Page 9 of The Dragonrider and the Void
The tendrils of darkness writhed closer, drawn to the power flowing through her. Lark closed her eyes, shutting off her access to both bonds at once.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the weight of defeat.
The tendrils began to twist, turning inward. The once-calm pool shifted, rising to take the shape of a humanoid figure. The light from the runes faded. White Eye folded Lark and Nix under his wings. He roared, jaws snapping as everything went dark. A shriek pierced the cave, followed immediately by a howling wind as a torrent swirled around them, then vanished.
Lark pushed past her dragon’s wings. Nix’s glow revealed their horrifying discovery. The runes no longer shimmered with power. They were completely devoid of magic. The dark pool atthe center of the cavern was gone, leaving behind nothing but bare stone.
“Lark, what did we just do?” Nix asked.
Dread filled her as White Eye confirmed her feelings with the terrible truth.
“We set it loose. The thing that created the rimeshade is free,” Lark replied, her voice trembling.
3
WRITTEN IN FROST
Lark rushed out of the chamber and into the crag, her pounding footsteps echoing off the stone walls. The dark veins of rimeshade corruption were gone, but the thin layer of rime frost remained.
“It’s on the move!” Lark said, her mind racing in trying to understand what had transpired. White Eye and Nix followed close behind.
As they ran, Lark tested her wrist. Somehow, the channeling of so much regenerative power had healed her. She prodded at her side but felt no pain or wetness from the stab wound. The immense amount of magic she’d allowed to pass through her would’ve killed most magi. But Lark had White Eye and Nix to share the load.
I was controlling it in the beginning,she thought.I managed to weave together both sources of power for a short time.
You’ve never combined them successfully before,Nix replied to her thoughts.
White Eye hummed with confusion. This was new to dragonriders of their era. No other rider they knew of had ever successfully combined these two channels of magic.
“I lost control,”Lark said. “It was because of me that the runes unraveled.”
“The thing that created the rimeshade… The entity that was in that pool, it absorbed each of the draconic and fae powers once they had unwound,”Nix replied.
I gave it the strength it needed to break free,Lark worried.
“We can track it. It’s leaving traces,” Nix said, watching as the frost thawed to water, dripping down the walls as it melted.
“We can’t let it leave the sanctuary,” Lark said, sprinting to the crag entrance, White Eye and Nix close on her heels, both ready to fight whatever they encountered.
Before they emerged into the courtyard, Lark skidded to a stop. She quickly tracked the lines of frost trailing the creature’s path. Ice collected in its wake, seeming to gather around any runes carved into paving stones within reach.
“Those runes still hold magic,” Lark said. “The frost is collecting around them, like it’s concentrating on the dragonriders’ stores of power.”
“It’s feeding on the energy stored within them,” Nix observed.
White Eye stepped forward and drew in a breath to release a blast of dragon fire that would melt away the entity’s grip on the runes.
“Wait,” Lark said, stopping him. “Whatever that thing is, it’s consuming energy as it encounters it. If you breathe fire on it, it could expose a pathway to your draconic power. If it got hold of it, it might syphon off us and weaken us both.”
White Eye shifted his body, butting his side up against her and nibbling with his lips at the bed roll secured to the back of Lark’s saddle.
“What’s gotten into you?” Lark asked, checking to see what was irritating him.
Lark’s eye was pulled to the bed roll. There, hidden underneath, she noticed the black sheath of a brismil sword. The scabbard carved from a dragon’s fang had been carefully concealed and secured to the saddle.
“My brismil,” Lark realized. “I should be using my armor. It might protect me against any syphoning attack the entity will use.”
She quickly flipped up the saddle blankets to reveal Nightfang. Wrapped around the sheath were the leather straps of her scale harness. To her joy, she found the matching black scale still snugly in place.
