The clang of steel on steel assaulted his enhanced hearing. A thunderous cacophony of beating hearts, gasped breaths, rushing blood, and muttered curses converged as his strength seeped from his body. Priva let go of the Deep and nearly blacked out. Spots danced in his vision, darkness leaking into the corners of his eyes. He was hauled upright and swayed before his balance oriented.
A circle was formed around Arinbjorn and Clyfe Fleetfoot. Priva blinked, vision tunneling. There stood the man who had murdered Callum.
Look to the sky.
The command was a whisper in his mind. Graissa’s voice was as a lilting song.
A screech filled the air above him. Priva raised his head, as did many of the others. An enormous flying creature plummeted down toward them.
Arinbjorn looked up. Priva tried to fight forward, seeing what was going to happen before it did. His throat closed shut as Clyfe rammed his shortblade deep into the King’s gut.
Arinbjorn fell, but Priva lost sight of him as the creature swooped into the Jattalians. Feathers and flashes of brown and red dove into the warriors, and there was a mad scramble as they fell. Several raised weapons to swipe at it, but it barreled back into the sky. A white streak followed on its heels.
What was going on? Two creatures?
Priva was jostled to the side as the Jattalians tried to regroup. He slipped to the ground, not able to catch himself, tied as he was.
Where are you? Graissa asked.
Something slammed into Priva’s head.
***
Malok Mountain Keeper
Malok’s mind dissolved. Too many threads. Too many futures. Too many possibilities.
The chaos around him meant little. Vaguely he was aware that something important was going on, but he couldn’t grasp which reality was coming to fruition. The one where the Triumphant King killed them all? The one where Malok died? The one where Brate died? The one where...?
He was flung onto his back. Shouts. Streaks of red and blue. The threads called out, trying to bring him back. He closed his eyes and fought with all the strength he possessed to resist the allure of their light. Someone was sobbing to his right. Anyia? Someone was shouting in an incoherent language. Another roar, and all went black.
***
Brate Hightower
Brate vomited as Branson was flung across the glade, the spatter soaking the grass beneath him. It was over, then.
“Cofals.” The word sprang from his mouth unbidden. The King’s Riftstone was pulled off his neck and flew across the glade to Brate. He caught it in midair, noting the cracked surface.
Everything crystallized.
The Rift stopped surging inside of him, instead settling to burn hot in his veins. The Deep was a distant call in his mind, barely perceptible. Brate stood and looked at the stone in his palm.
It was beautiful. He could see inside of it, where a swirling vortex as a galaxy of stars hung. Mesmerized, he let it dangle from the chain and brought it closer to his eyes. Dimly, he could hear Polbine Voltaire shouting in the language of the Rift, and the caluths swirled around the glade. People screamed. Someone cried out, sobbing. Malok fell.
It didn’t matter.
“I told you.”
Brate whirled around. The small boy stood, hair swept about his face, upper body bare. Trousers dangled to his knees, and his eyes burned red and bright. Was he really there, or was this a vision? Something itched on his arm. Brate reached down to scratch where the Prince of Chaos had marked him.
“Told me what?” Brate asked, lowering the Riftstone.
“That you would change your mind.” The child nodded at the stone. “Polbine Voltaire’s soul is within.”
Brate brought it back up. The King’s soul? He held it in his hands? He plopped it into his palm and looked back at the child. “What does this mean?”
The child gestured with his chin, and Brate turned to take in the glade. The caluths were pulling the screaming Sisters into the Void, but it was as if it was happening a mile away. Brate knew he was mere yards from the battle, but it was a mirage. Anyia was accessing the Deep and trying to fight, but the King culled her with a flick of his fingers as he strode toward Brate. He moved in slow motion, so Brate turned back to the child.
“Bond yourself to me, and I will tell you how to destroy the Riftstone. Polbine Voltaire will die, Anyia will live, Malok will live.” The child’s eyes flared, the red light nearly blinding Brate. “If not...” but the child didn’t finish.
