There I was, standing before him wearing my skin-tight black bodysuit covered in straps and clips and pouches, my hair a glint of white in the dark pools that were his eyes. He narrowed them and clenched his jaw, then he approached.
Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a scratch on him this time, but the image of his broken and bleeding form still flashed directly into my mind, almost as if to remind me of his mortality. No matter how scary he was, he was still flesh and bone, and he could be hurt, or even killed. I didn’t think he liked having his edge blunted like that.
“I do not like this,” he said.
“Me either,” I said, “I didn’t even get a gun.”
“Bringing you. Involving you. You are a prospect barely starting your silver trials. That we must rely on you for such a sensitive matter… it is not a decision I have made lightly, but it was one I had to make. Do you understand?”
“I understand that this whole thing is crazy, and that the stones shouldn’t be messed with.”
“Perhaps, but it has been unearthed, and it is at this very moment calling out to anyone who would hear it. If we do not get to it soon, someone else will.”
“Won’t they just get themselves halfway killed like—” I stopped myself from saying the rest, noting that there were three people present who maybe didn’t know he’d almost died last night. I didn’t know why I was protecting his reputation from the others, assuming they didn’t know what had happened to him, but there it was.
“That isn’t a chance I’m willing to take. We must get to the stone and retrieve it at all costs.”
“I’m starting to not like the sound of this… and where’s Aaryn? Shouldn’t she be coming with us?”
“Aaryn is indisposed.” He squared up to me, his look grave and serious. The closer her got, the more strongly I could feel the draw of his magic, his power curling off him like a scent I couldn’t escape. “I cannot force you to do this…”
Yes, you can, and you just have. There was no way in hell I could’ve refused to take part in this suicide mission, and he and I both knew it. I was just a prospect here, he was the big bad wolf; if he wanted me on this team, I’d be on the team, or I’d be finished. Maybe not necessarily murdered outright, but I probably wouldn’t be surviving my next trial no matter how hard I tried.
Did I really think Draven was the kind of guy to do something like that? To fix a trial so that I’d lose? Alright, maybe not, but I was starting to get the idea that he was the obsessive type, as well as the controlling type. If he was also prone to throwing tantrums when he didn’t get what he wanted, then that was dangerous combination.
I took a deep breath and puffed my chest up. “I want to do this,” I said, and I really did want to, if not because part of me knew that he was right—if the stones fell into the wrong hands, we were all screwed; case in point, Abvat—then also because I still had something to prove. Maybe not to him, but to myself. I wanted to prove that I could do this, that I had what it took to be the best.
There was another reason, too. Crag had said my kithe had manifested as wings of bright golden light when I touched the stone in the armory. Not only that, I could’ve sworn for a millisecond that I’d been on the other side of the rifts. Maybe that was all this stone could do, maybe that was all the power it had; enough to give me a hint of what could be. But maybe this other stone was even more powerful, maybe it was the key to unlocking something special inside of me, and that was worth chasing.
“Good,” Draven said, though his jaw clenched like he wanted to say more, like he was biting back words.
Sighing, I asked, “So, what’s the mission? Kinda dying to know.”
Draven turned around like he hadn’t heard me, walked to front of the armory, then spun around again to address his team. I saw Crag, rifle guy, and shades guy form up in a line, so I did the same, standing next to Crag who always made me look like an ant in comparison. “Listen up,” Draven said, commanding the room, “Our mission today will be swift and precise, however, it will also be dangerous, so we must be careful. We will deploy via portal orb to the edge of an ancient ruin. Inside that ruin is a stone we must retrieve, but we must do it swiftly, as the entire area is being ravaged by magic winds.”
My stomach went cold, and I felt the need to ask. I put my hand up. “Magic winds?”
“You need not be concerned. I will provide sufficient protection for us to keep the winds from causing us harm, but my protection will not last forever, so we must be quick. I want this to take no more than five minutes. Understood?”
Those assembled in front of Draven returned a chorus of “Understood,” and he nodded to them.
I put my hand up again. “Yes?” Draven asked.
“This is probably a stupid question, but why can’t we deploy right where we need to be? Why at the edge of the ruin?”
“You will soon find out. Stay close to me, all of you.”
Without asking if anyone was ready, Draven produced a blue portal orb from out of his coat pocket and tossed it into the air in front of him. The orb hung, suspended mid-flight, then suddenly grew to about the size of a person in an explosion of crackling blue light. Its black mouth yawned open, and without hesitating, Draven stepped through, as did rifle guy and shades guy. Crag looked over at me and arched an eyebrow. It was my turn next.
I took a breath and walked toward the center of the vortex, feeling that all too familiar pull on my stomach once I got close enough for it to affect me. It only took a second, and then I was off my feet, being drawn into the dark iris at the center of the vortex like it had hands to pull me into itself. I shut my eyes as my stomach twisted into itself. My heart leapt into my throat and started pounding, my skin prickled all over, but the moment passed and I emerged on the other side, only it wasn’t like the last couple of times I’d travelled through one of these.
