Darkling Mage BoxSet

by Nazri Noor

  He was right. It was slick with – well, something. Amniotic fluid, or blood. However darkly Deirdre and the Viridian Dawn could corrupt magic, Thea would always come out on top. The stalk had grown to the size of a skyscraper, and only then showed signs of stopping.

  “Too big to take down now.” Carver’s feet thrashed against the earth, his teeth gnashing in pain, but he fixed me with a look hard enough to convey his meaning. “Follow her. Find her. Destroy her. And bring him back.”

  Easier said than done, but I nodded. What choice did I really have? And where the hell did this leave me? The Viridian Dawn had been quelled, but Enrietta was dead. I shook my head. What the hell was I thinking? The headline was that Thea had another innocent grasped in her claws. I didn’t know what she had planned for him, but it couldn’t be so far off from what she did to me. We had to save him.

  But where to start? I looked up at the beanstalk from hell, its leaves like ragged red moth wings. The length of the hideous, massive stem pulsated, as if the whole infernal structure was coursing with blood. The noxious liquid coating the stalk gathered at specific points along its length, points that I then noticed were growing into nodes. Wait. Not nodes. Buds.

  “Carver?” I drew Vanitas again. “What’s happening?”

  He forced himself up, Bastion helping him to sit. It was strange to see them working together, and stranger still to see the pulsing amber fire emanating from Carver’s hand weave the bloodless flesh of his shoulder back into being.

  “Stand back,” he said, his voice still, and cautious.

  “Bastion,” Prudence called, from somewhere out in the garden. “Help me up, I can do this.”

  “Stay down, Prue,” he yelled back. “You can’t fight like that. We’ll protect you.”

  “Everyone needs to stop yelling,” I said, half-shouting, and half-regretting that I’d raised my voice.

  Something slithered out of one of the pods, a snaking, black tongue. No, a tentacle.

  “Dustin,” Vanitas said in my head. “This is bad.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  The black tongue split into six, then eight wriggling tendrils as it forcibly emerged from the pod in a burst of viscous fluid. The pod’s horrible ebony fruit fell to the ground with a sickening, wet thud.

  Bastion groaned. “No, no, not this bullshit again.”

  The black thing rose from its pile of gunk, then shook its torso to free itself of the slime. Where its head should have been was a mass of tentacles. It was a shrike, a minion of the Eldest, one of the throngs of gibbering abominations they called their children. The shrike raised its many limbs, and from tiny mouths lined with jagged yellow teeth, it screamed.

  More of the pods and polyps burst along the stalk, like ripened cysts, and more of the creatures spilled and splattered to the ground, birthed from along the length of Thea’s demonic creation.

  “Now that, you can burn,” Carver said, nodding at Romira.

  “Cute,” she said, both hands outstretched, twin globes of fire building in her palms. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Time for that later,” Carver said. I bumped up against him as I retreated, only just catching him closing the last of his wound as he struggled to his feet. “For now: kill.”

  Romira nodded. “Gladly.”

  Over a dozen shrikes had already been birthed by the stalk, but each emptied pod soon became swollen again, filled with the horrible amniotic fluid that sustained each of these shrieking monstrosities.

  Romira pelted them with expertly targeted fireballs, burning holes through their torsos to kill them, as if saving the best of her energies this time, no longer resorting to launching a gigantic ball of flame at their ranks the way she had done at the battle at Central Square.

  Bastion had found another tree to play with, using it to swat the shrikes aside as a giant would sweep ants off a kitchen table. This was the second time we’d encountered these horrors, and if we survived the night, I was certain it wouldn’t be the last.

  But this time we had the Black Hand – and I really needed to stop thinking of them as that – on our side. Carver was still reeling from his injury, the shoulder that once had a hole blown in it sagging, but he raised his one good hand, bared his teeth, then clenched his fist.

  The front rank of the shrikes screamed, then disintegrated into dust. Clearly his policy of disabling instead of destroying did not apply to shrikes. Vanitas was already hard at work slashing and sundering, without even needing my command. I took it as a sign that our bond was growing stronger. And Gil – where the hell was he?

