Page 47

“If you cannot see your enemy, perhaps they cannot see you either.” He snuffed out the Faelight and the glow on Calcifiend’s tail vanished too, leaving two glinting red eyes of a Fury staring at me from the gloom before they vanished as well.

“Unless Aquina Leopards can see as well as I can in the night?”

Anger flashed through me and I shifted my eyes to that of my Leopard form, the world around me brightening a little so I could see better again. Had he been snooping into my Order form just as the Sky Witch had? Filthy Pyros spy.

I followed him onto the ladder, sheathing my blade and took one rung after the other, sending a quiet prayer to Pisces to watch my back.

When I reached the bottom of the ladder, I moved to step off of it but found no floor waiting beneath me. Even my enhanced sight couldn’t capture a glimmer of anything below me. All was oppressively black.

“Kaiser?” I hissed into the nothingness.

No answer.

I peered down into the gloom, trying to pick out a single prick of light but it was impossible.

My instinct told me to cast a Faelight, but if Kaiser was right about that inscription, I couldn’t risk it.

I didn’t want to disturb the magic in this place because I got the feeling it would be a deadly mistake.

A strange, ethereal wind stirred my hair, tugging at my clothes, luring me down into the dark.

Let go, it seemed to purr. Leap into the unknown.

I should have climbed back up and got the fuck out of there.

Kaiser was probably one seriously dead motherfucker already.

It was time to call it quits and high tail it back to the Vault of Frost, skipping merrily away from the dead Fury and all of my problems. But answers called to me.

Power was echoing through my skin, like pins and needles, only it moved in rolling waves.

I was filled with a strange certainty that something in this place had knowledge to impart and I yearned to claim it.

Let go.

Have faith.

Never rest, Everest.

I released a breath, insanity taking me hostage as I made the most stupid decision of my life.

I let go.

My stomach lurched as I fell into the abyss, tumbling over and over, air rushing up to meet me from below. My hands shot out for purchase as a scream tore from my lungs, the fall going on and on.

But no matter how far I dropped, I never met the ground. This colossal hole went on eternally, and I was falling and falling, perhaps never to stop.

Light burst into existence, a red glow slithering through sharp cave walls either side of me, rivers of winding light heading deep into the earth. They pulsed with life, as if I was falling through the chest of a great beast, following the winding river of its arteries to the depths of its heart.

I gasped as I came to a sudden halt, suspended in the air, unable to move in any direction no matter how hard I flailed my arms and legs. Below me, all was veiled in shadow, but there was a glimmer of something within it now, like I was staring at a dark window.

A hand snared my ankle and I kicked out with a cry, looking over my shoulder to find Kaiser suspended behind me.

“Calm,” he commanded.

“Don’t tell me to be calm,” I snarled, kicking at him again. He’d led me into this pit of hell, and now we were trapped here together, doomed to die in this crevasse.

The cave walls shuddered, the vibration so deep it rocked my soul.

I fell quiet and all too still, gazing down at the strange gleaming surface beneath us, sensing we weren’t alone.

My throat was thick and I called on my magic, but it wouldn’t come, as if I was stripped of everything that made me Fae here in this void. Just a soul suspended in time, never to escape.

“Can you cast?” I hissed at Kaiser.

“No. Stay calm.”

“Tell me to stay calm again and I will rip your star-damned-”

“Belan vadir castris lavenius,” a bone-chilling voice reverberated through the atmosphere.

It wasn’t Fae. It was something other . Something that spoke as if through the rock itself, through the wind, the fire and sea as well.

And in a way it didn’t speak at all, the voice was in my skin, crawling through my blood and planting itself in the essence of who I was. “Kivon astrenis fradyr.”

Recognition rolled through me at the sense of this creature, because how could I forget it? The thing that had come to the Reaper acolytes and feasted on its chosen victims. A shiver of terror rolled through me. I had passed its test that day, but would I do so twice?

“I’m Everest Arcadia,” I called to it, bolstering my voice with power. If I was to die here at the jaws of this monstrous being, then at least let it remember my name. “I’ve come for answers.”

