Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
LYVIA
Threads created through bonded magic require a sacrifice that is not entirely understood by mortals.
Lyvia – Tynan’s Gate
Tynan’s tongue slipped out of his mouth, the black, three-forked tip lingering a little too long in the air. My powers reinforced the dark shield with more strength as I shoved a sliver of rising fear in their direction.
Where are you? I asked Tiberius. My stomach twisted while the seconds of not seeing him stretched to minutes. A reassuring wave of warmth flooded my chest, but no voice came. He was close. And though I couldn’t see him, I felt whole.
“I have much to share with you,” Tynan whispered, as he moved closer.
My hands raised on instinct, and I took a step back.
My foot squelched into a deep puddle of whatever slime I stood in.
The black talon of his forefinger lifted in my direction, and a surge of Obscura power whipped from my palm on its own accord, slapping his hand away.
Tynan paused and cocked his head, the gray whites of his eyes widening as he stared at the shadow coiling back into my palm.
“Curious,” he mused, turning his hand over and examining his long talons as they clicked and folded over his palm. “My siblings would be furious to know their powers were capable of changing allegiances. Though I suppose, after tens of thousands of years, forces like ours will change.”
His eyes stayed locked on his hands for a moment, and my chest constricted as the heaviness of the fog from above and mist from below closed in like a cage. I forced a breath.
“Where is Kellan Astraeus?” I asked, my voice coming out stronger than I felt.
Tynan’s eyes drew a long line from his fingers to my outstretched hands before meeting my gaze.
“Dead, of course,” he answered, his lips tilting. “You know this. It’s the only reason you are standing here. While I’m sure my sisters intended on drawing out his agony, their emotions often get the best of them. He died faster than they wished.”
My breath hitched as my chest tightened.
Ganmira and Renova’s wrath had been palpable when Kellan drew them back with his rubelline daggers.
And then they came for him… My mind blocked out the image of the hooks embedded into his abdomen, the blood pouring from the wounds…
but I couldn’t shut out the look on his face as his dark eyes found mine.
Bonscaíh.
“It’s why you are finally here,” Tynan continued. “Though I wasn’t expecting it to be him that drew you to me.”
My throat bobbed. “What do you mean?”
Ebony brows rose, lines of gray appearing on his forehead.
“We’ve always been connected, my dear. Death has always called to you. Descended from Enya, my first daughter. Born on the Sending, the one day the Realm of Vael dares speak my name. The one day every twenty-four years the moons named for my sisters cloud your world in darkness.
“Why do you think you’ve always been drawn to death? ‘Death Digger,’ Olienna called you.” He chuckled. “My, the way she screamed. He made sure we all heard it. My sisters may be malicious, spiteful creatures, but my brother is the most dangerous of us all.”
A phantom scream echoed in my ears. Had Olienna died when the gate opened?
His brother… The Sisters and the Brother. Tynan, Ganmira, Renova, and…
“Aelius?” I asked in a breath, fear fueling the adrenaline shooting through my veins.
Tynan rolled his eyes. “No. Though that one certainly has a temper.”
“Then who?”
“Sintarrak,” Tynan whispered, each of the consonants sticking on his tongue. “The thief of minds.”
The fog around me stilled its sluggish journey, and my powers quaked as he spoke the name. Olienna had harnessed the Palaega power… The power of the mind, to influence sleep and speak mind to mind, which meant…
“Another Embodied,” I choked out, my mind spinning. How many were there? We’d only ever worshipped four gods…
Tynan’s eyes drifted over my face as if reading the pages of questions flooding my brain.
“There were once many. You know the story.” Tynan inclined his head. The three forks of his tongue slipped between his teeth.
“The People of the Stars,” I answered, my mind whirring. Had all of it been true? An entire history of a people hidden away in Fabia’s Fables. Astraeus was one of the Starlings. They’d descended from the line of demigods, fathered by the Messenger who betrayed the superior gods, Sintarrak…
“You’ve met Sintarrak before.” Tynan smiled. The sharp points of his teeth dug into his lips. “He’s difficult to miss, what with eyes like stars.”
My stomach dropped. Silver eyes.
Those flashes I’d seen in the eyes of different faces, like living silver.
The soldier in Mount Telum last year, when I’d been taken prisoner, and again in Stynguard.
The mystic at the Eye of the Wood during the Awakening.
