Night sweats come by the gallon. What’s worse, I’m shouting in the middle of them, waking up the half of batch twenty-eight stuck in the same room as me. Echoes from Shade’s Milk prove devastating. The warring dark pulls me under like a roaring current, drowning me to no end. It gets so bad I’m forced to sleep in the arena on the third night.
Jurso tells me my marked are worried of Scorius’ methods. Little do they know I brought this terror upon myself.
After sitting on the sidelines with black circles rimming my eyes, I feel like a lifetime has passed me by. Not one new merit since I drank Shade’s Milk, and I’m at Tesstalia’s mercy as to when I’ll get the green light to enter Izfael’s chambers. According to her, we not only need to plan for his absence, but that of Vigil and Tyros too. There would be no other way to sneak me in.
How quickly my legs have been cut from under me. Ever since the whiff from Scorius’ vial.
Why would he do that to me?
Did he think an antagonistic bond would really be the answer?
Does he know that I now possess both, and at the same time, neither?
While attending weapons’ class in envy of students unlocking the power of enchanted steel, I fall into a daze of reflection. Recalling the panic of scaling the skyward spire, rewinding back to the duels in the Sept chambers, I’m forced to fight a Shade’s Milk echo building up from my gut.
The memory brightens—being stabbed through the heart by Grondus, left for dead, bleeding out in the arena… Boeru chose me.
He saved me… and now it’s my turn to save him.
A part of me wants to relax my body and let the echo take over. I’ll suffer drowning a thousand deaths to find my dragon. But not here. Now is not the time.
Tnng! Chrrt!
Sword and staff clash to my right, while to my left a dual-wielding highborn from tier three deflects elemental arrows like they’re nothing.
Right before my eyes, first years grow stronger. They learn to mesh magi and blade, while Spellglass sleeps uselessly in its sheath. I’m feeling the same as Layla must be—frustrated. Seeing manifested ice pelt a giant defender reminds me of her getting her ass whipped last night by a first-year mage in Sivus. He said he could beat her without wielding a weapon, and he did.
As soon as the bout began, he summoned a hail storm cloud from his fingertips and sent ice shards scraping against her face. She held hard against the wind—the mage able to combine two elements for a short duration—until she finally fell flat on her back.
Lifting her up by the arm was not a pretty sight. She wanted to charge the mage while he was spent, but the duel had already been called. The poor woman…
She needs to be in this class to learn how to deal with dragonshit like that. I don’t know what in the gods’ domain her Prominent is doing. It’s like all the cadets barren of magic are being built up as jesters to be laughed at.
Hrrrrrrrrrr!
My whole body floods with pins and needles.
The challenge horn.
All skirmishes stop mid-clash, and everyone looks to our tutor, who points in the direction of the Elshard arena. A stampede for the door ensues.
This is it… the moment Tesstalia’s been promising. If she’s waiting on the west exit of Elshard near the double doors, then this will be my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break in. Sure, my marked will be wondering where I am in this crucial chance to earn more donated weapons, but I’ll have to leave it in their hands. If I were to enter now with no dragon and an affinity to drop suddenly into another realm, I’d be beheaded in a jiff. Don’t need to be on the death roster today.
I rush down the halls and past all of the statues, trying to take back-channel routes away from the building crowd headed to the arena. On my way to the west exit, a group of riders with matching black cowls rush through the double doors.
“Wrong way, cadet!” one of them calls to me, and the others laugh as I pass the other way.
Shit. Witnesses.
Doesn’t matter. Have to risk it.
I stop short when nothing but the breeze claws through the doors. No footsteps or whispers beckon me.
This is where we were supposed to meet.
One look around the columns on either side proves it’s official—no Tesstalia to be found.
Did she betray me? Or perhaps someone beat Izfael to the “challenge” punch.
“Shit.” I kick gravel brought in by the riders.
“What are you complaining about?” Tesstalia moseys out from behind a column far from the door.
“You came.” My chest lightens.
“I did. And you look like shit.”
My lips fold into a line.
“Tick tock, Dragonborn.” She tosses me crimson robes and the cloak I used to get into Scorius’ chambers.
“But won’t you…?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.
“I’ll just say I forgot to polish one of his favorite trinkets. If he finds your signature in there, you’re dead. So… I figured I’d hedge my bets and keep you alive in the event you actually make something of yourself out here. Hood up.”
I rush behind one of the columns and swing into the robes. There’s a strange magical pull to them, as if it’s statically connecting to my cuirass. As I don the cloak over my head—hopefully shadowing my face—I walk into the hallway ready to go.
My vision grows hazy—another potential echo coming on—but I force it back.
“What is your goal, exactly?” She fastens a chain around a metal clamp at the breast of my robes.
“You’re putting me on a leash?”
“Shh! New servants get boiled for talking back to their uppers.” She lets the chain hang, then begins to drag me in mortifying fashion. “Stay close.”
