Page 78 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Voidwalker

The black was more familiar now.

So was the stasis, cold pressure creaking Fi’s joints as she floated, weightless.

Still terrifying, to feel the nothingness around her. No air to draw into her lungs.

She wondered if time flowed differently in the Void, the same way distance could bend on Shards. She hoped so. Antal was fighting alone. Last time he’d faced Verne on his own, she’d scraped the floor with him. Fi had to get there, had to help him.

Veshri!

She shouted the name of the first immortal in her mind, willing it to echo through every corner of the Void.

Veshri! Can you hear me?

What had summoned him before? Her panic? Her desperation? This time, she reached out with bristled resolve.

Veshri! You cryptic ass! I need you!

No shiver ran down her neck. No spark of static.

Only black.

Of course, nothing could be so easy. Fi had been stupendously lucky when the wandering daeyari paid her any attention the first time, too much to ask for a second salvation.

She hadn’t charged into the maw of liminal space just to gamble on the whims of a fickle immortal. Antal needed her.

In cataloging her last journey through the Void, one detail stoked Fi’s confidence. Veshri had come to her call. He’d drifted circles around her, had grasped her hand and woven solid ground out of nothing beneath her feet.

Then, he’d made her think of where she wanted to be.

Veshri comes to those who seek knowledge , Antal had told her.

Surely, the esteemed first immortal could have pulled Fi out of the Void himself. Instead, he’d made her do it on her own. She just had to remember how.

Fi closed her eyes. No sound around her, but it took a moment to focus past the weight of that silence, the drag of black nothingness against her joints.

She thought of Antal and Verne tangled in a writhe of claws, what he’d risked to stay and fight his usurper alongside a band of humans.

Not a detailed anchor. Motivation, rather than method.

More specific.

Fi pictured Verne’s reception room, how the black stone raked a chill down her spine. She pictured the firepit down the center, logs aglow with red energy rather than flame.

Antal had saved her life. And she’d saved his. More than a trade of debts—a partnership. She couldn’t fail him now.

She pictured half-moon windows overlooking a valley, views of conifers and a silver lake. She felt frigid air. Smelled that snap of ozone.

Her lungs ached without breath. Her fingertips sizzled, a pulse of cold.

She pictured rafters carved with folktale beasts and glowing eyes. Marble tiles beneath her boots. A crack in the stone, one she’d noted when Astrid threw her to the ground.

Cold brushed her skin and wound through her ribs, tangled in the enamel of her teeth.

Then, Fi was falling.

She plummeted through nothing, a roar of blood in her ears and no air to gasp. Terror and thrill raced through her as she tumbled through the endless space between realities.

Her first brush with the Void was a misstep on a frozen riverbank.

Her second, dumb luck.

The third made her a Voidwalker—a real one. Antal could never claim otherwise.

Fi pitched onto the Winter Plane with paradoxical momentum, having floated in stasis seconds ago.

She fell, gasping for air as her elbows slammed the floor—black marble tile, a crack at the edge.

Through spinning head, she noted the half-moon windows, the red glow of the firepit and carved rafters of Verne’s chateau.

Static itched her skin, the coat of the Void mixed with energy on the air.

Then, that tang of copper-less blood. Ahead of her, two daeyari tangled on the floor.

Antal was on his back. That useless fool was on his back again , shirt shredded, wrists bound in scarlet cord. Verne hunched over him with claws buried around his collarbone. Antal’s knees braced her stomach, clawed feet digging into thighs, holding her back from his throat. Slipping.

A heinous amount of blood coated them both, black seeping from rends and punctures.

But for a moment, stillness.

The two daeyari froze from their scuffle, caricatures of mortal combat as they both gawked at Fi’s sprawl upon the floor. Antal’s head tipped back against the tiles, gaze glazed with pain, yet he stared at her as if beholding the most stupefying creature in all the Shattered Planes.

Verne’s breath came heavy, eyes impossibly wide against her honed immortal face.

“How the fuck ?” she hissed.

Antal lurched to bite her neck.

They rolled in a blur of tails and teeth. Antal pressed Verne to the floor, fangs digging for her spine. She clawed his stomach. In his flinch, she shoved him off, the leg the Beast had snapped already healed enough to support her weight. Red energy crackled at her fingers.

Fi Shaped her crimson sword and ran. Unafraid. This monster wouldn’t take anyone else from her.

Her opening was brief, a split-second to appraise where to strike Verne and leave Antal unharmed. Pruning an antler would make a humiliating blow.

