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“How is she doing this?” Lex sighed, cupping his face in his hands. “It’s only been a month and now she’s a general in the army, she’s got Arius in her back pocket, and nobody knows she’s their dead princess. That’s absolute insanity.”
“She’s probably doing the same thing Tiernan did,” Dusk replied, pushing food around his plate.
It was well past midnight and he was too stressed to eat any of it. Lyra insisted that they had a meal, saying they’d need the energy, but he couldn’t find the will to take more than a few bites. There definitely wouldn’t be any sleep before dawn.
“She’s got her brother in a trance of some sort, so she can do whatever she wants. If he tells people to trust her, they will. You heard the things Tara said about being in the Ditanian military, they don’t think for themselves. They just do what they’re told and that’s it.”
“And they just accepted magic? No questions?” Lex asked, shrugging his shoulders.
“If you suddenly found out magic was real and accessible, would you turn it down? And Nedarya has promised them, with this power, that she’ll end the war forever. But I have a feeling the eternal peace of death is not what the soldiers are expecting.” Dusk glanced up at Lex, shaking his head. “Anyway, Gideon said they were a special battalion and had been training for a few weeks. I imagine Nedarya doesn’t have enough resources to go around indefinitely, but she’s got enough to amass more mages than anyone in this world can handle all at once.” Dusk stabbed a piece of broccoli on his plate. “They’re expendable. She’ll just keep replacing them until she gets everything she’s after, which won’t take her long to do with that kind of backup. And she’s coming here for the heart and the eye, I guarantee it.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know if there’s much we can do,” Dusk replied, his voice faltering slightly. “But I... I feel like we have to try. For Lyra’s sake. She’s been trapped on this mountain for over a thousand years trying to protect this thing, but the day has finally come. The heart is too big for her to move by herself and even if we somehow managed to get it off the island, Nedarya would hunt us down before we could get away. The least we can do is try to make sure Nedarya has a hard time getting to it.”
“Do you think Tara will be with her?”
“I don’t know... but if she is, we’ll have a formidable opponent on our hands. We both know that.”
“I can’t fight with you,” Lex said, looking down at his bandages. Dusk could hear the defeat in his voice. “I’m useless.”
A thought popped into his head. “No, you’re not. You might end up being the only thing that keeps the eye away from Nedarya.” Lex looked up at him quizzically. “We can’t hide the heart, but hear me out. She’s going to expect me to still have the eye and she probably thinks you’re dead. Given the wounds she inflicted on you, you should be. If you keep the eye and stay out of sight, you can get away if something happens to me. That way she won’t get it.”
“Don’t talk like that...”
“I don’t plan on dying tomorrow,” Dusk replied, reaching out and taking Lex’s hand. “But we have to play it safe. The eye is dead, it’s power possibly broken beyond repair. But with the heart in her possession, who knows what she’ll be able to do. Besides, the heart is still broken and Lyra said the only thing that can repair it is the eye. We have to keep it away from her. I don’t know what she could do if the two pieces are reunited.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to stand against her?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Dusk sighed. I’m just following my gut at this point. And my gut is telling me to make a stand, even if it’s in vain. At the very least we can damage what she’s been working so hard to build, and buy ourselves some more time.”
Lex pushed his plate full of uneaten food away. “We should go see Lyra. They’ll attack at dawn now that they know we’re here. Although hopefully the idea of a dragon makes them a bit more cautious.”
Dusk took an offered hand from Lex and together they exited the kitchens, heading for the platform. Lyra was still at the top of the mountain, resting her wings for the coming battle. Dusk saw a few of the caretakers dashing up and down the stone walkway with supplies cradled in their arms, dodging the ruined portions from the previous attack. One of them came out of a long tunnel, a stack of ancient-looking books belted and slung over his shoulder.
“I never got a chance to really look through the library here,” Dusk said absentmindedly. “There’s so many more books I want to read.”
“You’ll get the chance to read them,” Lex replied, squeezing his hand. “I promise.”
They reached the platform and activated the rune, the stone shooting them skyward. As they came to the top and the stone cracked loudly back into place, Dusk heard crashing from outside the stone walls. He looked at Lex with fear in his eyes and immediately slipped off his bow, nocking one of the obsidian arrows he’d made. With a finger to his lips he crept forward, the sound of shattering glass filling the air. The night was deep and dark except for the light of the moon. Pressing his back to a large stone he peeked around the edge.
