Eldritch, p.62
Eldritch, page 62
The mountain’s summit stood ahead of us and below, daring myself to peer downward, I could only make out three small specks where they stood through the density of the clouds. The distant sounds of their screaming and cheering failed to spur on a feeling of victory, they only incited a jealous longing to be back on the ground. Vertigo spun through my head, the world tilting and I clenched my eyes, hoping for it to pass.
Raivox flapped his wings, his body angling slightly upward, forcing me to clutch tighter, and he landed with a sudden thud. Face buried in his feathers, I trembled as I peeled myself away from where I’d buried my face in his feathers and found we’d landed on a jutting stretch of rock. My knuckles ached when I finally unraveled them from his horns and straightened.
Raivox lowered his head as he had before, and I slid down from his neck, tumbling along his rough scales in an awkward ejection. The rock slammed against my knees, sending a jolt of pain across my bones, when I smacked down against the surface. On hands and knees, I breathed, calming the pounding of my heart, then pushed to my feet and glanced around. A shallow cave ahead of us housed a wall of branches and bones, one of them a skull that stared unseeingly toward us.
“Where have you taken me?” I asked, peering out over the nauseating stretch of sky and mountains behind us.
A rough nudge of his beak sent me stumbling forward, toward that wall of piled bones and branches.
Scowling back at him, I edged toward it and stared up the tight weaving of what reminded me of a nest. “This is your home, isn’t it?”
He chuffed and ruffled his feathers as if he were excited to show me.
Taking hold of a piece of bone, I pulled myself up and stepped onto a bent branch. I reached again, pulling and stepping my way up the height of the wall, until at last, I reached the top of it. Nestled inside, sat two black-scaled eggs—exactly like the one from which Raivox had hatched.
Smiling, I looked back at him. “They’re yours.” I glanced around in search of another Corvugon that might’ve been flying about, but there was only Raivox. Perhaps they’d arrived the same way he had. “You’re a father.”
Again, he ruffled his feathers and flapped his wings, the pride beaming off him.
The smile on my face faded for the worry still writhing in the pit of my stomach. “Raivox, I need you to take me to that tree.”
He stretched his wings and flew upward, disappearing over the mountain.
Leaving me there, alone with his eggs.
“No,” I muttered, climbing back down the nest. “No, no, no.” When I reached the platform, I stalked toward its edge, wondering if I might be able to climb back down.
A dizzying height with no bottom visible from where I stood had me backing up again. “Raivox!” I called out, searching the sky for him. “Raivox come back!”
Seconds ticked off.
Minutes.
I summoned the whistling glyph to mind but dryness in my throat dulled the usually sharp sound.
Dread swelled in my chest after nearly an hour must’ve passed and he still hadn’t returned.
“Raivox!” I called out again, my voice hoarse and scratchy.
The dread sharpened and coiled into anger that cut through me like blades. All I could think about was Zevander. I needed to find him.
“Raivox!” I screamed and a growl answered, but not one I’d heard before. Slowly turning around, I looked up the length of the nest wall to find an enormous lizard, at least four times my size, sitting on the edge above. Once again, my muscles locked into a shudder, breath waning in my lungs. With its clawed, scaly fingers, it popped one of the eggs into its cheek, creating a lopsided bulge in its face.
“Oh, no. No, you don’t.” I called the bone glyph to mind and as it unraveled onto the ground, only one of the lizard’s eyes shifted, while the other remained trained on me, as if it were sizing me up to fit in the other side of its cheek.
I could’ve.
Easily.
But not without a fight.
I drew back the whip and the lizard flinched but didn’t scamper away.
A deep growl curled in its throat, rattling my nerves, and I hurled the whip with a quick strike against its flank. A gash bloomed across its scaly body and the lizard spat the egg out onto the ground. It scuttled down the nest wall toward it and I lashed the whip again, striking it on the nose that time.
The lizard let out a roar and charged toward me.