She swung for a hand instead. Her sword severed Verne’s wrist, cauterizing ash gray skin and black blood. The dismembered limb fell to the floor with a clatter of claws.

“Heal that , daeyari!”

Verne shrieked. What a world-shifting sight, Fi’s lifelong nightmare, hunched in pain on the floor and a whimper through her teeth, the pretty braids of her hair torn into a snarl around her antlers. Not just vulnerable, but pitiful. A wraith made to bleed.

Rage glinted scarlet in Verne’s eyes. Antal lunged, but she swiped with her good hand, Shaping concussive energy that sent him crashing against the ground. Verne’s fist clenched. A whip of energy caught Fi’s ankle and threw her against a wall, driving the air from her chest.

“You think you’re clever, mortal?” Verne shouted. “You think you’re powerful? In the time it takes me to blink, your bones will rot in the soil!”

Red sickles arced from her claws.

Antal tackled her, unbound, the metal cord finally ripped to shreds on the floor. They crashed to the tile, a snarl on Verne’s bloody lips as she turned her claws toward his throat.

But this wasn’t her game anymore. She couldn’t winnow them in isolation, couldn’t turn one-on-one combat to her favor because Fi was there at Antal’s side, kneeing him out of the way so her sword had a clear strike. Verne’s attack shifted to a shield, deflecting the swing.

Separated, Verne had bested each of them. Together, she couldn’t get a blow in.

Uncertainty flashed in Verne’s eyes. The confusion of a lioness who, for the first time in her long life, was forced to ponder the peril of the hare. Her movements turned defensive: parrying Fi’s blade, kicking Antal in the ribs, trying to put space between them.

Before Verne could teleport, Antal sank his claws into her thighs, pinning her to the floor.

Fi drove her sword down into Verne’s chest. The blade sank through skin and sternum and heart, lodging in stone beneath.

Fi waited for Verne to get up. She braced for the daeyari’s next blow, a cunning play of magic or trickery to put her and Antal back on the defensive.

Verne grabbed the blade in her good hand, energy shrieking against her claws.

Her fingers closed. Slipped. No purchase.

With neck rent, blood in her teeth, Verne’s gasp came out wet and shockingly… mortal.

It seemed impossible, watching Verne’s arm slump to the floor.

Her breaths shallowed, struggling around the blade in her chest. She didn’t get up. She didn’t pull the sword free. A strike to the heart didn’t kill a daeyari, but it left Verne shuddering. She coughed a mouthful of black then looked to Antal.

“Do it,” she rasped.

The image seared into Fi’s mind: Verne laid low, a sword in her chest, hand severed. In the folktales, daeyari didn’t bleed out on floors. To see the monster broken left Fi as breathless as the Void.

Antal stood slowly. He looked haggard, arm cradling the half-healed gouges of his stomach, claw marks dragged across cheek and sternum, bites along his arms. Yet he had the nerve, the outright audacity to look at Fi, scouring her for injury.

But he was alive.

Fi was alive.

Which only left…

“Do it, you coward!” Verne shouted. “Isn’t this what you came for?”

Antal bared fangs at his fallen rival, breaths labored as sparks of crimson knit his skin back together. His tail swayed low. Uncertain. Here they stood at the verge of triumph, yet the hardest decision remained.

He looked to Fi with fear in his eyes.

“I’ll be back,” Verne vowed. “Whether it takes me a century or ten, I’ll be back for you.”

Back with fiercer claws, longer fangs. Or would Verne’s journey of rematerialization rob her of enough sense that she’d forget her vendetta and never trouble them again? The pinch of Antal’s brow said he didn’t know for certain.

Fi didn’t know, either. She’d taken lives before, never out of malice, but when her own survival was threatened. Verne certainly threatened her survival, even if killing her would buy temporary peace at the price of future peril.

Fi and Antal were still standing there, neither willing to make the move, when footsteps scraped the stairs outside.

She spun to face the door, energy ready at her fingertips as the Beast daeyari burst into the room with a screech of claws on tile, lithe white limbs and…

Astrid mounted on his back. She hunched atop the monstrosity with burnt arms and bloody coat, gripping gnarled antlers for balance.

The daeyari dropped to a prowl, growling at Fi and Antal through bared fangs.

Then, he spotted Verne on the ground.

The creature’s eyes snapped feral as a wolf scenting blood. With a curse, Astrid stumbled off his back, planting her boots and grabbing antlers to stop the Beast from charging. He snarled back at her but didn’t fight.

“Astrid,” Verne called in a pitiful rasp. “Help me.”