There, in the middle of the plateau, was Lyra. She threw her large tail from side to side, smashing the sheets of obsidian that reached for the sky with their razor sharp claws. Dusk didn’t understand what was happening at first. Lyra had told them the glass was all that remained of the fight with Nozzera and therefore he assumed it was a relic of some kind. A great reminder of things that had happened in the past and what could happen again if magic were returned to the world. He let the tension out of his bowstring and stepped around, motioning for Lex to follow him. Lyra swung her tail again, destroying another section of the stone. The pieces scattered across the plateau and a few of them fell over the edge into the dark abyss beyond.
“Lyra?” Dusk asked, fearful she’d gone insane. “What’s going on?”
“I’m doing what I should have done weeks ago,” she called back, aiming her tail for another. “I’m making sure nobody can sneak up on us again.”
Dusk watched as she continued to smash sheet after sheet of the volcanic glass. He and Lex moved out of the way so she could finish the last sections around the ring of the volcano, destroying the hand-carved archways that used to shimmer in the sun. Then she turned her sights on the large mound where the other half of the heart was kept. She readied her tail, then paused for a moment, staring into the almost black glass.
“I sealed the heart in here a thousand years ago, hoping it would never see the light of day ever again.” She lowered her head, staring at the ground, her tail still poised to strike. “But it seems that’s not what destiny had in mind. I hope this decision is the right one to make.”
Walking up beside her, Dusk placed his hand on the side of her neck. She was warm from the exertion of breaking every reflective surface on the mountain. There were small cuts and chips in her scales from all the fighting and bad landings she’d experienced in her lifetime. Centuries upon centuries of history was etched across her hide for all the world to see should they look close enough. For the first time Dusk realized how truly old she was and how much she’d been through. He hoped this would be the last time she ever had to make a hard decision. After all that time, she deserved to rest.
“We’re going to do everything we can to protect it. That’s all we can do,” Dusk said, patting her. “At least this way it will be harder for them to take away.”
With a deep sigh Lyra lifted her head. “You’re right. This will slow them down at the very least. Maybe destiny has other things in place that we don’t know about.” She looked back at Dusk. “Step back.”
Dusk did as he was told. Lyra wound herself back, lifting her massive tail. Turning it over so the spikes faced the glass, she swung it forward with all her might. The bony plates struck the stone, web-like cracks spreading through the surface with loud popping as the spikes stuck in several inches. With a yank she tore them free. From within the puncture Dusk could see a familiar sight, a bright white glow like Tephyss’s skeleton the day he discovered it. The black stone had been hiding it all this time. Lyra swung again and again, shattering the obsidian piece by piece. After a few minutes she took a step back, panting. Blood dribbled from wounds in her tail and Dusk caught the metallic scent in the air. They didn’t seem to bother her though.
The heart was fully exposed and glowed brightly in the night like a beacon at the top of the mountain for all to see. The one contained within Tephyss’s body was large, but this was nearly three times the size. Lyra’s ‘half’ of the heart was nearly complete except for a large chunk carved out of the top. It had a strange, almost round shape, but there were several unnaturally flat sides, each one in the shape of a pentagon. Out of curiosity he stepped forward, reaching a hand out towards it. Lyra said nothing as his palm came to rest on the surface.
He expected a jolt, much like every other time he’d come into contact with magic, but this was different. The heart gave him a warm feeling that pulsed gently through his entire body. It wasn’t good or bad, it was only power. At once he felt connected with the world around him and all the stars in the sky. His consciousness spread beyond the confines of the material world and he found himself feeling the universe move around him. His senses left him. He could no longer smell the sea or feel the wind on his skin, it was as if he’d been transported outside of his own body.
Suddenly, he was aware of all the people in Udalara, the animals, the plants, and even the earth under his feet. Then, beyond that, he felt other lives out amongst the stars. There was something else out there, although he had no way to comprehend what it might be other than knowing it was alive. Beyond that were greater powers, bright clouds of light in a vast rainbow of colors he’d never seen before. Six of them, he realized. Something about them seemed familiar, but they were outside of his reach. Long trails of light spread from them in every direction, creating a dense spiderweb as they connected with every star except for his own. He knew they were watching him somehow, but even as one of the tendrils reached out for him, as if sensing his presence, it was stopped by an invisible force, like a wall. Dusk felt curious and frightened at the same time, but then his focus shifted back to Udalara. He could feel the crystal moon hovering out beyond the reach of the world, broken and lonely, the heart yearning to be reconnected with it. Even for all the power that he felt under his fingers, he could also feel the break in the stone. The heart was merely a shadow of its former self.
