Dream of Darkness and Dominion

by Hilary Thompson

  A flicker of understanding shattered Coren’s glare, and a tragic fear replaced it.

  “She’s gone, Coren,” Jyesh whispered, using his shifting to push at her fingers and whatever she was clutching. Her grip faltered, and Mara shrieked in rage as Coren wailed, jumping to catch something in the night air. But she must have missed it.

  Coren slumped to the ground, her face as blank as stone, her arms tight around her stomach as she rocked back and forth like a child. Jyesh knelt next to her and placed a palm on her shoulder.

  Whatever this blue power was, it was growing. But it needed more time.

  Mara seethed as she looked down at herself, mending the damage to the Heart. Her power electrified the air, and her gaze fell on Kosh, lying at the edge of the clearing next to Sy. Her composure slipped back over her face like a mask.

  “The good news is, I only need one soul to replace the one I gave to Shadow all those years ago.”

  Sy growled and started to shift as Mara strode toward him and Kosh.

  Jyesh used the distraction to shove Coren to the side. “Don’t move,” he ground out, but she barely noticed him, locked away in her mind.

  The flame of power inside Jyesh had grown almost too big to contain. He wasn’t completely sure, but he thought it was the fourth shift. The end. And he was oddly at peace with it.

  Mara flung Sy away, his spine cracking into a tree at the edge of the clearing. She bent over the boy, greedy for his power and foolishly forgetting that danger could still reach her.

  Jyesh walked toward her hunched back, flooded with more power than he’d ever imagined possible.

  He used the sharpest edge of the white heat to fling Kosh’s body backward into Coren’s lap.

  And then he rushed Mara, his power propelling them both to the edge of the clearing. As they crashed into the branches, Jyesh closed his eyes against the pain. He gave in to the sunlit sea in his mind, thinking of all the thousands of times he’d given in to something he didn’t want.

  This was easier.

  This was something he desperately wanted.

  He and Mara were crumpled together on the muddy grass, and he felt her magic in the air. He used the blue flame to suck her power inside himself, like a real flame sucks the air from a sealed jar. Her magic burned through his veins and into his organs and muscles, and his mortal body was overloaded with power. His heart convulsed, warning him, but he ignored it.

  He was master of himself in a way he’d never been.

  Dizziness overtook him and blurred white and blue filled his mind.

  “Jyesh, no!”

  He heard Coren’s faraway plea, and he appreciated it, but he was content with this.

  Jyesh slid his eyelids closed and tilted his head to the stars above. He imagined that somewhere in the corner of the sky the Sulit Mother smiled in a catten’s slim grin, and a pair of twin stars twinkled above him, and even the FatherSun peeked above the edge of the horizon.

  Jyesh imagined he could see Weshen Isle from here, that he might finally find a bit of home for his soul to rest in.

  He slipped the noose from his consciousness and willed the cataclysm of magic to burst free from his blood.

  He fell from the earth into the sky, and all was gone.

  COREN SCREAMED AGAIN, dragging herself across the clearing toward the emptiness where her twin’s body should be. She refused to look at the monster of a woman crumpled nearby.

  The forest was silent, except for her own cries as she pawed at the scorched grass. There was nothing left of him, not even a scrap of fabric. She’d lost Jyesh, truly lost him. And it was so much worse than the first time.

  “He’d only begun to live again,” she choked out. “He could have been saved.”

  “He was saved,” Sy countered, kneeling to wrap his arms around her shoulders. She snapped her face up, her eyes blazing into his.

  “He was still just a child inside, and he died. Everyone I care about is dying,” she broke into another sob, her broken ribs wrenching violently. The crying hurt her body so much, but she kept at it. She deserved this pain. She’d failed everyone.

  Sy ignored her outburst and sat next to her, one wide palm rubbing her back. “Jyesh was no child, Coren. Mara made certain of that. He did horrible evil, and that aged him. He was trapped in darkness most of his life, pulling people into the shadows with him. Like Nik. But in the end, Jyesh found enough light in his mental prison to open the door and let himself out. He chose the light, Coren.”

