Chapter 8 Riptide #2
“Our priority needs to be destroying the Soulstone, Yava.” Bjorn argues with me now, as I feel how he and I have decided on opposite paths of how to proceed.
“The risk of keeping the Soulstone around for any reason is too great; if Lithava and Hedda get their hands on it, they can bring the Black Dragon back to full power. Then all our ambitions with the Usurper and even the Rift are gone, no matter how much resonance you share with the beast.”
“If we can’t get any information on how the Black Rift was created, and how to heal or close it, then we have no hope of ever truly stopping the Black Dragon.
” I counter now, knowing which way I’ve decided, though Bjorn is the opposite.
“We need to use the Soulstone to amplify my connection to the Black Dragon and the Rift, so we can find out information about it in the Void. Hedda’s drakes once wore the black rings; even though they’re inside the Soulstone now, they’re connected to the evil energy of the Rift, and the Black Dragon itself.
We need to trace that connection back through time and find its origin.
Without ending the Black Rift first… we’ve got nothing. ”
Bjorn harrumphs, even as he changes his posture to sit a little further from me now on the couch, though we are still beside each other.
His big arms are crossed tight over his chest in his tactical sweater.
Glowering at me from beneath his formidable golden brows, Bjorn isn’t giving in on this one.
Though I know I’m right.
“I can see you and your drakes are divided on the best course of action.” Jarl Jorg glances between me and Bjorn. “It truly is a chicken-and-egg situation, is it not? But which is the greater of two evils?”
“Clearly, the source of the Black Dragon’s magic is,” Svanhild Magnussen scoffs now, very much like Bjorn as she waves a fierce hand.
“I’m sorry to say it, great-nephew, but your Bloodmate is right.
Though you would win the battle against your foe, you would lose the war, destroying the Soulstone to go after the Black Dragon first. For if what Rikyava explains is right, the Rift is the source of all our troubles as Blood Dragons.
All our divisiveness, when we should be unified as a Lineage in both our magic and our power in the wider world…
In-fighting when we could unite as a far greater force to be reckoned with.
That is our history and legacy, which the Black Rift creates.
That is our true enemy throughout time. And even if we defeat the Black Dragon this time, some other horrible creation will come to assail us in the generations ahead.
Once someone else with Hedda’s vast understanding, ambition, and diabolical madness rises, to discover the Black Rift again. ”
Svanhild Magnussen’s words silence all of us, as the room is claimed by tense thought. My stepfathers have been quiet this entire time, digesting the conversation, as have Strom’s sisters, gathered in a tight knot around young Mathilde, who swallows hard at all that’s been said.
Sadness engulfs me to see how much of this has been heaped upon her young shoulders as a Bloodwalker. With power that trumps many of her elders, she’s been included in this war-room, though she’s far too young to be here.
Cursed like our future generations will be, to save us from evil like the Black Dragon again someday, if we cannot eliminate the Rift.
Suddenly, as if my sadness for future generations has unlocked my deepest Bloodwalker power, a massive vision hits me from the Void.
I’m inundated by the screams of our Ancestors, and their terrible gnashing of teeth as a hundred thousand fell voices roar, Kill it!
, and I see the Black Dragon in my mind-sight.
As we connect again, its great bone-dead eye opening in my thoughts, I see how the Black Dragon is in the sigil-cavern of the Rift, rather than inside the ruby cave now.
The Rift’s energy has receded, though the Usurper is weathering a terrible torment. I see the Black Dragon has been incarcerated by a masterful plethora of sigils, which spiral up through the air from where its gargantuan body stands in the exact center of the cave, over the Rift.
That terrible energy seethes through the air in bitter, diseased crimson-black sigils that re-flood the entire cavern with their taint.
Though the leviathan tentacles of the Rift are not very active at the moment, I see how Lithava stands with all four of her mates in a wide ring around the Black Dragon, using a number of Hedda’s instruments from Unhaemmerten and a number I’ve never seen as adjuvants around the hall.
Beginning some ceremony to return their supremacy over the beast.
