Page 82 of The Stone Survival
The man in the cell fell silent.
“Why?” Serath asked. “Why are you doing this? Who are you really? Why are you working with the faction?”
He let out a soft laugh of surprise. “Oh, Serath, I’m not working for the faction. Iamthe faction.”
Blake’s confessionsat in the silence between us for several stunned seconds before I found my voice.
“What’s your real name?” Serath demanded.
“It hardly matters now,” our fake Yarrow said. “You’ve known me as Blake Yarrow, so we’ll keep it that way.” He smiled. “I like this skin. This…persona.”
Yes, we knew him, and he’d helped us. Been a friend to us… “Why are you doing this? Any of it. You’re not evil.”
His hard expression softened a fraction. “No. I’m not evil, Cameron. But this world is. The people are, and things need to change.”
“Andyou’regoing to change them?” Serath asked. “How? By letting the gray back in and wiping out this world? By killing Cameron and sucking the soul out of innocent goyles to create graynites?”
His expression pinched. “All necessary things to achieve a higher goal. There are powerful relics beyond the rift. Artifacts that we can use to heal this world and make it a better place.”
“You’re telling us your motives are altruistic?” Serath scoffed. “Bullshit.”
“You’re right,” Yarrow said. “I have other reasons. Personal reasons.”
I needed to know, to understand why the man I trusted and believed in, a man I’d looked up to, would betray us like this. “Tell us. We deserve to know, don’t you think?”
He seemed to consider this for a moment. “I suppose you do.” He chewed on his cheeks. “I’ve never spoken my story, not in all these years. But I suppose there is a first time for everything. Where to start? My origins? Yes, that will do.” His eyes glowed amber in the gloom as he continued. “I’m no simple man, Cameron. I never was and never will be, and because of that, I lost everything. How old do you think I am?”
“I don’t know.”
“Centuries. Too many to count. They kept me bound. Me and my twin. They used our power, our magic, for their own ends.”
“Who?”
“The witches. The covens. We were their secret. They used us time and time again, but the last time, things did not go as planned.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “The last time they used us, I succeeded in breaking free, but in doing so, I lost my better half.”
My heart pounded hard in my chest. “What are you talking about?”
“The ritual to close the rift was powered not by the covens but by me and Flora. We’re what you call conduits to the weave. Our bodies, our souls, can channel power, and because of it, we have been used for centuries by the witches who claimed to own us.
“When the rift occurred, it was no accident. A small sect, growing in the shadows, succeeded in opening the breach. They hoped to obtain relics spoken of in ancient texts. The sect was made up of human scholars, what you might call men of science—people you now know as alchemists. At that time, neither the witches nor the goyles were aware of their existence. The alchemists wanted power to rival the witches but were unable to control the fallout.
“Naturally, the gargoyles came to the witches, begging them to help close the rift, and Flora and I were brought out of our prison to be used in the ritual that would create the mystical implosion device. It wasn’t the first time we’d been abused in this way, and we were resigned to our fate.
“But as the ritual continued, we sensed that something was wrong. The power coming through us felt different. Tainted. Other. It burned us, and the distribution was all wrong. It flowed more through Flora than me, searing her, hurting her.” His eyes took on a faraway look as if he was peering into the past. “She screamed in agony, her skin glowing with an overload of energy. I slammed against the wards of the arcane circle, bellowing at the top of my lungs for them to stop. That they were killing her. That it was too much, but they kept chanting. Kept channeling and fueling their device, and my sister…” His voice cracked, and he paused, swallowing back emotion. “My sister burned in front of my eyes, swallowed by arcane flame. Only then did they realize. Only then did they stop.
“Their device was complete. My sister was dead. But I wasn’t done. I was still connected to the weave, to the strange, tainted power, and I continued to channel, and they couldn’t stop me because my sister’s death had dispelled the magic binding us. I was free for the first time in centuries. I let the power flood me, pushing it out into the world to annihilate the witches. I didn’t care if I died. There was no point in living without Flora, but in that moment, I was somewhere else. In a place where the past met the future and the present stood still, I saw the cosmos. I saw it all—the pain, torment, and injustice. I saw what lay beyond the rift—relics gleaming bright. One that can heal anywound, one that grants wishes, another that can turn back time, but the one that called to me the most was a relic that can bring back the dead.
“When I surfaced from this other place, the room was empty. The witches dead. The device I’d been forced to power gone. I was weakened, and so I ran, taking the knowledge of what lay beyond the rift with me.”
His sister was dead.
Flora was dead. “Who’s been at the academy with you? The Flora we know…”
“A remnant. A memory. I created her. She is everything Flora was.”
The last thing I wanted right now was to feel any empathy for him, but I couldn’t help it. He’d been used and abused. The witches had killed his sister. He’d been alone…
“I’m sorry for what they did to you.”