  Her crying softened a bit, and she slumped sideways into Sy’s strong grasp.

  There would always be sadness for the things that could have been. She knew that.

  But Sy was right. Jyesh had chosen his fate, and it had been a good and noble one.

  “There’s more balance in the world now,” she whispered, her senses calming enough to realize it was true. Sy closed his eyes, as if sensing the sources, too.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I can feel it. Light and dark are more even.”

  She crawled back to check Kosh, her fingers trembling. He was breathing, but still in some deep sleep. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look to where Penna’s body lay.

  “Is Aram dead?” she asked instead. Sy nodded.

  Coren was just about to ask the same of Mara, but a groan caught her attention.

  Somehow, Mara lived.

  Rage covered Coren like a storm cloud across the sun. “I’ll kill you!” she rasped, staggering to her feet and hobbling toward Mara, Sy following close behind. “You are nothing!”

  She drew a final dagger from the belt at her waist and fell over Mara, readying the blow, but something stopped her. Her magic was gone. Coren sensed nothing at all from Mara’s blood. Whatever Jyesh had done had made Mara vulnerable enough to kill.

  Coren smiled down at the dying woman. Mara’s face and skin were blistered as though from fire, and her chest cavity still gaped open as the Heart pumped weakly.

  Pumped Penna’s blood, Coren remembered, and she tightened her grip on the knife.

  But again, her hand stilled as her eyes tried to make sense of something.

  Floating just above Mara’s face was a thin white mist. It bobbed on the air currents like a fishing lure, never quite making it beneath the surface of her skin.

  “A soul,” Coren whispered, realizing with a start what she was seeing. But whose?

  Mara had traded her soul to Shadow decades ago.

  “What? Coren, how is that possible?” Sy asked. But she had no answer for him.

  Mara groaned again, and her hand fluttered next to Coren, her fingers grasping at Coren’s wrist. “Help me,” she croaked.

  Coren recoiled, her shoulders connecting with Sy’s chest behind her.

  “Failure is my lot, and I’ll take it. But help me have peace,” Mara begged, the last word hissing too long as the air left her battered lungs. The white mist condensed, draping itself like silk over Mara’s chest.

  “Your soul?” she managed. But where had it come from?

  Mara nodded, the movement barely perceptible.

  “Coren, wait!” a voice yelled from far above her. She jerked her neck back and gasped as the pair of Draken circled the clearing above.

  Both clambered to land, Nik shifting almost immediately as he ran on stiff legs toward Coren. Shuri hobbled to the edge of the trees, trying to fold away her shredded wings. Her form rippled between human and Draken, her power nearly spent. The early morning sun lit Nik’s bruises, and Coren winced.

  “Stop! Shadow is coming!” Nik gasped out, falling to his knees between Coren and Sy.

  Mara emitted a raspy chuckle. “So it goes,” she whispered, her eyes rolling back in her head.

  “Shadow comes for her,” Shuri said, finally making it to them in her human form. She was as battered as Nik.

  “Let it take her,” Sy said, reaching for the dagger in Coren’s hand.

  Nik grabbed it from them both. “No! If Shadow takes Mara, he’ll have the Heart
of Sulit.”

  Coren groaned, wracking her brain for a solution. Already, a mass of dark clouds was gathering on the eastern edge of the clearing, high in the sky but moving faster than any wind could push a storm.

  “My soul,” Mara croaked again. “The only way!”

  Coren stared at her. Surely, it was a trick. If Mara had her soul again, that wispy silk fluttering over her heart, was Shadow therefore powerless to take her again? Or did it forever own the soul she’d traded?

  “Put me to rest,” Mara whispered.

  Sy frowned. “Maybe she’s right. None of us knows how this works.” He looked to Nik and Shuri, who both shook their heads. “She traded her soul for the Heart. If we give her back the soul and take the Heart, then maybe...”

  Coren glanced up at the sky. It looked like night was being pulled back over the world. They had to try something.

