Chapter 244 - The Dark Descent

Siobhan

Month 9, Day 12, Sunday 3:45 a.m.

Siobhan raised her right hand with the palm outward as shadow coated the appendage like a liquid. While Thaddeus’s attention was drawn to this seeming attack, her other hand reached into her boot and pulled out the thin knife sheathed inside. In one smooth motion, she drew it and stabbed it at the side of his knee.

His automatic shield spell popped out again, stopping her thrust as if the knife in her hand were the wrong side of a powerful magnet.

Basic shield spells like this did have a weakness, though, or they would be popping up all the time at dinner or at the barber’s. Their parameters reacted to speed and force, not the mere proximity of anything categorized as a blade.

Siobhan understood her failure in a moment faster than a blink and reacted. Before he could respond to her attack, she snapped out her free hand, grasped his ankle, and yanked it toward her with a full body heave.

He lost his balance and began to fall. His lower back would have hit the rough stone at the edge of the short ledge, and his upper body would have swung over the side.

He, of course, cast some kind of spell to catch himself halfway, but she was already trying again with the knife, this time bringing it in with what she felt was excruciating slowness.

Despite her analysis of the shield artifact’s likely weaknesses, it again stopped her from stabbing him, but she got much closer.

Instead of drawing away for a third attempt, she kept pressing, using both arms and the weight of her body. Her knife inched closer as one second passed, and then two, and Thaddeus began to right himself.

A vibration spell cast on the blade would likely do the trick, as a lot of physical wards were weak against extremely rapid pounding or drilling. She could do that, but even though her spell rod was right next to her, she couldn’t spare the time both of her hands to open the right array.

In desperation, she threw up her shadow between them, surrounding Thaddeus’s head and trying to suck all of the heat from it. Freezing the inside of his nostrils and the film of liquid over his eyes might be possible, if she focused hard enough, and might buy her a smidgen more time.

He blew through her shadow with some kind of Radiant beam that seared through the protection over her eyes, and burnt at her shadow as if it was mere fog.

In desperation, she continued to attack with most of her shadow, while a small bit of it coated her hands and the knife blade. ‘Pierce! Pierce!’ she screamed in her mind, pouring desperate intent into the magic. If she could stop Thaddeus’s earlier spell as she had, was it so different to create a single point where the shield spell’s power failed?

But it was different, enough that even as she sank to within millimeters of Thaddeus’s flesh, she could not get through. Her shadow was so depleted, and it hurt, and she drew it back from attacking Thaddeus to instead protect her own flesh.

Then the thing in the back of her mind surged, flooding her with a desperate hunger for power that was at once deeply familiar and entirely alien. She remembered sensations she was sure she had never felt, and the edge of an eldritch understanding brushed her mind. True void contained an emptiness that could never be filled, a cold that could never be warmed, and a hunger that would cry out forever, for at the end of time, there was nothing. And a shadow had no meaning if there was no light.

The shadow devoured, and the knife sank into the flesh of Thaddeus’s knee.

Siobhan and Thaddeus let out almost identical, wrenching gasps, though for different reasons.

She firmed her grip and threw her body to the side, forcing the slim strip of metal to move through his joint.

The flesh made a wet ripping sound, and the cartilage, or perhaps the tendons, a snapped and cracked like a roasted chicken leg being torn from the rest of the meat. A burning hot spray of blood followed her hand, coating her fist as she yanked it back. 

Thaddeus’s gaze stayed locked on hers as he drew in a choked gasp. The leg buckled under him. 

Siobhan grabbed the spell rod, then shoved herself up and over the rocky edge of the ledge. She fell awkwardly, scattering a few of the battle potions she’d had waiting, and landed with jarring force on her left leg. Holding her breath until she was out of the radius of their effects, she limped away. As the pain lessened, her speed increased, until she was once again sprinting through the winding, hive-like tunnels cut through the white cliffs. 

