasyn were kept busy reinforcing their barrier, channeling more magic into the weaker spots. It was a feat of immense effort and concentration. Talasyn was turning pale and Alaric was tiring far too fast. With each blow, the yacht strained within the bright cords that secured it.
After all the months of training, they were still so unprepared. Despite the amplifiers carrying their aethermancy to greater heights, they felt like they were trying to stand unmoved in the kind of howling wind that bent oak trees in half.
“Alaric.” Talasyn forced his name out through gritted teeth. “There …” She pointed to a star-shaped whorl of violet pulsing into existence below them, spreading swiftly through the swirl of sun and midnight.
Alaric moved his arm—tendons nearly snapping in half at the effort—to pull strands of shadow magic over the crack in the shield. Talasyn followed suit with her light. The amethyst seam began to close up, but a second one appeared above it.
The sphere groaned .
He glanced at their ship’s timepiece set into the control bridge alongside the transceiver. How was it possible that so little time had passed? His exhaustion had sunk deep into his bones, and his vison swam with lambent black dots.
“Forty-five more minutes,” he said, as much for his own benefit as Talasyn’s. The sound of his own voice came as a shock to him. It was almost his father’s voice, cracked and worn. His throat hurt from the simple act of speaking. “Forty-five minutes, and it will be over. We have to hold on until then.”
She gave a weak nod. She was covered in sweat, shaking violently, her eyes like fire. “Stay with me,” she whispered.
His breath hitched. “You know I will.”
The barrier rippled with several more splinters of amethyst light. They exchanged a look and then sent out another blast of combined magic, new waves of black and gold patching over the cracks. He could have screamed with the effort required to produce it. Both of them were drawing on their reserves of strength, and it was still only the beginning of the ordeal.
A wisp of Voidfell broke through the barrier. Bright and crackling, and yet no more than a wisp—but it traveled at the speed of lightning and lashed at the left side of Alaric’s face. For a terrifying moment, amethyst was all that he could see. The pain was hot at first, splattering on his face like droplets of candle wax, and then it was a hundred sharp little teeth digging into his flesh, spreading beneath his mask.
It was the most human of instincts to clap a hand over that side of his face as he sank to one knee. The metal interior of his mask dug into the raw skin and he doubled over, and through the furious song of agony roaring in his ears he heard Talasyn screaming. Out of his right eye he saw a much larger current of Voidfell breaking through the sphere—
—and barreling directly toward him.
She was by his side before he knew it, one hand on the back of his neck, the other held out above him, fingers splayed against the oncoming amethyst glow. A section of combined Lightweave and Shadowgate peeled away from the sphere’s interior wall and washed over the intruding void magic, driving it back.
Talasyn was controlling the eclipse barrier all by herself. Her hand was incandescent at the edges, as though she were being eaten away by all that black and gold. The veins along her wrist and the inside of her forearm reddened and blistered, like the beginnings of frostbite, like burn marks, branching against her olive skin.
Alaric was in so much pain that he could barely think. But one thing was clear to him, the certainty of it anchoring him before he could drift away: he would not let Talasyn burn.
More splinters of violet collided against the pulsing sphere, cleaving to it, worming their way in. Alaric rose to his feet and Talasyn’s hand fell away from his nape as their magic gathered around him. He took hold of the threads of it, and together they blazed beneath the sevenfold eclipse. Magnified by the amplifiers of rain and blood and tempest, another wave of Lightweave and Shadowgate engulfed the Voidfell, sealing the cracks.
No more appeared.
Just as Alaric was starting to experience a shred of relief, just as the pain shooting through the left side of his face was starting to cool—
—just as he was starting to think that the worst was over—
—the entire lower half of the sphere bent upward , as though some enormous fist were attempting to punch through it from underneath.
Alaric and Talasyn scrambled to fight off this new attack. Despite failing to regain its former shape, the barrier held fast against the blows that pummeled it. But—
“I—don’t—like—this.” Talasyn was wheezing, choking out her words. “It feels … the harder we push, the more it pushes back—like—”
“—like it’s sentient,” Alaric finished for her. “Like it’s fighting us.”
