Chapter 24 Found
FOUND
Isigh now as I cuddle up next to the unconscious Bjorn on the bed, laying my head on his shoulder. It breaks our Bloodbond’s tense silence; as Strom heaves a sigh and comes to me, Baldur sits quietly on the other side of the bed while the twins idle near the food.
“We will get him back, Rikyava. I swear it. And you know I don’t make promises lightly.” Strom touches my shoulder, sweet but sad. He leans in, giving me a brief kiss on the lips, saying everything our hearts know right now but our words can’t, because it just fucking hurts too much.
“Bjorn’s a fighter. He won’t be lost inside the Black Dragon’s Void.
We’ll find him,” Mikkel says now as he and his sister come to the bed.
An intense calm is in both of them, though they are tender as they take my hands, and Mikkel leans in for a short kiss.
His kiss is gently dark now, a thing of beautiful midnight skies, as we share a brief moment.
Laerke is fierce but tender as she grips my hand hard.
“We will weather this storm, sister. Nobody’s lost quite yet,” Laerke asserts, as she faces everything head-on with her usual determined fierceness.
“Even Bjorn’s not lost yet.” A strange look comes into Baldur’s eyes.
Taking Bjorn’s pulse for the umpteenth time, Baldur goes deep into the Void yet again, seeing something there with his cosmic blue eyes that even I can’t.
He draws a deep breath, as if fortifying himself for battle, then slowly lets it out.
Flicking to me, his gaze is deeply serious.
Though a strange fire is in his eyes, with a flicker of excitement.
“Everybody out, to a separate room so we can recover. Let’s leave Bjorn and Rikyava alone for a while to rest.” Baldur watches me with his infinite blue gaze. Soberly, he takes me in, although iron is in his constitution as he weighs me, as if looking into my very soul.
And finding my true life’s purpose, at last.
“Stay with him, Yava,” Baldur says now, as he pierces me with his intense, endless look. “Find him where he dwells. Follow his essence, and use our united power, however much you need, as you traverse the most ancient skies. Find him; be with him where he is… and bring him back to us.”
I can’t understand what Baldur knows, as he stares me down with one foot in the cosmos now and one foot here with us.
I can feel from him that even he doesn’t know quite what he’s sensing now, far out in the endless Void-skies.
What I do know is that he’s sensed something about Bjorn, way out where we live and die in the Void.
And that something is important now, as he tells me to go there.
Soberly, I nod, taking his hand with a squeeze and thanking him for whatever he’s found. Because what I see in his eyes, as he leans in and briefly kisses me, is a glimmer of hope. Hope is what I need right now as I gently kiss him back, then my drakes and Laerke usher out.
So I can go find my First Drake.
And get him the fuck back.
I lay down naked beside Bjorn, as my drakes and Laerke leave the room. Though the fire in the brazier is enough to warm me, it suddenly seems drafty in the ancient abode, as the rest of my Bloodbond exit.
I cuddle close to Bjorn, snuggling under his arm now as I cinch a leg up over his hip. I toss the duvet over us both, tucking us in as I cling close to him like a monkey.
I hope it tells him, wherever he is, that like hell am I ever giving him up.
Determination fills me now, rather than my loss of faith, feeling Baldur’s hope fill me, that we can get Bjorn back.
Because Baldur has sensed something important; though I know Bjorn has been taken into the Black Dragon’s maw, I also know Baldur suggested I search for him in the regular Void, having sensed something there that might aid us.
As I feel my remaining drakes lay down in the adjacent room, resting like me now, I feel their exhausted abilities open up.
It’s not a powerhouse of magic that comes to me now from their exhausted magics as I open my fullest Bloodwalker might, but a deep, slow river that takes me, as I am washed far out into the stars.
I wander the ancient cosmos of the true Void, feeling Baldur’s hope like a lodestone inside my heart, as I do what he suggested and search for Bjorn’s essence.
