The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7)

by Everet Martins

  He noticed something else then. The hallway was silent. Not a single scream, a cleared throat, a twittering bird, or a bumbling guard. It was as if the world had become absent of sound. “Where is everyone?” he hissed. “What’s happening? Where am I?” It felt like an invisible hand was clamping around his stomach, the fingers winding down and screwing into his chest and throat.

  “Stupid, arrogant fool,” he growled. “You coward, do nothing.” He should have told the Arch Wizard when they returned from Tigeria that he’d been bitten by that bitch’s damned Shadow snake.

  A footstep resounded from one end of the hallway, drawing his squinting eyes. He saw then that a painting had fallen off the wall, a long strip torn in the canvas. Everything was in disarray, and he’d missed it entirely. Maybe you didn’t want to see it, he thought. Others were misaligned, and a vase had shattered into jagged pieces. The carpets were bunched and soiled with dark stains. A solitary woman stood at the end of the hallway, regarding him with a predatory stare.

  “You-you, p-please!” he stammered, gesturing for her to come. “Come help me. I need help, get me to the surgeon, the herbalist, anyone please! Hurry. Please, tell me what transpired. This doesn’t make sense. I was here and then everything is so confusing. I don’t understand.” He began to whimper, tears filling his eyes with heat. He lowered his head, blinking away the wet. He shook his head and raised it to look at her. “Please.” Somewhere deep in his heart, he knew what this creature was, but could only hope his intuition was wrong.

  “Me?” She pointed at her chest, finger covered in a strange material that reflected torchlight like a glimmering ruby. She slowly ran her finger between her breasts, tracing around the curve of one, the hand gently falling to her side. There was indeed something horribly familiar about this woman, but his mind felt like it had been coated in molasses, thoughts a jumbled mess.

  “You… can you?” He frantically nodded. “So-something came out of me.” He pressed his hands against his belly.

  She halted mid-stride, eyes rolling up to regard the ceiling. “He loves you, you know. He wants to place himself within you, to be a part of you. He wants to enjoy your body,” she whispered, her voice taking on a higher tone. “No. I will make him my champion, my personal guard. He should be rewarded for his loyalty.” She responded as if she was speaking in some sort of inner monologue. “He made taking this land so easy for us. We should reward him.” She shook her head. “You mean I should reward him?”

  “What—?”

  “He is not loyal,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Do you see how he looks at you? He sees you like all the others. He fears you, wants to take from you. He only wants to use us. Kill him. He is weak and of no use to our quest.” She shook her head again, lips quivering. “Think this through. Don’t be rash. Rashness got your daddy killed, got your mother slain. Do you wish to join them? This is not a man we can trust. He is allied with the Tower, or have you already forgotten the face of your mother?” She visibly shivered. “Stop. Stop!” She screamed. “I did not ask for your counsel! Go away and let me do this thing!”

  Greyson willed his legs to move, the trembling of his muscles only seeming to magnify. He’d certainly seen this creature before, the when and where escaping his fractured mind. He only knew he needed to run, and remaining there only meant death.

  “You need us,” she snarled. “Without us you are nothing, or must we punish you again?” She raised her hand to one side of her face, hovering over a mangled eye.

  The woman’s pale face spread into a wolfish grin he found attractive. She started down the hallway, her every step seeming to roar like a drum in the great silence. “Do you know why there isn’t any noise?” he asked, throat dry as dirt. She replied with a shrug and a widening smile. He watched as her wide hips sashayed toward him, drawing his eyes over her curves and between her legs. “See his eyes? They want you.”

  Greyson averted his stare, chest pulsing with shallow breaths. He forced himself to look at her. She passed under the glow of another torch, skin a carapace of tiny spikes and bumps. “You have wings,” he breathed, eyes bulging, guts urging him to flee. His legs surged to life, kicking and driving him out from under the archway and into the hallway, scrambling backward. “Leave me alone! Go away!” he screamed and crawled, not having the strength to stand.