Ishan checked in with them. Although her voice was nigh inaudible over the shriek and hum of magic, it was apparent that she was winded from the task of controlling the amplifiers’ aether cores. “Your Majesties. I know you can’t exactly respond right now, but something is off . The dragons are restless. And there are— noises . From inside the volcano.”
Of course there are noises, Alaric thought. The Voidfell is moving through the earth.
Now that he knew to listen for it, however, he could hear something. Beyond the discordant notes of Lightweave and Shadowgate and Voidfell bleeding in from aetherspace, beyond the rumbling of the ground and the faint cries of the dragons, there was something else. A combination of breathing and snuffling, like a snake slithering over loose rock. He could tell from the look on Talasyn’s face that she heard it, too.
How loud it must be if they could distinguish it from within the sphere, from amidst the maelstrom.
Suddenly, the Void Sever deactivated, its waves retreating into the crater. From afar it must have looked as though the volcano sharply sucked in its violet-plumed breath. Tendrils of amethyst death crawled back into the dark bowels of the earth from where they’d sprung. Alaric and Talasyn banished the sphere and collapsed onto the yacht’s deck. Right on cue the cold swept through him, and he reached for her in desperate exhaustion, pressing his forehead to hers.
She cradled his face in her overheated palms. The aftereffects of their combined magic receded slowly. Her fingers curled carefully, so carefully, over the metal mask and his skin, steering clear of where he’d been hit by the Voidfell. And that was how he knew that something was wrong. Even before she gasped out, “Alaric. Your face—gods—”
His heart dropped. It was instinct, too, how he made to twist away from her, but she held him in place, kissing the bridge of his nose, and then pressing her lips to the carved wolf’s snarl of his mask. A balm, a blessing. Grace.
“I’m all right,” he mumbled. It was true; the stinging was gone, leaving behind only a dull ache. “It’s nothing …”
He trailed off as his gaze darted to her right arm.
The blisters had disappeared, smoothed away by her body’s magical tolerance. But the pattern of her veins remained etched in bright scarlet, from her wrist to the inside of her elbow.
He couldn’t even touch her arm in order to get a closer look. He was too afraid that the clawed points of his gauntlets would hurt her.
The world came flooding back to his consciousness, a rush of volcanic rock and humid air, and it was—
—still dark. Save for the light of the stars and the fire lamps of the ships.
The dragons had gone eerily silent.
“It’s too soon.” Talasyn crawled over to the aetherwave transceiver, checking the yacht’s timepiece. “Daya Vaikar,” she said, “there’s still thirty minutes of eclipse left, why did the Void Sever—”
“I don’t know,” said Ishan. Her tone was hushed. Mystified.
“Maybe we scared it off,” Alaric said with a grunt, which earned him a pointed glare from his wife. He didn’t care, though. He never wanted to move again.
But when the rumbling began anew and Talasyn scrambled to her feet, so did he. They peered down into the crater, and Alaric saw with the eyes of the Shadowforged the open mouth and the rows of gargantuan teeth barreling toward them.
He dove for the yacht’s controls, firing up its Squallfast hearts, yanking on the steering wheel.
“ What is it? ” Talasyn demanded, clinging to the guardrail.
He didn’t bother to respond. She’d find out soon enough. He barked orders over the aetherwave, orders for Ishan and her Enchanters to get away. He pushed the yacht into a steep ascent, and behind him Talasyn swore loudly as the fire lamps on the bow illuminated what had risen from the belly of Aktamasok.
Their little ship cleared the crater, the fanged mouth chasing after it. The fanged mouth first, then the rest of the long, tapered snout.
Then the ridged brow, the curving horns, the violet reptilian eyes.
All of it unfolded from within the chasm on a white-scaled neck almost as broad as Lir’s straits. The moons were gone and the stars spiraled on, and Bakun the World-Eater, the first dragon, vast and roaring and as old as time, raised its head over the volcanic summit, unhinging its jaws wide in a guttural scream of rage and grief that echoed through the very foundations of earth and sky.