Page 71 of Celestial Bodies

Julen lost all sense of his physical surroundings, and suddenly, he was swimming in a sea of sludge. Julen thrashed about, seeking air, but the ooze had no end. He floundered, searching for a surface to breach, but the sludge pulled him down further. His body sank until he hit a barricade like a sea floor. Could he push through? His instincts told him to dig.

He pushed his arm through with all his might, maneuvering his fingers to a point where he could spear his hand through the wall of muck. Finally, the floor gave way to an opening. A cool breeze chilled his hands.Air. There’s air on the other side.

The hope for freedom compelled him to push harder. He forced an entire arm through and pulled himself through the thick, muddy floor. He thrashed about, trying to make his way out of the black mass to the other side. A leg broke through, then another. Julen’s limbs were free; he needed to get through the rest.

He managed to maneuver his waist out. Only his head clung to the sludge now.His limbs moved wildly in the open space beyond the muck. He whipped about, hoping the movement would dislodge his head.

Finally, as if sucked in by a vacuum, he shot out the other side and fell from the ceiling of a cavernous space before slamming into the soft, gelatinous floor. He coughed up the muck he had swallowed, gasping for air. Pressing his fingers into the ground, he felt that the sludge had congealed around this immense room. Julen tried to scratch at it, but the gelatinous floor wouldn’t break.

He looked around the space. He was surrounded by the black ooze, except for a gigantic, glowing amethyst larger than Julen himself and a mysterious window seemingly built into the dark walls around him. Where was he? Was he still in Vinculux?

His father’s voice mixed with the creature’s bellowed throughout the dungeon, reverberating against the undulating black walls. “Is he stable?”

The next voice to echo through the chamber was Carnufor’s. “I feel a pulse. This is excellent, Your Majesty. We’ll need to monitor him for a bit to ensure his heart doesn’t fail before you can channel into him, but this is already more promising than the others.”

Julen could hear them, his father and the doctor talking about him. They were outside, but where was he?

He screamed, “You bastards! Where am I? What have you done to me?”

“They can’t hear you.”

He jumped at the noise, scrambling away. He turned about, looking for whatever had just spoken.

From the darkness emerged the small fae. Its voice was soft and sad. Soon, the other creatures Julen saw in Carnufor’s lab emerged from the darkness, illuminated by the glowing purple stone. They stood behind the fae. Their eyes weren’t black. They looked present. Here. With Julen. “You’re trapped in the abyss. We all are.”

32

Chapter 31

Dacias

Dacias swallowed hard as the dormant volcanoes came into view, like ominous towers looming over the horizon.

Vinculux was close.

The journey after the attack on the transport was nothing short of terrifying. Out in the open, Dacias could only pray that he and Klorin looked the part of two Lapistrean guardians on their way to Vinculux. With each checkpoint they passed, Dacias breathed a sigh of relief, but the weight of the task ahead hung like an anchor in the pit of his stomach.

Dacias cursed himself for not getting Julen out sooner. What was he thinking? He should have never let Julen go back to that castle by himself. Dacias could have used Klorin’s UIN to sneak Julen through the Rugirean checkpoint, or Julen could have hidden in Cupidor while Dacias and Souzie carried out the plan at the castle. Either way, getting Julen out first would have been the wiser choice.

He hated himself for not thinking of this sooner and knew that he wasn’t in his right mind when they planned the escape. Julen’s description of life with his father made Dacias want to sneak into Lapistra and turn Haligran’s entrails into jumping rope. He would have thought of a safer option for Julen had his mind not been clouded by rage. He couldn’t let that happenagain. He needed to be sharp when they reached the prison.

The horses trudged along the road, which soon disappeared under rock and ash as they traversed the land between the volcanoes. The world around them changed. It was like being on another planet altogether—a hazardous planet with poisonous air that ate away one’s innards. The gaseous atmosphere burned Dacias’s eyes, and he choked on the fumes.

Sediment swirled about them as the horses moved along on the uneven terrain. Sympathy tugged Dacias’s heart as the horses took one pathetic step after another through the detritus. They looked exhausted. He considered jumping down from the cart to shift and help them pull, but he had to preserve his energy for Vinculux.

Freezing currents swept over the volcano walls, beating into Dacias and Klorin. They shivered as the wind seared their skin.

“Thank the Mother Planet Souzie’s in the transport,” Klorin shouted.

Dacias nodded in agreement but couldn’t ignore the pang of jealousy coursing through his body. He would do anything to have Julen safe in the transport too.

This was the last leg of their journey before reaching Vinculux. They needed to pass the row and breach the ascending slopes leading to the winding, downward path to the prison. Then, they’d be past the microclimate of the row. The air would normalize, and hopefully, the road would be easier to see.

Dacias had no idea if they were traveling along an established road anymore. Visibility became nonexistent as a cloud of volcanic debris consumed them. Hundreds of years of eroded rock and ash swirled about like a blizzard. The winds picked up speed, and the horses stumbled.

Dacias had to yell over the storm. “I don’t know if these horses can take much more of this.”

“We can’t exactly take a break to rest right now, Dax.”

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