She knelt and clasped the girl’s shoulders. “We’re sisters!” she exclaimed. “What have they done to you?”
Upon hearing the word “sister,” the girl’s face contorted in revulsion. “Drown,” she commanded, and then inky blackness flowed over Fernwalker, and the young druid’s vision went dark.
She felt a quick slip, the same sensation as if falling in a dream, and then she sucked water down her lungs. She tried to scream. The darkness lifted, and she found herself beneath the surface of the sea, the twinkling of Artalon’s nighttime skyline quivering above her through the waves.
Water filler her lungs, and she thrashed one more time before she stopped struggling. A strange sense of calm spread over her as she tried to breathe. Her throat felt small as water flooded her chest. It burned, and then nothing.
Her vision dimmed.
NO!
She felt Life within her. She reached out to the life force of the sea, and shifted, becoming a black marlin. Water rushed through her gills, and she gasped for watery breath. A surge of adrenalin shot through her, and her vision returned.
A swarm of troglodytes swam towards her at uncanny speed. Another moment, and they would catch her in their jaws.
She jackknifed her fish body and shimmied her tail. She shot forward past them, faster than they had anticipated. They tried to chase her, but she was too fast, darting between the towers through the underwater streets of Artalon until she left the city behind and swam into the wide blue expanse of the Sea of Wrath.
She turned around and stopped. It was difficult to see the city. Night had fallen, darkening the water.
A sudden thought occurred to her. Tiberan was not her father, but her mother had spoken of his ability to speak with and call the animals of Ahmbren to his aid. She had wondered whether that was a gift of the Dragon or a druidic power. With him, it was amplified by the Dragon, but it was still rooted in the power of Life. Fernwalker herself had formed a connection with Ghost once, learning to talk with the tiger through their joined minds.
She needed to somehow clear the troglodytes from the flooded streets. She floated still in the water, moving her fins only as much as necessary to hold her position. She reached inward to Life. She knew she wasn’t as strong in her power as her mother or any of the first generation seelie, but she had to try.
Seas of Ahmbren. I have need of your strength.
She sent the thought out like a prayer, on waves of subsonic music.
The Black Dragon’s swarms threaten all life.
She continued this song, channeling it through the power of Life and sending it reverberating through the Sea of Wrath.
And then she was not alone.
Hundreds of shadowy forms answered her call. They swam nearby, great large fish, dwarfing her blue marlin form.
We hear you, a voice answered in her mind. We remember the Black Dragon’s folly that sank the city and the Sea’s children who died that day.
The shadows moved closer.
Hammerhead sharks. Thousands of them.
Let us go and devour the enemy, they said.
YES! she exulted and darted forward. The hammerheads followed, and the army of Ahmbren’s wrath flooded back into the city.
They tore through the watery streets. The swimming troglodytes fought back, but they were not the masters of the open sea. The sea churned black with blood, turning the waters between the towers darker than the night sky. Starlight glittered over its surface.
Fernwalker raced to the low bridge on which she had found her sister. The hammerheads cleared her way, and she had an open path to where the seelie girl still stood. By the shining moon overhead and the explosive lights of the battle for Artalon, she made out the great bear form of Odoune tossing enemies over the edge of the bridge. Kristafrost and Eszhira fought at his side, protecting the bear’s flank from being swarmed. From the higher bridge overhead, Suleima and the others provided supporting fire, with Attaris’ hammers sending lightning bolts down into the enemy.
The elf girl stood to the side, watching the battle. A swarm of imps crowded around her ankles and knees.
Fernwalker stirred her fish tail, and she flew out of the water over the bridge. She shifted back to her elven form, gracefully tumbled through the air, and then landed behind the girl.
She moved to grab her, but the child turned and regarded her for a split second with amused eyes. Darkness overcame them both, and Fernwalker felt that abrupt falling sensation again.
