Page 56 of Heart of the Shadow King

Gaur had prepared a chamber and lined it with lead, which effectively blocks the song of theurzuland hinders our gift. He chained me up within those four close walls and left me there for days on end. Without light. Without food. Without water. I was buried alive, abandoned to rot in those chains. Such would have been my end were it not for Zur.

“Let her redeem herself!” Zur begged. “Let her do what she came here to do. Let her enstone the dragon!”

“Impossible,” Gaur replied. “Theva-joris not strong enough. Our priests say it can never be, not without a willing sacrifice.”

“Then let me be that sacrifice,” Zur declared before all Gaur’s court. “I offer myself freely. My life for hers. My life for theva-jor.”

They dragged me from my prison of lead, covered in my own foulness, thin, shuddering, starved. They cleaned me up, fed me, combed my hair. Adorned me in sacred robes and crowned my head in jewels.

Then they brought me to the place of sacrifice where Zur was bound, his flesh prepared for the diamond blade.

I screamed.

I begged.

I pleaded.

I vowed I would never do it. That I would kill myself first.

In the end it was Zur who convinced me.

He told me to let his death have meaning. He would die. Gruesomely. Horribly. But he would die knowing his people would be spared.

So much pain. So much.

The sacrificed one must remain alive as long as possible.

To keep the blood fresh and flowing.

I wept.

I wept until there were no tears left.

Then I sank intojor.

So deep I could not feel.

I did not want to feel.

I wanted to be stone.

The crystals devoured Zur’s blood. Their resonance was so profound, it could be felt in every corner of the Under Realm.

I felt nothing.

I knew nothing.

I was nothing.

I was fractured in a billion particles, spread out across the world.

I was everywhere. I was nowhere.

I stood before Arraog herself and looked her in the eye.

She was asleep. But she saw me. She knew me. She stirred, and towns were crushed to dust. She trembled, and rivers flooded, whole cities drowned. She breathed, and poison poured through channels, tunnels, crevices, souls.

But she could not escape me. And when I sent the resonance of a billion singing crystals into her, stone engulfed her heart.

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