The Obsidian Order Boxed Set

by martinez, katerina

  Valoel soared high into the air, turned to face me, then he began uttering not one word of power, but a whole sentence. I could feel the magic charge rising in the air, causing my nape to prickle. The voices inside his stone began lashing at my mind again, and I knew, he had opened his palm—he was using the stone’s power, just as I was.

  From within the deep dark I sensed the coming of invisible knives, sharp and deadly. They raced toward me like tiny piranhas eager to bite and nip at my skin, to tear me to ribbons as they’d almost done once before.

  “Duras,” I said as I ran, and my glowing shield sprang to life around me, but the knives didn’t care. They came in a horde, slashing and cutting, ignoring the magic protection I’d summoned. In my mind voices lashed out like demons screaming at me from within the depths of hell itself.

  Still, I ran, repeating the Aevian word for heal over and over. The birds would cut and rip my skin, and the magic would heal those cuts, only for them to be reopened again. It was agony. Even in the dark I could feel my vision starting to fade, the strength leaving my legs, but I pushed past it to reach the door, fell through it, and pulled it shut.

  The door sealed, huge locks sliding into place, and I staggered against the steps, falling flat on my ass.

  I was bleeding all over, and while many of the cuts were healing, some weren’t. My hands were shaking, trembling. The door wouldn’t be enough to stop Valoel from leaving, not if he’d been able to get into the vault in the first place, but I’d bought myself a few seconds, at least.

  Fighting through the pain I was in, I stood, and started heading up the stairs. That was when I heard more footsteps, rushing as if to cut me off at the top of the stairs. I picked up speed, taking the stone risers two at a time, my dagger tightly held in one hand, the stone in the other, ready to strike at whoever was about to get in my way.

  It was Draven, and he looked hurt.

  Draven dashed into view, stopping as soon as he saw me. His black shirt was ripped in places. Blood dripped from cuts along his shoulders, his biceps, his abdomen. He held a longsword in one hand with a ruby on the cross guard that glowed like the one on his chest had. The sword was covered in black, oozing gore that looked more like tar than like blood.

  “Seline…” he said, his eyes flying wide, his lips parting.

  In his eyes and face I saw the light from my kithe reflected at me; gold dancing within two black jewels. “You’re alive…” I said, my voice trailing off.

  “Did you think I was dead?” he asked.

  “Valoel, he… he made it sound like maybe he’d gotten you.”

  Draven’s face hardened at the sound of Valoel’s name. “You’ve spoken to him?”

  I rushed to the top of the stairs, turned, and pointed at the vault door. “He’s inside,” I said, “Draven, he has the other stone…”

  He made a move as if to go down the stairs, but I stopped him. “I have to face him.”

  “No, you can’t. He’s stronger than both of us.”

  “Someone has to. We can’t let him get away with the stone.”

  “That stone is what’s causing all the chaos at the fortress. One way or another, we have to get rid of it.”

  “There are better ways than letting Valoel take it.”

  The bolts on the massive vault door began to undo themselves, slamming into the open position one by one.

  “I never said anything about letting him,” I said, bracing myself against whatever was going to happen next.

  The vault door opened, and a black mist rushed out through the gap. A second later, Valoel burst out of the darkness, his wings carrying him at top speed. He rushed directly at Draven, drawing a longsword from the sheath on his belt and swinging it in an upward arc.

  Draven caught the blade with his own. Sparks flew, metal sang, and the force of the impact pushed Draven back, but the blow hadn’t gotten past his guard. Ignoring the birds, I turned to Valoel, leapt into the air, and swung at him with my dagger, catching his leg and drawing blood.

  I rolled on my shoulder as I hit the ground, turning up at Valoel again, ready for another attack. He locked his gaze on me, his hair flowing as if he were underwater, the black stone pulsing in his hand. “You should’ve come with me,” he snarled, “I don’t relish having to kill you.”

