Kill your darlings, p.22
Kill Your Darlings, page 22
After reaching the Crown of the World and severing Zalor’s connection to Darkmagic, we return to Eldria as heroes. Through the magic of Plot Armor, the Shadow Lord’s defeat saves my soul from death. I’m allowed to stay in this world. Kyla Starblade, who’s inhabited my Earthling body, is content to remain where she is. She protects my real-life family and friends. She’s good to them in a way I never could be.
And on Solera, my little found family lives happily ever after.
I have to stop thinking things into existence. The universe ignored my dream and seized on my nightmare. As I think about the Shadow Lord, a shadow falls upon us. Through my closed lids, I sense it: a colder coldness than the wind. A darker darkness than the storm.
My fantasy pops like a soap bubble. My head snaps up. I can’t see my enemy, but I recognize the signs.
“We’re in danger,” I tell my friends through the comms ring. “Zalor’s here.”
I was complacent. I let my guard down. Though he’s certainly helping to drive the plot, he hasn’t made an appearance in quite some time; this confrontation was inevitable. Lord Zalor is Solera’s greatest villain.
Did I really think I could outsmart him? Outrun him?
Asher, who’s wrapping my arms in gauze, fumbles his work. His eyes widen with terror. I know what I’ll find when I look over my shoulder, and I try to brace myself for how bad it’ll be.
It’s actually a little less bad than I imagined. Being a writer has some perks. I thought the Shadow Lord would descend on us with legions of the worst winged creatures who hide in the deepest, rotten crevices of this world.
Turns out he’s come alone. Alone, save for the behemoth he’s riding.
His pitch-black shadowbeast mount is a thraxwing. It’s shaped like a wyvern, but it’s massive. Multi-ribbed wings extend from its shoulders to the base of its tail, leathery flesh stretching between the bony fingers to provide lift. It undulates through the sky as if swimming underwater. Its wedge-shaped head tilts on a stubby neck, and obsidian venom sacs quiver between the dark fangs of its gaping maw.
“Running is futile.” Zalor’s stentorian voice needs no magical augmentation to rise above the thunder. “This foolhardy endeavor will bring nothing but ruin—to you, to me, and to Solera.”
He’s dwarfed by the thraxwing, whose wingspan is greater than that of Cendrion and Rexa combined. At first I wonder why Cendrion isn’t wheeling to face our nemesis, and then I see it: Zalor’s clawed hands are outstretched. He’s wielding. A thread of darkness connects him to the dragon straining silently beneath me.
“Land,” Zalor commands, as if we have a choice in the matter. “We have much to discuss, you and I.”
“How can he wield here?” Asher breathes. He’s drawn his crafting knife, but weapons are useless against the Shadow Lord.
Valen tries to counter-wield. A whip of lightning arcs from his outstretched palm. It starts on a course for Zalor but is yanked away, diverted toward the nearby skylands.
I’ve made another miscalculation. In leading my friends to the Crown of the World, Zalor’s legendary birthplace, I’ve led them into his territory. The wraiths evolved to be immune to the effects of the magnetic archipelago; the Shadow Lord must have similar immunity.
Too late, I see the futility of my actions. Too late, I see the dangerous precipice toward which my dreams, my desires, have pushed us.
“Little impostor.” Zalor’s sibilant hiss reaches me over the storm. “I suggest you make your friends cooperate. My thraxwing is hungry and itching for a fight.”
The thraxwing emits a guttural ululation. Its belly ripples grotesquely. It uses flesh-eating venom to incapacitate its prey, and we’re well within spitting range.
A hundred possibilities tumble through my brain. My thoughts center on the unicorn dagger at my hip, but if Zalor has full command of his magic, none of us will get close enough to land a blow. Direct confrontation with him is suicide.
“Do as he says,” I tell the others.
“He called you impostor,” Asher whispers.
“He knows.”
As Cendrion descends, guided by Zalor’s darkmagic, I can’t help but feel that the two halves of my story are colliding. The disparate truths burning at the core of my being have been at war, and the war is coming to a head.