She pushed herself to the edge of her capabilities, but she couldn’t deny the despair coursing through her. She had thrown everything she had at Thaddeus. What more was she supposed to do? 

But she didn’t fall down and give up or just resign herself to failure. If Siobhan were the type to simple accept reality when everything seemed hopeless, she would never have made it this far. 

Siobhan took her third fleetfoot potion of the night, ignoring the nausea that followed. She slowed slightly so that she could breathe well enough to chant, pulled her shadow in around her body, and began to cast a second spell. 

Thaddeus healed himself and caught up with her in less than a minute. This time, instead of running after her, he flew. It looked a lot like lounging on an invisible chair, but in effect, it was flying. He grabbed her by her hair and yanked hard enough that her neck wrenched and her feet flew out from under her. 

But she had been watching behind herself with her shadow, and was prepared for his arrival. As she fell backward and he flew onward, several strands of her long black hair between his fingers, she released the spell she had been building up. The Dazzler flashed out like a spear of light and took Thaddeus in the face. 

The black star sapphire Conduit pressed into her side shattered with enough force to send several shards ripping into her skin. 

In shock, scrambling to release all of the magic under her Will’s grasp before the much-decreased capacity of the largest shard still under her command gave out, Siobhan couldn’t react to anything else. 

She hit the ground. Her breath exploded out. A shock of pain and lightning seared from her spine into her extremities as the spell rod tried to forcibly take the place of her spine. Her head smacked down a split second later, and she saw stars, but didn’t pass out. 

Her open mouth gasped helplessly for air, but she managed to roll over with clumsy, almost drunken motions. With the help of the wall, she climbed to her feet. 

Thaddeus was reeling much as she had been, his invisible chariot spell dropped and his hands grasping at his face, which was bleeding again. However fast he was with a shield spell, he hadn’t been able to move faster than the light —especially since the dazzler’s tell-tale gathering process had been hidden under her shadow, leaving him no warning. By its nature, by the time you perceived it, it had already hit you. Failing to re-create his earlier armor had been a mistake, though even it might not have saved him. Light was difficult to defend against, especially when it carried a few transmogrification concepts suited to travel and piercing.

Siobhan thanked whatever gods might be for non-forced errors in her enemies. Then she braced herself, kicked him in the side of the head while he was down, and stumbled on. 

Fireflies danced across her sight. If not for the wall to orient her, she would have fallen at least twice before her diaphragm opened up enough for her to suck in a shallow sip of life-giving air. She stumbled on faster and had the presence of mind to pull an expensive healing potion from her bag. She took a moderate mouthful, re-corked the vial, and put the rest away as cleansing light swept through her body, fixing a half-dozen minor and moderate wounds each. 

Then she ran again. She was too tired to sprint at full speed, and when she heard Thaddeus get up and start chasing after her once more, the sharp rapping sound of each step indicating that he’d re-created his armor, she almost cried. Belatedly, she realized that she should have kicked him harder. She should have smashed his face in until he passed out. Some part of her still didn’t want to kill him, apparently. Siobhan cursed that peabrained, self-sacrificing, moronic part of her.

She flipped the ring on her middle finger—her mother’s ring—around and made a fist to ensure she wouldn’t lose contact. The stone was set deep enough that it could touch the back of her finger most of the time, but adjustments of her finger positioning or grip could create a small gap between herself and the celerium, causing a catastrophic failure. She cast the shadow-familiar spell again. 

As soon as she spoke the last words of the chant, those foreign daydream-thoughts screamed out from the back of her mind. Two children wearing crimson cloaks fled from a bestial wolf through an ominous forest, hand in hand. One pushed the other into a small den dug out at the base of a tree and turned to face the wolf, alone.

‘Oh, gods,’ Siobhan thought. 

The daydream urged her again. The child facing down the wolf pulled back its hood to reveal glowing yellow eyes and a pointed maw full of fangs. It gave a rattling, growling screech of threat toward the wolf, which hesitated.