  “You wanna kill me,” I said, “You’re gonna have to catch me.”

  Valoel, grunting, swooped toward me. I spun around and broke into a sprint to save my own life. I would never be faster than him, not while he was airborne, but if I could make enough turns, I had a chance. I had no idea where I was going, I was only following the Black Fortress’ labyrinthine halls, taking whatever random turns I could, but as long as I was doing that, Valoel wasn’t fleeing the grounds.

  I made a hard right, skidding along the stone floors, then catching my footing and sprinting again. Valoel made the same sharp turn, but he hadn’t been able to take it tightly enough, and he smashed into the wall with his shoulder. Grunting, he shook the hit off and took after me again.

  “Seline!” I heard Draven yell from somewhere behind us. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re both fools,” Valoel hissed, “But one of you is also a liar and a murderer, how about we talk about that instead of fighting?”

  I made a turn into a hallway that felt familiar. It was one that I’d only gone down a handful of times; a hallway with an iron hatch at the center of it. A sinking feeling filled my stomach as Valoel shot over me and landed by the hatch.

  Grunting, he heaved the lock with both hands, forcing it to give way and yanking it open. He yelled into the dark pit inside the hatch, raw, violent magic pulsing outward from him, transforming his voice into something monstrous. I stopped dead in my tracks, Draven landing beside me.

  “Why did you have to tell him about the Smother, too?” I asked.

  “It just… came up in conversation,” Draven said.

  “Really? How does that thing come up in conversation?”

  Something dark and ancient stirred inside the pit. Valoel threw himself away from the hatch, taking to the air just as inky black tendrils shot out from inside. The darkness was like water, expanding as soon as it hit the wall opposite the hatch.

  I took a step back as the hallway turned to ink, every inch of light snuffed out. Valoel’s eyes narrowed, and he grinned as the darkness surrounded him.

  “Run,” Draven said.

  “No way,” I said, “I beat this thing once, I can do it again.”

  “This isn’t a discussion, Seline. Get out of the fortress, now.”

  I turned my eyes up at him, the light fading around us, my heart hammering against my chest. “I’m not leaving you…”

  He turned to look at me, and for an instant I saw something like… feeling… in those black eyes of his. It was like a world of words left unspoken had suddenly been birthed from nothing. I watched his chest heave, saw his shoulders move with his breaths. He reached for me with one hand, cupping my cheek and running his thumb across it as the Smother forced its way out of the pit.

  “Together, then,” he said.

  I nodded, my skin melting at his touch, at the memory of that kiss. “Together.”

  Draven readied his sword. I readied my dagger and the singing stone. The Smother trundled through the hallway, barreling toward us. “Voyda,” I said, creating a kind of reverse darkness that acted as brilliant, white-hot light to the Smother. The beast shrieked, and Draven lunged toward it with his sword, striking at the creature as it retreated.

  I couldn’t see a thing, but I could hear well enough. I advanced, walking at first, then running, using the stone’s magic to create an even more powerful, more intense darkness around myself. I heard of the Smother’s tendrils whip around in a wide arc and was lucky to have dodged underneath it at the last second, otherwise I’d have become part of the stone wall. Another tendril shot out toward me, only this time it wrapped itself around my waist.

  More tendrils pulled around me. I s
truck at one of them with my dagger, and though I couldn’t see it, the dagger went through something meaty. Again, and again I hit the beast, the tip of my blade biting into that invisible flesh. Cold liquid sprayed from each stab, covering my arm and face.

  Distantly, I could hear Draven grunting with each strike of his sword. He had also fought this beast before, and he’d been the one to capture it. But if it had been infected by the stone’s power, then it wasn’t the same creature he had once wrestled with and brought low.

  One of the smother’s thick, ropey appendages touched the side of my face, a coldness to replace the warmth of Draven’s touch. I shrugged away from it and swiped at it with my dagger, slicing the tip of the tendril clean off and making the Smother scream again. Sensing that my magic was maybe wearing off, I gripped the stone tightly in my hand and drew it out of me again, creating more of that anti-darkness that made the Smother break its grip on my waist.

