55. Fen
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
FEN
Aristus materialized beneath me, his body solidifying out of nothing as I started to fall. I slammed onto his back with enough force to drive the air from my lungs, scrambling for his neck spike. Without a saddle, nothing would catch me if I slipped.
Through the pack bond, I felt Eradin’s relief that Selira had swooped in beneath her and Reece on his own dragon, terror still clawing up his throat. Lyndie’s dragon had caught her by the ankle, flipping her upright at the last second.
We’d agreed on no tack, but even if we hadn’t, the trial had made the decision for us. To make this harder? Probably.
As the meadow disappeared around us, a gaping hole appeared and sucked us inside.
We flew through darkness with no light or ending in sight, the sound of multiple dragon wings beating the air.
Only my thighs clamped around Aristus’s sides kept me on his back. The stitches in my shoulder pulled with every flap of his wings, a steady burn I did my best to ignore.
Every instinct I had was screaming at me to find purchase, to grip something solid, and there was nothing. No saddle or stirrups. Just Aristus’s spine beneath me and the dark dropping away on every side.
My friends’ fear bled through the bond, meshing with mine. We were drowning in it.
Until the world reformed.
We flew out of the darkness, into a broad, bone-white valley, the entrance magically closing behind us.
Vertical walls of blood-veined stone rose on every side of the canyon, climbing so high the peaks disappeared into clouds that looked solid enough to land on.
The jagged slopes had been cut at angles that shouldn’t exist, each face jutting outward below the next, forming a staircase.
Narrow ledges held debris that had fallen from above.
Bones covered the canyon floor so thoroughly the ground itself was invisible.
They were layered like sediment, generations of them pressed flat by the weight of whatever had come after.
Dragon ribcages the size of cottages thrust up through the accumulation, their arches worn smooth by weather.
Between them, I spied smaller shapes. Some still wore armor rusted to the color of old blood, fused so completely to the remains that the metal had become part of the bone.
The canyon walls held more of them, dragons and riders embedded in the rock. Stone had grown around them, their necks stretching toward the summit they’d never reach.
Skeletons of people at every stage of decay punctuated the surface and lay on ledges. Some still gripped crumbling weapons. Others sat, their legs and arms splayed wide.
“No exit,” Eradin said from Selira’s back where she flew beside Aristus, Lyndie and Reece just beyond her.
Lyndie and Reece stared upward, Reece pointing.
We’d flown into a fist of stone, and the only opening was whatever waited at the top, assuming anything waited at all.
Eradin’s horror hit me though the bond.
She was counting. Doing the math I couldn’t make myself finish.
How many Scorchings had fed this place?
My father might be in one of these walls or lying on the cavern floor, his armor rusted the same color as the rest, his bones as anonymous as all the others.
I made myself look. Really look at the armored shapes closest to us, scanning for House Lancifer colors. For anything. But I recognized nothing. There were too many.
I tightened my grip on Aristus’s neck spike until my knuckles stopped feeling like mine.
“Fen.” Eradin’s voice pulled me back. “Look.”
Strange structures protruded from the rock face at regular intervals, rising in pairs from the stone on either side of what might be a path if you could call a vertical climb a path.
Stone pillars, each one twice the height of a man, anchored directly into the canyon wall.
The rock had been carved around them, or it had grown to hold them in place.
Runes covered every visible side of them, different from the runes the elite inscribed into our dragons’ tack. Dense, layered, and carved so deep into the stone that the grooves created slices of shadow beneath. Some runes I recognized from the texts I’d studied. Most I didn’t.
They glowed the same faint blue as the collar fused to Aristus’s neck.
They looked almost ceremonial.
Ancient.
Like someone had built a road and marked it with monuments to make the path feel sacred.
I didn’t trust anything about this place.
“I assume we need to get to the top?” Lyndie asked.
Reece grunted, squinting upward. “Why not fly there?”
I was thinking the same thing. That was the only direction that made sense. The Oracle might wait above the cloud line or more of this final trial. But we wouldn’t find an answer down here other than death.
Even spaces jutted between the structures. The higher they climbed, the closer they stood together, the corridor narrowing as it rose. The trail had been built to be followed carefully, not rushed.
