Crystal Caged (Air Awakens: Vortex Chronicles Book 5)

by Elise Kova

  In that vision, there had been a body wrapped in a bag. A blood-offering had summoned Raspian in the failed future she’d been born into. Taavin had explained to her then that there were three ways to summon Raspian—the blood of the Voice, the blood of the Champion, or the ashes of the flame.

  In this world, Vi came willingly. They would not need her blood because the ashes of the Flame of Yargen would be freely given to summon the dark god.

  “I’m not asking my crew to get any closer,” Adela grumbled at her side. “I hope you’re a strong swimmer.”

  “Give me a rowboat, that’s all I require.”

  “Fine, then our deal is done.”

  “There are terms that persist.” Vi faced the pirate queen. “The boy Fallor.”

  “Yes, I understand, I’ll never touch him.” Adela looked forward. “Now stop staring at me with those creepy eyes.”

  Adela feared her now, too. The fear that vibrated at her edges was different than the others. Adela still denied being afraid to herself. The pirate had stopped allowing fear to enter her mind long, long ago. So the fear was suppressed and muted. But it was fear, nonetheless.

  Adela demanded a rowboat be readied. Vi followed close behind.

  “Here’s your rowboat.” The pirate queen motioned to the vessel. “Now I’ve done all you asked. Tell me of these passageways into the Archives.”

  Vi looked at Deneya. In her hands was the box holding the ashes of the Flame of Yargen. Just from the way she held herself, she stuck out in the group of pirates. She could never fit in here, and Adela would take her far from Risen if Vi didn’t do something.

  Perhaps Deneya had been wrong, and there was just enough humanity within her to save an old friend. Vi silently thanked Yargen for making her wait to absorb the last part of the goddess’s essence.

  “Deneya will show you the passages. Take her back to Risen.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Deneya said, stepping forward.

  “No. This is not a place for mortals,” Vi said softly. “Go back with them to Risen, and show them what you know of the Archives.” Vi suspected Deneya had learned much when she’d gone to procure the Flame.

  Deneya searched her face and Vi tried to silently encourage her agreement. This was the only way she would get back to Risen. Vi was out of negotiated trips.

  What Deneya did once there was up to her. She could try to flee. Or she could tell them about a passage into the Archives, only to have an ambush waiting.

  “All right.” It seemed Deneya was smart enough to figure those things out. She stepped forward, awkwardly hovering before Vi. “Be careful saving the world, I guess.”

  Vi nodded her head. “All will be light.”

  With the box in hand, Vi sat on the railing of the Stormfrost and swung her legs into the rowboat with ease.

  “Lower me,” Vi commanded, and the pirates followed her orders. As soon as the rowboat met the water, Vi glanced at each of the ropes holding it. With juth calt, she destroyed each one. Then, she envisioned the glyph for kot sorre in the water behind her. She pushed it forward and the skiff moved over the waves toward the isle of the elfin’ra.

  A group of men and women had collected on the beach. They’d likely been drawn over by the sight of the Stormfrost in the distance. In Vi’s world, this meeting might have been the moment Adela crawled into bed with the elfin’ra. Perhaps even in this world, the pirate queen would’ve allied herself had it not been for Vi sending Adela away.

  The skiff beached itself and Vi released her mental hold on the glyph. The elfin’ra surrounded her in a semicircle. They whispered under their breaths, but none made any motion to attack. They all watched as Vi stood and stepped onto the sand and surf of an island that had been surrounded by an impenetrable barrier for thousands of years.

  Finally, a man stepped forward. Vi recognized him from her vision and assumed him to be some sort of high priest of Raspian.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I am here to meet with your lord,” she said to him. “I have brought you the ashes of the Flame of Yargen so that you may summon him. And so that we might once and for all bring an end to the vortex.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The high priest led her down a beach path that quickly became gravely as it meandered between boulders and then buildings. The isle on the whole was smaller than Vi had expected. Yet she wasn’t surprised by its size. No, she was surprised; but the goddess who was taking over her mind and body was not.