Not just Baldur’s hope bolsters me now, but the bright passion of Strom, the vicious determination of Mikkel, even the fierce indomitable nature of Laerke, steadying me as I Bloodwalk through the Void.
Memories help a Bloodwalker find souls in the Void; but even as I search for memories of Bjorn to ground and lead me out in the stars, I get hit again by my hopelessness.
It’s the first time since my Bloodwalker power opened that I haven’t had Bjorn with me.
Even way back when I got blasted by the Black Dragon’s diabolical curse-work on that Outer Island, Bjorn was with me, shoring me up to all this metaphysical bullshit as he held me steady with his rock-solid body, strong hands, and fierce love.
That body is in stasis now, his soul lost, as Bjorn drifts far beyond the Void. He’s not even here in the cosmos, I know as his hands rest limp at his sides, no surviving thread of our love bonding us together anymore.
There’s only my aching heart here, wishing I could go back. Tears leak from my closed eyes now as I lay with him, wishing that I could go back to the beginning, with him.
I begin to imagine it; what if I hadn’t been such a dick to him when we were younger? What if I hadn’t been so furiously dramatic, pushing him away with my frustrations and rage just as much as he pushed me?
I wander aimlessly in the stars now, as I imagine what our life might have been like had I not left Stockholm in the dead of night two decades ago.
We’d have twenty more years of life with each other; twenty more years of living and loving, and figuring out how to become friends and true lovers through all our storms, rather than just igniting in each other’s presence.
“I should have fought for you,” I whisper to him now as I hold him and wander in the cosmos, trying to find anything of our love that’s left. “All those years, I should have fought at your side, rather than against you… then abandoning you.”
Even as I say it, I know that’s not entirely fair, because Bjorn was just as big a pain in my ass as I was for him.
All our stormy moments come back now. All the heated arguments and fight-sex when we were pissed at each other, plus the long breakups, as I feel the pain in my heart that loving him has caused.
But it’s also been brilliance, as I feel all the joys of our coming together, and all the times we weren’t fighting and it was so very good. They were times when we got along and were playful, friends even, and the most passionate of lovers to boot.
It all whirls through me now as I lose myself in the cosmos; the years of self-doubt I had after leaving him and going to the Red Letter Hotel Paris, all the times I wanted to call and explain myself, and apologize.
But now Bjorn’s soul is lost, and we never fully made up. We never truly healed the rift inside us that my abandoning Stockholm—and him—had caused.
We Bloodbonded in our mutual love and rage when we first came together in the heather atop that mountain in the wilds. But it’s been love and rage ever since, rather than true oneness, as I release a deep sigh now, letting myself wander upon the massive tide of all those conflicting emotions.
And drift off into the Void, alone.
I’m not really alone, however, as I move through the stars, my physical body in a deep stasis like sleep, but not. I see my Bloodbonds to my other drakes like shimmering ropes all through the Void, as they come with now, able to traverse the Void, as well.
Something about our Bloodbond has changed since we all became one with each other a day ago. They’ve acquired the ability to Bloodwalk just as much as me now, as we all rest and search for Bjorn together.
Remembering him, and the beautiful difficulty he is.
I feel how we all search for him as we wander together, but also separately, in the stars.
We remember different sides of him as we search; for Strom, it’s recalling how contentious Bjorn is as a man, but how incredible he is as a commander.
For Mikkel, it’s Bjorn’s infuriating stubbornness, which Mikkel secretly lauds him for, because like Mikkel’s darkness, it is Bjorn’s greatest gift.
For Baldur, a beautiful sensation takes him as he remembers how incredible it is to synergize his Blood Magic to Bjorn’s, and the powerhouse that ensues. Not just that, but the passion that sweeps them when it happens.
Beautiful.
As their memories flood me now, along with my own, my determination to find my first true lifemate out here in the Void skyrockets.
Though my tether to him and our First Bloodbond is sundered, my life means nothing without Bjorn; inhaling deeply now, I focus on all my love for him, and everything he means to me, as I wander, searching.
