Page 8 of The Dragonrider and the Void
A chilling bite crept its way through her broken wrist. White Eye’s draconic magic flowed through her, their combined magical energy bolstering the dragonrider half of the runes. Lark frowned as the warmth from their bond passed right through her to seep into the wall, while the cold continued spreading into her.
Something’s missing,Lark thought.
White Eye huffed in confirmation. Only the dragonrider script glowed. The fae symbols remained unchanged. The runes weren’t reacting to their influence in the way she was expecting. The chill in her body spread. Nix’s warmth was the only thing keeping her body from seizing up.
There’s a second pattern of magic here,Lark thought.It’s fae… and it’s unwinding. If I can somehow weave the two magic sources back together…
Lark split her focus, one half channeling the flow through her dragon bond, the other using Nix’s connection to the fae realm. Lark closed her eyes, letting both bonds pass through her at once. Her broken wrist and punctured side screamed in protest as she lifted her injured arm and pressed both palms firmly against the writing carved into the wall. In that moment, Lark wove the two powers together and combined them.
“How can this be possible?” she whispered, feeling the power within acting as a template for her to blend dragonrider magic with fae magic. The effort sent pain shooting through wrist and on down to her wounded side, but she sensed something else there, too. It was a resonance in the stone, as if the binding spells recognized her attempt to mend the uniquely crafted wards and reacted.
A ripple crossed the pool.
“Lark,” Nix warned, her voice sharp with concern.
“This is working,” Lark insisted, through gritted teeth, fighting the pain.
The script began to glow. Dragonrider runes and the fae glyphs turned purple with unfamiliar magic. Where the two powers merged, the stone itself seemed to come alive. To her joy, the dark veins of corrupt magic began to recede, their vines shrinking and branches shortening to expose bare rock underneath.
The surface of the pool began moving in a deliberate pattern. A tendril of the pool’s substance rose from its surface, dripping with oily slime as a tentacle stretched out toward them. Out of the corner of her eye, Lark spotted it feeling blindly through the air. Her focus faltered.
“No,” Lark growled, calling on more power to feed into the runes. Pain flashed, blurring her vision. The fracture in her wrist and the wound in her side felt as though they would burst into flames. Lark attempted to pull back, but she couldn’t close the gateway. The power flowing through her was like flash flood. Panic struck.
The tentacle trained on Lark and hit with the speed of a viper. Its physical form fractured in the glow of the light emitting from the runes. Then recoiled.
White Eye growled at the tendril, his focus set on maintaining Lark’s effort. Heat flared through her as Lark felt the surge he was sending. She thought she might burn to a crisp. She released a cry of pain and then surprise. The wound in her side hissed an instant before her arm popped, but not from breaking. The amount of power passing through her fused her skin, muscle, and bone back into place within moments.
White Eye roared, fracturing stalactites that fell and shattered as they hit the floor. Suddenly, the power of both bonds broke apart, coming untethered, and splitting back into two separate flows. As they did, the control over them started toreturn and she immediately pulled back. She withdrew power, her body cooling instantly. She experienced a moment of relief from the intensity of the energy transfer and from pain now that her arm and side had healed.
Her reprieve was short lived, though, as more tendrils rose from the pool. Their movements were becoming more frenzied and erratic. Though difficult to imagine, the darkness within them deepened, drinking in the light Lark had created through the runes. Lark’s power had been gutted and Nix’s fiery form flickered dangerously.
“The runes,” Nix’s voice crackled. “The spells in them weren’t just containing this creature, they were weakening it too.”
Lark watched as the colors emitting from the runes unwound and faded. “I couldn’t control them both. The binding is coming apart. Whatever spells were in these runes were beyond my skill to mend,” Lark said in horror.
“It’s drinking in each of the powers one at a time, it’s growing stronger now,” Nix said, watching as tentacles of oily void reached out from the pool.
It feeds on singular sources of magic… one flow at a time,Lark realized.That’s why binding two forms of magic was successful in containing it.
Lark remembered then what this consumption of energy had felt like. It was the same sensation that she’d felt when Barrik forced her to duel with a syphon during her training as a younger rider.
“That’s why the dragons couldn’t destroy it without help from another source. Every attack originating from one source of power made it stronger.”
She turned to Nix, thinking,White Eye brought us here because he sensed this place was under attack, but without knowing how to wield both bonds together at once, we werenever going to reform the spells that have bound this creature here.
The tentacles struck again. Lark stumbled and caught herself with one hand against the cavern wall. The script flared beneath her touch but fizzled at her inability to force two forms of power back together.
“Lark, it’s trying to escape,” Nix warned.
“I can’t just give up. I need to try again,” Lark said, planting both her hands back onto the dragonrider and fae runes. She drew on White Eye’s bond, then on the bond with Nix. Both powers flowed through her again. But this time they rejected one another, forcing her body to heat even faster than before. The harder she tried to put them together, the closer to burning up she came. Now that the powers had come apart, she couldn’t weave them back together.
“Nix, the fire. Pull it back.”
“What?” The fire fae’s voice shook.
White Eye growled, bolstering Lark’s abilities.
“Trust me. Both of you need to trust me.”
