We had precious moments. Deathsinger Zasha said that it wouldn’t be long before this prince of Brinn would notice that the choir countering him had ceased to sing.
“We must get these people out of the city before Prince Yethyr activates his Death Circle.”
Acad laughed. It was a rattling sound out of his dead throat. “All these people are dead, blade of Daened. Our energy is better suited to fighting the Brinn. It is what you were made for in any case.”
“To Hell with the council!”
Acad only laughed harder. “They are already in Hell. Don’t you know what a Hellgate does? They are likely traveling through a demon’s corridor as we speak, and when they emerge back into the land of the living, it will be far from here. It is the passage they paid for.”
“Paid for?”
“Your Mistress said she would take us with them!” Someone shouted from the crowd. They began coming toward us.
“That sword promised Erjed it would protect us!”
“Don’t blame Brother Tooth!” Malinda cried. “He thought she was helping us too!”
They crowded closer and Acad brandished me to keep them at bay.
“Don’t you dare threaten them with me. I will not harm innicents, especially ones that deserve to have their anger heard.”
“This blade will drink your life right out of your bodies if you come closer.”
“I most certainly will not.”
“I am warning you all,” Acad said. “Bonesong is hungry.”
“Stop lying!” Little Malinda was furious. “He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Exactly.” Then the ramifications of her words hit me. “Malinda, you can hear me?”
“Of course, I can hear you.” She said with furrowed brows. “You’re a talking sword. You always talk.”
Malinda could hear me. She always could hear me. Suddenly, it made more sense why a demon had wanted her eyes. Blind as she was, she couldn’t see how the entire crowd paused in their wrath to look at her. “You can hear the spirits,” someone whispered in awe.
Malinda was like Zasha and her choir and the Prince about to kill them all.
For a moment, I saw the great deathsinger she would have become. I saw Zasha welcoming her into their sacred order and teaching her the songs that ruled this city. I saw her prestige and gifts elevating her family from hovels and shoveling coal.
Her name would have been respected and feared; she would have wanted for nothing. Her entire life flashed before me, a life that would never be. Because of the Brinn. Because Deathsinger Zasha didn’t take Malinda with her.
Instead, she was here, robbed of a birthright she had never known
I was going to cut down every last member of that Council. They would be the sweetest lives I ever tasted.
But first, I had to get Malinda out of the city. I could not give her the life she was supposed to have, but I would give her a life.
“We have to get these people out of here.”
“They are cornered.” Acad was already heading toward the palace door. “All we can do is slaughter as many Brinn as possible before we are overwhelmed.”
Only hours ago, I would have been delighted by that plan. That felt like a lifetime ago. “They are not cornered. The First Stonesinger mentioned a Maze of Stone?”
“The door is 3 feet of solid stone. There are no more Stonesingers to open that way.”
“I can cut through solid stone.”
“Yes, to get to a Maze that none of us know the way through!” Acad cried. “Every Brinn life you drink would be more worthwhile than that folly. I will not be part of it.”
He reached to unlock the Palace Door, a door with a swarm of Brinn banging at it from the other side. I could not allow that to happen.
Malinda's life was on the line.
“I was not asking for your permission.”
I seized Acad’s muscles and turned him around. “Where’s the entrance to this Maze of Stone?”
“What are you doing?” Acad cried. He tried to fight me, but he had slaughtered countless Brinn with me outside the Palace Door; the blood that bound us was too deep. He could not stop me as I moved him back into the hall.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
It disturbed me. I had never tried to possess a body against its will. It was unnatural and terrible. I loathed myself to even think of attempting it.
I didn’t stop. “Where is the maze?”
“Brother Tooth asks if anyone knows where the Maze of Stone is. He’s going to break down the door.”
“Who the hell is Brother Tooth?” someone asked.
“The sword! His name is Bonesong, but he prefers Brother Tooth. He likes being my brother!”
“Don’t tell people that, Malinda!”
“I know,” a woman piped up. When everyone looked at her, she stumbled to explain. “I’m a palace maid. I’ve cleaned that room before.
“Take me.”
“He wants you to lead him.”
Frantically we all ran through the various wings of the palace. Such opulence. Such artistry. Such magic.
I didn’t pay attention. All that mattered was getting to that door as soon as possible.
“You’re a fool, sword!” Acad cursed at me all the way. “What if we all die in the maze? You will be lost in there, never to be found, never to be used against the Brinn. Have you forgotten your purpose?”
“I define my purpose, not that council of cowards.”
We passed through a door and suddenly it seemed as if we were in a cavern deep in the mountain and not a room in a palace, carved by human will.