A blast of Aeryz sent it flying backward but not before it quickly scrambled to its clawed feet. As I threw my arm back to strike again, something unfurled toward me and looped around my neck with such force, I dropped the bone whip. The lizard’s tongue stretched between us, from my throat to its opened mouth and the pressure had me clawing at the bands.
A rough yank took me closer to its mouth, but I dug my heels into the ground and leaned back, tightening its whip-like tongue around my throat. Stars exploded across my eyes and panic pounded through my chest. Gripping tight to its tongue, I summoned the death glyph. In seconds, flesh and scales crumbled to dust, and the moment its tongue fell away, I stumbled backward, desperate to catch myself.
It was too late, though.
I tumbled over the edge of the mountain.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
ZEVANDER
Zevander’s hand shook as he held it outstretched toward the shimmering Umbravale—the only barrier that separated the two worlds. He kept his hand curled to a tight fist but could feel the flame slithering through his veins, lashing at his palm for release. He hadn’t summoned it. He’d refused, yet it had risen from its slumber.
“How maddening it must be, to possess an immense power that can be manipulated.” Cadavros stood alongside him, smiling. He hadn’t called on a glyph nor spoken a chant. The power the mage siphoned had come from somewhere inside of himself.
Zevander could feel it moving about, an invader in his blood. “How?” he gritted out, resisting the pull that tensed his muscles—a rigidity that sent a cramping ache deep into his bones.
He eyed his sword, out of reach on the ground.
“As I told you before, I had become infected by the amulet. The night of the Emberforge ritual, I infected you. And in doing so, I created a way to control you. And your flame.”
“The flame inside of me burns infection.”
“It is not a simple disease which inhabits your body, but an ancient malediction. A pestilent curse.”
“Why?”
“A boy should not possess the power of a god without a means to temper him. To control him. You possess an unrivaled power, but the body, the mind that houses it is nothing more than flesh and bones. Easily broken by skilled hands.”
Zevander gnashed his teeth, refusing to relent. He’d spent years at the mercy of vicious hands that longed to break him. Had pieced himself together through sheer will. He’d be damned if he’d let another attempt to control him that way again.
“I didn’t have the strength to reach you beyond the Umbravale. It was only in Caligorya that I could grasp that dormant power inside of you. But only a flicker. A mere sampling of what should’ve belonged to me.”
Caligorya.
Pressure throbbed in his skull, but he called propulszir to mind, desperate to keep from revealing the idea that sprang to life.
Cadavros laughed. “Do you think your petty glyph can keep me out of your head?”
But as the mage clawed at the thin veil of his thoughts, trying to work his way past the resistant glyph, Zevander could feel the shift of focus, the black flame settling inside of him.
Caligorya had been his refuge from General Loyce. A means to escape her abuse. It’d always taken pain or elixirs to initiate, but Zevander had learned in his assassination training to slip into the dark state during intense interrogations. It required a bit of trickery was all. He merely had to convince his mind that he was on the brink of death. Elixirs made it easy, but another means was turning the flame on himself. Essentially like holding one’s breath. He needed to call upon it himself and trap it inside his chest—a subtlety Cadavros might fail to notice, might perceive as resistance.
He felt the nudge to his mind as Cadavros fought to break through.
Zevander forced his thoughts out, turning his mind back to the flame, keeping his hand clenched. As Cadavros meddled around his head, he let the flame simmer and boil inside of him. Let it rise into his ribs where it twisted and curled inside its bony cage. His heart hammered in his chest in a restless thud of panic. His pulse hastened. Breath shuddered out of him as he fought to hold the flame inside, his scorpion once again stirring at his back. Tighter his muscles held, his body shaking, sweat beading and dripping down his temples. An inky blackness crawled in from the fringes.
“What are you doing?” Cadavros’s voice was a distant sound that barely reached him as Zevander slipped, deeper and deeper into that void.
