Dragon Knight-Commander (A Cullen Rutherford Shapeshifter Romance)

Chapter 23

Cat of Inger Land

The rocky walls around me glistened and ran with water. I stepped over the mangled bodies of demons and spiders. Hair, gristle, bone and blood stained my boots. Ahead, Elena held up a flare in the same hand as her blue triangle and marched along, cutting the heads off the swaying demons. I looked back: dead dawkspawn as far as the eye could see along a tunnel that stretched half a mile behind me.

'Elena! How did we get here?'  

'Are you back? We walked. I compelled you as far as the void. Which means it should be around here somewhere.'

'Cullen?'

'My magic will collapse once we've gone back to our dimension. He'll be released then.'

She stopped abruptly ahead of me. The rock tunnel opened out over a steep drop. I looked down.

The void.

The Mount was completely hollow, all the way up and down. The tallest mountain in Eden was an empty shell - and the bottom of it was covered with teeming darkspawn. They crackled and sighed a hundred metres below us.

My hand flew to my mouth. Far away, two angels stood on the ledge opposite. I knew they were angels even though they didn't look particularly angelic. They wore black, leathery suits and dark leather boots. They were brawny and fantastic looking - inhuman like Cullen - and my brain just recognised them for what they were. Monsters. Instinctive fear gripped my stomach and my knees locked.

'Marvellous. Your witch is here. Let's crack on,' one of them said in a bored voice. He spoke softly from the other side of the mountain. His voice didn't echo. It hummed.

Elena turned to me. 'The angels are early.' She shouted to them, 'Don't you have to wait for the equinox?' Her voice echoed around the cavern.

'The three planes are in alignment and we are at the centre. Another day won't make a difference. You know what you have to do?'

'Yep.'

'Then begin.'

Elena pulled out a leather pouch with a needle hanging out of it. She ripped out the needle and trickled dark red liquid onto the cave floor in a straight line. It had the viscous consistency of blood.

'Who's blood is that?' I asked.

She drew another straight line with it. 'It had to be blood from an abomination,' she muttered without looking at me.

I thought back to the dead elven baby found by my side at the temple when I'd arrived in Thedas. 'Who's?' I asked and grabbed her arm.

'Yours.'

Mine? 'Doesn't it need to be a dead baby's?'

'I heard your doppelgänger was particularly cruel. That's what she used?'

My nostrils flared. 'So that's it? I get no say in this. You just take my blood and go ahead with some magic without even asking me if this is what I want? I don't even get to say goodbye to him? What's wrong with you? The magic's changed you.' 

Elena drew a third line, connecting them into an equilateral triangle like the one on our hands.

I gasped. 'Crikey, Lainey. That's a lot of blood. Did all that come from me?'

'Yeah. I tapped you. Sorry. Thought we'd have the rest of today to chat. I wanted to get here early, check out what the mythical void looked like, catch up. Explain a few things.'

'How do you know this will work?' I said.

Out over the void from where the angels stood, a solid rainbow of light crossed the mountain like a bridge. It connected to the rock on our side.