4. Elorie
Elorie
Shadowy tar drips from the fangs of the creature before us, and dread boils up inside me. But when I look at Greer, I find her grinning at the beast. As if she’s amused by its presence and not at all worried that we’re facing a creature of the Well without access to our magic.
I have to admire her bravery in the face of impossible odds, even as fear coils in my chest.
Not the kind of fear that has me running as fast and as far as I can because this creature will kill us without our magic. But because its presence means that if the Well has stretched this far into the realm, then it has certainly reached out into others.
What does that mean for the other territories in Lyrichia? What does that say about Vaelier?
About Wilder?
The rune on my chest burns so hot I nearly stumble. My fingers find the mark, and I dive deep to where my magic slumbers. To that pitch-black thread where he was once the golden light at the end.
“Wilder?” I reach for him with my entire being. “Tell me you’re there. Tell me you’re alive.”
There’s no answer. My thoughts float away into nothingness as my chest tightens.
I should have fought harder to get to him when I had the chance. Now I may never see him again.
Before me, the beast stretches. Its arms and legs are endless. As one disappears, another forms in its place. It is both something and nothing, crawling through the forest toward us, leaving a slimy path of death in its wake.
Not death—a rip.
A crevice.
The trail behind the creature is a wedge in the ground. An endless void, tunneling so deep that it travels to another place.
This split is not like the one in Solace, where creatures spilled from its depths. This is a single vein. Only one creature crawled out, but with it comes something else. An essence that floods the forest floor. It wafts at my ankles and stirs terror in my core.
As if there isn’t already enough of that here.
As if these people haven’t already suffered.
The Well stretches, and I shove down my unease. My concern for my well-being. My worry for my mate.
I sweep all other thoughts aside, and I twine my fear into a ball until it twists and turns and molds into something else.
Something heated.
Something furious.
Because that’s what I am. I’m angry I’m here and Wilder isn’t. I’m angry the realms collided. I’m angry Malachi used me. I’m angry about this lack of power—not magic—but power over my fate.
Gripping my daggers in hand, I channel that rage and step to Greer’s side.
Her smile grows when she gets a glimpse of the anger on my face. “You ready for a fight?”
“Aching for it.”
I move first, quicker than thought. Than the wind that is now hushed from the presence of the Well, choking out all else. I drive forward, daggers out and aimed at the beast, slicing the heart of the shadowy birdlike being.
The beast rears back, and this close, it is not only smoke and shadow.
There is a film of something else that can be cut, and when it bleeds, the same black ooze that drips from its mouth leaks out.
Only, the wounds heal too quickly. The moment my blade leaves the creature, it stitches itself back together.
I don’t give it time to recover as I strike again. It doesn’t rear back this time. It aims for me. Greer moves in tandem, striding between us to land a blow. Her blade draws a perfect line along its throat; dark tar rains down.
The creature’s head lobs backward, nearly beheaded, its face dangling in the wrong direction.
Except this creature has no real form, nothing to cut off that can’t fold inward and protrude whole once more.
The place that held its eyes melts into its toothy beak as it turns inside out, and a new face pushes up from the dark pillar of smoke.
This face has no teeth. There are only dark sockets where its eyes should be. It reeks of rot and burning flesh.
For years, I stood beside a burning pyre, acclimating to the smell of searing death. Still, this stench takes my breath away.
I stumble as the creature moves forward, but Greer doesn’t miss a step. She is a warrior at heart. A warrior in her soul. In her blood.
She twirls, drawing her blade like a paintbrush of death, carving a statue of destruction. Cutting one piece at a time. And with each one, the beast rolls in on itself and regenerates.
Feathers of shadow fly into the air, becoming small bugs that circle us. Nipping at any exposed skin. Leaving welts on my neck. It stings. It burns.
“Nothing can kill it.” I carve my daggers into where a heart should be, but as I pull them free, nothing but an empty hole in its chest stares back.
Filmy skin twines back together as the beast lowers to the ground.
“Back,” Greer says, shoving her arm in front of me as she moves back a step. “We need to get back.”
“What is it doing?”
“I don’t know.”
Before I can turn or blink, the creature curls. All around is pitch black, like it gulped the light from the realm. It draws inward and then bursts like an explosion in the darkness. There is nothing that keeps my feet on the ground.
A flood of darkness barrels at us, sending Greer and I through the air until my head strikes a tree, and my vision goes black.
“Do you hear that, Father?” I whirl toward the prison, nearly slipping on a boulder.
Father’s hands catch me, pulling me down to the sand before I topple into the sea. Waves crash against the boulders, reaching for me.
“Careful.” He helps me find my footing. “Your excitement almost sent you floating out to sea.”
I frown at the worry in Father’s eyes. Worry he tries to mask with a smile but fails.
He brushes my hair off my face, tucking a strand beneath the braid to hide the blue tint that grows a little higher each year. While that soulful hum that snagged my attention gets louder.
“What is it?” Father asks, his face pinching when he sees me staring at the prison.
He doesn’t like when I stare too long, much less go near there. Once, he caught me picking morning glories at the prison gates, and he refused to let me leave the village for nearly a full turn of the moon. I don’t know what he fears from those walls when nothing can get out.
