Rise and live again, her own voice said in the vast nothing. Live. You live again.
“Rise,” she whispered, torso lifting from the water. A chill passed through her as goosebumps formed from her throat down to her belly. I have to go back, she thought, nervy panic spiking in her guts. Her snakes stirred on her scalp. Most were languid while others remained as motionless as the corpses decorating the Midgaard throne.
A hand with fingerless gloves pressed on her upper chest, the touch burning like a hot iron. She winced, eyes slowly following the arm to find the owner’s body and the source of the disturbance. Her heart lurched at finding Prodal grinning down at her. “You,” she said in surprise. “How did you get here?”
Prodal raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “Must we always go through the same exercise? Do you even know where here is?”
“I’ve been here before…” she said, trailing off to regard the white infinity. “This place. Is it mine?”
“Yes.” Prodal nodded. “The last time Isa, Senka, and Juzo killed you in Tigeria in a small village if I recall, though I do forget the name of it now, not that it matters. You’re awfully fragile for a daughter of the Shadow.”
“I’m still growing. My powers are not yet fully realized,” she said, voice colored by defiance. “How did you get here?” She gently parted his hand aside, his fingers leaving four smoking burns on her flesh, though she hardly felt them. Everything was slow and muted here.
Prodal shrugged. “I go where I please. In fact, there are no places off limits. Even your phylactery,” he said with a knowing smile. “Do you care for more strength, more power? I can offer it to you, for a price.” He placed his hands on his hips, fingers twiddling at the strings securing his many belt pouches.
It was her turn to smile, rising out of the water to stand. Violet rivulets of water glowed among her porcelain curves. “I may not have all of my faculties here, but I am no fool, Betrayer.”
“Betrayer? That is a new one…” Prodal sighed.
“My friends. Where are the others?” she asked, glancing about.
“What others? You have no… oh, the others. Your copies?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes. Where have they gone?”
“You don’t need them here. In here, you’re whole again.” He snickered.
“In here.” The Shadow Princess frowned, glancing down at her toes. Long obsidian talons emerged from each toenail. “In here, I could live forever. At peace. The world outside thinks me a mad woman.”
“Perhaps. But you can’t stay here forever. Your own designs compel you to live again, as I’m sure you must’ve heard by now. Our time together dwindles, and you likely will not remember this conversation, but try to remember this: she suspects this is how you live again.”
“We’ve done this before.” The Shadow Princess nodded, slivers of memory coming back like pieces of a broken mirror, only showing a partial reflection. “Who is this she you refer to?”
“You already know to whom I refer.” Prodal started to pace, his boots leaving streaks of black mud in her perfect water.
The Arch Wizard, she thought.
“That’s the one!” Prodal grinned with a raised index finger. “I do hate to interfere with these matters, as it does please me to see how they play out. However, this matter is dear to my heart,” he said, pressing his palm to his chest and halting to regard her. His eyes seemed to sink into his head, cloaked in jet black.
She blinked, body flickering in an instant to appear before Prodal. She gripped his shoulders with both hands, talons jabbing into his back. “She knows about my phylactery? You’re sure?”
He shrugged in her grip, trying to ward her off, but she only gripped harder. “Ouch,” he pouted in an overt show of pain. The expression was absurd on him.
“Go on,” she urged, shaking him like a doll.
“Well, she has her suspicions.”
“That doesn’t matter as much as her knowing where it is, right?” She couldn’t remember her, memories a twisted wreck. She eyed the black blood pattering from Prodal’s back, dotting the water and swirling into grays. “I can hurt you here,” she said in recognition.
“Oh, there is one more thing.” Prodal’s humanoid face became a gaping demon’s maw, a dark rage curling on his black lips. He shifted away, somehow vanishing from her grip and appearing at her side. His visage resumed its human form.
“How did you…” She trailed off in confusion, lowering her hands.
