Page 34 of The Night Prince 3
He shifted his body, somehow keeping on the stone ledge as he scrambled towards the open entrance to the Temple of the Necrilem. Five feet away. Four feet! Three! Two! ONE!
He lunged, throwing himself through the doorway, where he sprawled on the cold ground of the temple’s foyer. He laid there for long moments, breathing hard, and his heart hammering in his ears. He’d made it!
That’s only the first test. There are likely to be far more inside, he reminded himself.
Finally, after long moments he lifted himself up on shaking arms and slid his trembling legs underneath him. He got to his feet. His knees nearly buckled, but he firmed them. He dusted off his pants.
First, he looked into the interior of the temple. This antechamber was circular. The floor was tiled in a mosaic in black and white. The skulls of humans and elves looked similar. Or he supposed they did. So it didn’t shock him by seeing what looked like a human skull detailed in tiles before him.
Or maybe it looks that way for me. After all, what elves would worship death? But other beings were a part of the Empire that might have done so.
Yet it was a human skull that was there.
It knows I’m here.
Finley shuddered. But there was the burn of excitement in his belly. If the temple knew he was here and put a human skull there, this was meant. This was the beginning of his journey.
Without a backwards glance, he headed deeper into the temple.
Naming Tradition
Earlier…
Declan could see a faint glimmering outline of Finley huddled on the ground against the back of the wall of the stairwell. Like a ghost. Shimmering in blue-white. He was practically curled into a ball, eyes tightly shut, arms brought up to his face as if to ward off something…
Declan breathed in and smelled the sharp ozone tang.
Leviathan.
And then there was the sharper, bitter smell of fear.
Finley.
At first upon seeing this ghostly remnant of his best friend his heart lodged in his throat. It filled his mouth. Made it so he was unable to speak. He heard voices all around him. Rhalyf screaming. Elasha shrieking. Aquilan murmuring loving reassurances. Darcassan’s strangled cries. Helgrom trying to keep it together. Snaglak and Glom understanding that Finley was gone.
But was he really gone?
Declan had seen things like this ghostly figure before. In Tyrael. In the first year of the war, he saw these emotional echoes of people who had died in terror. He had glimpsed them out of the corner of his eye. Glimmering there in dark corners. And when it became night, they glowed like fallen stars.
Everywhere.
He’d taken it upon himself to seek out each and every one of them. In many places, he’d found whole families who had died within inches of each other. Reaching for one another. Mouths opened in terror. Eyes squeezed shut. Children ripped from parents’ arms. Brothers holding one another. Sisters vainly defending younger siblings. Friends holding hands as death came.
He’d sit with them in their glimmering ghost light and he’d tell them that they were safe. That it was over. There was nothing to be afraid of any longer. And slowly, they had faded away. He didn’t know if what he’d done had helped them or if their energy had simply, naturally dissipated.
He’d told Aquilan that he had never come to Chicago for… reasons. But the truth was that he had not wanted to see all those fallen stars. Or the absence of them. He hadn’t seen any of the figures in the Thompson Center. Maybe time had washed their terror away without his help.
Yet when he saw Finley like that…
Was Finley gone?
Was Finley dead?
If this echo of his terror was here then…
I would not let the brother of your heart die, my Rahven, the elf said.
Relief was like a tidal wave. Slamming him back inside of himself. He had somehow left his body. He’d hardly felt it. But now he sensed the tile beneath his feet and smelled the cold, hard air of the underground.
