“At least a moon,” said Kalani. “It started small. We thought it was just a new Everdarque portal, so we ignored it.”
“This isn’t fae magic,” Damien said, though that was clear.
With no other choice, he finally reached out and touched the spire. The bark didn’t move, but beneath his palm there was a squirming, like hundreds of worms writhing over one another followed by the sharp pain of pinpricking claws. Arcana tried to work its way into him, to read him just as he so often did to others, but Damien had spent a lifetime learning to be difficult to read. As the arcana tried to rend its way in, noxscura answered in kind, pushing back and then reaching inside to explore for itself. And then everything went dark.
Damien’s vision left him, the sounds of the forest were silenced, the damp air no longer against his skin. Left with nothing but the wet writhing under his hand, that sour, dead stench filled his lungs and settled over him. The noxscura had to go no deeper to discover what the spire was, it came right out and told him:
Fear.
Chaos.
Destruction.
Damien stood on the parapet of the keep of Aszath Koth, looking down at the city. It should have been a comfort to see it, lights dotting the dense roadways in the dark, but there was only panic—he knew what was coming, and he couldn’t stop it. A set of hands grabbed him, pulling him into a shadow. There was a face too, and though he’d had this memory before, the woman was different this time, but then it was gone.
The world around him flew by, a pinch in his stomach as he was translocated far from Aszath Koth, and then thrown to the ground and chained there. He looked down, but his hands were small and useless. He couldn’t protect himself, he couldn’t do anything but cry for his mother.
And then Xander was beside him.
Damien struck out, and the vision was gone like a hand through smoke, leaving him in pitch darkness again but with his heart racing and sweat breaking out on his neck.Fear. Whatever it was, it wanted him afraid, to terrorize him instead of letting him see the truth, but he knew that was just a memory, and a foggy one at best, pushing forward.
The darkness changed again, but there was no vision of his past this time, there was just the grotesque tree and his hand pressed to it, but it was sinking in. The bark melted around his fingers, swallowing up his wrist, his arm. He couldn’t pull out of it, it happened too fast, and soon he was covered in it, completely absorbed. He was inside the thing that had been a tree, hewasthe thing, it was him, and the world was a chaotic amalgam of shadows and grotesque shapes suspended between life and death never to be escaped. Damien’s mind spun, falling over and into itself, nausea roiling in his root-like guts, a scream beating at a mouthless throat, legs that no longer existed wanting so badly to flee.
And then the noxscura reminded him: he was still himself.Pathetic, he spat into his settling mind, though whether it was at himself or the thing’s attempt, he was unsure.
Damien squeezed his eyelids shut until there were flashes of light, and opened them again to see the spire and his hand, attached but separate. He looked to one side and then the other. He was alone, and the Innomina Wildwood was…gone. No, not gone. Destroyed. Reduced to burnt out stumps, piles of ash and sludge and rot surrounded him. The ground was grey, the sky was grey, the whole world was grey, devoid of life or even its possibility in some hopeful, far-off future.
But the tree. Damien dug his fingers in, the wood giving way with a squelch. He clenched a fist around the wet pulp that had once been bark and tore it back. It ripped away like parchment, leaving a hole surrounded by dripping splinters and in its center, a sheet of glass. No, water? No. Blood.
Smooth, the liquid surface rose upward but did not spill out. Like a mirror, his face was reflected in the crimson, so stark against the greys all around, and he saw what a mess he had become, drenched in sweat, teeth bared, deep circles under his eyes and veins pulsing blue as the noxscura drained out of him. The effort was killing him to push through the defenses of whatever this was and to remain there, to see it, toknowit.
And it told Damien then that he didnotwant to know It.
His reflection shifted, eyes blackening, features blurring, and the face that stared back at him from the bloody pit was no longer his own but one with a too-wide smile and gaping holes for eyes. Breaking free of the tree, the blood seeped out to form clawed hands to grip the edge of the hole he’d made, the figure contorting as It birthed Itself from the rotting spire.
Stuck to the spot, Damien could only watch Its dripping and oozing neck crane, face brought just up to his own. Breath reeking of centuries of decay fell over him, hissing through a grin so pleased he could only assume, whatever It was, It had already won, and It knew.
One of Us?It asked in Key and Chthonic and Ouranic and every possible language all at once though Its mouth never moved and Its voice was not words but the sound of buildings crumbling and bones raking over shale.
Damien’s throat constricted around a gag as he opened his mouth, but he swallowed back a retch and told it, “Fuck off.”
Ripping himself backward, Damien’s hand broke away from the spire and he staggered out of the oozy, rotting ring. The stench was still all over him, the voice still ringing in his ears, and the feeling, the fear, the chaos, the destruction, prodding at every bit of him.
But the birdsong was back, the wetness in the air, the life. The Innomina Wildwood was still whole save for that cursed spot, but it had seemed so real—allof it—even as Damien knew it wasn’t. He raked hands through his hair, pacing outside of the circle, counting his steps as his boots fell on solid earth, fear they would sink in with the next hateful step. He fell to his knees, trying to tether himself to the plane, the one he’d been born in, and not that place, not to whatever that had been.
He wished Amma were there, to hear her voice, feel her touch, even as he was glad she was far from the horror he had seen.
“What is it?” Fior’s voice called, and the mania of the moment subsided enough for him to peer up at the others.
They were huddled together, all of them, but Kaz carefully stepped away from the rest of them to approach Damien. “Master?”
He touched the imp, a thing born wholly from the infernal plane, and he knew then that It was beyond even the place from where imps and demons came.
“That is an ancient evil,” he said, careful, deliberate, voice surprising him with its hoarseness. It wasn’t accurate, not entirely, but it was the best explanation he had. Calmer, he stood, clasping hands behind his back to think.
Kalani stormed up to him, grasping the shoulder of his tunic and squeezing hard. “But whatisit?”
He shifted his gaze down to her hand, and she released him, but her face demanded an answer. He hated to admit it, but the name was on the tip of his tongue, and it fell out before he could stop it. “E’nloc.”
