by Abby Dewsnup
Warren shook his head. “It isn’t everyday that someone passes through the Light Kingdom, returns with a sane mind, combusting into a firework halfway beneath the earth. You said there’s an ancient curse, so I know they told you something else — something that scares you.”
“What? That I’m the Solifeer?” I threw a rock into the clearing. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
Warren reclined back on his hands, feigning nonchalance. “I just wanted to hear you say it. Do you understand what you are, Anya? The Lucents chose you to end a World Shaker. You have powers that I can only dream of.”
I looked away, tracing circles in the gravel. I involuntarily made a choking sound as I inhaled for a breath that wouldn’t come. “It should’ve been me,” I said, hunching my shoulders. “I should be cast away in the world. Jay’s the one who can fight a World Shaker. He’s the one who should be the Solifeer.”
Warren was silent for a long moment. “When I was a kid, I used to play pretend in Coppice with my father and my sister. He was fun back then, giving me piggyback rides and teaching me how to tinker. But then he changed — he twisted in a way that I cannot understand.” Warren took a deep breath. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I know magic like that, and I want you to know that the Jay you knew is gone. And when we find him, if we do, you’ll have to accept whoever he is now.”
I nodded, looking away. “I only hope our Bond has been ripped apart,” I said bitterly, and it was true. I would be the one to find him without the Bond. Because if I didn’t, I’m not sure I could live with myself, knowing he was reaching for me through that darkness. It was better we were severed.
“You don’t want that,” Warren said slowly. “It’s okay to miss someone and feel guilty at the same time. Just don’t let it in, okay?”
This time, I was silent.
“The World Shaker in the city is never going to stop following you, you know. You have to prove to him that our world is justified in its existence. The guy we’re dealing with comes across as more of a fatalist, if you’re catching my drift. Might be best just to kill him,” Warren said.
“How can I justify an entire world, Warren? We’ve all got both light and dark in us!” I cried, throwing another rock into the empty clearing. “I can’t save everyone.”
Warren shook my shoulders, his eyes lighting up. “You don’t have to save them,” he cried, “You lead them. We’ll start in the city, go to the High Prince and explain who you are. There won’t be a person in this world who won’t know who you are once he plasters your face across the city as the new hero. We can snuff the World Shakers out of the dark once people know of their existence. No more hiding. They’ll face you in the light.”
His plan was messy, and I knew relying on the High Prince was a long shot. He was a gamble, but there wasn’t another option. I needed a teacher, and I was certain the High Prince had connections to someone — anyone — in the Fringe that could teach me. But he wasn’t to be trusted, and I needed to be wary.
Roland’s betrayal still ran red within me. So many days of twisted lies, a facade of strength. The wise Bounty Hunter who would lead us into a new day had been a mask. And Jay had paid for it. My heart bled for him.
I glanced over at Warren, trying to keep my thoughts from jumping to conclusions. Who was I to trust this Windwalker bandit? I didn’t know anything about him, and yet I had just spilled a dozen secrets from behind my locked teeth.
If I was a weapon, I had to become iron. This glass inside me was breaking, bending apart. The world above my Caves is not a world of wonders. It was a world that wanted me dead.
I had to become iron.
“We know the pathway through the Dark House is a bust,” I said. “Mane would be expecting us to come back through there. If only there was a way to contact the High Prince.”
Our conversation stopped short when a dozen figures appeared over the crest of the gravel hill. From where I was sitting they looked like middle-aged men, each one wielding a different steel tool.
“Lava Miners are back from shift,” Warren said lightly. “Don’t worry, they ignore us for the most part.”
I nodded, my gaze still fixed on the gaggle of men. Something about them sent a shiver through me, but I couldn’t place the feeling. Their movements were a slow, plodding shuffle, and their steel tools seemed to gleam wickedly in the sunlight. As they got closer, still a good thirty yards away, I understood what was upsetting about their appearance.
