Runes on the slab sparkle and emit a golden glow, interrupting my next thought. Stone ripples like water. All my time in the temple and realms beyond, and I’m still in awe of magic, all its uses and forms. “Nearly there?”
Crispin nods. Andraste is silent, as focused as Esmanth on opening the way.
The storm beyond the grove tames a little; it’s the muting of my undead army falling beneath something greater than a similar foe. Their disenchanted bones crack like kindling beneath slow footsteps. A buzz ignites between my temples. Skin heats and burns beneath my armor, the same as when I entered the arena with Theriss.
Magic, untempered, unchecked, corrupted. The buzz becomes an impression, my second sight resolving it into shapes. But there’s no hot and cool, no signs of blood or life. The shapes are grey and relentless.
“Oryllix,” I warn the others needlessly. Etain stands with sword in-hand, her other palm cradles flame. Callista fills our small chamber with a feral bellow, taking in her bear form. Kumiko hops foot to foot, and on it goes.
“Andraste,” Crispin urges softly.
“Don’t.” My eyes are fixed on the entrance, on their progress as I stride forward to greet the pair. “Don’t hurry her. I’m not worried.”
That’s not true. I see my mother’s suffering, my father’s face and his soul held like a plaything. Grief and rage beg to feed on my sanity, beg me to run as much as they beg me to slash, thrust, and pummel the Oryllix into mewling pulp.
A god is a man at his heart. But outside he is a god.
I draw my sword and lower its tip just in time to kiss One in his concave chest as he materializes before me, Two’s hand on his shoulder. I have the satisfaction of seeing his tow brow quirk. He glances at his sister, who after our last encounter resembles a haunch toyed with by hounds.
Two flicks her fingers, throwing a spider web of lightning. I raise my guard and crouch. A tendril finds me, and I hold my breath for the searing pain.
Her bolt dances over my armor, crackling and dissipating.
The last of my nerves temper and I stand, meeting One’s dead black eyes. “Well, well.”
Two rests her hand back on his shoulder, expressionless. Or, there’s not enough left of her face to manage an expression. Air heats around me and the tingle becomes an itch, magic poisoning. Something cool trickles into my boot and flows up my calves. In a blink Finna envelopes me and the sting ceases.
The twins exchange a look.
So far, this feels too easy. A trap? Or have I changed that much? I can’t help goading them. “Having some trouble? You made such a fuss getting in here. Have to admit I’m a little disappointed.”
One raises his hand and points.
A casual spin of my blade, faster than thought, a single rotation, and I take his godsdamn finger. It lays between us while he stares, words forgotten on his gaping lips.
The scarred runes on Two grow inky, void rather than glowing.
Crispin hangs back, guarding Andraste and my sister, and it’s on him that Two’s eyes fall.
Tindra strides forward. “Torr and Skömm.” Her words are a distraction, and they seem to momentarily paralyze the twins. Because she knows their true names, or is it something in the voice of a dragon? Not important right now; Theriss slip into shadow behind me.
One, or rather, Torr draws Bloodmoon and slashes at Tindra. “You know to fear it,” he rasps, backing away a step.
Tindra stops in her tracks, eying the crimson slate arc. I move a step closer, ready for whatever Torr deals out.
Pushing the blade from her path with one finger, Tindra circles Torr. “Why should I fear it?”
“How many names of the Flight grace your halls of the dead?” He follows her progress to ask the question. When his back is to Skömm, Callista roars and charges her.
Impact and surprise throw Skömm against the bones. Callista rears up on another animal groan, pinning Skömm, who rakes wildly for her brother with a withered arm. Where is the magic that decimated armies?
Something isn’t right.
Meridiana’s influence turns the air thick. Theriss slithers up from the shadows below, twining around Skömm, binding her. The cross and slash of long knives sings like a high note. Blade tips puncture the crepe-skinned hollow of Skömm’s flesh and cut gills into her throat. Her desperate rasp sucks air from the chamber.
Crispin lunges forward and taps my shoulder: It’s time.
A single glance reveals Andraste and Esmanth hovering at a grey-mist portal where the runestone stood.
