5
The seven immortal Weavers, winged and imposing, descended from the stars.
They remained aloft above the trees instead of landing in the courtyard, as if our domain was a stain they didn’t want sullying their pristine boots.
Some watched our dreamers with open curiosity, the same way one might observe a wild animal before determining whether or not it was feral, while others fixated on Erebus and me.
Their eyes dragged from our obsidian crowns to the shadows curling between our feet.
Examining, weighing. Wondering.
Would we be a threat to their power? Or valuable allies to their cause?
It was difficult not to squirm under their scrutiny.
“Be still, dreamers,” I could hear Ceveon warn. “Follow the Shadow Weavers’ lead.”
Lining the central path leading up to the castle, dreamers were dressed in dark, form-fitting outfits and cloaks hewn from supple leather and soft shadows.
They bristled under the Weavers’ stares, murmuring among themselves.
The newest dreamers were more familiar with what it meant to look, act, and be human; the ghost of the past, however, was still present in the older dreamers’ faces.
They were free from the Corruptive demons that had held their souls captive, but centuries of wearing demons’ skin had taken its toll.
We had worked diligently these past weeks to instill in them the seeds of loyalty, courage, and other component parts of human dignity, but the road ahead would be long.
And by the looks on the Weavers’ sneering faces, their perfect lips curled in ugly displays of mistrust, it was clear how they still viewed the dreamers.
Monsters.
Demons.
Scum wielding claws and teeth, wearing costumes of human skin.
“Shadow Weavers,” Xander, Weaver of the Present, finally proclaimed, speaking on behalf of the Seven.
His regal voice was loud enough to be plainly heard by everyone in the clearing.
Flanked by seven floating swords, he was armored and crowned in iron.
“Somnus has endorsed both your innocence and usefulness, so we have graciously agreed to visit your… domain.”
The condescending pause wasn’t missed.
“Thank you for coming,” I offered grandly, ignoring Erebus’s quiet scoff of irritation.
As though he couldn’t believe we were actually doing this.
“Dinner has been prepared inside our castle,” I continued, unsure of proper protocol.
Did the Weavers expect us to welcome them differently?
Were we already doing something wrong? I straightened my spine, preventing my shoulders from trembling.
It was growing difficult not to cower. “We’re honored to host you at our table so we can discuss the future of Noctis and the Dream Realm. ”
Sensing Erebus’s uncomfortable silence, I gave his hand a meaningful squeeze.
If Mithras were here, Erebus would have exploded already. But by some Maker-blessed miracle, his arrival was apparently delayed.
“Yes,” Erebus added stiffly, his upper lip curling in a display of contempt that rivaled the Weavers’. His look of disgust was, however, far more lethal. It exuded a cold violence that was unmatched by anyone in our domain. Anyone in the entire world, for that matter. “Welcome.”
The Weavers glanced at one other, expressions inscrutable.
“We have agreed to come,” Xander said slowly, “but we are not ready to sit at your table.”
My stomach twisted; if they weren’t prepared to dine with us, why bother coming? My sword buzzed underneath my palm, itching to be released. Surely they weren’t here for a fight.
“Bastards,” Erebus muttered darkly, just to me. “Coming all this way just to mock us. Branding their powers into our skulls like they own us.”
“Erebus—” I began, but it was no use. His anger was past its breaking point.
“You say Somnus has endorsed our ‘usefulness,’” Erebus said loudly, leveling his gaze on Somnus as the shadows around him began to surge and hiss.
Mine followed suit, eager to tangle with his growing fury.
Somnus did not react; his bone-white face was impassive.
“We are not shadows to be cast beneath your dying light.”
“Perhaps not,” Xander agreed. “Though you have yet to prove yourselves.”
“You doubt that we are Weavers, then?” Erebus asked icily. “Not exceptional enough to be a part of the glorious Seven?”
“We have good reason to doubt.” Xander motioned to Ceres, the Earth Weaver, and Lelantos, the Air Weaver.
A tall, misshapen figure appeared between them, bound by white cloth and thick chains.
The figure thrashed, but Ceres and Lelantos held firm, manipulating it into submission with their elemental magic.
“So, we’re here to offer you a gift. A simple test to decide if what you declare is true. ”
“We require no gift,” I said, shaking my head.
Their offering made my stomach churn. It was far too large to be human.