  She handed the dagger to Nik. “I’m going to try and shift her soul.” She didn’t know why that sounded possible now when it never had before, in the face of all of Mara’s previous threats and evils.

  But there was a peace in her heart now, a unity within her shifting. It was like there was a new map in her mind, and the way to each level of shifting was laid out before her. She could sense the sources all around her. She could imagine shifting herself younger, or older, or into a Vespa, or even into another appearance altogether.

  And she could feel the distinct source of the white soul before her now.

  She reached mental fingers toward it, closing her eyes to better focus on the light and not the growing darkness in the sky. She ran her thoughts along the smooth, unblemished sources of the soul. And she pushed. Opening the sources of the Heart, she wove the soul through and through, lacing them together like the finest woven cloth.

  A gasp of pain mixed with pleasure pushed from Mara’s cracked lips as Coren opened her eyes.

  She could see the glowing white dappling the beating red Heart. Heart and soul merged as one again.

  “Thank you,” Mara said, and her face looked even younger than the magic had ever made it. “Do better than me,” she pleaded.

  Coren nodded, knowing it was as close to an apology as she might ever get from this woman who had pushed her family into death again and again, retaliating for her own demise.

  Mara blinked her eyes over to Nik, who held the dagger aloft. “I’m ready,” she whispered, and he plunged the knife deep into the Heart, ripping apart its two chambers and spilling the blood over Mara’s heaving ribs.

  The scream didn’t come from Mara.

  It came from the skies above.

  And it wasn’t a scream of pain.

  It was a scream of glorious, supreme victory.

  Chapter 35

  THE DARK CLOUD ABOVE them descended into the clearing, an inky, shimmering smoke. Beside Sy, Nik growled, and Sy grasped his shaking hand.

  “Shadow,” Nik whispered, and fear squeezed Sy’s chest. Nik and Shuri had already fought and fled from the creature once today.

  Strands of shadow unfurled, dipping into the clearing like the long fingers of a god.

  “No!” Mara shrieked, as her body was yanked upright by two of the strands, her toes barely brushing the ground as she hovered in the air, darkness spearing every finger and toe, twining up her arms and legs, and wrapping her waist like satin ribbons. The bloodied Heart floated from her chest, borne aloft on sinuous tendrils of shadow.

  “No. This is wrong. I may have failed, but I fulfilled my bargain with you. You got what you wanted long ago. Let me die and rest in peace,” she wailed, trying to reach for the Heart and failing, her arms snapped straight back with a crack of bone and tendon breaking.

  Sy gaped, his brain refusing to process what was happening.

  Even the familiar buzz in his mind from the brothers and their curse grew silent as darkness settled over the clearing like ash. Every tree trunk, every blade of grass, was coated in shadows. The spirits in his head backed away, hiding in the corners of his mind, and Sy felt terror ripple through his very soul.

  What horror was coming for them that Zorander’s brothers hid from it?

  Coren scrambled for Penna’s body, and Sy grabbed Kosh. Nik and Shuri pushed their backs against them, and all four crouched in a sort of stand-off with an invisible enemy.

  Mara continued to wail her pleas for peace, even as a whispered song began to vibrate the air around them. The song tickled every fear that had ever kept Sy awake at night, and as he glanced around at his friends, it seemed the effect was the same.

  Coren cowered against a tree, tears streaming down her face as she gripped her dead sister to her chest like she could still protect the girl from something.

  Shuri skittered away from every nip and undulation of the shadows at her feet, scales rippling across her skin as she stubbornly resisted shifting back to her natural Draken form.

  And Nik. Sy’s heart broke as he saw how shattered Nik appeared. His crystal blue eyes were overtaken by huge, black pupils, and he hid his forearm beneath his leathers, glancing wildly about the clearing and jumping away from invisible threats.

  Sy locked his mind up tight as memories of Damren’s slashed flesh crowded his vision. Not real, he fought to remind himself, over and over.

  Yet the singing continued, a song as ancient as the clearing they stood inside.

  The Shadow is good, the Shadow is bad.

  The Shadow will take all that you had.

  The Shadow is near, the Shadow is far.