And finally, in the Death Dunes at the celebration of Maadon. The Impostor… The Messenger god…
“The Starlings allowed him access to your world by taking a piece of his power, so he’s watched from his world. He’s been watching you,” Tynan continued, his eyes narrowing.
“Why—” I choked on the word, my bravado fading as the enormity of the forces I was dealing with began to crush down.
“Because I chose you. You are my soldier in this war. You will defeat them, and then, you will free me.”
I blinked. “Free you?”
Tynan’s hands waved in a large arc overhead, and the hovering mist and smoke split, creating an unending column of clouds that stretched to infinity.
“I AM TRAPPED!” he bellowed, and power stretched from his form, thin ribbons of death exploding outward.
My powers reacted moments before his shadows slammed into my shield, and my feet slid in the sticky muck as the force of his wrath pushed me back.
“He betrayed us,” Tynan hissed, death sucking back as his body reformed. “He knew I would have been powerful enough to stop him and the little army of demigods he created.”
“And he sent you here…”
“God of Death, he named me.” Tynan shook his head as he paced. “I was the God of Power,” he seethed. “And he stuck me down here with the dead, believing my power would drain along with theirs.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “But I stopped him from claiming them, didn’t I? Stopped him from claiming the raw power of the dead. He’s waited for them on the other side for thousands of years, to snatch up their power, and they never come.”
“The power of the dead? What do you mean? Where do the dead go?”
Tynan blinked, as if he’d forgotten I was here, forgotten who he’d been talking to as the wrath for his brother flamed in his eyes.
“The dead do not ‘move on’ after their sentence is dealt. If they did, Sintarrak would simply take their souls, and they’d be doomed to live within him. And he would grow ever stronger.”
The dead are trapped, Xenelpha had said. But she had spoken about it as if Tynan had saved them…
“You’ve caged them… You keep them here? In hell?” I asked, looking around frantically. That was where I was, right? If Kellan had died and I followed him, I had to be in Tynan’s Hell. Kellan… I needed to find Kellan…
Tynan’s smile stretched into a grin, too wide to be considered natural. “This is not hell, my dear.”
At the flick of his talons, the ominous, obsidian stones sank down and disappeared into the sticky ground. I staggered back as the smoke rose high above us, clearing our surroundings.
“You are merely standing at its gate.”
A sea of tar spread as far as the distant horizon, stretching in all directions. I kept my shield intact as I slowly turned and scanned the vast body of black water. My eyes snagged on movement in the distance, and I squinted at a boat sitting on the surface.
A tall, gaunt-faced creature manned a vessel hewn from bone.
Wisps of white hair hung from its elongated head and arms, both ending in a hand connected to three long claws that stretched to the floor.
Empty space sat where its eyes should have been, their sickly, gray skin light enough to see the gnarled muscles, tendons, and bones that lay beneath.
The creature bent over the edge of the raft and reached its claws into the black water. I gasped as it straightened, its claws wrapping around the arms of a middle-aged woman. Thick, black liquid dripped from her agonized face as it pulled her from the sea of tar and onto the deck of the vessel.
Alive. She was alive. My heart picked up a gallop as I watched in horror as she shook and curled into a small ball. Her nails raked across her arms as the creature picked up the thin oar and began to row.
“I don’t understand—” I started, my stomach twisting.
Tynan’s humanoid form unwound as he merged back into pure death, the spiraling ribbons rolling over one another as they hovered in the air, and the ground beneath my feet began to shift.
I staggered, my eyes shooting to the ground, and bile rose to my throat as I lifted one foot and then the other, the sticky thickness sliding beneath my feet.
Blood. Coagulated blood, I realized, and as I looked closer, long fibers bundled closely together. Muscle.
What the hell?
As the muscle contracted, I began to lower. Fear shot through my veins, and my breath became hollow. My chest constricted, and I looked around in a panic as the tar of the black sea of death inched closer to my boots.
My shield wavered, breaking completely as the inky liquid hit its edge, and the creature I stood on top of continued to lower.
My powers siphoned back into me, and I reached for my bond with Tiberius, a wave of his own panic colliding with mine.
I forced quick breaths from my lungs as the liquid crept closer to my boots.
Tynan’s darkness loomed above, hovering over us as he watched the first bit of black water lap thickly up my boots and then my legs. His slippery voice cut through the shadows overhead.
“Prepare to face your sins, Lyvia. Welcome to the Abyss.”