“I don’t think you’re strong enough to take the Tower. Not yet, at least. You’ll need more than your… friends.” He gestured, fingers twiddling the air. He shook his head, releasing a disappointed sigh. “Terar could’ve helped you. He was mine, prepared to do whatever you needed. But you had to go and kill him. A shame, really. You always were an impetuous child.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he spoke over her. “Now, please do listen to my words and take them to heart if you wish to succeed in this ploy to take the Tower. I had Terar raise an army to the North, that much was true. They followed him, but they’ll follow you too with some prodding. In fact, I think you’ll find a kindred spirit in their collective madness.”
“Madness? Is that what you think of me? Have you forgotten who I am?” She scowled, bile rising in her throat.
He cocked an eyebrow at her, sneer held on his lips. “Do not kill these men, the Purists, as much as I’m sure you’d like to,” he said in a bored tone.
“And what if I do?” She balked, jaw clenching.
“They have artifacts you’ll need to slay the wizards. If you kill them, your task may be near insurmountable. The Arch Wizard trains them, and they only grow stronger while you weaken yourself, squabbling among your allies. I sometimes wonder if I’m helping the wrong side…” He peered up with a contemplative frown.
“An artifact? What does it do?” she asked, curiosity piqued.
“It nullifies the gifts imparted from the Dragon and the Phoenix, rendering them mortal. Easy prey,” Prodal said with a shrug.
A part of her wanted to break down into a shrieking cackle, but she held it back, keeping her face a mask. “You have no sway over my decisions.”
“I’m afraid not.” He nodded. “I can only offer counsel.”
“Why do you care to help me?” she asked, forked tongue licking her lips.
“Our time ends,” he growled. The world vanished, and a new one appeared.
She blinked up at the sky, a weeping kaleidoscope of pinks and blues shrouded by waving ferns. She was on her back, pushing herself up onto one elbow. Behind the Shadow Princess was her home, a narrow and shallow cave with a carpet of moss clinging to the back wall. All of her worldly possessions were still there: a few pilfered candle stubs to read by, a disintegrating book she had read hundreds of times, and most importantly, her buried phylactery.
It was a bright aquamarine crystal, imbued with enough of her strength to split the Tigerian realm into halves in the wrong hands. Her phylactery burned so bright its light traveled up through the five feet of earth in bright spears, illuminating the cave’s walls in shimmering blues and greens. The phylactery held the majority of her strength, rendering her body and spirit weak.
The price of endless resurrections was indeed high. She thought then that the ritual of its creation had likely birthed her duplicates. Her mind felt like it was being pulled apart, the stitches of sanity already starting to fray. How long would it be until the first duplicate revealed itself? Who would it be? Annoyance, she wagered. For now, she felt as if she could keep them at bay, giving her the much needed time to focus on how to best take the Tower.
The Tigerian realm possessed deserts in the interior and beautiful beaches in the North. She was back in the South, where the jungle reigned. She took in the vast and ancient forest hemming her in. Its woody scent filled the realm with centuries of debris, silently rotting. The organic smell came in waves, something she had yet grown accustomed to. Each towering tree was a timeless guardian o
f the skies above, occasionally failing and letting slivers of light stab through.
Tangled vines hung down in coiling loops between broad leaves. Roots twisted up from the ground like the backs of rising sea monsters, some so large you could walk beneath them. The foliage between the trees was lush and impassably thick. Tigerians had to stick to the paths to effectively travel to and from other locales. She would simply fly, though limited by her stamina. Stinging briers flanked the paths, deadly to those without the properly developed immunity.
Gnarled boughs spilled out with an endless supply of edible nuts. A gleaming spider’s web shone behind her cavern, hundreds of dead leaves and sticks trapped in its sticky snares. Another tree had a lightning-blasted side, charred in fractal scars. Mist wrapped around the broad trunks like a wizard’s smoke, rising only a foot from the ground and curling around her throat. It deadened sounds and crept into the twilight before being vaporized. Tiny insects were like stardust dancing on chinks of light.
