Chapter 36 Silver Flight
Silver Flight
Wake up, Auryn'reh Solah!
Open your eyes. The bed shakes, and it is not a dream. You are no longer in the Sight, no longer in the arms of your Silari. Wake fast. See the world that would rebel against your light.
War has come, burdened with the weight of all the lives entangled in the balance of its outcome.
Wake. Wake. Wake. Wake!
You gasp, lungs filling with air that tastes of smoke and ash and fear. The stone groans around you, dust spilling from the beams overhead. Something pounds against a barrier. A colossal impact. An explosion.
BAM!
Another shockwave rolls through, setting your teeth on edge. Not quaking earth. Not steel. Not drums pounding in the deep.
The sound of wards breaking, magic cracking beneath immense pressure and heat. You cannot see it, but you know—the Gliders have come. They are bombarding the wards, and the magic will not hold. It screams and wails and keens. The Veilweave bends beneath raw force and relentless bombardment.
Your gaze shoots to the shimmer above your bed.
Another ward—Kailorien’s. Gold-veined, anchored to his mana, woven so delicately it would have been invisible if not for your Manasight.
Your chest tightens. He swore he'd come for you—and yet he tries to keep you here.
You raise your hand, weaving silver through your fingertips.
The ward shudders, resists, then breaks apart with a crack like ice splitting on a lake.
You don't stop to think. Pulling on your leather pants and tunic then a pair of boots, you run.
The corridor outside seethes with panic. Reskala run past, menders drag bandages and tinctures, the acrid sting of smoke cuts your throat like hairline blades. Your boots slap stone, carrying you deeper into the fortress.
Pressure squeezes your lungs. An unnatural sensation. One you've felt before.
The rift. It's coming.
You search for Riftwardens, meandering through hallways and empty rooms. But they are gone. Not a single one crosses your path. Just more and more soldiers streaming toward the battlements, passing commands from Wing captains one by one.
“Support the courtyard!”
“Breach! Breach!”
“Gather the last from the east wall! Bring water for the fires!”
“Menders needed at the west!”
People run past you, nearly trampling you in their haste, hardly noticing you. Fight against them, Auryn'reh. You are too small, too slight against this tide. Keep moving. Burst through the current of bodies. Breathe, but don't stop moving. If you stop, you will die. They will all die.
Where is Kailorien? Where are the Wing captains? Isn't anyone commanding the divisions?
Run. Run. Run.
Around the next bend, you nearly trip over a group of Reskala slumped against the wall. Blood slicks their armor, one clutching a gut wound, another gasping through broken ribs. A mender sits beside them, wrapping bandages around their wounds.
Useless.
You can already see how death has marked them. Leave them. Keep running. They are only bodies, and you are the Numen—
Silence!
I am Auryn'reh, and I will not leave these men here because you've deemed them unworthy of the Numen's heart.
I shudder, taking a breath. Willing my racing heart to slow. Nausea rises in my belly, but I push it down. When I open my eyes again, the Reskala's eyes bore into mine. Desperate. Relieved.
“Sokar!” one rasps, reaching for me with trembling hands. “Your Radiance!”
That title isn't mine, but it must be. For now. If these men, if Kailorien, needs me to be the Sokar—if that is what it takes for me to stay with him and find compassion for this world—then I will bear it.
I drop to my knees, yanking a strip of bandage out of the mender's pack and cinching it tight around a soldier’s arm. “Easy now. Breathe…where are the Wardens?”
“Battlements!” another wheezes. “We needed every glyph against the bombs—the wards have shattered!”
It happens in an instant.
A blast. A shove. A yank on the back of my neck. Pain in my skull.
Stone and fire tears through the corridor, hurling us backward. I slam into the floor, ears ringing, copper flooding my tongue. My nose feels wet—blood running freely down my lip. I stare at the broken pieces of the ceiling, the world tilting up and down beneath me.
The ground roars.
Above, a chunk of stone from the ceiling falls toward me.
With sheer willpower, I force my body to roll, moving until the stones land beside me. The rest of the ceiling comes down in a thunder of debris. I stagger upright, gasping.
“Are you all ri—“ I turn to the injured Reskala and the mender beside me, but they don't move. Limbs mangled. Armor crushed. Eyes staring sightlessly into the Void.
Already gone.
Lives spent in moments.
The ringing in my ears thins, replaced by something worse. A sound not meant for mortal throats.
“Resh! Resh! Resh! Resh!”
It's everywhere—inside the broken walls, inside my bones. Not voices, but the drumming of death’s wings.