The walls trembled, the air hummed and the dark window below shivered with a roiling light.

“I am chaos,” it answered, somehow making me understand those words, although they were still spoken in that strange language. “I am the undoing of the sky, the unravelling of all.”

My tongue felt heavy as I bent it to answer, needing to understand the purpose of this powerful entity.

“Did the Reapers create you?” I asked.

“I came to be through the nothing, and the nothing I became.”

“Then did they summon you here?”

“I am not there. I can only reach across a parting sea, but soon I shall alight upon the shore, stepping fully from where I am to where you reside.”

“Speak clearly. Describe what you mean in more detail,” Kaiser demanded and the air shuddered violently as the monster turned its attention to the Fury.

“Man of torment, shattered and reforged anew. A soul such as yours would weigh heavily on the scales of death.”

“What are you?” I called.

“I am chaos,” it repeated.

“Are you the Void mentioned in the Elysium Prophecy?” I asked instead, my breath held as I awaited the truth.

“I am no Void. It is you who is marked with that fate. The power to destroy all power.”

“No, it can’t be,” I refuted, but those words were pointless denials now.

Whatever this creature was, it held knowledge I couldn’t begin to fathom.

Its sheer power was written into the fabric of the world itself.

I didn’t know how I knew that, but it was a fact as plain and indisputable as night and day.

The truth rendered me silent, shocked but not horrified.

Because I held within me the power to secure Cascada’s victory.

I was special. Not just destined for greatness but potentially destined for a place in history so illustrious that not even the Cardinal Reaper himself would be remembered as well as me.

“What do the Reapers want with you?” Kaiser asked.

“To command me. However, I may only be commanded by one. The hallowed sovereign.”

“Who are they?” Kaiser asked as I continued to grapple with the knowledge I’d been given. I’d had my doubts. I’d considered it, sure, but having it plainly spelled out for me was something wholly different. Kaiser had been right all along. By the stars, I really was the Void.

“It has to be a Reaper,” I breathed, finding my voice again.

“They are no one and everyone,” the beast replied.

“That is not an answer. Be clearer,” Kaiser growled.

“Name them,” I added in a growl.

“They go by many names.”

“Then name as many as you know,” Kaiser insisted.

“Killer, slayer, warrior, ruler, instigator.”

“Those aren’t names,” I said in frustration.

“They draw close now. Always close. They come for me, they worship and nourish me. Soon, I will step between the boundaries of this place and that. Then your world will know me in the splintering of the earth, in the spitting of every fire, in the strike of the howling wind and in the flooding of the four lands. I am the re-writer of prophecy, the undoing of all that has been done. Soon, you shall pray to me instead of your callous stars. Leave now. For they are coming.”

The cave shuddered and the world shifted, tipping and turning until we were falling again, only now we were spiralling away from the dark window.

We were thrown through the hatch, slamming into each other in a heap on the hard stone floor.

I untangled myself from Kaiser and Calcifiend leapt onto his master’s chest, growling at the hatch defensively.

I fisted a hand in my hair, reeling from what I’d just learned, fearing that monster’s vow right down to my core.

It would come here. The Reapers would make it so, and then it would destroy our world.

Is that what our prophets wanted? Why would they bring a plague upon our lands?

Why would they summon death to our door?

“ Move .” Kaiser shoved to his feet, grabbing my arm and hauling me back up the stairs, running so fast I almost tripped.

The door we had entered through was rattling on its hinges as if it was about to swing shut and Kaiser moved even faster, pulling me with him and pushing me ahead as we sprinted into the passageway beyond.

The door slammed closed at our backs with an echoing bang and a yell went up in the tunnel ahead, sending a quake through my bones.

Kaiser’s grip tightened painfully on my arm and he towed me down the tunnel at a rapid pace.

“Check the path,” he hissed and Calcifiend fluttered into the air and sped away ahead of us, flitting around a corner.

Kaiser never slowed, dragging me along even though I wasn’t going to slow for a second anyway. The Reapers were coming and I had no idea if we could make it out of these tunnels before they caught us. But we had to damn well try.

