Chapter 35 #2
Dagger twirling in his hand, he quirked a brow, amused.
All at once, they surged forward. He glanced at his knife and felt as if Adara was fighting alongside him.
One of them, audacious yet idiotic, charged at him, sword aimed at his chest. Dominic easily evaded the attack by ducking and stepping to the side.
With a shove, he sent the creature stumbling into its kin.
He turned, throwing the dagger into the back of its head.
Its deadweight fell onto the other monster, trapping the other beneath its body.
Dominic rushed toward them. He pulled his dagger free from his victim’s skull, then plunged it into the other’s neck, briefly watching the life drain from its angry red eyes before wiping his blood-slick hands on his pants.
The adrenaline coursing through him was short-lived as his magic began ebbing away.
No, no, no. Not now! He thought to himself, hoping his powers wouldn’t fail him.
He’d been doing so well, magic flowing freely through him without consequence, making him think that he had more time on his hands than he actually did.
But the symptoms of his depleting magic were returning, determined to let him die in this cursed desert.
Dominic swayed for a moment, head spinning.
He steadied himself, prepared to fight for his life, whether his magic would aid him or not.
The moment Dominic whirled around, two more creatures ran at him.
Despite his head pounding, he sprinted toward them.
At the last second, he dropped to the ground, sliding through the sand on his knees.
Their barbed tails cut through the air, aiming at his throat, but he leaned back, ducking beneath the lethal spikes.
With daggers in both hands, he slashed at the back of their legs.
The beasts went down with trill shrieks.
When Dominic shot to his feet, dizziness overwhelmed him. He staggered briefly, black splotches dancing in his sight.
Dominic screamed as hundreds of sharp needles pierced his wrist, forcing one of the knives to fall from his hand.
With the dagger in his other hand, he stabbed the onyx blade into one of its eyes.
He hissed through gritted teeth as the creature reeled back, retracting its thin teeth from his skin, and he pulled his dagger free.
The monster let out a fierce hiss, charging again, pulling a small axe from its belt.
Dominic attempted to dodge the blade, but his movements felt slow and labored, like his limbs were stuck in mud.
The blade sliced deeply through his thigh.
Reeling back, Dominic cried out in pain.
He gripped his dagger tighter in one hand while the other instinctively covered the blood gushing from his thigh.
His vision started to blur, and he didn’t know whether it was from blood loss or his diminishing powers. Figures faded in and out of sight.
He gritted his teeth, throwing his dagger with the last of his strength.
Its obsidian blade flew through the dark, embedding itself in something’s shoulder.
The thing foolishly ripped the blade from its flesh and lunged for Dominic.
Praying his magic hadn’t faded more, Dominic cast out a hand.
To his command, a vine swiftly stretched from the trees, wrapping around the creature’s neck and abdomen.
With a sweeping arc of his hand, the vine yanked the creature backward and sent it flying through the air.
A sickening noise resounded through the night as a tree branch impaled its chest.
Ragged breaths escaped Dominic’s lips as he fell to a knee.
Using so little of his magic had taken more of his strength than he expected.
His head pounded, and his hands shook uncontrollably.
Wheezing breaths came shallow and quick, only worsening his dizziness.
Unable to stand the world spinning around him, Dominic let his eyes fall closed.
Although he knew he had only been on one knee, he felt like he was falling from the peak of Andreilia’s mountain, as if he was tumbling through a never ending void.
Low, haunting moans filled the desert. Dominic’s eyes cracked open to see the figures slowly rising to their feet, despite the fatal wounds he’d given them.
Dominic! Saige called again, the sound of her terror-stricken cries flooding him with determined energy.
He had to get to her. Groaning as pain shot through his thigh, blood soaking his pant leg, Dominic shoved to his feet. He dusted the sand from his face and turned toward the monsters. Retrieving his onyx dagger from the ground, he sheathed it at his belt.
It took everything in him to summon his magic, muscles straining.
It felt like the lightning shot through his veins, tearing him apart from the inside as the white light sparked from his fingertips.
It shot out in white-hot streaks, striking the monsters.
Crackling lightning skittered over their bodies, billows of smoke rising into the night.
Their screams followed as he turned to run.