  I fell to the floor, my heart thundering, my lungs burning from the effort.

  I could see, now. It wasn’t much, but the darkness was lifting enough that I could pick out the creature’s shape. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. A huge, writhing mass of veiny limbs, black all over, and faster and more agile than anyone would believe. It bounced like a ball from wall to wall, using those powerful, octopus-like tendrils to push it across surfaces, defying gravity, but it was losing this fight.

  Draven’s moves were lightning. His sword seemed to gleam as it swung through the air, even in this near total darkness. As I watched, one tendril fell, then another, then another. With each deep, cutting hit, the beast retreated a little further, then a little further, and as it did, the darkness around me began to clear.

  I fought to stand, then gripping the stone in my hand, I ran toward the Smother, drawing raw, pulsing magic out of me, and channeling it through the stone. Magic flowed around me like it never had before. There was no pain, only a warm, tingling feeling like something broken made right again.

  In my mind I could hear Fate’s voice, reminding me that I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t being left behind; reminding me that we were sisters, and she wasn’t going anywhere. Aaryn’s voice came next, her description of the sacking of my home accompanied by flashes of memory; images of blades in the dark and fires in the night that awoke something that had been sleeping inside of me.

  And then there came Valoel’s voice, like a whispering snake in my ear, his promise that I wasn’t like the others; that I was different, better.

  The magic I’d been charging up inside of me exploded into the world. The creature screamed, its flesh sizzled and withered as if it had been seared, and then it retreated fully into the pit it had come from, taking the darkness with it. Draven threw his weight against the hatch, shut it, and locked it.

  Panting, Draven let his back rest against the wall and sank to a seated position. I rushed toward him and knelt at his side, touching his tired face. “Are you okay?” I asked, and in his eyes I could see myself. My bright white hair, my golden wings of light, color and luminescence swirling in those black pools.

  Draven groaned and winced. I noticed he was bleeding from his abdomen. “Valoel,” he said, “He got away.”

  “We need to get you to a doctor.”

  He tried to stand, but I held his shoulder down. “We need to catch him before he escapes.”

  “Draven, he’s gone… it’s over.”

  Shutting his eyes, he sighed and relaxed against the wall. “That’s the second time someone has escaped the fortress with a singing stone.”

  “We never should have brought it here in the first place.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  The light around me faded, and my kithe transformed into a flurry of glittering, golden light, disappearing within seconds. The stone in my hand was warm, it thrummed with power, but the power had gone dormant within it. Sadness gripped my stomach as that feeling of loss returned. Why was this happening? Why couldn’t I just have wings like I was supposed to?

  Draven reached for my cheek and thumbed a tear from under my eye. I hadn’t even noticed it show up. “It will be okay,” he said.

  Pressing my lips into a hard line, I nodded. “We should get out of here… if we can. We still need to get through the labyrinth.”

  He shook his head. “I killed the labyrinth.”

  “You… killed it?”

  “I didn’t have a choice. It would not relent, it would not succumb. Whatever dark magic had gripped it made it fight to the death.”

  “And Siren?”

  “I don’t know, maybe—” a shifting body of green, ephemeral light appeared next to us, manifesting from nothing.

  Siren stood there, smiling down on us like an angel. “Yes, Seline?” she asked, as if I hadn’t seen her turn into something like a banshee a little while ago.

  “Is there anyone left alive in the fortress?” Draven asked.

  She shut her eyes, turned her chin up, then nodded. “Yes,” she said, “Twelve.”

  “Teleportation orb, now.”

  Siren’s ghostly form broke apart into mist, but she returned before the cloud she’d left behind could fully disperse. She handed the small, blue orb to Draven, who used his sword to help get to his feet. “Tell me where they are,” he said.