The blackness lifted, and they stood in a half-flooded room. The water came up to Fernwalker’s waist and nearly reached the girl’s neck.
The girl flashed a feral grin, uncanny on such an otherwise innocent face. A crescent blade of solid shadow flashed and sliced through Fernwalker’s side. Pain flared through her torso and up her spine. The young druid gritted her teeth and stepped back, dropping to one knee in the water. Blood dripped from just above her hip, coloring the water green. Fernwalker clutched the open wound and gasped. She fell to her second knee.
The girl’s eyes shone with perverse glee. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes for a brief moment, and a shadowy portal formed behind her.
From it emerged a troglodyte warrior.
Fernwalker turned and fled, thrashing through the waist-high water through the tower’s hallways.
* * *
Wearing Aradma’s form by the grace of the reabsorbed succubus, Anuit stepped carefully into the halls of Taer Koorla. She wasn’t sure how complete the demon magic was in its transformation. Aradma had told her that if the tower did not recognize the strange black suit, it would seek to rid itself of a foreign body.
The living tower did not react when she stepped onto the moist flesh that served as a floor. Hellish, Anuit thought to herself, but much more organic, more alive than Dis.
Was she really going to do this? After all this time, she was going to seduce a man, and not just any man. She might have ascended as Queen of Dis, but Klrain had created the Demon City. Even the magic of Tal Harun had not been enough to contain him, and the legendary wizard had crafted that spell for ten thousand years. If Athaym thought for a moment she was not Aradma, he would end her.
Aradma followed behind, out of sight. She said she had been commanded to remain outside until she came to give herself to him. Apparently, this was close enough to satisfy the compulsion. Anuit wanted Aradma close when she stole Athaym’s power. She hoped that if it worked as she planned, she could undo his block that prevented the druid from channeling the powers of Life.
She was so connected to the Dark now, she didn’t have to reach out to it anymore. It perpetually flowed through her essence, beneath the surface of her mind. She felt and saw Dark energy coursing through the walls of the tower all around her. Athaym had somehow made this living creature a sorceress, a living battery of Shadow. She had also been able to see the blocks placed around Aradma’s soul that separated her from Life, before the druid had told her about it.
She journeyed deeper into the tower, stepping with Aradma’s grace. She felt the body’s difference from her own, its height, its acute sense of balance. And yet, even though it felt foreign to her, the demon magic ensured all her movements appeared proper, natural for what that body was intended to be.
She followed the dark shadows of the tower to where they grew thickest. She knew Aradma could not see its energy, much in the same way she couldn’t see the gold light of the Kairantheum as Aradma and Arda could.
A cold pit formed in her stomach. How would she seduce a man? The very idea made her want to shudder were it not for the glamor that prevented her from doing so. And it was more than just the natural revulsion her sexuality had for the opposite sex; it was a moral revulsion to the intimacy of fucking someone so evil.
The darkness thickened, and the details of the walls’ texture washed out in the shadow. And still, she kept climbing.
Athaym waited for her at the top of the tower, in a chamber with what looked like the surface of a b
rain rising through the center of the floor.
He turned to her. He did not smile, but his eyes glittered in satisfaction. “I knew you would come, Aradma.”
Anuit-as-Aradma walked towards him, stopping halfway. “You have won,” she said. “Life must find a way.”
Darkness coursed through his body underneath the surface. It radiated so strongly that Anuit’s own internal flows rippled in response. Doubt turned to fear, and she almost ran in that moment. Gods, he’s powerful!
“You have accepted inevitability. Through you, life will survive the Turning.”
She had thought he would have shown more delight, or at least desire. Instead, he just seemed… in control. She considered approaching him, but held herself back. No. He doesn’t want Aradma strong. He wants Aradma dominated, overcome. I’m surrendering, not conquering. She lowered her eyes to the ground, demurely.
His eyes turned away, focusing into the distance. “It won’t be long now,” he said. “Come. I will show you.” He beckoned for her to stand at his side, and she obeyed. He took her hand firmly in his and pointed with the other. “Look.”
