Chapter 21
Darkness—the kind that riled the spirit and shattered the mind—greeted me in the Shroud.
There was no beautiful meadow, no Leeran, just a shadow thick enough to make me question whether I’d forgotten to open my eyes, but I had, unfortunately.
I crept forward through the nothingness, ears perked for the faintest noise.
In the pitch black, my feet crunched against dry sticks and leaves.
Oh God, please let it be leaves. My dreamscape seemingly registered my hope, and a forest fell from the abyss above.
I threw my hands up over my head as it crashed down around me like some great force had dropped a diorama off a countertop.
But it wasn’t the earth and trees that inevitably pinned me in place, it was the sounds: vicious, feral, and taunting.
Frozen, an invisible string tugged at my center: my willow.
It was just over the hill; I could sense it.
I ambled forward, taking in my surroundings.
The trees were much the same as the real world, only instead of bark covering their trunks, they had what appeared to be scales.
I lifted a hand to run it across the nearest tree and jumped when it pulled away from me, sliding its roots in the ground to avoid my touch.
That’s not disturbing or anything. I wasted no time and moved on.
I wasn’t about to stick around and see what else that thing was capable of.
The invisible string tugged again; just a little farther. I started up the embankment, rounding into a field of illuminated bell flowers jingling an eerie tune. My stomach soured. An eerie familiar tune.
The violet-cloaked woman’s song.
“Bethesda …”
I felt the hot breath splay across the back of my neck before I had a chance to run.
Don’t move, that omnipresent voice rattled through me the same way it had when I was with the tentacle beast. It’s testing you. Lift your chin. Look assured.
It? What the hell was it? With my feet cemented to the ground, I did as the voice said and tilted my head up, staring straight ahead.
Ignore. Don’t move. My heart rattled in my chest, a strange thump-two-three-four echoing off the forest floor as whatever it was rounded my left side painstakingly slow.
It’s a Wendigo, the voice said. They feast on fear.
It rounded in time with her words, its shoulders even with my forehead.
While its front legs looked like that of a healthy deer, it dragged its crooked and rotting back legs behind it, torn muscle tangling in the dry leaves.
My heart slipped into my throat as it stopped a foot in front of me.
It lowered its face to mine, positioning itself in my direct line of sight, and I held back the urge to vomit at the scent of rot lifting off its fur.
Do not look away, the disembodied voice demanded. Hold its stare. You need only to convince it you won’t be an easy victim, and it will move on.
My mouth turned to sandpaper as the creature’s breath fanned across my face. Broken antlers jutted above exposed bone, and where eyes should have been only shriveled orbs of flesh remained.
Hold firm.
My body shook as the Wendigo parted its lipless mouth, opening wide to bare pointed teeth.
Hold.
Run, I had to run. It pressed close, rotten tongue falling out the side of its mouth.
A little longer …
I willed my eyes to stay open, but at the touch of that rotten tongue to my face, my body took over.
No!
A bloodcurdling howl released into the woods, silencing all other sounds.
I peeled my eyelids back open and readied myself to run, but the Wendigo stood motionless, attention no longer on me.
Instead, it peered over my shoulder. Shit, why does it look scared?
A low, guttural growl lifted into the trees and the Wendigo took off like a shot, leaving me alone with whatever the hell loomed behind me.
I waited for my disembodied helper to speak into my mind, to tell me what this monster was and how to survive it.
But the words never came. I was on my own.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I swallowed hard and considered running, but if it was another Wendigo, I’d only become its next meal.
It was too late to hide. I swallowed. My only option was to face the threat and hope some spoken wisdom rang through from my eye in the sky.
I turned, steady as I could manage, and cast my eyes to the ground, locking onto frost bitten feet, long talons protruding and stabbing into the dirt. I knew those claws …
“Hello, morsel,” the beast rumbled, steamy breath thrashing my hair about. It pinched my chin between its grimy talons and yanked my head up to meet its hollow eyes. “We meet again.”
