DOTD Chapters 18- 19

Fate calls, Fluer answers. Lucien wakes to track a surge of power in the woods.

CHAPTER 18:


Barefoot in the wet grass. The necklace was ablaze…I was ablaze. Pressure swirled and danced along my insides, uncoiling from my mostly healed chest and joining the blood in my veins. Everything was awake. Everything was alive. Gravity pulled at my birthmark, not down but forward…into the thick wood.

I wasn’t sure how I’d woken, how I’d crawled out of bed and gotten here. I didn’t know why I was walking into the trees; I just knew I had to. Something was calling my name, whispering to the weaving of my soul. Something was tugging my body and spirit, a thread of spider silk, a tethered invisible string.

It eased my steps through the darkness, guiding me with ease along paths I’d never walk. Where I was, I wasn't sure. It didn’t matter. All I knew was to follow the fiber to where it beckoned. Something waited for me, something I had to do. Twinkling specs of silver peeped through the trees, the midnight breeze kissing my heels and brushing sweetly through my white night gown. I was a lone feather drifting on stormy water, my destination unknown. Strands of my loose hair joined in the chorus of nightlife as I followed, listened, obeyed.

It was denser here, the thick maze of branches and shadows. My birthmark welled with impending weight, a small ball of metal settled in the tip of my finger. It drew me further still.

This was stupid.
Incredibly stupid.

I knew what stalked the night in these woods. I was wounded, aside from my dagger—denfenless, and yet I couldn't shake the insatiable need to press on. My limbs were in synch with the beckoning, traveling along the still, small voice that whispered. It was as if my feet were not my own, my will had melted into fate. Heat radiated more intently from the crystal as I weaved around a bend in the path to reveal a large sycamore. It swallowed me whole, curving over and twisting like a crooked finger and casting an enormous shadow over the ruins beneath.

My pulse began to race, mouth parted at the towering structure in its full, foreboding splendor. Something clung to these rocks, like a breath of something long dead.

Follow.
You must follow.

My senses were flooded once more. My feet obeyed.
Under the broken arch, something shifted. In the air, in me, in my viens…like walking through a milky membrane woven into oxygen. I pierced through, crossing the threshold.

A flash of blinding light.
I rubbed my eyes.
Colors changed. Grey, deep grey, and dust. The air was colder here, chilling the marrow in my bones to ice. I was in the same woods and yet… I was not. Moss hung from the trees like sap, like walking through the insides of a decaying pumpkin. My eyes adjusted to reveal a stone path ahead, its destination sending a spark of electricity within me when I beheld it. A black shack. Crudely made from rotting wood, windows lit with dim candlelight. Shingles the color of ash lifted and layed like uneven scales, climbing to a winding chimney puffing with smoke.

In that moment, I knew.

The necklace had brought me here.
To her.

Stone after stone. Step after step. I followed, I listened, I obeyed. Face to face with the moldering timber door, I reached for the rusted knocker, its face that of a serpent.

Knock.
Knock.

The door creaked open. Mildew and bones invaded my nose. My power surged: swelling, overflowing, confirming.


“ Welcome, Clinkling.”















CHAPTER 19:

There it was again. Something surged me awake from an already restless sleep. That same vibration, as if the atoms in the air were shifting, awakening…excited. Something was off.

I eased off the stiff mattress, grunting.
In two hundred years of living, you’d think sleep came often.
Wrong.

Rubbing the ache from my neck, I suited up.
Long bow, sword, boots.

Strapped with my armory, I snatched my satchel and began stuffing it with essentials:
Binding salt, crystal shard blades, a vial of sap from a blightroot tree, even spireweed oil.
I didn't know what the hell I was up against. Might as well be prepared for anything and everything. Goddamn filth never rested.

Wrapping my cloak and hood around me, I opened the cabin door and flew into the night. No Nightmaw this time. I needed stealth. I needed the shadows. My eyes scanned the treeline, a strange wave of purple heat leaving a trail of plumes behind it.
Crumbs.

My boots met the earth with practiced precision. I was the night. Melding with the wind and tasting the strange magic on my tongue. My body relaxed into the same, stealth-like rhythm, the shimmering light of the moon illuminating my path. As I eased along, my thoughts drifted.

Where was she tonight?
What trouble was she getting herself into now?

The damn girl was more stubborn than me and full of secrets. She wore them like skin. First, the warning written in blood: Benevorn’s curse. And now this dream. Edwin’s words, I knew I’d heard them somewhere. It couldn’t be possible. A child such as this was never to be born. There would be war. There would be death.

The signs were there, but I wouldn’t let them erode my mind. She was some random, smart-mouthed courtier. Not her…she couldn’t be her. Besides, if she was…what I felt when I looked at her, it would be the end of me. Possibly the end of everything. The flames that roared when she spoke, when she’d strode out of that water without a blink. There would be nothing there. I wouldn’t allow it. And yet her laugh, her smile, her bravery, even her secrets. They begged me to sip. Begged me to know her mind, to learn her heart. I would not. I learned my lesson once before. It was better this way. For everyone.

The trail of puffs began to wind and wander through a part of these woods I’d never known. Their sweet smell shifted. Something ancient, something cruel twined itself in, wrapping, coiling like a cobra. I hastened my pace through the dense brush, the golden light of my vision making it possible to see in a pitch blackness. It wasn’t just the night. Something slept under these trees. Something hidden in plain sight. Something that didn’t wish to be found.

Winding the bend, I came face to face with an enormous sycamore. Its trunk twisted over on itself like a serpent turned to stone mid-coil, gnarled, silent, and waiting. It was as if it remembered every trespasser who dared to set foot beneath its shadow. Stone ruins rested beneath it. I inched closer, following the now-faint vapor whisps disappearing under the arch.

Faded symbols were etched along the outer linings of the crumbling rock.
A Stone Maw.
Damn it.

I slung my stachel down, flipping it open and retrieving the spireweed oil. One drop to each wrist first, then one behind the neck. Entry and exit. Only one weapon would make it through. The only one I needed. I knew what hid here. I snatched the crystal shard and spurred into action.

My body pressed through the misted film, the oil burning as I crossed the threshold. Making it through to the other side, my senses exploded. My sight blanched, ears seared, taste turned sour, and the smell…that smell of mildew and bones, it was strangling my nasal cavities and down my throat.
My hands shot to my temples, searing pain popping in my frontal lobe. “Ahh!”

I gathered my bearings, scanning my surroundings as my eyesight calmed.

Grey. Ash.

Everything here looked dead, covered in a thick layer of dust. It was as if someone had ground two human skulls together, everything blanketed beneath the pale sawdust. My suspicions were confirmed by the dull surroundings. There was only one hellspawn that thrived in a moth-eaten, lifeless environment such as this. One powerful enough to procure and live behind the protection of a Stone Maw. I gripped the crystal shard tightly in my palm.

My eyes caught something to my left.

A stone path.
A run-down shack.

The trail of violet vapor, now a heavy cloud, wafted over the murky house.

Whatever it was.
It was here.
Doing its bidding with a vielborn.

My boots turned in that direction, about to climb the path, when a bloodcurdling scream pierced the air. It scraped against my bones like frayed metal, making my body go rigid.

It was female.