We rounded a corner into a forked path and Kaiser shoved me toward the righthand passage. “Go that way. Calcifiend will lead you back up to the Keep. I will distract the Reapers.”

He abandoned me just like that and I raced away down the passage he had directed me toward, finding Calcifiend there clicking his tongue urgently.

I ran after him, having no choice but to put my faith in Kaiser Brimtheon and his Sayer Dragon. He didn’t want his precious Void caught down here and killed, so this was as safe a plan as I was going to get. And if he was willing to put his ass on the line to secure my protection then so be it.

Calcifiend moved fast, flying along ahead of me, zipping down passages this way and that.

A boom echoed in the tunnels and shouts came from behind me, but they didn’t follow my path. They were headed after Kaiser and whatever maddened plan he was executing.

I couldn’t even hope that they’d catch him, because they would pull his memories from his head with a Cyclops and see exactly who had accompanied him down here - along with all the other damning secrets we held.

I met a staircase, stumbling at the abrupt shift in the ground beneath my feet. But I caught myself on the wall and ran faster, my thighs burning as I climbed and climbed and climbed out from the bowels of the keep, recognising the stairs I had taken to get down here earlier with Kaiser.

Calcifiend let out a sudden shriek of surprise, but it was too late to stop as he collided with a large chest and I almost followed him straight into it.

“I have come to rescue you,” Galomp announced, smiling big. “I followed you this far then did not know where else to go. It is very cold in here.” He looked around, casual as anything and I grabbed his arm, shoving him onward.

“ Go , Galomp,” I demanded. “The Reapers are coming.”

“Oh bother,” he gasped. “Let us go. And be fast about it.”

He turned and we headed up the stairs, Galomp moving ahead of me at a lumbering pace which wasn’t anywhere near fast enough.

“ Quicker ,” I urged and Calcifiend flew into him from behind again and again, nudging Galomp’s ass with his little head.

“There is a mosquito nibbling my buttocks!” Galomp cried and started running. He could really move when he wanted to.

We sprinted up the stairs, finally meeting the secret door that led out into the corridor that led to the Vault of Steel. We spilled through it together and my heart jerked violently in my chest at the sight of the golden cloaked man standing right in front of us.

We were dead. Completely fucking dead.

The Reaper lifted his head, his face catching in the firelight of a sconce and I found two amber eyes staring into mine.

“ Harlon ,” I gasped in utter relief.

He looked from me to Galomp in confusion. “You’re who they’re all looking for?” he hissed, glancing down the corridor anxiously.

Galomp’s eyes slid to me. “Do you know this Reaper?”

“He’s a friend. He won’t inform the other Reapers. Will you, Harl?”

Harlon glanced at Galomp again and then to me.

“Of course not.” He stepped closer, taking my hand.

“They’ve sent a Reaper to every secret door within the Keep.

You don’t have long.” He pulled me down the corridor to a window and shoved it open.

“Climb out and take the quickest route you can to the Vault of Frost.”

I gestured for Galomp to go first as I embraced Harlon hard. “Thank you,” I whispered and he laid a kiss on my cheek.

“I will always protect you, Ever,” he murmured, then I pulled away and climbed out after Galomp, spotting Calcifiend perched on his head.

Harlon closed the window tight, nodding to me and I raised a hand in goodbye. He swept back to guard the hidden door and I directed Galomp across the snow-covered ground, relief scattering through me along with a rush of thoughts.

I was the Void. A prophesised Fae, named so by some almighty creature that had no reason to lie to me.

This meant I could change the tide of the war.

It meant my power was the most sought-after weapon in The Waning Lands.

I had always wanted to be a Fae of legend, and it looked like I was going to get my wish.

And that was all well and good so long as there was a war to win.

Because if that monster was brought here by the Reapers, I was going to say goodbye to my dreams of grandeur and hello to the end of the world.

So I had to find a way to thwart the Reapers without getting myself killed in the process.

Nothing ever came easy to true legends after all.