Finally, he collapsed.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
ZEVANDER
Where in seven hells am I?
Zevander glanced around the unfamiliar surroundings in search of something he might recognize. Crude cob walls and a dirt floor released the pungent odor of damp soil and mold. The sound of a woman’s moans bled through wide cracks in a wooden door ahead and through them, Zevander could make out two bodies fucking each other. The stench of rot clung to his nose and frowning, he stared down at the decaying corpse of a rat on the floor.
Quiet whispers reached his ears, and Zevander turned toward a small wooden table behind him, following the sounds to the two children, no more than ten years old, who sat huddled beneath. The boy, pale and thin with pink eyes and two small horns protruding from his forehead, bore the telling characteristics of a spindling child. The little girl clutched in his arms looked to have suffered the worst deformities Zevander had ever seen on a child: one eye black and sunken, her face sallow and scarred.
Vaguely familiar, somehow.
“I’m going to find the cure, Melisara. I’ve been reading endlessly. There is a way to cleanse you,” the boy said, kissing the girl on the top of her ratted hair.
“Perhaps I can still ascend into Mother’s bloodline.” She stared up at him, but the boy seemed unbothered by her deformities, didn’t so much as wince when he lovingly gazed back at her, stroking her long red locks. “I can change faces, just as she used to.”
“She is Nilivir. If her blood magic was going to pass onto you, there would’ve been signs by now.” He affectionately kissed the top of her head, where the hair had thinned at her hairline. “Only knowledge, studying the scrolls, will change our circumstances.”
“No spindling has ever been permitted into the House of Sages. You’ll never have access.”
“I will.” Brows pulled tight, he flattened his lips. “Someday I will be the most powerful mage in the world.”
“And I’ll be the most beautiful.” She smiled up at him.
A loud gurgling scream broke their quiet whispers and Zevander turned for the bedroom door, beyond which, he’d heard fucking.
“I can make him stop. He’ll never lay a hand on her, or us, again,” the boy said, his words grinding through clenched teeth.
“Don’t Alastor. You have no power against him. It will do nothing. Besides, Mother says we need the coin.”
Zevander froze at the mention of his mentor’s name—one he’d thought was given out of deception. He tipped his head, studying the boy’s face, hidden behind his long black hair. Beneath the obvious malnourishment, he could see a glimmer of his former mentor there. Could hear the slightest resemblance in his young voice when he said, “The rotting drunk deserves to die.”
He was staring at Cadavros as a young boy.
Alastor must’ve been his birth name.
The door creaked and then thudded open, and a man stumbled out, his finer clothes giving Zevander the impression he hadn’t been borne from squalor. He tipped back a tankard of ale, running into the wall as he made his way toward where the children hid. “C’mon, you little monster. Let me see your ugly face.”
The little girl turned into the boy, hiding her face in his chest.
“C’mon you wretched little beast. Give me a good scare and show me where you are!” The stranger stumbled over his own feet and tumbled to the floor. The moment he caught sight of the children, his lips stretched to an evil grin. “There you are.” Lips peeled back he swiped out a hand for the girl. “Get over here you little bitch!”
“Leave her alone!” the boy screamed, shoving at his arm.
The drunk took hold of her bony little leg and gave a hard yank that sent her body flying out from beneath the table. As she flipped around, clawing at the dirt for the boy, he gave another yank, drawing her dress up, exposing her bare lower half to him.
The drunk gripped her hair and tipped her face into the light.
A howl ripped from the man’s throat as the boy lurched forward and bit the drunk’s arm. The little girl scrambled in the opposite direction.
“You fucking rat!” The drunk shot a blast of Aeryz that sent the young boy flying back into the wall behind him.
Zevander’s muscles tensed as the drunkard twisted around for the little girl who lay trembling, staring back at her tormentor from the corner of her good eye. “You are the most repulsive creature I’ve ever set eyes upon. You should be burned.”
“You’re going to die today,” she said in a quiet voice.
