Dire Sparks (Song of the Aura, Book Five) (15 page)

She pulled the crimson fluid towards her, and forced it into a frozen shape of the hardest ice. One word formed her vision.

Sword.

What resulted was a jagged, curving blade unlike any other she had ever seen. She grabbed it out of the air with both hands as it dropped towards her, and the icy handle molded to the contours of her grip. A bloodsword. A creation of her own Striding.

The corpse of the bloated monster toppled to the side, shattering one flight of stone stairs. The ring of Cjathrier surged inward. Elia spun, smashing the bloodsword down across the bronze bell. The blade broke into a hundred oozing fragments, splattering her neck and body.

The bell tolled with a clear, crystal
ping…

…
Ten meters between her and the Cjathrier. She slipped in her own blood, falling…

…
The black glass portal shuddered and fell from its roost, dropping down upon her from above…

…
Five meters. The portal was falling. It was going to crush her.
Creator. O Creator…

The portal hit with a sickening squelch, consuming the pillar, platform, and Elia herself just as Cjathrier mandibles scraped the blood-slicked stones.

Darkness fell. She tumbled through nothingness, wounded beyond recovery, barely able to process the fact that she had passed the third portion of the test.

Three down. One left.

I can’t go on…

Elia felt herself leaving the portal. There was a
tug
that rippled through her from toe to forehead, and she slipped out of the blackness onto a smooth metal floor. There she lay sprawled for many seconds, not moving, not trying, not fighting, not caring.
Two minutes,
Gramling had said.
Don’t pause for longer.
But she ignored the admonition. It hurt. Everything hurt. She was too tired. She couldn’t go on.

But you must.

She looked up through a veil of blood. The chamber, the
last chamber
, was a circle only a hundred feet across. Three grooved circles were carved or molded into the floor, and just inside the smallest was another portal… but instead of holding black glass, it held only the purest white light.

She was dying. If there were more traps, she would never make it. It was already too hard to think… the loss of blood through the bite wounds the Cjathrier had given her severely limited her chances.

A squelching sound interrupted her despair, causing her to look bewilderedly up. Then she saw them. Nineteen more portals, identical to hers, lined the room’s round wall. And as she watched, the other Acolytes began to step, fall, tumble, or crawl out of them. Directly across from her, Tressa toppled out of the blackness… screaming. Her hair was on fire, and she was bleeding tremendously.

Elia’s heart caught fire at the sound.
No! Please… not her. Not her!

Gasping for air and life, she reached out to the largest circle’s edge, only a few feet away. Jamming her fingertips in the groove, she dragged herself across it, desperate to help the Kinn girl while she still had the smallest ounce of life left.

As her heart passed over the curving line, it began to pound in her chest so hard she thought it would rip itself free.

The world flashed white.

~

Elia was no longer crawling. She was no longer dying. She felt… peaceful. She was walking on ice, cool ice that reminded her of the berg where she had lived as a child. She
was
on the berg… and approaching her own village from the East. Creator Almighty…

She was home.

The wind whipped her hair- blue-brown, as it should be, instead of the unnatural black- and played with the streaming end of her First Form dress. She stopped, gasping…

…
She was a full nymph again. She could
feel
it. Elia almost jumped in joy… she was
free!
The sun on her face, the waves all around, the salt in the air… it was perfect.

“
Elia!” called a hearty voice from around one of the nearby Icewaves. She walked quickly around it, trembling with expectation.

“
Yes?” She answered, hurrying. It was the voice of her father. She turned the corner…

…
and screamed. The village…
her
village… was in flames. Corpses lay scattered about, frozen in death throes, and the tents in the Tribe Circle were sending mountains of oily smoke heavenward as they burned out their lives in minutes.

In the midst of it all lay her father, bleeding from horrific bite-wounds in his neck and side, his face a mask of suffering. The ice beneath him was tinged red with his blood… he had been there for a long time.

“
No! Father! Father…” she sobbed, racing forward heedlessly to fall at his side, tears streaming down her face. What she had mistaken for vigor in his voice had actually been the urgency of death.
“Father…”
she gasped, holding him in her arms and pouring healing energies into him… but it was too late, and she knew it.

“
E… Elia…” he moaned, blood dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. “You have to… help me… Have to… stop this… Have… to…” He began shaking, and his teeth chattered so hard he bit his tongue, spilling more blood. Elia wiped it away, weeping, as the cold wind bit into her with renewed force.

“
I’m trying, Father,” she whispered, willing the Power of Sea to pour into him. His eyes glowed blue, sparkling with the energy she fed him through her healing gift… but then they faded, and she felt the stream of Sea lose its hold. Her father was just too weak. It wouldn’t work.

“
So… cold…” he moaned. She almost screamed. Guttural roars sounded from far off, and she realized with a shock that the draiks must be coming back for the last kill. Her.

No. Wait. Stop!
Her senses, enlivened by the frigid Inkwell air, went haywire.
This already happened… and NOT like this! It’s a trick! A trap! A test! Dream, remember? The fourth test is a DREAM. Gramling said so!

