If she had felt alone with the dwarves, then the creature must have felt worse. Not only was it not acknowledged by the dwarves, but it was dead and forced to sit by as their darkness seeped into its one-time home like a plague to the legacy that it had once dwelled in the Barrier Mountains … for legacy it must have been if it were so powerful a force.
“But if it is so powerful, will you be able to control it?” Braccus questioned.
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I want to say yes but the truth is I just don’t know. It is a force that exists after its physical death. Independent of itself, therefore it is bound to no one, least of all me.” Cianna looked to where his voice came from. “Honestly though—who cares? I don’t think it would harm us because it didn’t react badly to my energy.” She felt a pang of betrayal. “It came to treat me as a friend.”
“You must have spent a lot of time with it. Was this out of body experience because of the pain you were in?” he asked, physician once more.
“Yes, and through those visits I came to learn that it was not at all happy with the intruders to its home.”
“The chaos dwarves?”
“Yes. I know that you cannot help me kill them because you took Healer’s Trust, and I am not asking that of you.”
“You do not need to ask. I will do it willingly. Devotion to Realm and Guardians runs deeper than Healer’s Trust.”
“Then why did you tell the rock was killing me?” Cianna wondered aloud, almost critically.
“Because,” Braccus responded after some time, “you are my only hope of escaping.”
It appeared that both of their futures resided in the other, for without Braccus escape would be impossible for Cianna. She spoke softly, hoping to alleviate some of Braccus’ grief. “You did not tell them what they wanted to know; you only told them that I was dying. At first I didn’t think they really cared, but now I see they do, which begs the question of what exactly do they have planned for me? They already knew what the stone did. I am sure they didn’t know how it worked, or what long exposure would do to a human body, but they knew it inhibited wyrd. They do plan on using it on the Realm Guardians to take back the Barrier Mountains, and now they know a little better what the stone does, and what it is capable of, but they would have figured that out without your aid. What you did was what any human would do in a situation like this—you made it possible for your survival by clinging to the one thing and protecting the one thing that could help you survive. I do not blame you.”
“If it is all the same, Cianna, I would like to hold onto my grief a little more. As a healer I am not supposed to put the needs of myself above those of others. In this situation, being a good citizen meant I should have given my life to protect others. I should have let them kill me.” His voice dwindled in the chill of the musty air, suffocating his words.
“Well, whatever makes you feel happy. But Braccus, remember this: what measures the worth of a soul? Think about that for a time. You did not kill anyone. True, you gave information that may help to harm others, but at the same time you are doing more that will in the long run rid the land of this pestilence, of this illness. Isn’t that what a healer does—rid the world of disease?”
He was silent for a moment before his response came. “Yes.”
“You can make yourself feel better by knowing that you did everything in your power to save me from the malaise that gripped my body, Braccus. You not only did your job as a healer but as a good citizen too; you protected the daughter of Pharoh LaFaye, and you helped learn the means of their attack on your Realm.”
Silence proceeded. When it became apparent that no matter what Cianna said she would not comfort Braccus, she began to think he was the type of person that was just not comfortable with himself and created every excuse to think himself unworthy.
“What I want to know is how the stone was able to affect you?” Braccus asked. “You are a full angel right? Arael and Pharoh were your parents.”
This was something Cianna had not thought about yet. She was stumped. In everything she had read angels were not linked to wyrd the same way humans were.
“Maybe that is what they were testing,” Cianna said. “The affects Wyrder’s Bane would have on angels. I am unsure, maybe the necromantic wyrd within me is a human wyrd, something that is corruptible through the stone.” There was one other thought Cianna didn’t like but felt compelled to voice. “Or maybe the stone is stronger than anyone ever thought possible, and it can work on more races than humans.”
They thought for a time on that, and finding there was no resolution Cianna moved the topic back to escape.
“What would you ask of me then?” Braccus asked.
“Not to kill. I need you for other things.” In the next hour Cianna told him exactly what those other things were. By the time she was done detailing to him the ruse of their escape, a malicious smile peeled his lips like never before, a smile more satisfying than all its predecessors.
In the interim between plan and action Cianna prepared herself and Braccus for what was to come. After the pain finally left her body, she walked the cell daily and ate all the food that was given her. She didn’t bother to worry about what the chaos dwarves would think of her food being gone, for the rats had cleaned it up well enough before, so when she feigned illness as they came to inspect, there was no proof to the contrary.
The food did well to bolster her strength of mind and body, and the walking reinforced the mood to once more be on her way. Of course she did not plan on taking Braccus with her; they had both agreed that he would go back to the keep and wait for the Guardians to return so he could fill them in better than her letter had done.
The dwarves checked in on her very little, and if she had been able to tell time she would have guessed inspections came every couple of days, or at least she slept for a time twice between visits. The number of times she slept became her new calculation for time, not knowing whether it was day or night. Cianna slept when her body needed it, if it was night she didn’t know or care, but to her it was and so her way of estimating time was fashioned.
