Page 16 of The Dragonrider and the Void
A hallway?he hoped, envisioning a way out.
The heavy wooden door stood partially open, frost coating its hinges. He pushed it wide open to what looked to be a workshop. Tables held the now-familiar clear containers, the same as those lining the shelves he’d walked past. But these jars weren’t empty. They glowed like Yogo Sapphires with an electric blue energy in liquid form. He blinked, and suddenly each of the jars seemed to hold different shades of blues and greens.
Near the back of the workshop, he spotted a larger container. The crimson in it made his heart jump. This appeared to Venrick to be the exact color of the cursed amulet that had been locked around his neck by the Archmagus. Something in the liquid swirled with a slightly green quality. A chill ran down his spine.
That’s dragon blood!
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Venrick spun around. Lady Sanj stood in the doorway. Her human-like disguise dissolved, the perfect youthful beauty dissipated, returning her to her true form. The rimeshade was humanoid in form, but her skin appeared frosty white with a faint greenish glow as if she were sculpted from glacial ice. She stood as tall as Venrick and her eyes were glossy, like snow-covered lakes in the middle of winter. Her frost-spiked hair shifted from snow white to dark black at its roots. She was slender, almost gangly, but had the same high cheek bones, pointed nose, and full lips as Lark’s fire fae. Only where Nix’s colors were red, yellow and orange, the rimeshade’s were that glacial white with a haunting green under-glow. Every section of exposed skin was tattooed with a glowing blue ink that was scribed in some arcane language. She was wrapped a shifting black robe that swirled and plumed like smoke.
“The Magus said you’d come,” she continued, exposing her white pointed fangs. When she spoke, her voice crackled with the sound of breaking ice. “Though I admit, I expected you to come when we had the rider, not now. One of your bloodline and training should’ve been harder to coax onto our trail.” She sounded disappointed.
“The elf,” Venrick said. “Where is she?”
The rimeshade’s smile was cruel as winter. “Contributing to something far greater than herself. As will you.”
The temperature plunged to near freezing. Venrick reached for his sword, knowing it was little protection against arimeshade. She could make his blood freeze in a matter of moments if she wanted to. Venrick’s only defense was the Yogo in the pommel of his sword. It still had some power. He prepared to speak the elven language and spell cast, despite his rudimentary knowledge of it. In that moment, when he drew his sword, he bumped into a shelf behind him. The jar on it containing the dragon blood rattled, then fell, shattering on the floor. The dragon’s blood didn’t spill, however. Instead, the vibrant green magic came alive and rushed toward the veins in the floor, drawn like metal to a magnet. Instantly he felt something respond to it. A presence stirred from deep within the ground. Something old. Something angry.
The veins in the floor blazed with sudden green light. It surged through them, lighting like liquid fire. The rimeshade’s tattoos flared in response, their glacial glow intensifying. She took a step back, fear creasing the silver lines of her face.
“Impossible,” she whispered. “The wards he used here should have?—”
Venrick felt it then. The magic from the dragon blood was flowing toward him.
Venrick’s magical senses tingled with the approaching energy. This was a power more raw than any he’d ever known. Far more so than anything that could be drawn from a Yogo and even more so than that of brismil. A black tendril of the rimeshade’s power suddenly lit up when the dragon’s blood touched it. Instantly the vein peeled away from the rest and wrapped in a circle just before Venrick’s feet. Glowing green light flared up, forming a column of protective power around Venrick. As the draconic magic encircled him, a sense of strength surged through his core. The energy became a river of power, ripping wildly through him as it begged to be turned loose through a spell. Venrick had no idea how to shape it, but knew if he didn’t it would tear him apart.
“You fool!” the rimeshade snarled. She lashed out with her veins of icy power. The dark energy fought with the draconic power rising around him. The clash created a storm of ice crystals and swirling light. The rimeshade raised her hands, the blue tattoos blazing brighter as she attempted to contain whatever Venrick had awakened.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “He’ll destroy Haven’s Edge, killing us all. Not even your Morsythian allies can save you now.”
“Morsythians?” Venrick replied. Cheyanne was taking the Morsythians on a mission…Did she just say, this place is called Haven’s Edge?
The ground trembled and another container slipped off the shelving and shattered on the ground. Then another. The magic now released swirled around them like a vortex of power and light. It poured into veins of darkness carved through the stone ground as if seeking a host. Venrick braced himself as the powers turned their attention toward him. More of the tendrils of frost-coated darkness thawed, illuminating with absorbed magical energy. Just as Venrick thought his body couldn’t withstand any more of the magic, the flow took a sharp turn away from him. The light charged through the veins of rimeshade corruption, pulsing out away from him.
That’s when he became aware of a presence beneath them. His elven senses tingled downward, noting a force beneath the stone. Whatever it was projected ripples of anger through the very foundation of the cellar. The stones slabs cracked, revealing something other than earth beneath. The material reflected light like polished metal. Venrick cocked his head as a massive dragon scale emerged from the ground.
That’s a scale?he thought.But it can’t be. The dragon that scale belongs to would need to be enormous. As large as thisentire town…He looked at it again. There was no mistaking what it was despite its ridiculous size.
“Brismil?” Venrick breathed.
“Not brismil, you idiot. The beast is still here in our plane of existence,” she croaked.
He’d almost forgotten that she was in the room. “You’re saying a dragon is here, underneath Haven’s Edge?” he said, trying to maintain his balance as the ground continued to fracture.
“This is part of something far beyond your human understanding,” Lady Sanj replied, her voice losing its cruel edge, to be replaced by genuine fear. “If you don’t help me contain this creature, we’re all doomed. Not even your allies will be able to escape Trandor’s reawakening.”
Before Venrick could argue, the chamber shuddered again. A crack spread across the ceiling, and somewhere above, someone screamed.
This distilled energy that’s been spilled is going into the veins of corruption. They’re connected to this giant beast. It’s drawing back the power they’ve syphoned off it. That’s how this giant has remained buried for so long; it has been severely weakened.
As Venrick tried to comprehend the timeline of this fantastical operation, the ground trembled again.Just how long has this rimeshade been syphoning power off a dragon? Long enough to bury it and build a town on top,he answered himself.How could that be?
The dragon’s reawakening threatened to tear apart the entire underground network of chambers he’d stumbled into. If it succeeded, he’d lose any chance of finding Yarla and learning what the rimeshade had planned for Lark.
Venrick had seconds to act.
The veins flashed green, and in that brief illumination, he saw it. A shadow moving behind the rimeshade, something large, blue-skinned and wearing leather armor.