In place of human skin, each man looked like a fleshless body. Sunken cheeks and torn, burned flesh rotted atop protruding bones and muscle. Only their eyes were exempt from the horror, with human irises and slitted lids. Their hands, each clasped around a spear-like mining tool, were tinged black.
I gasped involuntarily, trying to rise back to my feet. “What are they?” I cried.
Warren’s face paled, his wings unfolding in a panic. “Oh my — those are not Lava Miners.”
I used the rock face to stand up, trying to keep my head straight as the world rocked back and forth. The Lava Miners were a dozen yards away now, their movements slow but deliberate. I could see their faces and the bluish veins across their skin now. Disgusting.
The speckled horse Warren had carried me on earlier whined in indignation. I felt Warren’s arms close around my shoulders, lifting me from the ground and onto the horse’s back. In an instant he had her reins unwound from the rock and thrown hastily into my fumbling hands.
“Stygian, they’re Stygian!” I cried, knowing it was true. Soon, their bodies would fade into shadow, but for now, they were rotting away. I tried to keep my stomach from throwing up the bread I had eaten.
I kicked the horse’s sides, turning her away from the scene. The men had spread out in a horizontal line and were closing in. Running along the length of them, I crested the hill only to find another group of Lava Miners, their skin as mangled and burned as the people behind me. We were surrounded.
“Don’t let them touch you,” I shouted to Warren, who was flying dangerously close to the ground in an effort to keep me safe. “They must’ve been touched by real Stygian, and they’ll do the same to you if they get a hand on your skin.”
“Noted,” Warren cried, his blade drawn. “Can we kill them?”
I spun around on the horse, taking in the closing circle. My heart pounded in my ears, making it hard to think. “You can only ward them off with light, but it’s noon out here and they don’t seem fazed.”
Warren said a word I wouldn’t dare repeat. “My wings are broken — they can’t carry the both of us.”
I spun back around, the horse’s reins entwined tightly in my fingers. The Stygian men were scarcely fifteen yards away, their groans dragging through the clearing. I kicked the horse’s side again, sending her into a gallop.
We raced for the Lava Miners. I let out a cry, feeling a buzz of warmth spread across my fingers. In an instant, my raised fist burst into flames. I opened my fingers in shock just as my other hand instinctively yanked her mane. Without warning we were jumping — soaring — through the air. The flame crackling across my hand erupted as quickly as it had come, diffusing from my fingers and onto the dry grass. I dared a glance behind me as the horse’s feet met with the ground, but I couldn’t see through the wall of fire.
I urged her on, sending a spray of dirt and gravel behind us. Warren flew a dozen feet ahead, his shadow leading the way.
“They can run, too?” Warren’s voice was severed, as if he could faint.
I whipped my head around, my blood running cold as ice. The Stygian men, their clothes smoldering, had cleared my flames, and were now racing for us at inhuman speed. I kicked the horse harder, ducking my head low as the scenery raced past. But I knew that our speed was no match for the magic that was now running through the Lava Miner’s veins. They were becoming more Stygian by the minute.
Memories of their gnarled smiles and dark hands twisted inside me. Though I had never admitted it, the Stygian h
ad made their way into my dreams long before I was free of them. Now I knew that I would never be without these spirits. They would chase me until I brought the World Shaker to his knees.
I clutched the mane close to me, my head nearly buried within it. I watched the hills ahead of me, not daring to look behind. All the world was a blur. I could see their shadows flitting in and out of the sunlight.
It wasn’t long before they flanked my right and left, their bodies smoking in the sunlight. I cried out and urged my horse to run faster, to evade their reaching hands. The World Shaker sent them, I decided in a moment of breathlessness. He’s routing us back to his city.
“There’s a village ahead,” Warren shouted. “We can find refuge there.”
I urged my horse to run faster, feeling an electrical buzz beneath my fingertips as I grasped her mane. Without thinking, I released the power, letting it slide from me and into the horse. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed as if the Stygian men fell a few paces behind us.
