Hold on, Niklaus. I’m coming…
I stop in front of five Guardians, members of the Blood family. And I know I’ve made it. Relaxed in their seats, they stand abruptly, caught unprepared and disheveled to see a woman out of uniform without any chains show up here of all places.
They guard a dome of bars without so much as a small candlelight to show anyone inside. I attempt to look around them to sneak even a glimpse of Niklaus in there.
I recognize Glinorious and Tycraniz Blood right away. The years have been kind to them. They remain god-like, ancient and majestically tall.
“I’m here for my husband.” The protective love that unravels into the palms of my hands links me to the Nightlung with ease. I will die to free him, and that truth alone gives me great power. Dominion over these demons.
Tycraniz does a double take. A quick scan of my upper body, and that flicker of identification spreads a grin over his face. “You are the wife?”
“She disappeared,” Glinorious Blood scoffs.
“Wasn’t she a witch?” another asks.
I measure the room with my eyes to make sure there is no additional threats. There are claw marks on the rocky ceiling. There are words probably carved by fingernails in the wall next to me.‘They don’t let you die here.’
“If you let me leave with him, I will not come back,” I say. Even though the tunnel is ice cold, my skin is set ablaze with a fueling desire to eliminate everyone in my path to get to him.
The Bloods laugh, collectively making threatening steps in my direction.
Dellilian steps out from behind my shadow, growling, snarling, and snapping to warn them about getting any closer.
They stop to silently assess the danger of this animal being in close quarters of this prison. A few words are passed around in Old Alkadonian. I only recognizeMeat Carnival.
“You only have a few seconds to decide,” I add calmly.
There’s a vehement charge of an otherworldly frequency buzzing into my bones, spearing into my hands. It’s a living, breathing beast that waits restlessly for me to release it.
“No,” Glinorious announces firmly. “We will cut off your limbs and hang you next to his confinement so he may watch you bleed out.”
“Final answer?” I move forward, holding my arms open to show I bear no weapon. “Because I heard you mate with your brothers and sisters to maintain a pure bloodline. Do you have any idea what that kind of incest does to your offspring over the generations?”
Glinorious is the first to attack me.
“It deforms them.”
The Nightlung possesses my senses and erupts me at sheer will. Claws are sunk into their minds, their genetics, each individual strand of DNA. And I fuse into the fibers of their souls. Within the radiating darkness of the Nightlung, I speak to the Bloods like a god commanding from worlds away.
“For every harm you have caused him, I will speed up your generational incest.”
The clock is spun and pushed forward in their anatomies. Years and decades leave them. But they do not age. No, that is not what I’m adjusting. I am speeding up the birth defects that will one day come to their children and their children’s children. I manipulate each era within their foul mating system. Their skin, once bronze by war, turns waxy and of decaying leather, pocketed with boils and warts that weep a yellow ichor. Foreheads bulge unnaturally, like second skulls are emerging. They lose or acquire more fingers and toes. Teeth rot, growing in disturbing shapes. Armor groans and cuts into their skin, too tight from new bone formations.
And those glamorous, noble headdresses—they melt and harden into small cages around their heads.
Drool hangs from their gaping mouths, a milky goo that flutters from each labored breath. Their human likeness has been buried by an incest-derived monstrous instinct. They move like hypnotized mammoths, disoriented and blind.
I strike while the disfiguration continues to warp their brain chemistry.
Stealing a sickle from Tycraniz’s belt, I bring two Blood Mammoths to their knees, slicing into their Achilles heels and kicking them to the ground. They crawl away from me in a daze, and the others follow only after attempting to fight back in a drunk, sluggish form—my sickle cuts into their oddly developed muscles and tendons.
A blizzard of iced blood and frigid arteries hit me at every angle internally. But as I see his cage is abandoned, left without a guard…I straighten my back and set down the sickle.
The only sign of life from beyond the bars and within the cocoon of nightfall is leveled breaths.
We are finally alone.
67. Darkened Knight of The Vexamen Prison
