It doesn’t even whimper as it’s turned to ash. I don’t have time to think about my victory as I know there will be more. Far more than I want to deal with. Maybe they’ll smell what’s left of their brethren and run. Maybe they’ll know fear like their prey does.
A veilrunner appears ten feet in front of me, running in my direction. It’s only there for a second before it leaps, its black teeth swirling with shadows. Its paws hit my chest before I have time to react, and those teeth clamp down on my shoulder, but they don’t reach my body.
My armor stopped it. The realization shocks it more than me. Nothing is supposed to be able to stop its bite, not even steel. I guess it’s never met a Priest with protection against the shadows made specifically by Rhaskar Thorne.
I press my hand against its face as it stands on my chest, and dragonfire consumes it. What was once a sixty-pound canine turns into a handful of dust. It blows in the midnight wind, the same wind I’m following, and I climb to my feet.
But there aren’t any more shrieks. No more pattering paws racing through the forest. The other veilrunners saw this one biteme, and they saw me turn it to ash. Then I remember that they, along with the skryths, cannot abide light, and I activate the Mark of the Lantern again, more worried about the creatures of the dark than I am about the other competitors.
I run, the scent growing ever stronger.
Until I see a very familiar blue mist rising from the ground around me.
Chapter 55
“Maybe it is too late to stop the first death, but it is not too late to stop what happens after.”
“You and Saelira were right to do as you did. Finish it.”
~Conversations between Caeldra and Kaelith
Fiona
The World of Night disappears. There are no duskthorn trees. No veilrunners or skryth. No full moon.
In their place is a woman tucked into bed and a red-haired man sitting beside her in a shabby wooden chair, both of them basking in the warmth of the hearthfire. A newborn baby lies in the cradle beside the man, and he slowly rocks it. He’s handsome, but not unusually so. He’s wearing simple linen trousers and a shirt. The woman’s eyes are dull from exhaustion as she stares at the child from her place in bed. She’s pretty. They both seem so young, so much younger than I am.
“I didn’t think you were going to survive it,” the man says softly so as not to wake the baby. “The midwife said something was wrong.”
“I did, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” she whispers. “We both did.” She stares at the baby who’s fast asleep in her swaddling blanket.
The man nods slowly, but his eyes don’t leave his child. I step closer and see that he looks exhausted as well. Neither of them has slept for far too long. There’s a knock on the cottage door, and the man smiles at the baby before standing up. “Must be the midwife coming to check on you and Asha. I’d thought she’d be by in the morning, not at midnight.”
Asha. Me.
The woman still stares at the baby, but the man opens the door to the cottage. It’s not the midwife, though. Instead, an older man wearing deep blue robes steps past the new father into the cottage and says, “Do you know who I am?”
Both the woman and the man look at the stranger and shake their heads. “We’re new here,” the man says. “I’m sorry, but we’re both exhausted. My wife just…”
The stranger smiles at them both and rubs the gray stubble on his cheeks thoughtfully. “May I see her? The baby, I mean.”
Without waiting for an answer, he walks across the room to the baby in the cradle. For a moment, he looks like he’s going to pick her up but then stops himself. “She’s beautiful. They all are, but this one is different. Her soul is distinct from the rest. Chosenrather than by chance, she will do a great many things the average soul will never be allowed to do.”
He turns to the man and woman who stare at him, and he smiles. “Teach her what it is to love unconditionally. Show her what it means to give rather than take and what it means to be kind. Her life will be more difficult than you can imagine, but if her heart hardens, all will be lost. Only the two of you can show her that just because the world outside is dark, she needn’t embrace the shadows.”
“Who are you?” the man asks.
The gray-haired stranger in deep blue velvet robes smiles at him and begins to glow. “I am Kaelith, Lord of the Lost, and this child is my last hope for a world where people still remember how to smile.”
Kaelith chose me. Lord of the Lost. He’s why I can find things. He set me on my path, why my parents were killed, why Rhaskar sought me out.
“Yes,” Kaelith says as he turns toward me. The memory changes, my parents and the baby freezing in place just as Azric did when Saelira came to me that night a week ago. “I chose you, Fiona Thorne, or should I call you Asha, as your parents did?” He takes another step toward me. “I set you on your path, and here you are at the edge of the chasm, one step from falling toward a destiny no one wants.”
“I’m not afraid of dying,” I say as I pull my daggers from their sheathes. I know they’ll be no use, but as I look at my mother and father, both of them so young, I realize Rhaskar wouldn’t haveknown I was alive, much less the gifts I was given, had a god not told him. Kaelith or one of the other gods told him what I was. They’re the reason my parents died. They knew what would happen, and they did it anyway. My parents showed me love. They taught me kindness and how to give rather than take, just as Kaelith asked them to. They were good people, and they died because of this…creature.
Kaelith walks toward me, his eyes never straying from my face. “You are drawn to Lost Things because my magic is wrapped around your soul. You were mine before you ever left the Void, before you ever took a breath. And vengeance is not one of my attributes. Little human, look around you. There will soon be far too many Lost Things to find, to save, for you to wallow in emotions as pointless as anger and revenge.”
The world around me changes from the little cottage. Suddenly, I’m floating in the sky beside Kaelith, looking at a village burning. Hundreds of people scream in pain, and I immediately expect to see Godforged committing the slaughter. Yet, as we slowly descend, I can make out what look like four Riders in full plate armor, but… it’s different. There are no winged horses, no ten-foot lances. The armor is… different. It’s more perfect, if that’s a description. Each of the soldiers has a strange glowing ball of crystal set in the center of their breastplate.