  I shouldn’t have asked, and I shouldn’t have wondered. I’d thought to look for him on the fringes of battle, but he was stuck in the midst of it, and there was a very specific reason I hadn’t been able to pick him out. Gil had changed. Transformed would be the correct term. He had gone full dog. It was terrifying, and awful, and glorious to behold.

  Imagine a man with the head of a wolf, standing with a canine’s digitigrade legs, all the vicious, destructive power of the animal’s claws driven with the sheer explosive force of the torso and arms of a man at peak athletic form. Do you have a complete picture in your mind? That still doesn’t compare to my first glimpse of Gil at his best, as a sweeping automaton of flaying death, painted artfully in fur, and teeth, and claws.

  I knew well enough from Sterling’s stories that Gil didn’t really need a full moon to go full dog, as they liked to refer to the transformation. I also knew that this meant he was drawing on ungodly stores of his own energy, since this wasn’t the natural order of things – at least as natural as werewolves went. But it was gory, bloody, and absolutely majestic.

  The thing that rended and tore at the shrikes had fur in the same black as Gil’s hair, his same eyes glowing red with hatred and bloodlust. When he ripped an abomination in two with his wolf-hands, and when he howled and bayed his fury at the moon, I swore I heard his same voice.

  A hand clapped me shakily on the shoulder and I nearly jumped.

  “Come on,” Bastion said, his eyes flitting between the shrikes and the black wolf-man bounding between them in his dance of gleeful dismemberment. “It looks like your friends know what they’re doing here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  I didn’t have time to fight back as he hooked his hands under my armpits, hoisting me up off the ground. I kicked at the air, struggling to be let down, when I realized that I was being lifted much higher than Bastion could physically carry me.

  I looked down, and then I understood. My body went limp, maybe as a survival reflex, because it felt like the best way to avoid slipping out of Bastion’s grasp and falling to my death.

  We were flying.

  Chapter 24

  The ground disappeared as we sped into the sky, the green of the Nicola Arboretum faded into obsidian with the rubber-slick wetness of so many shrikes. Here and there I caught an explosion of color, bursts of light from spells, and my heart pounded as I silently rooted for our side to win. Still, I knew that I shouldn’t be looking down. The real enemy was above us. I lifted my head.

  The carrion-stalk was taller than I’d expected, well over fifteen stories, each of its accursed segments marked where the glistening black polyps writhed with grotesque activity. More of the shrikes erupted from the horrible pustules, a terrible sweetness choking the air.

  One of them lashed out at me, its probing tentacle stopping just short of my cheek as I staggered and swayed in Bastion’s grasp. Or in the grasp of his magic, I should say. The shrike lost its grip and stumbled headlong to the ground, screaming, where it would doubtless horrifically survive, shamble up on its broken legs, then join the ranks of its brethren in attack. Trust the Eldest to create such twisted horrors as their underlings.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Bastion yelled, lifting me so our heads were level. “This is hard enough without you squirming. Did you gain weight? It feels like you’ve been hitting the taco bar pretty hard.”

/>   “Kiss my ass, Brandt, that’s all muscle weight.” As if. “And this is less a matter of how heavy I am and more of you being a scrawny little weakling.”

  He snorted, his breath hot. “I’m doing my best given the circumstances, you actual human dumpster. You think it’s easy climbing this shit with you in tow?”

  So that’s what he was doing. I could have sworn we were flying – you know, as if I even knew what proper arcane flight was supposed to feel like – but our movements were jerkier, as if we were being carried upward by the momentum of invisible limbs latching onto the outside of the stalk. He was actually climbing the thing.

  “Why the hell would Thea need to build this tower in the first place?” I yelled as we neared the top of the stalk. “She could just fly if she wanted.”

  “Same reason I’m basically dying here, because it’s not easy to just fly or teleport with someone else, especially not if they’re struggling.” Bastion turned his lip up. “Or husky.”

  “Neither the time nor the place, you colossal ass.” Teleport? Carver could take at least three of us wherever he went. Five, the last time he did it. But he did say that he specialized in non-offensive magic. Though again: neither the time nor the place. “Look. We’re almost there.”