  She laughed, a sonorous almost pleasing thing. In a blur of light, she vanished, and a second later, a boot scraped behind him. “There is nowhere to go, my pet.” He couldn’t turn, every muscle frozen with terror. Sweat trickled down his temples.

  There was a sound like creaking leather as she lowered herself at his back. An icy breath caressed his neck. Something wet lapped at his earlobe, sending a wave of gooseflesh down his body. “Do you want me?” she whispered, voice lowering. “He doesn’t want you. You’ll never be enough. Disgusting creature.” She growled, arms wrapping around his torso in a loving embrace. “You want me, don’t you?” Fingers tipped with sharpened talons gripped his breasts, massaging them. The sensation was arousing, flushing his cheeks with shame.

  Greyson’s throat worked in waves, voice a rasp. “How am I alive? I saw it… saw your snake leave me.”

  Her fingers traced a meandering path down from his chest, stopping to rest on the crests of his hips. To his horror, an involuntary stiffening formed in his groin. “You love me,” she whispered in his ear. “I see how your form reacts to my presence, my touch.”

  “No. Please, leave me alone. I’ve done nothing to you,” he whimpered. “How… how did you get here?”

  “You brought me here, my love.” She breathed.

  “What?”

  “My brood swelled to life within your body. And when it emerged, it forged a conduit over the Far Sea, making traveling here effortless. For that, I thank you and wish to reward your loyalty.” She ran her hands down his thighs, brushing his crotch with her fingertips.

  Greyson swallowed. “Please. Please, leave me alone. I don’t want any of this.”

  “That is where you’re wrong,” she breathed, nuzzling his neck with her nose. Her hand slithered to his crotch and started rubbing him through his pants. “You wish to hurt me, to end me. But now you’ll help me.”

  “I don’t!” he seethed. “I don’t know what this is, why you’re—” He cut off as her hand gripped his shaft, gently tugging and feeling dreadfully enjoyable. “I-I like that,” he found himself uttering. “Why are you doing this? How do I live?”

  “I found you earlier, mended your wounds while we took the city.” A long strip of something wet and rough curled around his throat, sending a shiver through his arms. It was her tongue, he realized, the strangeness of it further hardening his cock. “Pretend I am Larissa.”

  He tried to wriggle free from her grasp, but her heels hooked between his inner thighs, spreading his legs and pinning him to her chest. “What have you done with her?” he demanded, body shifting hardly an iota.

  “Nothing. She is here, she is with us. She will help you become my champion.”

  “Your champion? Help?” He tried to catch a glance of the Shadow Princess, eyes straining to look back, her tugging growing in its intensity.

  “You always wanted to be something more. Something more than what your father ever thought you could be. I understand, I do. And now, you’ll be given the chance,” she crooned. “I must warn you that this will be painful.” She released her hold on his cock and swiveled her body around to face him, mouth hanging open like a panting wolf. She wrapped her legs around his belly and reached to his backside, dragging his trousers off in one deft motion. He hated to admit that her face was beautiful.

  “No,” he whispered, shaking his head.

  “Yes.” The Shadow Princess grinned, her indomitable strength pressing him onto his back.

  “Yes, Greyson,” a strong, familiar voice said. Larissa emerged in the hallway, joining them at his side and kneeling at his shoulders.

  “Sister? Why are you here? Why hav
e you not fled? The Shadow snake…”

  She smiled, her pale body stripped of clothing, skin flawless. Her eyes glowed with an unearthly light. “This is the way to a stronger Midgaard. Father was weak and dying. We are the strength and the future Midgaard needs. You’ll be strongest among us, brother.”

  Tears flooded his eyes. “This… I don’t understand. This is wrong.”

  “Don’t cry, brother. There is nothing to fear in the Shadow.” She ran her fingers through his hair, her touch gentle and soothing. She leaned over and kissed him, her full lips engulfing his in their softness. He felt himself moaning, entwined in ecstasy and terror at once, both vying for dominance. Her tongue lapped hard at his, and he couldn’t help but lap back.

