Journey onto the Storm (BOOK 2)

Chapter 24

YUVEN

Spires of alabaster marble touched the heavens. Thick clouds of soft greys fluttered with colour across the curvature of the streets. Staircases wrapped around the smaller peaks and wove into structures tucked close to the towers. Alleyways shone through lights in the windows. Small beds of snowroses were given a flimsy shield in the windows. Massive mountains towered ever higher than the built structures of Avaerilian design, longing to take flight.

Energy poured from the streets and dug into the cracks of the white cobble, sprayed with snow.

In the crimson rapture, blood splattered with a scream.

Snowroses wilted in the pressure of clanking chains, echoing deep within the mountain's heart. It twined around his fingers and expanded his power beyond comprehension, into a soaked bubble of writhing, slicing teeth. Any who fell upon his might tore to the bone from their flight from Irimount, the city of death. It grew, a tumour on the scattered stones. Teeth grew out of the bulbs behind him, snapping at the heels and feasting on the cries of the trapped Irimount folk.

His song, a piercing, ripping chord.

Wind distorted, and the blizzard watched on in cruel coldness. Shapes slammed into the barrier. Skin flayed when they tried to claw their way out. On the other side, golden light, safe from the desolation, but trying to fight their way into the sphere of obscura.

It was no more than a dream, and he knew it — deep in his screaming soul.

Why can I not wake up?

A shadow crept onto the street with a twisted smile. Their teeth drove through their jaw, and a sense of urgency pulsed through the city of longing.

"You never left," it taunted as Derelicts wrapped around the spires and crushed them to nothing but ancient dust. "You will never leave. You did this. Look at your power."

It burned with a wildfire from the sun.

Look at what you've done.

His solace of a prison cell, no less a prisoner than the monster near his bed. It slathered its tongue against the stone. It groaned and howled. Its dissonant screech cracked the world with bloody raptures. Ooze slipped down the walls around Irimount, becoming a giant prison as the bubble ripped into all who tried to escape its confines. It distorted their beings, and left them naught but piles of visceral bone.

It was not me. It was not Yuven Traye. I am Yuven Traye. You never were. You stole from me.

Yuven lunged from the rapture with a single breath when it stifled the air of Irimount, and he scooted across the mattress until his back hit a frame. Ugh... He raised his hand, ashen from the sickness left behind in his body. He drove the tips of his fingers into his palm, then brushed a stray feather off his cheek. It fell into his hand. Images faded as he checked the window at his side, where no snowroses spread their petals to catch the fallen snow. Only his reflection stared back at him. Violets pale of life, the stars sprinkled across the night sky clouds tried to stifle. The shrine. He used the window to smooth out his frayed feathers, sensing the shift of wind slipping through the wood walls. Yes... we were on the path when... Another pulse went from temple to temple, and he scowled at the dimming lights outside. Myl'la.

He reached out to the lamp full of fire, to touch a sensation of her between the bridge of his fingers when he took a small shard of it into his palms. It flickered and died with his breath, and it sent a wave of shadows with its departure. On its tracks, a shape sat in the corner of the room by the door, head lowered with their hands resting in their lap. In the lamplight, a metallic pin hanging on a small braid of brown hair caught the last embers by his golden crescent blade and two seax's for his secondary weapon of choice, conductive to ice magick.