  “Excellent,” Bastion said, his voice dropping to a murmur. “Element of surprise.”

  “No,” I said. “You take me to the top then throw me at the biggest shadow you can find.”

  “The hell are you talking about? You going to run out on us already, you piece of – ”

  “Will you just trust me, Bastion? Come on. Just trust in Dustin.”

  “God I hate you and your stupid fucking catchphrase so much. I hope she spears you in the face just as soon as I – ”

  We sped across the peak of the tower, the tip of it bizarrely flat. I had no time to process the tableau as Bastion hurled me to the top of the platform, but I did catch sight of Asher strapped onto some kind of dais, vines holding him down across his chest. No ceremony this time, and no knife. All Thea had was her hand pressed against Asher’s bare skin, but whatever she was doing was enough to make him scream.

  She’d ruined my life already. I wasn’t going to let her destroy another. I hollered as my body approached the platform, what I fervently hoped was something resembling a battle cry, something loud enough to attract her attention. Thea turned to us, her lips drawn back, feral teeth exposed. In one smooth movement she gathered motes of ambient light into a solid spear, then sent it rocketing towards me.

  Predictable. As I sank into the shadows I heard Bastion’s yelp, then the thunder of dissipating arcane energy as the light-spear collided with one of his hastily conjured shields. He was going to give me hell for that later, but what mattered was that the gambit had worked: Thea missed, and she was disoriented, and I had all the velocity of a full fall to work with.

  I zipped through the Dark Room like an arrow, or maybe the Dark Room expelled me like a bullet from a chamber. It was terrifying, exhilarating, and I emerged from Thea’s shadow with my fist drawn back.

  My knuckles collided with her spine. I heard a crack as she stumbled, her hand flying off of Asher’s chest. His screaming stopped. A throbbing ache started up in my fist, but the thrill of connecting that blow made up for it. That felt good. That? That was for Mrs. Boules.

  “The hell were you thinking, Graves?” Bastion was huffing as he spoke. “I – hunh.” The air left him, and he landed heavily onto the flat surface of the tower, then crumpled to his knees. The ascent had taken a lot out of him. Probably a good thing, for as long as Thea ignored him. He helped, for sure, but I could have done without Bastion’s smart mouth in such a tense situation.

  And it only got tenser. Thea spat onto the ground and wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of black blood on a cheek that was far too white, the color of bleached bone. Her skin had a luminescent quality to it, and an odd sheen, like an insect’s exoskeleton. Not for the first time I thought of her as something like a firefly.

  And not for the first time she did something to catch me by surprise. That first lance she threw at Bastion needed some time to generate, but the next three she launched at me appeared out of nowhere.

  Javelins of light fired from her palms, so short and sharp that they looked more like daggers, or shards. Her expression twisted into a fury that I had never seen on her face, nor on any human’s. All traces of humanity had fled Thea Morgana’s corporeal body. What stood before me was so other, so alien, so – wrong.

  “Again he comes meddling,” she hissed, readying another salvo of her razor-sharp missiles. I had to be careful dodging, both to make sure I avoided being hit, but also to avoid getting Bastion caught in the line of fire. I could only hope that he at least had enough juice left to throw up one last protective shield for himself.

  “I thought I was all you ever wanted, Thea,” I said, taunting as well as I knew how, my eyes flitting between her and Asher still trapped on the altar. It didn’t look like he was in pain anymore, but getting him out of his restraints was a very good secondary objective to staying alive.

  Thea followed my line of sight, then she straightened her posture, her hands falling to her sides, the specks of light in her palms fading. Was she letting down her offensive?

  “There’s truly no reason for you to be so invested in the boy, Dustin Graves. Unless – ” She turned her head slowly towards the dais, a sharp, curved smile in the corner of her mouth. “Unless – do you feel a kinship with him? Seeing him splayed out like that, like some rack of meat?” She grinned fully. “Like a sacrifice?”

  The corner of my eye twitched, and my scar flared with heat, but I understood that it wasn’t pain this time. The Dark Room wanted to burst into our reality, and Thea, whether she knew it or not, was goading it out of me.

