Dire Sparks (Song of the Aura, Book Five) Page 9

  She nodded again, took the knife, and laid it atop the pile of clothes. The right Morgen stepped away, and the center Morgen came forward. It reached out, touching her chin with one black-fingered hand. The touch was surprisingly normal. She had expected the cold of a corpse, or something equally unnatural.

  Then the Morgen’s nail bit into her chin, drawing a crimson line up the right side of her face so fast she didn’t have time to scream at the pain. Instead, she gasped, back and neck arching for a moment before she pulled herself back under control. It would not do to show weakness… especially now.

  “It… has begun,” said the center Morgen, stepping back. Then all three turned in a single motion, and filed out of her room. The door shut behind them on its own accord. Elia breathed deeply and evenly, trying to blot out the shock of the wound on her face. Gramling’s words echoed in her head, like a ghostly narrator. One to clothe, one to defend, one to mark. So that was what it all was.

  They’ll wait outside, he’d continued. Prepare, then meet them. Look humble. And don’t take longer than two minutes. Acolytes have been failed for it… and failure means death.

  The cut on her face burned, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding very much. Two minutes. Taking her chances, she uttered a quick prayer. Then she turned to the things on her bed.

  Silently undressing, she proceeded to clad herself in the testing gear. A short skirt of thick, protective netting, with long black strands underneath, metal studs dotting the fabric. A tight black shirt that wrapped some sort of protective mesh. Black wrappings for her upper legs and lower arms. High black boots with spikes. Wrappings for her hands. The knife over it all… and her hair tied back with the last black wrap.

  It feels cold.

  Ignoring the fear, pressing it down… it lent her speed. The face wound still burned. She wiped away a trickle of blood, then wiped her hand on the blanket. She wouldn’t need it after today, one way or another. She got up and went to the door with time to spare.

  Outside, the three Morgens formed a triangle around her. As they led her down the hallway, she noticed in an offhand way that all the other doors were ajar. So she was the last Acolyte to be tested, then. It took most of the ensuing walk, through passages and up stairways, down ramps and across halls, for her to realize just what that meant.

  Everyone else she had met, Tressa included, was either a full Pit Strider… or dead. And Tressa had been at a disadvantage anyway. Enough… she would have more than her own share of trouble in just a moment.

  Finally the Morgens escorted her out of a long, arched passage, and up a wide flight of stairs lit on either edge with several iron tripod braziers. The stairs ended abruptly in a high iron wall, with scores of large, curling runes burned into the metal. She recognized all three symbols of Striding, Sea, Stone, and Sky, as well as two she did not recognize, a star and a skull that she assumed to represent Spirit and Pit. In the center of the wall was a circular door of some ebony substance that looked like glass.

  The Morgen ahead of her peeled off, circling around her back. All three stood in a line, halting several yards from the door. She continued on alone until she stood before the polished surface of the door, never looking back for instruction. The ritual helped her concentrate, as she called to mind Gramling’s words.

  The tests are different every time, but similar in some ways. The first is Shadow. Always Shadow. The second is Flame. The third is Blood. The fourth is Dream.

  I can say no more.

  She stared at her reflection in the murky depths of the crystalline door. The face she saw staring back was pale. Gaunt. The spiraling wound from the Morgen’s nail curled across her cheek, looping under her eye like a fearsome tattoo. There was dark paint lining her lower eyelids, and her lips looked black. When had that happened? She didn’t remember doing it to herself. It matched her black hair… in all, she looked like some ghoulish princess. Not the image she preferred… but in a way, she looked coldly beautiful.

  “And it is so,” spoke the Morgens behind her, the harsh melody of their voices shocking her back into the moment. “Dark to dark, light to light. You will choose your way.”

  That didn’t sound like the right ritual… did it? Choosing wasn’t part of this.

  Six hands raised in unison, and six voices cried out guttural curses.

  The glassy surface of the door rippled, shook, and oozed away, creating a hole that grew steadily larger, until it was nearly as long across as she was tall.

  “Enter,” hissed the Morgens.

  Following Gramling’s instructions, she bowed before the darkness beyond the opening, once, then twice. Then she stepped through, gingerly avoiding the liquid glass. The wavy lengths of black cloth blew in the breeze as she moved.

  Then she was inside, and the dark glass flowed back into place behind her.

  Shadow. Flame. Blood. Dream.

  She could do this. She had to.

  ~

  The darkness around her was absolute. It was as if she had been blinded, her vision seared from her eyes, and this was all that had been left. Melancholy oppressed her like a suffocating wave, but she pushed it off with an effort and raised her hand to summon flames.

  Something whispered in the dark, and she halted. Instinct screamed at her not to light her flame… but why? She needed to see, didn’t she?

  Maybe not. Forcing herself to wait, Elia reached out with her mind, letting the awareness of her Striding Power press outward like a bubble, searching for the source of the noise, and the overwhelming sense of danger she felt.

  There were water particles in almost everything… even air. She had used them, once before, to lift her up just the tiniest bit higher than she could have jumped on her own. She’d escaped draiks that way… perhaps now she could use the air-water once more, for a different purpose.