Once we head out into open air, the coast is clear to House Sivus. I guess all who are going to attend the challenge are already there.
“Well? The hell do you want with Izfael’s quarters? You know you can’t steal anything without getting us both slaughtered, right?”
“Not to worry… I’ll just be borrowing some mythos and that Seal for a few hours.”
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“You really weren’t listening when I told you his chambers were nearly impossible to infiltrate, huh?” Tesstalia says.
“Well, why are you dragging me then?”
“To pay off my debt expediently, of course. Turns out it is kind of possible, I guess. We’ll see, anyway.”
I shake my head.
The wind billows our robes as we make way to the giant familiar house of interconnected iron-plated flat towers with a massive tipping scale etched into its center. Once we enter, it’s strange to see it quiet at this time. Feels like two hours past midnight right now with our footsteps echoing all over the place.
“You’re not going to blow the damn quarters up, are you? I think Head Magus would demerit us for a year if you did something like that.”
“Or hang us as traitors,” I suggest.
“Traitors don’t get hanged here, Dragonborn.”
“According to mythos they do.”
“You and your damn tomes. Maybe I’ll have the house lord enlist you to update mythos for wartime protocols. Treason? If you’re noteworthy enough, Head Magus himself will freeze your body and deliver you via squall to the enemy.”
A shiver crawls down my spine thinking of how many of Miria’s enemies should be entombed already. By Boeru’s count, there wouldn’t be enough squalls to deliver them all.
“So wartime protocols for treason are at the Head Magus’ discretion?”
“Like many things,” she says.
“I learn so much every day.” I smile sadly, watching my vision swim as I choke back an echo like bile.
She turns a corner away from the main hall inlet. “You and Jurso are quite frightening when together, if I’m being honest. You remind me of Izfael and Vigil. Always scheming, always thinking.”
“Hopefully not with the murderous intent,” I quip.
She laughs. “According to Vigil, Izfael wasn’t always this way…”
Now her voice is starting to distort. Wish I got some sleep last night.
“He’s a Valor orphan, it’s easy to corrupt them,” I jest.
“Looking from Kavoh, everyone is corruptible when you suffer a whip for curfew,” she scoffs. “Shh!”
We hear a set of footsteps down the next intersecting hall. They seem like they’re going in the right direction—away from us—but our rattling chain nearly gives us away. I clap it tight to stop the vibrations, then we scurry on.
I’m not sure if it’s the warring dark pulsing up and down my chest, but I experience tremors seeing Izfael’s quarters coming closer. Being dragged against my will on that awful night in the library is something I won’t soon forget… which is why I hope my plan works.
“Lips sealed, Dragonborn,” Tesstalia whispers.
I dip my head and pull the anti-ward cloak tighter over me.
As the doors creak open, the main room of roaring hearth and hung relics is empty. Of course, anyone and everyone loyal to Izfael should be cheering him on right about now. Thinking of the electricity of the Elshard arena is something I’m sorely missing. But the burning sensation in my gut tells me I don’t belong there right now.
The chain rattles on the floor as Tesstalia peeks into rooms.
Pots and pans clang nearby. Someone is washing dishes in the tucked-away kitchen down the way to my right. Probably a newer servant stuck on duty. Tesstalia just continues on confidently to the next room, deeper into the chamber. Every cloister we enter means less noise can be heard from the outside. It gives me chills to remember that being Izfael’s goal. He intended to murder me over the Seal. To spill my tempered blood.
Once Tess shuts the black door at our backs, she sighs with relief.
“Gods, I’m shaking like a leaf in the Sosheef Mountains—”
“I read of those in the destination tomes. Spark-winds accumulate at those heights in tier two, right? Yeah, far from the city of Farole on the northern side.”
“You frighten me, Dragonborn.”
I shrug.
“Okay.” She steels herself. “That’s the mythos cove, and beyond the concrete enchanted door is what you’re looking for.”
“I remember all too well.” I dare to lift my head enough to survey the room. “How much time do you think we have?”
“An hour, maybe two. Izfael will go last. Hopefully there’s one or two events before he’s up,” Tess says, starting her way to the cove full of mythos.
Once I’m staring at rows of oversized nefarious-looking tomes in the tight quarters, I feel compelled to run my fingers over the felt. “So this is the mythos he hides from the public.”
“When Drydon shared these quarters with him, he’d spend most of his nights scouring them,” Tess says.
Butterflies shoot around my belly at the thought. So many secrets probably lie in this little room. But I have to be smart with my time. Traits. Advanced bonding. Finding my dragon. That’s why I’m here. I need to understand all this potential. When I pulled Boeru’s warring dark fire as my own, I knew something transcendent was manifesting… but it wasn’t my trait. My ailing gut tells me so.