They never asked if she was getting better. All they cared about was that she was still living, not that she was living well, just drawing breath. The notion made her question exactly what they had intended to use her for if they didn’t care what state of life she was in.
How she was going to love killing them.
It was a fire that rose in her and was never completely quenched, and wouldn’t be quenched until every last chaos dwarf in the Realm of Earth was exterminated. Cianna took this genocide very seriously, and she intended on seeing it carried out once she returned from the Necromancer’s Mosque, even if she had to rally the troops herself and launch the offensive.
As she walked, Cianna searched the walls blindly with her hands. Having no weapon would make escaping the dwarves that came to give her food difficult, and she had long since ordered Braccus to help her search for anything that would help. Even a sharp stone would work.
Being so much taller than the dwarves, she knew that it would not be hard to overpower two of them that were expecting nothing more than to toss a tray of food at a sick person and a healer. However, without a weapon she would not be able to kill them, and she had to kill them fast so she didn’t lose the element of surprise … she banished the thought. She had heard of what happened to those who ran up against a chaos dwarves’ weapon and she refused to be one of them.
“Ouch! I found one!” she heard Braccus’ anxious voice from out of the darkness behind her, and blindly she turned toward him. Cianna slowly made her way through the center of the room, waving arms out before her so that she didn’t bump into him. When her fingertips brushed muscled chest she stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It is a stone, about a foot long. It has a pretty good grip, but you have to be careful how you hold it; both sides are razor sharp.”
Cianna could barely believe it when she
touched the makeshift weapon. She had never imagined she would find something so exactly what she needed. It was more like a dagger than it was a stone, and without being able to see it Cianna could only imagine that it looked like a large arrowhead stone, like the kind she used to find as a girl in the rivers that meandered through the Barrier Mountains.
Cianna knew that she would win.
She stood there in the darkness, devoid of fear, lacking pain and anger, and was instead filled with a hope, with a promise that days ago she would never have thought possible. She knew that her time with the chaos dwarves, who lacked any type of hospitality, was coming to an end, and this razor sharp rock in her hands was the key.
Cianna was not sure exactly which condition led to her current rancor—whether it was her clothes sticking to her from weeks of dirt, grime, and other nastiness that she was not ready to define. It could be that she was trapped in this dungeon, locked into confinement by the foul chaos dwarves. Maybe it was the pain she had just recently recovered from. Whatever the reason, it angered her to no end, so when the pole on the door could be heard creaking open, she was ready to attack with venom she never knew she possessed.
She pressed against the wall as dim light shone in from the corridor beyond. One dwarf waited at the door as the other stepped into the room with the food.
The death of the two dwarves was fast as the stone cut an arch through the air. Pivoting, Cianna sliced the throat of the dwarf in the doorway, and with a slight twist of wrist she turned the blade and jammed it hard through the spine of the other dwarf.
The only sound either of them made was that of the tray clattering to the floor. Cianna’s heart stopped thundering instantly with the clattering, as she watched the blood of both of them spill across the floor.
Cianna glanced either way down the hall, and finding the way clear she motioned Braccus to help her with the bolt securing the other door shut. She grunted with the effort of opening the bolt. Finally they were both rewarded with a loud shuddering pop as the door slowly opened on rusty hinges.
The room was less like a room than it was a closet, and Cianna smiled when the light fell upon her rapier and the rapid firing crossbow. Both of her weapons she fastened in place, and she took a few minutes to adjust herself to their fit once more before slinging her pack over her back.
“Come on,” Cianna urged handing Braccus his cane before heading back out into the hall.
A motion from her warned Braccus to keep quiet, and like a slight wind Cianna slipped through the corridor to the flickering light beyond.
It only took her moments for her eyes to acclimate to the light of the main complex, and when she was ready to begin, ready to defend herself if need be, Cianna stepped out onto the ledge that overlooked the room below, clogged with dwarves and weapons and maps. This was the place they plotted the rebellion against Sara and Annbell and all the twins had done for the Realm of Earth.
In her rage she reached for the necromancy within her.
Her wyrd called out then, ready and calculated. It was the first time Cianna had used her necromancy in any semblance of control. She did not use it as she normally did, however. This time when her wyrd licked out of her body it was seeking, not calling. She looked for the force she had felt time and time again within the earth.
When she touched the creature it responded to her need, uncoiling deep in the earth, and though it was a nonphysical entity its movement shook the earth below their feet, shifting the stones within the gigantic complex. Debris and stones rained down around them as the floor began to split.
The creature, as huge as it was and as powerful as ever, was responding to the need of a friend, a friend that it unknowingly just made its master, even if for only a moment in time when they worked together for the evacuation of the dwarves’.
When the chaos dwarves looked upon the massive shape emerging from the ground as smoke, and then materializing in an insubstantial, translucent body, some panicked, others fled, and still more died on the spot as their hearts gave way to fear.
The entrance was not far from the corridor in which Cianna stood, and when they tried to make good on their escape, Cianna was there to greet them with hate in her eyes and fire in her blade.
The ones that tried to escape never managed to do so, for Cianna was fast, and her rapid firing crossbow faster.