  “A storage closet on the second floor, near the library.”

  Draven concentrated and tossed the orb into the center of the hall where it hovered, then expanded to create a shifting portal of blue light. Lightning whipped the air around it, electrifying my skin and making the hairs on my arms stand on end. Draven then took a step into the portal, and I followed, bracing myself for the twisting sensation in my stomach. I’d thought this before, but that feeling was one I’d never get used to.

  By the time I exited the portal, Draven was already a few feet ahead of me and kneeling by a small door. There, crumpled against the it, was a large body, still and unmoving.

  Oh… no…

  It was Crag. Both of his hands were firmly wrapped around the door’s handle. The door itself was scorched black, segments of it still glowing with soft, blue embers.

  The air smelled different here, burnt, almost. The scent took me back to the labyrinth, to the moment when a giant blue fireball raced toward me and Felice. Looking at the hallway around me, whatever windows had once been intact were now smashed to bits, and even though the stone was black, it also looked charred, like it had been torched with a flamethrower.

  Someone started pounding on the other side of the door. I walked up to Draven, whose hands were resting Crag’s burnt body. He was muttering a healing spell, choking through the words, but there was nothing to heal. Crag was dead. We hadn’t spent a lot of time together, and he’d been the guy to kidnap me from my home and bring me here, but I felt the sting of loss in the pit of my stomach. I shut my eyes.

  “Draven…” I said, careful not to interrupt the delicate moment. “There are people behind the door.”

  Draven took a deep breath and stood. Slowly, one finger at a time, he peeled Crag’s death grip off the door handle and set his body to one side. While he was doing that, I pushed the door open, putting all of my strength behind it. The hinges were tough, and probably burned solid, but the door budged an inch at a time.

  Already I could hear children’s voices rising, their mothers gasping for breath. Some of them called out from behind the door, thanking all the Gods that ever existed for our arrival. As soon as the door had opened wide enough, I helped them through the gap one at a time until they were all outside.

  “Is there anyone left in there?” I asked. I didn’t want to ask if there were any bodies.

  “No,” one of the mothers shook her head, then she saw Crag, and her eyes welled with tears.

  “What happened?”

  “He came to find us,” she said between light sobs. “He wanted us to follow him out, but the halls turned in on themselves. We were lost, we had circled the library three times. Then I… I used
magic to help make sure we wouldn’t come back to the same place and… the fireball…”

  Breadcrumbs, I thought.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “It was my fault. He pushed us all in here and shut the door. I begged him to get inside, but there was no room for him.” She choked up. “I heard the fireball hit him, heard his groans as he… as he died…”

  I embraced her, holding her tightly. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, “You’re all safe now, it’s over.”

  From across her shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Draven plucking a feather from his wings and setting it to rest on Crag’s chest. He murmured silently, then the feather became a puff of black ash that swirled in the air and vanished. He looked across at me, his expression taut and solid. He nodded.

  “Let’s get you all out of here, okay?” I said to the weeping mother. “All of you. Let’s go.”

  I extended my hands to anyone who would take them and walked with them through the black fortress’ halls. With the labyrinth’s influence gone, the place was much easier to navigate. I managed to bring them to the courtyard, where the bright sun and clear sky helped make everyone a little calmer.

  From above the fortress’ parapets came Aaryn, her massive white wings propelling her through the air. She dove into the courtyard when she saw us accompanied by three other Aevians—Felice among them. As Aaryn and the others began escorting the women and children through the fortress green and to safety, Felice came up to me and hugged me.

  “I’m glad you’re alive,” she said, “I was starting to wonder if I’d be dealing with Ferrum on my own from now on.”

  “Nah,” I said, my muscles relaxing against the hug, “Neither of you are gonna get rid of me that easily.” I pulled away. “Did Fate make it out?”

  “She did… she has wings…”

  “Yeah, I know… add that to the list of things about today that need processing.”