“What do you want,” I whispered.
“You know what I want.”
To eat me. To devour me. To kill me slowly.
“Why me? Why do you want to kill me so badly?”
It chuckled, the vein in its neck bulging. “Aside from my own pleasure? I suppose you could say it would earn me accolades with my queen.”
“Bethesda?”
It slapped me hard across the face. “You have no right to call her by name!”
Queen—the cloaked woman. Before I could tell myself otherwise, the words fell out. “A beast like you answers to a ruler? I guess you aren’t as tough as I thought you were then.”
“I am far tougher than anything a pin-brained human like yourself could ever imagine,” it snarled. “You’d do well to show me more respect!”
It clicked then: my way out of this. My mind flitted back to the passage in the strange demonology book about knowing one’s foe and how in order to weaken a creature of darkness, you must discover its name.
While the monster before me was wicked incarnate, it’d already proved less than the sharpest tool in the shed. This could work.
Bait it, my omnipotent helper confirmed.
I lifted my gaze to the beast. “I don’t know. You say you’re this awful beast, and yet you didn’t follow me into the water the last time we met. What, afraid of a few tentacles?”
It snatched my shirt, its X-shaped irises rattling about. “Misery fears me. And, unlike you, I know how to respect the creatures of this world, regardless of rank.”
Rank. So, there’s order to these creatures. We were getting somewhere.
“Right, as if an ancient being like that would be afraid of a lowly creature like you,” I scoffed.
Good, good. Keep going.
“Why you little …” It shook me hard. “Ancient? Misery is an infant in comparison to my brothers and I. We are ancient. We are eternal. We are the Lores.”
The Queen’s song … The Ancient Lores.
It spat on the ground, jowls rattling in time with its snarl. “Do not compare me to scum like that bottom-feeder, created from the thoughts of some heartbroken weakling.”
That’s right. Leeran said this place, these creatures were manifestations.
Thoughts and fears. My eyes danced across the beast’s face.
So, what was this one? Disaster? Danger?
I had to know more, gauge its strength so I could get out alive.
“Better to be a heartbroken weakling’s creation than that of a frightened toddler. ”
An ear-piercing screech slipped past its lips. In the blink of an eye, my spine crashed against the ground; the air knocked from my lungs. I crawled through the leaves to prop myself against the nearest tree, but it skittered away, sending me back into the dirt.
“You have insulted me for the last time,” the beast seethed. “I was created by the hands of Gods. Forged in fear.” It drew closer. “Born of darkness.” Closer.
Ready your magic, my helper demanded. Your light—invite it in and I’ll handle the rest.
Magic? How? I didn’t know how to do this, I couldn’t!
Pressure built in my chest as before, and I took a deep breath.
I had to try. Mind fixed, I closed my eyes, willing calm energy into my veins like last time.
I tracked the warm sensation as it trickled from my head to my hands and solidified it the same way Cillian seemed to with his affinity.
Light took shape in my palm, illuminating then sputtering out.
Come on, Fey. You can do this, you have to.
Again, I pushed the warmth through me until a hard object began to form: a dagger’s hilt. Holy … it worked.
The beast threw its head back. “I. Am. Chaos.”
The name rattled through me: Chaos. Too long I’d hid in the shadows. Too long I’d allowed this pompous creature to haunt me, to keep me from rest and sanity. Not anymore. Chaos would be the one to taste fear this time. I drew the blade in front of me and jumped to my feet.
Its toothy grin widened, crooked finger pointed at the dagger. “You dare threaten me with that? I am eternal. You cannot—”
“Don’t you ever shut up,” I screamed, thrusting the dagger forward.
Chaos latched onto the blade, breaking it in half with a single pinch, the shattered metal falling at my feet.
No! My feet slid back in retreat, heel colliding with a jittering tree trunk that hadn’t been there a second before.
I whirled about to find the trees close knit: no gaps, no escape.
