Celestara Veylin's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

The presence hurled its power at the gate, but the horde did not break. Celestara pressed her palm to the wall and felt them still out there, patient. She had turned the fortress into a weapon, yet the creatures did not flee. They circled. She reached into their minds through the crack in the stone and understood why. They tracked her. Not her scent, not her steps. Her thoughts. The sealed gate meant nothing. Every thought she had leaked through it like light under a door. "They read me," she said aloud. "Thick walls will not hide a mind." The presence answered from the stone. "Then quiet the mind, or blind the hunters. You are Veylin. You are not the only one who reads thoughts." She walked the empty halls until she found it, laid on a stone shelf as if left for her. A sleek wand, its handle wrapped in gold, a pale gem set at its crown. Faint marks ran down its length. When she lifted it, the gem woke and threw cold light across the wall. The purple cat crept out from a corner and stared at the glow, ears flat, unwilling to come closer. Celestara turned the wand toward her own hand. The light passed over her skin and showed nothing but skin. She understood then. The wand did not hide. It revealed. It stripped false shapes and showed the true form beneath. The creatures hunting her wore decayed bodies, but she had never seen their real ones. If she could find the mind that guided them, she could break the link. She climbed to the top of the gate and pointed the wand down at the horde. The gem flared. Its light swept the mass of bodies below. Most stayed the same, rotted and blank. But one figure changed. Where a decayed hunter had stood, the light showed a coiled thing with too many joints, its head turned up at her. It was the one reading her. The others only followed its thread. Celestara did not think in words now. She let the presence pour through her and aimed it at that single mind. The fortress's power struck like a hammer of stone. The coiled thing burst apart below. The thread snapped. All at once the horde stopped circling. Their heads swung in every direction, lost, no longer sure where she stood. She lowered the wand, breathing hard. The link was cut. For the first time since she fled across the plain, no mind followed hers. But the cat hissed and backed away from her boots. Celestara raised the wand and turned its light on herself again. This time the gem trembled. Under her own skin, where the fortress power had poured in, the light showed something that was not entirely her. The bond had left a shape inside her. She had blinded the hunters, and marked herself.