Chapter 8 Kaenon
KAENON
Moments Ago
I have been adrift in never-ending dreams for so long that at times I wonder about this strange existence. This eternal sleep no longer feels real, nor do I.
Perhaps this is the Beyond, after all.
But no. Lately, the dreams within my head have changed. Now, only my last memories are repeating themselves, over and over. At the end of these dreamlike memories, I am left crying out within my own mind, pleading for help.
It is the work of the incubus, I am sure. I know not why he is harnessing my strange sea of sleeping visions in this cruel way, but it comes as no surprise. After all, Veld was known far and wide for his cruelty.
So once again, I dream of the end.
The silver spikes embedded throughout my body prevent me from shifting. Rivulets of blood trickle over my skin like miniature streams, saturating the wilted grass beneath me as the agonized cries of my clan members echo in my ears from all around.
Shifter clans, fae soldiers, starving vampyrs, and many more beings gathered in this place for one last battle. One final stand. Now they are slaughtered in droves as my breathing grows shallow. My view of the glowing white omen in the night sky above me dims.
If this is how it feels to die, it is not the pain I expected.
It's the dying unmated, unbound, and utterly alone that is the true pain.
When this burning comet first appeared, streaking slowly across the heavens over a week ago, all shifter clans celebrated. The elders decided it must be a good omen from the gods—a sign that the upcoming Mate Hunt would be filled with great joy, with many shifters finding their fated ones.
Though I am six months shy of the twenty-one years of age most shifters are when they join the Mate Hunt, the elders of the clans granted my request to join. They said that a warrior as mighty as I would find favor with the gods and be bound to my fate-decreed mates, which would please my clan.
But I stopped caring about pleasing my clan many moons ago.
My clan only came to love me after I became a warrior renowned throughout this entire land—after years of exhaustive training and voluntary experiments at the hands of the fae to change the frailty I was born with.
I have become far more, and now, I have little interest in pleasing anyone but my future mate or mates. Even as I feel my inner beasts joining me in this thrall of death, even as a chill settles on my skin and doom settles upon these lands…
All I feel is empty longing for the completion of my soul, whoever they may be.
The Mate Hunt would have been tonight. If such evil had not brought an end to my world, would I have found the other pieces of my heart under this same omen-filled sky?
Nearby, I hear a fae soldier chanting to prepare her magic.
Her voice is pure terror as she faces the wicked hordes of darkness overtaking the land.
The fae kingdom has already been conquered, and many of their people are fleeing into the land of mortals even as thousands continue to perish here, slaughtered in droves by the dark Conqueror.
There is a darkness falling upon this land, the likes of which no one has ever seen.
I scent a non-living drawing closer. An animated corpse. If I do not move, it will begin to feast upon me—or perhaps I will die and be brought back by the tide of necromancers who have been turning this once-thriving domain into one of ash and walking death.
Just as I feel myself fading, a familiar voice shouts nearby.
"Kaenon!"
A bright light surrounds me, holy magic filling the night air. The living dead one near me shrieks and crumbles to pieces in this bloodied clearing. My view of the gods' omen in the skies is suddenly blocked by Athanis.
My fae friend’s purple robes of the temple of Galene are ripped and stained with ash. I smell blood on him. Although he must be injured, he grips one of my silver-ravaged arms and begins casting a spell to take us away from here.
The dream cuts forward until I'm suddenly in one of the many fae laboratory rooms, trying to reason with Athanis as he heals me.
His face is sullen as he pulls twisted shards of silver from my flesh.
The entire laboratory shakes from the terrors ravaging this domain.
Blood still drips from me as I lie weakened upon one of the tables.
Tears drip from me just as freely for the many souls who are still falling to the darkness outside.
"You must flee," I urge hoarsely. "This final battle will be won, and not by us. Flee with the other fae and leave me to die with my clansmen."
Athanis scoffs. "After all you have done for my brethren and me? I would not dare leave a noble warrior such as you to die, lest Sachar curse my afterlife. You must be saved from this and set away where he cannot reach you."
The dream wavers with pain, my body so damaged it is barely mending.
