I glance at him and let him feel everything I’m feeling right now—the good, bad, and the ugly. As he gives me a wry smile, fully understanding, he reaches out, taking my hand.
I let him, and it fills me up with Ström’s deep, incredible light, the amazing goodness of his powerful Bone Magic, despite it’s temptation to go dark, as we walk side-by-side for a moment.
We come to a split in the underground passage now, and I nod for him to take point. He gives me a long look, making sure I’m okay, before he squeezes my hand, then trots up to Baldur and surges ahead.
Strom leads us now, in this place where hidden curses may still do usharm. Nothing hounds us, however, except the vast feeling of unrestful dead as we wind through the burial mounds of deceased Bloodwalkers and their mates.
As we twist through countless passages, we don’t see any dragon bones—but I feel them, buried in the dirt inside the mounds’ walls, and deep beneath our feet.
A vengeful sensation makes me bristle, as all of those not-quite-abandoned bones seethe with hatred for the ancient Danish Jarls who imprisoned them here. The Danish Jarls were cruel over the eons; they tortured, then killed their strongest adversaries and trapped them here to suffer on, even after death.
Unlike the Blood Dragon bones atUnhaemmerten, however, these souls truly suffer, trapped here in the mortal world. Because these Bloodwalkers and their mates are locked inside their bones, thanks to their screaming hatred for their ancient Jarls, plus their desire for vengeance.
It’s a terrible sensation, roaring with Bone Magic darkness and almost no light, as I know these ancient dead will suffer endlessly, until someone razes this place with fire.
Incinerating their bones until there’s nothing left for them to remain tethered to.
But the original thirteen souls donated to create the Black Dragon can’t ever be set free unless we vanquish it. Thanks to Baldur’s fierce clarity inside me and my memories returned, now that the False Knight’s Council no longer holds me in their grip, I remember what I need to, to continue our hunt.
But that, plus Mikkel’s renewed torture, leaves me in a furious state now, snarling at the shadows all around as my blood-bright drakaina inside me surges, locked in unity with my Bone Magic drake.
Both of them flood me with energy so hot, I feel like my blood’s going to boil right out of my veins. Bjorn stays with me, helping me keep my cool with his strong touch as we maneuver through the passages, and Ström pushes ahead.
True to Ström’s guess, all of Alfhild’s curse-work to hide her lair was cleared out after her death. We meet no resistance and no guards protecting her inner sanctum. There are only a few more stone doors that Baldur doesn’t even pause to smash through with his magic.
And then we’re there.
I gaze around in surprise now, as I lift my eyebrows at the haunting, vaulted space we’ve arrived in. Because it’s a place I know from visiting it as a tourist in the human world; an underground water cistern in Copenhagen, the now-unused Cisternerne are Gothic in nature, an arresting place to visit.
The hall of underground cisterns is extensive here in the Twilight Realm, however, far more ancient than in the human world. Water still fills most of them, though one vast vault is high and dry, filled with a treasure-trove of ancient artifacts.
Plus an enormous silk and ebony bed that I know at once is Alfhild’s.
“Huh. The Cisternerne. I always wondered why a sound of dripping water filled this place.” Ström muses now as we move over a vaulted stone bridge that leads to the dry cistern filled with oddities and opulence.
“You couldn’t see the Cisternerne when you were here with Alfhild?” Bjorn glances at Ström, scowling as we learn yet one more thing about the odious thief who once held Ström under her sway. The bitch we killed for what she’d done to my Second Drake—good riddance.
Even though we didn’t cast the strike that killed her.
“No.” Ström shakes his head as we stand in Alfhild’s inner sanctum now, surrounded by her things. “She always had some kind of curse-veil around her living space; I couldn’t see what was behind it. I only felt a sensation of an ancient, underground space, and the few whispers I could feel and hear late at night after she was asleep.”
“Cagey, even with her most trusted,” Bjorn says as I leave his protection and move forward now, investigating the space. My Bloodwalker power has an affinity for magical locks, wards, and curses, though not as strong as Ström’s; raising my power more, I scan the area.
Though I see nothing on any of the walls, columns, floors, or accoutrement here, the area safe.
“There’s nothing here.” Ström confirms my search as he heaves a relieved sigh. He lifts the lid of an old 1800s steamer trunk beside the bed, glancing within. “Just Alfhild’s regular junk of daily living—or nightly.”
“Clothes, jewelry, toiletries.” Baldur emerges from a smaller space that I can see has been equipped with an old porcelain toilet and copper bathtub, plumbed from the Cisternerne’s waters. “Plus a bunch of fascinating arcane odds and ends, but nothing of significant power.”
But as Ström makes to head over the bridge to find Alfhild’s underground ways leading to the palace, and Bjorn turns to go with him, something about this space makes me hesitate.
“Rikyava?” Bjorn is back by my side in an instant. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” For a moment, I think it’s just me jumping at shadows as I stare around the vaulted stone cisterns. Both my dragons are growling deep inside me now, though, as if something terrible lives here. Something far beyond the angry bones in the mounds and the lingering presence of Alfhild Fey.
Something dangerous—that my inner dragons want to kill.
Moving around, I take another turn around the space. It’s then that I notice little piles of black ash here and there; some are small and make tiny dust mounds on the tables, while some are larger and take up significant areas of the floor.
