Page 24 of The Oracle of Dusk

“There’s no escape! He’s going to rain fire down on us!”

Two of the paladins were riding side-by-side. A tinge of panic hurried his next action. Silvanus tied both their threads to Aurora’s before he turned his attention to the meteoric assault of Drakon’s magic. He did everything he could, working quickly and precisely, clearing the path around them, redirecting the foul magic onto objects in the distance, onto threads of the landscape, onto small creatures hiding in burrows, onto Drakon himself. His head felt like it was splitting in two, dividing his focus between the physical plane and the Tapestry.

Drakon fired another crimson bolt, annihilating the two paladins in an instant, and nearly unseating both Silvanus and Aurora from Neptune’s saddle. Too close.

Ahead, Silvanus spied salvation.

“We’re going to run ourselves into solid rock!” Aurora shouted.

Aurora attempted to redirect Neptune. Silvanus held the course, fighting Aurora’s panic for control of the reins.

“Trust me!” Silvanus replied.

Where his physical eyes would see only rock, his wild magic saw the opening to a cave—one shrouded in protection both wild and divine. A hidden sanctuary. He reached out, parting the threads that held its gates closed.

“There’s an entrance!”

And they would make it.

Except Drakon had already gathered the crimson threads of his magic, a mere moment away from incinerating them.

There was one paladin left to sacrifice—the one riding with Princess Phaedra. He’d rushed into the fray to save her in the last attack because he’d known what she meant to Aurora—that without her, Aurora would lose the strength to fight. He’d trusted Aurora’s safety to Neptune and recklessly rushed in to cleanse the camp just to spare Aurora the emotional blow. Now, it would be unavoidable. Between the princess and Aurora, the princess mattered not at all. As he reached for the paladin’s goddess-blessed thread, his blood ran cold.

Shock nearly dragged him back to the physical plane.

There, thick and unmistakable, a red line of fate connected him to Phaedra, the same kind that connected Drakon and Aurora. She could be destined to become his greatest enemy, hunting him down throughout all of time. Or she could become a lover whose passion would chase him across the Tapestry, inexorably drawn to his thread in every lifetime.

He hesitated, weighing the value of his own heart against the fate of Trisia. He smiled bitterly, grateful he was in the Tapestry, unmoored from the anchor of his feeling heart. Fate was a cruel mistress.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

He tied the paladin’s thread to Aurora’s just as Drakon aimed his blast. But Silvanus wouldn’t be a coward—he would watch in full what he’d done. He returned to the physical plane, assaulted by every emotion and sensation that traversing the Tapestry had suppressed.

He snapped back into his physical body, recoiling from the sheer weight of existence. His throat was raw, every breath that sawed in and out more difficult from the last, the very air choked by Drakon’s evil, his tongue fouled by the oily ash raining down from above. Ear-splitting cracks rent the air and shook the earth beneath Neptune’s pounding hooves. Dust and rock were thrown up with every crimson meteor that streaked down from the sky.

The apocalypse was upon them.

Silvanus pitched his spear forward, his muscles screaming as he pushed against the thick, bubbling black of emerging monstrosities. The whole world had been swallowed by the gloom, the holy weapon the only source of light, save for the flashes of lightning above. He turned his head, glimpsing the riders behind him.

Panic and horror dealt the next blow. Great goddesses, what had he done? He’d put a target on the backs of men and women given grace by Justice Herself. Sacrificed the lives of others with barely a thought. Nausea threatened as his heart dropped to his knees. Now he could do nothing but watch as Drakon obliterated a woman fated to find him in every lifetime, for good or ill.

Drakon’s magic pierced the gloom, a streak of purple fire aimed directly at Phaedra and the paladin. Aurora turned her head, a sharp intake of breath preceding a tortured scream.

Her magic whipped out like a tongue of invisible flames, searing his senses.

But it was not enough.

Between one blink and the next, both riders and loper were reduced to ashes. The impact threw Aurora, Silvanus and Neptune into the air. Neptune landed with a bone-jarring thud, his pace unbroken, riders still mercifully seated.

They barrelled through the magical entrance into the mountain, Aurora’s desperate, hopeless shrieks echoing in the dark.

As he pulled back the last of his wild magic, sealing the entrance behind them, something flew through the air and knocked them both off Neptune’s back. Silvanus collided head-first with the wall, pain stealing his consciousness in an instant.

Wakefulness came to Silvanus in waves of ever-increasing pain. When at last he could open his eyes, it was to Neptune ruffling his hair with worried huffs. His head throbbed, and his next sharp intake of breath only added to the agony. With a shaking hand, he sought for purchase, cataloguing his injuries. Bruised, broken bones, most notably a few ribs, sticky blood trailing down his back from a wound on his head, but alive. It could be worse.

With a great deal more effort than he would have liked to admit, Silvanus got to his feet, leaning heavily on Neptune’s saddle.

In the darkness of the cave, blue lights winked from the walls. Like sparkling sapphires that were still half-buried in the rock, they were relics of a time long past. The remains of pre-sundering technology. Without them, he wouldn’t have been able to spot Aurora.

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