As shocked as Cianna was by the form before her, she could not pause to react to its stony hide and leathery wings. She had to act when it opened its fanged mouth, a scream of death come to the living world. This is what Cianna had planned for; she knew from before when Altavius had frightened the dwarves before her capture that this would work.
She hadn’t calculated on it working as well as it did, but then again she had not expected the entity in the earth to be a wyrm.
Cianna spared one look to take in the beauty of the creature that existed only in legends as far as others were concerned. She looked at the head, spiked with spines much like a fan, with webbing running between the lethal protrusions from the jaw to the crown of the head, just shy of joining one another. Cianna could not help but think that it truly looked like the creature wore two giant fans on the sides of its head.
The scales looked less like serpent’s skin, and more like aged stone, textured and cracked. If it were to lie still, there would have been no telling its lethal muscles from the stones of the cave.
The shape filled up the entire back of the cave. As it roared a fire that could not touch physical flesh, the dwarves ran in every which way, Cianna all but forgotten.
The one look was all that Cianna allowed herself, and before long her rapier was dancing through dirty flesh, her bolts ending lives as she dealt death to her former captors.
But Cianna would not let them live. Vengeance was hers, and it was sweet.
Altavius was there, but Cianna was not sure when he arrived. She felt him distantly and knew that he was with her, though his presence went nearly unnoticed in the calamity. Still he snapped and growled at any dwarf he could, seeming to enjoy the brutality of her slaughter as much as she did.
Cianna was like the Otherworld come to bear on the dwarves. Her vengeance was just, and her justice was merciless.
Blood painted the floor even as dying screams filled the air.
That night the chaos dwarves knew suffering and courted pain as fair as the lady before them—as just as her rapier, and as terrifying as her wythe wolf.
And when the cold morning dawned bright and clear and without care, it illuminated a blood-covered woman and her wythe headed south once more. Only this time the tribe of chaos dwarves who had tormented her were dead and burning in their cave home, in their own Otherworld. Their malicious spirits trailed behind her; Cianna’s horde awaiting her command. Their death, their murder, bound their souls forever to her wyrd.
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER?” Angelica already knew what was wrong with Joya. If the life flushing back to her skin was any indication of what was going on below the skin, Joya was in the grips of another trial. And if the howling wind was created by her sister, then Joya must be in the grips of the Trial of Air.
Grace was frightened for another reason. Joya’s Trial of Air was more intense than her passing through Earth, stronger than it should have been. Maybe it was their proximity to the Sylph Monoliths, but Grace could not be sure.
She did know that with each pulsing flow of wind from Joya the great standing stones dotting the area ahead in a haphazard fashion changed color from grey to an eerie blue glow in response to her wyrd.
They had no choice but to leave her tied to the back of Daisy as they beat a path for the shelter of the stones. Maeven had reported the other morning that something had been trailing them for some time now after they had left the Ravine of Aaridnay some weeks back.
Grace shuddered with more than chill induced by the violent wind. Maeven had mentioned darkness like night on the path behind them. Grace had heard of this before from lips long dead. Torriano, her deceas
ed sister, had mentioned black on the path behind them just moments before the Verax-Acis had taken them. Its dead white face and viciously pointed teeth still haunted Grace’s dreams.
At least the old woman was thankful for something; Joya’s wyrd had not even frightened the steed and she was not sure if it was the bond shared between rider and mount or if the wyrd coming from Joya did not see the horse as a threat.
One thing Grace was aware of as the biting rain lashed against her face and the thunder resounded over head: Daisy was a brave horse, for she ran to protect her mistress. The other mounts, however, ran to be free from her and her wyrd induced storm.
Inside the entrance of the standing stones an eerie calm infused the body with ease and serenity belying the storm that raged outside their embrace. Grace heard the howling of the wind, saw the flashing lightning, and felt the rolling thunder, but she was a person removed from reality; she felt none of the influence of the Otherworld outside within the Sylph Monoliths. Here it was like being inside a house for all its shelter from the storm. In all honesty, as Grace looked around she thought of this small slice of the Realm of Air less like a sheltering house and more like another world, both here and not here at the same time. Grace felt like a stranger in this new world gazing out foreign windows to the world she once knew, the world to which she belonged.
She then looked around her at the monoliths that made up the new world in which she stood, now holding Holly’s reigns in a fist clenched with apprehension, with worry heavy in her heart.
The Sylph Monoliths were a series of towering stones carved by wind and rain in such magnificent beauty that only the Mother Goddess could create. At times their convoluted heights resembled creatures from myths and legends while other times they were so abstract as to make the mind rail at trying to match them with something it could understand. There was neither rhyme nor reason as to the groupings of the twelve standing stones—eleven smaller ones and one grand monolith that had been dubbed Paralda in reverence of the King of the Sylphids. In truth, this was the most amazing stone of all being made of near mountainous proportions, yet being balanced on and held to the earth by a smaller stone only an eighth of its size. Merely looking at it inspired awe at such artful beauty.
The Mirror of the Moon (Revenant Wyrd Book 2) Page 14