Page 37 of Storm of Shadows

It takes several hours for the temple to fall silent, and by then I’ve almost drifted asleep. Moonlight pours in through the window, casting the rug in a silver tint.

Purple light glows in my fingers as I gather aether. I cup my hands and squeeze the magic into a ball. When the light is compressed into a small orb, I press it to the center of my brow and close my eyes. Aether hums. I focus all my thoughts on the orb.

“Oculus.”

Light bursts, transferring my mind into the orb.

With the Mind’s Eye spell cast, I see the surrounding room while my eyes are closed. Through the orb, I gaze at where my body sits cross-legged on the bed. Zephyr snores loudly beside me and doesn’t seem at all disturbed by my magic. When I first learned this spell in the Arcanium, seeing myself from outside my body was unnerving, even more so thanspeculus, a cloning spell.Oculusisn’t spell I’ve often used since mastering it during my studies, and I was half expecting for it to fail on my first attempt.

I direct the orb forth, and it crackles like lightning as it drifts through the air. When it reaches the door, I focus all my thoughts on forcing it through the wood. With enough effort, the orb slips through the door.

The corridor is empty, like I hoped. I follow it left, gliding weightlessly through the temple, and cling to the shadows. When footsteps sound, I dart behind the nearest wall or pillar and hope the approaching priestesses don’t glimpse the pale glow of my orb. While they can detect dark magic with ease, they’re less sensitive to aether. That’s what I read in the Arcanium, anyway. As long as I keep out of their sight, they shouldn’t be able to detect my spell.

The orb moves faster than I ever could through the temple, allowing me to map my way through the complex. I explore every turn, making a mental note of how all the corridors connect so I can retrace my steps later.

I find the dungeons deep in the heart of the temple, at the end of a long, spiraling staircase.

Torches lit with golden light perch along the walls. In Nolderan, we instead use aether crystals and fuel them with the Aether Tower’s power. As far as I’m aware, the Priestesses of Selynis haven’t constructed a system to enable ordinary citizens to use light magic and to enable enchantments to continue running without needing maintenance. I doubt they’ve ever tried creating such a thing, since they see their magic as Goddess-given and too sacred for the uninitiated to harness. All of this means these torches, few though they are, must be manually lit by priestesses, and I can’t tell how long it’ll be before they run out of magic and someone comes down here to light them again. There are also few hiding places.

That means I need to be quick.

I race down the long, dark corridor, and the air hums with aether as my orb pierces it. At the end, I come to a heavy iron door and force the orb through. It requires much more concentration to penetrate than the wooden door in my room. Once I’m through I emerge to a few steps, and the orb drifts down them. The dungeons are small, containing only three cells in total. Either Esterra has even less crime than Nolderan, or these cells are reserved for powerful enemies while regular criminals are contained elsewhere in the city.

I find Natharius in the farthest cell, manacles binding his wrists. Runes are carved into their shiny surface, emitting golden light.

He sits away from me with his back pressed against the metal bars. I drift closer so I can see him, and the glow of my orb reaches into his cell. His eyes open.

His lip curls. It’s more a sneer than a smile. “Now you know where I am, hurry and release me from this wretched place.” He holds up his golden manacles, and the chain linking them together clinks with the motion.

Unfortunately, I can’t speak while in this orb form and therefore can’t offer him one of my finest retorts. I consider delaying to annoy him, but that would waste precious time. Even annoying the Void Prince isn’t worth that.

“Terminir,” I say in my mind. I vaguely have the sensation of my lips moving, but the feeling is distant. The orb bursts, and my entire world is shattered by violet light. The brilliant rays last for only a brief moment before fading to darkness.

I once more feel the weight of my limbs and the softness of the silk blankets beneath me. When I open my eyes, I see my room through my own eyes rather than through the orb.

I don’t hesitate before scrambling from where I sit, and I reach over to Zephyr and shake him twice. He opens an eye but otherwise doesn’t move.

“I found where they’re holding Natharius. We need to hurry and get him out of there.”

Zephyr closes his eye again and has the audacity to snore. Loudly. I roll my eyes. Not even my exceptionally lazy faerie dragon can fall asleep that quickly.

“I know, I know,” I say, emphasizing my words with a heavy sigh. “I’d much rather leave him to rot in this temple, too.”

His head perks up, and he peers up at me with an extra shiny glint in his amethystine eyes.

“But we can’t.”

He snorts in protest.

“Look, we’ve already been through this. I can’t defeat Arluin and his necromancers and all his countless legions of undead alone.”

He puffs out his chest.

“Yes, yes. Of course. I mean,wecan’t defeat him alone.”

Zephyr doesn’t look convinced by that, but I don’t bother debating his ability to destroy Arluin by spitting little balls of aether at him.

“Anyway, we need the Void Prince and his dark magic, even as loathsome as he is, so we can’t leave him here.”

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