Page 41 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)
I lowered my hand. Let the dark settle. Let it breathe.
Then I drove it deeper.
The ground shuddered as I called the spires.
They came fast—jagged spears of solid shadow exploding upward through soil and stone. One ripped through the belly of a charging horse; another impaled two men at once. Chariots flipped end over end, wheels spinning uselessly. A captain—brave, or foolish—tried to rally his line.
He died mid-sentence, a spire through the heart.
Still, I felt nothing.
I was shadow. I was vengeance wrapped in silence. I was every buried corpse beneath Talfen soil, answering the call to rise.
The whispers grew louder, a chorus of approval in my skull.
I let them sing. My power surged, and I gave it a new command.
The soldiers’ own shadows, which had been stretched long and thin by the dragon fire, suddenly thickened.
They peeled themselves from the ground, two-dimensional things given horrid life.
A legionary screamed as his own dark twin wrapped around his throat, its fingers cold and hard as stone.
An archer fumbled for an arrow, only to have his shadow snatch the bow from his hands and snap it in two.
Discipline shattered. Formations dissolved into a panicked mob as men fought phantoms, striking at the very darkness that clung to their heels.
It was a beautiful, terrible symphony of terror, and I was its composer.
The cost hit me like a physical blow—another piece of my soul torn away, another step toward the grey spaces where Sayven wandered in his madness.
For a moment, the world tilted, and I heard voices that belonged to no one, saw faces that had never existed.
I gripped the stone beneath me until my knuckles went white, using the pain to anchor myself in reality.
Not yet, I told the whispers. Not until this is finished.
The Imperial advance faltered as their front ranks were decimated, confusion and panic spreading through their orderly formations.
Officers shouted contradictory orders, trying to understand an attack that came from nowhere and could not be countered by conventional means.
Their dragons wheeled overhead, seeking targets that existed only in shadow and suggestion.
But they were disciplined soldiers, veterans of a dozen campaigns. After the initial shock, they began to adapt, spreading their formations wider, moving more cautiously. They would learn to fear the darkness, but they would not break so easily.
Time for the next lesson.
I gathered my power again, feeling the familiar hollow ache as more of my essence was consumed by the magic, but even as I watched the routing soldiers flee across the valley floor, I felt something else stirring in my chest. Not the hollow ache of magic's cost or the grey whisper of approaching madness, but something warm and urgent and completely unexpected.
A pull. A need. A desperate compulsion to move toward something on the battlefield below.
I tried to dismiss it as another symptom of the magic's corruption, another trick of a mind slowly losing its grip on reality. But the feeling only grew stronger, tugging at something deep in my chest like a fish hook lodged in my heart.
Stay hidden, my orders commanded. Remain in position until the retreat is complete.
But the pull was becoming unbearable, a physical ache that seemed to drag me toward the edge of the cliff. My hands shook as I gripped the stone, trying to anchor myself in place, trying to resist the compulsion that felt both foreign and utterly familiar.
Go, whispered the voices in my head, and for once they seemed almost benevolent. Go to what calls you. Go to what you have been waiting for without knowing you were waiting.
I found myself standing without conscious decision, my body moving toward the cliff's edge as if controlled by some force outside my will.
The rational part of my mind screamed warnings—exposure, capture, death—but those concerns seemed distant and unimportant compared to the urgent need that filled my chest.
What is down there? I wondered, even as my power began to gather around me unbidden. What could possibly matter more than following orders, more than staying alive to fight another day?
The shadows embraced me like old friends, wrapping around my body until I was little more than a suggestion of darkness against the mountain's face.
I began to descend, moving through pools of black that connected one patch of shade to another, drawn inexorably toward something I couldn't name but somehow knew I had been searching for all my life.
The battlefield rushed up to meet me, the sounds of retreat and pursuit growing louder with each passing moment.
Somewhere in the chaos below, Imperial soldiers were fighting for their lives against Talfen warriors who showed no mercy to invaders of their homeland.
Somewhere in that same chaos was whatever had awakened this desperate hunger in my soul.
I moved through the shadows like a wraith, invisible to the fleeing soldiers, drawn by a compulsion that grew stronger with every step.
The hollow ache of magic's cost faded into background noise, overwhelmed by the certainty that I was exactly where I needed to be.
The pull grew stronger, more urgent, pointing me toward a specific section of the battlefield where the retreat had become a rout.
I followed it like a compass needle seeking true north, abandoning all caution in my need to reach whatever waited for me in the chaos ahead.
The carnage was a maelstrom around me, but my world had narrowed to a single, unwavering point.
I vaulted over the twisted corpse of a legionary, his own shadow still wrapped tight around his throat, and slid down a scree of loose rock.
The pull was physical agony now, a fire in my soul demanding release.
And then I saw her.
She lay near the broken body of a great obsidian dragon, half-hidden by a shattered shield.
Her armour was Imperial silver, but it was rent and bloodied.
One arm was flung out, her hand resting near a discarded sword.
A deep gash on her temple matted her hair, a darker crimson streak running down the side of her face.
Even unconscious, she radiated a defiance that seemed to push back against the death surrounding her.
She was the enemy. An invader. One of the hundreds I had just condemned to a terrifying death.
Finish it , the whispers hissed, hungry and eager. She is one of them. Let her die.
But the roar in my chest drowned them out.
The pull intensified into a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs.
It was her. Whatever this madness was, she was its source.
It was a feeling that went beyond magic, beyond duty, beyond sanity itself.
It was a feeling of finding a limb I hadn't known was missing.
My knees hit the blood-soaked earth beside her.
The shadows I commanded swirled around us, not as weapons, but as a barrier, a shield against the horrors of the battle.
They coiled and thickened, hiding us from sight.
My hand, shaking, reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her bloodstained cheek.
The contact was a jolt, a spark of light in the encroaching grey of my soul.
I didn’t know who she was, or why the very sight of her felt like finding a missing piece of myself.
I only knew I could not leave her here. The moment my skin touched hers, the roar in my soul settled into a single, possessive word that was more real than my own name.
Mine.
This place was death. Leaving her here was unthinkable.
The shadows coiled around my arms, eager and hungry.
I would take her. I would hide her from this world of steel and fire, and keep her safe in the dark.
Gathering the deepest shadows to me, I wrapped them around her gently, lifting her from the ground.
She was weightless in their embrace. As I turned to melt back into the darkness, the black dragon’s golden eye opened and fixed on me, filled not with fear, but with a startling, furious intelligence.
Then I was gone, taking the woman with me, a ghost stealing a prize from a war that no longer mattered.