I yanked her to the right into what I took to be a patch of crops, desert plants sprouting from the rocky ground. Muttering an apology to the owner, I watched as the soil sprayed behind us, the horse’s muscles bulging from exertion.
The Stygian men were smoking now, their skin turning a sickening shade of gray. Soon, they would rot away into the creatures I was familiar with. One of them let out a cackle, a sound that rattled me to my bones, and reached for the tail of my horse.
I yanked my staff from my bag — I had forgotten about the beloved weapon — and twisted around on my seat. With a cry I slammed the end of the stick against the Stygian’s hollowed face. He stumbled back and was soon lost in the dust.
I righted myself on the seat but did not return my staff to my bag. I tucked it away at my side, bending low against the horse’s neck once again. The village was coming into view just past the farmhouse. I raced past a man who shouting something unintelligible. I could only hope the Stygian were so focused on me that they ignored the farmer.
I felt a burning hand on the exposed skin of my calf, and another on the curve of my shoulder. I cried out and slammed my staff against the Stygian. He fell back, disappearing in a plume of smoke and bones. The other Stygian were vanishing as well, their forms fading away in the sunlight. I slowed my horse to a trot.
Sheer panic gripped my insides. The Stygian’s handprints were boiling my veins, and I could feel the weight of his rotten hands on my skin despite having shook him loose. I knew what happened when people touched a Stygian. I had seen it done time and time again — houses burned to the ground with the infected within them, a neighbor who went missing in the night.
“You sure shook them,” Warren landed, his hand out for a high-five. “You were practically flying.”
“No, don’t touch me,” I hissed, sliding from the horse’s back, my vision swimming. I wrapped my arms around myself, fighting at the fire of pain that now laced down my entire back. Before I had stepped from the Caves and earned an entire array of fears, my only worry was the Stygian. The irony was red-hot in my stomach. I would end up in the darkness after all, but this fate was even more bitter than before. I had finally seen the sun.
Confusion crossed Warren’s face. “They got you? You can’t have been touched, you’re the Solifeer. You — you’re perfect.”
I wanted to cry, but the tears did not come. The inner me was rising, the Anya who had survived in a Cave of Stygian her entire life. A plethora of self-taught skills resurfaced. “They grabbed my shoulder and my calf for half a second, maybe two. C’mon, we need to go somewhere with a heavy door and a lock. Preferably a place that’s quiet.” And then, quieter, I whispered, “I’ve been touched before. I can only pray I don’t get infected this time, either.”
We had stopped right outside of the town cathedral, a towering stone building that was inlaid with stained glass windows. I stumbled towards it, using trembling hands to open the dark wood doors. Dust filtered from the opening. I didn’t think anyone had come here to worship in a long time.
Our footsteps echoed off the high ceiling. Green light fell across the ground in slates, and grey statues rose like columns against the walls. A dozen benches stretched out in the center of the room, and a solitary pool of cloudy liquid remained vacant beside an altar.
I sat down in the nearest pew, rolling up my pant leg with gritted teeth. Stretching out across my tanned calf was a smoldering handprint, the fingers splayed out and crooked. Where his hand had touched, the skin had turned black. I could see the same mark on my shoulder, the fingers poking out from under my grimy shirt. And beneath my shirt, old and gray, was my third Stygian handprint, the first one I had ever acquired.
Warren drew in a sharp intake of breath. “You’ve done it this time,” he murmured, his fingers hovering over the marks. “In the Windwalker tribe, we had a man with similar marks. He lost his mind within minutes, though. How are you feeling?”
“Spectacular,” I replied sarcastically. Despite my snark, I mentally checked myself. I felt like myself, and the burning pain was fading with each passing moment.
The green light of the room was making me dizzy. My eyes grazed over the statues, taking in their weeping faces. At the far end of the room, the statue was of the Hinnish deity, a warrior god who had his arms folded in prayer. Standing over twenty feet tall, my eyes trailed up the curve up his cloak, before coming to a rest on his hands.
