Page 63 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1
“Maybe if you would fucking drop those ‘careful measures,’” she barked with bitter contempt, “just help them when they need help and expect nothing in return, it would work out better than you could possibly plan!”
The Ice Lord tossed his chin and leaned down, gripping her wrists. “I’ve begun lasting change with actual strategy against my opponent.”
He stared into her eyes; he stared back fiercely.
“Unlike your impulsive, maddening , ignorant INTERFERENCE! ”
His bellow boxed her ears. She cried out, turning away as her head rang with his disdain.
He didn’t stop there.
“Avel is dead , his soul trapped by his own mother!!” he roared. “If you had left him where he was, the Abyss would be expelled from the Red Desert within the next forty years, before the next generation is even grown! But now?! Because of you and your ‘Trinity’?!”
Indrath threw himself back from her, looming in her periphery with claws out. His voice rumbled. “They might not survive as a people! The Red Desert might become like Blackbark or the Bay of the Bite – if events avoid the worst of all outcomes!”
Uradri cringed, her nipples hard from the frigid blast of air. More connections than he spoke set into her mind, intuition snatching at insight.
“So, you and Mhael must’ve agreed,” she murmured. “You were sacrificing them to the Abyss. A mother and son, for the ‘greater good,’ am I right? Hah! Where have I heard that before?”
He paused, and it was her turn to sneer. “Since when does capitulating to and distracting the demons work? They can’t be bargained with, they are all appetite! Just destroy them! ”
“If our home were that simple, I would have destroyed you for your appetite millennia ago.”
She jerked with shock. His eyes burned in the fire-orange shade.
“We haven’t destroyed this demon,” he added, “because we’ve seen the collision of many factors and how bad it can get.”
“Indrath! Listen!” She leaned forward, fists clenched.
“You will never know how bad until it’s here!
You just pretend you do and convince others with a ‘plan’ so they don’t dare act on their own, curtailing their choices and stunting their own visions of their future!
Did you learn nothing after the Bay of the Bite?
We’ve seen the children of the world surprise us . Again and again!”
He huffed, turning aside with deaf ears.
“We never know the path,” she continued, projecting her voice off the mountain ceiling, “yet it is always here because we are one with it! The Heavens and Hells love their straight lines to doom and destruction, blind to the spirals and maelstroms in all directions! That is how the Sovereign always surprise you! Can’t you see that? !”
Indrath turned his back the rest of the way, pacing, his wings stiff and twitching as if tempted to lash out.
His voice lowered, took on a familiar tone.
“I’ve cleaned up so many of your messes, Adri, and some I can’t lay to rest for all time.
They keep coming back to haunt those not yet born, those innocent of every matter regarding you .
I’ve watched them needlessly suffer in your wake, sacrifices of your own making, for your ‘causes.’ Losses which you haven’t the self-awareness even to acknowledge! ”
He growled, turning around, fangs threatening her. “You already ruined the Naulor from that neglect. Now you’ve spoiled the millennia of my guardianship over the Davrin! You gave the Abyss a victory they will be celebrating for millennia yet to come .”
She opened her mouth .
“The worst of it? You didn’t save him!”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach. She closed her lips.
“At least if you had saved my ‘sacrifice,’” Indrath kept on, “Avel would still exist to help Mazdek recover!”
Uradri blinked. Several times. “Mazdek?”
“Mazdek’pien the Flame.”
“I know!” she barked. “What about Avel helping him ‘recover’?”
Indrath took a mocking bow. “Apologies. You require some history. The Dragon made a Bargain with me to give the Davrin a permanent home when they reached the mainland from our island. In return, they have been helping him, though they don’t know it.
I do, and Avel was the greatest of my offers, because I’ve seen how far the incursions of the Abyss will go this time around. ”
Those gold eyes… Uradri stared in horror. “What, you…bred him?”
“Not personally.” His chuckle dripped with poison. “Like I bred you.”
Her jaw stiffened. He grinned smugly.
“ You never know what will happen,” he continued, “because you dismiss the past and never look up from your navel. I have a few educated guesses about the flow of the Ley, about all of Existence! I have contacts to share their expertise, some of them the very anchors of worlds that you pretend haven’t always mattered each time you ‘discover’ anything. ”
He still wants to debate that?
“Wait, wait,” she said, annoyed by the distraction for once. “What did you mean, help Mazdek recover?”
