The moment this new darkness touches the sleeve of my Lethian armor, the silver threadsshriek.
A thousand voices cry out at once, a scream that sends me recoiling backward, striking fear through my heart as I wrench myself away from the hammer, leaving it on the ledge.
The darkness stops, but the screams don’t, driving my hands to my ears, a futile attempt to silence this horrible terror…
Until I realize that I’ve brought the dark energy with me.
Inky black shapes form across the inside of my arm outside my armor.
Shapes that, horrifyingly, are beginning to resemble exactly the intricate runes that were carved into the hammer’s handle.
A cry rises to my throat as my focus flashes to the white hammer now resting on the ledge only two paces away.
Its handle is bare.
The runes are gone.
Black liquid now rages across my palm and forearm, swirling furiously, attempting to form those same runes, except that they break apart, reform, and break again, continuing to defy gravity no matter which way I turn my arm, no matter how hard I try to shake them off…this darkness that smells as coppery as blood.
Suddenly, it seems to abandon shaping itself into runes, forming needles instead, its sharp edges striking down at the Lethian silver, a cascading barrage, as if the black blood is trying to find the smallest cracks between the threads.
Trying to get to my forearm.
My armor fights back, the threads screaming into the darkness around me, every cry pulsing out around me so that even the silvery light in the distance begins rippling in time with this agonizingly fearful music.
Even as I fight confusion…because if this darkness were trying to get to my skin, or even to the Dragonstone Blade, it could simply pool in my palm where both my skin and the blade’s image are exposed…I allow a new fury to fill me.
A determination.
I will not accept this darkness.
I will fight as hard against it as the silver threads are fighting to protect me.
Unable to use my left hand for fear the black liquid will adhere to my left palm, I hurl myself at the rock wall and smack my arm against it as hard as I can.
Again and again. My arm bent at the elbow as I beat the underside of my forearm against the jagged rock, determined to dislodge this coppery-black blood.
Screaming with effort, my voice cuts through the shrieking melody rising from my armor. “Get the fuck off me! I won’t accept this!”
I’m afraid you will.
“No—”
Barely, there is a flash of golden light, molten energy streaming up my right arm, flashing into my mind, capturing my consciousness before the tunnel vanishes?—
I’m standing in a bed of white rose petals, a field of flowers so beautiful, I imagine that my mother once created such perfection.
Ivory petals fall about me while white ribbons slither around my waist and chest, but this time, shade settles across my back, as if from a tree whose branches I can’t see.
A cool breeze touches my cheeks, oncoming winter.
The False Queen wades through the petals toward me, her black dress catching and tugging while her hair blows across her face, revealing only her lips.
“Well, this is a nice touch,” she says, gesturing to the bed of rose petals. “But rather typical of the illusions you live under, no?”
I’m confused by the way she speaks, as if I am responsible for the rose petals—as if I have some control over this environment when I don’t.
Which she demonstrates when, with another sweep of her hand, a vicious, hot wind rushes across the landscape, turning the petals to ashes that settle across a now-barren field.