I look over at one of the three sarcophagi nearby.
Two are sealed, but the third is open, waiting for me.
The other fae scientists crafted these when they began considering this last resort to preserve me and the other two surviving altered ones.
"No," I scowl. "I will not go under while this realm is yet drenched in the blood of all shifter clans. My fate will end with theirs."
He gives me a stern look. "Do not speak so brashly.
You know Galene herself sends visions to me, Kaenon.
I have seen your fate, and it does not end here—you must be saved to preserve our work.
The knowledge of how to cure ar inanis shifters must not be lost, lest many more perish in a future filled with ignorance. Is that your wish?"
No. He is right, it is not.
Within each clan of shifters, some lead the others with dignity and ferocity. My parents and their mates led the largest and most powerful shifter clan. My many older brothers and sisters, all strong like my parents, had mates and younglings of their own, adding to the pride of our family.
My birth came as an unfortunate late surprise to my aged parents, especially because I was born ar inanis—the fae people's term for a shifter born without an inner beast.
Shifters born beastless usually die within weeks, too feeble to survive without the wild spirits meant to inhabit us. I survived my frail childhood by the grace of the gods, sheer willpower, and the magical aid of a kind, fair, good-hearted fae named Thalo.
Now, though, I am no longer weak or beastless.
My time volunteering at the fae laboratory ensured that manifold. Because of what they attained in me, they believe they can cure other shifters born ar inanis. It is the very reason I asked Thalo to volunteer at the fae laboratory as a child, to improve the future of others like me.
"Then let us fight together to preserve it, but do not bury me like a relic," I plead.
Athanis looks exhausted in this dream, wiping blood that trickles from his nose.
"A mere priest such as I cannot stand against a saint so corrupted.
This great evil is no longer mortal at all, but an entity—a wicked force we could never have prepared for.
I pray my people find a safe future in the land of humans, for only the gods know how this blight will end.
But until that day…Kaenon, the survival of this research was Thalo's final wish. "
Thalo was the director of the fae laboratory. He fell to the dark conquest of this land along with many others weeks ago. He oversaw my procedures and treated all with great respect.
That fae was much like a father to me.
If my survival was his final wish…
My dream begins to change once more. There is a sudden desperation to it—as if the one influencing my dreams is eager to get to the end. My memories skip forward until my last waking moments replay with frightening realness, forcing me to feel all the horror once more.
"Athanis!" I shout as the priest stumbles toward me.
I lay in the sarcophagus, unable to move from the magic my friend has placed on me.
But he did not cast it on me cruelly. This lab is under attack.
Unnatural darkness dims this room as the screams and magical incantations of other fae scientists trying to defend their work echo out in the halls.
Their precious scrolls and records have been gathered into this room, along with the other two sealed sarcophagi.
I am the last altered one to be hidden away, but I ache to fight instead.
Athanis is terribly injured. His robes conceal the damage, but blood drips, staining his every footstep before he collapses beside my sarcophagus. With a shaking, crimson-stained hand, he withdraws something from the pockets of his robes and places it on my chest.
It is a leather bracelet intertwined with dark metal and symbols. I have seen others like this on fae who mourn their loved ones, who wish to see their spirits again in this plane of existence.
"There." His face coils in pain, but he fights to speak. "Keep this with you so you may behold me on the other side. Do not lose it when you wake."
"Athanis," I growl, struggling against the magic holding me here. "Let me out! We must get you healed and fight this—"
"It is done, Kaenon. The scientists will drag this laboratory to the depths of this realm with their magic, and you and the others will be preserved.
They will do anything to prevent the Entity from reaching this chamber.
Your fate will not end here, my friend. Y—you…
" He pauses to rasp for breath, smiling slightly down at me through his pain.
"I promise, you will thank the gods for the fate they hold in store for you.
And Syntyche willing, I shall be there to see it for myself. "
I protest again as he fights to draw another labored breath, but there is a terrific detonation somewhere that sends tremors through my very soul just before this room is plunged into darkness. I feel a sudden drop within me, as if this entire lab is falling from a great height.
