Page 180 of Cast in Conflict

It was Kaylin who answered. “It depends. Where did you go to sleep? In this library?”

“Is that what you call this space? It is not an accurate description.”

“We’ve seen the library in the Academia, and it seems similar.”

“You have seen Starrante’s space. Once, we might have been able to meet—but not now. I am concerned,” he continued, his body rising as his legs lengthened. “You should not be here. We have taken precautions—but even precautions must age and wither. Time is kind to none of us. If we do not feel it as the continual wound that you experience, we feel it nonetheless.” Bakkon exhaled. “It has been too long. I should have destroyed you when I first sensed you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Kaylin stepped, hard, on Mandoran’s foot.

“Time,” was the soft reply. “Our kin—my kin—leave the nest having devoured most of our clutch; it is a fight for both dominance and survival. It is only once we leave that we truly open all of our eyes; only once we interact with adults—and with outsiders—that we understand that there is more, must be more, than hunger and survival.

“You are not my kin. You are not young in the way we are young. And here, in this empty space, I have perhaps desired a reminder: I am not a youngling. Not a child. You remind me. It has been so long.” He did not take the book. Instead, he turned away, his legs stretching. “It is not safe for you to walk in this place. You, because you are mortal; you, because you are unstable.”

“We’re trying to leave.”

“If you are Chosen, you might be able to do so. I do not give much for the chances of your friend.”

“Can you get us out of here? With the web portals?”

“The portals are anchored,” he replied. “There is no external area into which you might safely walk. Do you not understand where you are?”

“Ravellon.”

25

The ground beneath their feet rumbled.

The Wevaran clicked and screeched. Kaylin wondered if the latter was the Wevaran version of cursing. It was an oddly comforting thought.

“Chosen,” Bakkon said, “why have you come?”

“I didn’t intend to come here. Where we live, this place is death. Worse than death. It’s surrounded by six Towers, and Shadow is trapped within it. We can walk into it, and we can leave. But the Shadow—”

“That is not the way it works,” was the soft reply. “I have preserved this space for far longer than you have been alive, hoping. Why did you come?” he asked again, as if aware that she hadn’t really answered his question.

Problem was, she wasn’t sure she had an acceptable answer. “I’m not sure how I arrived here. But—outside of the barrier, we were under attack and my friend—the unstable one—got hit with...Shadow spears.”

Kaylin couldn’t tell if Bakkon’s gaze had moved to Mandoran, he had so many eyes.

“He is not afflicted now.”

“No—but I couldn’t heal him in midair, which is where most of the fight was taking place.”

“You were outside.”

“Yes.”

“And now you are inside.”

“Yes.”

“You did not deliberately attempt to enter.”

“No—that’s what I’ve been saying. I was trying to heal him—to remove the Shadow the injury had introduced to his body.”

He said nothing.

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