Soul of the Storm (The Wardbreaker Book 2) Page 12

  I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “I was kidnapped,” I said, “It took a kidnapping to make me realize what I was missing.”

  “Kidnapped? That doesn’t sound pleasant.”

  “It’s a little more pleasant than living in this place…”

  “Maybe to you, but this is my home. The skies, the ocean, the small pockets of land; being here my purpose in the universe. A purpose I’ve been serving for… I couldn’t tell you how many years. I don’t think you’d be able to wrap your head around the number.”

  “How long have mages been coming here for?”

  Oktos craned his neck over his shoulder. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Really?”

  “No, this is good. Get all the questions out of the way so you can get used to the phrase. It may help you smooth things over with your Guardian.”

  A pause. “He’s pissed with me, isn’t he?”

  Oktos focused on the path again and continued to walk. We weren’t far, now. I could see the cracks in the wall, the faded stone. It went all the way from one side of the island I was on to the other, like a castle wall but with dark, and unmanned parapets. This was a place that had been battered by the elements for thousands of years, but had held.

  “Let’s just say, he’s not exactly happy you stood him up for so long,” Oktos said.

  A pit opened in my stomach. All this time I’d been able to push my Guardian, this thing I had no real knowledge of, into the back of my mind. I didn’t know what it looked like, I’d never heard it speak, I didn’t even really know what it was. But now that I’d been forced to consider it, I couldn’t help but feel guilty.

  For years it had been calling for me, waiting for me. For the longest time I thought it had one day decided to just stop calling, but Axel had been right. What if I’d just stopped listening? What if by doing that, I’d hurt it somehow? These creatures were meant to be little Gods, keepers of souls that leapfrogged through time, living life after life, like heirlooms passed down from one mage to the next.

  And I’d pissed one off.

  There’s a great way to start a relationship, Izzy. Good one.

  We kept walking, reaching a deep ditch that followed the base of the wall. Ahead of us lay a drawbridge that hadn’t been there a moment ago. I knew it hadn’t been there. But now that I’d laid eyes on it, I couldn’t remember ever not seeing it. Of course, there was a drawbridge. Where else was the path we were following going to take us if not to a way through the wall?

  “It’s uncanny, isn’t it?” Oktos asked.

  “Uncanny?”

  “The way things just happen in here.”

  “It’s like I’m dreaming…”

  “You’re not. Don’t let the disorientation get to you, otherwise you may never leave this place.”

  I traced the edges of the drawbridge with my eyes, feeling a pull in my stomach as they reached the top. It looked impossibly huge, a door that would dwarf most of the buildings in the neighborhood I lived in. It also looked like it was several meters thick. The chains holding it up would probably need to be as fat as pigs to make sure that thing didn’t just fall open.

  Oktos stopped at the end of the path and stared at the drawbridge. The wind moved through his feathers, causing them to ripple like a wave of black. “Well,” he said, “You’re up, kid.”

  “Me?” I asked, “Aren’t you gonna open it?”

  He padded down his hip bones. “Damn, I think I forgot the key back at my place. Would you mind opening it for me?”

  I pointed at the drawbridge. “And how am I supposed to open that?”

  “You’re an Elemancer, aren’t you? Get creative.”

  “There’s no way I’m bringing that thing down.”

  Oktos nodded slowly. “Well, then I guess you and I are stuck here for a while. How long was it humans could go without water? Three days?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve got time before my next appointment, I guess.”

  Frowning at the bird-man skeleton thing standing in front of me, I took a deep breath and decided to approach the end of the path. I stopped where the cracked stone met the earth and stared into the trench. I’d honestly expected to find more monsters in there, maybe swimming in pools of lava, or acid, or something equally awful, but the moat was empty. Just damp, disturbed earth… kind of like a freshly dug grave.

  That was somehow worse than monsters.

  “I couldn’t use my magic before,” I said, looking across my shoulder, “Can I use it now?”

  “Why don’t you try?” Oktos asked, cocking its head to the side.

  Huffing a frustrated breath, I turned to face the drawbridge again. Lightning flashed high above in that eerie purple and green sky. Behind the clouds, sinister looking shadows played and danced. My nerves were already shot, my muscles hadn’t stopped aching ever since I stepped out of the water, and now I had to somehow force my way past this door.

  The only way through, is through.

  I flexed my hands, popping the joints in my fingers. With a breath, I summoned the power of the Tempest, and it roared around me. Bolts of light raced across the sky. Thunder boomed, shaking my very bones. I had called, and the Tempest had answered. I could feel it working through me, my body vibrating like I was made of electricity instead of flesh and blood.

  I stretched both my hands out toward the door. They glowed with vibrant, purple light, brighter than I’d ever seen it before. Brilliant little runes began to form in the air around my wrists, creating bracelets of light-shapes that moved and rotated to a rhythm only they could know. In my mind, I visualized what I needed to do.

  I wanted to pull that drawbridge down. I’d rip it off its hinges if I had to, and I’d do it because I was a fucking Elemancer, and I hadn’t come here to let this place beat me.