Dominic heaved in deep breaths as he sprinted after his sister’s voice.
His magic was turning against him from within, sending sharp jolts of pain through him that he tried desperately to ignore.
But at least he still had it. Andreilia’s curse hadn’t succeeded at reclaiming its magic just yet.
And he didn’t plan on ever giving it back.
Dominic! Saige called one last time before fading away.
His mind was quiet now, except for the pounding of his blood.
Slowing to a walk, he could hardly see a few feet in front of him.
The world shifted, a strange feeling settling in his stomach.
A sense of pure wrongness lay ahead, yet it was familiar.
It chilled his bones. When lightning flashed, he caught a glimpse of a rickety cottage before him, and Dominic knew exactly why his breath became shallow.
Standing before him, old and worn with age and whatever the Hel the Ruins did to it, stood Dominic’s home. A small, ramshackle cottage, mostly destroyed save for a third of it that miraculously still had a roof, the wooden beams balancing precariously against each other.
Weeping was barely audible over the storm raging around him.
Hesitantly, Dominic stepped forward, over the broken stairs of the rotted porch.
The moment his foot met the wood, it splintered beneath his feet.
Quickly, he leaped across the threshold, the door already open and hanging off one of its hinges.
Dust flew up around him as he landed inside the confines of his demolished home.
Coughing, he waved a hand around his face, trying to clear it away.
Through the dust, a shadow appeared in the remnants of the kitchen.
“Saige?” he asked, dropping his pack of supplies by the door. He squinted, darkness ebbing and flowing in and out of this world. One moment it was there, the next gone, then back again.
Not Saige. Dominic turned on his heel, ready to sprint out the door. It slammed shut the moment he made a move. He pounded a fist on the door, jiggling the handle. It wouldn’t budge, locked and barricaded by some invisible force.
He paused, hands dropping to his sides. Slammed shut? Locked? The door had been barely hanging onto its hinges when he entered. Their front door never had a lock. He turned to face the interior of his home, trepidation sluicing through him.
Repaired. All of it. As if it hadn’t been worn down over the years of disuse and extreme conditions of the Ruins.
Dominic stared in disbelief at his childhood home—shabby, on the verge of falling apart, but still the home he remembered.
The home he’d tried desperately to forget.
The home he avoided looking at too closely now.
His eyes darted back and forth, never settling too long on anything, only catching glimpses of all the things he tried to purge from his memories.
A dusty vase filled with dead flowers here.
A fringed rug with mud stains there. Dishes piled on the table, littered with sticky remnants of a meal from long ago.
A broken window was hardly covered by a dull yellow curtain swaying in the breeze.
A hole in the wall, about the size of a fist. The old leathery brown sofa, worn with an indentation in its center.
An urn sat broken on the floor, ashes piled in the corner.
Something nudged against the toe of his boot.
An empty glass. Dominic picked it up, the reek of alcohol hitting him like a physical blow.
He hurled the bottle across the room, straight into the door that led to his parents’ room, though his father never bothered to sleep there.
The glass shattered, sprinkling down on the wooden floorboards.
Knowing it would break and the shattering of glass would fill the silent space didn’t stop him from wincing.
What he wasn’t expecting was for the door against which it shattered to fly open, banging against the adjacent wall.
A strong figure stood in the frame. A snarl jarred this decrepit place out of its silence.
Drawing his sword, Dominic took a hesitant step forward—but stopped when he heard weeping behind a closed door.
A door that led to the room he and his sister had shared.
“About time you came back, boy.”
Dominic stopped, his entire body going taut at the sound of that voice. Despite the years of training, of holding up under torture, of carving out his own heart, his hand, clamped around his sword, trembled uncontrollably. He turned to face the man in the doorway.
There was a thunderous crack, and Dominic fell to the floor, screaming in anguish. Not only at the familiar sting of the whip shredding his skin to ribbons, but whatever agonizing hold the Ruins clamped onto his mind.
Pain, anguish, fear. Emotions Dominic hadn’t felt in years consumed him entirely.
He wanted to shout her name but he didn’t know if it even came out as a whisper. Adara, he called out as a last resort, hoping somehow she would hear as the agony pitched him into darkness.