The trees had parted above her home, fearing her strength, and showing the sky speckled with clouds. Everything once living around her home had perished long ago, and nothing dared to try growing there again. Not even mold and mushrooms would survive her pestilence. She liked it there.
It was a shame she had to leave.
FIFTEEN
Reinforcements
“When our shoulders slump with weakness, and we need the support of friends, consider their aid an honor.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield
The sky was blanketed in a pall of gray clouds. The Shadow Princess soared over the northern forests, the frozen air biting at her wings and whipping her cheeks. She didn’t like the cold. The farther north she traveled, the more she discovered how little tolerance she had for it. Her carapace offered scant protection from its icy embrace. Her snakes for hair were folded down around her neck, seeking warmth against her body.
She outpaced the swiftest of birds, who fled in terror at her predatory gaze. The continuous stretch of evergreen trees were brushed in a thin layer of snow, glistening in the occasional spear of light. The Mountains of Misery were smeared in ominous clouds, their peaks looming over the forest and traveling beyond cloud cover.
She saw a pack of wolves tearing apart a wounded dear, tearing strips of flesh from its body while it feebly tried to kick them away. A few of the wolves paused in their feeding to raise their hackles and watch her as she passed, muzzles thick with blood.
The Purists apparently treaded on game paths. They naturally widened them under boots and wagon wheels. She knew she was drawing close to the Purist encampment when she spied pockets of cleared land among the winding paths, some holding strange wooden structures. The structures held the corpses of dead men, most stripped of their clothing, some their skin, and others their limbs too. Some were still writhing on their twisted altars of bone and antlers, others long dead.
She landed to inspect some of the clearings. It seemed there was no form of depravity restricted to the dead, no form of torture left unturned. They were a group that would be easy to control, lost in the ecstasy of novel pleasures. No, there would be no men left among them after this day turned to night again.
She had a feeling she would like meeting these Purists. She flew over a group of five men huddled by a fire and warming their hands over the flames. They were all swaddled in heavy furs and equipped with bows, spears, and packs. Two had their hoods down, showing their shaved heads, their eyes decorated with dark smudges. A hunting party, she guessed. There were shouts of alarm as eyes went wide and mouths fell agape as she flitted past, leaving them alone to question their mental faculties. She was but a shadow.
The farther north she went, the more people she saw. She passed over a logging crew, axes and saws straining to clear a new patch of forest. Only the foreman saw her, hand raised over his brows to stare as she flapped onward. She saw a mother and a child picking berries and depositing them into baskets. The mother ran to the daughter, clutching her tight against her side. And on she went, only here to observe. Her prize lay beyond.
She followed the paths northward, the horizon eventually materializing to show a structure more peculiar than any she’d ever glimpsed. She swooped down from the treetops, spreading her wings wide to slow her descent and gently glided along a broad road. The Shadow Princess landed with a jog, feet thumping at the ground, talons clacking. The path was thick with browned pine needles and crusted with a layer of snow. Her chest labored from the effort of flying, breath smoking on the frozen air. She glanced about, scanning for threats but finding only the creaking trees. She started onward in a walk, wings twitching as she folded them against her back.
The building appeared to have been constructed of mainly pine and oak. A wall of noise reached her ears when she drew close to the clearing. Pulleys squealed, hammers thumped, women shrieked, and saws whined through wood. Thousands of shirtless men and women milled about its hard angled ramps, ladders, ropes, and scaffolding, working like diligent ants. She paused to cross her arms before the path opened into the clearing, taking in the multi-tiered building. It appeared to have five or so defined levels, between them a mishmash of incomprehensible woodwork and spiraling ladders. Connecting platforms were lengths of rope where men climbed between them. Running up the center appeared to be a mechanical lift of some sort. It lurched into motion with a gaggle of people on its platform, a few hanging perilously off the edge.