  She lifted her hand, her talons just about as long as each of her fingers, then closed it into a fist. The vines around Asher’s chest tightened, then pulsated, burning, glowing with a pale green light. He groaned, then shuddered. Then he howled.

  “Stop,” I said. “You’re hurting him.”

  Thea – the thing that was once Thea – tilted her head with mock ignorance, feigned innocence. “Oh? Am I? Then surely you can stop me, can you not? You’re a mage now, are you not? Couldn’t you summon the forces from that black pit you call a home, to hurt me, to put a stop to my supposed madness?”

  She gestured with her other hand, and the vines tightened audibly this time, creaking as they pulled across Asher’s body. He writhed, and screamed. It wasn’t just the pressure – those things were leeching something out of him.

  “I said stop. You know I can do what I did to your abominations again. It would be easy.” I fought to keep the stammer out of my voice.

  “What would be easy,” Thea said, “would be for you to rip everything on this platform asunder. You don’t have the slightest idea of how to control your darkness. Your master has taught you nothing. If you so much as try, you’d flay Brandt apart just as surely as you’d slaughter the boy on the dais.” Thea clasped her hands together, her talons somehow neatly interlocking in the spaces between her fingers. “Poor Dustin Graves. As worthless as the day I met him.”

  “I’m not worthless,” I growled. Far too late in the game for her to be worming her way into my head like that. I wasn’t the same kid she took advantage of and warped all those months ago. “I’m better. I can beat you.” I curled my fists and stood on the balls of my feet, my chest puffed out, in spite of knowing that it only made me look more like the boy I was. “I can kill you.”

  Thea’s laughter was otherworldly, in all the worst senses of the word. It seemed to come from three voices, one that was her own, one that sounded like flutes playing from some distant cloud, and a third that underlined it with a roiling, guttural chord, like that of thunder, or of something long dormant and impatient to explode.

  She stepped closer, her hands falling to her hips, her talons extending as
she walked. “You couldn’t kill me if I handed you a gun and broke all four of my limbs. You couldn’t kill me if I walked to the very edge of this tower and begged you to push me. It isn’t your strength that I doubt, Dustin Graves.” She smiled again, light pouring from her mouth and her fangs, terrible to behold. “It’s your spine. Your utter lack of resolve, of courage. All you do is run. All you do is turn to your friends.”

  A streak of green and gold sailed through the air far behind her, garnets sparkling like droplets of blood in the moonlight. Ah. One of my friends. Just in time.

  Chapter 25

  “It pays to have friends, Thea. Ones who can get me out of a bind. Or get others out of binds, if necessary.”

  She followed my gaze, whirling, too late, to catch Vanitas at work. He sang in his flight, slicing cleanly through a clump of vines in a surgical swoop, freeing Asher from his restraints while leaving him unharmed.

  Asher rolled off the dais, thudding to the ground, then scrabbling away from the altar as quickly as his bruised body could manage. Smart kid. Yet as precise as Vanitas’s cut was, what was even more satisfying was the sound of frustration that emanated from Thea’s mouth, in those same three horrible voices.

  Retribution came swiftly. Thea’s claws swiped at me in a brilliant white arc, and if I hadn’t been standing in shadow then that would have been the very last of my face. I melded into the Dark Room, the mists and ethers of that other place so much more active and frenetic. I wasn’t just imagining things. It was fighting to get out. Black tendrils of smoke reached at me, probing at my arms, curling fond fingers at my cheeks. No. I couldn’t let them manifest.

  I leapt out of the Dark Room, reappearing in a shadow further behind Thea, but she knew my tricks all too well to fall for anything. She was, after all, my mentor, something which I recalled with bitterness. She twisted at the hip, hardly missing a beat, raking at the air as I stumbled away from the wail of her talons.

  She knew exactly where I was going. I cried out when the tips of her claws grazed my arm, fierce and sharp as knives. Three angry red lines bloomed on my skin. Thea smiled, lifting her talons to her face, admiring the traces of my blood on them. I steeled myself. Just scratches. Just shallow wounds. I needed to be more careful.