Page 23 of The Oracle of Dusk

“Not even your attack dog can prevent us from speaking when you’re this close, my sweet.”

“It’s not working. It’s too close to us,” Aurora replied, her panic rising.

“He, little mouse. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten all the lifetimes we’ve shared.”

“What do you mean,too close?” Silvanus asked.

“No matter. We’ll have plenty of time to get reacquainted…”

“Great goddesses, the sky!” Phaedra cried.

As if ripped straight from her nightmares, the sky above darkened, winds howling past her, swirling up and up. The gentle pinks and purples of sunrise bled into crimson, black clouds forming a vortex. Thunder reverberated in her bones and lightning arced across the sky. As if rending the very air, a great crack resounded across the whole of the desert and an ugly, jagged line formed in the sky. Ripping his way through the tear, Drakon emerged.

Blood-red scales and a crown of twisted black horns adorned his head, his gold eyes like macabre beacons in the darkness he spawned. Transfixed in horror, Aurora watched as he wriggled his long, serpentine body free, keeping his gaze locked on Aurora the whole while.

“What now?!” Phaedra screamed.

“We run! Follow me!” Silvanus shouted, his voice quickly swallowed up by the rising gale.

Silvanus turned their loper around and sped towards the Dragon’s Spine Mountains. As their party fled, ash began raining down, corrupting the very ground and birthing monstrosities where it piled up. With one last earth-shaking crack, Drakon freed himself from wherever he’d been sealed.

He dove.

“You grow more beautiful with every rebirth. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into you.”

Chapter 6

Silvanuscursedhiswretchedluck. They were woefully unprepared to meet Drakon head-on. Caught between the Beast of Old and the Dragon’s Spine Mountains, there was only one place to go. Doing so might save their lives, if they made it, but it would ensure his own execution twice over.

“Where are we going? We’ll be trapped against the foot of the mountains!” Aurora called back to him.

“We won’t!”

Sunrise became twilight as the air was choked with oily ash. Silvanus unsheathed his sword, willing it to become a spear. He raised it high, dispelling the monstrosities as far as its blinding light reached. The divine magic flowing through his veins answered his every instinct, a weapon as familiar to him as a limb, no matter that he’d only been in possession of it a mere few weeks. But without Aurora’s help, the best he could do was hold off the monstrosities. He would need to call upon his wild magic if they were to survive now. He closed his eyes, trusting his loper, Neptune. Neptune knew the way and was more than capable of dealing with monstrosities.

When Silvanus opened his eyes, the world was no longer composed of light and shadow, of mass and movement. Instead, he saw what the deities did—the Tapestry. Using this forbidden wild magic, all things were but threads in the great expanse laid out around him. Divorced from the raging tempest of emotions inside him and all but the barest hint of his physical body, Silvanus was free to make the most strategic of choices. But he had to be careful in this state, for he could not only see the threads that made up the Tapestry—he could alter them, if in a limited fashion. Behind him, Drakon made his descent, a mass of angry, warped, red threads encasing something that glittered so brightly even a glimmer hurt his senses. A thin strand of fate connected him to the beast. A thicker one, as if made of a hundred bleeding cords, connected Drakon to Aurora. It allowed the beast to find her, to locate her in the gloom enshrouding the physical world. Though impossible to sever, it could be redirected.

May the goddesses forgive him for what he was about to do.

Four paladins, an imperial guardsman and the princess followed on their mounts.

Six targets on five lopers. Five chances to deceive Drakon until Silvanus and Aurora were the only ones left to attack.

He found the imperial guardsman in the rear, his thread and that of his loper paler than those touched by divine magic. Silvanus plucked the man’s thread and merged it with the one linking Aurora to Drakon. When those who hated him spoke of his magic, this was it—tricking Fate, if only for a moment in time. The magic wouldn’t hold for long, but it should redirect Drakon’s attack away from Aurora.

Drakon closed in, almost on top of them now, and let loose a streamer of magic made of the deepest red. It engulfed the guardsman and his steed, shaking the ground like an earthquake, the trembles reaching him even in this plane. Their threads snapped and frayed, lives extinguished. The beast’s magic dissipated, and the lives it had snuffed out, now translucent threads, were subsumed into the Tapestry.

A wave of anger surged down the cord between Aurora and the beast. She flinched against him in the physical world.

“That blast was meant for me!” Aurora yelped.

“Not if I have any say in the matter.”

Strands of deepest crimson gathered around Drakon. The next attack. Silvanus grabbed the thread of the slowest paladin and tied it to Aurora’s. Another blast. Another bone-jarring quake. Another dead when they should be alive, their goddess-blessed strand winking out of existence, cut short and woven back into the Tapestry. Another rush of anger from the beast to Aurora.

“Oh goddess, the skies!”

Silvanus looked up. All around Drakon, dark strands gathered, several becoming dozens, dozens multiplying into hundreds.

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