The walls looked bare, but I did not need to be told where the entrance to the Maze of Stone was. I could hear it singing, loud and clear.
I moved Acad to the point in the wall that sang the loudest. I had him knock, and I listened.
It was at least three feet thick. No ordinary sword could possibly penetrate it, but Wes had said that I could penetrate corpse iron. I had been making a dent in the Forge’s Heart when he had died.
I had to try.
“They say the maze goes all the way through the mountain,” someone whispered.
“Where does it lead?” Malinda asked curiously.
“The Kunyat Plains,” someone else said.
That meant nothing to me. All that mattered was that it was far from here. I made Acad swing me at the solid stone.
Pain.
I hit pure stonesong, loud and beautiful and unbending. The rebound of our collision rattled my steel and threw Acad back.
I had barely scratched it.
I rallied and swung again and again, sharpening the echoes of my maker’s music into a lethal edge. This was a battle of songs, much like when I had attacked the Forge Heart, but that had been between two steelsongs. This was between stone and steel, one final duel. The last battle between two dead rival orders. Both had been extinguished tonight, one by exhaustion defending the wall and the other by me.
It was a small solace, but I would not let the order that I had made extinct lose. They had made me better. The song in the wall was static, but my father’s last creation was alive… I was alive. I could change tactics; I could change octaves.
I could cut through their music notes, beat by beat until I had sliced through solid stone. I paused to admire the gash I had made in the masterpiece of a dead choir.
I glanced behind, my thoughts swimming with precise calculations. Perhaps that was why I noticed there were fewer people in the room than I had remembered in the hall.
“Weren’t there more of us?”
Malinda was still there. “Brother Tooth says that some people are missing. I wouldn’t know. I can’t count.”
“There are,” a man said. “We must have lost them in the run through the palace.”
“We noticed while you were hacking at the wall,” another said. “Terad and a few others went out to bring them back.”
“Have they come back?”
“They haven’t,” Malinda told me.
My instincts were screaming. It occurred to me that our hasty run through the palace could have triggered traps or other dangers that the choirs that lived here could have sung into existence.
But that didn’t feel right. I suddenly knew, deep down, that we were being watched by something. Something dark and ancient and familiar in some strange foreign way.
“Tell them to call for their friends, but don’t leave the room. We have to stay together. I’m almost done cutting us a door through to the maze. We need to get out of this palace now.”
I turned Acad back to the wall; the sensation of being watched raising the hairs of even his dead neck.
I tuned out those fears; I narrowed my focus to cut another gash into the door, and then another. When I had four gashes make a rectangle, Acad kicked in my carved door. It made a satisfying thud that resounded down the tunnel I had just revealed.
The echo hadn’t even ceased when someone screamed. Acad turned. The crowd of people had pressed themselves against the opposite wall. There were even less of them than the last time I looked.
“Something is picking us off! Erna was just ripped from my hand!”
“It’s hiding in the shadows!
“Where is it? Where is it?”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A demon,” Malinda whispered. I saw her curled up against the wall, frantically covering her ears. “It’s up above. Can’t you hear it?”
Acad looked up just in time for a monstrous shape to drop from the ceiling. It swam through the air like a fish, but its actual appearance was much like the stomach entrails of Brinn soldiers I had disemboweled. It writhed and twisted, a stomach without a body, slurping down the whole body of who I presumed to be Erna.
It was the shape I had seen fly from the Hellgate, I realized. It had been stalking us this whole time. I had just been too busy opening the way to the maze to realize it.
And now this demon was blocking the way for everyone to reach the door I had made.
I would have to somehow kill it. I was trying to figure out how to even approach doing that when a voice pierced the air.
“Greetings, Datrea.”
A song amplified the words, making them sound deafeningly loud, even though the voice itself was deadly soft.
“I am Yethyr. Firstborn son of King Yevvar Kentheir of Brinn. I have drawn a Death Circle around your fair city. I am sure an arcane-minded populous such as yourself does not need to be told what that means. Any who wish to surrender and submit themselves to my service may do so, and they shall be escorted out of the city. I give you all one hour to make the only decision open to you.” He then added, as if as an afterthought, “any who choose to remain will die.”
The Prince fell quiet, leaving me with a hungry demon before me, a stone maze behind, an army outside, a little girl at the center, and only one hour to save her.
One hour.
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate all the support I have gotten during the transition to move this story to Royal Road. Do tell me what you think! I love comments and often respond to them
I will be posting a chapter every day until July 30, 2025. Make sure to follow the story and come back to read more!
What threat should concern Bonesong the most?