As the ceremony begins, the massive leviathan tentacles of the Rift shoot back up to ensnare the beast. The Black Dragon howls, thrashing from the agony of being incarcerated by that terrible energy, as I feel its mad mind thrust into mine.
Help me, Maker! It roars all through me now, like pummeling thunder and the screeching of nails down a blackboard.
But then its mind is gone, as I feel Hedda’s ancient spells retake her creation, wielded by my sister’s fingers.
Terrible black sigils scrawl all over the naked bodies of my sister and her mates now, as they replicate Hedda’s first ceremony to regain control of the beast and return it to its former glory.
I see those awful, diseased markings bite deep into Lithava and her drakes’ flesh as they raise their hands with their black rings, using Hedda’s power to perform this ritual. As I watch, horrified, the sigils whirl and tear all the way across their bodies, rocketing out into the surrounding air.
They dance, swirling and diving into the leviathan tentacles of the Rift itself, as it holds the beast—and the Rift responds.
The Black Rift’s tentacles of darkness surge to Hedda’s ancient sigils now, shooting up to coil in roped tentacles of hell around Lithava and her drakes, anchoring them into the ceremony along with the Black Dragon.
As I take it all in, beyond horrified, I see now what happened to my sister and her mates a day ago. Because they were not devoured inside the ruby cavern by the Black Rift then, they were super-powered by it—and that understanding suddenly makes me despair.
Bjorn was right; they didn’t perish in its terrible sways, only transformed into something different, powered up by its evil taint.
My sister and her mates have all become disastrously cursed by the Black Rift now; with diseased black-violet and crimson sigils shot through every inch of their flesh, even their eyes have gone black as night with those terrible sigils careening through them.
Lithava and her mates look like Hedda and her wights now, with those black sigils possessing them and the terrible tentacles of the Rift writhing all over their flesh.
And I know this is what must have happened to Hedda and her mates when she gave herself up to the Rift.
When she dove into her own deepest darkness to gain unrivaled power for the Black Dragon’s creation.
Rather than remaining in her united Bloodwalker light.
As terrible sigils from the Rift bury themselves anew inside the Black Dragon’s flesh, plus sigils from my sister and her drakes, the creature screams like a mad thing.
Its flesh is recreated, as those gods-awful sigils dive in; although we had seen it regain some of its previous state with every dragon it killed and every village it decimated, it thunders back to its former glory now, as flesh knits and sinews replace.
Bones thicken and lock into place; joints are restored as I watch from afar, horrified.
Skin of glossy black leather blossoms out all over it now, festooned with terrible oilslick-black and violet spikes.
Gargantuan crimson sigils spiral throughout every serrated scale, out to every talon and clawed wing-tip; as its tail thrashes now, covered in spikes, the Black Dragon fights the leviathan taint that holds it.
It ceases to scream inside its mind now, as I feel Hedda’s black energy overtake it once more.
Her will still lives in the world, and we failed to capture her spirit inside the Soulstone; as the greater part of her spirit pours back into the creature now, I feel it regain her mind, rather than its own.
That mind is not complete without her four mates; but even as I feel Hedda turn inside my mind now, snarling at me from where she once again lives within her creature, blazing down along my mind-connection to it, I feel her derision.
And her desire.
Come to me, Rikyava, Hedda says now as her terrible black eyes blaze at me from the creature’s Void, that Void filled with shrieking, mad stars. Come and be my perfect instrument, wielding my Jormungandr, at last. It is your destiny.
As Hedda fills me now, her soul-essence inside the Black Dragon careening into my mind like a night devoid of stars, I roar and surge back.
Though she tries to get her talons in me, I heave a massive burst of my Bloodwalker power down through that connection now, sundering it—as I pull like bejeezus from each one of my mates.
With a snap, my connection to Hedda and the Black Dragon is broken, but not before I spill to the floor, barely caught by Jarl Jorg’s fast hands.
As all my mates roar now.
Shuddering on the couch, at how I just hauled power from them all in a riptide.