Page 121 of Soul Forge

“Let me come with you,” she pleaded. “We should face this together.”

Silently, he held out his hand. A beat of weighted silence passed, and Elda felt like the impenetrable gloom in the archway was reaching out to her, trying to suck her in and trap her. There was no light at the other end of the opening, no way to tell if it dropped off into a yawning pit partway through. Blood rushed in her ears, her breaths quickening at the idea of falling into nothing.

Sypher’s hand squeezed hers, anchoring her before her panic could dig its claws in further. Together, they stepped into the gloom, their footsteps echoing over the trickling sounds of the gory streams dripping from the rock. The darkness seemed to swallow them, forcing them to keep a hand out on either side,following the curve of the tunnel. He kicked rubble out of their path, able to tell where the chunks were even in the dark. She realised Vel’s shadows probably meant he could scan the tunnel without needing his eyes.

Even so, Elda began to imagine creatures stuck to the walls, watching and waiting for the perfect time to strike. In her mind, they were bug-like, with long bodies and tickling antennae. Every little shift in the dark was one of them moving closer. The phantom clicking of limbs accompanied the grinding of stone, and she became convinced the tunnel would cave in and crush her if the creatures didn’t kill her first.

“Breathe,” Sypher murmured. “It’s an empty tunnel. The others are behind us.”

She sucked in a breath, letting it out slowly through her nose until the clicking and rumbling faded. Sure enough, the clopping of hooves started to echo through the dark.

“My mind is playing tricks on me,” she mumbled.

“I’ve got you,” he promised.

As the tunnel curved more, a halo of daylight up ahead illuminated the walls. Dozens of scratch marks scored the stone all around them, the tunnel as jagged at the exit as it had been at the beginning.

Elda kept her steps measured, resisting the urge to sprint away from the gloom, keeping pace with Sypher as they emerged into the light, blinking fiercely while their eyes adjusted after the oppressive shadows of the passageway. When the brightness was bearable, they froze.

The peak had been hollowed out; its summit opened to the sky. The sun beamed down on a vast basin protected by the rocky walls at the edges of the mountain. Spread out before them was the decaying corpse of an entire civilisation, petrified in a macabre mix of beauty and death.

“The city of angels,” Sypher whispered, his fingers tightening around Elda’s. “It’s real.”

The city of angels, as Sypher had labelled it, was destroyed, its buildings scarred by the machinations of whatever powerful force had wiped out the entire race. More golden mosaics winked mockingly beneath their layer of dirt and dust.

Elda had grown up knowing the angels were extinct. Sypher had told her himself that the race was gone before he existed. Her mother had told her tales of the angels – tales Elda believed were pretend as she’d sat listening with wide, eager eyes. She’d thought being one would be a great adventure. She remembered hanging on Meridia’s every word as a child and devouring any books within her permitted reading that mentioned the immortal race.

She’d also been told they were wiped out by a force of darkness, that their extinction was the first true act of evil Malakai ever committed. Never had she been prepared for the stories to betrue.

There were brown stains on the tiles and the buildings, faded and grainy, but very obviously blood. The moonstone clung to it, absorbing the death and destruction until it became a vital pieceof the scenery. Bones were scattered through the streets, all of them bleached and pitted by years of exposure to the elements. Many of them were shattered, the breaks rounded by time until it was hard to tell which bones belonged to one another.

Sypher stepped over the fractured remnants of an entire civilisation, holding Elda’s hand like she was his only anchor to reality. Through the bond between them, she felt his usually tight control on his emotions slipping. Fear, loss, and confusion slapped her with such force that it left her dazed.

The rest of their small group followed behind them, gawking at the wreckage they traipsed through. The only sound to break the mournful silence was the clip-clop of hooves on the tiles as they picked their way through the bodies.

The city had been beautiful once, but now its name was lost to time. It was clear that every inch had been created with great love and dedication, each tile in the enormous mosaic floor carefully placed to create an intricate picture that Elda knew could only be appreciated by those with the ability to fly. It saddened her to think such craftsmanship lay rotting at the top of a mountain, forgotten entirely by the rest of the world, save for a few vague scribblings in Valerus’ history books.

The stumps of buildings bore the remnants of elegant carvings and markings created to tell stories to anyone who passed them. Those stories had been violently destroyed, blasted apart by whatever chaos had swept through the city. Elda reached out to touch one of the few intact carvings in reverence. Her finger brushed the graceful curve of a moonstone bird, and a shock zapped its way up her arm.

She recoiled from the sting, the screams from her premonition pounding her skull in a sudden cacophony. Sypher and the others heard them, too, clapping their hands over their ears while they waited for the racket to fade. Nox whinnied and tossed her mane, Atlas bucking his back legs. Irileth wrappedher arms around the tulpar demon’s neck, covering her eardrums to dull the noise, and Reiner did the same for her Pegasus, choosing to bear the racket herself.

“The mountain clings to the pain it witnessed here,” Cerilla said gravely when the wailing finally faded. “The stones around us keep hold of the memories of what happened here. They hold in them the hope of a nation long lost, the desire for someone to return one day to rediscover the glorious beings that were the angels of Valerus. Moonstone is special in that it can be imbued with memories, emotions, and stories the same way a crystal can hold an enchantment.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Sypher warned them all. “Who knows what else they’ll try to show us.” They nodded, following him once more through the wreckage. Shards of glass still hung from crumbling window frames, reflecting the sunlight back at them until they came to an intersection.

Elda watched Sypher’s head turn, his fists clenching and unclenching. Something was tugging him forwards. She could feel whatever was guiding him humming through their bond along with the debilitating fear it inspired in him. Her own heart pounded erratically, smashing harder against her ribs in a short staccato the further in they went. She tried valiantly to avoid the empty gazes of hundreds of eyeless skulls, careful not to disturb their resting places.

The Soul Forge stopped next to a broken pillar. Its remnants were scattered inside the husk of a building that looked like it used to be a home. He frowned, his eyes scanning the ruined dwelling like he was searching for something.

His foot nudged something, and he froze, looking down at a skeleton sprawled at the pillar’s base. He let go of Elda’s hand as though he intended to touch it. The skull was small, the back of it shattered, and the wing bones were still arranged in a recognisable pattern. A tear tracked down Sypher’s cheek. Hetouched his gloved fingers to it and frowned, looking at it like he didn’t understand how it got there before his attention strayed back to the damaged skull.

“I know these bones,” he said softly. “How do I know them? What happened here?” His voice cracked, pain he couldn’t make sense of etched across his face. Elda sucked in a lungful of air, the weight of his grief making it hard to breathe. Seeing him so uncertain, so frightened, struck ice through her heart.

Cerilla simply bowed her head, unwilling to answer his question. A prickle of rage fluttered through Elda, but she kept her mouth shut. No amount of shouting at the Spirits would make them give answers before they were ready.

“Keep going, Battle-born,” Irileth urged softly. “All will be made clear. We can’t tell you ourselves.”

Sypher glanced at Elda, his shoulders hunched, brows knitted in an uncertain frown. She forced herself to smile faintly and nod, retaking his hand and towing him down the street he’d been walking. Her mind strayed back to the image of Vel standing above the corpses of her parents, her home burning around her, and she squared her shoulders. She would be Sypher’s guide through whatever was waiting, no matter what it took from her.

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