Page 89 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

The beam cuts into the gnarled shell of the ancestral voratrix, slicing through its hardened layers. The creature has no lungs, and it cannot scream, but the ocean churns into a frenzy, rocks crack and tumble, and the second island quakes, splitting into multiple fragments. The beast can feel the damage I’m doing, and it is beginning to panic.

A great blunt head bursts out of West Fang, snaking upward on a long neck like a massive tentacle. At the end of that tentacle a giant maw opens, and hundreds of translucent barbed tongues shoot out of it, racing toward me.

The reach of this monster is far greater than any voratrice I’ve ever seen—perhaps ten or twenty times higher. It might be able to reach us. I need to fly higher, out of range. But that might threaten Jessiva’s ability to breathe.

I’m not sure I can summon this beam of concentrated lightning again. If I cut it off too soon, I might not be able to kill the monster. So I hold the magic steady, even as the wicked tongues streak toward us.

“Just a moment more,” Jessiva cries. “Keep going, keep going—”

The tip of a barbed tongue lashes against my wing, ripping the tough skin as if it’s a cobweb. Jessiva screams, but still I hold, beating my wings furiously to maintain my altitude.

At last I feel a yielding at the end of the searing beam of light. I see its piercing tip enter the shell of the giant voratrice. I shift the angle of the lightning, cutting a long slit, then carving it wider, into an eye-shaped wound. The edges of the wound glow with heat, and flames lick up from them as the exposed inner flesh of the creature begins to burn.

The Mordvorren revolts in a dying panic, and I gasp as it manages to cut off my access to its lightning. But the deed is done. We’ve broken into the husk of the creature.

“Varex!” Jessiva shrieks a warning. Without thinking I’ve dipped lower in the sky, and the tongues of the great monster are beginning to curl around my wings.

Swiveling my neck toward the tongues, I blast them with the remaining bits of void magic I can summon—little more than dots of black light, but it’s enough to drive them back so I can dart free. I streak down, toward the hole I carved in the husk of the voratrix.

As I lose altitude, the Mordvorren attempts to recapture my mind, but I shrug off its hold again and again, shoving its threats and accusations aside. My only thought iskill. Kill the beast,the eldritch thing, the monster whose offshoot swallowed my mother.

From this closer vantage point, I can see a few places where massive roots extend from the main voratrice ball into the ground. There’s no knowing how far its network extends.

I streak down and land on top of the voratrix husk, close to the flaming edges of the opening I created. I’m conscious of the terrible tongues closing in, aiming for me. I have only seconds in which to end this, or they will tear Jessiva off my back and rip us both to shreds.

I shove my jaws through the opening and pour everything I have left into the soft insides of the creature. I vomit wind and shadows, lightning and void, tearing its entrails to shreds, stirring its brains into a froth, searing everything with incandescent fire.

The tongues reach me and begin to slash at my wings, but within seconds they fall away, limp and helpless. That’s how I know I’ve succeeded. That’s how I know that the eldritch voratrice is dead.

Shuddering, heaving ragged breaths, I back away from the wound in the creature’s husk. Steam and acrid smoke issue from the opening.

“Jessiva,” I say breathlessly. “Jessiva, are you alive? Are you injured?”

“I’m here.” She pats my neck. Her voice is shaky, but I can tell her spirit is still strong. “I’m alright.”

I start to speak again, but she exclaims, “Varex, look!”

From the interior of the voratrice, wispy shapes are rising, slithering upward through the smoke. They are small and indistinct, but each one bears the form of a dragon.

When dragons die, their spirits rise and return to the air. The souls of all the dragons ever captured by this titanic monster have been languishing inside its original core. Perhaps that’swhat it wanted all along—perhaps that’s the reason it created so many secondary and tertiary cores on Ouroskelle and the neighboring islands. Perhaps its true sustenance and purpose was the eternal torment of dragon souls.

And now all those souls are free.

Scarcely daring to breathe, I watch the spirits rise, searching for the one I most desire to see.

And there she is. I would know her anywhere—black as the night, with white freckles on her wings like the stars above. A dragon made for midnight hunts, born of beautiful darkness.

“There,” I say brokenly to Jessiva. “There, do you see her? The black one with wings made of stars. The Bone-Queen Zemua. My mother.”

“I see her,” Jessiva replies. Her hand presses comfortingly against my neck.

My mother’s spirit does not come to me. I didn’t expect her to. She is not aware of this world in the same way anymore. But I don’t need her to see me or speak to me. It is enough to know that after all these years, I have avenged her. She will no longer suffer in the belly of the monster, but will rejoin the Bone-Builder as part of the universe.

The voices of the Mordvorren fall utterly silent, and I know, with complete certainty, that it cannot take hold of me now.

Jessiva and I watch the dragon souls ascend until they have all passed on to their peace. Then I rise on damaged wings, struggling a little against the wind, until I can survey both of the twin islands. They are mostly wrecked, but part of West Fang is intact despite the long tentacle-neck that burst out of it.

I fly to a grassy hilltop dotted with trees and land there, beneath the rustling fronds.

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