Anxiety boils my blood. Maybe this is my Dark Night of the Soul, the moment when hope seems lost. Or—the thought lances from my brain to my heart, spearing me with a dread more profound than I’ve ever felt—maybe this is the end.
Solera isn’t a dream, it’s real. In reality, we’re never guaranteed a happy ending. We’re not even guaranteed a satisfying one.
Cendrion’s rough landing on a skyland jolts me out of my spiral. No, this can’t be the end of my story. My Earthling self gave up at every major pinch point. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to burn the memory of her and never look back.
Steeling myself, I twist around to face Zalor. He hovers on the thraxwing, anchored in the raging winds by some manner of magical enchantment. The beast’s pitch-black tail lashes, tipped with a poisonous barb. More poisonous quills bristle on its back beneath Zalor’s feet.
“How long I’ve waited for this conversation,” he breathes.
His voice is filled with a yearning so intense, so intimate, it makes me squirm with revulsion. My terror mutates, sprouting new limbs as I consider all the ways he could hurt us. “What do you want with me?”
“You overplayed your hand, Impostor. You thought I wouldn’t see through your facade at Torvel,” he says. “You thought I wouldn’t recognize the darkness in your soul.”
Another ineffective tongue of voltmagic lances from Valen. It falls pitifully short of its mark, skittering into the sky. Zalor doesn’t address it, thank Ohra. My friends are beneath his notice. He’s fixated on me.
“I may not be Kyla Starblade,” I say, slipping the unicorn dagger from its loop and passing it to Asher, using Fyr’thal’s trembling body as cover, “but that’s my strength now, not my weakness. I had a window to your world, a connection to all of you. I know the way you think and act.”
“Of course,” says Zalor, spreading his skeletal hands. “Your connection to Solera runs deep. Little did you know that while you were feeding off of us, some of us were feeding off of you.”
I freeze in the act of standing on Cendrion’s back. Stuck in an awkward half-crouch, I stare at the Shadow Lord.
“It was not so much that you were transcribing our story,” he continues. “It was more that you were directing it. The moment you touched Solera, you changed it. That’s one of the quantum-magical laws of the universe, you know—by the mere act of observation, you have altered our reality.”
“No,” I whisper. That can’t be. Wouldn’t I need some sort of magic to influence Solera the way Solera influenced me?
“I sensed the darkness in your soul from worlds away and used it to my advantage, drawing power from you. Every battle I won was the direct result of your inadvertent collaboration with me. You needed conflict on the pages of your pathetic books; through your meddling, you enabled my greatest victories.”
My legs crumple and I slip on Cendrion’s rain-drenched scales. I slide down his haunches, careening past his wing to land hard on the unforgiving skyland coast.
Words have deserted me. I’m empty. My brain fills with a high-pitched buzz. Only the primal urge to argue remains. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” Sinister amusement tinges his rich baritone. “If you give too much of yourself to the darkness, you shouldn’t be surprised when the darkness grows strong.”
“But—” Freezing rain flies into my mouth, stinging my tongue, yet my throat is dry. “I have no magic.”
“You have no Soleran magic.” Lightning roars, illuminating him in all his villainous glory. “The magic in your native world is more nuanced and understated. Can you think of no time you experienced a rush of power, an embrace of something other?”
That rings a painful bell. It echoes in the silence of my unfocused mind and bleeding soul. As before, so it is again: I sense the irrefutable truth of his words.
“Writing,” I whisper.
He claps slowly. Even through my fog of horror, I feel a faint jab of annoyance at his patronization. “There is magic aplenty spread across the multiverse, but most souls fail to ever grasp it. You were one of the lucky ones on Earth. How eager you were to throw it away.”
I can’t tell if I’m weeping, but I think I must be. The storm douses my cheeks. Wind tears at my cloak, tempting me toward the abyss. Part of me wants to hurl myself off the skyland. I deserve to crash into the Shifting Sea and die on impact.
It was my fault. I was complicit in all the destruction and murder. I wielded neither magic nor sword, but the mighty pen. If Zalor gained power from my darkness, then I’m as much to blame for the death of my darlings as he is.