“Your presence at our table is all we ask. If it is proof you require, please look around you.” I gestured to the dreamers in the courtyard and the castle that sprawled behind us, its many spires reaching like claws into the sky.
“We created every structure in our domain. And these dreamers are our devoted acolytes. Is that not proof enough?”
Xander’s eyes narrowed, his judgment determined.
The other Weavers were silent; it was clear they had already decided our fate before even setting foot in our domain.
“We cannot acknowledge you as Shadow Weavers until you demonstrate your Maker-given power. Transform this demon as you’ve done to the others. That is all.”
My stomach dropped.
What?
Ceres and Lelantos loosened their grip.
The cloth-wrapped figure crashed into the edge of the forest, toppling the tree it landed in with a vicious snap.
It broke its chains as it rose, squirming out of its cloth with a triumphant roar.
At first, the demon seemed to be about the size of a horse, a distorted blend of scales and corded muscle.
But then its spine unfurled, revealing legs made of bone.
It stretched tall, spiderlike, its grinning skull bearing long pointed teeth.
Its eyes, eerily similar to Raelion’s, gleamed a wet, bloody red.
“They brought a demon here?” I gasped.
Erebus snarled, incredulous. “Utter fools.”
It lunged toward the courtyard before we could react.
The demon pinned two dreamers with its legs, piercing clean through an abdomen and a thigh.
The dreamers—both new to our domain—shrieked in pain, wriggling in an attempt to escape.
I screamed for the other dreamers to run, but many stood frozen in place.
Erebus and Ceveon had instructed the dreamers on basic combat strategies, but there hadn’t been enough time to prepare for true threats.
Never mind organizing them to actually confront those threats.
Many dreamers simply weren’t ready for it.
They had centuries of rage and power boiling in their eyes, but they weren’t fully equipped to wield that potential in a controlled way.
Without control, they were dangerous. But without access to their power, they were even worse.
They were weak. Which meant Erebus and I were weak, too.
The Weavers knew it.
This demon knew it, too.
Quickly, the demon hooked its first victim by the stomach and flung him into a tree with a sickening crack.
When his body hit the ground, it melted into a puddle of shadow.
Then, without hesitation, the demon cut the second victim’s body from calf to hip, wielding its legs like knives as the woman screamed louder.
Louder. Louder. A brutal crush of the demon’s leg and the woman was silent; her body, like the man’s, slid away in a cloud of shadow.
A powerful blast of darkness, hurled from Erebus’s hands, sent the demon reeling.
“Are they dead?” I gasped out, horrified.
“No,” Erebus said briskly, dodging a leg as it almost clipped his shoulder.
“They will wake in their beds tomorrow, bodies reset.” He ducked, narrowly missing the demon’s snapping teeth as he drew his sword, aiming for the demon’s muscled neck.
I sent my own blast of shadow at the demon, willing the tendrils to act like snares.
They volleyed into the demon’s bony legs, rendering it temporarily immobilized.
“But it won’t wash away the sensation of having died. ”
The demon lunged again, a few of its legs creaking like sticks from my snares.
It closed in on a young dreamer who’d fallen to the ground in fear, while simultaneously using its rear legs—stretching impossibly longer—to strike at Erebus and me.
Erebus cut at one leg as I slashed at the other, but the bone merely cracked; it didn’t shatter.
The demon swept one leg fast and wide, slamming Erebus into one of the courtyard’s many metal lamps.
He rose instantly, perfectly fine and utterly furious, but it was too late.
His fall had distracted me. The demon brought down another leg, as a scorpion would its tail, aiming it at my skull.
I stifled a scream, too stunned to move.
A shove sent me sprawling.
Ceveon.
He’d intervened without hesitation, pushing me out of harm’s way.
But that placed him directly in line with the demon.
The demon’s powerful leg rushed toward the green-eyed man, more explosive than lightning—but Ceveon expertly blocked it with a shield hewn from shadow.
I shoved myself to my feet, elated he’d survived the blow, but a panicked scream sent me whirling in a new direction.
The demon had ensnared a boy by his ankle and was dragging him closer with its knife-sharp teeth.
Messy red hair, brown eyes wide in fear—I instantly recognized him.
In his previous life, the boy had lived a life of illness and pain. He’d become feverish and was too weak to drink the elixir he’d been given. After he succumbed to Corruption, he’d been happy to arrive at our domain. He thought it was a second chance at a life lost.
The demon’s mouth widened in a gleeful roar, aiming for the boy’s head—just as I frantically willed a shadow spear to fly down its vile throat.
