“When an artefact is created, the magic inside it is constructed of fibres from a person’s spirit. It’s incredibly difficult to reverse an artefact’s mutation, as you must first recognise the fibres of spirit that lay within and battle the reserves of strength held by each filament. A person could tirelessly layer their magic onto an object for days, or years, making it impossible to ever overpower. In fact, even attempting to overpower such an object will likely kill the average Eloi. Explain how you’ve overpowered objects in the past, Ven.”
“I looked into them and I could hear the incantations that had been used on them. I would just repeat the incantation over and over until I understood it—”
“What?” Herra suddenly interrupted, her head jerking up, her eyes wide. “That’s not how you—”
“It’s mind magic,” Frey interrupted, a wide smile breaking over her face. “Constructing and deconstructing incantations is something the most powerful Obelisk servants can do. She’s combining the Eloi and Sinn energy.”
Sig whistled low, his brows curving up. “Don’t let those old stiffs know that. They’ll throw themselves from the top of their tower.”
Frey muttered something in response, but I tuned them out, reaching forward to lay a finger on the fryktille. I closed my eyes, trying to see into it. I could feel the magic there, but it was guarded. A slithering, hissing beast herding it into a dark corner.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side, Herra.” I smiled, reaching out hesitantly to that hissing rope of energy.
It reared up at me, as prickly and angry as it had been the first time I had sensed Herra’s magic, but it allowed me to slip past, because it was only concerned with not allowing anything out. The magic of the fryktille was a chorus of voices, all muttering a complicated string of words that jumbled in my head, refusing to form proper sounds.
I scrunched up my brows, focussing on the first word alone, echoed by at least eight voices, over a period of a year. I could feel the heat of the sun pricking across my back as time stretched by, my energy draining with each word I worked to untangle, until finally, I was able to utter the incantation aloud in a hoarse voice.
“Fyne dinn frykt visyna dinn frykt.”
“Again.” It was Frey’s voice that I heard. It was faint, far away, hard to understand from so deep inside the fryktille.
I repeated the words, struggling to form them properly as their meaning still escaped me.
“Words in Aethen can mean a hundred different things,” she said. “The word for life can cause death.”
I repeated the incantation again, unable to respond to her. If I said any word other than the Aethen words filling my mouth, I would lose the thread of them entirely.
“So I can’t translate this incantation for you,” she continued, after I was finished reciting. “You need to feel the intention of the words, but dinn usually refers to a person. Me, or you, or someone else. Frykt is the Aethen word for fear.”
Fear.
I could feel it. The intention to frighten—in no small way. The incantation was lined with powerful, dark ambition.
Feel your fear.
I shivered, swallowing around the first half of the incantation, my blood turning to ice as the second half fell into place like a whisper, urging me to do exactly as the incantation intended.
Feel your fear. Show your fear.
I said nothing aloud this time. There was power in those words, and decoding them had released Herra’s guarding energy, allowing the magic of the fryktille to spring out and envelop me.
“It’s awake.” The words sounded so far away, the voice foreign and unrecognisable as a thousand whispers converged on me at once.
“Don’t touch it!” another voice yelled, a little closer. “She can do this.”
My head filled with curling, insidious tendrils of smoke, those whispers melting into screams as the smoke grew closer, billows of sound that had me trying to slap my hands over my ears—except I was frozen.
Trapped.
The fryktille had awoken with a vengeance, and my fear was filling my eyes, dark and dangerous. It curled all around me, carrying the screams of people I knew and people I didn’t. The smoke constricted, whipping out and wrapping tendrils of inky black rope around me. It dripped dark oil into my skin as it wrapped my wrists, ankles, and neck. The smoke continued to grow form, until the vines were attached to a man with one blue eye and one black eye.
He touched my chin, smearing black up to my lips.
“I’ve tasted you and now I know you,” he spoke under his breath, the timbre of his voice menacing.
I was crying, my tears mixing with the horrible black oil as those vine-like tendrils constricted on each of my limbs, threatening to tear me apart. Calder’s oily touch slipped to my chest, his fingers pressing inward, against my heart. I struggled in earnest, pleas falling from my lips as my power beat a panicked tattoo within the protective embrace of my ribcage.
Calder only smiled, his fingers pressing deeper, becoming formless as they pushed right through my skin. My skin didn’t break, or bleed, but the pain was otherworldly. A scream ripped from my throat as he forced his knuckles past my ribs, his touch curling around my heart.
His oily grip tightened, squeezing, as my screams turned to croaking whimpers. The oil was slipping inside me, poisoning me, filling the shadow of my power with a different kind of darkness.
With the Darkness.
My cries became an unearthly song to pierce the sky. I tore open the heavens, my heart filling with rage. This world had beaten me, abused me, and killed me. The people inside it had toyed with me, defiled me, and used me.
The Darkness had saved me.
And together, we would make them all pay.
My rage and pain were too vast for my human body, which was torn apart at the seams, my inky essence leaking out to replace my mortal form. I rose into the air, a writhing, zapping storm, my arms as wide as the horizon, my tears filling the ocean to overflowing. Waves swelled and crashed into the shore, and I swelled and crashed with them, lost to the corruption of a moon-robbed night.
There was a touch on my shoulder, and for just a moment, my nightmare paused, skipping and backtracking, trying to recapture my mind. But the touch was heavy and full of power. It tore the fryktille from my hand and gathered me up, a voice rumbling low with anger.
“Get out.”
My whole body was covered in sweat, my skin numb, my tongue heavy and flat. I could taste blood and ash, and I could still feel the Darkness inside me. I curled tighter, hunched as small as I could make myself, all thoughts of my mission forgotten. I could feel a solid body nearby, hands gathering me against a large chest. I was curled between two strong legs, a soft brush of power sweeping through me, coaxing away the aches in my soul.
“Calder,” I croaked, almost desperately.
A laugh vibrated through the chest my face was pressed to—low and mocking.
“He’s here.”
The voice wasn’t Calder’s—it was Fjor’s. I tore my eyes open, my vision blurry and unfocussed as I tried to make out my surroundings. I was still on the bed. Two long, muscled legs were bent around me. I stared at the long leather boots, folded beneath the knee, dark brown pants tucked into the tops. The hem of a navy blue tunic was visible beneath the ends of a long brown coat. The hands that held me were covered in leather wraps, and I could feel the straps crossing over the top of his coat, against his chest. They were the straps for the navy blue cape I could see, crushed against the mess of feather pillows around us. I swallowed as my vision cleared further, and I focussed on the other side of the bed, where a shadowy form came into focus.