Page 90 of Sharpen Your Claws

If the others agreed, they didn’t verbally say so. They continued through the dimly lit hall. Evera took them through the secret path that swerved and fell. At one point, they slid down the rocks, and moments later, there was sunlight. Evera raised a hand, signaling for them to be stealthy. She fell to the floor, crawling toward a ledge.

The sunlight came from a circular opening in the mountain. Grass and trees once soaked in the light, but now they laid rotten around the lake below. Evera hissed in a breath, annoyed, likely at the sight of the water. Nicholas needn’t know that, once, the water had been serene and pure. What they gazed upon was decay, an inky sludge-like substance that laid perfectly still, absorbing the sun like a consuming void.

They weren’t alone. Shadowed disciples circled the lake. They had made camp among the ruined trees. The bones and carcasses of rodents scattered around a smothered fire pit. Beside the camp were haphazard cages, but they were more than enough to hold mortals. Fourteen more than William predicted. Nicholas kissed his knuckles when he felt them shake. The patients were alive, but unwell, laying about the cages in their own feces, some with their ribs threatening to rip through skin.

Henry pointed to the black lake where a single mass floated; Fearworn. What became of him, at least. The fae was more corpse than anything, made up of thin gray skin. His once long hair had deteriorated, little more than stray strands peeking through a scabbed scalp. His eyes were open, black as can be, and looking skyward, yet perceived nothing. As dead as he appeared, he remained on the cusp of life. Nicholas felt it, a heartbeat thrumming beneath his fingers, quiet as a bird. He wouldn’t have noticed had they not been so silent and still.

Three shadowed disciples swept over to the cages. They yanked on the door and dragged out the patients. Those with enough strength shrieked and kicked. The disciples snapped their wrists. William moved. Nicholas caught the back of his shirt.

“Whatever they are planning, they are doing it now,” said Henry. “I fear we don’t have time to conjure a better plan.”

Certainly not for the disciples dragged the mortals around the lake. Three had been caught in the disciples’ hands, standing at predetermined locations.

There would be no plans. There could be no hesitation. He wanted Fearworn gone for good this time. He wanted a life with William afterward without these troubles.

“There’s a path leading down. We’ll come out at the south side of the lake,” Evera explained.

“Too slow,” he said before he leapt.

Evera cursed at him, but the disciples were working their magic. By the time they crawled their way down, their ritual would be well on the way, if not completed. The shadowed disciples chanted, their voices ringing as one. The dark sound made the mountain shake. The patients struggled in their clawed grasps, too weak to fight.

He summoned a storm-like wind that ripped trees from their roots and sent the shadowed disciples to their knees. The patients stood in place, locked in a trance, their eyes forced skyward. Strings of coalesced silver spun from their chests to connect near the far edge of the lake. Their skin sagged as they whined and gurgled, incapable of screaming.

He swept a hand across the lake, sending a burst of air that knocked one patient free. Their string shuddered, blinking, then disappeared as they laid, coughing and kicking. He landed beside them, using one hand to grab their shirt. He threw them back to avoid the disciple lunging at them.

“It’s too late,” the disciple cackled. “You won’t stop this. We have more than enough.”

Nicholas had always known power. She followed him since birth, a shadow clinging to his back, ever watchful. In the last two years, she had taken on a new form, one he hadn’t quite gotten to know. Every moment of every day, he worried what would become of him if he let her in. If he listened to that gnawing need forever grappling for control, what would be the consequence? Even against Laurent, Nicholas knew he had more sleeping within him, a strength that couldn’t be explained, and that strength screamed to break forth.

The disciples would give their lives to finish the ritual that would summon their beloved master to his former self. Nicholas hadn’t truly beaten him, and he worried he wouldn’t, for Fearworn had been living with power for far longer. If he didn’t end it all right then and there, he imagined there wouldn’t be much of a future left, considering Fearworn or The One Who Waits would devour them all. So, he stopped trying. He let go of those walls he fruitlessly built all his life, and let power burst free.

The disciple called upon spears of ice protecting himself in a wild dance. A wave of Nicholas’ hand shattered each of them. He used the ice as his own, hundreds of broken pieces to lash out. The disciple dodged haphazardly, creating a thin sheet of ice to launch. Nicholas shattered what would have sliced him in half. He sent the pieces down in a crash, piercing the disciples’ heart. With a gurgled whine, the disciple dropped lifelessly to the earth.

Charmaine’s fire raged near the cages where the remaining humans were kept. William cared for them, looking over his shoulder once to catch Nicholas’ eyes. He was fearful and determined. Nicholas didn’t want to let him down and, perhaps, deep, deep down, he wanted to be more than the monstrous shade others made him out to be.