Suddenly, I find myself in a known place. As I gaze around, I see that I have come to the ring of ancient standing stones in the stars, made of the vast constellations themselves.
It is broken; everything here is sundered. A terrible feeling sweeps over me now, as I recognize that this was our handiwork. This ancient place is only ruined in the stars because we made it so, with our hubris.
Our battles, contentiousness, and our heinous breakups assault me everywhere I look, as I remember our hubris now.
Like rifts of endless darkness, I see how that empty, sundering energy rips through the Void with each memory of our divisiveness, expanding those cracks in the star-stones wider, and ever more black.
I let it fill me now, as I see our folly in the Void. Because I cannot banish it; love it or hate it, my contentiousness with my first and greatest love is a part of me, just like this ancient sundering energy is a part of the endless cosmos I traverse.
I understand that now, as I stand in the star-stones, broken yet endless. I cannot banish the true feelings of a ruined heart; I can only heal them, and do better next time, whenever Bjorn and I fight.
I promise to do just that, as I search for him now at the epicenter of the star-stones. I have been drawn here for a reason. Everything feels crystal-edged now, as I hunt for my lost drake out in the Void that makes us.
Good times, bad times, amazing times, terrible ones; I let all my memories fill me now as I search. I’m feeling everything Bjorn is, and that we are together. I laugh, and smile, and cry far out in the ancient skies now, knowing no one but my drakes can hear me.
It’s then that I suddenly feel myself walking, right towards the star-stones. With one vastly broken stone in particular, I’m moving in a single line towards that stone, rather than wandering aimlessly as I search for Bjorn.
I glance down to see my auric body has found some kind of thread. A little golden thread of light, its brightness pierces right through my heart as I walk on through the silent, starry darkness, towards that broken stone.
I know it’s Bjorn that I’m suddenly following out in the skies. A string of essence, it’s as if with each memory I retrieve of the good, the bad, and the ugly, I feel a little more of him, way out in the cosmos.
With each memory I retrieve of everything we are together, I find more of that golden thread, leading me to Bjorn.
I feel how it’s connected to our Bloodbond, too; because though all our bonds to Bjorn have been sundered, we each still have our memories of him, and his entire wholeness, leading us on through this ancient midnight.
As I finally come to the most massively broken star-stone, its towering reaches sundered and riven with cracks from our battle with the division energy here, I see how Bjorn’s golden thread flows into it.
Even more, this lifeline to him flows right into one of the cracks on the stone, flowing into the darkness. I peer into that gargantuan crack now, leagues taller than me and just as wide, as I stand in my infinitesimal self, and see how that Void is utterly black.
Though the true Void all around me is littered with stars of countless souls all still living here in the endless sky of the cosmos, this other Void is empty of everything that gives light.
Like a true black hole, I feel how that emptiness sucks me in now, as if hungry. It hauls at my metaphysical body and flesh, seeking to take me into its infernal night, forever.
Somehow, Bjorn is in there, as I draw a deep breath and ready myself. Gathering the threads of my bound drakes close around me, holding onto all their souls as my tether, I ready myself.
Then launch into the darkness.
All is screeching hell as I enter the place where there is no light. A terrible cacophony of a hundred thousand souls surrounds me now, as I both hear and feel them screeching and writhing in torment here in the blackness where I am now.
For this is the fury and darkness of the Usurper, borne of the souls that power it; and this is what lives inside the black emptiness in the Void, which I know I have come through somehow, to be within the Black Dragon’s Void now.
There is no light here; nothing shines in this place of endless, cacophonous midnight. Only the writhing torment of the hundreds of thousands of souls stolen from the place of their birth exists here, as I shudder in near-terror now from the massive, insane sound of their annihilation.
But I have come through from the star-stones in the real Void; I used whatever power remained in that place as I followed that golden thread of light with my fullest heart, holding nothing back.
And I have come here, weathering the Black Dragon’s eternal screeching night now.
Right to Bjorn, where he is trapped in the darkness.