Like a bird of prey diving for its next meal, the umbraphage flung itself towards the ground.
An agonising heat seared through Cinn’s left wrist, and he tore his eyes away from the umbraphage to his warding band. It had become lava-hot, radiating scalding heat, and all at once it was as if molten sunlight coursed beneath his skin. As the inferno deepened, already causing blistering redmarks, he unleashed a primal scream. He tried to rip off the band with his other hand—stupid, stupid!—which only doubled his pain when the flesh of his fingers and palm joined his wrist in burning, practically melting his flesh away.
“Give me your wrist!” shouted someone—Julien?—but Cinn had enough sense to spare them his agony, and swung his arm in the opposite direction.
Then, a new sensation began. One of terror. One of dread, creeping slowly through him.
Limbs failing him, he tumbled to the ground, looked up to find most of his vision consumed by black, the umbraphage’s form spreading out in front of him like an angel of death.
And then, all pain, all the noise, every single sensation faded away, as he slipped away from the world.
nineteen
Cinn
This shouldn’t be happening.
The band was supposed to protect him.
Instead itburnedhim, and allowed him to shadowslip at the worst possible time, leaving everyone else to die.
He’d have presumed he was dead himself right now, if it wasn’t for the fact he recognised where he was: back in the ruined red city of death. Crumbling skyscrapers rose above him, the alien red vines devouring them with their insidious grasp. An odd rumbling reverberated around him, causing a slight shake to the cracked ground. He looked up to the sky. Yup, the moon was still fractured into shards. At least it was reliable here.
The only silver lining was that his bangle was icy cold, its blistering burn ceased, his skin unmarred.
“Where are you, little motes?” he said aloud, eyes searching the sky for his shadowmote friends that had helped him last time. They were nowhere in sight.
Well, he’d better go find them then, before it was too late.
Forcing his legs into action, he picked a random direction and started walking. It was unsettling how detailed this version of the shadowrealm was. Just like a real city, it had trees, although dead and splintered, and cars, some parked neatly against the pavement, others sprawling at odd angles in the road.
Something about the shape of the cars seemed strange to him, but he struggled to put his finger on it. The vehicles appeared sleek and streamlined; the contours were too smooth, the angles too… something.
A tiny tickling sensation, not unpleasant, brushed against the back of his neck. A miniscule shadowmote flew in front of his face, so close that for a moment Cinn thought it was going to act like a butterfly and land on his nose. Its impossible black glow flickered as it hovered in place.
“Hello there,” Cinn whispered.
In reply, it bounced up and down before zipping off to the left, then pausing. Cinn stepped towards it, then it zoomed off again.
Did it want him… tofollowit?
Well, he had no other plans.
Always remaining several metres ahead of Cinn, the shadowmote led him down a littered alley, ground covered in sharp shards of glass.
Two more turns, and they reached the beginning of a bridge, its skeletal remains stretching across a dried river, the bed of which was a deep drop below him. The corroded metal and fractured concrete only hinted at this structure’s past life.
As he stared at this desolate, decaying monument, his mind whirled.
It was then the lurching sense of familiarity hit him.
He almost couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognised the city before now, because it was his very own: it wasLondon. This wasn’t any old bridge: this was the remnants ofTower Bridge.
Looking across the riverbed, his eyes scanned for the recognisable silhouettes of other landmarks. Where was the Tower of London, standing proudly on the north bank?
A heavy sense of sorrow settled over him when he finally identified what remained of it. The historic castle, like everything else in this London, now lay in ruins, its medieval walls crumbled after succumbing to the oppressive red vines that choked it. They wrapped around theshattered stones, their vibrant hue in stark contrast to the desolation that surrounded them.
He’d never been able to afford the entrance fee for The Tower of London since that one time he’d visited on a school trip. His experience of the day had been marred by shadowslipping in the middle of the inner ward. He’d collapsed on the grass, perhaps under the weight of too many spirits compressed into one place. Comparatively, it was a relatively ‘good’ trip—the dead that he’d met had been surprisingly friendly, considering most of them had been executed there.