  “Why would Yargen come to us?” the high priest asked casually. He was merely curious, not disbelieving.

  “Because this world is held in balance by him and—” Vi almost said me “—Yargen. Due to the actions of man, it has been thrown dangerously out of order. I have been working to correct it for thousands of years.”

  “You?” The man looked her up and down with his red eyes. “You are her Champion?”

  “I am.” There were murmurs at the admission behind her.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t slay you here and now and use your blood to summon my lord?” The man grinned wickedly at her. “That way he might usher in a new age of darkness without the burden of Yargen’s strongest warrior.”

  “Because you cannot kill me,” Vi said lightly. Part of her was amused at the idea of them trying, though Vi couldn’t tell if that was her own feeling or the goddess’s. “And because I bring you the ashes willingly.”

  “I say we kill her now,” a woman shouted behind her.

  A man clearly agreed because he lunged for her. Vi turned her head and thought, juth calt. He seized and fell to the ground. Another woman screamed and rushed over to him, shaking him as a trickle of blood came out of his pasty lips.

  “Foolish,” the priest sighed, as if the man’s death was little more than a frustrating inconvenience. Vi sympathized with the sentiment. “Please, no more of that,” he said to the group behind them. All of the others nodded in unison. “Our lord will need your blood fresh for his glorious return. To waste your life is to go against his will.”

  They crossed into a desolate city square. More people were beginning to follow them as they marched through the cobblestone streets. The elfin’ra on the whole were an emaciated people with hungry eyes.

  “Why do you worship Raspian?”

  “I’m surprised you would ask.” The man glanced at her.

  “I admit to being curious.”

  “Very well… On Meru, there were once temples for both Raspian and Yargen. But after her last victory that ushered in this age of light, Yargen cast Raspian’s temple out to sea on a lone island.” Vi wondered where that isle might be. Perhaps it was Salvidia. “Unlike all the other times they had done battle, this past time she sealed him off in an unnatural way and ruled that none should worship him.”

  “There were those who worshiped him before?” Vi tried to imagine a time when worshipers of Yargen and Raspian lived side-by-side. Thanks to the goddess, she had hazy visions of such a thing occurring on ancient Meru.

  “Oh yes. What is light without the darkness? Or darkness without the light? I do not revere Yargen.” He scrunched his nose in a scowl, accentuating the point. “But I understand her role. I merely choose to relish the darkness. I choose the chaos his beast makes in our world. We all choose this because we believe that in nothingness exists true equality.”

  Equality through the destruction of all things… Vi certainly didn’t agree with the notion. But as the Champion of Yargen, she wasn’t supposed to. Perhaps, as he said, all she was meant to do was understand it.

  They ascended an endless flight of stairs to a ridge. On the other side, a pathway sloped toward the sea. It ended on a plateau where a lone altar stood. Vi glanced behind her at the red-eyed men and women who had followed them to this point.

  All these people were willing sacrifices for Raspian.

  She wanted to tell them that their lives still meant something. But in their eyes, their greatest purpose was the one they stood
ready to fulfill. She could see it in each one of them, how they walked with relaxed faces, as though in a trance. The closer they got to the altar, the more the elfin’ra moved as one unit, breathing together, marching together.

  The moon was high as Vi crossed the threshold of the stones that surrounded the altar. At the center was the relief carving of a dragon, curling around on itself to form a perfect circle. A line had been drawn through the middle and cleaved the whole image in two, off-setting the halves. The image was meant to represent Raspian’s dragon breaking free of its lunar prison, ready to reap chaos on the world.

  All those assembled moved around the symbol. The formed a second row, then a third. When everyone was in position, five complete circles of elfin’ra stood shoulder to shoulder around the altar.

  The head priest positioned himself at the center of the circles, before the altar.

  “Bring me the ashes,” he commanded.