Screams and chanting still echo in the distance, but Athanis begins casting in the holy tongue. I have only learned a few words of the holy tongue from my friend, so I only understand some of it.
"Wild…thee…warrior mighty…"
He is chanting more divine words I do not know, but I can no longer hear them. I am helpless, falling once again—but this time it is into a deep slumber.
No! I try to scream.
Heavy darkness seals around me like a vice, pulling me into this nothingness.
I know what comes next—the sea of dreams. The endless waiting, perhaps never to be found. I am buried alive, the slumber clouding everything in my mind.
Stop this! Help me! Someone please help—
My wordless plea cuts off as this unnatural, eternal sleep abruptly splinters, freeing me and the beasts within. The dreams end as the top of my sarcophagus slides away. The heavy magic lifts, my eyes flutter open for the first time in gods know how long, and I finally focus on…
A green sky. Warped air.
Screaming, sounds of bloodshed, and chaos.
There is confusion in this place I have awakened, but then a warm, sweet scent curls around me and—
Gods of my ancestors.
Gratitude and disbelief halt the breath in my lungs.
This scent belongs to one who is meant to be mine. I recognize it at once as the scent of my mate, drawing me further into this strange world and further from that hellish sea of dreams. Before the fall of my people and before I was sealed away, I ached for the one or ones who would complete me.
That one is here, somewhere.
Mate, my inner beasts rejoice, pleased and wild and ravenous over her at once.
But where is she? All I see is sky.
When I sit up, I take in more chaos. There are others in this strange purple place—fae.
Their alarmed cries and shouts of pain echo with confusion as they attack one another with unfocused eyes.
The field beneath my sarcophagus buckles and rolls, though I feel no true motion.
My hair stands on end as powerful, bright red blood magic glows all around for a moment, yet the distortions remain—thanks to Nivarrah, I realize.
Nivarrah’s awakening is ill news, for her mind became unstable long ago from Veld’s cruelties toward her.
The fae scientists performed many experimental magical administrations on Nivarrah in pursuit of a way to break their ill-fated bond.
Thalo believed that if they could free her from her ties to the cruel incubus, she could be rehabilitated and perhaps use her impressive illusory magic for good one day.
The fae believed they were nearing success with her, hence why she was sealed away to preserve their work within her.
Now Nivarrah stands nearby, weaving chaos into the realities of those caught in her magic web, but her furious glare is fixed on the incubus beside me—the same one I suspected of meddling before I awoke.
Only, unlike me, Veld did not volunteer for the experiments the fae administered to him. His presence in the lab was a form of service in reparation to the fae people, demanded by the merciful fae king himself after Veld forced himself upon the fae king's niece, Luritha.
Nivarrah was sentenced to the same reparative punishment for violently slaughtering Luritha in a jealous fit after learning her incubus had been unfaithful.
They're a pungent pair. I have never known anyone to break their mates' very spirits the way those two have broken one another.
It does not please my inner beasts or me to have awoken near them.
"At long last, it worked," Veld murmurs, his gaze following something in the distance.
The leathery-winged, tailed nuisance looks as monstrous as any other incubus I have met, with his pointed teeth and claws.
He still wears the black fae clothes provided by the scientists in the laboratory long ago, while I wear nothing since I was freshly shifted before Athanis healed and sealed me away.
"You were harnessing our dreams to call aid," I realize.
“Indeed. We were under for far too long, so I sought one who would listen. I did not realize the one who would finally hear my efforts would be so...mouthwatering."
Nivarrah hisses angrily nearby, but my attention follows where Veld has been looking.
There is a doe fleeing from us. She is caught in Nivarrah’s confusion, unable to truly escape as she bounds one way, then another, before narrowly avoiding the magic spells of confused fae fighting amongst themselves.
But the instant I see her, my heart tries to gallop free.
Mate, my inner beasts echo.
Seeing my mate run fills me with the same excitement as when I begin a hunt.
Elated by the idea of running with my mate even in this chaos muddying the world around us, I rise at last. Vaguely, I am aware of the leather bracelet Athanis left me sliding off my chest to fall into my sarcophagus once more.
Then I leap forward, shifting to race after her.