He wouldn’t be able to touch it. To be able to simply snap it off. Of course he wouldn’t.
But he had to try.
Excruciating pain shot through him, originating with the tips of his fingers where the black material burned him. He blew on fingers that were already blistering, biting the inside of his cheek to distract him from the agony.
From behind the cage, darkness deepened and twisted into a boundless shape, rising up like a black phoenix ascending from hell, wing-like protrusions spreading wide across the expanse of the cavern.
OURS NOW
Julien staggered back before holding his ground. The sudden revelation that these creatures could communicate wasn’t lost on him, despite the limited processing time.
The raspy voice, emanating from the core of the being, thundered again:
POWERFUL
HE BELONGS TO SHADOW
“No! You can’t have him. He belongs to us,” Julien shouted, half of his mind chastising himself for entertaining the idea of reasoning with an umbraphage.
A ripple cascaded through the shape of the creature, then part of it bulged out, lunging towards Cinn’s body as if about to devour its prey.
Julien had no time to think about what .
This was it. The moment his body had been waiting for, and the moment his mind most feared.
Closing his eyes, he gave in, finally relenting after all these years. He reached for the motes that were always within his grasp, no matter where he was. Not lumenmotes: there was far too little light down here for them to be of use. Not windmotes, though there was plenty of air. No, Julien sought out another type of mote. The ones that were always waitingfor him. The ones that nobody else could feel. The ones that he’d never allowed himself the opportunity to learn to control after they’d killed his mother.
The nameless motes.
The illicit motes.
The motes that made him feel like a god, with all the power and destruction that brought with it.
They came to him, as quick as light, ready to be commanded, so eager to serve.
A feeling of euphoria submerged Julien, wrapping him in a bubble that numbed his senses to the world around him.
A drink of water after being parched in the desert.
A long-awaited sunrise after an endless night.
That first gasp after being held underwater.
Stepping out of the shadows and into the sunlight.
Power coursing through him, he aimed the motes straight at the umbraphage, which made a harrowing screeching sound, as it flapped its formless shadowy contours this way and that.
Its dark shape threw itself at Julien, but his motes were there in nanoseconds, protecting him without him consciously channelling them to do so, their pure whiteness forming an impenetrable barrier. The umbraphage flew backwards as if electrocuted. Its booming voice seemed to annunciate scraps of syllables that were too garbled to make meaning of.
With each fresh pummel of Julien’s motes, the umbraphage’s skin—if it could be described as that—started to peel off. Inky layer after inky layer floated in the air before breaking apart into black confetti. Smaller and smaller the creature became, until its harrowing scream quietened to a pathetic broken whimper.
Then there was only silence.
Silence, and Julien, andCinn.
The cage was gone, and so were the worms, although they’d gifted Cinn’s flesh with a line of circular bite marks. Still Cinn slept on, and Julien’s heart lurched—because he was all out of ideas, of energy. His small stockpile of hope dwindled as his throat constricted, and he blinked back hot tears. The plan had been simple—come here, find Cinn. He had no roadmap for how to actually revive him.
Joining Cinn on the rock slab, he perched on the edge of it, looking down at him. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” he whispered into the silence of the cavern, brushing a thumb over Cinn’s forehead before tracing the outline of his face all the way to his lips.