‘This is a bad idea,’ she recognized. ‘But it won’t break my Will. And aside from that, I feel like things literally cannot get any worse for me at this moment. Even if that thing were to side with Thaddeus and turn on me, he would likely still be distracted fighting it, which could give me a better chance to escape. If it tries to run and start hurting people, that gives me an opportunity, too. Surely, dealing with me cannot be more important than dealing with an Aberrant. Best-case scenario, it does what it promises and then runs out of energy and goes back inside, just like last time.’ 

She tried to come up with a better option, but Thaddeus had begun to cast another spell already. Siobhan detached her shadow. 

For a single second, nothing happened, and she simply ran on without it. 

Then the dissonance hit, flipping the world upside down and inside out. But she was prepared, and the sensory confusion didn’t hit her as hard as last time. She stumbled a bit, but didn’t fall. 

As if her left-behind shadow were a hole in the ground and the thing in her head was crawling out of it, a black hand reached up and grasped the stone. An arm followed, and then an entire body. A copy of Siobhan stood up between Thaddeus and Siobhan herself. It opened its eyes, and the glowing-amber circles of its irises reflected off Thaddeus’s dark armor. 

It lunged at Thaddeus with inhuman speed. One hand formed into a claw that sank through the clear face panel of his armor, going for the eyes with single-minded intensity. 

Blood and a thick clear fluid splattered on the inside of his faceplate as he flinched back with a curse. But his response was immediate and devastating. Light erupted from the hand holding his component bracelet in a blazing wave. 

Siobhan felt a phantom pain, like she was standing too close to a roaring bonfire, as the Radiance tore through her shadow once again.

The being wearing her shadow screamed, too high-pitched to seem remotely human, on the edge of breaking glass. But she sensed it absorbing some of the light—not as much as she could have channeled herself, but enough to matter. Undeterred by the damage, as soon as the spell dropped, it tried to leap on Thaddeus. Not as a human might have done, but like some sort of shadow-kraken or octopus. It wrapped itself around his torso and head, sank through the faceplate again, and tried to crawl into his orifices. 

Thaddeus, of course, responded with even more light, bursting outward directly from his skin like the surface of the sun. He followed that up with some kind of ripping attack that somehow affected the shadow despite its selective ephemerality. 

Siobhan did her best to put the input from her shadow into the back of her mind as they battled, but she couldn’t help flinching each time Thaddeus let loose some new spell. Eventually, after a short time that somehow felt like an eternity of battle and running, her shadow became too damaged. ‘What happens if it “dies?” What happens to me if my shadow gets completely ripped apart, and dissipates or something?’ She didn’t want to risk releasing the spell, because rather than bringing her shadow back, it might just sever the connection between her and it, giving complete control to the thing currently wearing it. 

Apparently, the thing felt the same sense of insecurity, because it rushed back toward her in a blur, too fast for her senses to track. But it didn’t reattach to her this time. Standing slightly hunched but somehow still taller than her, it looked back the way it had come. “There is no hope in a fight against that man,” it said to her in its strange, muffled voice. Its words held the ring of truth, echoed by the frustrated despair she felt from it. 

Siobhan slowed at an intersection, now hopelessly lost. She turned toward the left, but it pinched at her sleeve and pointed to the right. She hesitated, but with a muttered curse, turned to the right instead. By this point, it was obvious that the thing had some additional sense for magic that she did not, and unless this was all a very elaborate ruse, it sincerely didn’t want her captured by the Red Guard and was willing to collaborate to keep her free. 

“I offer another way to escape, one that the enemy cannot track nor follow,” it said. 

Siobhan glared at it, panting heavily as she willed her legs to keep moving, step after step. Her mouth was so dry.

“I can create a door,” it said, a spike of hunger hidden underneath a bed of truthfulness. 

Siobhan scoffed. “No.”

“Why!?” it cried.