I blinked, trying to make sense of it. Nestled in the stone arms of the praying statue was someone sleeping. His leg dangled from the arm and the other was bent up in nonchalance. His arms were thrown over his knee. The boy — he couldn’t be more than fourteen — had an embroidered hood halfway fallen from his shadowed face.
“You know what, Anya? I don’t think anything is happening,” Warren was saying. I refocused my gaze on him.
I tried to control my breathing. The pain had faded, but the terror of what could happen to me was sending my body into a panic. “I really hope you’re right,” I said through gritted teeth. “’Cause you’ll need to lock me in here if you’re wrong.”
Warren smiled halfheartedly. “Want some bread while we wait?”
“The girl will be fine.”
I turned to the voice, taking in the supposedly sleeping boy who had now risen from his perch. He sat in a familiar way, and for a moment I mistook him to be the High Prince — he, too, had sat with his leg propped up, his head raised. An authoritative cockiness reeked from this boy as it had from the Prince, but their stances were difference. Where the High Prince had known his mind, this boy just looked lost.
“What did you say?” I asked weakly.
“I said you’ll be fine. The Solifeer can’t succumb to something the World Shaker created.” The boy laid back down, his hand tracing invisible shapes in the sky. “Obviously.”
Warren and I looked at each other, skeptical. “And who are you?” He finally asked.
The boy lowered his hood, revealing a young face with a mess of brown hair on the top of his head. The sides of his hair were shaved short, with a symbol I couldn’t distinguish cut into the shave near his right ear. He looked like someone I would have been close with in the Caves. With a start, I realized it was because he looked like a thief. “Someone who has been listening to your conversation for the past five minutes. I know who you are, and I know what you’re doing. You better get out of here before I report you to the High Prince.”
Warren scoffed. “Because someone like you is supposed to intimidate me? Scram, kid. We can handle this.”
The boy’s hand fell back down, clasped loosely across his chest. He turned his head, watching us with slitted, cat-like eyes. “The Stygian will be back, you know. It’s nearly night, and when the sun sets they’ll materialize in this very building. But I’ll bet you wanted to stay the night here, didn’t you?”
“No we didn’t,” Warren said, crossing his arms in indignation.
I was staring at my calf, watching my veins branch out fro
m the handprint in a sickening shade of purple. “Why did you call me the Solifeer?” I asked in a raw voice.
“Because you reek of it,” the boy muttered. “You’re obviously new to the whole title, or you would’ve known I was here.”
“Come down here,” I said, my words coming quickly, too quickly, stumbling over each other. “Come where I can see you face.”
He obliged, swinging down from the statue’s clasped hands with grace. I marveled at the scene. A weeping statue towered over him, but it was the boy who seemed ancient, like a deity at the dawning of the world. Green light fell across his face as he approached me.
“You said I’ll be fine?” I asked, ignoring Warren’s jabbing elbow. “How do you know that?”
The kid shrugged. “I’m a Seer.”
Perhaps it was the burning in my skin that caused me to wince in pain, but something in his statement sent a flash of fear through me. He was right. I was new to being the Solifeer. I didn’t understand all that I could do. But as I stared at his eyes, a green that reflected the stained-glass windows, a fragmented memory invaded my thoughts.
I could see his face in a mirror, but the mirror was shattered a thousand times over, and each of his features remained distorted and distant. I returned to the present, feeling his heavy gaze on mine. Something told me he knew what I had seen.
“Why are you in this cathedral?” I asked slowly. “What brings you to this town?”
A scratching sound interrupted our conversation. I turned my head in the direction of the door, a wave of terror washing over me. From the outside, the unmistakable sound of claws scratching at the wood resounding throughout the cathedral.
Warren cursed loudly and rose from the pew. “We need to get out of here, fast. I reckon I could send us through the window, but from there I—”
The boy sighed. “I’m glad I was here to save you lot—”