On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) (22 page)

He waited for some kind of response from within, maybe even another image of Amber’s face. When nothing came, he let out a disgusted breath and slammed the lid closed on the box once more.

“But why would it show that to me?” Jovian asked Angelica through the door of her bathroom. He stood in her lavender room, staring at the spot by the fireplace where he had found Angelica just the day before. There was still a bloodstain on the carpet. Thankfully it looked like the rug was old and needed changing anyway.

“I don’t know,” she responded. He could hear her peeing in the toilet and rolled his eyes. “I really hate this tea!” she complained.

“Angelica, the orb?” he asked.

“We should investigate it more,” she told him, her voice echoing out at him. “Once I can get off this toilet. Likely the shadow is just trying to get rid of us. For some reason I get the impression that we make it uncomfortable, like it doesn’t know us, and it’s nervous that we’re here.”

“Yeah, I feel like it asked me what I was today,” he said incredulously.

“You too?” Angelica asked, the tinkling sound of water drawing to an end.

“So what do we do about the orb?”

“What exactly did you see?” Angelica asked.

“The face of Amber.”

“That’s it?” Angelica asked.

“Just a feeling that it knows where she is, but when I touched it, all it showed me was the Turquoise Tower again,” He tossed his hands in the air. “It’s always that tower. Whenever I sleep, eat, look in the mirror, all I see is that
damn
tower!”

“I know,” Angelica said. “Maybe we should investigate it together.”

Jovian huffed and leaned his back against the door. “Are you ever going to be able to get off that toilet?”

Angelica laughed. “That’s the plan. It’s slowing down. I think I can make it out soon.”

Jovian smiled. The sound of water falling into the toilet came again. Angelica growled.

“Is there a toilet up there by any chance?” Angelica asked.

Jovian laughed. “Not that I saw, but maybe an abandoned bowl we can let you crouch over.”

“Alright,” Jovian said, standing in the red-carpeted hall, the mahogany paneling shining dully in the lamplight. There were no windows in the hall; they were all occupied by the rooms that took up the outer wall. The hall twisted around the center of the second floor. The mash of colors was so dark that the lamplight did little to illuminate it. One wrong move and it would be easy to trip. “You going to make it?”

It had been another hour and a half before Angelica thought all of the stone had passed out of her — or rather, all of the tea. She nodded her head. “If not, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

Jovian frowned, but shrugged. “These stairs are really tricky; there’s no light, and no hand railing.” He looked back at Angelica, but she only shrugged and shook her head as if he was being silly.

He opened the door and started up the stairs at a slow pace. As they went higher, the stairs seemed to narrow, and he slowed down, still afraid that he might slip and slide back down.

“What kind of construction team from beyond the Black Gates orchestrated this?” Angelica panted halfway up the stairs. Jovian laughed at her.

Before long they were able to see the dim light filtering down the top of the stairs, and the path became easier. In moments they were standing before the dusty door. Jovian pushed it open and motioned for Angelica to step in before him.

She stopped, holding her hands up as the floor swayed beneath her feet. “Alright, can’t we just bring the orb back to the room?”

Jovian laughed. “It’s really not that bad once you get to the box.”

“Am I going to
make
it to the box?” Angelica wondered aloud.

“Follow me,” Jovian said.

Jovian tip-toed across the floor, following his earlier footprints in the dust. He wasn’t sure why he was tip-toeing, it wasn’t like it made him any lighter, but when he reached the edge of the box, he finally relaxed and stood normally.

Angelica skirted around him, coming to stand at his side.

“Now what?” she asked.

Jovian sat before the box, and she sat beside him. He could see her visibly relax once she was fully sitting on the floor and hadn’t plummeted to her death.

Jovian sat staring at the orb for a moment, seeing the white depths swirling like wyrd within it. He waited to see if the familiar eyes of his sister, Amber, would look back out at him. Nothing happened.

“Jove, what is it?” Angelica asked, leaning down a little so she could get a better look into her brother’s green eyes. He blinked and shook his head.

“The last time I was here, I touched it, and I was pulled into the orb.”

“And you saw the Turquoise Tower?”

“Yeah,” he responded.

“That’s not very useful, but maybe we can direct it to show us something else?” Angelica reached forward and took the orb into her hands. She shifted the orb from hand to hand, then suddenly, like a lodestone to metal, her hands became fastened to it. Her fingers stiffened into claws, and she clutched at the orb. Jovian saw rivers of purple wyrd seeping down her arms and draining into it. Purple light dripped into the swirling whiteness of the orb like ink dropping into water.

Angelica slumped forward, the orb once more cradled in the box, with her hands fastened tight to it, as if they were made of one substance.

Jovian shrugged. The same thing had happened to him. He reached forward as well, and clasped his hands to the orb. He felt the orb slip into him, calling to his power. His back arched, his eyes flew open, and his fingers froze in their grip of the orb.

He was plunged into the white surface of the Orb of Aldaras.

