Chapter 61 Ancient Bones #2
“The ancient foe Parlin defeated?”
“Parlin lived a thousand years ago, did he not?”
Saffron had been so dismissive. But the bones of her, the soul of her, knew exactly what she was looking at. As though her ancient ancestors had passed down the knowledge of it, an inherited understanding, borne of world-ending fear.
That’s who the internal screams belonged to. The innate terror, the inherent dread.
It was theirs. The mages from a thousand years back in her bloodline.
These thoughts and realizations occurred between one second and the next, and in that time, the Sordai hovered suspended over the rocky platform, eyeless but with eyes, soundless but somehow roaring, and then it swooped down, down—
—straight at Miret.
Miret tried to roll away, to scramble back, but he wasn’t fast enough.
The Sordai dove into him, through him, and out the other side.
Taking with it…something.
A light, a glow. Something essential and life-giving.
It moved through Miret, and it drank.
Levan bellowed, his wand drawn, but what curse or counter spell could he fire?
Miret slumped to the ground, though he was not dead. He was simply…changed. Duller, emptier. Like Segal after he had Risen.
“Levan,” Saffron screamed. “What does Sordai mean in Ancient Sarthi?”
“Soul death,” Levan murmured, coming to the same terrible realization as Saffron.
The Sordai swooped and swirled through the air above, brighter now, stronger.
“Don’t let it touch you,” Miret whispered, the words echoing around the towering cave, then muttered the Saints’ Prayer in guttural, fearful Eqoran.
“Sen ammorten,” Saffron yelled, aiming her wand at the floating Sordai.
Thanks to half a decade of shooting practice at the Academy, her aim was true. But it didn’t matter. The killing curse sailed straight through the Sordai’s belly, ineffectual, meaningless.
It turned to stare at her, through her, and then dove again.
Saffron ducked and rolled away just in time, but it changed course at the last minute, plunging toward Levan, who took two staggering steps backward.
“Ans clyptus,” Saffron roared, and a shimmering spellshield leapt from the tip of her wand into the air between Levan and the Sordai.
The Sordai slammed straight into it, and though Saffron shuddered from the impact, the shield held.
Levan regained his composure and quickly sidestepped, jump-twirling around the side of the shield and incanting, “Sen debilitan.”
A curse without honorable intentions, though hopefully the self-preservatory nature would encourage magic to heed his command.
The curse leapt from his wand, sharp and true, driving into the skull of the Sordai. But again the spell had no impact on the monster; it simply drank the magic like a tonic, its form shining brighter and sharper still.
Worse—it was stealing her shield.
Whorls of the glowing bronze-gold matter drifted into the Sordai, like iron filings drawn to a magnet. Horrified, Saffron let the shield drop, breathless with fear. Her lungs burned like coals behind her ribs.
How could they defeat a foe that gained strength from killing curses?
She chastised herself for never paying attention to Parlin the Great lore in school, although she wasn’t certain anyone truly remembered how he’d beaten the Sordai a thousand years ago.
Something about a wand from the Elm of Eternity, but…
no. All she recalled, all anyone recalled, was the impressive length and girth of his famous vock.
In magekind’s defense, the Sordai were supposed to be long extinct. Yet Sarcane had left one here to guard the Fifth Prophecy. Had left bones for the monster to reanimate. It was smart, effective. Too much so. It was invincible, unvanquishable.
Had Sarcane assumed the right mage would know how to best such a beast? Had he assumed that Parlin’s knowledge of the ancient foe would endure through the centuries?
If so, he had woefully underestimated the tendency humans had to forget the distant past. Auria had often tiraded about societal decline and the hallmarks of decadence.
If the Vallish had given history the weight it deserved, if they hadn’t been so distracted by wine and sex and gambling and chariot races and all the empty pleasures of their hedonistic land…
These thoughts happened instantly, simultaneously, as the Sordai chased Levan around the cave.
Saffron pursued the Sordai itself, throwing up spellshields over and over again as it lunged for her lover, but while the initial collision of monster with magic bought Levan time to flee, every time the Sordai would end up drinking the shield, gaining more power.
Saffron’s well was emptying by the second—and her enemy was strengthening. Fear guillotined through her as she wondered how exponential said strength might be.
Miret was limp, lame, on the rocky platform. Levan was a single lapsed spellshield from meeting the same soul death. Cold sweat poured from Saffron’s shoulder blades with the effort of keeping him safe.
Harrow entered the cave, wand raised, hand trembling, as though coming to see what all the fuss was about, but at the sight of the dark flying skeleton with glowing eyes and a malevolent smoke billowing from its body, he muttered, “Oh fuck no,” and promptly ran back in the direction of the rope.
Did he have the right idea?
Should they somehow try to flee?
Miret wasn’t in any fit state—soul-dead, whatever that meant. And without the prophecy, it would all be for naught.
Where was the prophecy? At the bottom of the chest?
“Miret!” Saffron called over the inky water, hoping the Sordai would not comprehend—especially when Ancient Sarthi was the common language last time the monster had walked Ascenfall. “Check the chest for the relic wand.”
Miret dragged himself toward the chest, though the sloughing movement was weak, unhurried, as though he could not convince his body to care.
Saffron turned her gaze to raise another spellshield, and though her aim was true and it held up the Sordai, the monster was doing something different.
It had gained enough form from the magic it consumed to have something resembling a palm, and it was this oar-shaped extremity that it raised in the air now, expectant, charged.
Through bottomless almost-eyes, it studied her so slowly, so hungrily, so deliberately that every muscle in Saffron’s body begged her to flee.
Those distant ancestors wailed a warning from beyond the veil, but her magical immunity would protect her—it had to, this gift from her father, bestowed upon her in the name of this very quest, handed down like a beloved cloak, born from—
The Sordai thrust its palm outward, loosing a cord of violent, blinding white.
The whole cave illuminated like a dying sun.
The cord locked on to Saffron like a manacle, like a kiss of death.
Her father’s protection failed.
Something was being pulled from her, lassoed on the rope of sinister magic. Her will to live. Her very soul. Perhaps this was a power so ancient and arcane that a lone mage’s sacrifice could not even begin to contain it.
For several moments—maybe seconds, maybe centuries—Saffron felt a sense of peace as the desire to exist bled from her.
How much easier it would be to relinquish all the struggles that kept her moving forward.
How much easier it would be to surrender.
She could rest, for the first time in her adult life.
She could simply be. Empty of that poisonous desire for revenge, empty of that heavy sense of duty, of obligation. She would be so light, so free.
It would feel so good—was already feeling so good.
She sighed around the yanking, tugging sensation, at the cord of white pulling behind her ribs.
There was pleasure in it, so much pleasure, and what was a mage without pleasure?
She’d never felt pleasure like it, the euphoric texture, the undercurrent of rightness, every cell in her body glowing as though bathed in saintly light.
True acquiescence was close. It brought with it a dreamy, floating feeling, like dying peacefully in one’s sleep.
Why had she ever made it so difficult for herself?
Why had she turned every day into a fraught mission for something greater?
Why had she not just let herself be? Exist, exist, that’s all, unburdened by petty human wants.
Distantly, someone was roaring.
“SILVER! Fight! Fight, Silver!”
A male, ragged roar, familiar, aching.
Some internal hand grabbed onto the rope of grotesque soul magic and held it fast.
The Sordai grunted its displeasure.