Dragon Empress

Chapter 25

A hand closed around her right wrist. “This is tough enough as it is, Tigress. Let’s not invite attacks.”

“I’m not planning to attack.” She had half a mind to wrench her hand free of his grasp . . . but dangerous thoughts about the feel of Effrax’s skin against hers filled her brain. “If it’s a shadowbeast, we might learn something from it. There’s more to them than everyone assumes. One of them helped me during the Final Battle.” In a softer voice, she added, “He saved my life.”

“What if this shadowbeast is not the helpful type?” said Viran.

Roxanne rolled her shoulders. Her bones were stiff with cold. “Then it’ll be four against one. I like those odds.”

An urgent trill from G’shídrian drew her attention. The phoenix tossed his head, nodding at the shape in the shadows. When she looked back at the shadowbeast, she saw it had been joined by others.

“Four against four, now,” said Effrax, readying his longbow.

Roxanne’s mouth twisted. “Could be worse.”

“It is worse.” Viran drew Sethildras and pointed, indicating something to their left. More shapes oozed toward them across the landscape, dark and twisting wraiths.

“Time to run, you reckon?” said Effrax.

G’shídrian trilled again and darted at the slithering, swarming shapes.

“I didn’t mean run into battle,” he sighed, “but fine.”

He pulled an arrow taut against his bowstring and loosed it. At least physics worked the same way in this universe. The projectile soared through the darkness and burrowed deep into one of the black shapes, felling it.

Viran charged, using Sethildras to cut a swath through the shadowbeasts—and shadowbeasts they must be, though Roxanne couldn’t tell where one ended and another began. A boiling yet eerily silent mass of limbs strained for her as she sprinted after Viran.

One stray limb snagged her sleeve and she lashed out. Her fist connected with something hard, and she heard a hiss of pain as the thing, whatever it was, recoiled from her assault. Beside her, Effrax stumbled. The shadows rose like a tidal wave, threatening to consume him.

“No!” Roxanne lunged and drove her fist into another formless, lightless shape. Desperately she tried to free Effrax, but there were too many shadowbeasts, and there was no light to see what she was doing, and she was so very cold—

“I’ve got him,” came Viran’s deep voice. He appeared in her line of vision, hoisting Effrax upright. “Run!”

She ran.

There was only one good thing to be said about the Etherworld: no matter how much energy it siphoned from her, it siphoned more from the creatures it was designed to imprison. She shoved weak, lethargic shadowbeasts out of her way with ease. Adrenaline made her powerful, but her razor-sharp senses were dull. Another demon launched at her, and she didn’t dodge in time. It snagged her sleeve, dragging her down.

She thudded to the black expanse of ground. Silent phantoms descended, hemming her in on all sides. She stretched out a hand in vain, grasping for freedom.

Miraculously, a someone grabbed her fingers.

“Let go,” she called to Effrax, who’d doubled back to rescue her. “There’s too many!”

In response, his grip tightened. With his free hand, he wrenched demonic shapes aside, digging toward her. “I’m not leaving you,” he cried over the roaring whisper of shadowbeasts, the deafening shuffle of their movements. “We stick together.”

Memories of their past crashed in her mind. A stifled sob caught in her throat.

Then she screamed. Something sharp—a tooth, a talon, a spiked tail—had dug into her arm. Warm wetness pooled beneath her layers of clothing. She watched in horror as green aura flooded out of her, concentrating in a bright knot around her wound.

The shadowbeasts surged forward, lured by her blood. Roxanne began thrashing like a fish out of water. She would be eaten alive, swallowed whole—

Whoosh! A blaze of light burned her retinas. Heat crackled around her, searing her flesh, but she embraced it. The fire was a breath of life after the icy suffocation of the Etherworld, and it repelled the shadowbeasts at last.

She blinked and looked up to find Effrax wielding. Fire—or rather, the Etherworld’s ghoulish bastardization of fire—surrounded him. Eerie white flames surged from his outstretched palm like wriggling, bloodless maggots.

“I hate this place,” Roxanne muttered, clambering to her hands and knees. Her wounded arm shook beneath her weight as the shadowbeasts fell back from Effrax’s pale, unnatural flames.

He caught her eye and grinned. For a moment, she was tempted to believe they were going to be alright.

Then the Etherworld struck.

The ground beneath Effrax’s feet burst upwards in a reverse avalanche. It merged into grasping tendrils that wrapped around him. He let out a ragged scream and dropped his threads. The white blaze vanished, replaced by a crimson glow. His bindings were stripping him of his magic.

With a wordless cry, Roxanne flung herself on the tendrils. Her injured arm shrieked in protest as she tried to free Effrax. He writhed in the Etherworld’s shadowy clutches—then he began to sink. The ground was pulling him down, down into darkness.

Panic wiped her mind blank. Without thinking, Roxanne sank into her inner consciousness and embraced her source. It glowed much more faintly here than it did on Selaras, but as soon as she became one with her power, renewed strength filled her.

She threaded energy into the ground, willing the dark earthen tendrils to relinquish Effrax. They did not comply. She was powerless against them—and the next second, more furious arms had burst up to seize her, too.

The moment the ground touched her, something snapped in Roxanne’s chest. It wasn’t the pinching sensation she associated with dropped threads or mis-woven spells: this was a fracture in her soul, agony beyond imagining. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came.