A chant like prayer, rising in frenzy. The explosion ripped open a hole in the wall.
Cold air from outside whips my hair behind me.
Pitch black out there. No light. Nothing.
Just the chanting, pulsing like a war drum.
Kail! Please answer me!
I cry into the Bond. But the thread is wrong—thin, stretched, distorted. As if something claws between us. As if some unnatural magic pulls at the thread from a different side.
Kailorien!
My voice echoes back in silence. Panic stabs deep. I turn to the dead Reskala, grief catching in my throat. I cannot stop. I cannot stay. If I hesitate, that voice will return. If I don't keep moving, death will catch me. My hands shake. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Kailorien! I need you! You said you would come! You said you would hear me!
I must find him. My body is still broken from the Sight, but I must use magic now.
My right hand flares. A draw on my soul.
A pull. Magic simultaneously threads mana from my core and crushes my lungs.
Raw blazing pain splits down my chest, salt settling into wounds unseen.
Just like the Moores. Just like the time I closed the rift.
No mystic voice speaks this time.
No warning is given.
But I know it with my whole being—I am drawing too much, pulling too much.
It’s all right. I’ll find him. I just need to find him. I won’t fall. I won’t!
Silver burns across my skin, lines etching into my flesh—symbols I know as well as my own breath. Vor’tha—Kailorien’s rune—glows on my knuckles and fingers. I freeze, staring.
And then the world splits. A bellow like a war-horn shakes the hall, reckless and untamed. Light bursts from my hand—more and more and more—gathering before me into a massive orb of mana.
From within steps Astenos. The war-steed looms tall, veins glowing not blue, but white. My white.
Looking at me with fiery, glowing eyes, he shifts on his massive legs and bows his head. His breath steams like winter’s grave, curling cold against my skin. His mane and tail blurs at the edges, fading into ghostly silver mist drifting like torn veils in the dark.
I seize his mane, haul myself onto his back. No reins to hold onto. No saddle to keep me steady. Just the trembling muscles of my thighs and my fingers weaving into his coarse hair. “Please. Take me to him,” I beg the creature.
Astenos rears, starlight bursting from his shoulders, wings unfurling wider than the corridor can hold.
The walls shake with the force of them, dust streaming from the stone.
Not feathers and bone, but pure Veilweave, the magic already singing commands to the currents of the air.
He approaches the hole in the wall, balancing on the ledge, debris falling away from his six hooves down into the pitch-black nothingness below.
“Fly,” I command, Vor’tha pulsing on my hand.
The stallion leaps into the air.
Behind us, the fortress fell away.
The air strikes me like a blow. Cold, merciless, tearing breath from my lungs.
My thighs burn as I cling to Astenos' massive frame, every muscle screaming with effort.
My hands tangle in his mane, gripping so hard the coarse strands cut my palms. Wind roars in my ears, ripping at my hair, stinging my eyes until I can barely see.
Tears freeze on my lashes. The world blurs—black sky above, shards of fire below.
I try to breathe, but the frost scours my chest raw.
My jaw locks against a scream, teeth gritted so hard my head aches.
The glow of Astenos’s wings is blinding.
White fire arches with their every thunderous beat, trailing sparks that fall like stars.
It makes the dark seem deeper, swallowing the fortress into void.
I press low against his neck, my heart hammering. Hold on. Don’t fall. Don’t let go!
The courtyard comes into view in fragments—through smoke, through tears, through bursts of light from shattering wards. Below, the people look small, like beads upon a checkerboard. Screams and shouting. Magefire and spraying blood. Wings, talons, glaives, and shields.
And there—
Kailorien.
I see him for an instant. Crimson waves tearing outward. Gliders dissolving into ash before his unleashed fury. Reskala chanting—Resh! Resh! Resh! Resh!—even as the Gliders mow them down.
I open my mouth to shout, but cold wind silences me.
Kailorien!
A scream splits the air, ragged and desperate.
“RIFT! RIFT!”
I twist, eyes locking on a nearby wall as it tears open. A jagged wound in reality, spilling shadow and shrieks, broken bones, warped limbs, and glowing eyes. Varkhounds pour out in a tide of black slimy ichor, running at full tilt, destroying everything in their path.
Every pulse in my body demands to reach Kailorien. But my hands wrench tighter on Astenos’s mane.
“To the Rift!” I gasp, voice breaking.
Vor’tha sings between my fingers. The war-steed obeys, wings snapping with a deafening gust as he veers away from the Bond, carrying me straight toward the abyss.
Toward the breach.
Toward the wound in the world that only I can close.