So, as the rest of the Keep of Flames dreamed, Azric Cyrus waited. Armed with a wooden training sword and a stuffed dragon, he lay in his bed alone and prepared himself for the thing that terrified him.
Deep inside him, he felt the disgust welling up from somewhere far away. The shadows on the walls began to waver and change. Tomorrow, there would be tiny lines where those shadows had eaten away at the stone, but that didn’t matter to the young Prince. He was not a protector of Keeps. He was a protector of his friends, of hisfamily.
So, even though fear filled his tiny, seven-year-old body, the soul which inhabited that body did the only thing it knew to do. He got out of bed, one arm wrapped around the dragon that looked so much like Inni, and his other hand tightly gripping the wooden sword he was using to learn to fight with.
He moved silently, as his Uncle Darian had taught him, using shadows to muffle the squeak of the hinges on his door. He didn’t want whatever was hurting his aunt to know he was coming. On this night, he would make sure no one would hurt her ever again.
Using his powers of Steel to grow pixie wings, he hovered an inch above the ground and moved silently down the hall to the room where Echo was staying. The hand holding his sword shook, but he didn’t falter in his resolve to help her.
As he neared her room, he heard her scream in pain. He heard her writhe, body flailing on the other side of the door. Someone orsomething was in there hurting her like it did every night. No one else was brave enough to walk in and save her. Even the Prince’s father had told him to never go into Aunt Echo’s room.
But the young Azric couldn’t let his friends or family hurt if he could stop it any more than his father could. He already knew his destiny—he would lead the entire world to fight the real enemy. If he were strong enough to do that, he could help his aunt fight whatever was terrorizing her.
So, with a shaking hand, he opened her door, his training sword at the ready, as his father had taught him. Except there wasn’t anything in his Aunt Echo’s room. There were no monsters or evil men. Shadows whipped around his aunt, their contact with the walls, ceiling, and floor leaving thin lines in their wake. His mother would have to fix that in the morning.
Shadows didn’t scare Azric like they’d scare anyone else, his mother included. He could protect himself from them. Echo herself had taught him how.
He watched as she screamed, her body straining against invisible bonds that held her wrists and ankles to the bed. The covers were already on the floor, a twisted knot which showed just how long she’d been fighting whatever tormented her.
He did the only thing he could think of. He reached for her, his tiny hand shaking his aunt’s shoulder. Maybe if she were awake, she could tell him how to help her.
Her eyes snapped open, pure fury in them, and shadows wrapped around the boy. But he slipped them using a trick she’d taught him, moving into the Void and back out to stand a foot away. It didn’tkeep him safe for long, but it was long enough for Echo to come to her senses.
“Azric? What are you doing here? You know no one is supposed to come into my room at night.”
The boy swallowed hard, his training sword falling to his side as he clung to the stuffed dragon. “You were hurting, Aunt Echo. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I thought I could help. I thought I could protect you from the bad things that hurt you every night.”
She sighed and motioned for him to go to her. The little boy crawled into bed beside his aunt, and she hugged him, savoring the warmth and goodness that he exuded constantly.
“Azric, you can’t save me or protect me from my nightmares. That’s all they are. They’re just memories of a very bad time I went through.”
He turned his head to look at his aunt. “What time was so bad that you have nightmares every night? One time, I fell off Inni, and I was so scared. That was a bad time, but I’ve only had three nightmares about it.”
Her constant smile faded then as she thought back on what caused the nightmares that never truly ended. “You’ve heard how champions are made, haven’t you?”
The boy nodded. “A god takes you to their world, and they teach you how to be strong.”
“Well, my god, Nyxthos, is not a kind god. His training was meant to hurt me and scare me. He spent a very long time doing this, making sure I wouldn’t break no matter what happened.”
Azric snarled like he’d seen Inni do when something made her mad. “Then I need to fight him so that he can’t hurt you anymore. Maybe then you won’t be scared.”
She shook her head, part of her wishing he could do just that. “No, you can’t fight him. He’s a god, Azric. He doesn’t hurt me anymore, though. All that’s left are the memories. I’m sorry you had to witness it, but there’s nothing you can do to help. It’s okay, though. We live in a world of gods, and my time with Nyxthos taught me that sometimes you must become the monster to be strong enough to protect the ones you love.”
Azric took a deep breath as he thought, and then he sat up suddenly, completely ignoring the fact that Echo tried to brush off his desire to help her. Moving fast enough that he almost hit Echo with his training sword, he pushed his stuffed dragon to her. “Take little Inni. She keeps me safe at night. I don’t need her anymore since big Inni always watches me when I’m sleeping. Maybe she can protect your dreams like big Inni protects me.”
And Echo Vael, Queen of Shadows and Champion of Darkness and Secrets, took the little boy’s stuffed dragon. She’d meant to do it just to make the boy feel better, but when she woke in the morning, her covers were still on her. After Prince Azric checked on her, after he’d given her his dragon, she’d slept soundly for the first time in almost sixty years.
Don’t you dare get hurt.The Prince of Bones’s words were nothing but a nuisance as the red dragon fell through the air. The cut along her side ached where the shadow lance sliced through four scales. It wasn’t the worst wound she’d ever received, but like the rest, this wouldn’t ever truly heal. Her scales would forever be dulled because of it.
The pain and injury would be worth it, though. If they could end this war, they could learn to work together with the other champions. They could train without all this violence to work against a single enemy. The red dragon would go through nearly anything to make sure they were prepared for the Hunters.
The air sung around them as the dragon feigned a loss of control and consciousness.This is going to hurt,she told the Prince as they neared the ground. Her wings fluttered above her, appearing as if she wasn’t conscious.
The Champion of Darkness was watching. They both knew this. Echo Vael always watched them when they stepped onto a battlefield together. More than any other enemy, she paid attention to her nephew.
When they were only a few dozen feet from the ground, Inni’s wings tightened, slowing them drastically. It wasn’t enough to stop their fall, but they weren’t in any true danger. The Prince of Bonesand his dragon hit the ground with a dramatic crash. The Prince was thrown from his seat, flying almost fifty feet from where his dragon lay motionless.
He didn’t move. She was there in an instant. Alone, without Vyran, just as they’d planned. A spear made of shadows was in her hand as she walked toward her nephew, not to check to see if he was alive nor to kill him. No, she was there because her soldiers needed souls to create more demons from. She needed to pillage Averna’s villages, reaping the lives of its humans.