The eight remaining elites flew their dragons back and forth through the valley, their heads tilted back.
Most of the dragons wore full tack.
They’d left them to sleep in it.
When I got out of here, things were going to change. Assuming I lived long enough to change them.
One lady pointed to the top and kicked her dragon in the sides, urging her to fly upward.
The beast’s wings flapped at a feverish pace as the rider drove her higher and higher.
They came to a shuddering halt and the dragon’s wings seized.
Its collar blazed pure white, and every pillar lit in response.
Magical threads wavered out from the structures, connecting to the collar. They pulled taut.
The rider’s scream rang out as the two fell. The bodies bounced against the jagged slope until they landed hard on the bone-strewn canyon base with a wet smack. Bone fragments scattered and dust shot up around them before they settled among the other riders who hadn’t made it through the Scorching.
Dead on impact.
Bile rushed up into my throat, but I forced it back down.
She’d done exactly what I would’ve done an hour ago. Assessed the trial, found the most direct route, and committed to it completely. The Scorching had trained us to think that way. Move fast. Take ground. Hesitate and lose.
It had trained us to die in the most efficient way possible.
“We’ll climb,” I said. “No flying. Stick to the path between the structures.” I glanced at the others. “Stay together. Watch out for each other.”
The elite must’ve come to the same conclusion, because they started up the path, riding their dragons. Lady Severine took the lead on Heartsbrim, the ruby dragon’s wings beating hard to keep up the agitated pace she demanded with her whip. Lord Cedric followed her, his face grim.
A woman in House Mireille leathers who hadn’t spoken to anyone since the second lake kicked her dragon, forcing it up the slope after Lord Cedric, followed by a man whose name I didn’t know but whose dragon had lost half its tail somewhere in one of the trials and was compensating with every wingbeat.
Lord Blair and the others kept to the rear, the lord’s head tilted back as he studied the summit.
Four elite teams reduced to fragments. What remained of us wasn’t a race anymore. It was a thinning.
Vella looked back, holding my gaze long enough to turn it into a statement, before turning forward and kicking her dragon in the sides.
Aristus’s carried us up the first section easily. Without the saddle restricting him, he could move. His muscles bunched and released smoothly beneath me.
Eradin came behind me, followed by Reece. Lyndie took the rear.
We urged our dragons higher, talons scrambling across bones and smooth stone, wings flapping to add momentum.
I leaned forward, clutching the spike jutting up between Aristus’s shoulders.
Every time Aristus’s wings drove us higher, the motion twisted my side. I’d stopped feeling the wound as pain. Now only a dull coldness deadened my shoulder.
My thighs were already burning. Without the saddle, every movement Aristus made transmitted directly into my body. His muscles bunched beneath me, released, and bunched again. Each wingbeat shifted his spine. I had to compensate or slide backward.
Only the neck spike kept me on his back. My hands cramped around it, my grip so tight my knuckles had gone numb.
Aristus’s breathing deepened. His lungs could fill all the way now, and he climbed the way dragons were meant to, faster than any collared dragon straining above us.
We’d only gone a short distance when a hum vibrated through the air. The pillars shuddered and screamed.
The sound burrowed into my skull and vibrated my teeth.
Pressure built behind my eyes until my vision blurred.
Aristus lurched beneath me, his wings stuttering mid-beat. His confusion spiked into terror. Something was pulling at him from the inside, trying to swallow him whole.
Every dragon other than Selira faltered at the same time, their wings losing rhythm and their eyes glazing.
My stomach dropped.
Only Selira moved steady, unaffected.
Through what remained of our bond, I felt Aristus’s attention snap toward her.
The hum deepened around us, throbbing through my bones, and the runes etched into the collars blazed blue-white. Lines of spindly light connected the collars to the pillars.
One ahead flared, sending out wavering feelers, and I shielded my eyes from the glare. The dragon it touched convulsed. Its wings locked, spiked outward. The dragon’s guttural groan rang out, and the rider shrieked.
The woman from House Mireille and her dragon slid back down the slope, the dragon’s body jarring on each rigid segment. Lord Blair and the others reined their dragons to the side. She tumbled past them, the dragon’s body jarring across the surface.