He attacked the closest disciple that had her claws dug into one of the unfortunate patients used in the ritual. She kept chanting even as he snapped her neck. When she dropped, the strings connected to the mortal’s chest didn’t dissipate. They flickered momentarily, but the disciples continued their chanting, including those battling against Henry, Evera, and Arden.

He took the mortal by the waist and tugged. The strings flickered in and out. The skin along his chest pulled, threatening to rip him apart, but one last struggle from Nicholas had the strings snapping. The man dropped into his arms. Across the lake, a portal came into being, little more than a thin white cut in the world. They truly were opening a portal, and he wondered if this led to the plane of monsters or somewhere worse.

Two disciples nearby released their captives. Their ritual had left the mortals utterly defenseless, stuck, becoming the fuel for a portal. The disciples stood together, calling upon the mountain to summon a rockslide. The boulders tumbled toward William and his patients. A wall of roots erupting from the soil cut him off. Snarling, he tore those roots to shreds, the power within him so turbulent he had no trouble sending the pieces flying at the disciples and calling upon the avalanche. The rocks hovered midair, leaving William and his patients shocked beneath its shadow. Nicholas sent those rocks flying at the disciples.

The disciples summoned roots to create a shield. Smirking, he pressed the rocks all around them, forcing the pieces to compress more and more around the shield until the disciples within shrieked. With a sickening crunch, he crushed them.

The lake rippled. The water washed over the edge in growing waves, then a force sent him to the ground. He recognized that power, Fearworn’s, the same he had used against them in the forest during the war. Through the chaos, the disciples shrieked higher and higher. The ritual—it was ending, he felt it, as if the world itself cried at what was being done. He rose against it, pressing and pressing, the power converging at the point of his back to ram into the phantom force. Then it all shattered, and he leapt to find the portal sparked to life, brilliant in its blinding white hue. The mortals screamed, their pain so palpable he felt it, like someone tore him limb from limb. Blood seeped from their orifices and their skin shriveled as if their insides had gone to mush.

Seven disciples remained. He leapt for three on the farther side of the lake, leaving the remaining four to his companions. The beasts scattered, and he commanded the soil to dissolve into quicksand. The disciples sank, their claws ripping through the murk. Two escaped while the last couldn’t overcome his commands and sank to their demise.

One mortal dropped, heaving for breath along the lake shore. Without so many of the disciples’ chanting, the strings connecting to the portal withered. Evera and Arden killed two more disciples, leading to another mortal dropping. Nicholas surged after the disciples nearest him, taking their lightning as if it was his own. He morphed the power into a beast rising above his head to snap its jaws, then sent it hurtling forward. The disciple became little more than a smoldering corpse.

The remaining disciple met Nicholas in battle with a whip of fire. He dodged the crackling whip that sent the grass up in flames. Those flames licked his fingertips, becoming an extended part of his form. He raised them higher into a wave that cast the cave in orange light. The disciple surged backwards, unable to escape the destruction. The fire scorched through him, his shriek dying out with the flames that left plumes of smoke rising high.

The last of the mortals dropped, the strings dissipating entirely. Most of them weren’t moving. Their milky white eyes were blank, and bodies were little more than gray husks. The portal flickered in and out of existence. He felt its energy waning, little more than a line of sparks that would soon snuff out. They won, in a manner. Lives were spared, some were lost, and deep in the lake, Fearworn slept. Nicholas dared not touch the water. Fearworn would defend himself and, before that, they should get the surviving mortals far from the shoreline.

He lugged one of the breathing mortals onto his back to trek around the lake. Evera brought another, both of them laying the mortals near the surviving five huddled by the cliff side. None spoke, the fear palpable in their eyes, so overtaken by what they went through that they were speechless. He preferred that. He wasn’t in the mood to be answering questions.

William took to checking every body, even if all knew it was pointless. Nicholas followed, always a step behind, watching as he settled his fingers against each throat. They came to save his patients, and he had to face the reality that more were lost than spared. Nicholas wasn’t bothered by that. He cared about William, the way his eyes darkened and took on that same hue from the war when he tried so hard to close himself off. Then that darkness shivered after he took an elderly woman with a soft face into his arms. There, he sobbed and closed her eyes.

Nicholas stood nearby, uncertain of what to do. He wanted to take William into his arms, ask why he cared so much. They survived, and that was what mattered. They had more work to do, to finish Fearworn off before he could do worse.

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