A shadowy patch formed in front of them, and within it the image of Artalon appeared. Aradma-as-Anuit suppressed a gasp. The entire city was partially submerged under water. Troglodytes battled on the balconies and bridges, and demons fought sidhe and gnomish airships in the sky.
“Naiadne is doing well. You should be proud of your daughter.”
Anuit didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept silent. I have to take control before he takes Artalon, she thought. If this goes on too long, he will discover me.
The image of Naiadne turned and stared at them through the floating shadow. She appeared in a hallway, chasing someone. She stopped briefly and faced them. “Not long, Father,” she said. She glanced at Anuit-as-Aradma, and the sorceress saw nothing but loathing in her eyes. Oh, Aradma, Anuit thought as sorrow filled her. Your daughter. Kaldor’s daughter. The succubus’s magic disguised the sorceress’s inner turmoil, hiding anything that would betray the illusion.
Athaym nodded once, and the image vanished.
Anuit-as-Aradma turned and stepped in front of him, close enough to feel the heat of his skin radiating onto her black skin-suit. She slipped her arms around his waist. Her heart thudded, and she pushed back at her rising fear to keep it from exploding into terror. Only the succubus’s magic kept her body calm and relaxed, as if a part of her locked on and attuned to what he wanted.
He looked down at her quickly, and his eyes focused. For a moment, he seemed jarred from his center, and the dark flow inside him shuddered. Aradma’s doppelganger smiled then. He might have once been the Black Dragon, but now he was Athaym… no matter what coursed inside him, he was still a man.
And more importantly, through Athaym, the Dark wanted Life. It wanted to absorb it, to devour it, to possess it. She felt the Dark in his being, though she couldn’t yet see its center.
“Give me a child,” Anuit-as-Aradma said pulling his waist close to hers. “Let our daughter herald the new age.”
Athaym’s face remained still, but lust ignited his eyes. She pressed her body to his and he grabbed her shoulders so tightly she grunted. He jerked her back, stared intensely into her eyes for a brief moment, and then pulled her shoulders forward, snapping her face to his. Her lower lip caught between both his and her lower teeth and she hissed in pain, tasting blood.
Fear rose to terror, and she couldn’t keep it from bubbling through the succubus’s illusion of calm. He jerked her back again, staring into her eyes once more. She trembled on the verge of panic, knowing he saw her fear.
But instead of seeing through the illusion, he only grew more aroused.
Despite her terror, she forced herself to reach for his waist and loosen his belt. He made a sharp gesture, and a line of shadow whipped around both of them, slicing away his clothing and cutting her free of the black skin-suit.
Her body trembled in cold fear. His fingers rubbed over her hips and her skin crawled in revulsion. The succubus’s magic twisted it into the illusion of overwhelming desire.
Athaym picked her up by her hips and held her to him. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he turned and pressed her down against the fleshy rise of Taer Koorla’s brain.
She fell to her back with a splurt on the horrid mass. He held her down by her neck with his right hand, pressing her head back until the spongy surface bulged around her elven ears. Brain fluid spilled over her forehead, glistening and pasting the silver hair to her skin. With his other hand, he flung each of her legs open wide, and then he mounted her.
She closed her eyes, steeling herself for the man’s invasion. I will rule him, she told herself. I will—
She opened her eyes and screamed. There was no warmth in her, no readiness between her legs. He thrust inside, tearing her flesh apart with his sex.
She lay there, stunned at the violence of his stabbing passion, dully staring up at the great eyeball in the ceiling. The tower watched her rocking up and down from his relentless violations.
Darkness erupted from him and flowed into her, joining her own Dark essence. Their souls touched.
She screamed.
The illusion faded away.
His eyes opened in surprise, staring at Anuit’s face. “You!” he roared.