  The Shadow knows all that you are.

  Mara’s body thudded to the forest floor, catching everyone’s attention. The Heart still hovered at eye level, its jagged pieces pulsing as the spilled blood collected in an impossible cloud around it.

  The song ceased, and a voice resonated through the trees, the words echoing around them from all sides. “Stupid humans. They always believe they can trick the gods. They covet immortality, never thinking of the price eternal life exacts.”

  Sy backed farther away from Mara, pulling the others with him, as something began to rise from the mass of darkness, sliding between one form and another until it settled on something close to human. The form was too tall and much too thin, but it had a semblance of arms and legs. Its gait was too smooth for the awkward angles as it glided toward the Heart rather than stepped.

  It passed right through Mara’s unmoving body. Her eyes had grown glassy, and her mouth was slack. Sy wondered if she had finally died, or if this was simply another trick?

  He’d believe anything at this point.

  The form plucked the Heart from thin air and cradled it like a newborn child.

  “You have done magnificent work, SoulShifter,” it said then, and Coren gasped as though she’d been hit in the stomach. “Don’t be too hard on yourselves. I hardly expected any of you to guess what I truly wanted.”

  “What are you?” Sy asked because he needed to be told.

  “You know what I am. The oldest of all the gods, and the youngest. The one who’s never invited to the family reunions.” The voice grew sinister as the form held up the Heart. Shadows snaked up and around the Heart, binding it back together, mending its divided chambers, guiding the droplets of Penna’s blood back inside.

  Terror froze each of Sy’s limbs as he watched all their work undone. They’d failed, and Shadow had everything.

  “Mara was your pawn,” Coren said then, and Shadow’s laughter rumbled around the clearing.

  “Of course, she was. No human or witch could come up with such plans or power. Now, I have a soul and a heart, and the magic will grant me a body with ease. But don’t worry. The game doesn’t end tonight. There are still a few more moves I need you each to make. I like my opponents to be the best, and let’s face it: You have work to do.”

  “You’ll never win,” Coren said, steel in her voice. Sy felt her pride, but he wasn’t sure it was warranted. How could they win against this? Just like with Graeme’s death, all they’d done tonight was unco
ver another layer of darkness.

  He had a feeling this one went all the way down, rotten to the core of the world.

  “Go, now. Heal your children and what’s left of your armies. Ready your cities. Fill your heads with the best nonsense humans can concoct about how you will triumph in the end, become the light of the world, and all that. It’s a tale as old as time, and the most entertaining way to say goodnight.”

  The final word hit the clearing like a lightning bolt, and Sy reeled as every surrounding space was filled with shadows, black and corporeal, wriggling up his nose and into his ears like insects and slinking around his ankles and between his fingers.

  A cacophony of rustling and whispering and hissing laughter filled the air, and then the shadows drew back, more slowly than they’d come, but vanishing completely.

  “Oh, and Sy?” the disembodied voice continued, growing farther away. “Your family’s next.”

  Sy’s heart pounded with anxiety. What in the Magi did that mean?

  Sounds faded into silence as the clearing brightened with early morning sun. Sy shook his head as though waking from a deep sleep, but this time he remembered every second of the nightmare. Coren still clutched Penna to her chest, her eyes wide with fear.

  Nik and Shuri leaned against each other, supporting one another.

  When Sy turned to where Mara had fallen, all he saw was dust drifting away on an autumn breeze. Something glinted in the grass, and when all her sources had blown away, Sy’s breath hitched.

  The twin Kitsuun blades waited there, plain as day for anyone to pick up.

  Was it a trick? Or an oversight?

  Behind him, he heard Coren draw a shuddery breath. He turned to see her lay the little girl gently on the soft grass, her hand stroking the child’s face and resting on the roundness of her cheek. Coren leaned forward to kiss the girl’s forehead, then rose. Without looking at Sy, she walked straight to the Kitsuun blades and sheathed them at her back, shifting some of her own leathers to better hold them.

  “Let’s bury our dead and go home,” she said, her voice dull. “Like Shadow said, we have work to do.”