Your draigs.
Irian
Irian was late.
He had lost himself to the violence, to stave off the sorrow. Lost himself to the steady, singing sweep of his blade, its hilt so familiar in his palm that he might as well have been born holding it. Lost himself to the easy slide of muscle over bone, the crouching sway of boots on dirt, the rhythmic dance of death.
Still they came—revenants pouring through the Gate like honey through a sieve, slow but inexorable. How many had he slaughtered? Hundreds? Thousands? Their congealed blood slicked his hands and armor; their rotting flesh ribboned his sword.
At last he felt it—a tug beneath his heart. A downdraft before a storm, carrying unfamiliar sensations: the prickle of withering thorns. The drag of an ebb tide. The vanishing flicker of a dying fire.
He cursed, kicking out at the armless revenant trying to gnaw upon his greaves. He turned, flew.
The void between spaces swallowed him. Spat him out.
He stumbled, nearly careening into Laoise. Both she and Wayland bowed in silent vigil beneath the dark, towering shape of theHeartwood, the sleeping giant of the forest. How he hated the sight of it.
Had this place not taken enough from him? First his future. Then his bride. What more could it demand that he had not already given?
He cursed again as he knelt beside the other two heirs. In this moment it was easier to feel anger than it was to feel the anguish lurking like a specter in his veins. He jammed the tip of the Sky-Sword into the dirt, leaned his forehead on its hilt. Listened as it sang to him the last notes of a valediction.
“By fire and by sky.” He sang the words he had always known like a lullaby for all he had wished for. A dirge for all he had gained. A lamentation for all he had lost. “By fast water and by ancient tree. By the power of my willing heart, I tithe my Treasure to thee… O Eala.”
He closed his eyes.Theywere waiting for him—Geth, the cosmic, tempestuous source of his Treasure’s power. The breath of the world; its first inhale and final exhale. As angry as they were essential—cyclone and breeze and everything in between.
The cost will be high.
“I know.” His voice was a storm; his tears, cold as cirrus clouds upon the sky’s blue face. “I know.”
They reached for him as if they would comfort him, as if they would tear him apart.
The love we give is equal to the love we live.The storm descended on Irian like a tornado, ripping his hair and clothing. Lightning crackled along his bones, a pain he could not stand. His head cracked open and his thoughts and memories poured out, strewn like leaves before a hurricane.
For a moment, he was a dark-haired, gray-eyed boy once more, standing upon the iron cliff as the tide ebbed toward the horizon. Only this time, the waves carried away something precious to him. More precious than clams or pebbles or stories. He reached for it, crying out as it was ripped from his arms.
Fia!
Fia
My Treasure slammed into Eala with the force of a battering ram, forcing her already frail form against the towering golden oak tree. The nemeton shuddered, and she shuddered with it. Green laddered over her own cracked markings, vines strangling her forearms and creeping to circle her throat.
I yanked the Heart of the Forest—now quiescent in my palm as the source magic tithed away from me—from my neck and threw it. It skidded over the uneven flagstones until it knocked against Eala’s boots. She stared at it, not quite comprehending what I had done.
What we were all about to do.
She soon would.
The power of Wayland’s Treasure slammed into her next, pummeling her like a brutish sea upon a stormy beach. Water gushed down the length of her hair, splatting onto the floor. She fell to her knees, vomiting foam as waves lapped her forearms, layering over the thorny vines drawing lines of blood down her wrists.
“No,” Eala whispered, but her teeth were splinters of wood andher tongue was seaweed and her words rasped like salt. “What have you done to me?”
“Nothing you have not asked for.” I watched dispassionately as she writhed upon the floor. “Time and again, you have done unspeakable things for power. You lied to friends for power. You betrayed those who loved you for power. You killed your sisters for power. You stole Rogan’s will for power. You traded the fate of both realms for power, and only yearned for more. So now you have it. How does it feel, to be the most powerful individual in both worlds? You are a vessel for three Treasures now—the elemental magic of three sources surges beneath your skin.How does it feel?”
She crawled toward me, her movements hectic, jerky. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a gutted fish upon the strand.
The power of Laoise’s Treasure flashed over her—a pyre of fire lapping and dancing. Eala roared, and the flames roared with her. Her skin—pulsing and breathing like the inchoate embers of a wildfire—flashed with rose-gold scales.
“Stop!” Her mouth yawned like ashes. Her steaming hair stank of char. “Please, Sister—whatever you are doing to me,stop. I cannot bear it!”
