Page 60 of Forsaken Secrets

"STOP!" Lynk grabbed my hand. "I told you! They're too dangerous."

I spun and glared at him. "I can't just leave them here like this! How would you like to be stuck in a small cage and tormented with wraiths for hundreds of years? If we set them free, they should revert. I've seen it work before."

"It's a risk, but she might be right, old man," Eli said.

Lynk's eyes glittered with pent up frustration as he stared between the two of us, but finally he spun to the spryke. "Fine. Gods damn it. But you should know that I have no idea if it'll work. Once a relic has been tempered, it isn't easy for them to revert. I'll have to kill them if they come after us instead …"

"They can do it. I know it." Please don't hurt us. I whispered in my mind.

Lynk grimaced, but nodded. "I'll be the one to free them."

I shrugged. "Fine. You have the experience anyway."

He shook his head, then strode over and paused in front of the cage. "Fuck. What am I doing? This is such a stupid idea. Those damn kids …" he trailed off, muttering the rest too quietly for me to hear.

My lips curled into a smile as he broke open the cage with a loud clank, sending several of the bars flying, then took five giant steps back and withdrew his blade. Eli stood beside him, arms wide and eyes tight.

I stared at them. Were the sprykes really that dangerous?

The little ball of purple light bounced out of the cage and my smile grew.

They glided away from us towards the opposite wall behind their cage, illuminating parts of the room we hadn't seen coming in. At the far back stood a tall metal door covered in strange markings, but between it and us were a dozen more ghouls. I looked over at Lynk and his shadowy black eyes and grimaced.

How much more of that darkness could he take?

The spryke paused over one of the disintegrating ghouls, though, and slowly unfurled, strands of white, purple, black, and blue spreading out over the corpse. Within seconds, there was nothing left.

They continued, repeating the process with every other body wraith in our way.

Holy gods. No wonder the wraiths were terrified of them.

They ate the corruption!

When the final body was cleared, they paused, hanging mid air just in front of the door. "Thank you, Weaver. When I'm well …" then they were gone, as though they had disappeared into thin air.

"Wait — what just happened?" I asked, walking to where they'd last been. And what had they meant by Weaver? I'd never heard anyone called that before …

Eli spoke behind me. "I think the cage kept them from the korra realm where they usually live. That's how mages tamed sprykes according to the old texts. Supposedly, they manipulated the metal to interrupt and deaden magic."

"I've read about a lot of relic creatures, but none quite like that. Are there more like that out there?"

"Oh, you have no idea," Lynk muttered.

My heart leapt. Perhaps if this worked out and we could pay off our debt, I'd figure out a way to explore more. To see sprykes, fleirals, vrytra, and maybe even dragons at home in nature, where they belonged. Instead of captured and tamed in relics.

"You coming?" Lynk asked as he pushed open the tall metal door.

"Shouldn't we read it, at least?"

"It's mostly been melted away," Eli said, stepping up and tracing the engravings with his fingers. "Something about — brator — "

Shrugging, I stepped past them. Hopefully, the room had some answers for us.

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