  Tendrils of purple light shot out from my fingertips to grab hold of the drawbridge. I watched them wriggle through the gaps all along its sides. I could feel the way they’d fastened themselves to it. They were like ropes, waiting for me to pull. Gathering all of my composure, I pulled, but the door was heavy. It budged, then fell back into place with a loud smash.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” Oktos asked, though for a moment I wasn’t sure if it he was the one heckling me, or if I’d just heard the voice of the Tempest itself.

  “Alright,” I said, keeping my voice low, “I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

  I pulled with my mind again, only this time I also pulled with my arms. Instantly my muscles started to burn as the magic coursed through me. The veins on my neck bulged out, and I screamed as the strain increased, but the drawbridge was really moving. I could hear the chains groaning as they fell through their sockets, but something else had started happening, too.

  Cracks had started to erupt along the drawbridge. Jagged pieces of wood jutted out in places, even the iron supports had started to break under the immense pressure I was putting on them. Screaming, gritting my teeth to push through the pain, I willed that behemoth to fall, and it did. The drawbridge slammed to the ground with enough force to shake the world.

  I was still panting when Oktos caught up with me, my hands trembling from the effort of what I’d just done. I’d never done magic like that before, and I clearly hadn’t been ready for it, but I’d survived.

  “Well done,” Oktos said, “Now, we move onto the next part.”

  “Next part?” I asked, “What are you talking about?”

  He pointed beyond the door, where another path lay—a path leading to a tower with what looked like a little flame twinkling on top. “How much further until I find my Guardian?”

  Oktos shrugged. “That’s up to you. Keep walking, and you’ll get there. Stop and, well… this place becomes your tomb.”

  “Is there a third option?”

  “Probably… but not for you.” Oktos gestured with his bony hand, and I started walking down the path. I’d come this far, I had to keep pushing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Oktos walke
d with me through a courtyard of black flagstone, stopping just short of a floating slab of dull, rectangular, black stone. I stared at it for a long moment, trying to figure out what was holding it up only to decide that, of course, it was magic. Duh.

  Looking up and beyond it, there were more of these floating slabs. Together they formed a set of loose, unconnected stairs leading to the top of a black tower. Inside of that tower was, a soft, warm orange glow, like the glow of a fireplace. I figured I could jump and grab the edge of the floating stone block in front of me and hoist myself up, but I had no idea how I was supposed to climb the rest of the stairs.

  There was a lot of distance between some of them, and the drop back down was likely to kill me. I looked over at Oktos and studied his skeletal, winged figure until he turned his head. “So?” he asked.

  “So… what?”

  “Oh, you need me to explain?” he shook his head. “Right, so, you need to get up there.”

  “Get up… how? These things are huge, I can’t climb them all.”

  Oktos sighed, if skeletons could sigh. “Do you seriously need me to tell you how to get up there? If you do, you don’t deserve a Guardian.”

  “Yeah, alright,” I snapped, “You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

  “Hey, you’re the one asking the stupid questions.” Oktos took to the skies on his black, feathery wings. “I guess I’ll see you up there? That is, if you don’t kill yourself trying. Good luck!”

  “You seriously couldn’t give me a lift?” I called out.

  “I could!” Oktos yelled, “But I really don’t want to.”

  Lightning rippled through the clouds, illuminating his form for a moment as he ascended, and then the night swallowed him again, leaving me alone in the Tempest. I frowned at the rock in front of me, thought about it—ripped my dress to give myself a little more movement—and then with a shuffle and a jump, I climbed up and over until I was standing on it.

  Finding my footing wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. Though the slab of stone hovered about a foot above the ground, it didn’t move with my weight and felt firm beneath my feet. That was a good start.

  Looking across at the next slab of stone, though, made my stomach twist into itself. Not only was there gap between this one and the next one, the ledge was also about a foot higher than my head. I stared at the gap, calculating the jump in my head. More importantly, trying to figure out how badly I’d injure myself if I missed my mark and fell to the floor.

  A fall would hurt, and if I was really unlucky I’d come away with a broken bone, but I didn’t think it would kill me. So, I went for it, taking the best shuffle jump I could and stretching my arms out as far as they would go. I soared through the air, heard the wind rushing past my ears, felt the world fall away beneath my feet.

  My fingers only just made contact with the top of the stone slab. It took everything I had within me just to get up and over it, and by the time I did, I was panting and out of breath, and staring up at an unforgiving, cloudy, lightning-filled sky. Oktos’ words came rushing up from inside of me like acid reflux, forcing me to get back on my feet.

  This place could be your tomb.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen. I had to get up there, I had to find whatever was at the top of that tower, only now there were two fresh problems I had to deal with. Firstly, the next stone slab I had to jump to was way out of reach. Not only was the distance across too far probably even for an athlete with one hell of a run-up, but even if I did make the jump across, I’d never grab the edge.

  But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was behind me; the stone block I’d just leapt from was gone. This meant two things. Number one, that blocks were probably going to continue disappearing as I made the transition from one to the next. And two, that the only way back to the ground was going to involve a fall that would gradually get bigger, and more deadly.