They hit a ledge and flipped over, falling.
The thread snapped. The nearest pillar pulsed once, a wave of light rushing from base to tip of every carved channel at once, the runes flaring so bright I could barely see.
Fed. Satisfied. Already waiting for the next victim.
I’d seen runes like these before on the oldest of the Unity Bands in the royal vault and on the foundation stones of the bonding chamber in the castle.
This path had never been meant to lead us anywhere. It had been designed to feed.
The runes on Aristus’s collar flared white, and his confusion turned to fear. Something was still pulling at him. I could feel more than see it.
Lord Cedric’s dragon stumbled, his legs appearing to forget how to move. One foreleg stretched out to carry them higher but dragged back. The dragon caught itself and continued climbing, but the collar around his neck blazed brighter.
Aristus shuddered. Then his wings locked. He remained rigid, the thread connecting his collar to the nearest pillar blazing white and pulling taut. Something was reaching inside him, finding the part of him that was tired, that had been carrying weight for twenty-three years, and was pulling on it.
His wings unlocked with a crack and caught the air. My heart restarted.
Don’t you dare fall, I swore I heard Eradin say.
Same to you, I thought back, not knowing if she’d hear it.
Warmth flooded through the connection.
She’d heard.
Her determination surged through the pack bond. She wasn’t giving up. Which meant we couldn’t either.
Lyndie’s dragon slowed, his wings stuttering before finding their rhythm again. Reece’s dragon slid backward, struggling to compensate for his damaged wing. We paused, waiting while they caught on a ledge before the dragon scrambled to his feet and surged to catch up to us.
Selira strode beside Aristus, her awareness spiking through the bond. She could sense something the rest of us couldn’t.
“They’re drawing power from the dragons.” Eradin’s voice echoed in the valley, naming what I’d already suspected. “Their magic is being siphoned through the collars to feed the structures.”
“That’s not possible,” Lyndie said in a shaky voice.
“Look at them.” Eradin gestured to where elite dragons were starting to lag. “Look at your own dragon. Every one with a collar is struggling. Selira isn’t.”
The higher we climbed, the worse it got.
The hum grew, calling for more.
Was this what killed my father?
He hadn’t been weak. He’d been murdered by the system I’d spent my life defending.
“Aristus.” I leaned forward, running my fingers across his neck where the collar bit deepest. Heat flared under my hand, but it wasn’t mine. This thing was helping the pillars drain him. “Fight it. Whatever it’s taking, hold on to it. Don’t let go.”
His uncertainty bled through the bond. He didn’t know how.
“Trust me.” The words scraped out. “The way I’m trusting you.”
“If we survive this,” I said, my voice a croak, “I have two wishes now. For Aristus to heal. And I want to know what happened to my father, Jaris.”
Aristus went rigid beneath me, every muscle locking at once. His wings stopped mid-beat, and we dropped before he caught himself, a sickening lurch that nearly unseated me.
He shook hard enough to rattle my teeth.
As far as I knew, they’d never met. I’d bonded with Aristus when I was seven, and my father had flown into the Scorching that same season and never come back. Yet my dragon knew that name.
Why would my dragon flinch at a dead man’s name?
“Hold on. Please.” I pressed my forehead to his neck, my shoulder shrieking at the angle.
The thread connecting his collar to the nearest structure flickered. The white light dimmed.
For the first time since we’d entered this trial, he pushed back.
Eradin’s terror for us and our dragons shot through the bond, pulling taut with her need to fix this.
The higher we climbed, the worse it got.
A voice erupted from everywhere and nowhere. Ancient. It echoed off the canyon walls until I couldn’t tell which direction it came from.
Only the strongest may pass. Only the worthy shall ascend. Push forward. Prove your devotion.
The words settled into the canyon like a command.
Vella kicked Heartsbrim in the sides.
The dragon shrieked and scrambled forward, bolting up the slope. The beast’s collar blazed white-hot. The thread connecting Heartsbrim to the nearest structure flared so bright I had to look away.
Eradin’s horror crashed into mine.
Heartsbrim groaned and fell to the jagged surface.
He started sliding backward.