Jovian was surrounded by fog. Everywhere he looked there was nothing but milk-white fog. Then a shifting breeze billowed his clothes, and like a curtain, the fog parted and receded. He stood there beside Angelica, looking around the white expanse. Now it was less like they were standing in white fog and more like they were within a white room. From somewhere overhead a light shone, though they couldn’t see its source.

It was a soft light, and they took the time to survey the room. It was round. In fact, it might even have been an orb they stood in, since they saw no seam of wall meeting floor, or wall greeting ceiling.

There was a humming noise, and the wall before them slipped open. Inside there was a darkness, and the darkness formed the familiar shape of the egrigor, with its spindly arms and its elongated head.

“I see you followed my lead,” the shadow said in an oddly hollow voice. It stepped from the opening in the wall, and suddenly the wall hushed shut behind him, locking with a reverberation of air.

“Why did you bring us here?” Jovian asked.

“What are you?” it asked, stepping closer to them. It tilted its head, as if sampling their wyrd from afar.

“Why is it
always
that question?” Angelica asked Jovian.

“I can’t harm you, and I should be able to,” Wyrders’ Bane said, clasping its hands behind its back. “So I must wonder, what are you?”

“I’m Jovian, and you are?” Jovian said.

The shadow must not have liked his glib response, because it flew at him, its arm outstretched, and caught Jovian around the neck. It lifted him off his feet, and Jovian felt a swell of power pulse down the arm and into the hand which held him. Where the creature gripped his neck, smoke began to rise, and the smell of burning flesh came to his nose.

Jovian screamed out and retaliated with a pulse of his own wyrd. There was a flash of red wyrd where the hand held his throat, and the egrigor was blasted backward. The shadow slammed into the wall and burst along the surface. The shadow was like black ink in water, shifting and drifting. It slipped along the floor like sludge, where it pooled just a few feet from Angelica and Jovian. Then the puddle of blackness took shape, and up rose the egrigor from the surface.

“Since I can’t harm you with the intention placed in me upon my forming, we will have to do things a little differently.”

The egrigor lashed forward with his arms, and each finger elongated into individual, pulsating ropes. They flew at Angelica and Jovian. Angelica was faster than Jovian, darting out of the way, while the rope-fingers slithered around Jovian’s legs, knocking him to the floor.

Angelica dove at the egrigor, forming her wyrd into a purple lance of power. She thrust it at the shadow, but it batted her aside. Where her wyrd touched the egrigor, however, a cut formed, and from within the cut they saw a bloom of light, like the sun bursting forth its illumination from the depths of a storm cloud.

Angelica rolled to her feet, holding the lance of her purple wyrd in her hands as she would a quarter staff.

Meanwhile, the black wyrd of the egrigor burned through the legs of Jovian’s pants, licking pain at his ankles and smoldering his flesh where it touched.

Jovian held up his hands and willed his wyrd to take shape. He blasted out with a pillar of light, taking the egrigor by surprise even as Angelica attacked from behind. She beat at the egrigor with her wyrded weapon, and the column of red wyrd Jovian shot forth pushed the shadow back.

It vanished, and the pain in his ankle abated.

Jovian pushed to his feet. Angelica came to his side. She lifted the quarter staff, and made a motion as if she were going to recall the weapon into the folds of her wyrd, but Jovian held up his hand.

“Not yet,” he said. He pointed at the ground not far from where they stood, and there she saw the haze of a shadow lilting across the ground. Jovian struck out with an arch of red lightning, but it did nothing more than scatter the shadow.

It slipped around behind them, and Jovian took the time to call forth a weapon much like Angelica’s, but his was in the shape of a sword.

When they turned it was to see the egrigor fully formed and lancing out black lightning at them. Jovian and Angelica dove in opposite directions, and where the black lightning struck, the floor darkened and smoked.

Jovian came to his feet and leaped at the egrigor. With a powerful downward arc, he drove his wyrded blade deep into its neck. Angelica had mirrored Jovian’s attack and struck at the egrigor’s head.

Their weapons were like some fire from the Ever After, wounding the egrigor wherever they struck. Light burst forth, and the egrigor stumbled. As he fell back, their weapons went with him, held fast in his now illuminating body.

“Strike at the light!” Angelica said, and Jovian didn’t waste any time. He lashed out with his wyrd and his mind, and so did Angelica. They struck as one, their wyrd burying deep in the egrigor. When they felt their wyrd take root, they pulled. The seams of light etched by their weapons in the body of the egrigor gave a loud roar, shuddered, and then split.

They didn’t stop pulling. They jerked their minds back, and the rifts in his form tore wider. They were repelled by a flash of light, and when they landed, they watched the egrigor shudder and then burst into a thousand shimmering shards. Like fragments of charred paper, the bits of the egrigor fell to the floor of the round room.

From the center of where the egrigor landed, a bright light blossomed, and they were transported.

They were standing in the middle of the field where the two sides of the angelic war faced off. They were looking directly at the black-robed figure, so elegant, so powerful. The figure reached a hand up and laid it on the mane of the Pale Horse, and the steed seemed to calm at the touch.