“You thought you were strong enough to rewrite the ending,” Zalor continues, “and still you believe you might. Hope springs eternal—but hope is an emotion as dangerous and futile as any other. You should know that by now.”
I do know. I’m quaking with nerves. My dying soul flickers. It naively believes there could be a way out of this mess.
But I can’t think of an escape. I should feel something after learning this wretched truth, yet I feel nothing. The nothing frightens me more than it has any right to. It’s a black hole, and I’m at the event horizon, letting it pull me away from reality and identity.
“Kill me if you must,” I say, forcing the words past the cavernous darkness inside me. “Just let my friends go.”
“Kill you?” Zalor laughs. “I don’t want to kill you, I want you alive. You belong to me, as surely as I belong to you.”
“I don’t belong to you. I refuse to surrender to you!”
A chill emanates from Zalor. It’s impossible to tell where he’s looking, since his eyes are spheres of unbroken night, but I sense his gaze has shifted to my friends. “Not even if it ensured the survival of this world you love so desperately?”
Adrenaline pulses through me. “Leave them out of this.”
“They are intrinsic to this,” he counters. “They are the key—the beginning, and the end.”
Riddles? He’s never been one for riddles. He’s about as subtle as a baseball bat to the back of the head.
“Poor, deluded soul that you are, you’ve convinced yourself they care for you.” He clicks his tongue in a pitying fashion. “If you knew the truth, you’d see surrender is the kindest option. You are not worthy of them. You deserve nothing.”
I clap my hands to my ears, trying to block out his toxic words, but they’re inside me now. They’ve burrowed deep into my soul, poisoning me. “Shut up! You’re wrong about everything. And so help me Ohra, I will never give you what you want.”
Zalor’s ghastly visage buckles with disdain. “You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
“I’d cut off my face to spite my face, so joke’s on you.”
“Let’s be reasonable, Impostor. Remember, I want to change your ending, too. We can live in peace, you and I. I’ll help you return to your life, you help me conquer Solera. Once Solera’s mine, who knows what I’ll set my sights on next?”
At his portentous words, something erupts from my emptiness. A memory. A name.
Eric.
Lindsay. My parents. New York City. Bumblebees. Mountains. Music. The moon. The sun.
I will not let the Shadow Lord consume and mutilate them as he has mutilated Solera. He destroyed too many things I love; I won’t let him do any more damage.
The wind whispers. The rain sings. The abyss calls my name, and I know what I have to do. Zalor wants me alive. He’s been feeding off my power to ensure his victory in the Shadow War. Without me poisoning the story, Solera can win.
I stand shakily. Finally I feel something, but it’s not the fear I expected. It’s sorrow.
Zalor smiles at me. I smile back.
Then I dive off the cliff.
His screech fills the sky, slicing through the elements to reach me. I surrender to the fall, and once I’ve surrendered, I barely feel it. The drop in one’s stomach isn’t due to gravity, it’s due to fear. Relinquish the fear of the abyss, and it’s easy to take the plunge. All you have to do is give up everything.
I’ll pull Zalor after me—he’ll follow, I know it. Through my sacrifice, I’ll allow my friends to continue to the Crown of the World and finish our quest. Without my meddling, Solera will stand a chance.
“Goodbye,” I whisper through the comms ring as I plummet into the unending darkness. “I’m sorry.”
Out of a swirl of wind and water, the Shifting Sea fades into visibility. I hurtle headlong toward the mountainous whitecaps, gaining speed with each of my final heartbeats. If Zalor hasn’t caught me yet, he never will. I’m close, so close—
Then dragon talons clasp my waist. Before I shatter against the waves, warm darkness envelops me. Familiar darkness.
I surrender to the kind oblivion and float away.
Chapter 23
This is a nightmare.
“Your readers are expecting a happily-ever-after,” says Jen Perez, my editor. I sit across from her, only half paying attention. “You can’t build up a Young Adult Fantasy—with romance subplots, no less—and rip the rug out from under your audience’s feet.”