He arched a brow. “I wouldn’t imagine you would have much concern for his well-being. His is a Dragon.”
“He told me he battled the Abyss.”
Indrath looked shocked. “You talked with him? Tch! Before or after you tried to kill him? ”
“Shut up,” she growled. “Is that what you mean by recover? He fought them only recently?”
“So, ‘recent’ is good enough to be relevant to you?” Indrath straightened, folding his arm. “Yes. He fought them. And he won, but it cost him dearly.”
Uradri felt the chill again. “Yes… I think I saw it.”
“Oh?”
“In his eyes. The gold was bleeding.”
“Ah.” He shrugged, pure hatred crossing his face. “Well. It was all for nothing, it seems. Avel is dead. Mazdek may follow. And I plan to enjoy extracting some repayment from Emmelil.”
Uradri jolted in her seat. “What?”
Lips split to show fangs. “As gratifying as it was to shred Picsi into pieces, I know you cannot summon those rioters again if one of the three is still here. I kept her. I shall make sure she remains for a very long time.” Shimmer eyes narrowed.
“Even longer with you. I must consider how to finally manage you, sister.”
Her feathers ruffled in their restraints. “Manage me?”
He lunged in, planting both clawed hands into her wings, the cold making it hurt. “Do you think I am going to set you free, only to be summoned again to make matters worse? Especially as Indra grows and learns her place in this world?”
“Say what you will,” she lunged up in his face, “you can’t keep me! You never have!”
“There’s always a first time.” He gripped her chin to lift it and hold her still. “Listen well. Oros was the last of your lost ones, sister. I now have the power to see to that. Try to slip out through the Ley again. Try .”
She had already tried. While he was talking.
“Indrath,” she said with low rancor, jerking her chin free of his grasp. “Sovereign cannot be kept.”
“I have a few Abyssal oddities who thought the same thing.”
Uradri clamped her jaw as he turned away.
A denied yet panicked fear threatened to make her cry out after him, to keep his attention a little longer, to learn the trick she needed to escape.
She forced quiet instead, drawing it out until he paused at the edge of the darkness and spoke his next thought.
“I wish you’d never found the Wilder,” he said. “They had no idea what their ancestors put up with until now.”
“Without me and my Trinity,” she replied softly, “you’d have no family, Indrath. No Wilder, and no Indra, either. You probably would have gone back to the Tilabil by now.”
With red wings and ivory crown of horns held high, Indrath left.
But he didn’t deny this.
For the first time she could recall, or possibly ever , Uradri regretted losing track of time trying to find the Ley. In this unspoken, unmarked time, she remained chained in the empty throne room, her brother her only visitor when he wanted to torment them both.
The Infernal version of him had become infinitely crueler.
He extracted pain from her in many forms but would never deform her body to satisfy his own sense of her appeal.
Sometimes—not always—he succumbed to his own temptation and sought release upon that body, though he never risked another child.
Indra is enough.
The Ice Lord would have no competition for his affection. Not even from her mother.
“Indrath,” she finally dared say, limbs quivering as she struggled to sit on one hip from kneeling position.
He strapped her back and flank with his whip. “Lord Rousse.”
“Lord Rousse.” She tried not to spit. “Do you realize you will kill me? ”
“Oh, but I don’t plan to.”
“Your plans don’t matter.” She held her middle, quelling the fear of oblivion. “My light will fade here. I don’t know how long it will take, but Sovereign cannot be kept.”
“Oh, is that what you meant?” His voice dripped derision. “If you cannot escape, if you cannot have it your way , you simply refuse to suffer the consequences, hm?”
He pressed her back against the throne, squatting in front of her, preventing further speech with the musky rod he’d just removed from her netherhole, filling her throat until she gagged.
His aura invaded hers with hooks and barbs too familiar by now, granting his strength that she didn’t want, forcing her to go on.
“I’ve endured far more,” he said, leaving her sopping at both ends. “Far worse. But like with Yaraj, you never stayed long enough, never paid attention when it was happening.”
His bitter words echoed long after he’d left.
You never stayed long enough…
She might have stayed on Miurag longer than ever before, thanks to this icy prison. Much like Avel whom she’d failed, her body had been harmed, and it had healed each time, enough to create a memory of its own: one of pleasure in its creation, and one of pain in the restraint.
In the loss of freedom.
Her spirit needed freedom, she thirsted for it every moment, but this body could do without for far longer.
Terrifying .