It hit true, burrowing into the back of the demon’s fleshy maw.
But instead of flailing in pain or cowering in defeat, the demon widened its throat, swallowing the spear whole.
The demon instantly tripled in size, wrapping itself in my shadows and roaring in ecstasy.
“How revolting,” I heard Nephthys, the Water Weaver, say. She grasped the sapphire necklace at her throat, dark blue hair cascading down her bronze shoulders in miniature rivers. “That is their power?”
“Apparently so. They feed the dark,” Ceres responded, more thoughtful than disgusted. Her horned headpiece, wrapped in roses, cobwebs, and small skeletons, bobbed as she shook her head. “That wickedness cannot be Maker-given. Can it?”
“I don’t see how,” Fenrir snarled, eyes positively burning as he snaked a protective hand around Nephthys’s hips. The casual intimacy of the gesture snagged my attention; perhaps they were lovers as some tales suggested. “And they’re both so pitifully weak.”
“Are they lying, then?” Lelantos, the Air Weaver, asked. His half mask of bone framed part of his face, wrapping around full lips and pale eyes. “We may need to retreat and consider a new strategy.”
“Wait,” Theia, Weaver of the Future, said carefully, her silver hair crowned with diamonds. She looked more ghost than human, every inch of her softly shimmering with pale light. “Let us see what they do next.”
“This is a demon!” I yelled, decorum sliding from my bones as if I were shedding an uncomfortable skin. “We can’t purify it like we do our dreamers.”
Erebus shouted a warning, but it was too late.
The demon, now a hulking mass of skeletal legs, flung a limb into Ceveon’s chest, crushing his shield. It snarled—no, laughed—as its mouth widened, revealing a pit lined with sharp teeth. Teeth meant for tearing. Teeth meant for devouring. It lunged for Ceveon’s throat, mouth opening in glee—
Just as I sent another spear of shadow into the demon’s mouth, halting it.
The dreamers froze, no longer scrambling over each other to retreat. The demon craned its neck, eyes rolling back in their sockets. It was no longer breathing, no longer focused on attacking us.
But then it swallowed my spear whole.
“It can’t be stopped,” I sputtered, beginning to panic.
Its limbs ruptured as they grew, sounding like a forest of trees being cracked in half.
It was growing longer, sharper, stronger.
A behemoth with a spider’s legs, a scorpion’s tail, a horse’s body, and a dragon’s skull.
No longer interested in the dreamers at its feet, the demon fixed its bloody eyes on the Weavers above, unleashing a terrible howl.
The Weavers recoiled, scattering like birds frightened by a loud noise.
“Esmer, here!”
Erebus sprinted to my side, grabbing my hand as he sent us flying.
Black wings unfurled from our backs in a burst of shadow, shooting us high above the trees.
We instinctively pushed our swords together, shadows twining around them in growing sweeps.
Within seconds, we had a tempest at our disposal.
The demon peered up at us, eagerly waiting for us to strike.
It wanted us to attack.
“Enough playing,” Erebus snarled, his eyes a raging sea of cold fury. “Let’s end this demon now.”
“How? Our shadows can’t kill it. We’re powerless—”
“We’re not,” he insisted sharply. “We command the dark. We rule over the shadows. And we’ve been fighting this demon like we don’t.”
Understanding dawned over me.
Oh.
“So we use the demon’s darkness to our benefit. We command it and make it ours,” I said, slowly starting to smile. He was right. Of course he was right. “The Weavers want to see our darkness. So let’s show them what we can do.”
Erebus smiled back at me, silver eyes glittering with unexpected delight. “Precisely.”
We sent the shadows down like a scythe, our aim powerful and true.
The demon shrieked, trying to avoid the colossal blow, but it was too late.
Our shadows ripped down its skin and shuddered through its mouth.
Intuitively, I began to see something within the demon: a small curl of darkness, squeezed into a tight fist deep inside its stomach.
I could feel it yearning to escape—to surge from the demon’s diseased heart.
“There,” I said triumphantly, pushing harder.
The darkness reacted to our shadows, eager. Our blades absorbed every last drop.
The demon collapsed into a pitiful heap, limbs instantly still.
Dead.
We looked up at the same time. The Weavers were slack-jawed with fascination, respect, and the barest gleam of something else. Something far more unsettling, perhaps, than the Weavers rejecting us outright.
Fear.