Torr slashes at Theriss, who melts to the shadows a breath ahead of Bloodmoon. His cut is deadly, slices the air with speed that defies the eye, but it’s slower than when I faced him before. He’s holding back.
Skömm finds some reserve of strength, and with a magical blow, throws off Callista, who tumbles back into our company with a groan and a shake that throws dust into the air.
Skömm and Torr link arm to shoulder, eyes fixed on the portal. Single particles of air burst into sparks of blue flame.
“Send Andraste and Esmanth in?”
Crispin, at my side, shakes his head. “They have to be the last in, or the waypoint closes.” In his eyes there’s something that gives me pause, doubt about our plan. “They’re no safer in there alone than they are out here.
The Oryllix are too close for us all to run through the portal, to escape them or whatever they’re about to unleash.
Tindra, still in the far corner, gives me a look: Move back.
I rest my palm on Crispin’s chest piece and push. He doesn’t hesitate, taking Etain’s wrist as he goes.
Tindra reaches the pair, a woman as she steps behind them, then a ripple of gold and bronze that swells to a lava flow of scales. Her wings flare, throwing bone and dust in a macabre shower. Reaching her full height collapses the chamber entirely.
She circles the Oryllix, now huddled close, and still, I can’t believe they sit there, unmoving. In fact, as they watch her, they seem almost afraid.
What in the hells is happening?
Tindra’s passage barely clears our group, scales brushing my forehead. The voice that emanates from her is the thunder and a breath of ancient flame and at the same time, impossibly, a whisper.
“Your trinket blade enrages me, but it does not frighten me...” The dragon lowers its head, considering the twins reflected in its bronze-black eyes. She licks her lips, languid. “But no dragon has ever borne the blood of a god, and that should frighten you!” It inhales, throat and chest ablaze.
Crispin stiffens. “Blood?” He looks to me, eyes wide. “Is that true?”
Memory, of her mouth on my neck as I spilled my seed into her, of my blood on her lips. “Why?”
We duck together before he can answer. Tindra bellows a column of flame over the Oryllix, singing bone to ash and skin to near blister.
When smoke and steam clear on a snap of her tail, the Oryllix are gone. Nothing remains but a perfect black circle in the destruction.
“In!” I shout, eyes still watering from smoke and heat.
We stumble over smoldering ruins; Kumiko, Callista, Meridiana...one by one each woman disappears beyond the fog. Crispin jumps in, taking Andraste by the hand. I go last, half expecting a reappearance of the twins. Nothing, right up until Esmanth grabs my hand and we plunge into the waypoint, sealing it shut.
-Twilight Hold-
“Crispin? Callista?” Fog paints my face like water, thick and swirling on a cool damp breeze. The world around me has no feature, no definition. There is only the mist. Beside me, Esmanth is little more than a silhouette.
“Here!” Etain calls back. “Were at the runestone; come toward my voice.”
Etain, Kumiko, Tindra, and Meridiana crouch around the waypoint, its glow fading.
“Where are the others?”
“No idea,” says Kumiko.
Meridiana closes her eyes. “They are here.”
Esmanth steps between them and rests her palm on the di
mmed runestone. “Another waypoint.”
“How is that possible?”
She gives me a look.
“Sorry. Mostly rhetorical.”
“All I can think is that it took both of us to open the way, but because there were two of us…” Esmanth shrugs.
“But dividing us right down the middle?” asks Tindra, searching the fog.
“That much I agree with.” It’s impossible not to feel Mordenn or the Oryllix at work here. “Esmanth, Meridiana, between the two of you, can you lead us to Crispin?”
Meridiana rolls a slender shoulder, looking adorably put out that it’s even a question. “I don’t see why not.”
“And I can feel Andraste,” Esmanth inhales, eyes half closed. “So, she must sense me a hundred times better. If we’re looking for each other, surely it won’t take long?”
“Your optimism is endearing,” I mutter, slinging up my bag. “Tindra, Kumiko...any thoughts about what lies ahead, or which way to go?”
“Anything,” Tindra breathes into the fog on a single ominous note, towering over the women. “Twilight Hold is the margins of waking worlds, the blank space between realms. We pass through the long-dormant veins of Yggdrasil.”
