They drag me down the corridor, my bare feet scraping against the stone. The air grows colder as we approach the reinforced cell. They wrench the door open, and the hum of his power washes over me, a wave of cold that has nothing to do with the temperature.
They shove me inside.
The cell is larger than mine, and he is in the center of it, a fallen constellation in the dark. The guards chain my wrist to a thick iron ring set into the far wall. The chain is long enough to allow me to stand or sit, but not to reach the door. Not to reach him, unless he comes to me.
The heavy door clangs shut, the sound echoing like a death knell. The bolt scrapes home, sealing me in the suffocating darkness with the creature.
For a long moment, there is only the sound of my own ragged breathing and the slow, shallow rasp of his. My eyes adjust to the near-total blackness, and his form slowly takes shape—a sprawl of pale limbs, silver hair, and the dark, broken lines of his wings. He is perfectly, utterly still. A predator in repose.
I press myself back against the wall, the cold stone biting into my skin. The chain clinks softly.
The sound, small as it is, seems to break a spell.
Across the cell, the Vrakken’s head moves. It is a slow, deliberate motion, the turn of a hunter who has scented prey. My blood freezes, a frigid tide that steals all warmth. My vision tunnels until his face is the only thing I can see.
And his eyes snap open.
They are not black like the Aethel’s. They are a true, starless abyss. A void that consumes the faint light, that promises nothing but cold, empty eternity. And they are fixed on me. Notwith confusion, not with pain, but with a chilling, absolute, and predatory focus.
2
EOIN
Pain is a simple fact. It informs me that the integrity of this physical form is compromised. Multiple lacerations. A compound fracture in the ulna of the left wing. Internal hemorrhaging is probable. The dark elves were…thorough.
My awareness floats in a cold, gray sea of sensation, or rather, the lack of it. Millennia of discipline have allowed me to erect mental walls around the pain, to observe it with clinical detachment. The dampening runes on the iron cuffs are the primary issue. They leech my power, leaving me in this weakened, deteriorating state. They hum with a discordant energy, an ugly stain on the silence of my mind.
Death is a logical outcome. My mission to infiltrate this stronghold and retrieve the Shadow Prism has failed. That is the only true failure. My own existence is a secondary concern. I have existed for eons. To cease is not a tragedy, it is simply an end.
A new element disrupts my assessment.
The heavy scrape of the cell door. The thud of a small body. A new scent floods the chamber, layering over the odors of stone, damp, and my own cooling blood. It is human. Female. Thescent is composed of fear—a sharp, acrid tang—and old grime, but beneath it, there is something else. A faint, clean hum, like the resonance of a plucked string at the edge of hearing.
My eyes remain closed. I take stock of her presence without movement. Her breathing is shallow, ragged. The rhythm of her heart is elevated. She is small, her weight barely registering on the stone floor. Insignificant. Another short-lived, fragile creature the elves use and discard. They have likely thrown her in here to die with me, a final, petty cruelty.
I perceive her with my other senses. A slight form, malnourished. A body full of old injuries etched into her skin—scars that speak of a life of sustained brutality. There is a faint, almost imperceptible glow to her, a pale golden light visible only to a Vrakken’s eyes, clinging to her skin like dust motes in a sunbeam. This must be the source of the hum. Some low-level, latent magical ability. Purna, perhaps. It is rare in humans. A curiosity, but one that will expire with her.
More time passes. The gray sea of my awareness begins to darken at the edges. My body is failing.
The door scrapes open again. The scent of an Aethel guard, sharp and metallic, cuts through the gloom. He carries a torch, and the sudden light is a blow against my eyelids. I do not flinch. Stillness is my armor.
The guard hauls the female to her feet. She makes a small sound, a pained gasp. He is a large example of his kind, his movements efficient and brutal. He produces a knife. He does not approach me. Instead, he slices a shallow cut along the female’s forearm.
Her blood wells up, a dark ruby line against her pale skin. It smells… different. The faint hum intensifies, a resonant chord that vibrates in the marrow of my bones.
The guard drags her towards me, forcing her bleeding arm downwards. I understand his purpose. A crude experiment. Heintends to see if her life force can stabilize my own. It is a futile gesture. I have fed from a thousand vessels. None have ever mattered.
He presses her arm against my lips. The coppery scent of human blood is familiar, uninteresting. I have no need to resist; my body has already begun the final process of shutting down.
A single drop touches my tongue.
Cataclysm.
The universe collapses into a single point of blinding, white-hot fire. It is not healing. It is an annihilation of everything I am. The cold, silent void of my apathy—the core of my being, the discipline of ten thousand years—is shattered, flooded with a roaring, violent torrent of pure sensation. Heat. Power. A feeling so intense, so overwhelming, it borders on agony.
My form convulses, a primal, involuntary reaction to a sensation it cannot comprehend. The gray sea of my awareness is burned away by a sun going nova inside my skull. The pain from my wounds vanishes, not healed, but consumed by this new, terrifying fire. It is life, raw and undiluted, a poison to the perfect, empty stillness I have cultivated for centuries.
More.