Bursts of eerie light flashed across her vision. Dimly, she realized Viran and G’shídrian had joined them and were now wielding, trying to free her and Effrax. All they accomplished was to ensnare themselves in the Etherworld’s suffocating grasp.

This is it, thought Roxanne.

They’d barreled headlong into this desperate quest, and now they were paying the price. They’d be imprisoned like the shadowbeasts, like Valaan, like Necrovar himself. Or, if fate was kind, perhaps they’d die and be snuffed out of their misery.

The nature of her bindings changed. No longer were they solid and unforgiving: the tendrils around her grew liquid and sticky, like congealed blood. She renewed her thrashing, hoping beyond hope that she might break free.

It was no use. The gelatinous bindings clotted around her body, encasing her in icy black jelly. Darkness oozed over her head.

In Roxanne’s final moments of consciousness, bone-deep sorrow gripped her. She loved her animal friends, but she wished, for a heartbeat, that she’d spent more time with her human ones. She would never again see Keriya’s smile. Never hear Fletcher’s laugh. Never feel Effrax’s warmth as he held her . . .

Then she was swallowed whole, and she knew no more.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN“Let light shine on the parts of you that are broken.”

~ Taeleia Alenciae, Twelfth Age

The brutal claws of the Etherworld dug into Viran’s flesh and soul. A year’s worth of research on this place had done nothing to prepare him for it, and now he’d committed the cardinal sin.

He’d wielded.

The iron shadows constricting him turned gelatinous. His soul hemorrhaged energy. It reminded him of how he’d felt during the Final Battle, when Keriya had siphoned power from him.

Roxanne, Effrax, and G’shídrian had succumbed to their shadow-bindings. They were little more than glowing cocoons, quivering shapes silhouetted against the horrible color-inverted landscape. Viran made one last, desperate attempt to reach Roxanne, who was closest.

His limbs were trapped. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

Think!

Agony drove rational thought from his mind. Obsidian jelly swarmed up his neck, encased his head, and then—he was gone.

Imprisoned.

Fire- and air-threads leaked from his soul, and the Etherworld consumed them. Viran sensed its unending hunger. He lay in suspended animation, his own private hell. Minutes passed, then hours. Pain dominated his brain, but despair seeped in at the edges.

They’d failed their mission.

Viran pawed through thought after laborious thought. The Etherworld wasn’t torment enough, no—he had to berate himself for his folly.

Had it been worth the risks involved? It had seemed so on Selaras, but now he and his friends were trapped in an unending nightmare.

Though Khyvette had spoken little of the horrors she’d endured here, she’d clarified one point: it was not, as mortal legends said, lightmagic and darkmagic wielders the Etherworld was meant to ensnare. It was creatures who held the two essential halves of Pure Valemagic.

Light and dark, creation and destruction, totality and nothingness. The two eternal forces.

Now both working to destroy Viran from the inside out.

We don’t have valemagic. It made sense for the Etherworld to feed off our energy, but to imprison us? It wasn’t designed for that.

As that realization dawned on him, he began wondering why the binding realm acted as it had.

It imprisoned us when we wielded our base magics.

Could Necrovar have woven some additional enchantment into this world, one designed to imprison wielders of base magics? An extra layer to bind Valaan and the other Allentrian gods would have been a smart move. It made sense to Viran . . . but if he was imprisoned in an enchantment that targeted the base magics, how was he ever to get free?

Perhaps by using my other powers.

Wielding required mental focus, and Viran wasn’t sure he’d be able to direct voltmagic against his bindings. He rallied, concentrating on removing all mental resistance and letting his electricity free.

After ages of suffering, his soul sparked. Though the darkness was absolute, he sensed currents of electricity arcing out of his body—yet his wielding accomplished nothing. The Etherworld absorbed his voltmagic. He was merely feeding his captor.

He sank into a stupor of misery.

I’m sorry, Keriya. Sorry I couldn’t help you. Sorry I pushed you away.

He would never get the chance to fix that mistake. Never gaze into her eyes and see their inner light. The light that had shone through his darkness.

Viran’s heart—which was inexplicably beating, despite the fact that he couldn’t breathe—stuttered. He had one more magic at his disposal. It had manifested during the Final Battle, in his moment of greatest need. He’d fallen from the tallest tower of Necrovar’s citadel, and it had saved him from a grisly death.

He hadn’t dared touch this other demonic power since that fateful fight. He worried how people would react. But if ever there were a place to use his gift, this hellscape would be it.

Viran retreated inside himself and embraced the darkmagic in his soul.

The mental process of using darkmagic was intuitive and simple. He imagined a light that cast shadows out from his source. Burning energy manifested in his mind, and darkness fled from it.

Threads seeped from his body. The Etherworld greedily lapped them up, but Viran held fast against its t*****e. He willed himself into darkness, converting every molecule of his being to incorporeal shadow, as he’d done during the Final Battle.

Clashing sensations wracked him: pain and freedom. Torment and triumph. Time ebbed. The Etherworld exhaled a long, slow sigh.

Pain spiked, and he lost his grip on the spell. Threads slipped from his mental grasp. With a wrenching pinch in his chest, he re-solidified.

Viran found himself lying on a springy, viscid surface. He peeled his head from the ground, unsticking his cheek. Below him, three shapes shone in a semi-opaque jelly: Roxanne, Effrax, G’shídrian. They glowed with the aura of their magics as the Etherworld drained them of power.

The three of them were upside down—or maybe Viran was downside up. He’d fallen through the ground and come out the other side, emerging into another layer of the Etherworld.