Page 36 of The Dragonrider and the Void
“Whatever magic they’re using, it’s devouring the life out of our town, bit by bit.”
Hardin helped Pell regain his footing, his decision made. “We’re not waiting until midnight.” He turned to Quinthara, their thoughts aligning. “Can you sense how deep the magic in these runes goes? If we tried to destroy them here at the square, what would that do to the people?”
Together they extended their mental probe, searching the power within the runes.
“They run deep, feeding down into whatever is in that cave,” he concluded.
He got the sense from Quinthara that breaking them individually might hurt the people more than help them. If they were going to break this curse, they needed to break the runes all at once.
“Can we do it, though?” Hardin asked.
Quinthara’s determination agreed with him. They had to try.
He faced Marra again. “The caves were sacred for a reason. Our people should never have been forced to go in there.”
His sister’s eyes widened. “It’s down there, feeding. They need to keep it satiated, or it will—” She doubled over, the dark stains on her skin extending further up her neck.
Hardin supported Marra as she struggled to stay upright. The stains on her skin had spread noticeably in just the short time they’d been talking. Whatever was feeding on the townspeople’s life force had suddenly grown hungrier.
“Quin,” he said aloud, though their thoughts were already aligned. “We need to get into those caves. But if Thorgan is there…” Hardin felt a sensation. Quinthara shared her plan with him. An instant later he said. “Do it.”
Together, they approached the cave entrance. The runes glowed brighter as they neared, pulsing with a sickly rhythm that matched the mechanical movements of the townspeople.
Quinthara’s warning reverberated through Hardin. She reared up, spreading her wings to cast a shadow over the mouth of the cave. Drawing in a deep breath, she released. Where normally fire came blasting forth, she expelled a resonating hum that made the air itself vibrate. The sound sent ripples through the flow of magic feeding the runes.
The effect was immediate. The townspeople stumbled, their rhythmic movements disrupted by the blast. At the sluice box, his mother dropped her bucket, water splashing across the ground as her hands flew to her head.
“Again,” Hardin urged, placing his hands on the stone beside the cave entrance. The magic was trying to reform its patterns. The spell was trying to maintain its grip on the people like magical wards tried to block people out.
Quinthara’s hum deepened, and she added a trickle of their own power. Hardin’s pride swelled as he marveled at her ingenuity.
A crack appeared in the stone, splitting one of the central runes. The flow of magic began to unravel, but a force fought to stitch it back together. A surge of bone-chilling air swelled up from deep within the cave. Frost spread across the rocks, filling in the cracks where Quinthara’s draconic powers were disrupting the runes.
“It’s protecting itself,” Marra gasped from behind him.
Hardin felt it then. Layers of magic, like sheets of ice, one laid over another. Thorgan’s spells were just the surface. Beneath them lay an older power, something even more sinister.
Quinthara’s hum changed pitch, harmonizing with some deep note that Hardin could feel in his bones. The townspeople were stirring now, their movements becoming more natural as the spell’s hold weakened.
The frost from the cave spread faster, trying to reform the broken runes. But now Hardin understood. It wasn’t just about breaking the bindings. They had to sever the connection to whatever was feeding on his people’s life force.
Together, they ventured hesitantly into the cave.
The deeper they went, the colder it became. Frost coated the walls in intricate patterns that mirrored the runes outside, glowing with the same white light. They found a man who’d beencarrying a bucket back down into the depths. He was slumped against the wall. Hardin checked him, the man was unconscious but still breathing. Others dotted the sides of the path as the cave transformed into something of an ice tunnel.
“Whatever or whoever is doing this, their magic is stronger here,” Hardin said, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked back at Quinthara. “Can you get them out?”
The dragon’s response was immediate. She carefully gathered those who’d fallen unconscious from a lack of energy. Using her wings to shield them from the biting cold, she backed out of the cave.
Hardin pressed forward alone. Eventually the passage opened into a larger frozen chamber. He stopped short. These walls were covered in thick glacial ice. Black veins shot through the ice, funneling toward a mound near the center of the cave where a human-sized pillar of washed stones rose up from the floor. Veins of darkness flecked with silver light fused into the stoney monolith. Resting atop the pillar was something Hardin had never seen before.
“Is that, an egg?” he breathed.
There was no mistaking it. The dragon egg was massive, bigger around than a round shield. Hardin was nearly six-feet tall and it would’ve come to hip height on him had it been resting on the ground.
That’s much larger than I imagined,he thought. Hardin had sung songs about the hatching grounds of the first twelve dragons, but he’d always imagined them being more the size of something that would contain a cat or a small dog.
It’s scaley green shell was the same hue as the emerald the Paragons and Knights wore to represent Storm Keep. Despite its stunning magnificence, the dragon egg was crawling with the same darkness that crept its way through the ice. Those sameevil tendrils that were marking his loved ones and devouring the life force of everyone in his hometown.