Someone screamed, and Brate turned as the King raised his hand toward Myra. She ran to him, about to shoot a shaft of the Deep. Brate took a step forward, but Voltaire spoke, and the Rift surged from his hands. Before Brate could form a thought, the Rift slammed into her. Ezra Carp yelled something incoherent, but he was surrounded by caluths. They pulled him toward the Void as Myra fell in a haze of red, her flesh burned and smoke curling from her body.
This wasn’t right. Brate gripped the Riftstone tight and willed it all to cease. The King to die. The Liar to die. The caluths to disappear.
The Deep stirred mildly, but his will was suppressed by the Rift, which still burned like a blight in his soul.
“How many more must die, Bender?” The child’s question cut through the shock engulfing Brate. He turned back to him, sweat making the stone in his hand slick. “Choose quickly. The King is almost here.”
He didn’t have a choice. What else was there to do? Isa was dead. Malok was unconscious in the dirt. Anyia was culled. Myra was dead. Ezra was about to be muscled into the Void, going Creator knew where.
Brate gathered what little of his will he did have, pushing it into the tiny, glowing edge of the Deep hovering in his mind. He shoved it away into hiding. It disappeared, and the Rift took over completely.
He knelt before the child. “I will bond myself to you.”
Behind him, Anyia screamed, but her cries where drowned out by the laughter of the child.
The Riftstone burned Brate’s palm, and he dropped it with a hiss. It hovered in the air as Polbine Voltaire stopped, just feet away from Brate. The King’s eyes changed from hatred to confusion, the slowing of time making his movements exaggerated.
The Riftstone glowed as bright as the child’s eyes, and for a second he morphed into the Prince of Chaos. The Rift burst from Brate, pulling at his body. Brate screamed at the burn, as if a million flames of fire were pulled from his skin at once. His pain seemed to be mirrored by the King, who raised his head to the sky and howled. The essence in the Riftstone shot to the Prince, whose dazzling visage absorbed the King’s soul.
Brate fell, the pain so intense he couldn’t think. Huddled in the dirt, he clung for something, anything to make it stop.
His will pulsed, ever so faintly where it lurked in the small corner of his mind. The Deep wavered as a single ripple in a lake. Brate gasped and reached for his soul as it was pulled from his body. As Isa had done, he embraced the Rift to cleanse the Deep, and a small section drifted away from the pull of the Liar and settled into the pocket of the Deep.
Brate jerked as his essence stopped burning and settled into the Riftstone. He raised his head from the dirt, where the Prince of Chaos turned into the boy once again. He reached a small hand to the stone where it hovered in the air to run his fingers over the surface, no longer cracked but whole. Brate’s core vibrated.
“Beautiful,” the child breathed, a smile on his lips. Something thudded to the ground. Brate turned to look at Polbine Voltaire sprawled on the grass beside him. His face was pale, eyes vacant. The child’s body relaxed, and he pulled the Riftstone into his hand.
Brate dared to rise to his knees. The child handed him the Riftstone. It pulsed as Brate’s hand enclosed it, his core thrumming as if it recognized his soul.
“Brate?” Anyia’s voice shattered through his mind, pulling at his emotions. He suppressed the feeling as he climbed to his feet. He raised his gaze to her. She and Malok were the only ones in the glade, but the Seer remained inert on t
he ground. “Brate, what have you done?” Tears brimmed and fell from her brown eyes, filled with confusion and fear.
“I’ve done what I must.” He turned from her and followed the child from the glade.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Graissa del’Blyth
Graissa clung to the pithion’s back as he swooped into the sky. He banked around just in time for her to see the unicorn slam into the stones below. The Fortress rumbled as if the very crust of the sphere was going to splinter apart. Gold and blue light streaked from the unicorn’s horn as Vivian embraced the Deep.
It shot out to the Jattalians, laying waste to any who were still standing. They fell, thrown to the ground as the Fortress shook and roared, stone walls crumbling and crashing down the cliff to the sand and sea.