  Vi opened the box. This was the moment she let go of herself. Yargen had made her body with the intention of its eventual return to the goddess. Fulfilling that intention wouldn’t hurt. Yargen had told her that much.

  Bringing the box to her face, Vi tilted her head down and inhaled deeply. The ashes filled her nose, mouth, and eyes. The magic they contained blinded her and burned her from within, singeing every corner of her body. But there was no pain. She felt only warmth, like sinking deeply into a familiar bed, the blankets layered so high, she never wanted to escape.

  Her inner organs seared away. Underneath the once-tender flesh was crystal, and more crystal. Just as she had been in Taavin, the crystal was alive in her. It had always been.

  Yargen? she thought. Vi’s existence was more inward than outward now.

  I am here with you. I am you.

  Vi coughed and a waterfall of ash cascaded from her mouth and back into the box. Slowly, the world came back into focus. She could see and hear, but her body was fully in Yargen’s control. She thought she’d been ready to fully relinquish control, but being a mere observer in her own skin rattled a corner of Vi’s consciousness that she thought had been long smothered.

  “Summon him for me.” Vi felt her mouth form the words, but she did not feel herself say them. Her arms stretched outward, carrying the box forward. Her arms were awash in light, every color swirled atop them, settling into her skin before shifting again. Judging from the reactions on the elfin’ras’ faces, this was not her vision alone. This was her new body—the body of a goddess returned.

  Together, Vi thought frantically.

  A subtle hum was her reply.

  I want to take this final step together. I can help you.

  How? Yargen demanded. Vi could feel the rest of the unspoken question. How could a mortal help a divine being?

  You have fought him as yourself, time and again. He knows you, Vi insisted. He does not know me. Let me help you end this.

  Eternity drifted through her mind as the goddess debated her proposition. Very well, mortal. So it shall be.

  The sensation of her body returned to her with tingling waves of magic. In her mind, she stood side-by-side with Yargen. It was not the same control as before; Yargen was not forfeiting out of necessity because her essence was not complete. Yargen was allowing Vi this final act.

  “Scatter the ashes on his mark, and we shall begin,” the priest boomed.

  The elfin’ra parted so Vi could enter the symbol. She did as instructed, scattering the ashes all around her. She stepped back out of the symbol, discarded the box, and watched as the elfin’ra closed back the circles again, all looking to their high priest.

  The head priest raised his arm and drew a dagger from his belt. He sliced himself from forearm to palm. He held his wound over a stone chute that directed his blood into the carving of the split dragon below. The crimson river flowed unnaturally fast down the carved channels, filling in the outlines. As soon as the symbol was drawn in blood, it began to glow a bright red.

  He began chanting, words fast and low that Vi barely recognized. She understood them though Yargen’s ears as the language of the gods, but trying to comprehend them with even a fraction of a mortal mind was impossible, so she didn’t try. She was beginning to learn the limitations of her shared space—what she could and couldn’t control, how much Yargen would let her understand and do.

  The men and women of the circles raised their arms, joining their voices with their leader’s. The chanting grew louder and louder; some were wailing the words by the end. They threw their heads back in what looked like ecstasy, eyes rolling back.

  Dark, ominous clouds rolled in overhead. The wind picked up around them, swirling to this spot, as though there were a void before her, sucking in the air. Vi widened her stance, bracing herself. Even in a place of darkness, her magic connected with the earth. She felt Yargen’s powers grounding her, connecting with the land beneath her feet.

  The head priest descended from the dais with a purposeful stride. His face was red from shouting, and his eyes glowed a brilliant vermilion. He stared at her issuing a silent challenge; Vi readied herself, allowing ripples of magic to pulsate from her form.

  When the man reached the center of the circled zealots, everything reached a crescendo in a bolt of blood-red lightning.

  It struck the man, sparking off and sending the other men and women around him flying back. Their bodies, dead, littered the ground. Magic arced through the air like the rebirth of a cosmos, all condensing on a glowing figure rising from where the leader of this dark ritual had once stood.