A hoot called from a nearby tree. The hoot traveled over the clearing, every tree hewed down to stumps with only saplings and shrubs remaining. A return hoot echoed from the tower, carried up its disconnected walls and along its platforms by differing voices. It appears my presence has been marked, she thought with a groan.
“You there. Who are you? Raise your arms, and I’ll not gut you like a dog,” a deep voice growled from the treetops. She looked up, finding the source of the voice, a glowing figure of heat like a rose in a field of grasses. The sentry had an arrow drawn and pointed it at her. The voice expected compliance, and that annoyed her. She thought then that Annoyance would show herself, but she didn’t.
“The master will want to know what this creature is. Maybe he’ll want to have fun with her,” another voice said across from the first. A branch rustled from where he likely stood. Not a master of deception then, not like the Swiftshades of the Silver Tower.
“Both of you, come down here,” she said impatiently, pointing at the ground. “Your master is dead. I’m your master now.”
The pair started to climb down in obedience as men always did, their minds as soft as treacle and unable to resist her allure. “No, jump,” she commanded. “That will take too long.”
“But our legs,” one sentry voiced in protest.
“You’ll be alright.” She gestured to the ground again. “Come down.”
“Very well…” One man leaped from the uppermost branches of the tree, arms flailing, bow and arrow tumbling. He hit the ground with a sickening crunch, one leg cracking backward at the knee. He clutched his leg with an ululation of agony, writhing among the pine needles. The man wore an outfit constructed of heavy gray wolf pelts, hair long and oily, face narrow like a rat’s.
She scoffed and slowly strode over to him, meeting his horrified eyes. She lowered herself to squat over his broken leg and drove a talon into his knee. He threw his head back, throat issuing a piercing shriek. “Stop! Please stop!”
“Too easy,” she muttered. The Shadow Princess detected a rustling in the other tree, bowstring creaking as an arrow was drawn. “You too, or did you not hear me the first time?” she barked, swiveling her gaze to the other man, his heat signature glowing bright. He dropped his bow, and she turned back to the shrieking man. She heard the second yelp as he leaped, hitting the ground with a pop and then blessed silence. Dead then.
“You dare point your weapon at me? Do you have any idea who I am?” She leaned in so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath.
He screamed in response as
she twisted her talon in his knee, wiggling it for an enhanced effect. “Sorry, I can’t hear you,” she said pleasantly.
“N-no. D-don’t know, don’t!” he screamed, shaking his head.
“Quiet down. Useless.” She grimaced and extracted her talon from his knee and used it to draw a bleeding smile across his throat. She rose up to stand as the sentry gurgled and choked on his blood. A violet disc of light opened ten feet behind her, and through it came Larissa and Greyson, followed by an endless stream of Shadow snakes. The snakes fanned over the men, biting them hundreds of times, some pilfering hunks of flesh.
The Shadow Princess pointed to the strange construct. “You two, lead the charge. Kill any who resist.”
Larissa started in a run but halted after a few steps at seeing Greyson’s rooted legs. Greyson stared at the Shadow Princess, big white eyes blinking with unbridled hatred. “You,” he gurgled out, words no longer coming easy for him. “You did. This. To me. Me!”
She glowered. “Now is not the time, Greyson.”
For the first time since she’d been reborn, a duplicate appeared. Disgust leaned into Greyson’s neck, sniffing him like a dog. She bent in closer, brushing her cheek against his with a croon. Disgust pulled back and shook her head, face scrunched. “Kill this creature. It does us no good. How can you stand to look at something so ugly?”
“At least it’s male. Could you imagine a woman so ugly?” She grinned at Disgust, who grinned back.
“I-I hear you,” Greyson growled, both of his mouths harmonizing.
“We… I didn’t do anything to you.” The Shadow Princess gestured with one hand. “I only revealed what you really are, child. Your hate for the Tower, for the Arch Wizard, did this to you. Hate… well, it changes you.” She shrugged. “It surprises me that you haven’t learned this.”
The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7) Page 27