  “Yesss,” the Shadow Princess drawled. He felt her gripping his cock, directing him inside her sex. He closed his eyes, furiously kissing his sister, sucking her tongue into his mouth. The Shadow Princess drove her hips down hard, swallowing all of him.

  And then there was pain.

  He screamed into Larissa’s mouth, and her incongruously powerful hands violently forced his head against hers as he tried to pull away. Fire burned through his cock, and his jaw clamped down over his sister’s tongue. His mouth filled with the iron tang of her blood, both screaming now. Her hot blood poured over his cheeks and spiraled down his neck. Larissa violently jerked her head back, and a bit of tongue tore free with a snap. Without thinking, he swallowed it, screwing his eyes shut.

  His wounded loins spilled bright around his hips and thighs, pooling around his ass. His vision bloomed with flowers of burning reds and yellows and bursting greens. The Shadow Princess worked her hips in tight circles, moaning with pleasure. Despite the pain, he further stiffened inside of her, something born of her magic.

  He shrieked his agony as the Shadow Princess assaulted him with her sex. Arteries emerged like cords in his throat, eyes wide as he found a measure of refuge in the ceiling. It felt like within her body a portcullis of steel and blades had clamped over his cock, shredding him to bits with her every gyration. Maybe a moment had passed, and he imagined that the pain couldn’t get worse, but it did. He screamed until he could scream no more, his voice a shattered husk.

  “Sister,” he choked out. He managed to pry his eyes open for a moment, glimpsing Larissa’s mouth circled and smeared in bright blood. She grinned at him and moved in a blur, her mouth latching onto his throat. She bit hard, teeth sawing into his flesh and drawing blood. “No! I’m poisoned!” He balked, warmth flooding his body with a sense of relief. His vision became pinholes, seeing the Shadow Princess smashing her hips into his with wet slaps.

  Finally, and mercifully, the world dwindled away and became nothing.

  Greyson stirred, blinking at a spear of light cutting through a blanket of darkness. He was laying on the floor of a cell, its walls mortared field stones with a banded wooden door. Dust hung on the air like ancient insects. Everything was wrong. He was grateful for the absence of pain, but glimpsing his hands made his eyes go wide in horror. His fingers were elongated to double in size, skin gray as a worn headstone. He opened his mouth to speak, but even making words felt like an impossible task. His jaw creaked as he uttered his name, voicing no more than a rasp. He tried again and produced only a guttural croak.

  Something gibbered with a hyena’s laugh at his back. Whirling to find the disturbance, his heart lurched in his chest at the sight of a mirror. It was propped against the wall, stretching from floor to ceiling and trimmed in gold, taken from the upper levels of the palace, he reasoned. Beside it was a bowl one might use for a dog, filled with murky water.

  “No!” he cried, hand slowly raising to paw at his cheek. “Why?” His limbs had all elongated to a horrifying degree, flesh nude, and muscles dense and striated. Spines dotted his hairless head, eyes sunken caverns in a face that appeared more like a skull than a man’s. His nose was a mutilated mass of flesh shaped like a rotting tomato. Where his cock had once been, nothing more than a mutilated lump of flesh thick with coiling scars remained.

  “Wha-what what have they done to me?” He wept, slowly reaching a hand to caress his head and finding the spikes felt like bones. He was beautiful once. His shrieks bounced from the walls and carried down the sordid hallways of the palace’s dungeons. From each of his vertebrae emerged a spike as long as his hand. But that wasn’t the worst of his transformation. Something twitched on his back like a mouth.

  He turned his back, craning his neck to peer over his shoulder, eyes bulging to see his lower back had become an angry demon’s face. It opened deep-set eyes glowing with a wolfish yellow, orbits shrouded in cascading layers of dense bone. Its nose, his second nose, was flat like a snake’s. Then its mouth opened, a giant tongue lolling to the ground stretching almost five feet and presenting a mouth filled with teeth as long as daggers. Among the lolling tongue was a pair of tendrils, tasting the air and curling from his second maw.