They’d blocked me in, roped me off in a damn death circle with the beast. This was it. I was done.
“Your death,” Chaos said, “will be slow. Agonizing. Consider it a repayment for all the years I have haunted you, only to be mocked and belittled. One face, another face, but always the same, pathetic soul. Aislyn, your time ends now!”
It lunged, claws drawn, but I stood frozen … Aislyn. This horrific monster had hunted me since my first life. I’d managed to outrun it for that long, and this was how it all ended? Trapped, walled in, like a lamb to the slaughter. What an absolute waste—
A gust of wind thrashed through the trees, bending them in its path. Chaos lurched around, irritation written all over its cursed face, to find the white wisp. My heart swelled.
Leeran, he’d come for me.
Chaos stalked toward the flitting mist. “You! I’ve had enough of you!”
I watched, expecting Leeran to take physical shape, but his vaporous form twisted here and there, back and forth, the beast following each move. Ridiculous, really—the way the once terrible creature looked more like a cat chasing a laser pointer than a beast on the hunt.
My eyes dropped to the shattered blade to find one triangular shard still attached to the hilt. I dove for it and stood, ready for a second shot.
My disembodied helper called out, Aim for the heart!
I raced toward Chaos, jumped, and latched onto its shoulders. It reared, determined to buck me off, but I held tight, feeling along it’s back until I found the precise place I aimed to strike: right between the shoulder blades.
“You fool! You wretch,” it shrieked.
I struck hard. Flesh, bone, and muscle tore beneath my severed blade.
The beast’s heartbeat radiated down the metal, rattling against my fingers, and I shoved what remained of the dagger deeper.
The sound escaping Chaos’s mouth reminded me of a pig headed for slaughter as it crumpled to its knees, falling flat on its face.
“You … fool.…” It heaved against the leaves. “They’ll … come for … you …”
With that, it released its last breath.
My lungs labored, hands shaking and soaked in warm, fresh blood. Black, tar-like blood. I skittered backward on my hands and stared at the lifeless being before me. I’d done that … I’d killed it.
I’d … I’d killed!
Chaos’s frame began to quiver beneath my stare.
For a moment I thought it’d been true: that it was an eternal being.
But then it burst in an eruption of gore.
I threw my hands up to shield my face, blood and fleshy bits splattering on my clothes.
I fought back the urge to puke, but sickness won out.
I rolled over, releasing all the pent-up anxiety, terror, and disgust; I let it seep out of my body.
I was alive.
It was all I could do to keep from falling apart: repeating those three words over again.
A zap against my hair brought me back to reality, and I raised my head from its hung position.
Leeran—still mist—swam through the open air around me, dusting his hazy frame against my brow.
I forced a smile. “Thank you for the well-timed distraction again.”
He danced along my skin once more before dipping toward the ground and coming to rest above the shattered dagger poking up in the bloody sea. He hovered there.
“What?” On hands and knees, I dragged myself closer, carefully pausing outside the worst of the mess. Leeran’s misty shape bobbed. Wait … was he pointing? “I don’t understand …”
Collect the essence, the voice called.
My gaze darted across the muck and the mire. Leeran’s position lingered right over Chaos’s heart: weak, but still beating. Within it, a glimmer caught my eye.
You have to harvest its essence or it will revive.
No. No way. Beast or not, I had to respect the dead. I refused to go sifting through its remains.
Quickly, or all of this will have been for nothing!
At the thought of being hunted all over again, I pinched my eyes shut, raised my hand above the heart, and Leeran edged my fingers down around it. The heart was surprisingly small for such a large creature. I squeezed and it popped like a grape.
A symphony of screams and howls ignited the airwaves.
The ground began to rattle, birds took flight, and the trees tore off toward the horizon. My blood ran cold, and goose bumps splayed up my arms. What. The. Hell. Was. That?
They know! Grab it and run! Now!
I rummaged through the heart casing and found the essence glimmering through the bloodied cover.
A stone.