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THE PRINCE OF SHADOWS
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SLOW, MONOTONOUS CLAPPING broke through the melancholic silence.
“What a lovely story,” echoed a sinister voice from one of the large tunnels.
“That voice...” Savara stiffened. She had only ever heard it in her mind, but now, echoing through the cavernous chamber, it curdled her blood.
“Who goes there?” growled Ori, in his earthquake-provoking growl. He waited a few seconds before adding, “Whoever you are, you are trespassing on hallowed grounds.”
“Ah, Ori, still as uptight as ever. Nice to see some things don’t change.”
From the shadows appeared a pair of midnight blue eyes, dulled slightly by a swirling dark haze. Paled, olive-skinned hands appeared next, traced by blackened veins, clapping slowly. The voice rang as smooth and cool as the night sky but was stained by the malice of its words. The young man’s face was framed by ebony hair that seemed to defy gravity, bobbing gently above his shoulders as though trapped underwater.
It was him, the man that had saved her on multiple occasions, but for some reason, he didn’t feel the same. The energy surrounding him was dark and twisted, and the voice that rang from his lips belonged to her nightmares. Savara clenched her fists, but Ori rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Hallowed grounds as these are not sites for violence,” Ori said calmly. “Or possession.”
The clapping finally stopped. “I agree,” said the young man in the voice that had more than once robbed her of sleep.
Something evil hung in the air between them. It sought out the thing inside her like a bear out sniffing for its next prey. Savara tensed as many muscles as she could, hoping to evade detection.
For the present, the man was occupied by other things. A sharpened dagger hung at his side, twin to the one Griffin had found in almost every way, except this one glowed white in the spirit-tinged air.
He reached for the gilded hilt and in a single fluid motion sliced through his palm as though it were butter. The cut was deep, but he didn’t flinch. His face remained expressionless as he took the knife in his bloodied palm and stabbed the ground below his feet.
The earth trembled.
The dark red fluid traced the lines of the golden hilt as it seeped down into the grass, and with it flowed the strange shadowing from the man’s eyes and veins. The muting of the colours of his person disappeared into the soil, and his skin and eyes regained their crispness, but his face remained hollow—purposefully hollow.
The skies above them rumbled; the earth below them shook; beyond the cavern, a storm approached.
***
“LOOKS LIKE ONE HELL of a storm,” Sebastian said as he looked over the brim of an ever-steaming teacup towards the darkening horizon and then back to Storm. “And the weather seems rough too,” he added with a smirk.
“Sebastian, is it really the time for jokes?” Jasper asked. From where they stood, high up on the great wall of Idune, the wind raged like a fearsome ocean thrashing against a cliffside. His bones quaked as he thought of the horrors that waited beyond the clouds.
“Ignore him,” Storm growled, her eyes fixed on the whorl of shadows inching ever closer to their perch. “Sebas is just asking for a fight.”
“Begging and pleading, Stormy, my dear,” Sebastian grinned. “You in an obliging mood?”
“I’d carve your heart out if I got the chance.”
Sebastian purred. “I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Sebas, if you had half the brains you think you have, you’d have twice as much as you do now,” Storm spat.
“Very funny Stormy, my darling dearest, but I only need one brain cell to know that the blush creeping over your cheeks means—” The words caught in his throat.
In the time it took for Storm to draw her sword, a hummingbird would have barely beat its wings. With precision and swiftness matched by only the wind itself, she slashed cleanly through the teacup. The base clattered to the ground far below them, along with the rest of the tea. The handle dangled precariously between his fingertips.
Sebastian’s eyes widened in awe, but Storm remained entirely unfazed. Her gaze never once lifted from the shadows, despite the obscuring strands of brilliant red hair swishing around the harsh edge of her cheekbones. The sword hung easily at her side, a single drop of tea gliding gracefully down its too-sharpened blade.
“I wouldn’t finish that sentence,” she hissed before returning to the expectant army below.
“How many times have you used that one?” Jasper asked when Storm was well out of earshot.
Sebastian grinned coyly. “Not as many as you’d think, and hopefully more than I should’ve.”
Jasper raised an eyebrow. “You do know she’ll kill you one of these days, right?”
“Is that what you think?” Sebastian laughed. “If she wanted me dead, I would’ve been dead years ago.”
“Then why do you continue to push her?”
Sebastian stared down at Storm as she exchanged words with a soldier on the ground. The smile that spread across his face was unmistakable, as was the glimmer in his eyes. Storm looked up at them briefly and frowned before resuming her conversation.
“I guess I just know great ways to waste a good cup of tea.” Sebastian shrugged and tossed the remaining bits of porcelain to the stones below, their clank and smash engulfed by the howling air currents around them.
***
HE APPEARED FROM NOTHING itself, but his presence was impossibly heavy. A swirling plume of dust circled upwards from the ground around the knife. Through it, eyes as red as the rubies that marked her face pierced the cloud.
“Get behind me,” Ori whispered to Savara as the body of a man stepped out of the swirling plume, looking more shadow than whole.
The man inhaled deeply, letting the crisp, cool mountain air fill his mostly solid lungs. His charcoal suit shifted like the dust that comprised him, but his intimidating smile remained entirely vivid. Pearly white teeth and ruby red eyes stood out against the rest of his shadow-tinged body.
“A wonder it is to be whole again,” he laughed, relishing in the sensations around him. “I believe, Princess of Flame, you have met my apprentice, but we’ve never formally been introduced. I am Adrius, Prince of Shadows,” he said with an exaggerated but perfectly executed bow.
It was his voice, she realised. The one from her nightmares.
“My, my, Ori. It has been a while. I’d like to say you’re looking no worse for wear, but lies have never been my strong suit...”
“Adrius,” Ori spat in reply. “How is this possible?”