  The glass maze that was her mind melted away, and she felt herself expanded and contained within each miniscule droplet of water that lingered in the hallway’s air. For it was a hallway, if an unusually large one. The contours of the air-water assured her of its exact shape.

  The mass of humidity was broken only by bumps in her awareness along each wall, torches, perhaps, though unlit. And there was an odd feel to this air-water… as if it were dirty, or tainted. Come to think of it, there was far more water in the air than she had ever felt before.

  Suddenly she realized where she had felt- no, smelled- this before. It was the same smell, the same murkiness, that an unlit whitewood torch smelled like. The Reethe had used a strange liquid drawn from the sea to burn wet wood, and they could even light the water on fire with it. Lighting her own fire… that could cause the air in the entire hallway to burst into flame!

  Thank the Aura I stopped to think. Elia edged forward down the tunnel, slightly crouched, keeping her senses alert for any traps. She had almost reached the first bump in her awareness, when there came a bubbling, frothing sound from behind her. She spun, feeling outward with the dirty water particles in the air. There was water, at least some, but it was mixed with a sludgy, slow-moving ichor that stank, pouring forth from the flat surface of the glass door with no regard for the natural laws of the world. The door hadn’t opened, yet the slimy substance kept coming. She felt it.

  It was almost to her feet now. She knew instinctively that touching it would mean hurt, poison, or death… to go forward, and quickly, was now her only option. The sludge was mere feet away. She tried not to breathe too deeply of the contaminated air, edging forward past the “bumps” on the walls near her.

  One of the bumps suddenly uncoiled, lashing out at her with a savage blow of hard metal edges. Her awareness barely warned her. She leaped aside, twisting and pulling the knife from its sheath by her side. Something like a dark tentacle of metal missed her by centimeters, recoiling. She landed, ducked a second swipe of the thing, and slashed it with the blade. There was a metallic screech as the tentacle was severed, and the thrashing appendage slapped to the ground with a clang.

&n
bsp; Liquid! sent her Striding sense, and she lurched to the side again. A hot, dark liquid sprayed past her from the tentacle’s metal stump, hissing as it struck the far wall. She winced, grunting as a few drops of the stuff burned into her shoulder like acid. For a moment, she crouched close to the ground, out of reach.

  Silence enveloped the corridor, except for the constant oozing of the black sludge from the glass door. After a moment, she dared to breathe easy again, crawling slowly forward in an attempt to sneak through the rest of the hallway.

  Then, with a whirring and gear-grinding, the rest of the metal tentacles on both walls uncoiled.

  Oh no.

  Elia abandoned all stealth, springing to her feet and sprinting down the hallway as fast as she could, knife held ready at her side. There was a tentacle for every yard of wall, on both walls, and all of them lashed out at her as she passed. The air was filled with whirring, whining sounds, and a low hissing that reminded her of water-serpents starving for their next kill.

  She slashed and stabbed, twirled and dodged, ducked and rolled. It was a deadly game of tag, where a single miniscule mistake could cost Elia her life… and the stakes were stacked against her, as all she had to “see” with was Striding. Nevertheless, she managed. The testing gear was well-made; the boots and fabric were immune to the acidic blood of the armored tentacle, and stomping on them with the spikes saved her life more than once.

  The spray caught her at least twice. It burned like the blazes, searing her skin and numbing her arms and legs for a moment wherever it hit. The tentacles were sharp, too, and for every two she cut apart, one would invariably gash her in the hand, or stomach, or knee. Tough as the Acolyte gear was, it could only take so much.

  The world became a blur of heat, and blood, and stink, and exertion. Her body felt a surge of power as the battle-fury took hold, but the farther down the hallway she ran, and the longer she fought, the more it ebbed away. Blindness became a mere inconvenience, as aching fatigue threatened to bring her down. The strangest part was the silence, broken only by the slithering movements of the tentacles and her own labored breathing.

  Then, suddenly, she was through, stumbling right into another black-glass portal that had somehow escaped her senses. Behind her, the remaining tentacles began to grow longer and longer, extending from the walls in a last-ditch attempt to slow her, but she had had enough.

  The dark sludge had almost reached her again. The snaky arms lashed out at her. She spun, thrusting out her free hand and yelling a hoarse battle-cry. The black blood inside the writhing machines boiled and exploded as she forced them apart with Sea Striding.

  Each and every tentacle burst into a hundred metal fragments, spraying the hallway with liquid and shrapnel. The force of the mental blow was so heated that sparks flew from the explosions, lighting the space with a blood glare.

  Oh…

  Fire blossomed, and a titanic explosion rocked the hallway. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, as red and yellow flames surged toward her in a blinding ball of fury. Just before they reached her, the glassy surface behind her seemed to give way, melting outward and literally sucking her through backwards. Inky darkness wrapped her, and for a moment she felt submerged in an infinite sea of nothingness…

  …Then she tumbled into empty space, where a burning inferno of an entirely different kind was raging.

