Chapter 17
I scream as something slams into me from the right, knocking me to the ground with a thud and forcing the air from my lungs. The dragon’s tail, maybe? With a groan, I roll and gain my feet, arms spread, ready to defend myself from talon and tooth and whatever else the beast has planned.
But I take a step back and trip on something.
“Isola,” Saipha rasps, and I almost cry at the sound of her voice coming from the dirt floor at my feet. I reach down, and her fingers find mine, gripping me almost painfully. “S-sorry I ran into you,” she whispers. It was my friend, not a dragon that knocked me down.
Saipha releases my hand, and I spin in a circle, expecting death for both of us at any moment. But there’s nothing. No purple glowing eyes. No hissing. And no dragon. Nothing. We’re alone.
“Did you see it?” I whisper.
“I saw a lot of things.” Her voice is thin and trembling. She sounds as shaken as me. “I don’t know what in the dragon-burned hells this place is, but I want out of it. Now.”
How could she not have seen it? The monster was right here.
I scan the void. There’s not even enough light to see Saipha at my feet.
It scares something primal in me, causing the fine hairs on the back of my neck to rise.
Closing my eyes, I rely on my other senses, strain my ears and focus on feeling vibrations in the floor.
There are neither of those, but a certain sense still flares.
When I was a little girl, Mum called me talented with Ether.
Father even said he thought I had the senses of a future artificer.
But everything changed after the attack.
Their enthusiasm turned to worry. My body no longer felt safe, but like some dangerous object I happened to inhabit.
Maybe…I should stop being afraid of it. Maybe my worst fears are true, and it’s not Etherlight but Ethershade I feel. Maybe my earlier hope was misplaced and these senses are further proof I’m cursed.
But, if being cursed is about to help my friend, then I’m going to use it.
I take a deep breath and focus as Mum taught me—just like I did last night under the dragon automaton, allowing my mind and body to relax and receive.
Points of dense energy on each of the walls coalesce in my mind, and I can feel the invisible currents of Etherlight strung between them, forming a web. One we’re currently stuck in.
I know what this is. I read about it in one of Father’s journals years ago—it didn’t have any sketches of sigils but was full of theories on them. He might have even created the web and sigils himself. And then there’s the smell…
“It’s not real,” I whisper.
“What?”
“None of it is real.” I help Saipha to her feet. “No matter what it shows you, just hold on to me and keep walking.”
Slowly, I lead her to where I still envision one of the points of energy on the wall. But before I can reach it, she shrieks and jerks from my hold, her footfalls pounding over the stone in the darkness like she’s running for her life.
Instinct tells me to chase after my friend. But undoing this is what’ll really help her.
“Not real, Saipha!” I shout after her but continue heading to the point I’d been guiding us toward.
I pull off my boot and use it to get enough height to smudge it across the stone where I sense the energy coming from, hoping that this sigil, like the others, is drawn in chalk and not anything more permanent.
My gamble pays off. The magic flickers, then crackles, then dims, breaking the web connecting it to the other sigils and the horrible visions it induced.
I lean back against the wall, catching my breath as the sense of the sigil on the opposite side goes dark as well, then another, and another.
I can’t help but grin. Sigil circuits are like a house of cards—they all rely on one another to work. Pull out one, and the rest fail.
“It’s over, Saipha,” I shout into the darkness. The lack of light wasn’t a fabrication. “It wasn’t real.” I can hear her on the opposite side, drawing in ragged breaths. My senses are my own once more. “It’s safe now, I promise.”
“How can you be so sure none of it was real?” Her voice quivers slightly, breathing reluctant to settle. I wonder what form the illusions took for her.
“The stink.” I should have put it together right away.
I smelled this aroma recently. “Take a second. Take a breath,” I counsel, since I don’t think we’re in any real danger now that the artificer sigils have been disabled.
Saipha follows my instructions. “You know that smell.” It’s faint now that the sigils are not spreading it throughout the room, but it still lingers.
She inhales again, sharper, faster. “Green dragon.” She probably smelled it on her father’s uniform when he returned home the other night while my mum and I were being questioned.
Their acid can eat through anything, even steel—most people focus on that. But inhaling their gases can cause horrible hallucinations.
“This room is just magic and mechanics,” I say to keep us both calm.
“I bet they used some of the venom from the green dragon that attacked the other day to make the sigils.” I stand and shove my boot on, really glad I didn’t touch the stuff with my bare hand.
Then I shuffle toward where I heard her voice.
“Does that mean the sigils were drawing from Ethershade?” she whispers, scandalized.
The question makes sense, given that the Creed says dragons are the embodiment of Ethershade. But… “I think the sigils merely vaporized the acid. I don’t think they actually drew from Ethershade.”
“But we breathed it in,” she whispers from only a short distance in front of me. “We breathed in green dragon vapor—that must have Ethershade in it, right?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“How could it not? It’s a part of those monsters.” It’s her words now that are all venom.
“Maybe that was the point.” Reaching her, I grab her hand and hold it for a moment, stabilizing both of us. My next words are as solemn as a funeral horn. “The curse is brought on by a buildup of Ethershade.”
“So they’re willingly exposing us to it?” The words are small, barely more than a breath. The one thing in the world that terrifies Saipha.
“I don’t know,” I repeat. I want to reassure her by telling her Mum’s theories—that dragons are not actually beasts of Ethershade—but I know my friend, and all she will hear is treason against the Creed that guides us.
“I don’t know what the inquisitors’ logic is here or what they might do next.
All I know is that I don’t think it’ll be good. ”
“I don’t like any of this.” I can hear the scowl in her voice.
“I don’t, either. So let’s get out of here while we can.
” I guide us along the outer wall. One palm glides against smooth stone, and the other still clings to Saipha’s hand.
I walk us around the room, knowing that, eventually, we’ll have to find some way out.
At least both of us are breathing normally, and my heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode.
A vertical gap in the stone, no wider than my little finger, has me stopping.
I release Saipha’s hand, and I push against the stone next to the seam.
With some effort, it gives way. The moonlight is almost blinding after the total darkness of the chamber.
We emerge with tandem sighs of relief, and I can’t shut the door fast enough behind us.
It blends nearly seamlessly with the brick and mortar of the wall. A hidden exit.
My hands ball into fists at my sides. The inquisitors were ready to let us wander that room all night, caught in a web of focused dragon venom, scared out of our minds. The Tribunals are designed to push us to our limits, they say. But now I’m even more certain it’s to break us.
I can’t help the shudder that runs down my body at the thought of what awaits us next.