At first, Zevander might’ve thought she was a seer, but he turned to see the young Alastor quietly sliding a dagger from a holster on the table. The boy tiptoed toward them, his footsteps hardly making a sound against the dirt, as he approached the man from behind.
“By whom?” The drunk belched in her face and laughed when she grimaced. “You and your little spindling brother? Murdered by a monster and her weak, powerless—”
The boy jabbed the blade into the back of his neck and backed away as the drunk reached for his throat, gasping.
The girl scrambled out from beneath him only seconds before he collapsed face-down in the dirt. Blood pooled around him, his body twitching as the last remnants of life escaped him.
“Alastor!” the little girl whispered. “What have you done?”
Eyes wide and panicked, the boy glanced up at her and back to the dead man. “He…He was going…to hurt you.”
Her face twisted to worry, jaw trembling. “They’ll throw you into a vein for this. He was a highblood.”
The dread in the boy’s eyes hardened and he crawled toward the man on hands and knees, and rifled through his pockets, until he pulled out a small rock of vivicantem, dangling from a chain. Alastor glared at the man as he held it up to the light. “Nothing more than jewelry for them.”
Words Zevander had said himself a time or two.
The boy unclasped the chain and pulled it through the hole in the white stone, leaving it free in the palm of his hand. “I could take it all at once. They would blame me, not you.”
“No. You’ll become Carnifican.”
“Better than burning in the flame.”
Zevander’s stomach clenched as he watched the boy pop the stone into his mouth and swallow it.
“No going back now,” he said, tears wavering in his eyes as he held the young girl’s hand in his. “I love you, Melisara. No matter what happens.”
“What are you doing here?” a voice growled from behind, and Zevander turned to see Cadavros standing behind him.
“You lied about who you were,” Zevander said. “You were nothing more than a spindling child.”
“Yes. I was born a spindling. Not even the king is privy to my past.”
It made sense now, why a mage as powerful as Cadavros would criticize the king and highbloods. Why igniting the vein may have once been important to him for innocent reasons.
Good reasons.
“Do you know what happens to a spindling when he’s given an excessive amount of vivicantem at once?” Cadavros pressed his lips to a hard line, as if he were holding back a surge of emotions. It was strange to see him that way when Zevander had always known him to be cold and detached. “His bloodline magic is restored. But we wouldn’t know because we continue to starve our spindlings. More mouths in search of vivicantem. More competition for power. Spindlings aren’t worthless, after all. I became Magelord. An impossible feat, as I’d been told the entirety of my life.” Cadavros crept toward the children who sat curled into one another on the floor. “I acquired my mother’s ability to steal identities rather easily after that. Face eater, she’d once been called. Sanguidin. A vampiric blood magic my sister inherited naturally. The ability to summon fangs at her will.” He nodded toward the drunk lying on the floor. “Eventually, I assumed his son’s place as an apprentice in the magehood by stealing his identity as well. It wasn’t as easy as drinking blood, like Melisara. I had no fangs to call upon for the task, therefore, I had to consume them whole.” His lips curled in repulsion. “A disgusting dilemma. To conceal who we were, I went by Cadavros. She went by Melantha.”
Zevander froze and swung his gaze back to Cadavros. “Your sister is Melantha. Apprentice to the Magelord?”
A memory sprang to mind, of sitting in a tavern across from an old woman who bore an awful disfigurement. The one who’d gotten Zevander’s father arrested. The one who’d insisted on keeping young Zevander for reasons he couldn’t understand at the time. “You hoped to cure her. That was your intent.”
“We all begin with good intentions, don’t we? Even the darkest of souls.”
More revelations came to light as Zevander pieced together snippets of thought. “It was her. Killing the sexsells in The Hovel.”
Cadavros chuckled. “She always harbored a bitter resentment toward our mother, though it was our mother’s vampiric magic which offered her a way to stay youthful and beautiful, drinking the blood of attractive women.”