  A roar cut through the ringing in Vi’s ears as the man tilted his head back and let out a primordial cry. He should be dead; the lightning had struck him square in the chest. Instead he wore the red light as a second skin, seeming to grow in size before Vi’s eyes.

  She’d seen all this before. Perhaps that was why she was so calm. She’d seen it in her vision of her failed future, and Yargen had seen it countless times. This was how it always began: a battle to determine which god would rule the next cycle of the world.

  The man’s jaw elongated with his screams. She watched as it jutted painfully outward. Vi heard the crunching of bones and witnessed new growth to make room for rows of razor-sharp teeth. His skin became hard and leathery as it stretched across plated armor underneath. His face became even more sunken and skull-like. His hair floated around him, swirling with the magic tempest he was birthed within. His eyes rolled back completely, exposing whites that seemed to glow faintly.

  Lightning continued to strike around them. The electricity burnt away each of the bodies, as if rabidly consuming what scraps were left of the mortal essence that had brought both divine beings back into the world. Raspian continued to grow, remaking the mortal form that was given to him into something he found suitable.

  Then, all at once, the wind died, the lightning ceased, and the world was still.

  She didn’t have to look around to know that time and space had shifted. Reality distorted around the weight of the gods. The landscape had become even more barren, every building crumbling to dust. The horizon had all but vanished. Over Raspian’s right shoulder, the moon hung, cracked and bleeding, about to give birth to a wyvern that was ready to consume the world whole.

  This suspended reality, outside of time, was a temporary battleground for them. It was the place the opposing gods could exist simultaneously: not quite the mortal realm and not quite the land of the divine. They could decide the victor here—who would return to the real world and rule, and who would be trapped in this liminal space until the next great battle.

  Vi didn’t dare take her eyes off the dark god. She watched him warily. At any moment, he would attack, and their final battle would begin. The memory of her final vision, following the destruction of the Crystal Caverns, cut through all of Yargen’s influences and stood out in her memory.

  The vision, that’s why you need me! Vi tried to communicate hastily with the goddess.

  Vision? What vision? Vi didn’t have a cha
nce to respond as Raspian raised a hand, pointing a clawed finger at her. Lightning punctuated his every movement. He opened his mouth and sound filled her mind.

  “You finally meet me once more, Yargen.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “It’s time,” Yargen said through Vi’s mouth, using the language of the divine. Vi felt her lips make the sounds and understood the meaning of the words, but she couldn’t have repeated them if she tried. “Go willingly into your darkness. Meet me once more in a thousand years.”

  “After you trapped me in that pit? No, perhaps you should feel what it’s like to be contained and smothered with no natural way out.”

  He lifted his hand and Vi felt the magic collecting there. Yargen acted before she could.

  She moved, tilting to the side, her hand swinging back. A spear of light trailed the line of her fingertips through the air. Her hand closed around it. She flung it forward.

  The spear crashed against Raspian without so much as stunning him. He lifted his hand and a crack of lightning shot into the sky above. It arced through the clouds and came down as a hailstorm of bolts.

  Vi dodged each one quickly. She retreated, gaining distance. Each attack carved static electricity through the air, giving her a split second to react before a bolt of red lightning scarred the earth where she had been standing.

  Raspian lowered his hand and lumbered forward. He swung his other hand upward to cleave the land beneath her feet. Her body was sent tumbling back, head over heels. She dug her hands into the earth, seeking purchase. Just when she found her footing, a large rock fell atop her back and Vi cried out in pain.

  She might be sharing her mind, but Vi felt every blow as though it was solely her own to bear.

  “What a weak mortal form you chose this time,” Raspian said with his booming voice. “You have committed yourself to one girl, Yargen, when I have had generations of devotees ready to bleed for me. I took the essence of hundreds. What can one mortal do for you?”