The feeling was so overwhelming that he felt tears come to his eyes. He yanked his hand away, gazing down at the skin of his palm that was still glowing. Slowly his senses returned to him, but they felt lessened, like he wasn’t quite in his own body again. He turned his head back to Lyra, her violet eyes watching him intently.
“What... what is this?” he muttered. “There’s so much... and out there too.” He pointed up to the stars above them. “I... I can feel them.”
Lyra nodded, her snout coming in closer. “Yes. There are more.”
A thought struck him and he realized how insignificant he was in the vast cosmos that so unassumingly floated above him. “Does anything we do even matter?” Dusk asked, gazing up at her. “There’s so much more than this.”
“If it’s important to you, then it matters.”
Dusk was silent. He looked back up at the stars, the newfound knowledge almost haunting him. He knew who they were, the bright lights in the sky and their millions of tendrils touching every star, and they had their eyes trained on him. Part of him wished he didn’t know.
“Lex,” Lyra said, turning herself back towards him. “I need your help.”
“Is he okay?” Lex asked, taking a step forward.
“He’s fine. A glimpse of the truth will catch anyone off guard. Take him with you and find Selussa. The caretakers are leaving on the boat you came to the island on. He needs to do something physical to bring him back to our reality. And get him to eat something if you can.” She reached out with her claws and gently prodded Dusk back towards Lex, breaking his eye contact with the heavens above. “That boat needs to sail by dawn. Do anything you can to help them. I’ll meet you down there.”
With that she turned and trotted to the side of the plateau, slipping over the edge into the darkness below. Lex reached up and put his arm around Dusk’s shoulders, guiding him back towards the platform.
“Come with me,” he said, noticing the faraway look in Dusk’s eyes. “We’ve got work to do.”
“I... I want to stay up here... with the stars,” he replied, turning his head back towards the sky. “They’re watching us.”
Lex grabbed both his cheeks and pulled him in for a kiss, letting the moment drag on until Dusk’s eyes finally closed and he wrapped an arm around Lex’s waist, squeezing gently with his fingertips.
“That’s better,” Lex cooed as he pulled away. “Someday you’ll have to explain to me what that was all about, but for now we’ve got people to save.”
“Okay,” Dusk replied breathlessly.
He still felt himself wanting to turn back, but he let Lex lead him to the platform and down into the mountain. Shaking his head he tried to focus on the task at hand. What he’d seen could be thought about another day. There were only a few hours left until the island would be under siege for control of the crystal heart.
***
Dusk and Lex stood side by side, watching the longboat pull away from the shore in the dense marine fog before dawn. With Lyra’s help they managed to get it back out into open water after it had been beached for over a month. The denizens of Birchwood had never been able to retrieve it luckily. With one last check to make sure it was in sailing condition, the sail was unfurled and any caretaker still able took an oar. Selussa waved from the stern of the ship in the pale purple light as the horizon grew brighter. They were headed around the mountain where they’d strike out north towards the labyrinth of islands that blocked the western side of the bay. If everything went as planned, they’d land on the far western edge of the continent that was almost completely uninhabited. There they would start a new life, one far away from the war in Inahan and the Circle. Lyra promised to join them someday, if she could.
“I hope they make it,” Lex said, his boot grinding nervously into the sand.
“Me too,” Dusk replied, feeling a strange sense of sadness come over him.
He waved back to Selussa, hopeful they’d find their destination, but knowing he’d never see them again even if they did. It was an odd realization.
Lord d'Ronja was standing to Lex’s left, watching the scene silently. He’d been adamant that Lex go back to the mainland with him and hire a carriage to go home. Lex laughed at the idea and told him he could go by himself, there were other things that needed to be done. Finally his father realized he only had two choices, he could either get on the boat and sail to the north with the caretakers or stay behind. Lex had urged him to get on the boat, but there he was, standing in the sand with the two boys and a dragon, staring death in the face defiantly. He was a braver man than Dusk had given him credit for, although it took some coaxing to find it.
“We should prepare,” Lord d'Ronja croaked. He cleared his throat. “They’ll be here soon.”
“He’s right,” Lyra agreed, looking to the eastern horizon where the sky was starting to tinge pink. “Dawn approaches.”
“Grab everything you need or want in case we need to make an escape.” Dusk took a deep breath, inhaling the salty sea air. “Dead or alive, we won’t be sleeping here again. We know we can’t win. Our only goal is to slow them down and put a dent in Nedarya’s forces. Be prepared for anything.”
“Gods it turns me on when you talk like that,” Lex huffed next to him.
Dusk saw his father blush off to the side and turn away with a grin on his face..