“The flame Risen saw was an illusion…nothing more. The real flame had been weakened to the point that it was kept hidden away.” Deneya spoke without looking back. Eira had to stay within mere inches to hear her soft words.
Eira waited to ask her next question until Deneya opened the trapdoor in the floor and they were back in the passages that led toward the final ladder and the room she had last met Taavin in. “Didhereally extinguish the real flame?”
Deneya didn’t answer until they were both up on the platform at the top of the ladder. She stared at the empty room, seeing things that Eira couldn’t even imagine. There was a history here that Eira had only begun to piece together. A history that Deneya, Taavin, and Ulvarth were woven into.
“The truth of what happened to the Flame of Yargen is too difficult to tell. It’s not made for mortal minds.”
“But—”
Deneya turned to face Eira, her blue eyes shining almost purple in the low light. “Don’t ask questions when you’re not prepared for the answers. And trust me: you’renotprepared. If you thought you were already at risk for what you know, you have no idea what this line of questioning will yield.”
Eira closed her mouth on all objections and gave a small nod.
“Good, now let’s find you a talking rock to convince them you were here.” Deneya led the way into the room, Eira following two steps behind.
The place was barren, just like the last time she was here. But this time Eira wasn’t hopelessly distracted by Taavin. This time she could explore the room at her leisure. The ghostly outlines of portraits once hung on the walls were burned into the plaster from years of sunlight. There were still the footprints of trinkets on the shelves in the dust that had collected around them.
The room was in the shape of an octagon with four doors. One was where she’d entered from; another was a washroom; a completely vacant room was the third; but behind the fourth door was a strange, absolutely dark room that beckoned to her with gentle caresses of a magic so potent that Eira had no idea how she hadn’t felt it the first time she was here.
Unlike the rest of the quarters, this room was unadorned—there were no delicate patterns of swords, birds, and suns. It was empty save for a single pedestal. The stone column had a divot in its top. Collected in the empty basin was the power that had drawn her in. She could almost see it swirling, overflowing down the edges of the pedestal. The magic was like a beacon—a light in the darkness—calling to her. Beckoning. It was as potent as the first magic she felt after leaving the pit.
Eira couldn’t stop her magic from unraveling from her to greet it. Her powers sank into the pores of the stone and ignited words trapped within the fragments of the magic. They were splinters, said again and again by different people, yet also the same. She knew the voices, and yet couldn’t quite place them. These were unlike any other echoes she’d ever heard.
This is—isn’t—real flame?
Yes—legendary flame of—left of it.
I know—our destiny.
Thrumsana.
—do now?
I heard the goddess.
I wanted—everything you desired—only way.
Thrumsana.
Whenever—ready.
Thrumsana. Thrumsana.
The words continued, disjointed and broken. Segments of conversations flickered like a candle in a breeze, casting haunting shadows on the walls. They seemed to spin through her mind like a vortex, faster and faster, trapping her in a rising torrent of sound. Two voices, three voices, six. All the same people. All familiar. All different. It made no sense. It would tear her apart.
Give me the flame. Deneya’s voice.It is—commands it.
—will be killed.
Death comes for us all.
Thrumsana.
Where is it?a masculine voice roared. The sound was horribly familiar. It was different than the whispering tones she’d last heard it as. This was the voice of the man they had called Champion.What have you—ruined—kill you.
Thrumsana. Thrumsana. Thrumsana. Thrumsana. Thrum—
The noise reached a crescendo of a hundred voices screaming all at once. Eira’s head sang in horrible harmony, and she let out a shout and clutched her skull.