My gaze wanders to the window overlooking Sixth Avenue. “I’m subverting expectations.”
“There’s subverting expectations and then there’s this.” She plops my manuscript on her desk.
“I made it realistic.”
“It’s fantasy. No one wants to read this depressing drivel.”
Yep, thanks for stating the obvious, I’m aware. No one wants the ugly truth of who I am. They prefer the mask I’ve constructed—the halcyon, paper-thin facade of magical optimism and happiness.
“Gabi called me. I’m not going to do a line edit until you’ve rewritten the last two-thirds.”
I grimace. If Gabi, my agent, has gotten involved, it’s only a matter of time before everyone is breathing down my neck, demanding I change the ending.
“I know it’s a big ask, especially with such a short deadline,” Jen adds. “But you can’t kill ninety percent of your main cast, including your MC’s love interest and best friends.”
“That’s what happens. That’s the story.”
If I have to suffer in life, so too must my characters suffer. If I can’t be happy, no one can.
“Stories are one thing. The publishing industry is another.” Jen folds her arms. “This is a business. I know you like what you’ve written, but you need to scrap it.”
Scrap it, she says, like it’s that easy. Kill your darlings.
I grimace. That phrase has always irked me. It’s my least favorite writing advice. It demands you give up the things you love to make your story fit society’s narrow expectations. Sacrifice passion for practicality, creativity for commercialization.
Yet her words spark a distant memory—this isn’t real, is it? None of this is real. This is a dream. There’s another reality, somewhere far away. A reality I’ve destroyed.
Jen prattles on in the background, but I can’t be bothered to listen. I didn’t become a writer to suffer through meetings like this, I became a writer because I wanted to experience magic. I wanted my words to make a difference.
I latch onto the idea of magic and trace threads of memory to their origin. Somewhere out there is a world filled with magic. A world that needs me.
I stand and turn my back on Jen.
“Where are you going? We haven’t started on my notes—”
“This isn’t real,” I whisper, ignoring her.
Jen calls after me, but I squeeze my eyes shut and block out the bustle of the posh office and muted sounds of the city beyond. This is a dream, nothing more.
I want to wake up.
With a groan, I open my eyes. I’m lying on the floor of a small, enclosed rock cavern. Fyr’thal perches on my chest, dozing peacefully, his warm weight a blessing.
“Thanks, buddy,” I murmur, reaching to stroke his crested head. I can’t, because my arms are cocooned in fabric. I’m bundled in blankets and spare coats.
My movement is enough to startle the phoenix awake, and also enough to remind my arms that they’re in pain. Fyr’thal shrills an ethereal cry that reverberates in the tiny space. Moments later, a fissure appears in the seamless rock wall, and I recognize the signs of Asher’s earthmagic. The stone rumbles and ripples and an opening widens, revealing four backlit figures in a much larger cave beyond.
Valen is the first to enter my cozy grotto. He drops to my side and lays a hand on my cheek.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispers.
Earth grows hazier by the day (I can’t even remember the dream I just had), but I know no one has ever looked at me like this, spoken to me in such a way.
Like my dying soul, Earth was filled with lots of emptiness. Empty words, empty promises. On the rare occasions when people noticed something was wrong with me, I recall that they’d make empty offers: I’m always here for you. I believe in you. You’ll achieve your dreams if you work hard. Remember, you are loved!
“Where are we?” My voice is cracked and dry.
“Xintra, the ice continent.”
“What?” I struggle again, trying to sit up. Fyr’thal hoots indignantly and flutters away. The cold latches onto me as soon as his fiery form is gone. “How?”
“Honestly?” Rexa enters the small cave with Asher in tow. “Sheer, dumb luck.”
“Your stunt threw everyone for a loop,” Cendrion adds. He remains in the larger cavern, since he can’t fit in with us, but he snakes his head through the opening to talk. “Luckily, it surprised Zalor more than us. He dropped the spell he was using to control me, and I jumped after you. Rexa had the good sense to follow.”
“That doesn’t explain why we’re not all sea monster food,” I say, taking in the concerned faces, the affection shining in their eyes.