Could it be? But everything was so… real. Present. Vital. She couldn’t let her father die!

“
Elia…” he moaned again.

“
Father…”

“
It isn’t like this… it’s just… it’s all…” he spasmed again, coughing and hacking. She pressed him close to her, ignoring his weight. Dying, he felt light as air.

“
I know, Father… I know… but I can’t let you go. I can’t… can’t…” she realized that she was sobbing so hard tears were falling on her father’s face. She turned her head, trying to stop the flow…

…
when a series of growls and a heavy
whump
caught her ear. The tent in front of her exploded in a whirlwind of burning hide-shreds as a bloody-fanged draik charged through, breathing fire. Flames engulfed the pair, but she protected them with an upraised hand and the force of her will.

The draik swiped at her head with its claws. She instinctively leaned out of the way, arching her back in a painful U-shape to avoid the bloody death she should have met. Roaring in rage at its failure, the draik lunged with its mouth. Elia tried to twist away, but there was nowhere to go. Too late, though, she realized it hadn’t been aiming for her.

It had come for her father.

He barked a curse as it snatched him in its jaws, the old fight burning in him again for just a moment. Raising a lacerated arm, he stabbed the creature in the eye with a shard of ice Elia hadn’t noticed he held. The sudden frenzy knocked Elia onto her back. As she twisted to her feet, the draik bellowed in pain, wringing its head to either side.

“
NO!” she screamed, throwing her arms out and Striding with all her might. The move she had learned fighting Cjathrier served her well, and the draik’s spine exploded in a fountain of frozen blood-spikes as she killed it from the inside.

The monster fell, skull driving into the ground so hard the ice cracked… but her father’s limp body was bent over at an impossible angle. She knew he was dead before she pulled him from the sharp jaws, screaming and sobbing, desperate and shaken beyond recovery. One word echoed through her mind again and again.

Why… Why… Why? If none of it is real… WHY?

“
WHY?!?” she screamed to the sky.

Lightning flashed.

The world went white.

~

Elia found herself back in the final testing chamber, curled limply between the first and second floor circle. Her wounds still hurt abominably, but the blood dripped from them a little slower, and an all-encompassing numbness dulled the pain to an almost bearable point.

Was she dying? Or growing stronger? Was she winning, or losing? Everything seemed to so gray, so lifeless, so without point…
her father had died before her eyes!

But then she saw Tressa, also between the first and second circles on the opposite side, breathing in and out at a frantic pace, shaking uncontrollably, her good hand across her eyes.

She had to go on.

With infinite difficulty, Elia forced herself to kneel, then crouch… then stand. Whatever she would meet beyond the next circle, she would meet it with strength.

Just one step.

The world flashed white.

~

She was in a cold stone room, dimly lit, like so many in the Sepulcher’s lower reaches. She was healthy again, but she was also a captive… that much she knew, and no more.

Someone was behind her, grabbing her, forcing her arms behind her back. She fought soundlessly, but to no avail. The Someone bent her wrists, and she cried out in pain. Then cold chains wrapped around her, pinning her arms, and she was forced to kneel with her cheek pressed down on a low, stone altar. One eye was blinded by her position, but the other could see a line of other stone altars stretching off into the darkness. And there were people kneeling in front of them, held down by figures in dark cloaks and hoods…

Gribly!
Her mouth tried to scream his name, but no sound would come. The person by the nearest altar was Gribly, she was sure of it! Beyond him knelt Lauro, and beyond them… Captain Berne. Beyond the Captain, a woman in dark clothes and a flowing mane of hair; beyond her, a nymph cleric in white robes. The line of people went on past the limits of her sight, off into the shadows of the vast hall, where a steady
thunk-thud, thunk-thud
echoed in the darkness.

Oh no. Oh, Aura… no…

She tried to scream. Nothing came. She thrashed and fought, but the black-robe behind her kept her motionless with his crushing weight on her neck and back. How was the thing so blasted
strong?
Or was she just too weak?

Thunk. Thud. Thunk. Thud. Thunk. Thud.
As the sound grew nearer, her ears caught the sound of swishing before each repeat.

Out of the shadows strode
him.
The figure that haunted her dreams and darkened her days. The slayer of light and the sword of the dark.

Sheolus.

The Golden One’s face had been remade, as she had seen before, smooth gold replacing the decaying gray. Hope fled her. How could anyone fight an enemy who was unable to die? How could Gramling and she hope to topple a god, even if he was a false one?

Sheolus raised a huge, two-handed, bone-white sword. The prisoner before him cowered, whimpering…

Swish. Thunk. Thud.
The unfortunate victim’s head rolled away past Sheolus’s feet, and the blood…

Elia closed her eyes, feeling sick.

Swish. Thunk. Thud.

He was getting closer. Her eyes shot open as the cleric in white actually managed to speak as he fought vainly for freedom.

“
Fiend! You will die! You will worse than die! You will be ended forever! Eternity itself shall consume you! The fire of Halla shall fall on-”