Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

We were leaving Carver and the others to defend the grounds. I wasn’t going to bother any of the rest of them with this, not with a plan that might not even work. If they could hold the Overthroat at bay for a little while, just a little longer, then maybe I could figure something out. Improvise.

I tightened my grip around Herald’s hand, then nodded. “Right. Here we go.”

I engaged the Dark Room’s power, and together we sank into the shadows at our feet. Herald’s face was frozen with determination, even though I knew that traces of fear lurked beneath the surface.

My heart was trembling on the inside, too, but I forced myself to give him my best smile. I offered one last dumb joke to help quell our panic.

“Do you trust in Dustin?” I asked softly.

Herald’s answer came so quietly, in a puff of breath.

“Always.”

Chapter 32

Together we ran through the misted gloom of the Dark Room. The air was thin, and in my excursions I was always so grateful to end my sprints, to fall out of the darkness and reenter our reality for huge gulps of air. But this time, all I wanted was to find that same chamber from before, the one with the pillars and the spinning, shimmering portals.

It didn’t take us long, for once. Ask, I thought, and the Dark Room would provide. It was learning to be more obedient, I figured, allowing me to pinpoint parts of its shifting terrain to explore. More importantly, it was following the silent, repeated command that I chanted in the back of my head, the one that told the shadows to stay still. Not to harm Herald. Never to harm Herald. And for the moment, they were content to obey.

“This is it,” I said. My shoes scuffed against the leathery, reptilian pattern of the ground as we stopped running. Herald was panting, but still found the time to groan at the sight of the portals.

They were unchanged, mostly, from the last time I’d seen them. And truthfully I still didn’t understand whether these portals served as a thoroughfare between our worlds – hell, whether the Eldest themselves used the inside of my heart as a bridge between the realities. Did shrikes run and stumble between these rifts when I was asleep, when I wasn’t looking?

Yet on an instinctual level I knew that this was what connected me to the Eldest. I was their tether, the beacon they used to find their way back to earth, and severing this connection would take that away from them. Keep them blind.

The rituals and prayers their worshippers and cultists executed sent up temporary flares for them to see, but those were nothing compared to how my own spirit burned like a constant, towering pyre. “Here,” my soul said. “Come here and kill us.” The answer was to douse that flame – by turning out its source, or smothering it completely. I didn’t like that option. But one way or another, we had to shut the light off.

But how? And at what cost?

Herald had the right idea. He hurled a handful of frost at one of the portals, and I watched as little motes of snow built in size and velocity as they sped, turning into icicles.

By the time they’d reached the portals, each icicle had grown to the size of a sword. They smashed on impact, some striking the pillars flanking the portals, some hitting the rifts themselves – but nothing. The icicles fell into shattered shards and mounds of useless slush. Herald fell to his knees, groaning.

“No more of that,” I said, stroking his back. “You’re overexerting. I guess we can’t destroy these things. Not by conventional means, anyhow.”

Herald grabbed my hand and pulled himself to his feet, still panting from the strain. “Then what are you suggesting? Why did you come here in the first place?”

“Well. To try and smash the rifts. That was one option. The other was to snuff the connection to the Eldest out at its source.” My gaze fell on a particularly cruel shard of ice, shaped like a spike, sitting on the ground nearby. “It wouldn’t take much work, either.”

Herald followed my gaze, scowled, then kicked away the shard. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you do that. I’m not going to stand by and watch you kill yourself.”

I looked at my hands, wondering how many more the Overthroat might have killed in all the time we’d already wasted, how many more of the Old Ones we would have to fight off if we somehow survived.

“I can’t do this. Not anymore. I have to end it.”

“What are you saying?” Herald’s voice cracked as he spoke. “This isn’t happening, Dust. Not if I have any say in it. There has to be another way.”

“Oh,” said a woman’s voice. “But there is.”

Somehow I knew we would see her there. Izanami stepped out of the shadows, returned to her human form. I stumbled back, holding my arm across Herald’s chest.

“No more tricks,” I spat. “No more of your betrayal.”

Izanami scoffed. “You call that betrayal? No, mortal. That was only a matter of balancing what you took from my children. No more tricks, now. I only wish to help – but the problem is that you already know the answer.”

Herald strained against my arm. “Dust,” he said. “What’s she talking about?”

Izanami smiled. “The breath of the dying. Without that crucial, final reagent, the amulet’s enchantment is woefully incomplete. It cannot perform the sealing.” She extended a finger, lazily gesturing between the two of us. “One must die to save the day. It is the only way you will defeat the Overthroat. The question, of course – which of you will be the sacrifice?”