Draven Ashborne's Arc

Chapter 30 of 17

The stone split wide, and the source climbed into the room. Eldrich had taught the six to bind their light in a circle. He had shown them how to move as one. He had not shown them how to hold it against the thing itself. It rose from the crack, black and vast, darkness pouring off its hide like smoke off a fire. Malakorax the Primordial of Darkness had woken. And the ring of light was already burning too fast. Draven felt it in the joined hands. The combined light flared bright, then guttered. Briar's grip trembled beside him. Aurelius's holy light thinned. "It burns too quick," Aldric said flatly across the circle. "We're spending it faster than we make it." Eldrich shouted for them to slow the flow, to pass it steady. But Draven's fire fought the strange warmth on both sides, still reaching for the cold that was not there. Across the room Seraphina met his eyes. Weeks of standing apart, and now the room stank of poison and his hands sat in the wrong hands. His fire strained toward her. The seam pulled thin where he stood, just as Eldrich had warned. He tried to feed his heat slow into Briar. It surged instead. The whole ring lurched. "You are still a pair," Malakorax said. Its voice was low and plain. It looked only at Draven and Seraphina. "You lean on each other. I feel the crack." It pressed one claw against the joined light, and the circle bent inward where the two of them stood too far and wanted too close. Draven shut his eyes and pushed harder. The light answered, blazed white, and burned out. Briar gasped as her golden glow snuffed. Celestia's mend flickered dark. The binding failed, hand by hand, until six mages stood in a broken ring with nothing left to give. The last of the light died against the dragon's hide. Malakorax spread its wings. It did not roar. It settled its weight into the broken floor and breathed out, and darkness rolled from its mouth across the stone. The vapor climbed the walls. It poured through the cracks and out into the sky beyond. The six could only watch. Aurelius reached for Briar. Celestia sank to her knees. "It's spreading," she said, her regal voice gone quiet. "The wood. The fields. All of it." Eldrich pulled them back toward the stair. "We cannot hold it here. Not yet." His old hands shook. "The circle broke because two of you still fight the form." He looked at Draven, then Seraphina. "You have to learn it clean, on ground the dark has not taken." Draven found Seraphina's hand as they climbed. Below them Malakorax made a lair of the tower's roots and poured its corruption outward. "Where is left," Draven said. Aldric answered without looking back. "Footholds. A few. We reach them before the dark does." They ran for the surface, the world going gray behind them.