  Chapter Ten: Writhing

  Elia screamed as she hurtled out from the glass portal, into a sea of fire. All around, the air itself burned. It was as if she had plunged into the heart of a volcano, or the maw of a dragon. Frantically she reached out to the air-water… but there was none here, where the air was sucked dry by the hungry flames.

  In the last second before the fire consumed her, her mind flitted back to the first time she had manipulated flame.

  You can protect yourself. Gramling’s words again.

  She threw her arms wide, willing the flames to part. As she fell into the inferno, it surged around her in a fiery shell… but it did not harm her. A stone floor appeared beneath her; she sheathed her knife and hit the ground in a roll, moving with single-minded fluidity. The paving felt bitterly cold, biting through her boot soles in total opposition of what should be.

  She almost collapsed: the strain on her Striding was so immense it seemed she would die in seconds. But I can’t give in. This is it. Win or die. So she held. She held, protected amid a sea of flame, and stepped forward. Just once. Then rest. Then another step. Then rest.

  Step by step, she crossed the cold ground, arms spread wide to keep the flames at bay. Above her was fury, around her was fury, on every side was the inferno. But she kept on, unfailing, fighting the weight of the flames with every ounce of strength she had.

  Fill me, Power of the Sea. Sustain me, Power of the Aura. Bring me life. Bring me victory!

  Elia kept on, never veering left or right. When at last the far wall came into sight, a sheer expanse of gray slate, no portal to be seen, she almost faltered. But the Sea of her blood sparked and glowed… the Power of Sea surged through her veins, and she took the last steps with a new vigor.

  Looking up, she spied something round and dark through the flames. The portal door. But it was far above her, too high to jump. She hesitated. The problem wouldn’t faze Gribly or Gramling, with their Stone Striding strength… but she was helpless against the problem.

  Or am I?

  Her newfound strength would last for a long time… but she had two more challenges to overcome, if Gramling’s words were true; and they had been trustworthy so far. Sea Striding was no help, not in the fiery air. So what…

  …A Fellspark. The idea came to her so unexpectedly she almost dismissed it. Fire couldn’t fight fire, as the saying went. But… perhaps it was powerful enough… if she could hold out… There was nothing for it but to try.

  She couldn’t cup her hands, outstretched as they were. For her plan to work, she would be exposed to the flame for a vital second or two. So she had to make the Fellspark as she was.

  Elia closed her eyes, and found the glass maze. Sweat soaked her hand wrappings, so it was not hard to find a bead of water to use as a prism. On a whim, she found two: one in each hand. It might over-tax her, but she needed all the power she could grasp. She gazed with her mind’s eye, summoning the white fury of her Striding…

  …and sparks jumped outward from each palm. Once, twice, thrice… and they held, little sizzling arcs of pure energy, building up in her hands.

  Power like she had never known flowed through her. She counted to three, and thrust her hands downward.

  She unleashed the Fellsparks. White light blinded her, and the sheer force of the Stride burned the stone at her feet to ash, shooting her upward with unparalleled force. She struck the wall, gasping as the heated surface scorched the exposed portion of her back. Her uniform was smoking as she rocketed towards the black portal, and for half a second the flames engulfed her…

  …but she felt the cool strangeness of the glassy door, and the pulling sensation…

  …and she slipped through into darkness once more.

  ~

  This time, there was a floor. Elia tumbled out of the darkness into a shaft of red light, bruising her knees on the smooth floor that met her immediately. Her Fellsparks died instantly as the post-Stride fatigue washed over her. The sound of her singed body hitting the stone echoed throughout the shady beyond, lasting for several seconds before dying out. The sound indicated that she was in a cavern again… from the echoes, probably the largest one yet.

  It wasn’t quite so dark in the vast expanse, and she could dimly make out the shapes of jagged, twisting stalactites and grasping, curling stalagmites; mighty shapes that stretched out to meet each other, forming a massive honeycomb of interconnecting strands. The cavern wasn’t empty then, but the holes and mazes of the mineral-formed rock made for an arching, hollow vista.

  Anything could be out there, she realized. There was water in the air… clean, cave humidity, if a bit stale
with age. No traps were evident, and the air would not light aflame if she caused a spark. Carefully, tiredly, she got to her feet, straining her eyes and her senses to make out any danger that awaited her in the cavern.

  There was none immediately apparent, and she knew she would have to face the next portion soon. Two minutes at each resting point. Don’t use them up. That was what Gramling had said. What had he told her the third test would be?

  Blood. Oh. So this would be the easy one, then. She almost chuckled at her own dry humor. Gribly would appreciate it, if she lived to tell him.

  The thought steeled her on, and she crept silently into the darkness, hand on her knife, mind alert and ready for Striding.

  But for the first tense minutes, nothing happened. She stole between pillars of rock, crossed shadows, slipped under massive pockmarked formations… and met nothing. No one. She refrained from lighting flame. She could see well enough without it, and it might alert whatever was supposed to be attacking her. As far as she could tell, she had crossed half the cavern’s space before anything of interest occurred.