“At least Thaddeus doesn’t want to kill me, though that might change if he realizes what you really are. Surely, he’s taken vows to destroy Aberrants, too. Or at least capture them,” she added with a cruel smile. 

The thing’s frustration and fear grew to a fever-pitch, and the shadow rippled as it looked over its shoulder once more. “You will be as bad off as I, if we cannot escape,” it promised. 

“But I will be worse off if I take your poisoned deal.”

It gritted its teeth and wriggled strangely, as if its limbs had fallen asleep, or as if it was trying to stomp about and throw a tantrum, but had forgotten what that looked like. “Fine. I vow that I shall not harm you this night, on my magic. I vow that I shall not harm you this night, on my memories and dreams. I vow that I shall not harm you this night, on my future. I have thrice vowed your safety, human. Until the sun rises, you are safe with me.” 

Thaddeus slammed past her divination-diverting ward easily.

Siobhan shuddered from the sense of being watched, pinned like a butterfly for observation. Without her shadow, she could not stop him. 

The divination fell away, but she was not relieved, because she knew something else would be coming next. 

Another pulse of magic flashed out, this time seeming to turn the very air into syrup. It was as if the effects of gravity and energy were reduced. 

Siobhan had heard people describe dreams where they tried to run but bounced instead, their bodies too light and weak to affect the world even enough to flee. Siobhan leaned forward until her fingers touched the wall and the ground and tried to use them to pull herself forward faster. ‘Swimming isn’t the answer. Would a directed gravity spell propel me?’ she wondered, already reaching for the spell rod. It was a little banged up, but after a few smacks, the spell array she wanted sprang open. 

A directed gravity spell did indeed work, but she knew that inevitably, Thaddeus would be faster. While he was casting this, he couldn’t move directly through the stone or fly, but there was no way he would have cast something that disadvantaged them equally. 

Even her lungs found it difficult to process the air like this, and her weariness reached a crescendo. 

A rippling, gurgling sound approached, echoing strangely, but definitely growing closer. 

Siobhan let out a low sob of exhaustion. 

The creature wearing her shadow stepped in front of her, unaffected by Thaddeus’s spell. “Choose now. There is no time.” Its form lost coherence for a moment, and then became a hooded, flapping cloak of darkness that held no head, and no body. When she looked closer, it seemed more like a cloak-shaped window to…elsewhere. 

It was very dark beyond, but she could make out the light of distant fires. ‘What magic is this?’ she wondered. 

But the rippling sound was upon her now, and when she turned to look behind her, there was Thaddeus, his arms outstretched and hands pressed together to carve the way as his jacket, worn on top of his armor, flapped about like some sort of tail fin and propelled him powerfully forward. It should have looked ridiculous. Instead, it was terrifying. 

The air regained its viscosity, and as she tumbled to the ground, Thaddeus’s Will tightened for a follow-up spell. 

She met his gaze through his faceplate. He was serious now, and she could sense his determination to break her like a constrictor snake broke the bones of its prey. He had lost all patience with their game of cat and mouse. 

Siobhan threw herself backward through the cloak, and when she had passed, it collapsed to nothing behind her.

Author Note 2/13:

Hey guys! A general update here. As you probably know, I got sick at the beginning of January. I thought I was better a few weeks later, but then kept relapsing. It took over a month from the time I first got  sick until I was actually better. However, I've still managed to get the weekly chapter out the last few times, and this last week I finished the book! It's off to the editor now. You can still let me know if you find typos, and I'll check them against the returned manuscript when I get it.

I'm going to be taking about 3 weeks off from plotting and writing to re-read the series from the beginning. We're approaching a million words now, and I've realized I am beginning to forget some of the more subtle details and such that I've written. Since I've built up a bit of a backlog, you guys will still get the weekly chapter.

However, after the book comes out I'll be taking a break for a bit, and at that point will go on a 2-3 week posting hiatus before jumping into Book 6.

Weekly discussion thread on Azalea's Arcane Alcove: https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/chapter-244-discussion-the-dark-descent/586