“Do you feel like that was… Do you get the impression…”
Fuck, Brand didn’t want to say it out loud, like speaking a curse into existence.
It had taken them hours to fell the first dreadbeast. Now, in the same amount of time, they’d taken down a dozen? A dozen that had been far, far larger and more disastrous.
The sense that it’d been too easy intensified when he saw Luna stop dead in her tracks maybe fifteen yards away, head tilting as her gaze went distant.
Magnus winced, hands going to his ears with a curse.
Dread, swift and staggering, twisted in his gut like a rusty knife.
And then he heard it.
That same high-pitched, keening whistle from the chasm edge. Ominous. A promise of looming destruction from not one, but twelve difference directions.
“Luna! Your shield!”Brand bellowed, uncaring that his voice splintered as he surged into motion to reach her.
He was too late.
With an explosion that must have rocked all of the Montrealm, every last dreadwyrm imploded.
A wave of absolute ruination followed, leveling half the city around him. Brand was thrown mid-step, his body flying across the square and slamming onto a pile of rubble. Even his horns hadn’t been enough to protect his head, a sharp corner cracking into his skull hard enough to steal his senses.
He’d thought the sounds before were haunting. They were nothing in comparison to when his ears popped clear and he was bombarded by so many screams that it wrenched a sob from his lungs.
Lyriat’s roar rose above the din, a broken, devastating sound that only wrecked him further.
Luna.
Brand could barely see through the billowing dust, a cloud of deep sienna that may as well have been blood. Stumbling, dizzy, he tripped down the broken boulders beneath him and followed the bond where it led, that tension pulling them together.
Feeling it was the only thing keeping him sane. Surely, if anything had happened to her, it would be gone.
Surely.
A howl went up, followed by a growl. Sorcha.
Something dark flew past him, and those growls turned to violent snarling. Snapping barks meant to threaten. When he heard Lyriat’s cries of alarm, summoning any who could stand, he didn’t care anymore that he was practically blind—he ran.
Brand broke through the veil of red, the wasted square clear before him.
There, in its center, was a writhing mass of black hovering over Luna’s prone form, completely unperturbed by the feral Sorcha. It seemed to turn to him, and then it spoke—layered, like a chorus of clawing nails. “Catch me if you can, Brandir.”
“No.No!”
It lifted her body, swallowing it, and flew up the high road towards the castle. He kept his eyes on it only long enough to see it disappear into his own fucking tower.
Brand didn’t think as he sprinted for the portal on the other side, hoping it had survived. He had to get to her.
Brand burst into his chamber,half-crazed and searching.
There was little relief in finding Luna sprawled on the bed, even when he saw the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Something else was there. He could feel it.
Brandishing his greatsword, he took tentative steps towards her. Scanning. Sweeping. His muddled senses alert. He was all too aware of his exhausted limbs. The throbbing at the base of his skull and the blood trickling down his back.
There.Movement in his peripheral vision had him whipping his head towards the fireplace on the opposite wall.
The shadows, seemingly innocent as they clung to the nooks and crannies of their bedroom, began to writhe—just like the ones in the Dread Chasm. They pulled from every crevice,gathering themselves into a pool on the floorboards like a shifting sea of evil.