I pull out a large tome with black felt and sharp chrome overlays branching out from the corners. It reads Mythos of Mayhem: Shadows of Bonded Past. My heart skips at the thought. This’ll be a good a start as any. And I have to be quick about it.
“Please open the door to his actual chambers,” I ask Tess as I start skimming the text. If a full-blown echo comes on, I have to be ready…
My skin crawls as I read of old war lords—a ghoulborn commandant with the trait of altering the terrain of a battlefield, polluting it with blight that poisoned the enemy and empowered him. Another dragonborn merged fully with his spirit to change between human and dragon seamlessly in battle. The deeper I go, the more the warring dark pulses throughout my body, as if the very words provoke it.
Once understanding the depths of what a trait could entail—matching it with Scorius’ verbal teachings—I have to move on. What is the actual process of unlocking a trait? What is my Prominent doing exactly?
Time is moving too fast. I’m feeling the pressure as I ingest whatever I can. Everything is about exercising the nature of a bond—antagonistic includes fighting to earn respect. An agree-to-disagree approach. While symbiotic is all shared experience—like Scorius had been evoking in his prime bubble. Then there were desperate triggers. In some cases, traits can simply bloom in the face of death.
I flip toward the end of the tome, feeling the pressure to move on, and land on a section that cuts very close to home. “Dangers of Unstable Bonds.” Broggen comes to mind first, since his riderborn bond wants to claw right out of his skin. Most antagonistic bonds start that way, which is no surprise, but when a symbiotic bond falls to antagonistic… then it’s time to worry.
A falling-out is tragic, while a coming together is cathartic. My awakening journey is backward. But Boeru didn’t give up on me. He was coaxed by an outside factor. That gods-damn Shade’s Milk.
Keep reading, Hale. You’re close to something here.
I start flipping through ancient examples of deep bonds becoming so intertwined that the spirit took over the host. Others tell of long comas due to giving into the warring dark. Those are the ones that frighten me most—there’s more than one way to reach that realm.
A part of it gives me comfort. I’m not the only one who got baptized from dark versions of my loved ones. What’s more, there are whole sections of combining warring dark with high magic. It’s starting to click why Izfael wanted my blood. He wanted to create a breach and dive into the realm… hone his fire magic and lace it more intricately with the dark.
Things are starting to connect.
“Haledyn,” Tess’ worried tone snaps me out of my deep concentration. “It’s been an hour.”
“Already?” I slap the book shut and move on to a lavender tome with black overlays. “Shit.”
My throat runs dry when I see it—Teachings of the Sept. Mythos I never imagined. I’m transported back to their chambers—with Relias and company toying with our pathetic souls, incinerating those unworthy like we were ants.
As tempting as it is to sit down and devour the entire mythos, I have to flip to cracked Seals. Data, history. That’s why I’m here in the first place… to break open to the realm between life and death, and find Sefene for Boeru.
Am I mad? Maybe—
But then again, maybe not.
As I get to the section of diagrams and illustrations of cloaked men with diadems, my entire body begins to tremor. Despite my arms and legs shaking like they’re about to explode, I’m absorbing information astoundingly fast.
My finger skims quakingly over a line: The crack is a result of a choosing already taken place.
Thoughts of Boeru telling me why and when he chose me rush to the front of my mind.
“Blood must be ripe with temperament that is compatible with a willing spirit”—Quote of High Dane Savorfold.
I keep on, going deeper into Savorfold’s confident statements about a practice still far from mastered.
“Here I stand, over the Seal forged by mine own intent to gateway into the afterlife. I do not spill my blood for a spirit to seek me out. I stand… to find mine own.” His final quote causes a quake at my feet, rippling straight toward the Seal Izfael created.
I worry none of what’s happening is real. This is the same exhausting process of falling into an echo. Anxiety, intense pulsing pressure prickling my entire body.
“Tess,” my voice is all air. I don’t hear or see her as my periphery turns nearly black.
A splitting sound cracks through my ears, and I peek past the concrete door to see light coming out of cracks in the Seal.
“It can’t be.” I choke on the bile rushing up my throat. “Boe.”
When I blink again, I nearly fall from being jarred into the realm of warring dark. Shaking my head violently, I blink out of it enough to find myself a step closer to the Seal.
Savorfold wrote something profound that continues to run through my head, even after I fall to my knees and crawl to the Seal.
“After blood is tempered, intent alone can activate a window. Like sharks drawn to blood… the spirits will come.”
“Boeru. I’m coming.” I crawl, even though my limbs are numb.
I claw and claw toward the Seal, holding my aching gut with one arm. It’s like I’ve been stabbed from the inside… like the Arkitus fights to take hold.
Once I’m completely onto the cracked Seal—cerulean-amber light blinding my vision—I use the last of my strength to pull my hidden dagger and swipe it through my own hand. Blood spills, and the next time I blink… the echo takes over.