The Prince of Shadows smiled. “Come now. You didn’t expect them to get rid of me? You know as well as I that every land demands its leader. That little Izar wretch might have stripped me of my body, but she could never take my soul.” He raised his chin proudly. “That is my realm.” He laughed, the same one that chilled Savara’s blood and rattled her bones. “You see, Ori, timing is everything, and the divination of our little friend here meant the time was finally right.”
Savara wished at that moment to be invisible. The Prince of Shadows gave voice to the fears in her heart.
“Leave her out of this,” Ori retorted, protecting her with his body the way a father might—the first time anyone had. The gesture, little as it was, helped.
The Prince of Shadows scowled. “She is at the root of this, whether you wish to accept it or not.”
As the two men stared each other down, Savara’s skin prickled with the sensation of being watched. She turned to find the young man whose body had been used to transport the Prince of Shadows watching her intently from the other end of the chamber. His midnight blue eyes burned into her shoulder skin. Time and time again, his eyes were the ones she’d met as she was led out of trouble, but now, his were the ones she’d followed into it.
“What do you mean?” Savara asked, returning her gaze to the shadowy man, still feeling his apprentice’s eyes on her.
“Should you tell her, or should I?” the Prince of Shadows mocked. “If anything, it’s poetic. You taking away her memories before, and now being the one—”
“You will do no more speaking,” Ori snarled. His hands balled into tense fists as he slid his foot back into a fighting stance. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“I thought hallowed grounds were not stages for fighting?” the Prince of Shadows smirked.
“For you, I can make an exception,” Ori retorted.
Shards of rock met tendrils of shadow. The room buzzed with a dense energy that felt like worlds colliding.
Savara ducked and dodged as best she could, but the flying bits of debris threw her off course. She watched their heated battle from the floor, in awe of the elderly Harri leader.
Ori moved with force and density, launching rocks from all corners of the sanctuary, hurling them like bullets toward his attacker. The Prince of Shadows hardly moved at all, letting his dagger-like tendrils carve everything in their path. To Savara’s dismay, he even seemed amused. The Apprentice watched from the sidelines, dodging the occasional flying rock. His eyes flicked from her to his master. When he was sure only she was watching, he mouthed the words, get up.
The Prince of Shadows raised a hand in her direction, sending two stray tendrils after her. Her heart raced, forcing the adrenaline through her veins in hopes of getting her moving again but to no avail. Savara sat paralysed with fear.
With a vicious slash, the tendrils pierced the ground beside her. She shielded her eyes and pleaded with the thing inside her to make an appearance, terrified by the rumbling ground beneath her. Please, please, please... she begged, searching the darkest parts of her soul in vain. The next thing she knew, thick vines began wrapping themselves around her legs, strapping her to the ground.
“You cannot hide those powers forever, princess,” laughed the Prince of Shadows. “I can feel your fear. I can sense your doubts. You’re worried about becoming a monster?” The corners of his mouth curved upwards. “You have no idea.” The next wave of his fingers sent Ori flying into the solid rock wall before slumping to the ground.
“No!” Savara cried, jutting her hand out in anger.
Finally, they appeared. Her powers. Her palms tingled, radiating energy like heat from a fire. She motioned a hand towards the Prince of Shadows, sending her own tendrils of lavender light in his direction. She felt for the contours of his soul, similarly to how she had with the child in Big Tog’s study, but found only endless depths of darkness. Grasping at him was like grasping at nothing. She wondered if there was anything truly alive in him at all.
The Prince of Shadows, with a dark energy of his own, clamped down on hers and smiled. “There she is.”
***
SHADOWS BEAT DOWN ON the city of Idune like a tsunami dragging an island to the darkest depths of the sea. Buildings burst into flames, people fled their houses in flocks, screams littered the ashen air.
“Storm!” called Jasper against the surging flames. “Behind you!”
She slashed at the anthropomorphic cloud, deterring it rather than vanquishing it. “They aren’t dying! What are these things?” she called back.
“They’re not good,” he replied, slashing the air around them with his sword with much less grace. “Don’t let them touch you.” His limited knowledge of fighting showed but wouldn’t stop him.
“How are we going to get rid of them if we can’t kill them?” she yelled.
“We’re not.”
Suddenly a wave of living targets appeared. They marched in unison, arms poised to fight. In time with their steps, they jabbed, sending a wave of brilliant red flames across the floors.
“That’s more like it,” Storm called.
Jasper looked across at the sea of blank faces when one caught his eye. A middle-aged man that he recognised from his capture outside of Osiir approached him.
“I know you,” he said, but the man didn’t register. “Storm! Those are the captured Argia. Don’t hurt them!” Jasper yelled to her. “You’re Thomas, right?” Jasper asked, but the man continued to approach with arms readied. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he continued, but the man’s expression was unchanging, fixed like a statue. The man waved a hand in the air, sending out a trail of flames toward Jasper. He jumped just in time to dodge.
“I don’t think they can hear you,” Storm called irritably.
Jasper, worrying she was right, regarded the man’s eyes with a pleading gaze. The humanity he had once known had been obscured entirely by the shadowy black dust. “They’re in there somewhere,” he replied. “They have to be...”
Just as the man was about to dole out a lethal dose of fire, Storm sliced through his chest, leaving a jarring streak of spurting red liquid across it. “They’re possessed,” she said firmly. “If you don’t want me to kill them, don’t let them get so close.”
The man coughed violently as the blood spurted from his lungs. Fear filled his eyes briefly before he crumpled painfully to the ground. With two more coughs, he was gone. His body stilled and grew cold before being consumed by another wave of flames. There was no time to mourn the man’s tragic and dehumanised death. The flames and shadows raged on around them, dancing together in a dangerous harmony, the kind which toyed with the fine line between life and whatever lay beyond.