He tried to pull away, but she clasped her legs tightly around his waist, pressing him deeply inside, pushing into the pain, while she grabbed around his back and clung to him. “Yes,” she whispered into his ear. “Me.”
He couldn’t stop. His body had surrendered to the power of succubus-induced lust. “Let me go!” he moaned.
“No!” she hissed, taking comfort in his fear.
He tried to channel, but his own Dark flow was tangled up in hers. Every time he struggled to extricate himself, her connection to the element entangled and frustrated his spirit.
She steeled herself, ignoring the cold ache of his pounding hips. She sent her mind into her Dark core and then into his. She felt his link to the Dark—sweet Dis, he is too powerful—and it resisted her tugging as an immovable stone. She plunged deeper, losing awareness of the brain floor into which she was pressed and the giant eye in the ceiling that stared at her from above…
…until only he and she existed in the Shadow.
Then she sensed it. Something else. Something so small and subtle as to almost be overlooked. Something so fundamentally integrated into his spirit, a connection to Dark deeper than channeling, embedded within the existential root of his being.
The Seal of the Dark.
It lay loose. It touched the root of her own being too, joined by their sexual union.
She put all her focus towards it, wrapping her will around the seal as if her will were a fist.
She pulled.
He screamed aloud. “No! Release me!”
She pulled.
He whispered. “I will make you my queen…”
She pulled.
He gasped the smallest of breaths. “I will worship you…”
She pulled.
He convulsed once, and the seal broke free.
It affixed itself to the root of her being and settled into the core of her essence.
The room came back into view, and she released him, tucking her knees to her chest and kicking him in the stomach off and out of her before he spilled his seed. He lay stunned, staring numbly at the ceiling and clutching his head.
The larynx doors to the brain chamber vibrated, and wind rushed hot around her wet skin as the tower-mother wailed in uncertain rage.
Anuit struggled to sit, trying to scramble off of the slick brain. She slid onto the fleshy ground and groaned before fixating on the man, wanting to channel and kill him before he gathered himself. She couldn’t focus. Her hips ached, her sex throbbed in pain and stung as if a dagger had been plunged within her and then yanked away. Her pelvis cried out with every move. The Dark slipped through her mind, untapped. The image of his shrinking
sex, covered in her bright virgin’s blood, burned itself into her memory. She vomited.
Aradma entered the chamber, pushing aside the flaps of the wailing larynx portal. She ran to Anuit’s side and took the sorceress in her arms. “Anuit—”
“You must finish him,” Anuit whispered. “Now, before he finds his center again, you must end him!”
Athaym slowly pushed himself to his feet, still lolling his head and trying to find his focus.
Anuit reached into herself, past her link to the Dark, and thrust her will into the seal. She felt the Dark bond around Aradma’s soul that cut the seelie off from Life.
“Be free in the Dark,” Anuit whispered through the power of the seal. “I release you.”
Athaym rose. His eyes glittered clearly now, and he turned to face them. He could still channel. He would kill them both—
Anuit slipped into unconsciousness.
* * *
Fernwalker struggled through the watery hallways. The troglodyte swam behind her like a predatory crocodile, tail thrashing. The elf could barely see, but she knew she had to move forward. To stop was to die.
I will not give up, she told herself. I am a druid, a servant of Life. Life will find a way.
She tried again to shift back into the black marlin. The pain in her side flared. She couldn’t find her center to take the fish form.
Shit. My sister’s going to kill me.
For a split second, her eyes watered in frustration. She thrust the thought aside and focused on the present. She tried to shift again, but the pain was too great. She was stuck in her elven form.
The troglodyte swam lazily behind her, drawing near. He savored the assuredness of his prey. Behind him, the seelie girl followed.
The young druid came to a set of stairs leading upwards. She scrambled as fast as she could through the pain, sometimes falling to her knees and adding to the agony as her kneecaps slammed into the steps.
I cannot stop. To stop is to die.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 131