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A cold heaviness settled over me. This manwasme. He was everything I was bound to become.
“You’ve returned.” His voice seemed hoarse from misuse, and he rubbed one of his marred hands along the exposed, pale skin of his neck.
“So… Are you meant to be me?” Some kind of dream creation of my subconscious mind? His clothes were more filth than fabric, but despite his obvious disheveled experience, he didn’t exude an ounce of discomfort. If anything, he appeared strangely…confident.
“I am the Lost.” His shadows inched him closer. “And the Lost are me.”
Well, I supposed that was true. All I felt was lost.
“Riddles in my dreams. Lovely.” I let out an exasperated sigh.
The man shook his head once. “Not a riddle. Not a dream.”
“Right, well, can you tell me what I’m supposed to get out of this?” I gestured wide to include the raging ocean and mist-filled expanse at my back. His eyes tracked my movements, and all atonce I’d realized he’d yet to blink. The chill I’d been missing earlier attacked my bones, and I shivered.
“Get?” Again, the tendrils around his body pushed him forward. “What do you want?”
“I want to control the shadows, like you.” I nodded to the spires forming around him, and he chuckled darkly.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do!” My hands formed neat fists by my side.
In a rush he was on me, only a breath away, his shadows licking my skin. “No, you don’t.” Without pulling back, he whispered into my ear, “You want them gone.” And then he gripped my hand so tightly that pain shot through my tendons. With a deliberate tap, he pointed to the Charmer’s emblem hidden beneath my glove.
“No.” My denial was equally quiet and full of none of the confidence he wielded.
He sighed, a raspy, horrific sound like a rake being dragged over stone. “I know. I was like you once.” He released my hand. “And soon, you will be me.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
One of his tendrils snaked out of his aura and reared back. It struck hard and fast with the precision of a viper, leaving a slit across my cheek. The tang of copper filled my nostrils.
“I’ll let you in on a secret. You cannot control what does not want to be tamed. You should know that better than anyone else, Charmer,” he said. Slowly, he dragged one of his fingers along the cut his shadow made, and he brought my blood to his lips. His eyes slipped closed.
Fingers trembling, I wiped away the rest as my skin began to heal. “What’s going to happen to me?”
When he opened his eyes again, the whites had gone bloodshot, and an eerie smile claimed his lips. “Are you ready to find out?”
Deep, rumbling bells rang somewhere in the distance, and suddenly everything was too loud—the crashing waves like piercing cymbals, the building crescendo of roaring insects, even the slither of shadows now more like the sharp, hair-raising scrape of metal on metal. Again the bells tolled, and with that unsettling intonation the ground shook. Fractures split the beach and a void opened beneath us as black sand poured into the abyss. Only his shadows kept me from suffering the same fate, but I wasn’t sure what was worse—him or the fall.
With the flick of his wrist, one shadow formed a deadly spear, and he poised it above my throat. I swallowed, feeling the bite of it against my skin and the subsequent heat of my blood. But before he could curl his fingers and command his weapon, the bell rang again, and this time his shadows shuddered. An electrical current surged through the tendrils, and they released me into the void. A scream ripped through my lungs as I tumbled downward. Wind whistled by my ears and the world swam out of focus, until the bells sounded again and I shot out of bed.
Chest heaving, I gripped my nightstand for purchase and allowed myself a minute to acclimate. I was still in the Lavender room. The same velvet petals hung over my head, and Kost’s damn glasses were still angrily intact in their package on the floor. As my heartbeat returned to an acceptable pace, I began to pick up on the sounds of the surrounding inn, and once again my pulse skyrocketed.
Horror-filled screams rose above the constant toll of a bell. Something was wrong. I burst into the hall to collide with a frantic throng of people all running in opposite directions. I spied the barmaid at the end of the hall, trying to convince patrons to remain in their rooms and board up their doors and windows. I made it to her in the span of a breath.
“What’s going on?”
Her body trembled in response, but she managed one shaky word. “Monsters.”
The bell tolled again and then was abruptly cut off, followed by a resounding boom. I felt the reverberation in the ground as it traveled up my feet and through to my hands. Without seeing it, I knew. Something had brought the tower down.
“Keep everyone indoors,” I said to the barmaid before turning on my heels and speeding down the hall. I couldn’t sense Kost, Calem, or Ozias’s shadows, which meant they were already outside dealing with the possible threat. I needed to get to them. Fast. My training with Kost surfaced in my mind, and I focused on my shadows as I ran. Not for protection, not for defense, but for movement. Something simple, something that wouldn’t accidentally hurt anyone. With the curl of my fingers, I beckoned them to me—and to my surprise, they came. They snaked around buildings and wrapped themselves around my ankles. I didn’t have time to marvel at the sensation, at the swell of relief in my chest. I just kept running. Aided by their power, I was at the edge of the town in seconds, and I faltered at the sight.
The splintered structure of the tower lay in a heap, the bell cracked and sinking into the soft mud of the earth. Ozias stood at the mouth of a bridge practically pushing locals into a nearby cottage. Down on the marsh, Calem and Kost stood back-to-back, each one holding glittering, ink-black weapons as they stared down a gaggle of Slimacks.
Slimacks?They were supposed to be solitary creatures, and yet here they were, acting as a pack. Furthermore, they weren’t undead monsters. They were true, livingbeasts. Their wormlike, fleshy bodies were pink and still coated in a thick mucous membrane. If they’d been touched by death, Kitska beasts like Boo and Rook, I would’ve known. But these beasts… They seemed perfectly normal—attackaside. Each one moved across the earth on four, squatty legs as they kept their bloated bellies elevated above the marsh. It was absurd to see them above the earth and rampaging like this. They preferred to live underground and would press their legs flush with their bodies as they chowed through even the densest dirt to burrow deeper and deeper.