Graissa’s stomach lurched as the pithion dove for the ground. The unicorn’s horn stopped glowing as the pithion landed beside her. Graissa took a steadying breath and climbed from his back, Cackle following behind.
Vivian and Moriah slid from the unicorn. Graissa surveyed the damage, running her hand along the pithion’s soft feathers. The Jattalians were lying on the ground, dazed but still breathing.
“I couldn’t make myself kill them,” Vivian said softly, long hair blowing and eyes downcast.
Graissa caught sight of Priva on the ground and rushed to his side. Blood drenched his entire body from head to boots. His wrists and ankles were tied with rope, so she grasped a knife lying on the ground beside him and began sawing at the knots. He groaned as she pulled the rope off his hands.
He blinked and rolled, a gash across his forehead leaking blood. “Where is Father?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Lie still.” She grabbed at his ankles, sawing through the rope. It snapped off, and Priva pushed upright, appearing dazed yet aware. His eyes swept across the courtyard.
“Who did this?” His eyes landed on a figure behind Graissa, and with a cry he scrambled around her and grabbed a bleeding man with a huge wound on his abdomen. Although Graissa didn’t know much about medicine, even she could tell that he was dead.
“I’m sorry,” Priva muttered. Graissa stood and went to lay a hand on his shoulder. This must be King Arinbjorn. “Even though I wanted to take you from your throne, I never would have wished death to find you.” Priva gripped the King’s hand with a fierce moan, eyes clamped shut.
Graissa’s throat closed with emotion.
Moriah came to her side. “We must decide what to do with the Jattalians,” she said, voice low and soft. She was right. Who knew how long it would be before they all awoke?
A clamoring in the city drifted over on a breeze. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the warriors figured out something was wrong at the Fortress and made their way here.
“Priva,” she said, but he shrugged her off and stood. Weariness etched his brow, and his eyes were dead. No light sparked, no glint of emotion.
He strode to a huge warrior lying supine across the rock. He grabbed the rope that had once bound him, tying the warrior with strong knots. “I will need your help.” He glanced up at Graissa. “And I’ll need your unicorn.”
***
Malok Mountain Keeper
An eerie silence filled the glade, and as Malok fought against the strands of visions assaulting his mind, he clawed for consciousness as a drowning man for land. It came gradually, so that when he finally sat up, the sphere spun and danced, making his stomach twist.
The threads called for him, and with a grimace, he shoved them away. Flashes nearly sent him back into the dream land. Branson. Brita. Truman. The King.
“Malok!”
He shoved up, blinking. Anyia’s tear-stained face filled his vision. He glanced about, but she was the only one there, save for the King and Myra, who both lay several feet away. The glade was empty, quiet. Panic shoved into the confines of his mind. Which future had come to pass? He grabbed her hand as she reached down, letting her help him stand.
“What happened?”
She tried vainly to calm herself, trembling and face contorted. “Brate... he bound himself to the Liar.”
Malok sighed. There were hundreds of possible outcomes to that decision. “You better explain to me exactly what was said and what happened.” He glanced at Myra, sadness threatening to undo him. Tears filled his eyes as he gazed at her body.
Anyia grabbed his hand. “We are doomed, aren’t we?”
Malok cleared his throat, rubbing fingers across his tired, wet eyes. “No. There is always hope.”
She shook her head. “How?”
He squeezed her hand, but even as he did, the threads called to him. The temptation to grasp at them, follow their paths, was almost too much to bear. They wanted him to See Anyia, tell her what lay in store. He stiffened, closing his eyes and trying to mentally shove them away. They receded, but still called with light.
“Trust me. The Truth will not leave us.”
“I wish I had your faith,” she said softly, eyes landing on Myra. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“You of all people should not doubt.” Malok let go of her hand, striding south. The Dreadwood welcomed him, tree limbs grasping at his clothes and scratching his skin.
“Where are we going?” Anyia followed, voice hitching.
“Out of this cursed place, and to meet the others in the Scrape Lands.”
“But—” her voice cut off as she stared back into the glade. Someone moved, an image visible through the branches. “Is that who I think it is?”