  The beginnings of vertigo took hold of my insides. I looked away from the edge and concentrated on the mission, on the objective. Get to the next block, and then the next, and then the next. This was starting to feel like something out of a video game, the only difference being this was very much really happening to me, and I wouldn’t get any extra lives if I missed my jump.

  “God dammit, Oktos,” I said, steeling myself against the growing dread building inside of my chest.

  For the longest time I just stared at the stone across from me, watching it, hoping that—if this was anything like a video game—it would at some point move a little closer to me, enough that with a timed jump I could make it. But it didn’t move. It only hovered, completely motionless, as if it were sitting atop an invisible platform.

  Minutes passed, or maybe hours. There was no way of knowing in here. It didn’t help that none of this felt real. The tower I was supposed to reach now looked like it was miles up in the air, the glow within it seeming to get weaker, and dimmer, as the time passed. Was I on a timer? Was the light going to keep fading until, eventually, it just winked out of existence?

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked no one. “This is a test, and I’m already failing… but how the hell am I supposed to get up there? I’m not like Oktos, I can’t fly—”

  Lightning flashed high above, and with it came a dose of insight. I realized, then, that I’d forgotten how I even came to the Tempest to begin with. I had remembered the things Asmodius had said, how he’d called me irrelevant, a whore; nothing. I remembered Axel, and RJ, Danvers, Karim—I knew who I was, who my friends were, and where I’d been before I arrived in this strange, hellish world.

  I saw myself, now, fleeing the Athenaeum and using my powers to push my body beyond the limits of what it should be able to do. I sped away from that building like a bullet. I remembered the way the branches whipped at my face as I shot through them, remembered the sting of every cut and scrape, remembered the blind clarity I’d had as my instincts guided me toward the cliff edge.

  Looking down at my hands and arms, I could see them—the lines of split flesh, the spots of blood. The pain had all but gone, subdued by the adrenaline that hadn’t stopped coursing through me from the moment I entered the Tempest. The only parts of me that weren’t cut and scraped were my bare feet, and that made no sense, until it hit me.

  I hadn’t run through those woods—I’d flown.

  Sure, I hadn’t soared high above the tree-line, but my feet had never touched the ground. Not once. And if I’d done it once, I could do it again. Looking up at the next stone block, breathing deeply to calm my raging nerves, I wrapped the power of this place around myself like a blanket.

  A display of lightning exploded around me, sending rumbling thunder through the heavens for miles. My body started vibrating, humming with the power of the Tempest. I could feel it in my chest, in my hands, in my toes—an all-consuming electric current so powerful it made me start trembling.

  Stretching out my hands, I watched them crackle with purple light, light that went all the way up my arms and into my neck. I felt like a battery, like I was being charged up from nothing, and when that charge reached a critical point, I leapt across the gap toward the next stone block… landing perfectly above it, as if the wind itself had carried me gracefully to the top.

  My body sang with the power with the Tempest, magic coursing through me like blood; like adrenaline. The next steppingstone seemed much farther away than the other two had been, but I didn’t hesitate. I took the two or three steps I had the space to take and launched myself toward it, soaring through the air like a leaf on a breeze.

  Suddenly I was on my way to the top, on my way to the warm glow of the tower; the only inviting thing about this blasted place. Already I could see why some mages never made it out of the Tempest. It wasn’t enough to simply be a mage or to have a Guardian waiting for you. You had to be capable, and worthy—all the things Asmodius had said I wasn’t.

  time to think about him as I moved from floating slab to floating slab. No matter what hap
pened to me, whether I made it out alive or not, Asmodius would always be able to gloat about one thing. He was the reason I was here. The Athenaeum was a mystical place filled with magical treasures and more mages than I’d ever been around in my life, but being present on its own wasn’t enough to push me toward the Precipice.

  It had been Asmodius, maybe not the threat of him, but perhaps my deep, burning need to fight him; at the very least, to protect myself from him. He wouldn’t have made a move on me as long as I remained at the Athenaeum, but he wasn’t going to let a silly little thing like a rule get in the way of his desires, and I wouldn’t have been able to stay within that building forever.

  I’d have to leave sometime, and then he’d be there, ready to strike and take what he wanted.

  The ground was starting to look distant indeed, the way down behind me completely gone, but I was almost at the top, now. I could see the top of the bell-tower, the columns supporting it, the glow illuminating its dark insides. I thought of Axel as I leapt the last few spaces to reach it. He’d probably come looking for me. RJ and Danvers, too.

  Had I put them in danger by fleeing like that? Had I put myself in danger? Probably no more than I was already in. I had no idea what was waiting for me up there. All I knew was that I couldn’t go back down again. The closer I got to the top, the more the ground started falling away into nothingness until there wasn’t a ground level left. I’d crossed the Rubicon, the point of no return.

  I would leave the Tempest with my Guardian, or I wouldn’t leave at all.

  Finally, I reached the top, landing gracefully on a ledge. There were no walls, only columns going all the way around the edge of the tower, and that domed ceiling. At the center of the tower was Oktos, his wings furled around his skeletal form so only his beak and his legs were showing. On the floor in front of him was a small fire, barely a campfire, almost at the point of guttering out, its light struggling to reach the top of the dome.