The wind started pushing hard against my body from the moment it could. I staggered, nearly toppling, but I managed to open my eyes and find a wall I could reach for and hold onto, keeping myself upright. I was in a stone building somewhere, but the roof had fallen into itself long ago, and some of its walls had been completely destroyed, rendering it useless as far as shelter from the winds went.
I glanced up at the sky only to see a churning ocean of grey and black filled with snapping arcs of wild, roaring violet lightning. It was so loud out here, and already the wind was strong enough that a single careless step could see me eating the stone floor underneath me. Draven hurried toward me, frowning as he moved, his hand stretched. I caught a glimpse of the ruby on his neck and saw that it wasn’t just glowing like I’d seen it do before; it was pulsing with light, beating like a tiny heart.
I went to wave Draven away—I didn’t need him to help me stand—but he wasn’t reaching for my hand, he was reaching for my necklace. I looked into his eyes and saw the flashes of lightning reflected in them, but also something else. The little, crescent shaped charm hanging off the silver chain at my neck was glowing with bright, bluish light at a speed and intensity to match his; and even though I could rarely get a read on his emotions, I received it loud and clear right now.
He knows what this is.
“Draven?” I asked.
The portal snapped closed, and the orb shot toward Draven, who caught it without even looking. He stuffed the small, blue sphere back into his coat pocket, took a breath, and moved away from me to peer out of a broken doorway. Crag was standing next to me, his large form acting like a buffer against the brunt of the wind.
“Could you stay right there?” I asked, “Like, right next to me?”
“Want me to hold your hand, too?” he asked.
“No… just be a shield from the wind. That’s enough for me.”
Crag stepped aside a little, letting the wind come and hit me full in the face. It tugged at my hair and nipped at my nose and ears, like the winter gusts in New York. Only it wasn’t winter in New York, and there definitely wasn’t any snow on the streets right no
w, but there was snow here. It was under my feet, on tiny ledges, and flurrying lightly on the back of the gale.
“Where the hell are we, anyway?” I asked.
“Norway,” Crag grunted.
“Norway?” I said. “What the hell?”
Fate and I had never left the greater New York area in the ten years we’d spent on this planet, much less gone travelling to another country on another continent. Now that he’d mentioned it, though, something did feel different about the ground I was standing on, about the air I was breathing. It was cleaner, fresher, different to everything I was used to.
“Save the awe for later,” Draven said, “We return to the Black Fortress in four minutes and thirty seconds. Elrik, Greyson, move out and take point.”
Elrik and Greyson slipped out of the front of the building, each holding a gun aloft and keeping it aimed directly in front of them, moving with all the precision of a SWAT team. Draven waited, then nodded, and reached for my hand, this time. I took it, and he drew me toward him.
“Go,” he said, “Run.”
Ahead of me was a clearing of snowy mounds being pushed along by the wind and kicked up into the air, and while it was the middle of the day, the sky was so thick and dark, it was difficult to see well during the brief pause between lightning strikes. On the other side of the clearing I spotted another ruined building, though that one seemed to have an intact roof and I couldn’t see much snow inside. Elrik was at the door, stretching his hand toward me.
Taking a deep breath, and instantly regretting it because the air was so cold, I rushed across the snow. It was much deeper than I’d thought, difficult to navigate, but I pushed through until I reached the other doorway and hurried inside. Behind me came Draven, hurrying with his hand cupped over his eyes to allow him to see.
Then came Crag, who didn’t run and didn’t seem fazed by the wind; he simply sauntered over, shoulders swaying, his expression hard and stoic. He pulled a pair of shades from his breast pocket and slid them over his nose as he walked, grinning smugly. Beside me, Greyson was holding his thumb up at Crag and nodding with that same grin on his face.
I rolled my eyes. “And there I thought we were on a serious mission,” I said.
“We are supposed to be,” Draven barked, and the grin faded from Greyson’s face. He raised his rifle again and moved ahead of Draven, joining Elrik at the archway to another room inside this frigid ice-box of a building. “Move out, the stone is close.”
Draven’s men did as he commanded, carefully moving through the archway and then taking each subsequent room in turn, scanning and clearing it before stepping through the next door. But it wasn’t long before caught Elrik wincing and shutting his eyes like he was in pain. I wasn’t feeling whatever pain he was, but I could’ve sworn I’d heard a high-pitched ringing in my ears at the exact same moment.
“Hear that?” Crag asked.
“I think I heard something,” I said.
“Be glad you’re not them. I bet they’re already having a hard time thinking.”
If Draven was, he didn’t show it. His face was stone, impenetrable, his focus razor sharp. I followed him as we moved to the next ruin, torrents of lightning now ripping through the sky, and I could no longer say I couldn’t hear… something. It was like a whisper, a series of voices quietly talking in the back of my mind, though some of them talking more forcefully than others. I could hear yelling, sobbing, cackling—not laughing, but mad cackling—and the ramblings of a lunatic, all in my head like I had earbuds in my ears.
It was getting altogether too crowded in there, and yet, it almost sounded like music. I kept trying to find the melody, the rhythm. I came close once or twice, but it was like listening to four songs overlapping each other; no instruments, just the front men and women, each singing their own separate song above the other.