“Then we should get passing.”
“Gladly. There is no time here, no eternity. Just one empty, frozen moment that endures. A dragon has no need of, or use for, this place”
Kumiko rests a hand on my arm as we gather up. “I’ve passed through the Hold perhaps three or four times. Only under the most urgent circumstances. This place is unpredictable, half-defended, and prone to illusion.”
“Then we should all be vigilant. Call something out the moment you see it; don’t wait.” Flimsy advice with our field of view being our nose-tips. “You know what I mean.”
Esmanth laughs. “I may be able to help with that. Maybe?” She opens her hand to the mist. The gray orb, the same that she conjured before, swirls in her palm. There’s no sound or sudden change, but the air in my nose loses dampness. Clouds around us thin until they resemble something like the last wisps of morning dew burned away by the sun. There is no sun; I have no idea where the dull rainy-day glow emanates from, but there’s light and now, visibility.
“Very good, miss. You’ve earned your bread.” I tug Esmanth’s hair and her smile widens. “For today.”
“I’ll take it!” She tucks her skirts up a few inches into her belts. “No idea how I did it. I’m kind of going by feel, here. Instinct. So, I’ll have my reward today and my punishment tomorrow.”
I know what she means. “I’ll hold you to that.”
We start out of the runestone clearing, a low spot in the basin of a stone knob with a path that spirals up and away. At the top we pause to look and get our bearings.
Our wide path winds on to the horizon, cresting and falling until it disappears. It hangs like a ribbon in the sky, without terrain or landmarks.
“There’s nothing here…” I glance at Kumiko.
“There won’t be, not until we pass through the Long Road.”
The sound I make is one of frustration as much as resignation.
“You’ll be happier when you abandon your concept of time and place,” she says blithely.
Of course. No time or place. Simple.
Kumiko sees my face and nudges me. “The paths are fixed. But the realms fade in and out. I know you like to know what to expect; a good warrior does. But here...this is probably what Crispin and Andraste used to generate the temples, so let that guide your expectations. Ugh, is that helpful?”
“It is, actually.” I hold her close a moment, feeling the small thunder of her heartbeat. Etain joins us, and Tindra, and my sister.
“We need to find the rest of our party as quickly as possible,” says Tindra, casting a glance around us.
“I think we’re alright. We know they’re here. Crispin will keep them safe. And with the blow we just dealt the Oryllix?”
Tindra is the only one who doesn’t cheer at my words. “You must be something they never expected. You’re intensely powerful, but compared to the twins?” She shakes her head.
This knocks some wind from my sails, but she’s not wrong. And she’s not saying we can’t win. “What’s your guess?”
“Mordenn has reined them in. Or you and Esmanth together gave them pause. Perhaps both.”
“His path to the Pantheon carries plenty of weight,” says Kumiko.
“The blood of MacVortigan carries more.”
Their expressions say they agree to disagree, but as we start down the rocky slope, Kumiko and Tindra walk side by side. It’s a reminder that nothing is certain but the allies beside me.
I have a thousand questions, new replacing old. Whatever comes next, we’re ready. We stand with the Long Road ahead.
And whatever awaits us, I’m grateful for my companions.
–A quick note to my readers–
Thanks for being patient! When I started the serial it was going to be a short, fun series that you all would (hopefully) enjoy, and something to connect with readers while I worked on the full-length harem.
If you follow the newsletter, this is all old hat. If you don’t, good news everyone! Podium has picked up Cocidius & Cocidius II (a full-length) for audiobook, and part one’s audiobook should release in early June!
The other half of this being, part two is planned and will release later this year.
So, heartfelt thanks to everyone who gave feedback, hung in there, and took a chance on my stories in the first place. I can’t wait to roll out two later this year, and keep a lookout for Steel Sirens, a new project, dropping at the end of May! Hopefully.
If you’re not on the mailing list you can sign up below. I try to keep with six times a year, no spam, no invitations to my Pampered Chef page, etc.
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Happy reading,
-Maxx
Temple of Cocidius Page 54