“You don’t hear the song?” I ask as the tone changes to something more somber.
The wistful hope that once led the chorus is more haunting now.
He shakes his head, even as the song is so crisp. So clear.
“Tell me what you’re hearing.”
My eyes close, and I try to make out the words, but it’s as if I’m in a dream. I know them, but I can’t quite understand them.
“Someone sad. Someone who lost something, maybe. I can’t understand it.”
Focusing harder, I latch onto the words that don’t make sense until I am no longer in the darkness of my mind but in an open space that reflects back at me. Where the walls are endless, and I am not the one hearing the tune but singing it. Listening to the echo of it against a pitch-black room.
My eyebrows crinkle as I blink them open and find my father shaking my shoulders.
“There you are.” Relief floods his face. “You weren’t answering me.”
“I thought I saw—” My head hammers as I try to remember the face in the reflection. “I don’t know what it was. It’s like I was somewhere else.”
Worry fills his gaze as he looks up and down the beach. “We should get home. The shadows are moving.”
I glance around at the shadows cast by the prison. They change direction at all times of day, without warning. Unlike the shadow of a tree, shifting with the sun or the moon, the prison’s darkness does not move with the light; it does what it wishes. And right now, it’s like it’s reaching for me.
Father grabs the fish we caught and leads the way back to the village. But even as we leave those shadows behind, something in them follows. A song with words I don’t know, but my throat hums.
“Elorie, wake up.” Greer’s voice pierces through the music in my memory.
My eyes fly open, and I find her crouched in front of me.
“Are you okay?”
“I hit my head.” I run my fingers over the blood trickling from the lump that’s already forming. “I’ll be fine.”
“I pushed the creature back, but it won’t be long before it lunges again. Nothing works. It just keeps coming.” She eyes the creature over her shoulder.
It’s curled close to the ground. No longer birdlike, as it was before. Now, the beast coils like a snake. A hiss of warning flutters from somewhere deep while it watches us, soaking in the essence spilling from the Well.
“We can’t let it get to the village.”
She shakes her head. “Without magic we can’t stop it.”
Over Greer’s shoulder, the creature sinks its belly into the Well like it’s drinking something down.
The creatures in Solace didn’t do that—they didn’t need the Well to recharge.
They fed on our magic, growing stronger the more we used on them.
Here, that’s not the case. Alyssium is dry.
There is nothing for the creature to feed on except its source.
“We don’t need to stop it.” I realize. “It can’t survive without magic, and there’s none here. It will only be able to reach so far before it retreats.”
“Then why would it be here in the first place?” Greer’s eyebrows pinch. “If it needs magic to survive, nothing should have drawn it to Alyssium.”
“We have magic within us?” I guess, but it doesn’t make sense. Our magic slumbers, and these creatures can’t access what we can’t.
What else could it be reaching for?
I shift against the tree, and my mother’s blade digs into my spine. The heat of it against my back grows warmer the longer I wear it. The metal thrums, and heat radiates from the blade. But it is not hot like flame; it is something else. It’s awake.
Reaching back, I unsheathe the sword. The blue vein down the center swims and glows, sending the creature into a frenzy.
“It’s reacting to my mother’s sword. There must be magic in the blade.”
Greer’s eyebrows pinch, pulling at the scar that cuts through one of them. “How could a blade be strong enough to draw the attention of the Well?”
“I don’t know, but when my magic first woke, it wasn’t in the prison.” I remember clearly now, fighting the Fae in the street, the snow melting. “I was fighting in the street to save my father, and something burst out. I thought it was from within me…”
“Or maybe it was something within the sword.” She finishes my thought.
I nod. “Distract the creature. If the magic in the sword is what the Well is after, I’ll give it what it wants, and maybe it will leave us alone.”
“Go.” Greer spins just as the creature reaches us. Her sword slices through its center, slowing it down.
I don’t wait for the creature to recover. I run, sweat dripping down the back of my neck while Greer continues to battle the beast at my back. Her strikes weaken with each blow, but she holds the line, keeping the creature away from me.
Sliding to my knees in the dirt, I stop at the crack in the island floor. Within it is obsidian darkness.
So deep there is no end.
Flecks shimmer in the endless abyss, but they have no light.
I lift the blade above my head with all my might; I shove the sword down into the split, offering what magic I hold in this blade to the Well. Only, the air shifts. Goose bumps prickle my flesh; heat floods my skin in a rush that feels nothing like when I closed the split in Solace.
Instead of it taking the offering and quieting, something within the vein shudders.
A piercing cry rings out into the night, as if the realm is screaming. I release the blade and cover my ears, but the wailing continues. A shrill, violent bellow rattles my bones. Darkness bursts, and then, like a breath is drawn back in, it’s gone, along with the beast Greer was fighting.
The artificial night vanishes. The Well retreats. The ground closes.
Only, the sword, which I offered the Well in sacrifice, is still half buried in the ground before me. Not dull as I’d expect from the magic being drained. It’s glowing.
Whatever was within it didn’t just call the Well here—it stopped it. It affected it. There is only one magic I’ve seen do as much: gods-touched magic.
How could such magic be within my mother’s blade?