Page 4 of The War of Wings
Fury
“And so the world will be plunged into a night so dark and fraught with suffering, the sun will take its last breath, the oceans will recede, and humanity will be nothing more than fodder for the darkness itself.”
-An excerpt fromProphecies of the Realm, writtenby Leon Mendorin
Chapter 1
Petra
“Fuck. Fuck.Fuck.” What a silly, inadequate fucking word, a meaningless incantation I chanted as if it were a prayer that could save me from the Darkness Beyond.
I felt the sensation of running. No, I was sprinting. Air rushed over what should’ve been my face. There was an undeniable burning sensation where my chest should’ve been. I could see and feel no physical form, felt none of the weight of the armor that I’d been wearing in the moments before I fell into nothingness. I hadn’t the slightest clue of what I was running toward, but I knew what I was running from.
“Welcome to the Darkness Beyond.”
Lord Evarius Castemont. Behind the gold and glory and finery of an Eserenian lord had been a snake, coiled in the tall grass, ready to sink his fangs into me.
Malosym. Leader of the Occulti.
“Fuck,” I ground out through gritted teeth. Was he following me? Could he follow me here?
Something chittered behind me, the high-pitched noise echoing through the darkness. My bodiless form lurched forward as my steps faltered and I hit the ground.Shit.Shit.Shit.The chittering was louder now, closer, my hands clawing aimlessly for something to grab onto,anythingto help me find my way upright.
The sensation of ground beneath my feet found me once again and I was running, pushing, flailing through this place in search of an escape.
“Katia? Rhedros?” I screamed into the pitch black, in search of the beings who’d given me life. Somewhere in this void, in this chasm of nothingness, they waited, imprisoned.
“She’s here,” someone, somethinganswered, whining and hissing like a chorus of mangled, choking whispers. I had no body and yet I could taste the metallic tang of fear, feel the skin at the back of my neck prickle with the feeling I was being watched.
I needed… I neededsomething.I didn’t know what. A way out of this darkness to anywhere else but here.
The voices were closer this time as they repeated, “She’s here.”
I yelped as something shot by my head, so close it skimmed my cheek. My hand flailed out to cast a bolt of fire in its direction, but not even a spark shone in the darkness. Still, I tried, as if maybe I could scrape up enough power from my barren veins to cast one shot. Maybe desperation was flammable and terror could be the fuel.
But it wasn’t enough, and all I could do was sprint into the wide open maw of oblivion, praying it would eventually lead me somewhere.
Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but the Darkness Beyond.
There was an emptiness inside me that had opened the moment Umbri sacrificed my powers back in Blindbarrow. Even now, I felt the same fear, the same dread that gripped mewhen I watched the Bloodsinger throw the vial of my blood against the wall, heard the glass shatter and the sound of my blood fizzling in the candle’s flame, rendering me powerless. The walls of that emptiness ached without my power to hold them in place, threatening to fall without their very foundation. The gnawing pain was so much worse here in the Darkness Beyond than it had been in the Human Realm, the loss so much more profound.
“Hello?” I screamed again. “Katia! Rhedros! Where are you?”
They had to be here somewhere. This is where they said they were imprisoned, right? In the Darkness Beyond? But I received no answer to my call, only the unmistakableclickof talons snapping behind me. I pushed impossibly harder, ran impossibly faster, careened through the darkness as I prayed to be anywhere but here.
Please, anywhere but here!
And suddenly, I was. I was somewhere else.
But the relief I felt was short-lived, quickly replaced by the sensation of falling. I had a body now — arms and hands and legs and feet that all flailed and thrashed as I tried to make sense of which way was up and which way was down and where the fuck I was and–
Darkness, once again.
???
“She’s breathing!” a voice called frantically. “Holy shit! She’s breathing!”
A distant part of me began to rouse, one that had been sleeping since the last time I heard that voice. Another me in another life had known it well, almost as well as my own.