Malok smiled. Yes. Yes it was.
***
Priva Car’abel
The unicorn snorted angrily when Priva tried to climb astride her, his blade strapped to his back. Graissa laid a hand on her neck, talking in soothing tones. The unicorn danced to the side, shaking her mane. When Priva tried once more to leap onto her back, she turned and butted him with her head.
“Bricking beast!” The words leaped from his mouth before he could stop them.
Graissa glared at him. Fine. Let her judge him. But his city was in shambles, his Father was dead, and he didn’t care what some Midlandian spoiled rich girl thought of his language.
“She won’t let you.” Vivian’s statement grated on his nerves. She stood to the side, watching with a frown. He refrained from a smart retort, instead turning to Graissa.
“I need to find my siblings. This is the fastest way.” He eyed the pithion. Maybe—
“Don’t stare at me, Sensor,” the creature said. Priva started. It spoke?
“Please. Can’t you help?” Graissa went toward him, hands behind her back. “After all, I’m sure a strong beast like you would have no problem—”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” it snorted, continuing to preen itself. There was a strange man beside the beast, with eyes of amber and a crooked smile on his face. Graissa was keeping very strange company these days.
“Cackle?” Graissa asked. “Any ideas?”
“You think because I am now a man I can suddenly fly, too?” he asked, voice smooth and low.
“Oh, enough,” the pithion said, sticking out its chest. “Come, human. But don’t get too comfortable. I am not a beast of burden.”
Priva didn’t hesitate. He bound onto the creature’s back, mildly surprised how soft it was. The pithion shook itself and then got a running start, shooting into the sky. Creator. This was fantastic.
He glanced down. The city was ablaze. Pockets of fighting dotted the streets below.
“Where am I taking you?” the pithion asked.
Priva dared to lean over, trying to ascertain where the rest of his Bladewielders were, and where Hux had assembled the siblings. Once the city had fallen, where would they have gone?
A flash of blue ignited the western edge of the city. The Deep lurched.
“I know, I know,” the pithion said before Priva could even open his mouth. He banked toward the right, heading straight for the blue flashes. “You Stewards can’t help yourselves, can
you?”
“What do you mean?” Priva asked.
“War. Bloodshed. The fall of kings. The raging tempests.” It snorted. “Life is so much easier when you are stone.” He dove down, and Priva’s stomach lurched. He grabbed the neck feathers under his hands, trying to stay in his seat. The buildings drew closer, blue igniting the entire street. As they landed, several Jattalians rushed across the road. Priva jumped and unsheathed his weapon, but it wasn’t needed. Grrale followed on their heels and blasted them with a surge of the Deep. They screamed and fell, bodies twitching on the ground.
“It’s about time,” Grrale grunted when he saw Priva. To his credit, he barely even seemed to react to the pithion. “The city skirmishes are being contained.” He glanced over his shoulder as a contingent of Bladewielders came into sight. “The others have their own groups of Bladewielders. I’m not sure what happens out to sea, but at least here on land, we are routing them.” He looked Priva up and down. “You look like you should be dead.”
“Are you sure we hold the city?” It seemed almost too good to be true.
Grrale barked a laugh. “There are fifteen of us, Priva. Fifteen accessors is no match for an army within our own city walls. Does the Fortress stand?”
“For now.”
Grrale grinned. “Then what are you doing? Go back and unseat Father. We—”
“He’s dead,” Priva said stiffly, turning from Grrale and climbing back into the pithion.
“Dead?” The lad seemed to stiffen, then clenched his jaw. “May the Creator rest his soul.”
Priva grabbed the pithion’s feathers. “Gather the others. When the enemy is routed, come back to the Fortress. Don’t worry about what happens to our fleet. I have an idea.”
Grrale nodded and craned his neck as Priva soared into the sky on the pithion.
The unicorn better behave. Otherwise his plan would be doomed from the start.
***
Graissa del’Blyth
Graissa stood on the Fortress battlements. To the east, the horizon flashed in powerful surges of blue and white. The unicorn did her job well.
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