Page 95 of Heart of the Shadow King

Just the fall.

Then I hit the ground, jarred inside myjorprotection, and roll several times over before coming to a stop. I lie where I’ve fallen for some while, feeling the tremors pulsing through my limbs, feeling the flares of raw red power erupt inside my head. Part of me wants to stay. To simply cease all striving and let the crystals claim me fully. But that’s not what I came here for.

A deep throb stabs my senses. Turning slowly, I open my eyes, not expecting to see anything this deep down. Only . . . wait. Thereissomething.

I’ve found the heart stone. But it’s more than just a stone. It is a vast network of crystals, all grown together and spread before me, extending for miles in the deeps of the world. They are enormous, formed by the pressure of eons. Far greater than the tallest of the Urzulhar, ten times that size, all joined together like interlaced fingers, gleaming in unreal beauty. A complex song hums from their cores, multi-voiced and far beyond the comprehension of my gods-gift.

But I don’t have to comprehend it. I only have to join it. To make myself part of it.

I rise slowly. The world shakes again, and the crystals groan in the midst of their song. But the red pulse in their centers strengthens, drawing me. I stretch out both hands, step in among that network, a weaving so intricate it could only be fashioned by the hands of a god. I plant my palms against two different juttings of living stone.

Resonance jolts through my body, penetrating my shield ofjor.It rushes through my soul, expanding my awareness tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousand. I feel all theurzularound me, these massive crystals connected in vibrating force to each other, to the smaller crystals around them, to the broken fragments of the Urzulhar. On and on the connection spreads, dragging me with it. More and bigger, encompassing the world. It would be easy to lose myself in the vastness of this chorus, to let my body, mind, and soul be absorbed into this greater whole. Maybe I will. Maybe this is my final destiny. But first . . .

I close my eyes. Take hold of those vibrations. Were it not for myjor,I would shatter into a million pieces just as I shattered Targ. But I am stronger, for the moment at least. I send myself out, rippling across the world. The soul is a great thing after all, even when contained in a frail, human vessel. But I am no longer contained. My vessel is that song, that radiance. It carries me out from my center, expanding every idea of self I once believed. I am a world. I am a song. I am everywhere at once.

I feel the other living souls of this realm, all their small and trembling fears. The troldefolk, who cower within their crumbling homes. Thewoggha, who scurry through their collapsing caverns. The mothcats, the cave spiders, the delicate wingedolk, who gasp their last breaths, on the brink of extinction. I feel them all within myself. They are mine, and I am theirs, though they may never know me.

I will save them. All of them.

I plunge deep. Into the hot, crushing depths. This too is both like and unlike my dream of falling. In that dream my flesh could not endure the heat. But I am not flesh anymore. I am stone. I am crystal. I am ancient, ageless, and impervious. Thus, I plunge, riding onurzulvibrations all the way to the molten core where Arraog writhes.

She is vast.

Too great and too terrible to be contained within this form.

She is an idea—an unknowable greatness. Beauty and terror, meant for dancing across the hugeness of space and time. Yet here she is, hemmed in by a world of rock, which binds but cannot hold her. Not forever. She flexes one claw, and a new fissure opens along the surface crust. She roars, and plumes of poisonous gas rise, filling tunnels with deadly clouds. But worse by far than her size or her poison is her rage. It blasts, an inferno from the pits of hell. It would incinerate me in an instant were I not dispersed across the shimmeringurzul.As it is, she cannot touch me.

But she knows I am here.

I feel you, creature of dust.

I feel you here in my prison.

She twists, straining against the walls of stone. Caverns quake, cities fall. Heat roils around her, molten rock dripping from every enormous scale. She turns a wild, rolling eye this way and that, as though she can see me, as though I am a thing that can be seen.

I’ve been waiting for you.

I was promised.

Her mouth opens. A river of lava rushes between teeth the size of mountains, rising, swelling, filling caves and caverns in a molten flood. Burning me across the miles of my existence. But I feel no pain, stone that I am.

Nornala said that you would come.

When Lamruil bound me, Nornala promised me relief.

Have you come to kill me, dust creature?

Have you come to set me free?

No human mind could comprehend that voice. It is too hot, too enormous, too ancient. To try to fathom it would be to cast oneself into a sea of madness.

But stone can bear such heat. Stone can bear such pressure.

“Arraog.” I sing her name from every crystal in the world. She would not hear a smaller voice, but this voice, this song, she perceives. Her head tilts to one side, and a hundred islands on the surface world vanish beneath rolling waves. But I have her attention.

“Arraog,” I say, “I feel your pain.”

You know nothing of pain, dust creature.

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