  All of its senses came to him in a rush. He could feel it breathing. He could feel the moisture on his second tongue leeching away layers of dust covering the floor. He realized he could control the wiry tendrils in his mouth, twisting them to and fro. He pulled his second tongue back in, rolling up like a carpet, tendrils tucking into his guts. He opened and closed his second mouth, taking up the width of his hips and the length of half his back. He tried to say ‘this is madness’ from his original throat, but the words came out as a slobbering mess of thick saliva from his second.

  The Shadow Princess and his sister did this to him. He clenched the maw on his second mouth, felt the sharp teeth interlocking and grinding. His breath sawed in an out both of his noses, making the nostrils flare, rage building in his chest like a growing inferno. In a surprising burst of strength, he leaped at the mirror, smashing his fists into it and filling the air with shards of glass. The shards tinkled to the floor around him, now showing thousands of his hideous reflection.

  He threw his head back and howled with a bestial roar, both mouths shrieking like the damned. The Tower did this to you, my child. The Arch Wizard must pay for her treachery, an oddly familiar voice drawled in his head, despite its familiarity, he was compelled to obey. A vestige of his former self tried to resist, perhaps contest the idea, but it faded away as if crushed by a tsunami of mud.

  “The Tower must pay,” he whispered back.

  FOURTEEN

  Live Again

  “When we can’t use the Powers, we use our blades. When we can’t use our blades, we use our hands.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield

  The Shadow Princess draped one leg over the armrest of King Ezra’s former throne, lithe arm thrown over the back, her posture slouched. She tapped a bladed talon on the golden armrest, the clink resounding in the vast chamber. The back was cushioned in a deep red fabric that almost matched her carapace. Larissa stood to her right upon the dais. Her once white regal dress was in tatters, the ruffled shoulders torn and the bottom blackened with dirt. Over her dress was a jeweled bodice, the front a mix of blood stains, some browned with age and others bright from recent feedings.

  To her left was the prince, sniveling in a growing pool of his own drool from each of his mouths. It had been ten days since she completed the ritual, turning him into her champion. She enjoyed the process. It had been too long since she’d had a proper fuck. Each day, he cried a little less and growled a little more. In time, he would be fully hers. She had surmised correctly that he would serve as a fearsome creature to lead her horde’s charge against the Tower.

  Intricate carvings of beasts unknown, Dragons, and Phoenixes wound around the room on its crown molding. Inlaid in the creamy marble floor was a giant Dragon circling a Phoenix of silver and gold. She regarded the false gods with indifference, not unlike an annoying insect. These designs, all of it was transient. Against the walls were shattered vases, the shards an opalescent blue, strewn flowers wilting like corpses. Bright shafts of colored light passed through a wall of gems, highlighting the dust particles lazi
ng on the air, giving it a dream-like quality.

  “When was he supposed to arrive?” she drawled, setting her gaze on the disheveled princess. It seemed even the daughters of gods were sometimes forced to wait.

  Larissa licked her lips, chin blotched with crusts of drying blood. “He should be arriving soon, Master.” She deeply bowed. “I believe I can feel him drawing near.”

  “I do not enjoy waiting, Princess,” she said.

  “I know. I’m sorry, Master.” Larissa prostrated herself, arms outstretched, her cuticles rimmed in blood.

  “He disrespects you. Maybe he is laying a trap, perhaps that is the source of the delay,” a new duplicate, Paranoia said at her back.

  “No,” the Shadow Princess replied with the start of a scowl. “He was a servant of my father. He wouldn’t hurt me. He knows our…” she cleared her throat, “my strength.”

  Paranoia snickered. “We can help you, if you let us.”

  “No. And stop asking, or I’ll hurt you next,” she said, voice iron and leaving no room for debate.

  “You mean hurt us,” Annoyance growled, arms crossed under her breasts. She cocked her head at the bottom of the dais, glaring up at her with eyes pulsing with violet light.

  “You don’t exist!” the Shadow Princess barked, shifting her body to lean forward and grip both armrests.

  “If I don’t exist, then why are you speaking to me? Then why do I annoy you?” Annoyance smiled knowingly, her voice a grating squeak.