Greyson suddenly collapsed and fell to the floor, clutching his head. Draven ran over to him and knelt by his side. He turned one of his hands up toward the sky and strings of blue light erupted from his fingertips. The streams of light joined over Draven’s head, then expanded in all directions to create a kind of dome.
“Get inside, everyone,” Draven called out.
I moved with Crag to huddle under the magic shield falling around me, and when the light touched the floor, the voices were silenced. All sound, in fact, was gone, except for Greyson’s haggard breathing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t hold on any longer.”
“Relax,” Draven said, “You’re going to be fine. Pull yourself together, soldier and get back up. I didn’t foresee the stone’s intensity growing so much since our last visit. Elrik—”
“Boss, we’ve got a problem,” Crag said, cutting Draven off.
Draven looked up at the much larger man who, even crouching, still dwarfed all of us. “What is it?” he asked.
“Company.”
“What?!” Draven snapped.
Crag pointed at a broken section of the wall in the ruined building we were in, and while it was dark out there, where the storm was at its thickest, I saw something. On the other side of that wall there was an open field of snow and jagged, protruding rock being pounded by harsh winds and flurrying snow; and between it all, as clear as day, flashlight beams crossing each other.
Someone else had beaten us to the site.
The magic bubble Draven had thrown up around us kept the noise that was starting to hurt the others at bay, but as long as he was doing that, he couldn’t get closer to the stone without risking detection. If we moved quietly through the ruins and then pushed across to the other side of the clearing in a hurry, I didn’t think we’d be spotted before we got too close to them for it to matter. Whoever was already there, though, would definitely see a big bubble of blue magic moving rapidly toward them.
We needed another plan.
“Who are those people?” I asked.
“Crimson Hunters,” Draven said.
A shudder worked its way up my spine. The Crimson Hunters were an Order of supernaturals from the other side of the rifts that hunted other supernaturals for sport. Nobody was safe from them. Not even the natives. Everyone was a potential trophy.
“How can you be sure it’s them?” I asked.
“I can see them. They’re wearing leathers and furs; their weapons are antique in design. Crimson Hunters don’t use human made weapons and armors, only those they can make with their own hands.”
“Why would they come here? This place is dangerous, isn’t it?”
“It is, but where the winds are stirring, there is sport present. The storms only rage in areas where great supernatural power has been used, like what happened following your encounter with the Caretaker.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t remember hearing any winds.”
“That’s because the Black Fortress is shielded from them, but outside of our protective enchantment, the winds raged for days.” He clenched his jaw tightly and cursed under his breath. “The wind was already blowing when we arrived last night, we must have made it worse.”
“Want me to crack some skulls, boss?” Crag asked. He was itching for a fight, I could tell.
“No. We must gather intelligence first. If they are Hunters, we need to know how many there are, and who they are.”
“I’ll recon,” Elrik said. “I’ll take a forward position and use the scope on the rifle to see what’s out there.”
Without questioning whether Elrik thought he would be okay or not, Draven nodded. His subordinate immediately got to work, leaving the safety of the bubble and taking point at the ruin’s most extreme edge.
He was clearly in pain, the stone’s power slowly starting to affect him the closer he got to it, but he toughed it out and went through with his mission. He knelt at a crumpled wall and looked through his rifle’s sight, watching for targets. I didn’t think he’d see much, though; it looked like a small, grey twister had hit directly in front of us—one that wasn’t moving, only
churning and flashing furiously.
Draven looked like he was deep in thought when I moved in front of him and stole his attention. “What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing,” he said, “Your role will come when we secure the stone. Until then, you are to wait by my side and do nothing.”
“Cut the bullshit, Draven. You know as well as I do you brought me here for two reasons. Number one, yes, maybe I can touch that stone without getting killed. But number two, the stone’s power doesn’t have as much of a hold on me as it does on all of you, so I can get far closer to it than any of you can. Now, I’m going to ask you again, what do you need me to do?”
Draven’s eyes narrowed. “You understand we are potentially dealing with a rival Faction? One that hunts people for sport?”
“I do, but you just said yourself the stone’s power has gotten stronger. How much longer do you think your boy out there is going to stand it? How much longer can you hold this shield up before you exhaust yourself? You need me, so use me.”
He was staring at me so intently, I was starting to feel almost defenseless against the weight of his gaze. It was like he was analyzing me, sizing me up, seeing me for the first time not as some prospect, but as someone with talent, someone with real ability. I felt vulnerable and exposed in the face of this analysis, but also validated, especially when he shut his eyes and looked to the floor, sighing, defeated.
Elrik came rushing back into the bubble, grasping one ear with one hand and his rifle with the other. “Fuck!” he cursed, “It doesn’t stop, what the hell is that thing really?”
“Forget about that,” Draven said, “How many are there?”
“I saw four, maybe five.”
“Races?”
“Unknown. They’re wearing their glamor.”
“How close to the stone were they?”
“I couldn’t see the stone, but they all looked like they were stopped. One of them looked hurt.”
Draven paused, considering. “Could you confirm if they were wearing any real armor?” he asked.
The Obsidian Order Boxed Set Page 24